The Double Wedding Ring (16 page)

T
here's something about the sunshine as it reflects off snow. It's almost blinding. As Barney and I made our usual trek into town, I felt like I was in danger of getting lost. I was in an odd mood. I'd woken up early from Jesse's and headed back to Eleanor's for a change of clothes, just as the sun was creeping upward. I showered, got ready for work, and felt energetic about the day. But as I was heading downstairs to make myself breakfast, I saw that Oliver was in the kitchen, sitting quietly and staring off somewhere, deep in thought.

“I thought I was the early bird,” I said.

He smiled a little, but I worried I'd been wrong to interrupt him. “Felt a bit of pressure lying down. Couldn't catch my breath,” he said.

I rushed over to him. “I'll call the doctor.”

“You'll wake him up.”

“Then I'll drive you to the hospital.”

He patted my hand. “I'm okay now. Your mother's been cooking all sorts of exotic dishes and I'm afraid they're too much for this old stomach.”

“It could be your heart.”

“Nothing to worry about. My heart is fine. But I'll make an appointment as soon as the doctor's office opens. Not just an appointment. I'll see him today.”

“Oliver, if something's wrong
 . . .”

“This, too, shall pass.” He took a deep breath, as if to prove he could. “It goes so fast,” he said. “Enjoy it while you can.”

“It's not over yet. Don't forget, you've got a big day ahead,” I pointed out. “You're going to dance with my grandmother a week from today. Okay?”

He mocked me with a stern expression and a firm nod. “Yes, mum.”

“Oliver, I really think the doctor . . .”

“I'm fine. It's just indigestion.” He sounded frustrated with me. I wanted to push but I didn't. As I had pointed out to my mother, Oliver and Eleanor were adults capable of making their own decisions. Even if this one made me nervous.

He decided to go back upstairs and try for another hour's sleep. The changes were hard on him, too. I hoped that was all it was. I decided against my original plan of getting to the shop early to work on my quilt. Instead I waited in the house, making a batch of blueberry muffins and generally keeping myself busy and close until eight o'clock, when my grandmother came downstairs, followed by my parents, and finally by Oliver and Barney. Oliver winked at me, making me a co-conspirator. He wasn't going to say anything to my grandmother, and I was going to give him until the doctor's visit to change his mind.

An hour after that, as Barney and I walked into town, we were passed by Eleanor, my mother, and little Patch on their way into the shop in Eleanor's car. Patch was standing on my mother's shoulder, watching the world out the passenger-side window. She was getting more sure of herself and her place in the world, and maybe she also wanted to show Barney that while he rolled around in snow, she rode in luxury. I took a longer route than usual and walked past the bed and breakfast in town. Anna's friend had spent the night there. I checked my watch. The owner, an old friend of Eleanor's named Jackie Greene, usually served breakfast until about nine-thirty, and it was that time now. Her guests would either be checking out or heading into town for some sightseeing. It was too cold to just stand there, and Barney was getting anxious, so I decided to go in and just ask Jackie if Anna's friend was still there.

But I didn't even have to go that far. The man in the camel hair coat came out of the bed and breakfast just as I was heading to the door. He smiled as he passed me, but it wasn't a smile of recognition. Just a friendly morning nod as he turned left onto the road that led to Main Street. If he remembered me as the lady on the roof of Clark's Dry Cleaners yesterday, he didn't show it.

Barney and I hung back for a moment then followed. The man, Jesse had said his name was Ken Tremayne, walked quickly, but given that the temperature had dipped below freezing, it didn't surprise me.

I stayed behind Ken, and Barney helped to give me cover by sniffing at everything he could find. When Ken stopped at the edge of the cemetery, I watched him while Barney stuck his nose in the snow to his absolute delight. It was sort of the same reaction I have when a new shipment of fabric comes into the shop, though I don't actually plunge my nose into it.

Ken just stood there. Was he going into our cemetery, which housed residents from as far back as the seventeenth century? What would be there to find? I suddenly had images of a suitcase filled with the missing money hidden in an empty grave.

