Died in the Wool (3 page)

“Lady, morning glories are annuals, too. You know what that means?”

“Uhhh, they bloom once?”

“No, you have to plant them every year. They don't make it through the winter.”

“So?”

“I've never replanted them. They come up every year. I've even gone over there and pulled them up by the roots. They come back, and they bloom all morning, all afternoon, and sometimes late at night they're still open.”

I didn't know what to say to him. Surely he had to be mistaken. There must be some weird breed or species of morning glories that bloomed all day and came back every year. Of course, then they'd be called “all-day glories.” Still, there had to be some logical explanation for the flowers.

“Her name was Glory.”

“Who was named Glory?” I said.

“The woman in the house. Her name was Glory Kendall.”

Three

As I was leaving Evan Merchant's house, I decided to head down to Debbie's Cookie Cutter and buy some chocolate chip cookies. I can honestly say that I believe I'd either be dead or in the nuthouse if it weren't for chocolate chips. Chocolate chip cookies, chocolate chip ice cream, chocolate chip muffins … I mean, as far as I'm concerned, there really isn't much need for other food. Okay, except pizza. I get really cranky if I go too long without an injection of chocolate chips. At least I haven't started carrying a bag of them around with me.

I bought two dozen chocolate chip cookies from Debbie and ran into the new sheriff of New Kassel on the street outside. “Mort,” I said.

“Torie, what's up?”

Mort Joachim is younger than I am, probably about thirty-one or thirty-two. He'd only been sheriff for about six months. The position had been vacated by my stepfather, Colin Brooke, who had gone on to greener pastures as the town's mayor. I used to complain about the old mayor quite a bit. Then I found out he was actually a mobster living under an alternate identity. Sort of like a round, bald, bowling-obsessed villain in a comic book. Well, the new mayor, my stepfather, doesn't spend a lot of time bowling—except his usual Tuesday night league with my husband—but he spends countless hours golfing, since there really doesn't seem to be that much to do as mayor. I wish I'd known that, because I definitely would have run against him.

At any rate, the blond-haired, violet-eyed new sheriff was as green as grass and rather friendly. He had won his office against Lou Counts, the closest thing to Satan I'd ever come across. She is ex-military, driven, and no-nonsense, and she hates me with a passion. Unfortunately she is now a deputy for the sheriff's department, but I rarely have to have anything to do with her. I mostly deal with Mort, since I'm a special consultant to the sheriff—another one of those hats I wear.

“I was just headed home, Mort. How about you?”

“Tobias claims somebody dug up one of his rosebushes and did something with his gnomes.”

“Oh, yeah, Tobias loves his garden gnomes,” I said.

“So I'm headed over to investigate the vandalism,” he said.

“Hey, Mort, I was wondering … you think you could check out the Kendall house for me?”

“What do you mean?” he asked.

“Just go over, check the locks, maybe make sure the windows haven't been broken into or anything,” I said.

“Why?”

“Well, Evan Merchant claims the house is haunted. Of course, that's just not possible, but he says he sees a girl up in one of the windows, so I'm thinking maybe some squatters have taken up residence.”

“I'll check it out,” he said.

“Can you let me know what you find?”

“Sure.”

Just then my cell phone rang. “I gotta take this,” I said, and waved to him. It was my husband calling. “Hey, Rudy, what's up?”

“Mary decided to use hair spray on the horses' manes,” he said.

Well, any sentence that begins with “Mary decided,” especially one that comes over a cell phone, is one to worry about, so my eyes had started rolling before he'd even finished this one. “What do you mean, she used hair spray?”

“She decided that she wanted the horses to have big hair. Like back in the eighties and nineties. She said Cutter looks like Jon Bon Jovi.”

“Okay, here's the deal. Ground her from the hair spray, then tell her she has to wash it out of the manes herself. Then … hell, I don't know. Tell her she's on stall duty for the next month.”

“You seriously want Mary to clean out the horses' stalls for the next month? We'll have horse manure everywhere,” he said.

“I didn't say I wouldn't go and clean up behind her, but she needs to think she's cleaning the stalls.”

