The Quilter's Legacy (26 page)

“It does,” said Norman. “A dash instead of a check means the client reclaimed the item before it sold. In the fifth column, the two numbers separated by a slash are the price of the item and my father's commission, and the fifth column is the date the item left the store.”

Sylvia had already guessed as much, and she studied the entry with a pang of regret. Fifty dollars. Claudia had parted with their mother's Ocean Waves quilt for fifty dollars, and nowhere on that page did Sylvia see any indication of who had purchased it.

“Why are there blank spaces for some of the items where the checks or dashes should be?” asked Amy. “What happened to the things that didn't sell and weren't reclaimed?”

Sylvia and Andrew exchanged a look, surprised to see her taking an interest.

“If the third column is empty, the item was still in the shop when my father retired,” said Norman. “He tried to contact his clients so they would pick up their goods, but not everyone responded. He donated what little inventory remained to charity.” He pointed to the last entry on the page. “Which brings me to this.”

Sylvia, Andrew, Sarah, and even Amy leaned closer to get a better look at Claudia's last transaction with the consignment shop. On November 22, 1959, she had placed another quilt with Norman's father, one identified as QLT W/S.

Sylvia sucked in a breath and sat back in her chair. A small, white quilt. The whole cloth quilt. And the third column was blank.

“Do you have any idea what charity your father donated his inventory to?” she asked.

“He gave to several—Goodwill, St. Vincent de Paul, a few other local groups that aren't even around anymore, but he didn't keep a record of how the items were distributed, just one receipt from each organization with an amount for his tax deductions.”

“May I?” Sarah asked, reaching for the ledger. Norman slid it across the table. She paged through it and eventually shook her head. “Did your father keep a separate record for his accounts receivable? This book tells us how much he paid out and to whom, but not what his customers paid the shop.”

Norman winced. “One of my father's failures in the business was that he was always more interested in the contents of the store's shelves than its cash register. He was so disinterested in actually selling anything that I think he would have been happier running a museum.” He rose. “I can show you the rest of his records, such as they are. I don't think he'd mind.”

He led them behind the counter and through the kitchen into a small, cluttered office. Floor to ceiling bookshelves stuffed with books, magazines, and coffee mugs lined one entire wall, while the others were plastered with movie posters. Someone had taken a pen to them, Sylvia noted, contributing mustaches, eye patches, and blackened teeth as well as dialogue balloons with rather more colorful language than filmmakers typically included in their advertising. A dusty computer sat on a small desk, but there was no chair, and the desk calendar was set to April of the previous year. She and Sarah spotted the filing cabinet bursting with papers and exchanged looks of dismay; looking for records in this place would be nearly as bad as searching the attic of Elm Creek Manor. But Norman merely said, “Excuse the mess,” took a key from the desk drawer, and led them back down the hall.

He unlocked the door to a narrow storage room and shoved it open as far as it would go, which was barely enough room for him to reach inside and flip on the light. Sylvia peered past him, noted the several large filing boxes that had impeded the door's progress, and wished they were searching the office instead.

Norman glanced down at her and chuckled. “Not all of this stuff is my dad's.” With effort, he shoved the door open wider and squeezed his torso through the narrow opening. “Most of this is for the coffee shop.”

“I hope you don't ever get audited,” said Sarah, taking in the scene. “You'd need a team of accountants to sort out this mess.”

“What?” Norman seemed genuinely bewildered as he looked from her to the room and back. “Oh. Yeah, I guess it's a little untidy, but I know where everything is.”

Andrew looked dubious. “All I see are piles of paper.”

“But each pile has a purpose.” Grinning, Norman hauled four filing cartons into the hallway and lined them up along the wall. “You'll wish my dad was that organized before you're through.”

He removed the first carton's lid, and Sylvia heard Sarah stifle a groan as they took in what appeared to be nothing more than a box of the street sweepings after a ticker-tape parade.

“Accounts receivable, I presume?” asked Sylvia, accepting Andrew's assistance as she knelt beside the carton.

“Accounts receivable and miscellaneous,” affirmed Norman.

