The Devil's Puzzle (22 page)

“What was that about?” Carrie asked me.

“Nothing. What do you want to tell me?”

“Natalie called over here looking for you. I think it’s about Eleanor. Have you seen her lately?”

“Not since yesterday. Her bedroom door was closed when I got home last night and still was closed when I got up this morning. And I just had the oddest conversation with Oliver. I really have to talk to her.”

“She’s at the shop now. I saw her go in.” Carrie poured me a cup of strong black coffee in a to-go cup. “You need to go across the street and talk to her. And then come back and tell me everything she says.”

CHAPTER 34

I
rushed into Someday Quilts to find Natalie, her mother Susanne, and Maggie in a huddle.

“Where’s Eleanor?” I asked.

“Her office,” Natalie told me. “But don’t go in there. She said she’ll be out in a minute.”

“What’s going on?”

“No idea. But she asked where you were.”

“I’m here. I’ll go tell her,” I said.

Maggie grabbed my arm. “She said to wait.”

“Is something wrong?”

Susanne walked over and patted my shoulder. “I’m sure everything’s fine, Nell. Just give Eleanor a minute to compose herself and she’ll come out and tell us what this is all about.”

“Maggie,” I said as I looked toward her. “Do you know what’s going on?”

“No. Eleanor called me this morning and asked if I would come to the shop.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know.”

“Do you think Oliver asked her to marry him?” Natalie asked.

“That’s the only thing that would make sense.”

As she spoke, Bernie walked in. Aside from Carrie, this was the entire quilt group.

“If Oliver asked her,” Bernie said, “she must have said yes. Otherwise she wouldn’t have gathered us all together.”

“That’s true,” Susanne agreed. “You don’t get your friends together to say you’ve turned down a man’s proposal.”

“Unless she found out we all knew and didn’t tell her,” Natalie said. “Do you think she’d be mad?”

I didn’t want to tell them that an engagement was very unlikely. Instead, we all stood watching Eleanor’s office door for what seemed like an eternity. There was no sign of movement from inside. I almost knocked on the door, but Maggie stopped me. “She’ll come out when she’s ready.”

“Do we still have our quilt meeting tomorrow?” Bernie asked.

“I can’t believe tomorrow is Friday,” I said. “So much has happened.”

“Like those teenagers in the cemetery,” Susanne said.

I turned to her. “Are you talking about Archer’s headstone? Why do you say it was teenagers?”

“That’s what the mayor said. I ran into him coming out of the police station.”

That didn’t make sense to me. The paint was still wet. If it had been a group of teenagers, I would have heard them or seen them. All I saw was a figure running into the cemetery. And whoever was driving Glad’s car.

After five more minutes had passed, I lost my patience. No matter what anyone said, I was going to open Eleanor’s office door and demand to know what had happened. Just as I moved toward it, though, Eleanor emerged. Smiling.

“Nell, I was about to give up on ever seeing you again. What time did you get home last night?” she asked.

“Just after two. What’s going on?”

“Nothing. Nothing bad, anyway.”

“Does this have to do with Oliver?”

“A little,” she said. “Natalie, will you do me a favor? Lock the door and put out the CLOSED sign. I want us to have a minute to ourselves.”

We all waited as Natalie did as she was asked, then turned back to Eleanor.

“Oliver and I had a nice long talk last night,” Eleanor said. “He wanted to ask me something and he was actually quite nervous. He thought I would be against the idea. Sweet, really.”

While I stood with my heart in my throat, the others smiled, ready to spring into a group hug and act surprised if she told us that she and Oliver were engaged.

“Oliver must go to Paris for an art exhibit. Some of his work will be shown there. And he’s asked me to come with.”

“Is that it?” Bernie asked. “That’s the news?”

Eleanor’s face fell. “What’s wrong?” she snapped. “I haven’t taken a vacation in years.”

“That’s not what she means,” I said.

Eleanor blushed. “Do you think I’m foolish to go? You and Natalie can mind the store, can’t you?”

“Of course,” I said. “It’s wonderful news.”

“We’re just jealous,” Maggie said. “A trip to Paris. All that wonderful food and the beautiful sights. I haven’t been to Paris since the early sixties, but I remember it fondly. It was my favorite city.”

“I’ve never been there,” Natalie laughed, “and it’s my favorite city. How romantic!”

Bernie came forward and hugged Eleanor. “When are you leaving?” “July 5th. I’ll be around for Nell’s birthday cake and the quilt show. Can’t miss that.”

I laughed. “No, of course not. You wouldn’t want to miss me tearing my hair out and possibly killing Glad Warren.”

She relaxed. “You don’t think I’m crazy to go?”

“I think you’d be crazy not to,” I told her.

For about an hour we celebrated the way only quilters can, with everyone giving Eleanor a list of fabric shops in Paris along with requests for beautiful Provençal fabrics in saturated yellows, blues, and reds. Eventually, though, everyone left, and Eleanor and I found ourselves alone in the shop.

“This is coming along nicely,” she said, pointing toward my devil’s puzzle quilt blocks still displayed on the design board.

I studied it for a moment. “It’s not bad. I didn’t know if I liked the colors at first, but it’s coming together.”

