4 Plagued by Quilt (15 page)

Granny had bought this old frame house shortly after Granddaddy died, saying it was her way of letting go and holding on at the same time.
It gives us both room to breathe,
she’d told me over the phone, the other half of that “us” being the other love of her life, the Weaver’s Cat. She’d taken some furniture and her looms and books with her to the new old house, giving the growing Cat permission to stretch and fill all the corners of the space she’d shared with Granddaddy since they were married. I was lucky enough, now, to own both places and to have stewardship of the loving memories woven between them. I’d hated losing my job and my life in Illinois, but I loved the safety net of Blue Plum that I’d fallen into. My move to this house had been, like Granny’s, one of letting go and holding on, at the same time.

Phillip had moved to town not much more than a month and a half earlier. New like me. By all accounts, he’d loved his job and profession. But someone in town had come to hate him enough to kill him. At least to hate him enough at that one crucial moment—at the swing of that wicked hackle. Did that make it a crime of passion? A momentary loss of humanity? Or had someone planned to kill him with the hackle there and then? Was it reasonable for anyone to think they could be accurate and forceful enough to kill with the swing of a hackle? But if the murder wasn’t premeditated, who’d taken the
hackle to the retting pond? Phillip? And if he had, then it didn’t matter who had access to the storage area. It only mattered who knew where to find him, or happened to find him, that morning, at that hour. And what had that person gained by his death? Or what hadn’t that person lost?

Sprawling in the faded blue chair wasn’t producing the coherent answers I wanted, just more confusion and questions. On the theory that comfort and better accessories might make a difference, I went to change out of my presentable shopkeeper khakis and knit top into dark jeans and a black T-shirt. Then I took the ultimate accessory out of the drawer in the bedside table—a notebook from Ernestine. She, who always carried the perfect props, had given me a “casebook” suitable for a sleuth from the Golden Age of Detective Fiction—chocolate brown leather, the size of a deck of cards, dark red ribbon bookmark, and an elastic band bound into its cover to keep it closed. I felt almost indecent every time I stroked it.

My little beauty and the sheaf of notes from the meeting at Ardis’ went with me to sit on the front porch swing. There we swung gently to and fro, and I read and thought and made more notes. None of that helped, either, except to pass the time until it was too dark on the unlit porch to read. A good supper might have helped, considering I’d eaten only Mel’s cookies since breakfast, but I’d decided to skip eating until later. Not that I wasn’t hungry, but nothing I ate was going to sit well. The thought of driving out to the Homeplace and breaking in was giving me the heebie-jeebies.

I
was “visiting the Holston Homeplace Living History Farm after hours.” That sounded better to my rationalizing ears than “I was breaking in.” And I left my car at the Quickie Mart, a quarter of a mile away from the site, not because I planned to sneak in on foot, but because the warm evening reminded me of the first night I’d spent in the cottage. On that night I’d walked to the store for milk, so on this night, walking in the shadows along the edge of the dark, winding country road was a pleasant nostalgia tour. Although, after thinking of the phrase “nostalgia tour,” I wished I hadn’t, because I’d first heard it from Clod. Still, “nostalgia tour” sounded better than “breaking in,” too. So did “looking for a lost and fragile friend.”

And entering the grounds of the Homeplace hardly involved breaking in.
Anyone
could walk around the locked gate that barred the drive. “Stroll” was more like it. And most people would only need to duck behind a rhododendron if a car came along the road. And a smaller person hardly even had to duck, because some of the rhododendrons in east Tennessee were huge.

Once around the gate (and after brushing off a few rhododendron leaves), I headed for the caretaker’s cottage. Geneva, if she’d made it out to the site, might have
gone to one of the other buildings. But as far as I knew, she’d never left the cottage once she’d started haunting it, so that was the first place to look for her. That it was also a place I wanted to look around because Phillip had lived there was only a coincidence.

Since meeting my less-than-corporeal friend, I’d done some research on ghosts. I’d read both that lavender kept ghosts at bay and that it attracted them—contradictory and confusing, like so many pieces of my life lately. The bees I’d seen buzzing in the lavender the other morning were all home and in bed when I walked past Phillip’s door and around to the side that was hidden from view. I put on the white cotton museum gloves I’d so handily stuck in my pocket. Then I checked to see if the window in the pantry was still in the habit of being unlocked, and I smiled. Yes, it was.

It occurred to me, after I’d climbed less than gracefully through the window, that it was now possible I’d broken into—that is, that I’d entered unlocked premises—more often than Joe had. It also occurred to me that long, lithe legs built for ambling were an advantage during such activities. So was the small LED flashlight on my key ring.

The pantry opened into the kitchen, which wasn’t as neat and clean as when I’d stayed there. Phillip hadn’t done his dishes before he died. I admired the variety of spices he’d left out on the counter—cumin, coriander, turmeric, garam masala, rosemary, smoked salt, basil, dill—the inventory was wasting time and making me hungry. There wasn’t a hackle sitting on the counter or table or on top of the refrigerator. No ghost wept in a chair at the table as she had the first time I met her.

