Crewel and Unusual Read online

  “Speaking of going.” I checked my phone. “Time flies. I’ll go to lunch early, if that’s all right. It’s a pretty day for a walk. A pretty day to see something pretty.”

  “Well, Joe’s always been the better-looking Dunbar boy, but I’d call him handsome before I called him pretty.” She expected a laugh and accepted the one I gave her more easily than the reassurances she needed every so often.

  “Pretty Boy Joe has a ring to it, though,” I said. “Ardis, don’t worry about the table runner. Even if it’s the most amazing, the most astounding, the most fabulous and historic piece it’s been my honor to behold, I’ll look, and possibly heave a sigh, but then I’ll turn my back on it and come right back here.”

  “It’s Ivy’s steel that’s glinting in your eyes.”

  I wondered if anyone else saw Granny shining in my eyes as I greeted them on my way to the Vault. The old guys sitting on the bench in front of the courthouse, who spent more time reminiscing than keeping up on current events, called out, “Hey there, Ivy,” when I passed. They saw her just in my size and shape. I waved back. I liked being recognized that way, but those were reactions to generalities. I liked Ardis’s recognition better. Granny had known Ardis for years, and she’d let Ardis get closer than most.

  Rachel Meeks, a loan officer at the new bank, waved when she saw me. She was trying to get a scarecrow to sit up on a hay bale by the bank’s front door. Other scarecrows and corn shocks dotted the streets here and there, part of the town’s “Feeling Festive for Fall” campaign to bring people, not to mention their dollars, to Main Street.

  According to Granny, if a cuteness scale existed for measuring small towns, Blue Plum sat at the bug’s ear end of it. That was a good thing, she’d explained to me when I was five. I’d agreed, picturing tiny, perfect firefly ears. I still agreed. I also knew I was lucky she’d built her business soundly enough that I could stay in Blue Plum and make a living. Cuteness and town campaigns didn’t guarantee success to every business enterprise. The town had lost a car parts store a few years back, and several restaurants had come and gone, though Mel’s on Main managed to hang in there. Mel felt lucky, too. She said it was the luck of the ladle and larder that kept her serving up soup and sandwiches. She glossed over the hard work and long hours she put into it but readily gave credit to community involvement as an ingredient for the café’s longevity. Granny had believed in that, too. It isn’t just that Blue Plum supports us and so we support Blue Plum, she’d say. It’s that we are Blue Plum. It’s a simple as that.

  A block beyond the new bank, newsprint covered the four tall, arched front windows and front door of the old one. The transformation of the building from defunct bank to the Blue Plum Vault was still a work in progress, but it was about to become the newest business in town. Businesses, plural, to be accurate. The brainchild of the Blue Plum Area Arts Council, and Gar Brown in particular, the Vault was going to be a collection of small arts-related shops housed in the newly renovated and repurposed building. The big reveal would come at the grand opening on Saturday. After Gar’s death, there’d been talk about changing the name from the Blue Plum Vault and Gallery to the Garland Brown Gallery. There was also talk about postponing the opening. Both were decided against. People saw the project as Gar’s baby. He’d started as a teller in that bank, and he’d come up with the idea of calling it the Vault. Keeping the name and opening it on schedule was a tribute to him.

  I went up the two limestone steps to the front door. It was locked. I’d expected that, and I knocked. And, as simple as that, Nervie Bales opened the door.

  THREE

  Kath? You all right?”

  “Nervie. Hi.” I hadn’t realized how nervy I’d now feel around her. Thank you, Shirley and Mercy. I’d already talked myself out of worrying about her patterns—not my patterns, not my problem. And I could let Ardis do the pouncing about whether she meant to teach classes at the Weaver’s Cat as well as at the Vault.

  “You’re probably looking for Sierra,” Nervie said. “She’s around here, somewhere.”

  I didn’t correct her.

  Nervie swung the door open. “You don’t mind looking for her yourself, do you?” She relocked the door behind me and didn’t wait for an answer, instead trailing, “Lots to do before the opening,” over her shoulder as she disappeared.