But no such luck. Instead of walking through the gate, he reached into his pocket and grabbed a pack of cigarettes.

While he smoked, I tugged at Barney to keep walking. I didn't want to be spotted staring at the man.

I walked quickly trying to pass Ken by without being noticed, but Barney was having none of it. A goose, one of many that made a home in the cemetery, waddled toward us and Barney loudly announced its presence. Ken turned and saw me again, and as he did he dropped his lighter. I walked over and retrieved it from the snow.

“Thank you. You must be a resident of this lovely town. Everyone's so friendly. ”

I looked over at the man, who I guessed was in his fifties. There was a slight gray in his brown hair, and a general no-nonsense quality to his appearance, but he was dressed like a man who had money and wanted the world to know it. “I am,” I said. “And thank you. We like it.”

“Ken Tremayne.” He shook my hand.

“Nell Fitzgerald.”

“Nice dog you've got.”

“He is.” I patted his head. Barney had lost all interest in the goose and now sat between Ken and myself at full attention. “He loves the snow.”

Ken took a drag of his cigarette. “I'm a little lost. I'm supposed to be going to one of the coffee shops in town to meet a friend.”

“There's only one: Jitters. And you're headed in the right direction. In fact I'm heading there myself.” All the better to question you, I thought.

We started to walk, and I knew I didn't have much time since there was only a block to go. No point in wasting it with small talk.

“You're Anna's friend,” I said. “I'm Jesse's girlfriend.”

“Wow, this is a small town. I met Jesse yesterday. He seems nice.”

“You didn't know him before?”

“You mean in New York? No. That's a pretty big town,” he said with a laugh.

“I guess I assumed you were a cop.”

“Based on?”

I shrugged. “Gut instinct.” In truth I was just fishing for his profession.

“No, actually I'm a former prosecutor. But good guess. I believe in law and order. I just decided to go another way.”

“Another way?”

“I still get to catch bad guys, but for more money.”

“Not anymore.”

“Excuse me?”

“You said ‘former prosecutor.' What do you do now?”

“Defense. It pays even better.”

“Someone yesterday said Anna's business partner had come into town. Is that someone else?”

“That's me. Well, actually I'm more of a silent partner. I put up the money, provide legal counsel, and Anna does everything else.”

“Why interior design?”

“I have money in a lot of businesses. I'm an amateur magician, so I own half of a shop in the East Village. I have a stake in a tapas restaurant in Brooklyn. I'm looking into investing in a bakery in Brooklyn.”

“Busy guy. It's amazing you can find the time to come up here.”

“Anna and Roger are old friends as well as clients. It's so sad to think he's gone. And she's heartbroken, of course. I wanted to do whatever I could.”

“Anna said they were divorcing, only Roger didn't want the divorce.”

“He had no choice but to go along with it whether he wanted it or not.”

“Because you and Anna are a couple and maybe Roger was holding up the divorce.”

Ken stopped. He turned his body toward me. Barney pushed his way between us, growling slightly. “What's your role in all this?”

“Curious bystander,” I said. “This is a small place and when someone is murdered, even a stranger like Roger Leighton, the whole town is interested.”

“Maybe the town should get cable.”

Behind Ken, I saw a familiar but unwelcome figure coming toward us. Bob Marshall. “Miss Fitzgerald, we never stop running into each other, do we?”

Ken looked over at Bob, and was just as displeased to see him as I was. But given Barney's reaction to the lawyer, I wasn't sure if one bad guy was accidently saving me from another.

“I wouldn't say we run into each other, Mr. Marshall,” I said. “I'd say you keep looking for me.”

“You're right there. I saw your mom and grandmother opening the shop, just as I was coming out of Jitters. Carrie makes really good coffee, doesn't she? By the way, Ken, Anna's waiting for you. And she's not a lady who likes to be kept waiting.” He smiled at me, and then at Ken, before continuing his walk past us.

“Do you know Bob Marshall?” I asked.

Ken swallowed hard. “I know of him,” he said. “The fact that you clearly dislike him is the strongest piece of evidence I have that, despite your earlier comments, you are a sane and sensible young lady.”