I moved into the living room, still furnished with the shabby sofa and upholstered rocker. Phillip had squeezed
a desk into the corner near the window seat. Stacks of books surrounded a laptop-sized space in the middle of the desk.

No ghost or hackle sat on the mantelpiece. The fireplace tools stood handy, where I remembered. I thought about using the shovel to pry the cap off the newel post at the bottom of the stairs, the way TGIF and I had before. But the note Elihu Bowman left in the hollow post when he finished building the house didn’t answer any of my questions, and having it in my hand wouldn’t either, as far as I could see. I put my hand on the newel and looked up the stairs. There was a low-ceilinged bedroom up there and a small bathroom. I put a foot on the first step up, but stepped down again. Was that my inner prude hesitating to intrude in a dead man’s more personal space? Maybe. Instead I went back to the desk.

The books on Phillip’s desk were less interesting than his herbs and spices. Less varied and less exotic, anyway.
The American Resting Place: 400 Years of History Through Our Cemeteries and Burial Grounds
piqued my interest, but the rest of the books looked like textbooks he must have used in his graduate museum administration classes. A manila folder under one of the stacks intrigued me more than the books, and the stack of books sitting on the folder cooperated more quickly than Argyle had when I’d asked him to move.

I considered the ethics of opening the folder. It was thin, light. There couldn’t be more than two dozen sheets of paper in it. Or three dozen. If I leafed through them quickly, my ethical lapse would be over in a twinkling—ignoring the fact that I was still inside the cottage without invitation. But, after all, it was that kind of cottage, and I knew from
personal experience that people frequently turned up in the pantry or the kitchen uninvited. Ghosts, too.

Inside the file, right on top—I caught my breath. A photocopy of Elihu Bowman’s note looked up at me.

Finished this house this day for this family

My dear wife and our dear children

Elihu Bowman

29th April 1853

Good for Phillip for not falling into the camp of architectural historians and preservation experts who pooh-poohed stories of people finding documents stashed in newel posts. I’d known a few homeowners who’d found the blueprints of their houses in newels. Elihu’s charming note, even in facsimile, was a pleasure to see again.

The next page in the file was a photograph—but again, it was a copy, not an original. It looked as though Phillip had done a cut-and-paste into a document and printed the document page. He’d printed it in gray tones, instead of color, and the lack of contrast made it hard to decipher. But there appeared to be names scrawled on a lined surface. Not paper—it was too dark to be paper, and the lines looked more like dimensional spaces than something ruled onto a surface. The scrawls were a childish mix of upper- and lowercase letters, one short name per line.
Ezra, Thos, Uley, Whit
—four little boys leaving behind their marks? Without any reference points—who, what, when, and especially where it had been taken—the photograph didn’t mean anything to me. It wasn’t worthless, though; it gave us names, possible access points.

The rest of the papers in the file were photocopies from county record books—ledgers dating back to when they were kept by hand in spidery script, their ink now fading. They looked to be a combination of census, deed, and land records. Maybe tax records, too, but it would take time to decipher the handwriting and interpret some of the abbreviations and jargon. There were more like four dozen pages in the file. The first date on the first page was July 30, 1814. I turned to the last page and saw March 11, 1918, but scanning through the pages in between showed dates drifting back and forth and possibly beyond in both directions.

Phillip had highlighted certain names throughout. He’d been thorough and systematic, using a different color for each surname. The name Holston rated blue. I saw a couple of Bowmans, but they were a Francis and a Benjamin, not Elihu. With more time and more care, I might find Elihu, but I didn’t want to get caught up in details. I didn’t want to get caught, period. Murphy was a name new to me, and it showed up several times in green. And Severs in yellow. Related to Mattie Severs? Levi Severs had sold a fifteen-acre tract of land in 1872. Why had Phillip thought that was significant? Why were any of these documents significant?

“Your life of crime is much less exciting than mine,” a voice said in my ear. It was a familiar voice, but that didn’t matter. I jumped and scattered photocopies from the file as I spun around.

“And although I am not as easily spooked as you are, I do not sound like a startled kitten when I do scream. Let me show you.” Geneva kindly demonstrated a bloodcurdling scream.

The photocopies I hadn’t initially strewn, hit the floor
when I dropped the file to cover my ears. When I opened my eyes, she was floating in front of me.

“Have you found any clues yet?” she asked.

“I’m not sure I have any memory of my life before your scream.”

She tipped her head and looked thoughtful. “Perhaps that is what happened to my memory, too.” She said that without any of the usual signs of distress she showed when she talked about trying to remember.

“Did you have any trouble getting here?” I asked.

