Cathedral Windows (4 page)

Chapter 8

“Make a list of all the supplies we need for the Christmas party,” Eleanor instructed me the next morning at the shop.

“And a list of all the suspects . . . ,” I said. I was off in my own world, and I had been all morning.

“Excuse me?”

“If Charlie didn't burn his house down, then someone did.”

“Nell, Christmas Eve is three days away.”

“Exactly. We need to figure this out quickly so Charlie can go home for Christmas. Well, go somewhere. So someone will open their home to him once we prove he didn't have anything to do with the fire.”

“We have the party at the library on Christmas Eve, the benefit for Morristown's fire department,” Eleanor said. I remembered; I just didn't care anymore.

“Charlie feels like he doesn't belong in Archers Rest. And now, with no home and no job and half the town thinking he's an arsonist, I don't blame him. I need to help him, Grandma—even if it means that I can't do anything for the benefit,” I said. “I'm sorry. I know that's important too.”

Eleanor studied me a long time, with the same expression Jesse said I often gave him when I was thinking about something important. Then she walked to her office, waking poor Barney from his usual all-day nap. “It's time to open the shop. I'll be busy, but you can handle it.”

All morning we had a steady stream of women in colorful clothes, and “I love stripping” buttons, running into their Internet friends and turning the shop into a party. Excited quilters grabbed precut fabrics, kits, yardage—anything they could get their hands on. It was festive but distracting.

Sprinkled in with the shop hoppers were townspeople trying to get the news on Charlie. “If he did it, then he didn't mean it,” Bernie said. Our pharmacist and a member of my quilt group, Bernie was always ready to see past a mistake. And that's what she felt this was, Charlie making a mistake.

“He's sad,” Dru Ann Love, our local librarian, offered. “Too much loss. He acted out and it got out of control.”

The other women in the shop nodded in agreement. That was the general consensus. While a few people were relieved that “unstable” Charlie was locked up, most felt that though he was guilty it wasn't his fault. Since the house was his, free and clear, no crime had been committed and no one was hurt but Charlie. A couple of them even had sharp words for Jesse for locking up that poor man. But no one made offers to open their home to him, or speculated about the real guilty party. For all their support, no one seemed to think Charlie was innocent.

As the afternoon wore on and I waited on group after group of shop hoppers, I could hear Eleanor on the phone making calls. Unfortunately I was too busy to eavesdrop, and the chatter of happy quilters combined with Christmas music made it impossible anyway. There was a slight lull of customers around three o'clock, but it didn't last. Half a dozen kids from Charlie's third grade class ran into the shop, breathless and excited, with Jacob leading them.

“My dad said you and Jesse arrested Mr. Lofton,” he stammered between breaths. “He said you think he burned his house down.”

“I don't think that Jacob. Neither does Jesse. Charlie isn't under arrest. He needed a place to sleep last night, so he stayed at the police station. As a guest, not a prisoner.”

“He didn't do anything wrong, did he, Miss Nell?” Emily asked.

“No, he didn't.”

“Why can't he just put on his uniform and bust out of jail?” Jacob asked, then mimicked a superhero pose.

“It's not that simple.”

“My mom said he can't come to school and teach us,” Emily said. The worry in her voice was heartbreaking. “But we want him there. We have to do something so he comes back to school. What can we do?”

“I don't know,” I admitted. “I wish I did.”

“Can't we give him our quilt blocks?” she suggested. “He said they were really good. Doesn't he need them more than Morristown?”

“I don't think . . .” I stopped. “Maybe,” I said. “Maybe that's a really good idea. Ask your parents if it's okay to come by here tomorrow after school. I have a project I want you to work on with me.”

“Will it help Mr. Lofton?” Emily asked.

“I hope so.” It was a start anyway.

* * *

When Eleanor finally emerged from her office, she was bursting with ideas, but I had one of my own. Not that she'd let me get a word in.

“Everything's changed,” she said. “Everything. The party is still at the library and the raffle is still to raise funds for Morristown, but that's it. The bake sale, the craft fair, and the silent auction are all to raise money for Charlie. Help him get back on his feet. The whole committee backs me up on this.”

I found myself on the verge of tears. Unlike the rest of town, Eleanor hadn't worried about Charlie's guilt or innocence. She focused only on the fact that he needed help. I hugged her tightly. “That's wonderful. And I have a way to give him back a family memento as a Christmas gift.” I brought her back to the classroom and showed her the box of fabric squares. “If we made the quilt his grandmother intended to make . . .”

Eleanor stroked the squares of muslin. “This will take weeks, maybe months . . .”

“If we have help . . .”