“With the emphasis on miscellaneous.” Then he apologized and explained that they would have to search on their own, for he had to return to work. He encouraged them to look as long as they liked and offered the use of his photocopier to duplicate any documents that would aid them in their search.

“I hope no one has any plans for the afternoon,” said Sarah after Norman left.

Andrew hesitated. “I still need to run that errand.”

“Well, there are four of us and four boxes.” Amy seated herself on the floor beside another carton and removed the lid. “We shouldn't need more than a few hours.”

Behind her back, Sylvia and Andrew exchanged speculative glances, then Andrew shrugged and made his way to the last carton. He patted his daughter on the shoulder as he passed.

Sylvia sifted through the first few layers of paper in her carton, uncertain what she ought to be looking for and doubtful she would recognize it when she found it. Sarah advised them to look for anything with Claudia's name on it, of course, but also canceled checks or store receipts for purchases made on the date the Ocean Waves quilt was sold. If Norman's father had not written the item code on the receipt, they could still identify the quilt by comparing the total on the receipt to the price listed in the ledger.

Their work was painstakingly slow, and working on the floor added to their discomfort, but within the first half-hour Andrew made a fortunate discovery: an envelope containing receipts for donations to five local charities, dated the same year Norman told them the shop had closed. “We'll phone them as soon as we get home,” said Sarah, placing the envelope on a nearby shelf for safekeeping. “I admit it's not likely they still have the whole cloth quilt, but they might know where it ended up.”

“Not unless their records are much better than Norman's father's,” said Amy as she thumbed through a stack of canceled checks bound by a stack of rubber bands. Wisps of hair had come loose from her barrette, and she absently tucked them behind her ears as she set the checks aside.

Despite the exasperation of the unnecessary labor Norman's father had inflicted upon them, as she sorted through the contents of her carton, Sylvia began to sympathize with him. She had only rarely visited his store as a young woman and its closing had passed her by unnoticed, but the ledger and those haphazard files revealed a man happy in his work, one who had cultivated a close relationship with his customers. He had often scrawled notes on claim tickets, reminders to set an item aside for a customer who would particularly appreciate it or to inquire about the health of an ailing relative. One note brought tears to Sylvia's eyes. “Tell her no more quilts,” he had jotted in black pencil on the back of the claim ticket stub for the Ocean Waves quilt. “Hate to sell them. Should keep.”

Someone, at least, had recognized that the true measure of the quilts' worth was not in what price they could fetch but in the story they told of the woman who had so lovingly crafted them. But did the ambiguous message mean that Norman's father would like to keep the quilts for himself, that Claudia ought to keep the quilts because she hated to sell them, or that he hated to sell them because he believed Claudia ought to keep them in the family? Sylvia knew her sister's selfishness well, and yet part of her longed to believe that Claudia had sold off their mother's legacy only because she had no other choice. If Sylvia could never reclaim those precious heirlooms, their loss would be easier to accept if she knew Claudia had not parted with them easily.

Their search gleaned one other tantalizing clue, and Amy was the one who discovered it: a canceled check whose date and total matched the ledger entry for the Ocean Waves quilt.

A thrill ran through Sylvia as she examined the check, crumpled from its long storage, the ink of the signature fading, but with the printed name and address of the account holder still legible. Even Sarah's warning that they ought to examine the ledger in the unlikely event that a second item had sold that same day for the exact same amount did not weaken her confidence that this was the check that had purchased her mother's quilt.

“It's more than fifty years old,” said Amy. “That woman may no longer live at that address.”

“I'm certain she doesn't,” said Sylvia. “I know this woman, or rather, knew her. She was my mother's age.”

“Were they friends?” asked Sarah.

“Whatever else Gloria Schaeffer may have been, she was no friend to our family. You may recall, Sarah, that I told you how Claudia and I were kicked out of the Waterford Quilting Guild during World War II because of silly rumors that we Bergstroms were German sympathizers. It was utter nonsense, of course, but Gloria thought our presence disrupted the harmony of our meetings, and since she was guild president …” Sylvia shrugged. “I figured if they didn't want me, I wanted no part of them, but Claudia took our dismissal hard. What I don't understand, though, is what Gloria Schaeffer would want with a Bergstrom quilt.”

“Maybe she didn't know it was your mother's,” suggested Andrew.

