4 Plagued by Quilt Page 13

  “As long as they’re ready to break for lunch and Wes’ presentation, I don’t see why that should be a problem.”

  “Thanks. Phillip didn’t tell me where the key for the storage room is, though.” I felt entirely honest saying that, and must have sounded it, too. I should remember to thank Clod.

  “There’s a key box on the wall behind the door in his office.”

  “And I won’t need a key for the box?”

  “No.”

  Wes looked bored with our housekeeping details. That shouldn’t have bothered me; I didn’t know the man and didn’t need to care about what he thought. But I’d known men like him. Administrative types who couldn’t be bothered to take, or at least fake, an interest in what the women standing with them were talking about. If Wes had looked contemplative or preoccupied, I might have given him a pass. He’d ignored me the other day, when he and Nadine came to see the bones, though, and now he looked on the verge of rolling his eyes, and that was too much. I wanted to wake him up, and it was tempting to tip him over the eye-rolling edge by asking him something to do with fibers or textiles or some other “woman’s” subject. Instead I asked him what he planned to talk about over lunch during his presentation for the students. My ploy might have worked, too, but Nadine answered first.

  “Wes has graciously come to the rescue by stepping up to the plate and stepping in for Phillip.”

  That didn’t tell me what he was going to talk about, but it did tell me he was a verifiable home-run king and superhero all rolled into one. Or maybe that was too sarcastic. Maybe it just told me that there were interesting dynamics between Nadine and Wes. Suspicious dynamics? Who knew?

  I’d left the students for longer than I meant to, and turned to go, and then I remembered what else I wanted to ask.

  “One more question, Nadine. When you talked to the volunteers last night, you didn’t tell any of them we didn’t need them, did you?”

  “Why would I do that? Is there a problem?” she demanded.

  I waved her concerns away. “No, one of them said she’d heard something, and I said I’d ask. You know how these things go.” Interesting. But if Nadine hadn’t told the volunteers we didn’t need them, who had and used her name? Or was Nadine as good a liar as Fredda? I’d watched her face and listened for tightening in her voice, and hadn’t detected either. But maybe I wasn’t so attuned to those clues as Clod was.

  I dashed back to the education room, hoping to find a dozen teenagers bent industriously over their stitching. They weren’t. They’d abandoned their needles and floss and were gathered around a table, transfixed by whatever they were looking at. All of them except Zach. He sat in his own world of tiny white bones that he’d chain-stitched on a scrap of black velvet. At first, I didn’t see what held the other students so engrossed, but it didn’t take more than a few breaths before the clues smacked me upside my nose. Then the students shifted, and there were Shirley and Mercy, hovering on the other side of the table. And there was the Plague Quilt, its deep colors and rich embroidery shimmering the way the surface of water does when it’s far, far down in a well.

  Barging in and wresting the class away from the Spiveys was an option. In another situation, saving teenagers—or any innocent bystanders—from the twins’ clutches might be the only option worth considering. Not this time, though. I crept in, on stealthy Kath feet, giving Zach a thumbs-up for creativity in embroidery on my way past. He was still cool, though, and didn’t acknowledge my thumb.

  The Plague Quilt drew me, and at the same time it worried me. What would happen if I touched it?

  One of the students—Barb?—saw me and waved me forward.

  “Look,” she said, “it’s got autographs.”

  In the one quick look the twins had allowed me the other day, I hadn’t noticed signatures on the Plague Quilt. I’d been too caught up in the colors.

  “They aren’t signatures,” Zach corrected.

  “They’re names,” said Barb. “Same difference.”

  “Big difference,” Zach said. “They’re all in the same handwriting, so they aren’t real autographs.”

  Barb made a face at Zach. He was more invested in his embroidered bones and didn’t notice. I noticed the twins starting to refold the quilt.

  “Wait,” I said, practically leaping forward.

