The Devil's Puzzle (18 page)

I walked into the lobby with a knot in my stomach. I looked inside the auditorium, but it was empty and the screen was dark. I turned toward the back office when I heard a noise from the projection booth. I thought I caught a glimpse of someone who was slim and probably female. Definitely not Ed. But just to be sure, I walked up the stairs to the booth slowly.

“Ed?” I knocked on the door, but I didn’t get an answer. If there was someone inside, he—or more likely she—was not interested in being seen. I turned the knob and went in.

Empty.

The booth was small. An old projector, two chairs, a file cabinet, a large open trunk that had piles of rolled-up movie posters, and a hat rack with a Charlie Chaplin–like hat and cane. I checked for a second door but could find none. I even peeked into the trunk, but no one was hiding in it. I was sure someone had been in here. On the file cabinet was a pink candle with wisps of smoke still coming from it. It had just been blown out. Next to the candle there were a few rose petals, a heart-shaped locket with no photos inside, a small bottle of perfumed oil, and a book of love poems. The whole thing was set on a piece of red velvet cloth. It looked like an altar for a witch’s spell, a place where someone might have been setting up to attract love with potions and candles.

Was Ed a witch?

“Whether he is or not is none of my business,” I said to myself. A more important question was whether someone had been able to get out of here in the minute or so it had taken me to get up from the theater to the booth. There was only one door and only one staircase. If someone had been in the booth and left, we would have run into each other. And yet the candle proved that I hadn’t been wrong about seeing someone in the booth.

I turned back to the door and pulled the handle. It wouldn’t budge. I pulled again. I tried pushing. I pushed again. I stopped, frustrated and a little scared. I was locked in. Someone had locked me in. I took a few steps back from the door and looked around. The candles, the book of poems—nothing was useful for opening a lock. I turned back to the file cabinet and opened the first drawer, hoping to find a stash of tools or even just a lone credit card like they used in the movies. As I searched the drawer, I felt a gust of wind on my back.

I turned. The door was wide open. I didn’t stick around to figure out how it had happened. I just ran down the stairs hoping I’d find Ed and maybe get an explanation once I was safe. I told myself it was a stuck door and that the emptiness of such a big, old place was beginning to spook me. There weren’t any witches, or ghosts, or anything. Ed, I told myself, would have a perfectly logical explanation for why a locked door suddenly opened, just the way he’d had an explanation for why a heavy metal door could do the same thing.

When I reached the hallway outside his office, I was relieved to hear his voice—but only until I realized how angry he sounded.

“I don’t think you understand the situation.”

Ed was in his office with the door nearly closed, but I could hear every word clearly.

“Look,” he said, “I went along with this because you helped me out, but I don’t feel right about it.” He paused. “Don’t you threaten me. I’m not as big a patsy as you think.”

I moved a little to see who Ed was talking to and realized he was on the phone. His office was a jumbled mess of papers, carpet samples, and paint cans. Just as I stepped back, our eyes met.

“I’ll have to call you back,” he said into the receiver, and hung up.

“Nell.” His face had gone from angry to smiling. “I didn’t see you there.”

I pushed the door open wider. Something about the suddenness of his mood change made me nervous. I decided even if he wasn’t the person who had locked me in the booth, he wasn’t likely to be glad I’d been snooping around in there.

“I just got here,” I said.

“Well, then come in, Nell. Sit down. Can I get you something? The soda machine is fixed.”

“I’m sorry to barge in, but there was no one outside . . .”

“Slow day. Didn’t see the point in paying people to stand around.”

“So you’re still here all alone?”

“Not anymore.” He smiled. “I feel like you keep being drawn to the place today, so what can I do for you?”

“I came to ask you a favor. As you know, I’m in charge of the quilt show for the anniversary celebration, and I’m visiting local businesses to ask for their help.”

I could see him relax. “That whole thing is going to be nuts, isn’t it? I don’t know why I got myself involved in it.”

“Maybe it will bring in business.”

“Not for me. People won’t want to go to a movie with all that other stuff going on. And I don’t think tourists come to Archers Rest to sit in the theater.”

“I hadn’t thought of that.”

“Neither had the good leaders of this town.” He scowled. “They really don’t care what happens to you if you’re not part of their clique.” He took a breath. “But that’s not why you came to talk to me.”

“I was just wondering if you would mind if I hung some quilts outside the theater that weekend? The quilt show will be outdoors and all over the main streets of town. At least, that’s the plan.”

“You can hang them outdoors. You can even hang some indoors, if you need to. That might actually bring people in.”

“I appreciate that, Ed.”

“Anything to help Eleanor’s granddaughter. She’s always been so good to my family.”

“Really? Eleanor’s not much of a moviegoer.”

“When you and Jesse came by the other day, I pulled out my dad’s files. So interesting to go through the old stuff. It’ll take me months to get through everything, but I did find something you might like to hear. Remember that summer in ’75 I told you my dad was doing well?”

“You said he took a salary home that year.”

“Turns out we nearly closed down. Eleanor loaned my dad the money to keep going.” He paused. “I shouldn’t say loaned, since my dad never paid her back. It’s on my list if this place ever turns enough of a profit, though.”

“Why didn’t your dad get a loan at the bank?”

“Are you kidding? Those people wouldn’t help my dad. Too big a risk.”

“Do you know where she got the money?”

“No. And I don’t know how I feel about it, either. I just can’t imagine what she was thinking.”

“That your father needed the money, I imagine.”

He nodded. “I’m sure she had the best of intentions.”

