4 Plagued by Quilt (22 page)

I
lost Fredda when I turned in at the emergency entrance. It took no evasive skill—I stopped in front of the ER doors, and she drove on past. When someone came and knocked on my window, I apologized for being confused and upset. I proceeded, slowly, to visitors’ parking, looking everywhere for Fredda or her car. After I parked, I called Ardis.

“Daddy and I had the best time at the Homeplace yesterday. I thought he was happy feeding the ducks in the park Friday night, but that was nothing compared to how happy scratching Portia’s back made him. Portia’s the pig out there. I think Daddy fell in love.”

“Ardis, I’m at the hospital.”

“
Oh my land
. What’s happened?”

“Nothing yet. I’m here with the baby hats, but Fredda followed me here.”

“Followed you how? With intent?
Hon!
This might be the break we need. Is she there now? Are you safe? Why are you calling me? Hang up and call 911.
I’ll
hang up and call 911. What are your coordinates?”

“Ardis, it’s okay. I’m in the parking lot. I think I lost her when I turned in at the emergency entrance.”

“That was smart. What
do
you want me to do? Call Cole?”

“No—do you know what Mel found out yesterday? He dated Fredda for a while.”

“Well, that’s an example of his poor judgment, but I don’t see—”

“I think that kept
him
from seeing. Here’s what I’m going to do. I’m getting the hats, now I’m getting out of the car. Locking the car. Now I’m going to walk into the hospital, talking to you, ready to scream and throw a bag of baby hats at a murderer.”

“I’ll keep listening.”

“I don’t see her anywhere. I’m walking past a box hedge that’s making me nervous.”

“When you get inside, stop at the information desk and tell them it should be trimmed for safety’s sake.”

“I’m going through the door. I’m inside. I still don’t see her. I think it’s okay.”

“You call me when you head back out to your car.”

“I will.”

*   *   *

When the volunteer came to meet me and collect the hats, I decided each TGIF member should take a turn making a delivery. Watching the woman look at each hat and exclaim, with her hand on her heart, how much nurses and families appreciated our time and effort made the trip and the year of knitting worth it.

“Would you like to see some of your hats in action?” she asked.

How could I resist?

She took me to the windowed hallway outside the Nursery Intensive Care Unit where we could look in at the babies in their incubators. Half a dozen fragile babies
wore our soft knit hats. Thea’s red and white stripes were immediately recognizable. Two babies wore hats that might have been from Mel during her celery and lettuce phase. A baby being held and rocked wore a yellow beanie that might have come from Debbie. The woman rocking and singing to the baby was Fredda.

*   *   *

“She’s a baby cuddler, Ardis. She’s there every morning from six until eight, except on Sundays, when she goes at ten. Like today. She does it because she lost her own baby. The volunteer told me she’s the most faithful baby cuddler they have, that she cuddles the parents as much as the babies.”

“Should the volunteer have told you all that? It seems like there’s a privacy issue involved.”

“I might have let on that I knew Fredda better and that I knew more of her story than I do.”

“We could call that an ethical issue, but instead we’ll call it necessary subterfuge.”

“It means Fredda has an alibi.”

“Only if she was there on Tuesday and only if Phillip was attacked during those hours.”

“She was here Tuesday. They’re very careful about volunteers signing in and out. And I’m no expert, but I don’t think he died even an hour before I found him.”

“We’ll see if we can find out the time of death,” Ardis said. “Then we’ll knit ourselves a couple of thinking caps and put them on.”

*   *   *

I e-mailed the rest of the posse and told them that if Phillip was attacked anytime after six Tuesday morning, Fredda had an alibi.

Thea e-mailed back, “Mm-hm.”

Mel e-mailed back, “Time of death: post six. Source: Smiling Deputy Darla.”

I e-mailed, “Cole’s missing a good bet. He should hook up with Darla.”

Thea sent, “E-mail is not sufficiently secure for transmission of sensitive information.”

