Crewel Yule (9 page)

“Thanks,” she said, taking one and wiping her eyes. She took a second and blew her nose. They were the good, thick kind of napkins, soft as tissue.

“Can I get you anything else? A glass of water? There’s someone in the bar, maybe I can get you a brandy.”

She found herself smiling at him, even though her forehead was pinched by her eyebrows hiked upward and together. He had nice, old-fashioned manners, offering the two treatments old-fashioned men thought good for shock or loss.

To her surprise, she found the idea of a drink attractive. “Could you?” she asked him. “Brandy?”

“Certainly.” He went away again.

She kept wiping and blowing, there seemed no end to it. She wondered who the man was. Maybe he was gay; gay men often had nice manners. He was back in two minutes with a little snifter of brown liquid. The taste was harsh, and it was very warm in her stomach. Amazingly, it almost immediately stopped the tears.

“Thank you,” she said, dabbing at her nose.

“Do you want to go over there and talk to someone?”

“No.” She was very sure about that.

“They may be wondering who she is,” he said, but not unkindly, and he sat down.

A small detail of the body appeared in Cherry’s mind. “She’s wearing her name tag, they can get her name off that,” she said. She put the glass down on the table with a too-hard clink. “Does that sound heartless?”

“Well . . .” He studied her for a moment. “More cowardly, I guess.”

A sound almost like a laugh came out of her, surprising and frightening her. “I’m not a coward!” she declared. “But they’ll make me look at her, and while I wasn’t too fond of her lately, I don’t want to do that. There’s no way I could do that, I’d start screaming or throw up. Or both.”

“I understand,” he said. “I’m Godwin DuLac, by the way. From Excelsior, Minnesota.”

“Cherry Pye,” she said, “from Milwaukee, Wisconsin.” She waited for the little look she always got when giving her name, but it didn’t come. Probably already read it off my own tag, she thought.

“Can I ask you something?” he said.

She nodded, poised to explain her father’s weird sense of humor.

“Was Belle upset about something? Or sad?”

Taken aback, she blinked, then said, “I don’t think so. I mean, she didn’t say anything to me. Why? Oh. . .” He was thinking Belle’s death was a suicide. She took the rest of the brandy in a single small mouthful while she thought. “Well, she has been making more mistakes than usual.”

“What kind of mistakes?”

“Ordering things and then sending them back. Forgetting to order things. Forgetting when it’s her night to close up or her morning to open. She’s always been a scatterbrain, but she’s been worse lately. As if something’s been on her mind. But she didn’t act depressed, she just laughed it off like usual.” Cherry thought some more. “I don’t know, I’ve been so tied up with my own problems lately . . .” She hadn’t meant to say that, she bit her lips and reached for the brandy, but the glass was empty.

“Do you want some more?” Godwin asked.

“No. No, thank you. That was nice of you, to think of it. It really helped.” She looked over her shoulder. The crowd was noisy; everyone giving orders. “Will you stay with me for a little while? Just until I get the nerve to go over there?” Because she really had to go over there.

“Of course,” he said.

Nine

Lenore sat quietly on the small couch in Bewitching Stitches’ suite. She wore a long, deep-green, matte-silk skirt and a wine-colored blouse with bell sleeves. Her curly dark hair was in a loose arrangement on top of her head with tendrils that showed off her slender neck and delicate ears, and would have made her look sweet and vulnerable if she weren’t already looking sullen and angry.

On a low, square table in front of her was the model of her Christmas tree sampler. There were two things right about it: the dark green Cashel linen it was made of—the same shade of green as her skirt—and the perfect, balanced placement of the various stitches. Everything else was wrong; most prominently, the dejected way it slumped on its base. But the roughened areas of the linen where stitches had been pulled out didn’t help, and the hasty, almost clumsy way the eight parts had been sewn together was painfully evident.
Awful,
she thought,
how I can make a dozen perfect French knots in a row but can’t piece a pattern?
No wonder people glanced at it, then went on by.

It did not occur to Lenore that it was still early in the buying period, or that customers saw the unhappy scowl on her face and kept on going.

“Here’s the coffee you wanted, Lenore,” said Vinny Moore, President of Bewitching Stitches, putting a Styrofoam cup of foamy café latté down in front of her. “And here, have a pastry, it will cheer you up,” he added, holding out a paper plate with three fruit-filled selections.

Too deep in misery to get the hint, she shook her head and Mr. Moore retired to the other side of the room.

Lenore contemplated the stack of patterns gloomily. It was going on ten o’clock, and there had been a steady stream of customers through the suite. There had been a few sales, but not enough to lower the stack noticeably. Certainly not enough to qualify her pattern as a hit.

Lenore felt part of the problem was bad placement. She should be seated next to the check-out table, where people had to stand and wait while their orders were rung up. There, having nothing else to do, they’d take a closer look at the model. Then they would, perhaps, see past the snagged fabric and inadequate finishing to the clever design.

Or maybe it wouldn’t help. Mr. Moore should know his business; maybe he looked at her model and just plumped her down here to sink or swim.

Lenore needed a big success here at the Market. The pattern deserved it, and good sales would mean they’d buy her next pattern, too. Her husband Cody stayed on as credit manager at Harley-Davidson because the pay was good and they offered great benefits, but the work was not challenging and he often talked of starting his own accounting firm. Now that Mike and Alyssa were both in school, her husband—not unjustifiably—wanted her to share the burden and find a full-time job. But if this new pattern led to regular work as a designer for Bewitching Stitches, her income could easily go higher than what she could earn as a full-time cashier at Pik n’ Save.

Maybe she should have canceled her appearance in Nashville, and just taken a chance with Bewitching Stitches’ catalog presentation. No, making a personal appearance—Meet The Designer!—was important, despite the cost of travel.

