Quilt As You Go (14 page)

"You're the best,” Harriet said and hugged her aunt with her good arm.

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Harriet and Fred
were in the kitchen the next morning when Aunt Beth came downstairs.

"Are you trying to put me out of a job?” Beth said when she saw Harriet's cereal bowl.

"You're helping enough, taking on all my quilt jobs; especially the one for the woman in Angel Harbor."

A woman they had met at quilt camp had pieced a quilt she hoped to enter in the upcoming Jefferson County Quilt Guild show. It was a blended floral quilt, and the woman had asked for stitching that suggested a small iris image combined with some equally small cross-hatching. It would take at least twice if not three times the amount of time to finish as for an average quilt of the same size.

"Honey, I could do that job in my sleep,” Aunt Beth said.

Beth's familiarity with the long arm machine aside, Harriet knew her aunt was more tired than she let on. In the few short months since retiring, she'd become accustomed to a life of leisure, or at least a life of not being on her feet all day.

"My collar bone and shoulder are feeling a lot better already. I'm supposed to start exercises today."

"For your shoulder?” Aunt Beth asked in disbelief.

"No, no, not my shoulder—my wrist and elbow. It says so on that paper they gave us when I left the emergency room. I'm supposed to squeeze a rubber ball. I thought I'd squeeze a needle through fabric at Loose Threads today instead. I was going to go rummage through projects in the studio when I finished my cereal and see if I could find something I'd already cut out that would be easy to hand piece."

"You have so many UFOs that shouldn't be too hard,” Aunt Beth said, making reference to the euphemism that quilters used for unfinished projects or “objects."

Harriet laughed as she got up and put her empty cereal bowl in the sink.

"Come on, Fred, we have work to do."

It was a good thing I started early, Harriet thought later. It had taken almost thirty minutes to wade through her partially started projects one-handed. She'd finally picked up a Lemoyne star project she'd started in a class years ago on one of her visits to Aunt Beth. The stars were made up of eight diamond-shaped pieces with setting triangles and squares in a background color. Harriet had cut her diamonds from brown-and-red print Civil War reproduction fabrics. Fred batted at the pieces as she tried to gather them up and put them into her quilting bag.

"You're not helping, you know,” she scolded. “This is hard enough one-handed without having to pick pieces up off the floor where you keep knocking them."

"Are you ready?” Aunt Beth asked as she came into the studio, her purse in one hand and her quilt bag in the other.

"I am in spite of excessive feline help."

"I got decaf or fully leaded here,” Connie said and held up a coffee carafe in each hand. “Anyone?"

Jenny held up her cup and pointed to the decaf. Sarah held her mug out for the caffeinated coffee when her turn came. Connie filled her own cup with a blend and returned the pots to the shop kitchen. The rest of the Loose Threads seated around the table in the large classroom at Pins and Needles were drinking tea of one sort or another.

"No Carla today?” Harriet asked, a brief vision of Carla and Aiden dead on the floor of his house, killed by Terry, flashing past her consciousness. She pushed it from her mind. It had to be the pain medication talking, if you considered the two ibuprofens she'd taken that morning pain medication.

"She's in the back room pricing fabric,” Robin said. “She said Marjory got in a big shipment from Kona Bay she had to check in."

"So, Ilsa agreed to meet us here?” Jenny asked.

"Yeah,” DeAnn said. “I asked her if she quilted, and it turns out she does, so it was easy. She had to go by the police station this morning, and then she should be joining us."

"Harriet?” a little-girl voice called from the shop. “Are you here?” Bebe Brewster leaned into the room. “Oh, there you are,” she said when she spotted Harriet sitting between her Aunt Beth and Mavis. “Carlton asked me to come by and have you fix this report."

She tottered to Harriet's side on the impossibly high heels of her gladiator sandals, a process made more difficult by the tight strip of pink fabric that surrounded her hips. The girl was wearing fishnet tights, and Harriet wasn't sure if the pink piece above them was supposed to be a skirt or an artfully placed shawl. Bebe flipped the papers in her hand back and forth, not quite fanning herself.

Harriet turned toward her. Bebe continued flipping the papers without handing them over. Aunt Beth finally reached out and grabbed the girl's left hand.