Mel shot back, “Cole’s as sensitive as a disengaged transmission.”

*   *   *

Monday morning, in the education room at the Homeplace, watching the twins in their unexpected niche as teachers of crazy quilting—thinking
who knew
and
good thing they came
along
and
good thing they didn’t get that phone call about not needing volunteers
—I realized how stupid I’d been. Of course
they’d
made those phone calls. Was I really that dense? I decided to blame it on the lure of the Plague Quilt. My subconscious must have known what they’d done, but it also knew that if I rumbled them, I might never see the quilt again. Knowing now, though, gave me an advantage about which they weren’t aware.

I smiled and waved at Shirley across the room. She jumped. Maybe I wasn’t being subtle enough. I didn’t want to tip my hand.

“How’s the detective business?” Zach asked when I stopped to admire the flame stitch he was adding to his quilt block beneath the coffins.

“Slow.”

“Tortoise or hare slow?”

“Tortoise. I hope.”

“Thought so.”

“Anything new on the excavation front?”

“Jerry’s doing the lunch lecture today. Talking about the artifacts we dug up with the skeletons.”

“
Is
he? I think I’ll have to stay after class today.”

“Thought so.”

*   *   *

Jerry Hicks disappointed some of us by not having the artifacts with him at his lunch lecture. What he did was probably better and smarter, though. He called the twenty-minute presentation a slide show symposium, and he showed photographs he’d taken of the excavation process, and of the bones and artifacts in situ, and then before, during, and after cleaning. Judging by the lack of fidgeting and the heads all tilted to look at the screen rather than electronic devices in laps, the entire audience thought the slides were cool.

Nadine, Wes, and I sat in a row behind the students. I didn’t like the idea of sitting in a darkened room with either of them, but they’d joined me and it would have felt awkward to get up and move away. I took small comfort in Shirley and Mercy sitting in the row behind us. Clod stood alone in the back corner, for no good reason that I could see. I’d called Ardis to let her know I would be another half hour or so. I would have told her why, but she said she was in the middle of a sale and hung up.

Jerry narrated the slides as he flipped through them, telling a slight story of two young people who hadn’t lived to be much older than the students in the room. He told the kids that his findings were preliminary.

“In the end, the bones and the artifacts, and the artifacts in the bones, will speak for themselves.”

“What do you mean,
artifacts in the bones
?” Nash asked.

“Wait and see. Let’s look at the bones first. We have two individuals interred in what we can call a nonstandard burial pattern. A male approximately five foot ten.
A female approximately five foot two.” Jerry went through slide after slide, showing measurements of long bones, the difference between male and female pelvic bones. There was a surprising moment of humor when a set of red-gummed dentures came on the screen.

“The young man was fashionable and money-conscious,” Jerry said. “You all might get your nose pierced to impress your best girl. Back in the day, you would have had your cavity-prone teeth pulled out and a set of dentures made. That way you came to a marriage with no more dentist bills in your future. These dentures will help us put a date to the bones. They’re made of vulcanized rubber. That manufacturing process gives us one set of dates. They are also what you might call whistling dentures. Feel the roof of your mouth with your tongue, right behind your teeth. Feel the ridges? Those are called rugae. They serve a purpose. They’re a sounding board. They help us talk. Our poor fellow’s dentures were manufactured before the connection was made between rugae and clear speech. His dentures are smooth, and he probably whistled on the letter
S
.”

“Do dental records go back that far?” a girl asked.

“It’s certainly possible,” Jerry said, “although I wouldn’t say probable. We’ll definitely be looking, though.”

I would definitely ask Geneva if Sam had a new set of rubber dentures. And if the poor guy whistled when he said his name.

Jerry next showed photographs of buttons, shoe buttons, a belt buckle, miscellaneous metal clasps, and numerous small unidentifiable pieces of metal, and then what he’d tentatively identified as spiral steel corset stays. I was sure he was right about the stays. No textiles had survived, and I didn’t see anything that looked like
the remains of a bustle. The length of the steel stays might help date the bones. The absence of a bustle might or might not. Bustles were a changing fashion, and not every woman wore one every day.