“Unlikely. My mother and Gloria were both founding members of the guild. They would have seen a good deal of each other's work, both complete and in progress.”

“Maybe she wanted to help Claudia financially,” said Sarah. “Out of guilt for what she did.”

Sylvia admitted it was possible, but perhaps she still harbored some resentment for that long-ago offense, for she could not believe Gloria would wish to assist any Bergstrom. More likely, Gloria had taken a perverse glee in the downturn in the family's fortunes and could not resist parting them from one of their treasured heirlooms.

“Gloria had two sons,” said Sylvia, setting the canceled check aside with the charity receipts and the Ocean Waves claim ticket stub. “Assuming Gloria is no longer among the living, one of them may have inherited the quilt.” They would be in the phone book, if they still lived in Waterford.

Several hours and cups of coffee later, they finished wading through the detritus of the consignment shop without finding any more clues to the whereabouts of the missing quilts. Still, with Gloria Schaeffer's last known address in hand, Sylvia felt somewhat optimistic, despite her growing concerns about the whole cloth quilt, of which they still knew very little.

Sarah photocopied the relevant documents while the others returned the cartons to the storage room. Then they found Norman out front and thanked him. As they left the coffee shop, Andrew glanced at his watch. “It's four-thirty. If we hurry, we can take care of that errand before the office closes.”

“Goodness, Andrew, I completely forgot.” Sylvia turned up the collar of her coat and tucked her arm through his. “If I had known we would spend so much time at the Daily Grind I would have suggested we take care of your errand first. Where to, then? The bank? The hardware store?”

“The county clerk's office,” he replied, “and it's not my errand. It's our errand. Don't tell me you forgot.”

“I'm afraid I did,” said Sylvia, smiling at his eagerness.

“How could you forget? What were we talking about ever since the Ohio border? What did we say we'd take care of as soon as we got home?”

With dismay, Sylvia remembered. “Oh, let's worry about that another day, shall we?” Her arm in Andrew's, she began strolling down the sidewalk toward Grandma's Attic and the van. “After all that work, I have absolutely no interest in waiting in a long line.”

Andrew stopped short. “There won't be a line at this hour. Besides, we're right here.”

“Sylvia's right,” said Sarah. Sylvia doubted she had caught on, but she could usually sense Sylvia's moods and must have realized there was a problem. “Anyway, it's my turn to make supper, so I need to get home.”

“This won't take long,” said Andrew. “All we have to do is fill out a form and show our IDs. It's not that hard to get a marriage license.”

Amy looked at her father, expressionless.

“Andrew, please,” said Sylvia quietly. “Let's go home.”

“The county clerk's office is right across the street. We're here, so we might as well stop by. If there's a long line, we'll come back another time.”

“You had to do this now,” said Amy. “You couldn't wait until I went home.”

“You mean sneak around, as if I'm doing something shameful?

I'm proud that Sylvia's marrying me, and I'm not going to hide that from anyone.”

“Andrew, please,” murmured Sylvia.

“I'm not asking you to hide.”

“What, then? Should I pretend that we're not getting married rather than offend you?”

Amy threw up her hands. “Listen, Dad, you do what you have to do. Just don't pretend you're not baiting me, and don't expect me to stand around and watch while you do it.”

She stalked off. Andrew glowered, and Sylvia started to follow her, but Sarah caught her by the arm. “I'll stay with her,” she said quietly. “We'll meet you at the van.”

Sylvia agreed and watched as Sarah hurried down the sidewalk after Amy. Amy paused when Sarah approached, and they exchanged a few words before continuing on together. Neither one looked back.

“Are you coming?” asked Andrew after the pair rounded the corner and vanished from sight.

Sylvia nodded.

Andrew was right in one respect: The county clerk's office was not busy at that hour, and they waited only a few minutes before their number was called. They filled out the proper form, paid the forty dollar fee, showed their driver's licenses, and accepted the clerk's congratulations when he told them they could pick up their license in three days. Soon they were back outside on the sidewalk in the fading daylight. Sylvia returned Andrew's kiss when he told her how happy he was, but she shivered in the cold and tucked her hands into her pockets instead of taking his arm.