She grabbed a square of the folded muslin and a piece of bright fabric. “We'll start right now.”

The rest of the afternoon and into the evening, Eleanor and I sewed cathedral windows blocks. The other members of the quilt group came by and sewed. As word got out, friends from the church and the school came by. Shop hoppers were offered a twenty percent discount on fabric if they sewed a block. Most sat and took their turn at the needle, but when they found out why we were making the quilt, they went without their discount and asked that the money be given to Charlie instead.

I ordered pizzas to keep the sewers from getting too hungry. Dennis at Archers Pizza sent them free of charge as his way to help, but when I opened the shop's door to the pizza delivery man, Bill Davis was standing behind him.

“I heard what you're doing for Lofton. Some kind of quilting bee.” He grunted.

“No. Not technically,” I said, making my voice unnaturally cheerful to contradict his. “But if you want to join us, we can use the help. All skill levels welcome.”

“He deserves to be fired and put in jail. He's a danger to the whole town and you're making him a stupid quilt.”

“It's not a stupid quilt, and he's not a danger to anyone.” I took the pizzas from the delivery man, who seemed anxious to get as far away from our conversation as he could. And frankly, so was I. “Mr. Davis, I understand Charlie suggested one of your players drop out of the team to focus on his studies, but that's hardly a reason to try to ruin him.”

“Ruin him? And over something like baseball?” Bill seemed more puzzled than annoyed now. “I don't want him in town. That's all. And I would think if any of your quilt friends”—he spit the words out—“had common sense, they'd feel the same.” With that, he turned and walked away from the shop, leaving me holding the pizzas and, to the best of my ability, my temper.

Behind me I could hear the men and women who had been sewing blocks react to the insult. I wished it had made them rush to believe in Charlie's innocence, but it hadn't. It only made them move convinced he needed help.

* * *

By the time we shut the door at nine o'clock, fifty-six of the more than four hundred blocks had been sewn. Some were done expertly, some not, but each was sewn with a good heart and a desire to help.

“We need to start sewing the blocks together if we're going to have this ready for Charlie's party on Christmas Eve,” Eleanor said.

“Do you think it's possible?”

“The good thing is that it doesn't need quilting, so once we sew the blocks it's done.” She stood up and stretched. “I'm so tired I could sleep on the couch in my office.”

“That's a really good idea.” As the words came out of my mouth, I could already see that Eleanor had read my mind.

“Call Jesse, and hide the blocks. We don't want Charlie knowing what we're doing,” she told me. “I'll get some sheets and a pillow from the house and bring them back.”

I was in her office and dialing the police station in minutes. When Jesse answered, I was so excited by all the events of the day and by Eleanor's offer to let Charlie stay at the shop that I said everything in one long sentence. He couldn't argue with letting Charlie stay here. Even if Charlie was a serial arsonist, the only thing in danger was the fabric, and if Eleanor wasn't worried, it shouldn't bother Jesse.

“You and Eleanor are very sweet, and I know Charlie will appreciate everything you're doing for him,” Jesse said when I finished.

“Tell him that the couch is comfortable, and it's private. Even when the shop is open he can close the door and be alone. Of course, he'd be even more comfortable at the house, but . . .”

“Nell. We got some reports back on the fire.” Jesse sounded calm but sad. “Charlie had made inquiries about the insurance on the house just a few days before it went up in flames.”

“He said he was thinking of selling, maybe he just wanted to know what the policy was so he could tell a real estate—”

Jesse cut me off. “And his lighter was found in the pile of burned debris near the origin of the fire.”

“He could have lost it. He told me he didn't have it when he went for his walk.”

“He's now saying he thinks he left it at school and has no idea how it ended up in the backyard,” Jesse said. “Look, he's officially under arrest now. I know you're going to be mad at me . . .”

“I'm not mad. You're just doing your job. But you're wrong.”

“Help prove me wrong, Nell. Help me come up with a better suspect than Charlie. But in the meantime, I have to go where the evidence points me.”

I hung up deflated. It wasn't so much that people would think Charlie was guilty; sadly, they already thought that. It was the motive—insurance money—that would put a chill on our efforts to help him, especially with people like Bill Davis determined to ruin Charlie's reputation. Getting him out of jail in time to be at the fund-raiser was going to be difficult enough; getting people interested in being there for someone suspected of insurance fraud was going to be much, much harder.

Chapter 9

The next morning I took Jesse up on his challenge. There was no better place to start than the school. I got there just as the bell was ringing. I saw Jacob, Emily, and the rest of the third graders heading into class taught by Richard Bell, the assistant principal.

“I thought you were done with the quilt project in school,” Mr. Bell said.