Ken hadn't acknowledged Bob Marshall, who clearly liked to stir up trouble and must have been looking for a reaction. Or maybe they were trying hard to seem as if they were not friends. I'd been linking Anna to one man and then the other, but what if they were the partners who killed Roger? Of course, at least right now, I had no idea what could join them together.

Ken started walking again. Jitters was up ahead. This conversation would be over soon and I felt like I had only scratched the surface.

“You said you're a defense attorney now,” I said. “There's another lawyer's name I ran across, C. G. Kruger. Do you know him?”

He let out a half cough, half snicker. “A crooked lawyer for crooked cops. He represents all kinds of lowlifes, but cops are his specialty.”

“And that information is well-known among police officers in New York City?”

“Among the dirty ones, yes. Why do you ask?”

“As I said, I'm a curious bystander.”

Jesse took that card, and kept it out of evidence. He knew what it meant. There was a knot growing in my stomach that was getting very difficult to ignore.

“I
t needs to have more stitching over here. It should have a balance between the blocks and the borders.”

Susanne was standing behind Natalie, instructing her daughter on how to finish Eleanor's quilt when I came into the shop, still focused on my conversation with Ken Tremayne. I debated whether to talk to Jesse, and my reluctance made me feel as though I were doubting him, which I wasn't.

I looked around. There were a few customers, but they all seemed in the hunting phase. I grabbed the newest book by husband-and-wife design team Weeks Ringle and Bill Kerr and started paging through, calming myself with the images of their beautiful modern quilts.

“And you should add some hearts there,” Susanne continued.

Natalie looked up at me for help. She had only been doing longarm quilting since March, but in that time she'd completed dozens of quilts and, to my eye anyway, was an accomplished quilter. Her mother was an award winner and perhaps had a tougher standard, though Natalie's work was amazing. I was about to make a statement to that effect when my own parent troubles came toward me.

“Nell.” My mother came out of Eleanor's office with a sense of purpose I hadn't seen in her in years. “Grandma and I have it all figured out. Let me show you.”

As my mother pulled me back toward the office, I caught Natalie's eye. It was too late to save either of us from the well-intended advice of our moms.

Eleanor was sitting at her desk, glasses perched on her nose, eyes firmly fixed on the computer screen. “I found a company that will do all the printing for the actual pattern and the cover photo,” she said. “You just upload the design and they take care of everything. They have thin paper or a heavier cardstock; which would you prefer?”

I looked at the screen. “Wow. We've gotten that far?”

“Not if you don't want to.”

My mother sighed. “Of course she wants to. We talked about this yesterday. This is the next step if Nell is going to start her own business.”

“It wouldn't just be my business,” I said. “It would be part of Someday Quilts.”

“I was thinking about that.” Eleanor swiveled her chair toward me. She had a blank expression on her face, the one she used when she was doing her best not to influence me. “I sort of jumped the gun with that name. It's your pattern company. You should decide what to call it. I was thinking maybe Nell Fitzgerald Designs.”

“Or Manhattan Modern Quilts,” my mother suggested.

“But I don't live in Manhattan.”

“But you could. I mean, this is exactly the sort of career that would allow you the freedom to go anywhere.”

She reached into her oversize purse and pulled out a stack of eight-and-a-half-by-eleven sheets of paper. There was something about quilting printed on them, but it wasn't until she handed them over that I could see where she was going with this.

“Tokyo?” I asked.

“Did you know that quilting is huge in Japan?”

“Yes. But I didn't know that you knew. And what does that have to do with my little quilt patterns?”

“That's my point. They're not little quilt patterns. They could be the start of a major company. I printed this off the Internet yesterday. There's this big festival there, lots of really amazing things. You should go and see what they're doing.”

“Mom, I've never even been to Houston.”

“Texas? What does that have to do with anything?”

My grandmother took the papers from me and set them on the desk. “It's a quilt show, Patty. And your mother has a point, Nell. You should see the trends, see what's hot, what's changing. If you're going to make a go of this . . .”