“Oh,” he said. “Do you always think this deviously, or only when it comes to our kids?”

“I'm not answering that,” I said and laughed.

“What do you want for dinner?” he asked.

“I don't know. If there's nothing thawed, then I guess we're going with pasta,” I said.

“How about I make some black beans and rice?” he said.

“Good,” I said. “I'll be home in a few minutes. I need to pick up Rachel from rehearsal. You've got Matthew already, right?”

“Right,” he said.

I had to check, because one time we were just sitting down to eat dinner when we realized that neither one of us had retrieved Matthew from my mother's. I wouldn't have felt so bad about this if Matthew was a quiet kid, a child that you could forget was there, but Matthew talks incessantly and is constantly blowing things up in his mind, so there's usually a fair amount of spit flying through the air at all times. You'd think we would notice that there wasn't a little boy jumping around the kitchen with his light saber making lots of spit noises, but we hadn't. I felt so horrible that I'd driven right over and gotten him without eating my dinner.

Well, everybody's forgotten his or her kid at least once. Right? Most of the time I can tell someone is missing when the decibel level in the house has changed by just a fraction. I'm usually very tuned in to what my children are doing, especially when they're out of the room. It's that Mommy Sense. I guess I had just been preoccupied that night, and, to be fair, each of us had assumed the other one had picked him up. Nevertheless, it was the low point of my maternal career, but worth several packages of Yu-Gi-Oh cards and at least one Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtle action figure for Matthew. He came out pretty good on the deal. In fact, Mary had asked if I could forget about her a few times.

I picked up Rachel from play practice at school. Her boyfriend, Riley, waved to us as we pulled out of the parking lot. Rachel is old enough to drive now, but she's sort of short and panics easily, so I'm not real thrilled with the idea.

Later, at dinner, Rachel wouldn't shut up. You must understand that there is absolutely nothing unusual about this, but Mary was fast losing her patience, as she had tried to speak at least three times.

Mary is a talker, too. She talks at such amazing speeds that sometimes I worry about her lips burning off. One of the kids at school told her she should become the “prices may vary” person. Yup, that person at the end of the commercials that comes on and says, “Prices may vary…” and then spews out this long tirade of disclaimers so fast that you can barely understand them. There's a reason for Mary's linguistic velocity. If she didn't speak quickly, Rachel would be talking again and Mary would never get anything said.

So, after ten minutes of listening to Rachel drone on and on about what person was playing what part in the play and how
amazing
each and every actor was, Mary lost all sense of propriety and let out a burp that rattled the walls. Rachel took one look at Mary and said, “Pig,” and then just glared.

It was during that glaring moment that Mary cupped her hand to her ear. “Do you hear that?” Mary asked. “Silence.”

Rachel stuck her tongue out at Mary.

“Jenny Abraham tried to kill herself,” Mary said.

“What?” I asked.

“Yeah, she's, like, fifteen. I've been trying to tell you this for, like, the last twenty hours, but motormouth over there wouldn't give me a chance.”

“Her mother must be devastated,” I said.

“Why did she do it?” Rudy asked.

Mary shrugged. “Who knows?” she said.

“Well, is she all right? Is she at home or in the hospital?” I asked.

“She's fine. I think she's still at the hospital, though,” Mary said, making designs on her plate with the black beans. Then she looked to Rachel. “You can continue with all that crap none of us care about now.”

“So,” Rachel said, “Mr. Zozlowski thought Deanna would make a better Juliet, but after watching Melinda, I'm telling you, Melinda owns the part. She
is
Juliet.”

We all just stared at her. “What?” she asked, shoving her fork in her mouth.

The phone rang then, and I answered it on the second ring. “Hello,” I said.

“Yeah, is this Torie O'Shea?”

“Yes,” I said.

“Hi, it's Evan Merchant,” he said. “I'd like to sell you those blankets and things.”

“Great,” I said. “Look, I'm going to call a local appraiser. I want this to be a fair deal. She'll come out and look at the quilts and let you know what they're worth.”

“Okay,” he said.

“She'll need to get in the house and see the quilts, though.”

“That's fine,” he said. “You going to be with her?”

