Tree of Life and Death (5 page)

Jayne raised the iron to reveal that the row, which had been a puffy blob from the bulk of the seams, was now a perfectly flat rectangle.

It seemed simple enough, but I still wasn't sure I could make the remaining pieces look so perfect. "What if they're not all nice and straight when I'm done?"

"Then you take them back to the sewing machine, rip out the seam, and sew it again until you get it right."

I didn't bother to explain that I hadn't done the sewing. I trusted Dee to have done an acceptable stitching job, so if the finished row wasn't straight, it was more likely due to my ironing than to her stitching. I took the second row, placed it in front of me right side up, did my best to push the seam allowances all to one side, and then reached for the iron.

"No, no, no." Jayne's voice was even sharper than before as she reclaimed the iron. "The seam allowances need to alternate from row to row." Jayne flipped the direction of the two seams, ironed them, and then placed the second row next to the first one she'd ironed so I could see which way the seams fell when the rows butted up against each other.

"Always have a plan for the ironing of the whole block before you start. You want to push the seam allowances toward the darker fabrics whenever possible, but also make sure that they're not both going in the same direction where two rows meet. Then, when the rows are put together, the extra layers alternate, and they don't form a big lump on one side."

While she spoke, she ironed the third row for me, pushing the seams in the right direction without any apparent thought, leaving nothing for me to do, which was probably just as well.

"I never realized how complicated ironing could be."

"Ironing can make or break a quilt," Jayne said. "Meg taught me that. Have you met her yet? She designed the ornaments we're making today."

"I've seen her in passing, but we didn't get formally introduced," I said. "She was in a bit of a hurry at the time."

"You'll love her," Jayne said. "She's easy to talk to, even now that she's famous. I always think of her as Mrs. Claus, even without the hat she's wearing today. Her husband doesn't look anything like Santa, which ruins the image, but he doesn't usually travel with her, so that's okay."

Meg did indeed look like every illustration I'd ever seen of Mrs. Claus: plump, rosy-cheeked, with white hair pulled up into a loose bun, and wearing little round spectacles. The Santa hat and the red-and-white pinafore-style apron that she wore with black pants only added to the impression. Jayne, on the other hand, looked like an oversized elf in her green sweater. A mean elf, gleefully placing lumps of coal in bad kids' stockings.

"Oh no," Jayne said, peering at something on the other side of the room. "That woman is doing it again. I thought Meg was going to talk to her, but it looks like she didn't have a chance. I'd better go deal with it."

"Don't let me stop you." I had no idea what quilting crime was happening on the other side of the room or how Jayne had spotted it. Still, if it meant that I would get off with just a warning from the quilt police, I had to be grateful that someone else was doing something worse than I was.

*   *   *

I abandoned my short-lived post at the ironing board and carried the ironed pieces back to Emma and Dee. I felt like a fraud, since Jayne had done all the work.

Matt Viera had joined Dee and Emma while I was learning just how much of a science ironing could be. He was perched on the very corner of the table where Dee was seated. As I approached, a woman in her fifties, wearing a quilted red-and-white vest, came over from the refreshments table. "Excuse me, Matteo," she said in a breathless voice. When he turned to look at who was calling him, she waved her phone at him. "May I?"

"Sure." He slid around to the end of the table and held out his arm so she could snuggle in beside him.

She held her phone out, took several selfies, and checked to make sure the images were acceptable before saying, "Thank you. I told my Facebook friends that I'd met you at another quilting event, but they kept saying that without a picture, it didn't happen. Now I've got the proof."

When had arts reporters become such celebrities that people would ask to take pictures with them? Even male fashion models weren't widely known by name, so why would this woman have been bragging about meeting him to her Facebook friends? Or was it just because he was an incredibly good-looking man, even when he wasn't painstakingly cleaned up, dressed and polished for the camera?

Actually, now that I thought about it, I could have sworn that Matt had grown even better looking since I last saw him three months ago. Absence truly did make the heart grow fonder.

The selfie-taker wandered off happily, and Matt turned back to face me and Dee. "Keely, it's good to finally see you again."