  They folded faster, sliding the quilt back into its muslin bag and setting the bag on the table behind them, all in an annoying Spivey twinkling. And then they bossed the students back into their seats, clapping their hands and chivying them along by telling them time was wasting and quilts weren’t made in a day. Oddly enough, their efforts were effective—the students complied without complaint.

  But while they were being officious and efficient, the twins kept darting glances at me. If I moved to the left, one of them mirrored that movement. Through some secret Spivey sense, they tracked me and one of them faced me at all times. It was as though they didn’t know what to expect from me. As though I might suddenly . . . what? Pounce on them? Grab the quilt and run?

  They were in good company; I didn’t know what to expect from me, either. I had questions for them, but I was wary, too—wary of upsetting them so that they’d take the quilt away and I’d never see it again, and wary of the quilt. Was there a connection between it and the twins’ skirts, beyond the velvet coming from Rebecca? Did that matter? But I had two bigger questions. First, if Nadine hadn’t told the twins we didn’t need volunteers, then where had they disappeared to? And second, why was it called the Plague Quilt? The answer to the first question might be simple. They’d gone out to the car to get the quilt. But why had it taken so long? What had they been up to? “Up to” as opposed to “doing”—of that I was sure. I decided to treat the twins the way I did Geneva when she was skittish—act as though everything was going as planned. Go for the smooth. Nadine might not have known what that meant, but I was sure Zach would. Going for the smooth with the twins might be the only way to learn more about the quilt.

  They were showing the students how to arrange various sizes and shapes of cotton scraps on squares of muslin for backing, looking at colors and patterns. The students were attentive and enjoying themselves, all of which put me in a quandary. Did I let the twins continue, or did I interrupt and take the students on the spurious tour of the storage area? Or . . . did I let the twins do their thing while I went on a solo reconnaissance tour of the storage and archives? I approached Shirley slowly, calmly, smoothly. I knew it was Shirley because I could breathe easily.

  “I’m really glad to see the two of you, Shirley.” I meant that, which surprised me. I felt bad about being surprised, but at least I was honest about it. Honest enough to know this happy-to-see-the-twins interlude probably wouldn’t last and I should take advantage of it. I checked the clock. “You and Mercy are doing a great job.”

  “It’s our passion,” Shirley said.

  “It shows.” She didn’t seem surprised either by my compliment or by my saying I was glad to see them. But maybe that was the way they got through life—and why not? If living in an oblivious, happy bubble really worked for them, more power to them. “The kids are supposed to break for lunch and a presentation from Wes Treadwell in half an hour.”

  Shirley made a choking noise.

  “Are you okay?” I asked.

  “She’s fine,” Mercy said. “Knee-jerk reaction. Skip back to the part about us doing a great job and leave Less-and-less Treadwell out of it.”

  “You know him?”

  “We’d rather not.”

  “Oh. Well—”

  “And we’d rather not talk about him.”

  “Okay. So, not talking about Wes Treadwell, are you two happy in here until lunch? Because if you don’t need me, I thought I’d go into the storage area and scope out what to show the students.”

  “You mean snoop,” said Mercy.


  “Don’t worry,” Shirley said. “We’ll cover for you.”

  Chapter 15

  The only wrinkle in my scheme, other than the Spiveys’ seeing right through it, was noticing that Zach was gone. So were his embroidered bones. Phillip hadn’t covered wandering students in our volunteer orientation. Nadine was aware he’d been helping Jerry, though, and she hadn’t insisted that he stay with the rest of the group, so maybe I didn’t need to worry. Unless I needed to worry about law-breaking. Doggone Clod for putting that in my head. And doggone Zach for disappearing.

  As I went down the hall, Zach came out of the restroom. I felt like a jerk.

  “Are you through embroidering for the day?” I asked.

  “Are you abandoning the class to the old lady twins for the day?”

  I looked left and right, but didn’t see anyone else. “The Spiveys are experts in the actual art of quilting. I’m not. I’m taking this opportunity to look around the storage area and the archives.”