“Probably.”

“Good, then I don't need to be.”

“Right,” I said.

“Call me when she's available.”

“I will,” I said.

Later, after dinner and Matthew's bath—which is always a drenching event—I called Geena Campbell, the appraiser, who lives in St. Louis. I've known Geena for a few years now. We have some quilts in the Gaheimer Collection, and I had inherited a few of my own family heirloom quilts. In fact, a few years back, I started quilting. I'm not very good, and it takes me forever to finish one. I always have more ideas than actual projects, and I've bought fabric for all of those ideas. I've also bought fabric just because it was cool fabric, and I've bought fabric because I might need it for a project. Basically, I've become a fabric hound. At any rate, I love quilts and quilting, even though I think the Über Quilting Gene did not get passed to me. My aunt can quilt nine stitches to the inch; my grandmother could quilt ten stitches to the inch. I'm lucky if I get in six. Of course, the idea is to get as many stitches to the inch as possible.

Geena and I had met at a few quilt shows and then ran into each other at a quilt shop out in St. Charles, and finally I asked her to come and appraise the quilts that I have, which she did. Then she realized what a great little quilt shop we had in New Kassel. It's called the Fabric of Life, known as “the Fab” to us locals. I see Geena at least four times a year when the shop has its quarterly clearance sale.

Geena answered in her usual bubbly voice. “Hey, it's Torie,” I said.

“Torie! How nice to hear from you,” she said.

“I was wondering if you'd do me a favor,” I said. “I'll pay you, of course, since it falls in the realm of your occupation.”

“Got a new old quilt you want me to look at?”

“I may have several,” I said. “I'm about to purchase a bunch of quilts by Glory Kendall. I need you to come down and appraise them, partly so I know what I'm getting and partly so I can pay the owner a fair price.”

“Glory Kendall?” she said, instantly recognizing the name. “She's got a quilt at the Smithsonian, and her Ode to Mother won the most prestigious award at the San Francisco World's Fair in 1915. She was only seventeen when she quilted it! How have you come across such a wonderful windfall?”

“She was born and raised here in town, and the present owner of the quilts is selling them.”

“Oh, that's fantastic,” she said. “You're going to do right by them, I know you will. Will you have a display?”

“Oh, you betcha,” I said. “Even if I don't get the Kendall house, I'll clear out a room at the Gaheimer House for them.”

“The house?”

I explained to her that it was up for sale as well. “When can you come down? I think he's pretty anxious for some quick cash.”

“I'm free tomorrow afternoon,” she said.

“Great, I'll meet you at the Fab,” I said. “I can drive you out to the house.”

“Oh, I can't wait to see these quilts.”

“Me, too,” I said.

We said good-bye and hung up. I was about to get comfortable and watch a movie when there was a knock at the door. It was Sheriff Mort.

“Torie,” Mort said, “I went by the Kendall house, and I don't see anything wrong.”

“Really?” I asked.

“What's this about the Kendall house?” Rudy asked. Rudy and Mort get along really well. I think Rudy's trying to talk him into joining his bowling team. Any help Rudy's bowling team could get would be a good thing.

“Evan thinks it's haunted,” I said. “I thought maybe there were squatters there.”

“Oh, no,” Rudy said. “That house is haunted.”

I just stared at him. He plopped down in his recliner, and Matthew crawled up in his lap. Matthew was almost too big to fit there anymore, but that didn't stop him from wiggling his butt into the chair until Rudy winced. “Ouch. That's my hip, son,” he said.

“What do you mean, the house is haunted?” I asked.

“Everybody knows that,” Rudy said. I said nothing. Suddenly Rudy smiled. “Oh, my gosh, do I actually know something about New Kassel that you don't?”

I ignored him and turned my attention back to Mort. “No sign of breaking and entering at all?”

“No,” he said, “In fact, other than some major dust, the house looked fine. I think a pipe busted a few years back, because there was a water stain on the dining room ceiling, and there's that one room on the second floor, but I saw absolutely no evidence of anybody being in the house who shouldn't be. I guess I was so set on the idea of squatters that I went right past the part about that one room.