For a moment, I was distracted by the perfect planes of his face and the look in his dark eyes that suggested seeing me again had made his day. Then I remembered the last three months of silence from him. He had my number, and he knew where I lived. If he'd wanted to see me that badly, there hadn't been anything to stop him. I'd believed he was interested in me before, and I'd been wrong. I wasn't going to make that mistake again. This time, I knew there was nothing personal in his attention to me, any more than there had been in his gracious willingness to be in the woman's selfies. His nice-guy persona was just part of his skills as a reporter.

"Nice to see you too," I said politely, but without any warmth. Forewarned was forearmed, and I'd made a whole career out of being prepared to resist any sort of emotional manipulation during negotiations. The only thing I didn't understand was why Matt was even bothering to work his magic on me today. Back in August, he'd needed my help to get the scoop on who had killed Randall Tremain, but there was nothing truly newsworthy about today's event. "You must be here to write about the start of a new holiday tradition at the museum."

"Among other things." He swung one leg back and forth a few inches, drawing my attention to the ridiculous pockets on his thigh and the strong muscles beneath the cotton fabric. "Have they converted you yet?"

"To quilting?" I tossed the ironed rows onto the table next to Dee's sewing machine. "No. I'm only qualified to fetch and carry. I can't even iron properly, apparently. What about you? When are you going to take up quilting?"

"I can sew already. I'm planning to make a couple of the ornaments today. I just wanted to say hi to my favorite quilters first."

Dee's machine stopped. "If you sign the ornaments you make, I bet Gil could auction them off for a fortune after the tree comes down."

He shook his head ever so slightly at Dee and then looked at me again. "Hey, I just remembered. You still owe me a tour of the bank vault in your home. I'll call you next week to set it up."

I knew he didn't mean it, and still I almost believed he'd call this time.

Before I could respond, I was distracted by a commotion over near the refreshments table. Jayne Connors's shrill voice had gotten even louder and harder to ignore. She was shrieking at poor Trudy Kline, making me regret not paying more attention to who had distracted Jayne from lecturing me. Of all the people in the room, Trudy was the least capable of standing up for herself.

Despite Jayne's angry, piercing tone, I only caught about half of the words, something about washing hands
thoroughly
before returning to the cutting table after eating and the damage that a little bit of grease or chocolate could do to fabric.

Meg McLaughlin came in from yet another trip to the ladies' room just in time to intervene. Living up to her cuddly Mrs. Claus appearance, Meg drew her protégée out into the hallway to cool down, leaving the red-faced Trudy to be surrounded and reassured by other members of the quilt guild. The women seemed to know what would cheer her up, which mostly consisted of talking about her charm bracelet, judging from the way they bent over it and admired it. Trudy preened under their attention, like a recently engaged woman showing off an engagement ring.

Dee sighed. "We have to do something about Jayne. Emma, please make sure to add it to the agenda for our next board meeting. It can go under old business."

"Ancient business." Emma seemed to realize Matt and I didn't know what they were talking about, and she explained. "This isn't the first time she's caused a scene at a guild event. She's a total control freak, and she gets confrontational when things don't go according to her plan. Shouting is only the first stage. She's been known to throw things if she doesn't feel she's being listened to. She stabbed a table with a pair of scissors once when we were working on a quilt for a fundraiser. Fortunately, it wasn't one of Sunny's heavy-duty scissors, or it would have caused a lot more damage."

"Why haven't you banned Jayne from membership if she's that much trouble?"

"We may have to," Dee said. "I'd rather convince her to see a therapist or something. She's really an extraordinary needlewoman, and her quilts are popular at our shows. She won the Best of Show ribbon about five years ago, and she probably deserved it every year since. The quilts are judged without names attached, but I think the judges recognized her style and let their personal dislike sway their votes. They couldn't deny her a blue ribbon, because her quilts are stunning, but they could pass her over for the very top award."

"Still," I said, "it sounds like she could be dangerous. To the guild's property and maybe even to other members."