  Zach seemed to think that was an invitation to join me. Maybe it was. He was a student, after all, and my cover story was showing the storage and archives to students. Way to take advantage of minors, Kath.

  “How old are you?”

  “Seventeen.”

  “Sounds right. I need to stop in here.”

  Phillip’s office door was open, with no deputies in sight. The copier lid was open, too, with no documents in sight. Dratted deputies. The key box—gray, metal, about the size of a phone book and several inches deep—was mounted on the wall behind the door. The storage room key hung inside on a duly labeled hook. I grabbed it and realized that Zach had hung back at the door, hands jammed in his pockets. Interesting that he was fine with sweeping dirt from old bones but reluctant to invade a dead man’s office space.

  “That his?”

  I looked to see what he meant. “The banjo?”

  “Banjos are cool.”

  “Do you play?”

  His shoulder movement didn’t tell me much. Banjos were cool, but discussing them obviously wasn’t. Casual conversation probably wasn’t cool, either, but as I led the way to the storage room, I tried anyway.

  “What did Ms. Spivey and Ms. Spivey tell you about the quilt they showed you?” Okay, so the question wasn’t all that casual. But I didn’t ask leading questions. “Did they have a name for the quilt?” Okay, so I did ask a leading question, but at least I didn’t suggest an answer.

  “What do you mean, a name for it?”

  “Some well-known quilts have names, the same way paintings or statues do. There’s a famous one called the Kaleidoscope Quilt. Did the twins call theirs anything?”

  “Like what?”

  “That’s what I was asking you.” I unlocked and opened the storage room door, reaching around the frame to flip the light on. Ahead of us and stretching to the left for the length of the building were four ranks of six-foot-tall gray metal shelves—one row down each wall and two sets back to back down the middle of the long, narrow space—all laden with bundles and boxes large, medium, small, and enticing.

  “What do you see?” I asked. But it wasn’t a question for Zach, and I answered it myself. “Wonderful things.”

  “Huh?”

  “It’s a quotation. It’s what Lord Carnarvon asked and what Howard Carter answered when he first looked into King Tut’s tomb.”

  “Cool.” He tried to see around me. “They got mummies here?”

  “No. It’s just something that always goes through my head when I open a door like this. Wait, though.” I stayed in the doorway so he couldn’t go past. “What did the twins say about the quilt? Humor me on this, okay? Old quilts are to me like Tut’s tomb was to Carter and Carnarvon.”

  “I think I’m on Tut’s team. The old ladies wouldn’t let anyone else touch the quilt.”

  “It might be fragile.”

  “They talked about their great-grandmother. Could’ve been their great-great-grandmother. Whatever. They thought she was great, anyway, and they talked like they actually knew her, which I guess could be possible. How old are they, anyway?”

  “That’s an impolite question.”

  “You asked how old I am.”

  “They’re somewhere in their early seventies.” He didn’t look impressed. “Anything else about the quilt?”

  “The Tut connection.”

  “You’ve lost me. Is that something they said?”

  “No. I did. It’s a game. Connections. The connection between King Tut and the quilt is coffins. And you know, if you need to have a name for it, you could call it the Old Lady Quilt.”

  “Coffins?”

  “Tiny coffins in a row on one edge. Thirteen of them.”

  I’d missed the signatures, and I’d missed the coffins. I hadn’t been given enough time with the quilt. “Did the Spiveys say anything about the coffins? Or the signatures?”

  “No. Are we actually going in there? Because, I’m like—”

  “Yeah, come on. I’ll show you around.”

  Phillip had given me a brief tour of the storage area when I’d agreed to be part of Hands on History, although he’d apologized for the “small-town, small-time” facilities.

  “It’s not what you’re used to, coming from a state museum, is it?” he’d asked.

  “It’s exactly what I’m used to. Old things, lovingly cared for,” I’d said. “And professionals doing the best they can with the resources they have.”

  “Then I’ll put it another way,” he’d said. “It’s not what I plan to become used to.”