"Wow,” she said. “That's, ah...” She paused a moment, trying to find the right word to describe the obscenely large bauble adorning the younger woman's finger. “That's some ring you have there. What's the occasion?"

Bebe grinned and batted her eyelashes. “This ole thing?” She held her hand out, tilting it from side to side, catching the light with the stone and sprinkling the resulting twinkles around the room. “It's me and Carlton's one-year anniversary. I know it's supposed to be paper or clocks, but I didn't want a watch, so Carlton decided to super-size my wedding ring.” Her smile widened as the Loose Threads ooh-ed and ahh-ed over the ring with a lack of sincerity that went right over her head.

Harriet cleared her throat and waited. When Bebe ignored her and kept talking, she grabbed her arm.

"The papers,” she said. “There's a problem?"

"Oh, yeah,” Bebe said, and laid the papers on the table. “Carlton said there was a mistake in the security costs.” She pointed to a line that had been highlighted in yellow. “He said the cost went up the second and third day for the same amount of hours."

"See the little star beside the figure here?” Harriet pointed to a number on the page. “That star refers to a note at the bottom of the page.” She moved her finger to the bottom of the page. “See, it says here the on-duty Foggy Point policemen had to be paid at their overtime rate per hour. They get paid time and a half for overtime, so that's what we paid. Most of the security force was made up of private security people, but your husband made a deal with the mayor to use policemen, too. This is the price we paid for that deal."

"That wasn't very clever, was it?” Bebe asked.

"I'm sure he had his reasons,” Harriet said, hoping that would end the conversation. She wanted to talk to the other Threads before Ilsa arrived.

"Would you like some coffee or tea?” Connie asked Bebe.

"Oh, that would be real nice—coffee please."

Connie pulled out a chair on the other side of Aunt Beth, and Bebe carefully sat on the edge, folding her long legs to the side. When she was settled, Connie retrieved the coffee pot and filled a cup, which she set on the table in front of her.

"Are you doing anything special for your anniversary?” Jenny asked politely. Harriet thought the ten-carat rock should be special enough for ten anniversaries, but she didn't say anything.

"I wanted to go to Cabo, but Carlton can't get away from work.” Bebe made an exaggerated pout with her pink-painted lips. “He's going to charter a plane and take me to San Francisco for dinner and the opera, you know, like in that movie."

Only you're no Julia Roberts and Carlton is definitely not Richard Gere, Harriet thought, and wondered if Bebe even realized she'd cast herself in the role of a hooker.

Bebe took several nervous sips of her coffee then set the mug on the table.

"Thanks for the coffee, but I better get these back to Carlton."

She stood up but then didn't leave. Harriet followed her gaze toward the door to the classroom. She could see Ilsa coming down the short hallway.

"Who's that?” Bebe asked, the curiosity clear in her voice.

Ilsa's sharply creased linen pants and her violet silk tank top were a notch above the usual garb worn by locals in Foggy Point. The single strand of pearls around her slender neck perfectly coordinated with her neat shoulder-length bob and was pure classic. Bebe could only aspire to the easy grace the woman exuded.

Ilsa held a cream-colored soft leather tote bag over her left arm. She looked at DeAnn.

"Am I too late?” she asked when no one said anything.

"Of course not, come on in,” DeAnn said.

"Where are my manners?” Connie exclaimed. “Here, you can sit by Beth.” She gave Bebe a pointed glare. “Bebe was just leaving."

Bebe held her hand with the diamond out to Ilsa in an awkward, reverse handshake.

"I'm Bebe Brewster,” she said in her little-girl voice. “My husband Carlton is president of the business association. I was here on business, but I have to go.” She said it in a way that implied she had more important things to do.

Ilsa took Bebe's hand in both of hers. “How very nice to meet you. I'm sure I'll see you again around town."

Ilsa was smooth—Harriet had to give her that. She sat in Bebe's chair and accepted the coffee offered by Connie.

"Thank you for inviting me to quilt with you,” she said when she was settled, breaking the silence that had once again descended on the group. “No matter how stressful life gets, I always find peace in my quilting."

She pulled a partially completed block out of her bag, followed by a handful of fabric pieces that looked to be similar in size to the fat quarters the Loose Threads were familiar with.

"Your fabric is beautiful,” Aunt Beth said. “What are you making?"