Well, then, maybe she should have left the crappy model at home. No, the pattern was complex and difficult, and it needed a model. A photograph or drawing wouldn’t do. But this model . . . It was tooth-grindingly awful to have to put this thing on display. Oh, there had been a few customers who could see past the flaws, but most were just coming in long enough to buy patterns by known designers, and would only have paused if something brilliant caught their eye. Something like the properly finished model Belle had promised Lenore.

There ought to be a special place in hell for people who deliberately smash the dreams of others,
thought Lenore savagely.
And Belle can’t get there any too soon.

Another customer came in, glanced very briefly at Lenore and her model, then turned away. It was a rejection so clear Lenore nearly cried out in protest. But she stuffed it down, though the effort deepened her scowl.

Then her anger flared up even brighter at the injustice of it all. Wouldn’t it be great to go find Belle? Lenore had seen her at breakfast, filling a plate with scrambled eggs in the buffet line, laughing and talking just as if she were not some kind of weird monster. Cherry wasn’t with her. Lenore thought about that. Was the partnership in trouble? There was certainly some tension between Belle and Cherry. Lenore recalled the sudden silence that fell when she came in a week ago, and, once before that, Cherry turning away too late to hide her angry face.
Probably Belle’s fault. No, undoubtedly Belle’s fault! The witch.

And here was Belle in Nashville, in easy reach. All by herself, Cherry wasn’t with her.

But how to get away? Lenore, overwhelmed by a desire to escape, reached hastily for the Styrofoam cup of coffee on the little table. Her grip was awkward as she lifted it. She tried to rearrange her grasp without putting it down and managed to flip it into her lap.

She jumped to her feet with a hiss, sending the cup bounding across the room and flipping brown liquid from her skirt all over the table. The patterns were in plastic bags—except the top one, which was for customers to peruse. And the model. The pattern was spattered—but the model was drenched.

Lenore gave a wordless yell and ran from the suite.

Eve Suttle’s employer said, in her charming Georgia accent, “You all are better at samplers than I am; how about you buy them? Here’s your copy of my credit card. Please,
please
try not to spend more than two hundred on sampler patterns.”

“Yes, ma’am, Mrs. Entwhistle.” Eve had grown up in Savannah, but had long ago lost her accent, if not her manners. She wasn’t sure how to go about regaining it, or if she should. Would it be reclaiming her roots or mocking them to deliberately slow her words?

She wasn’t going to have any problem limiting her purchases. Belle was here, Eve knew because she had asked at the front desk last night and when the woman said yes, Eve had left a note telling Belle when and where to meet her.

That meeting time was now in less than an hour; Eve was anxious to be on her way so she could do enough shopping to satisfy Mrs. Entwhistle and still make the meeting. She had not, of course, told anyone about it. She took the card and stowed it in an inner pocket of her purse, then checked her watch.

“There’s someone here with a sampler shaped like a Christmas tree, see if you can find it,” Mrs. Entwhistle said.

“Okay.” It was ten after nine.

“Eve.”

“Okay.”

“Eve!”

“What?” Had she missed something? Eve was anxious not to give away any hint that she was less than focused on buying product for Silver Threads. “I’m sorry, I think I’m not awake yet.”

“See if you can find that sampler shaped like a Christmas tree. I can’t remember who is sponsoring her.”

“Oh, that. I know the designer; she’s Lenore King from Milwaukee. She used to come into that store I worked at up there, to show the owner parts of her design. What I saw of it looked really great, but I never saw the whole pattern. I’ll look for her, and if her model’s good, I’ll be sure to buy a couple of patterns.”

“If it’s really good, buy half a dozen. All right, we’re set. See you at lunch.”

It was nearly time for the meeting when Eve passed through the Bewitching Stitches suite. Lenore King wasn’t there, and her model looked as if someone had spilled something on it, cocoa or coffee. How awful, because Belle charged the earth for finishing. But wait, this model had problems besides the stains. This couldn’t have been properly finished! How could Lenore put this out where people could see it? Sales of the piece must be suffering because the model looked so bad.

Eve stooped for a closer look. Actually, it was a really clever design—and they were coffee stains, she could smell it. She knew several people who would love to stitch something as beautiful—and difficult—as this, including herself.

She straightened. “Is this Lenore King’s design?” she asked.

A man behind a little table said, “Yes. And that’s only her working model. The real model wasn’t ready on time for the Market, I guess because we got moved up two months.”

Eve knew Lenore had been stitching a showcase model of this pattern months ago; there had been plenty of time to get it finished by mid-December. So it wasn’t hard to guess whose fault it was that the real model wasn’t here.

Eve hid her anger at this further evidence of perfidy and looked around. “Where’s Lenore?” she asked.

“She went to change her skirt. She upended a whole cup of coffee on herself,” said the man, who was short and sporting a curly dark beard. “Do you know her?”

“I used to, back when I lived in Milwaukee. She was always coming up with nice sampler patterns, but this was her masterpiece. I remember how hard she was working on it. And if you give it a good look, you can see that it turned out
really beautiful!
” Eve said that last sentence nice and loud so other customers could hear her, and added, just as loudly, “I want six patterns of this beautiful Christmas tree sampler, please!”

She quickly chose a few other patterns so long as she was there, then hurried off to her ten o’clock appointment with Belle.

Lenore was crying in fury and frustration as she shoved her door card into the lock on the ninth floor. She stripped off her beautiful silk skirt and panty hose in the bathroom and wiped her bare legs with a washcloth soaked in cold water. The skin was only a little red and there were no blisters, but her hands trembled with aftershock.