“These fabrics are a tie to our quilting past,” she said. “There might have been a woman more than a hundred years ago who made this pattern in these colors.”

“I think that’s the one thing that’s tolerable about doing this show, and putting up with Glad. It will be nice to see all the centuries of quilts represented. To see how it’s evolved and yet, somehow, kept its traditions,” I said. “I think it will surprise people to see how many beautiful quilts there are from so many generations of women. Assuming everyone turns in the quilts they’ve promised.”

“Speaking of which, I’ve chosen a couple of my quilts to show. One is from the seventies. It has appliquéd brown owls on orange backgrounds. It’s hideous, but it’s authentic. And I have one I’ve been working on. It’s blocks of solid colors, in greens and blues. All the quilt magazines keep talking about the new modern movement in quilting—lots of geometrics, simple lines, bold colors. I thought I’d give it a try.”

“Sounds perfect.”

“And if it’s okay with the chairwoman of the quilt show,” she said as she smiled at me, “I’d like to add in a couple of Grace’s quilts. They’re from the thirties, both appliquéd quilts. One is butterflies and the other has flowers.”

“Are you talking about the ones you keep in the living room at the house?”

“Those are the ones.”

“I’d be thrilled to display them. And I promise to take very good care of them.”

I took a deep breath. Maybe this wasn’t the time to tell her, but it was an opening. I wanted her to hear it from me before she heard it elsewhere. And I had a feeling that Molly was going to track her down with a load of questions about some long-ago conversation the mayor had overheard.

“Can I ask you a strange question?”

“You frequently do, Nell.”

“Where were you in July of 1975?”

“Is this about the skeleton?”

“I’m not sure. Not yet,” I said. “But it might be.”

“Nova Scotia, with Grace and the children,” she said. “We went every summer, and that summer was the last time we went.”

“What do you remember about it?”

“It was very hot, I remember that,” she said. “Grace’s health was fragile. She couldn’t take the heat in Archers Rest, so it was decided to bring her up north, where it was a bit cooler. We stayed in the home of some friends of hers. She was able to sit on the beach and look out at the ocean. We had long talks while the kids played in the water. It was a lovely time.”

“How long were you gone?”

“The whole month of July. We left the first of July and came back August 2nd.”

“You remember those exact dates?”

“Grace died exactly a week later. It may have been too much for her, poor thing. I’ve always wondered about that, but she wanted to go. And when someone is nearing the end of their life, how can you deny them what they want?” Eleanor looked at me. “What have you found out?”

“I think I have some news.”

“About Grace?”

“About her son, Winston.”

Eleanor’s eyes flickered, but she stood calmly looking at me. “What about him?”

I knew I was breaking my promise to Jesse, but it was better this news came from me than from Molly. “He may be the one.”

“The one what?”

“The . . . the person we found in your rose garden.”

Eleanor swallowed hard. “Oh.” And with that she left the room.

CHAPTER 35

J
ust as I was about to go after her, I heard shouting coming from the street. I ran outside just in time to see an unmanned squad car roll into a fire hydrant, causing the hydrant to gush water all over the street.

Jesse and several officers were on the scene in moments. A few members of the volunteer fire department, Ed and the mayor among them, soon joined in and brought the fire hydrant under control.

Jesse’s eyes met mine. “This is crazy,” he said. “Someone purposefully put that car in neutral and headed it in the direction of the fire hydrant.”

“Is anyone hurt?” I called back.

“No, but it’s going to take all day to clear this up.” He could have been frazzled. After everything that had been happening in town he certainly had a right to be, but Jesse seemed calm and in charge. Off to the side a dozen or so people watched the action with a combination of amusement and concern. Carrie and many of her customers came out of Jitters. I walked over to Carrie, but Molly intercepted me.

“You wouldn’t think a town like this would be so dangerous, but my great-uncle gets murdered, and now all these acts of vandalism . . .”

“There was a thirty-five-year gap between those events.”

“I guess. But it makes you wonder if any of us are safe.”

I wanted to say something snarky, something about going back to crime-free Boston and leaving Jesse, and me, to figure out what had happened to Winston, but she was just a college freshman looking for answers to a family mystery, and I knew I was overreacting.

“It’s really a nice town,” I said instead, softening my voice to a friendly tone. “You’ve just caught us at a bad time.” It was the best explanation I could come up with for why peaceful Archers Rest had suddenly turned into a vandal’s paradise.

“I don’t know about that,” Molly said. “I got an overnight package from my grandmother with some of Winston’s papers. I was supposed to deliver it to Jesse, but I started looking at it, and there’s some interesting stuff in there.”

“Like?”

Molly looked around at the people on the street and leaned in close. “Can we go inside Jitters?” Molly asked.

We moved past the crowd and into the coffee shop. I pointed toward a small table in the back and we sat there. I could see Carrie staring at us, so I asked for coffee.

“I’ll bring it to the table,” she called back. I knew she was more interested in joining the conversation than bringing coffee, which is why I agreed.

“So what did his papers tell you?”

Molly reached into her computer bag and pulled out a large envelope, from which she began to pull smaller envelopes. The small ones were old with beautiful handwriting on them, and they were addressed to Elizabeth.

“These are letters Winston wrote to his sister,” Molly said. “He seemed pretty upset about something.”