I started to leave his office, now with more questions than when I arrived. As I got to the door, I turned, hoping to get at least one more answer. “How well did you know Grace’s son, Winston?”

He shrugged. “Not well.”

“Did he come to the theater often?”

“A few times. There wasn’t much to do in Archers Rest in those days. Even men like Winston had to do something with their evenings.”

“You didn’t like him?”

He furrowed his brow. “Is this about that skeleton? Was Glad right about it being Winston?”

I hesitated before deciding on a small lie. “No, Ed. At least, we’re not completely sure yet who it is. It’s just that all this talk about the town’s past made me curious about Grace and her family. Maybe I could do something to honor them at the celebration.”

“That would be wonderful. Grace Roemer was a good woman. And we have to honor the good people in this town and not let a few of them so-called leading citizens dictate who is important and who isn’t.” He sighed. “I didn’t like the man. He came to the theater one day, shouting at my father.”

“Why?”

“No idea. And my father wasn’t the kind of man you would shout at. He didn’t mind getting into a fight. Not like me. I wouldn’t hurt a fly.” He laughed. “Even if the fly deserved it.”

CHAPTER 28

W
hen I got to the house, I ran upstairs to change. Eleanor wasn’t home. She was, I assumed, still with Oliver talking about whatever had made Oliver so nervous. At the top of the stairs I peeked into Eleanor’s bedroom. Somewhere in that room was a box of photos, old letters, and other mementos. I remembered Eleanor showing it to me when I was a kid. At the time, the pictures that interested me were of my mother as a little girl and of Eleanor on her wedding day. But I hadn’t seen everything that box held. As I stood at the entrance to her room, I wondered if maybe there was something inside that box that would answer the growing number of questions I had about my grandmother’s life.

I stepped across the threshold.

Eleanor had a blue and white star quilt on her bed and a scrappy nine patch folded up on a chair. I particularly loved the nine patch, as it was made with leftovers from the shop. There was no logic to the fabric selection. There were pastels, stripes, polka dots, bright and jewel-tone fabrics, even a Halloween fabric thrown in. Each piece had been cut into two-inch squares, then sewn together randomly. She made something similar every year from whatever extra bits of fabric she had left from the shop. She brought them home and lovingly pieced and quilted them as though she were creating a family heirloom. In a way she was, because these were the quilts that reminded me most of her. And aside from reminding me of Eleanor, the hodgepodge scrap quilts spoke to another tradition of quilting that I loved. By making use of every inch of fabric you have, you find that things that shouldn’t go together often work perfectly—a Halloween pumpkin next to red polka dots, a blue plaid and an orange stripe, a famous artist like Oliver and salt-of-the-earth Eleanor.

I couldn’t help myself. Though I had come into the room to search for the box, I sat on the chair, wrapped myself in the quilt, and enjoyed the comfort of my grandmother’s room.

I had been coming to this house since I was a little girl, running through the rooms, jumping on the beds, and enjoying the freedom and security that comes from an afternoon at Grandma’s. As close as we had always been, it seemed there was so much about her that I didn’t know.

I stood up, refolded the quilt, and put it back exactly where it had been. I knew I couldn’t snoop through my grandmother’s things. Whatever secrets she had were her secrets. While I might be willing to ask a few questions and butt in where I arguably didn’t belong, searching her room was a line even I couldn’t cross.

Before I left, I walked over to the window and looked down. I had a perfect view of the backyard and the spot where Winston had been buried all these years. How many times over the years had Eleanor looked out at this window, and what, I wondered, had she been thinking about when she did?

I walked into my own room and got ready for dinner with Jesse. I let the hot water in my shower melt away the tightness in my shoulders and chest. When I stepped out, I grabbed my favorite pair of jeans and a light blue cotton sweater I knew Jesse liked to see me in and went looking for my black flat shoes. They weren’t anywhere in my room, so I headed downstairs to the kitchen where I often left them, much to Eleanor’s annoyance.

It was only when I stepped out into the hallway that I realized how dark the house was. There was a noise. It was faint and it sounded odd—deep and steady, almost mechanical. Suddenly the tightness in my chest was back.

“It’s coming from outside,” I told myself. It was getting far too easy to scare me these days, I thought as I crept halfway down the stairs.

Then I realized how foolish I was being. Not because I was scared. I was foolish because I was trying to be quiet, trying to hide my presence and possibly catch someone in the house. I didn’t want to catch anybody in the house. I cleared my throat as loudly as I could and stomped my foot on each step as I walked downstairs.

When I reached the kitchen, I turned on all the lights. No one was there. Nothing was disturbed. I peeked out at the backyard and there, too, things were quiet.

“Idiot,” I said. I grabbed my shoes and headed for the door, but I was stopped by a blinking light on the phone. A message, maybe from Eleanor. Maybe good news. For a second I was almost optimistic.

But it was Glad. “Eleanor, I need to chat with you. It’s rather urgent, and I hope you will make the time to call me back tonight. I tried your shop and you weren’t there. Apparently no one knew where you were. Obviously you’ve been running your business for many years, but it seems to me your employees should be able to reach you at all times.” She coughed. “Anyway, please do call me promptly.”

I remembered what she had said to the mayor in what was supposed to have been a secret meeting: “We can’t let that ridiculous woman ruin everything.”

Was I that ridiculous woman, potentially ruining a quilt show? Was that why Glad was so desperate to get in touch with my grandmother ? Or was Eleanor the woman in question? Or someone else? And if it wasn’t the quilt show, what was Glad so worried about being ruined?

CHAPTER 29

J
esse had the pasta boiling and the sauce bubbling when I arrived, though he looked like a man who was not in control of the situation.