When Jerry showed slides of an oval object that, when cleaned, turned out to be a locket with a cameo, I barely kept myself from gasping, or possibly crying. I turned to look at Clod. The lights were too low, though, and I could hardly see him. That didn’t stop my mind’s eye from imagining the look of irritated, surprised, confounded disbelief I longed to see on his face.

“These next slides show a silver pocket watch,” Jerry said. “I wish I could tell you the watch is engraved with a name and a date. It isn’t. But look at this.” He flashed another slide, showing the watch and the locket turned over. “The script is ornate, but that’s an
M
and an
S
on the back of the locket.”

Mattie. Mattie Severs. Mattie and Sam.

“Mercy and Shirley,” one of the twins whispered faintly behind me.

“Mercy Spivey,” whispered the other more faintly.

“If Hicks had brought that watch or the cameo with him and passed them around,” Wes said, “ten to one, one or the other or both would have disappeared in a kid’s pocket.”

“Baloney.” Had I said that? I must have. It wasn’t too dark in our row to see Wes look down his nose in my direction. Good for me.

Jerry’s slide show ended with close-up pictures of the skulls. He’d told his story of the bones smoothly, and I hadn’t noticed that we’d seen the skulls only from a distance in the full-skeleton shots, and he’d shown us the dentures only separate from their skull. If Geneva had
been there with me, she could have told us about her friend Mattie’s blond hair and her beautiful singing voice. But she wasn’t, and I was glad, because the skulls spoke for themselves.

“These are . . . sad pictures,” Jerry said quietly. “They’re pictures of two murder victims. The black spots you see pocking the frontal bones are lead shot from a shotgun blast.”

I
didn’t hang around after the slide show. I didn’t speak to anyone. I needed to get back to the Weaver’s Cat. I needed to think about what to tell Geneva. I needed to get away before Clod fought his way along the row of auditorium seats to reach me. I didn’t want his questions or any discussion. An apology for doubting and mocking me would have been nice, but that probably wasn’t coming and it wasn’t worth waiting for, anyway.

Zach mumbled something as I zipped past, but when I turned back, he’d slouched off in the other direction.

Clod came out of the visitors’ center as I pulled away. He might have tried to flag me. I glanced at him only long enough to see his ticked-off face. I didn’t stop.

By the time I got to the Weaver’s Cat, my emotions had run the gamut—from sorrow to excitement to worry to relief and back to excitement. We’d found Mattie and Sam. I was sure of it. Worry crept back when I wondered how the news would affect Geneva, but I was beginning to formulate a plan for telling her and for dealing with her reaction. Excitement rose to the top again when I pictured Ardis’ reaction. But I hadn’t counted on her looking every bit as ticked off as Clod.

“It’s taken me a few days,” she said when I walked
through the front door, “but I’ve finally figured out what you haven’t been telling me.”

She stood behind the counter, arms crossed, in the classic grade-school-teacher pose she used to good effect on former students. It had a pretty good effect on me, too, even though I wasn’t one of her former students. But my excitement carried me forward with credible ease and a smile that I hoped would disarm her. I also had an idea what she’d finally figured out. Dealing with that meant the excavation news would have to wait.

“It took me a few days to figure something out, too, Ardis. And I’ll bet there’s a commonality between your something and mine, and if I’m right, I’ll buy you lunch.”

“That’s not usually the way bets work.”

“Doesn’t matter. I’m reading Spivey irritation all over your face, and buying lunch is the least I can do to ease your burden. Let me run upstairs. I’ll be right back and ready to listen.”

I hadn’t seen Geneva or Argyle when I came in. I ran up to the study and found them together in the window seat. Seeing Geneva backlit against the window, it was hard to tell, but she still looked “strong.” She was less like rainwater or vapor. She also wasn’t sitting in a dejected heap.