"These are eighteenth-century Dutch reproduction fabrics,” Ilsa said. “I'm doing a simple geometric pattern with squares and triangles. I don't know the English name for it."

"What's the fabric made of?” Robin asked. Ilsa's fabrics were dark-colored prints with a shiny surface.

"These fabrics are all Dutch chintz,” Ilsa explained. “Cotton, basically. The Dutch East India Company brought fabric to the Netherlands in the sixteen hundreds, and then they brought instructions on how to construct fabric mills and create the fabric. By the seventeen hundreds, the Netherlands produced their own fabric, but as you can see, it was still heavily influenced by the patterns produced in India."

She pointed to a modified tree-of-life pattern on a red background. She picked up her stack of fabric and handed it around the table.

"This is beautiful,” DeAnn said, starting a round of marveling over the fabric that led into a discussion of chintz and then quilt block patterns, and before the group knew it, it was lunch time.

"I'm glad we can make our own quilts again,” Sarah Ness said when the conversation lagged. “I mean, charity is all fine, but I want to work on my own designs."

Mavis rolled her eyes when Sarah looked away. “Anyone want to go get a salad at the Sandwich Board?"

"I've got to get back to work,” Aunt Beth said. “Someone's business is awaiting my return.” She smiled at Harriet.

"Hey, you volunteered,” Harriet said.

"We'll make sure Harriet gets home to keep you company after lunch,” Connie said.

Sarah and DeAnn both had to return to work, but Jenny, Lauren and Robin were able to join Mavis, Harriet, Connie and Ilsa for lunch.

"Do you do a lot of quilting at home?” Harriet asked Ilsa when everyone was settled around three tables the group had pushed together at the Sandwich Board.

"I do more in the off season,” she said. “I have a flower shop, and we stay pretty busy in the spring and summer. In the winter, the shop closes earlier and I am not so tired when I go home. That is how I met Gerard,” she said tentatively. “He came into the flower shop."

She paused, and Connie smiled in encouragement. The Threads were all listening intently—finally, they were getting to the good stuff.

"He wasn't a customer. He works for a tulip farm,” She looked down, realizing her mistake. “He worked for a tulip farm. It was a family business. He delivered flowers, sorted bulbs—he even helped Joris set up a computer program to track the bulb plantings."

"And you had no idea he had another wife and family?” Lauren asked. Connie coughed to cover the small gasp that escaped her lips.

"It's okay,” Ilsa said, looking at Connie as she said it. “We need to get this out. It's like I said at the church, Gerard told me he'd been married for ten years and had a son he'd been estranged from ever since.” She looked at Mavis. “He had a cousin in Amsterdam. We went to dinner at their house on Sundays."

She said the last part in a rush, as if the cousin made the wife and son more real.

"He does have a cousin in Amsterdam,” Mavis said slowly. “Theobald."

"That's right.” Ilsa became more animated. “Theobald and Uda. They have two daughters, Elsbeth and Karyssa."

"Well,” Mavis said after a moment, “at least he told the truth about that."

"Okay,” Lauren said. “So, why has he been hiding all these years?"

"Lauren,” Connie scolded.

"Well, it's what everyone wants to know,” she said.

"I wish I knew,” Ilsa said.

"You and me both,” Mavis muttered.

"What about Ger—” Harriet paused. “I'm going to call him Gerald, no offense.” She directed her attention to Ilsa. “His quilt."

"I understand,” Ilsa said. “What quilt are you referring to?"

"Gerald returned a quilt to Mavis when he came back.” Mavis started to interrupt, but Harriet held her hand up. “Mavis found a quilt she'd made for Gerald before he left. It's been missing, and it suddenly showed up in her cottage. It's made from plaid shirting flannel. It has narrow sashing and was made with the quilt-as-you-go technique."

"I know that quilt. He said his sister in the States had made it for him before he left for the Netherlands. He told me it reminded him of home."

A tear spilled down Mavis's cheek. She dabbed at it with her crumpled napkin.

"I'm sorry,” Ilsa said as she reached out and patted Mavis's age-spotted hand.

"No,” Mavis said. “You have nothing to be sorry for. I need to hear this.
We
need to hear it. It's the only way we're going to figure out what happened. We need to know why a reasonably happy, successful family man would abandon his family and start a new life half a world away."