“I did wonder if I would get lost and be left to wander as though in a wasteland. But no, I knew the way here without thinking. And then I wondered why I ended up haunting this house—uselessly, I might add, if one measures one’s success by traditional haunted-house stories. I thought perhaps the reason I came to
live
, as it were, here, and the reason I was drawn back so easily is because I am buried in the foundation.”

“You
are
?”

“Of course not; this house is much older than I am. But I looked around the foundations anyway, and under the house, too. As a theory, that did not pan out.”

“You’re handling this all very well,” I said. “How do you feel being back here? Do you miss the place?”

“It is not a happy house.”

“You weren’t happy when I met you here, but the house is cute and comfy enough.”

“It is not easy to be comfy or cute when one is dead and gone. You should try it sometime. In fact, you probably will. But I remember that you were not happy living here, either.”

“For other reasons, though. For good reasons. Not because of the house. You had good reason, too.”

“That is true. It is not any easier being happy than it is being comfy when one lies moldering graveless, so perhaps you are right, and everyone’s unhappiness here has nothing to do with the house. What are all these papers you threw around with such wild abandon?”

“Something Phillip Bell was researching.” I started gathering the photocopies. Getting them back in their original order would be impossible. I was more or less shoveling them back into the file when the name Levi Severs caught my eye again. I sat back on my heels. “Geneva, did you really look around the foundations of the house for your body?”

“Yes.”

“And it didn’t upset you? Talking about your death and trying to remember your life usually do.”

“Trying to remember and failing is depleting. Searching for clues and answers feels like strength.”

“That’s a good way to put it. Have you found any clues or answers?”

“Only if you count the woman who arrived here before you did. Oh, now look. You have gone and thrown those papers all over the room again. Are you having a heart attack?”

*   *   *

We cleared up her mistaken notion that I was having a heart attack fairly quickly. Finding out what she meant about another woman took some frenzied whispering on my part and affronted huffing on Geneva’s. She thought I was overreacting by accusing her of underreporting. From her description—unless more than one sultry woman in Blue Plum had a red feather tattoo behind her ear—the other woman was Fredda Oliver.

“I would have told you immediately that you were
not alone, when you climbed so clumsily through the window, had that been true,” Geneva said.

“You didn’t tell me
you
were here immediately.”

“But we are here together, now, and Fred is not here, and that is all that matters, except that she has an unusual name, which must be hard on her, so perhaps
we
should not be so hard on her.”

“Her name is Fredda, and she might have killed Phillip. That was kind of hard on
him
.”

“And you should not be so hard on me, either, because I am the one who was Geneva-on-the-spot to see everything she touched and took. Unlike some, who had given up and turned their backs on crime solving.”

“What did Fredda touch and take? Anything on the desk? Was there a computer on the desk? Did she take it?”

“She went upstairs first.”

“Darn. I’ve been here longer than I should have already. How long was
she
here?”

“I have no idea.”

“Do you know how she got in?”

“No.”

“But you said she arrived—”

“Well, she must have, because she was here.”

“You mean she was here when you got here?”

“Yes.”

“This isn’t getting us anywhere. Can you show me what she did upstairs? Then we’d better scoot.”

This time I didn’t hesitate at the stairs. I dashed up them to the room under the eaves and flashed my light around. It was not the room as I remembered it. The narrow iron bed frame that had made the room look like a Victorian housemaid’s garret was gone. Now it had the air, figuratively and literally, of a college flophouse. A
pizza box and beer bottles, empty except for their stale smell, shared the floor with strewn clothes and a queen-sized mattress.

“Geneva, what did Fredda do up here? This is important. If she took much, I should make a list.”

No one had made the bed the morning Phillip died. The top sheet and blanket were twisted together near the foot. The wrinkled bottom sheet looked cold. He hadn’t closed the closet door, unless Fredda left it hanging open.

“Geneva?”

She didn’t answer, and when I looked around, she was sitting between the pillows at the head of the bed.

“Do you remember what she took?”

“I’ll have to think,” she said.

“Okay.” I went into the bathroom and looked in the medicine cabinet. Didn’t see anything interesting. The usual assortment of personal hygiene products and over-the-counter stuff. But what had I expected? Empty spaces labeled with Fredda’s initials? I stuck my head back into the bedroom. “Did it look as though she knew her way around? Was she hunting for something, or did she go straight to the things she touched and took? This morning, she told Nadine she’d never been inside. But Deputy Dunbar says she’s an excellent liar, and the night before Phillip died, I called and a woman answered his phone. I’m almost certain it was Fredda. She could’ve answered his phone while he was at her place, but he said “I live here,” and he joked about how awkward it would be for me to meet him here for breakfast. Have you remembered anything yet?”

“Hmm.”

What was up with her? She sat there, just staring at
the wall. No. At a television. Phillip had mounted a flat screen on the wall above the bureau. I’d missed it by staring at the bed and dashing into the bathroom.