“We have been waiting patiently for you to remember us.”

“I didn’t forget you. I was out at the Homeplace longer than I expected to be.”

“We like
this
place.”

“I’m so glad you do, Geneva. Would you like to come downstairs? I’ll be busy in the shop all afternoon.”

“We’re feeling like homebodies today.”

“I’ll come back up to see you later, then. There’s
something I’d like to talk to you about. In the meantime, would you like to hear another chapter or two of
Murder, She Wrote
?”

“We would be delighted.”

*   *   *

Ardis had to wait through several chatty customers before she could unburden herself to me, but a large bag of mohair going out the door served to knock the edges off her irritation. As I’d thought, she’d figured out that Shirley and Mercy were involved with the quilting for Hands on History. I apologized for not telling her and told her about the bargain I’d made.

“You sold out?”

“With everything else going on—
everything else
, Ardis—letting them help seemed like a small thing. I needed help; they were there. At the time it was the only thing to do. And they really are doing a fine job.”

We shook our heads in unified wonder.

“Oh, and wait until you see the Plague Quilt. Ardis, if you can look at it and still judge me, I will buy you lunch for a year.”

“But I’ll only get to see the quilt if the twins live up to their end of the bargain.”

“I know that’s a big ‘if.’ But here’s what
I
figured out this morning, when my brain finally had a lucid moment. They’re the ones who called the other volunteers. They claimed to be Nadine and told the volunteers they weren’t needed. The only way Shirley and Mercy could have done that was by getting into the volunteer file, in an office, where they didn’t belong.”

“You’re going to hold that over their heads? Think it’ll work?” she asked.

“I’ll let you know.”

“And I’ll run pick up lunch at Mel’s and put it on your tab.”

*   *   *

Almost as soon as Ardis left through the back door, Ernestine came in through the front, decked out in her Aunt Bee outfit. She was a serious Aunt Bee, though. An Aunt Bee who needed to tell Andy or Opie she meant business.

“I’m going to go see Grace again,” she said. “She’s been in jail almost a week now, and she must be feeling quite anxious.”

“That’s a really nice idea, Ernestine.”

“I’m going to apologize for misleading her last time.”

“Um, yeah?”

“We need her help, Kath. I’d like your permission to tell her about the posse and ask her specific questions without beating around the bush. She might not be able to answer them. She might not know any more about Phillip’s recent life than we do.”

“But it’s worth a try. You’re right.”

“Last time I went to see her, it felt more like fun and games. This time we need her, but I’m also much more certain that she needs us.”

*   *   *

Ardis came back with two servings of Mel’s black bean and yellow rice salad, extra jalapeños, and more of the spicy flatbread.

“Serious food for serious work,” she said. “I feel like we’re spinning our wheels on both investigations. I hope that’s not an indication that we can’t handle more than one at a time. I’d hate to think we’re less competent than the sheriff’s department.”

“This morning we proved that we’re
more
competent.” I passed her my flatbread, because she’d eaten hers, and I told her about Jerry’s slide show. “There’s no real proof yet of who they are. But what Jerry and Zach found fits the story I heard, and it should be possible to date the remains from several of the artifacts—the length of the corset stays, the style of the dentures. Maybe we’ll be unbelievably lucky and find the sales ledger from the store where the locket was bought and engraved. Sometimes they turn up in archives or historical society collections. I know it’s them, Ardis, and if you’d seen the lead shot embedded in the skulls . . .”

“Mattie and Sam,” Ardis said. “It gives me the shivers. I would say someone is walking over my grave, but think about it—people have been walking over their grave all these years.” She shivered for real then, and I saw why.

Geneva hovered next to her. “I want to see their grave.”

Ardis pulled a shawl from under the counter to wrap around her shoulders, then sat down on the stool.

Geneva floated over to hover in front of me. “Will you take me?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Ardis said, looking at me through Geneva. “Is there a bug going around?” She blinked, then rubbed her eyes.