"It's complicated," Emma said. "It's not just that she's a really good quilter, but she's also close with Meg McLaughlin, and no one's sure how Meg would react if we kicked her friend out of the guild. Meg's the most famous quilter ever to come from Danger Cove, and she teaches all around the world. She lives in Seattle now, but she was originally from here, and she's good about remembering where she came from. She turns down other events if they conflict with our show so she can be here. Her presence at our show brings in a lot of paying visitors who wouldn't come otherwise. Plus, she does one workshop a year for the guild without charge. That's why she's here today and why we have so many volunteers. Your appraisals brought in people too, and some of our guild members would have come just to help out the museum, but most are only here so they can meet Meg and learn from her."

Trudy had recovered her composure and was over at the fabric-cutting table near the entrance, laughing with a couple of other guild members. They'd hastily braided a simple red-and-white crown out of some fabric strips too narrow to use and bestowed it on her, dubbing her a quilting princess for the day.

Jayne and Meg hadn't returned, and I hoped that Meg had been able to convince Jayne that she'd helped more than enough for the day and should go home.

I still needed to find Gil and give her the papers for the quilt registry. She must have left again while I'd been learning about ironing. She definitely wasn't here now, and if she'd been here when the incident between Jayne and Trudy started, Gil would have kept it from escalating to an uncomfortable situation.

I couldn't go home until I'd handed off the paperwork, but if I didn't get away from Dee and Emma right now, I was going to get roped into operating one of the dangerous weapons that masqueraded as harmless sewing machines. "I'm starved. I think I'll go see if there's anything left at the refreshment table."

"I'll come with you." Matt straightened and ambled across the room with me.

"Stefan was looking for you a few minutes ago. Did he catch you?"

Matt shook his head. "I haven't seen him yet."

I turned to look at the ironing station where I'd seen Stefan earlier, but he still hadn't returned. "He can't have gone far. I doubt he'd leave before he got the chance to introduce you to his girlfriend. They were hoping you'd interview her about her quilt shop's contributions to today's event."

"What did you think of Sunny? Is she as perfect as Stefan says?"

"Sunny seems to be everything that Stefan has ever claimed about her, even the traits that seemed too good to be true." I surveyed the remnants of the refreshments on the conference table. There wasn't even a crumb large enough to tempt a night-before Christmas mouse to stir. "She's obviously devoted to him, and she's lovely, smart, and strong minded."

"I suppose that means that now both of them will be picking on me for my failure to live up to their expectations?"

"From what I've seen, Sunny might
think
that you're a disappointment, but unlike Stefan, she knows better than to say it out loud."

"Where is she?" Matt said. "I do want to meet her and talk about her shop, but I can't stay for long today."

"A reporter's work is never done?"

"That too," Matt said. "But I've got a meeting with some business associates at the Smugglers' Tavern this afternoon."

Business associates, not fellow reporters. That was odd. None of my business, and I wasn't going to ask.

"Sunny had to go get some supplies at her quilt shop," I said. "She should be back any minute now though. It shouldn't take much more than half an hour to pop over there, get what she needs, and drive back here. It's been at least that long since she left. In fact, that's probably why Stefan isn't here right now. He probably went outside to help her unload her car."

"I'll give them another half hour, just in case she got tied up with an emergency at the shop," Matt said. "It'll give me a chance to make an ornament or two, but then I really need to leave. I can meet Sunny at her shop some other time."

I was lifting the lid on the slow cooker to see if there was any mulled cider left, when screams from outside startled me into dropping it back in place. The room's windows were above eye level, so we couldn't see outside, but even if we could have, the sounds seemed to be coming from the direction of the back parking lot. Someone must have left the back door propped open so the quilters would have easy access to the upstairs boardroom without trekking through the rest of the museum.

Matt and I looked at each other for a moment, and I assumed that, like me, he was remembering the last time we'd been together and heard a woman screaming—the day Randall Tremain's body had been found by his business partner. Just like then, Matt came to his senses before I did and raced out of the boardroom and down the back stairs with me at his heels.