“I am. I'm just here to help Charlie.” No point in lying.

Mr. Bell shook his head. “I don't get it. Burning his house for the insurance money, and he seemed like such a nice guy.”

“He is a nice guy.”

“Oh, I know, I just mean . . . My kid brother played on his team in high school. Best pitcher we ever had. Not good enough for the pros, but for Archers Rest, wow!” Mr. Bell smiled at the memory. “I'll tell you, we had big plans for him at the school.”

“What kind of big plans?”

“Doesn't matter now, does it? But I heard that you're trying to help him, and I think that's great. Anything I can do. I mean, innocent until proven guilty and all that.”

I wished it were that simple. Mr. Bell went into the classroom to teach what should have been Charlie's class. There weren't a lot of options for substitute teachers in Archers Rest, or jobs for out-of-work ones.

It brought up an interesting question. What was Mrs. Davis going to do when the kindergartners moved over to Morristown? When the third grade teacher left, maybe Julie Davis saw the job as hers by right, and Charlie had put a roadblock in her plans.

I waited in the hallway, strung with “lights” made from construction paper. Each bulb had a small photo of a kid with a wish for the holidays. A construction paper menorah and a map of Africa, decorated in red, black, and green for Kwanzaa, also had photos and wishes. Everywhere I looked there were wishes for Mr. Lofton to return to school, which made me smile.

I followed the decorations, all cheerful and full of hope, down to the kindergarten classroom. I watched through the window in her door as Mrs. Davis read to her class, played a few games with them, and then let them take a nap on blankets stretched out on the floor by the large stuffed animals that littered the room. When the kids looked settled and quiet, I knocked lightly. Julie Davis came to the door, opened it slightly, and looked at me with a sort of startled, annoyed expression. Then she let herself into the hallway and closed the door behind her.

“You're Nell,” she said. “From Eleanor's shop.”

“I'm Eleanor's granddaughter.”

“If Eleanor's sent you over here about the other day . . .”

“She wanted me to see if you were okay.”

“I'm fine.”

I had no clue where to go from there. But not knowing what I was doing hadn't ever stopped me from pushing ahead—as a quilter, an art student, or an amateur sleuth. “Obviously she's concerned that it will happen again.”

Mrs. Davis blushed. “Is she going to say anything? She promised me she wouldn't.”

“No, of course not. Jesse knows about the other time . . .” The file on his desk, the one labeled “Davis,” must have had something to do with Mrs. Davis. Or at least it could, and I had to see how far I could take this.

“I gave that back. The woman at the coffee shop dropped the charges. And I gave back the thread. Eleanor said it wasn't criminal, and my husband, he talked to Jesse and he said no one would know.” Tears filled her eyes. “You have no idea. I've given everything to these students. The budget is so small, and every year it gets smaller. I've put my own money into the decorations, the toys . . . and none of it matters.” She was crying now. “I'm just trying to even things out.”

She was a shoplifter. A shoplifter who was going to be out of work. Could she have stolen Charlie's lighter? I felt like running to the jail to tell Jesse. But he had that file. He already knew, he already thought of it and dismissed the idea. Besides, I had to have more than an idea. I had to have proof.

“I'm not really here about that,” I admitted. “I'm here about Charlie.”

“That again. It's all cleared up and forgotten.” She dried her tears and sighed deeply, part relief, part exhaustion. She opened the door to her classroom a bit, and I feared she'd head inside before I had a chance to ask her any more questions. I decided to change the topic and, if possible, circle back to it when she relaxed a little. Instead I explained that the Christmas Eve committee planned to divert some of the fund-raiser's money to helping Charlie get back on his feet. I even told her about the cathedral windows quilt.

“We want him to stay in town,” I said. “And I'm doing everything I can to make sure that happens.”

I waited for her reaction, but she just stood there. “Whatever I can do to help. I mean, Bill and I will go to the fund-raiser. We were planning to anyway. We'll bring something.” She shifted her legs and glanced back through the window at her sleeping students.

“Bill seemed pretty upset about the idea yesterday,” I said.

“He's calmed down.”

“Is he concerned that Mr. Bell will make Charlie the baseball coach?” It was just a guess, but a good one, I thought.

“That's ridiculous. My husband and I are both good teachers. We've put our lives into these students. Charlie's barely been teaching for four months. And obviously he has serious issues, mental issues. Thank heavens that's come to light.”

“Or someone wants the town to believe that.”

Mrs. Davis did her best to sneer at me, but it didn't work. Her hands were shaking. “The kids are getting restless,” she said, and slipped back into her classroom.

I looked through the window and saw a class that was still napping. Julie Davis was the only one who looked restless to me.