Geneva looked at Ardis over her shoulder. She waved her arm up and down. Ardis put her hand over her eyes.

“This is very interesting,” Geneva said. “We should talk about it after you take me to see dear Mattie and Sam.”

*   *   *

Geneva peppered me with questions up both flights of stairs to the study in the attic. I didn’t know any of the answers, so I didn’t say anything. Her last question came with an impatient, though soundless, stamp of her foot.

“But what does it
mean
?” she asked.

“I don’t know.”

My answer and the silence of her foot stamping the attic floor frustrated her. She threw herself into the window seat. Argyle, roused from another nap, said, “Mrrph.”

“I don’t know why, Geneva. Ardis is more aware of you, and I’m not sure what to do about it.”

“What do you mean ‘do about it’? Is it such a terrible problem to see ghosts?”

“No-o.”

“You’re lying.”

“No, no, I’m not. The problem isn’t in
seeing
ghosts. The problem is in other people
not
seeing them while you
are
seeing them. You know that. We both know that. But the problem right now is that she doesn’t
quite
see you and it’s making her crazy.”
Crazy.
I looked at the place in the wall where Granddaddy had made the clever hidden door and the cupboard behind it—the cupboard Geneva called her room, the cupboard where Granny had kept her private dye journals. What if I found something in those journals—a plant dye that helped someone see ghosts, or protected them from seeing ghosts? What were the ethics involved in making the decision to use something like that?

“Will you take me to see Mattie and Sam’s grave?” Geneva asked quietly.

“Yes.”

*   *   *

Ardis had recovered from her “bug” by the time I went back downstairs. She waved away my suggestion that she take another afternoon off. I didn’t pester her about it. I knew she wouldn’t have any more problems. Geneva had agreed to stay in the attic until I came to get her.

We stayed busy the rest of the afternoon. It was the steady kind of busy—three skeins here, an embroidery kit there, a lace shawl pattern and the cashmere to knit it—that didn’t rush us off our feet, but made the register till happy.

“No time for our thinking caps, though,” Ardis said. “And we have operatives who want to report in.”

Ernestine had stopped by when she left the jail but hadn’t stayed. John called and said he’d call back later. Late in the afternoon the back-door chime said “Baa” and Zach wandered in.

“Ardis, I’d like you to meet Zach Aikens, the man who discovered the elbow that led to Mattie and Sam. Zach, this is Ms. Buchanan. She’s like me; she thinks she’s a detective, too.”

“Nice to meet you, Zach. Are you kin to Ezekiel Aikens?”

“Yeah. Why?”

“He’s a fine man. He did me a kindness when my husband passed.”

“Yeah? What?”

“That’s between him and me. But the next time you see him, tell him Vernon Buchanan’s wife says hey, and then go ahead and ask him. It was a pleasure to meet you, young man.”

Ardis shook Zach’s hand with both of hers, and then went to help a new knitter choose needles and yarn for her first scarf. Zach stuck his hands in his pockets and studied the mannequin and its quilted jacket.

“This is your first time here, isn’t it? What do you think of the Weaver’s Cat?”

He looked around, giving the bins of yarn and the racks of notions and patterns the same serious attention
he’d given the mannequin. A display of hand-painted roving caught his eye.

“What’s that for?”

“Spinning. It’s carded wool. The different colors of dye were brushed on by hand.”

He went to check it out, and a group of chattering, laughing women swarmed the counter. I rang them up and answered their questions. The camel bells jingled at the front door, and when I looked over. Zach had left the building.

*   *   *

“I know the posse met on Friday,” Ardis said when we had a moment alone at the counter, “but I think we should call a special interim meeting. I’d say tonight, but it’s Daddy’s bath night and that’s more than enough excitement for him or me. If you think tomorrow’s time enough, I’ll go ahead and call the others.”

“Sure, that’ll give us that much more time to learn something.” Besides, I’d promised to take my ghost to visit a grave.