  I enjoyed showing Zach the eclectic variety of artifacts—from clay marbles to several dozen pairs of mule shoes to lace-edged antimacassars to an apple butter kettle and paddle—but I couldn’t help feeling the loss of Phillip’s joy and dramatics. I’d always thought of museum artifacts, resting quietly in their boxes and drawers, as waiting in suspended animation for the right interpreter to come along and tell their stories. And these artifacts—the Homeplace—lost a voice when Phillip died. Others would come along, but how sad that we’d missed out on his interpretations of those stories.

  “Are you allergic to dust?” Zach asked.

  I blew my nose.

  “Because I don’t see any, but if there is some, it might be so old that it’s toxic.”

  “I’m sure that’s it. There’s probably toxic dust in these, anyway.” I pointed to the filing cabinets and shelves of boxes that made up the archives. “It’s hard to avoid a certain amount of dust in old papers.”

  “What’s in them?”

  “Artifact records, here,” I said, pointing to the accession files cabinet. “Whole lives and fragments of lives, in the rest of it. The history of the Holston family in letters, deeds, newspaper clippings, ledgers, receipts, recipes, photographs, and who knows what else. So, what do you think?” I took the cotton gloves I’d worn earlier out of my pocket and put them back on, then pulled the top drawer out of the first archive cabinet and started flipping through the files. “Storage and archives are reasonably cool, right?”

  He didn’t answer, which was cool, and I continued flipping. Then I realized I was being rude by suddenly ignoring him, or at least being un-instructor-like. “That’s the end of the tour, I guess. Any questions?”

  “Yeah. What are you looking for?” He pointed at the open drawer, at the file in my hands, at my eyes, which kept returning to the clipping in the file.

  “Elbows.”

  He looked down his seventeen-year-old nose at me.

  “Access points.” I ticked the points off on my fingers. “Names. A Holston family tree would be nice. Names of Holstons who lived here. Names of anyone who lived at the Homeplace. That kind of information shouldn’t be too tough to find.”

  “Isn’t all that in one of those guidebooks they sell in the gift shop?”

&
nbsp; “Some of it. Histories are usually abridged, though. Looking for that information, and finding it easily, will tell us something about the site, too. About how much research has been done and about the state and extent of the archives. About what might be missing. I want to know what kinds of primary source materials are here. Someone else, with more time, is coming in later to do more thorough research. I’m just—” I checked the time on my phone. “We still have time before lunch, so if you want to stay and help, then you and I’ll be the scouting party, finding likely access points, to save time later. What do you think?”

  “I think I’m confused. Who are you trying to be, Harriet the Spy or Marshal Dillon?”

  “You’re too young to know Marshal Dillon.”

  “I’m not too young to know anything.”

  A box of white cotton gloves sat on top of the filing cabinets. I handed a pair to him. He curled his lip, but put them on.

  As he opened a drawer in the second cabinet and started flipping, I wondered what Geneva would think of Zach. From the way she talked about Matt Dillon, she had a crush on him, thanks to her years of nonstop television watching during the time she’d haunted the cottage. Would she like Zach, because of that, and think of him as a pardner, or see him as an indecipherable modern kid? But being indecipherable was a teenager’s general lot in life, and probably not so different from a ghost’s lot in death.

  I stopped my own flipping when I came to a file holding a clothbound book. Clothbound. What would happen if I touched it? Probably nothing. It was cloth but not clothing. Was that what made the difference with this weird extra and extraordinary “sense” I’d developed since Granny’s death? Textiles were safe, but some textiles, made into clothing, somehow “radiated” the emotions of the person who wore them? Would the cloth-but-not-clothing rule make the difference so that I could touch the Plague Quilt? Maybe not if the quilt incorporated scraps from dresses. Did I dare touch it? Did I dare touch the book in the filing cabinet? Why not? I touched textiles all the time without flaking out and nothing would happen this time, either.