Some people have families who laugh when they announce their dreams. Mine went into uber-support mode. My head was swimming. All I wanted was to make a pattern of one of my quilts and maybe sell it at the shop; make my way slowly toward a career in quilting. But my family wouldn't be happy until I was the Bill Gates of the quilt world.

I sat opposite Eleanor and pushed back my chair to give me a little room to think. Unfortunately, I accidently hit Barney in the leg. He sat up with a start, accepted my apology, but left the room. No doubt in search of a place less crowded and dangerous.

“I think I'm going to start with a couple of patterns,” I said. “The gazebo quilt and maybe the Amish bars quilt I made. They're easy to re-create and both have some nice appliqué elements that would be simple for anyone. I'll sell the patterns at the shop and on our website, and see how it goes. If more than ten people like them enough to buy, then I'll make more.”

“Nell . . .” my mother started.

“And we'll call the company Someday Quilts Designs because it is part of the quilt shop and it should remain that way. We should sit down later and figure out a logical amount to print, and also the profit split. Natalie kicks back a percentage of her fees for longarm services to pay for the machine and the space. If it's okay with you, Grandma, I'd like to do the same. Any questions?”

My grandmother smiled. “I think you've covered it.”

“Thanks, both of you, for the help. Mom, I do like the idea of checking out quilt shows and the wholesale market shows to see what the trends are. And if there's ever a time I can afford to go to Tokyo, I'll do it in a heartbeat. Right now, though, we have customers in the shop, so I think I'll go to work.”

I got up and left the office, just in time to see Susanne and Natalie sort out their differences on the quilting.

“We're going with stippling in the background of the feathered border,” Natalie said, referring to the squiggly quilt design that was often used to fill in spaces and flatten areas. I imagined Susanne liked the idea of the quilted feathers popping from the background, and stippling would certainly help with that. “And my mom has some ideas about how you should quilt your gazebo quilt.”

“Wonderful.” I tried to suppress a smile but couldn't.

Jesse and Allie weren't the only instant family I had. The quilt group had given me a large group of sisters, all of whom were pretty open about telling me how to live my life.

“Dru!” Natalie called out as the door opened. I turned around to see our librarian come into the shop. She'd visited before many times. Dru had become a quilter after the town had joined together to make a cathedral windows quilt as a Christmas project for Charlie when he was down on his luck.

“Strange to see you outside the library,” I said.

She laughed. “I know. People think I live there, which I practically do.” She handed me a large hardcover book. “This is for you.”

“
Designing Patterns
,” I read. “
Taking Your Artwork and Turning It into a Business
.”

“I heard you were doing that with your quilts,” she said. “So I brought this over. I checked it out for you for two weeks, but if you need it longer let me know.”

“How did you find out about the patterns?”

“Jake over at the butcher shop told me when he came to return some DVDs to the library. His wife overheard it when she was getting coffee at Jitters. He knew I'd be interested because I'm always talking about how beautiful your quilts are.”

My instant family had expanded once again, to the entire town of Archers Rest. “This will be very helpful,” I told her. “I'll read it cover to cover. How's your car these days?”

“Perfect. Except for the scratch.”

“What scratch?”

“It's weird. Right on the door handle of the passenger side. I would never have even seen it, except I gave Charlie a ride and he noticed it. You want to see?”

Not only did I want to see, but Natalie quickly covered Eleanor's quilt with the muslin and she and Susanne followed me out of the shop without our coats. Susanne, at least, had the sense to grab her sweater, and as she joined us, she wrapped her Irish wool fisherman's cardigan tightly around herself.

I leaned over to examine the handle. Dru was right. Two lines had been scratched into the handle. “They're perfectly straight,” I said. “Hard to do if you are keying a car.”

“It looks like something left by a clip,” Susanne suggested.

“As if something were attached?” I asked. Susanne nodded. I looked at the door handle again. “Dru, your car was parked facing west on the day of the shooting?”

“Yeah. The passenger side was to the street, and the driver's side was to the curb. Why?”

I stood up. “I've been wrong about something,” I said. “Completely wrong.”