  Minerva “Nervie” Bales wasn’t easy to get to know. She reminded me of a darter, one of the quick, tiny fish native to Tennessee’s streams and rivers. Joe had introduced me to a few. He liked them, and I could see why. They were pretty little things, in their own fishy way. Nervie was pretty, too, in a way that suggested it didn’t matter to her. I liked that about her, even if I didn’t see her often enough, or long enough, to know if I liked more than that about her. She was probably in her mid-fifties, although I didn’t know that for sure, either. She taught her crewel embroidery class at the Cat, but as Ardis said, she beetled in and out so fast, I rarely spoke more than a few words to her.

  A voice called something upstairs and another, more muffled, answered. Five of the shop spaces were located on the second floor, as well as the gallery in the newly opened-up area in the middle. I’d met a few of the merchants when I “helped” Joe with the finish work. Floyd Decker, a retired antique dealer, had taken one of the spaces on the first floor. He’d missed the business and decided to keep his hand in this way. Simon Grace was selling used books. I looked forward to prowling their shops. I’d met a metalworker, too, but couldn’t remember her name. Her welding mask and blowtorch had made more of an impression on me.

  Sierra Estep, whom Nervie assumed I’d come looking for, was almost certainly busier getting ready for the opening weekend than Nervie. Sierra was the newly minted MA in arts administration hired by the Blue Plum Area Arts Council to run the Vault. In the few times we’d talked, I’d learned that she topped me by three or four inches, loved leggings and tunic tops with bold patterns, dyed her long, straight hair cherry red, and could load a heavy roll of newsprint into her car without much trouble. She lived in an apartment on the third floor of the bank building. We’d by no means forged a deep friendship over those details, but we were on good terms.

  Sierra wouldn’t miss me, so I didn’t go looking for her. I didn’t look for Joe, either. He wasn’t answering texts or his phone, which wasn’t that unusual. He might be on the road between Blue Plum and Asheville. Or there were plenty of places, most of them small creeks with trout and darters, with spotty-to-nonexistent cell service. He liked those places. I liked textiles. I rubbed my hands and went looking for a table runner.

  I didn’t have any real standing at the Vault, for Nervie to let me in and turn me loose to wander. But, having been there off and on with Joe, I wasn’t a total stranger. Joe had bartered the finish work in exchange for the smallest shop space, rent-free, for a year. He painted exquisite postcard-size watercolors and planned to sell them and hand-tied trout flies.

  The first floor waited quietly. No need for anyone at the information and sales desk without shoppers. Sierra might be in her office down the hall toward the back of the building. I pictured her answering questions from one person on the phone while simultaneously typing answers in an email to someone else. She might have been relaxing over lunch in her apartment, but I doubted that.

  The Arts Council, calling the venture a co-op, had rented the shop spaces to a mix of craftspeople and merchants. The spaces were carved out of the old bank floor plan, upstairs and down, some in the original offices, some in newly created alcoves, one in the vault itself. The doors had been widened to give the feeling of shops in a mall. None of the shops would carry a huge amount of stock, and the shopkeepers wouldn’t all keep regular hours in their spaces. Customers would shop and pay at the information and sales desk on their way out. A few renters had moved their wares into their spaces over the weekend, and the rest were scheduled to move in over the next few days. If I was Sierra, I’d be anticipating fires right now and have my boots on, ready to stamp
them out.

  Smells hadn’t settled into place at the Vault yet. Paint, varnish, and new wood scents hung in the air. They were exciting smells, smells with promise, but also unfinished. They were one of the reasons for the staggered move-in dates. The last lick of paint had gone on the night before.

  A hamburger with onions lingered in the air, too, making me hungry. I followed that scent trail up the stairs. Halfway up, someone on the second floor turned on a blare of country music. Then turned it up.

  “Down!” someone above me shouted. “Turn it down! For—”

  The last part of the objection was drowned out as the volume increased again, the twang and guitar threatening to rupture my eardrums. Then they stopped so abruptly I felt disoriented. Gingerly, I crept up the last few steps.

  The open gallery space lay before me. To my left, a woman with braids around her head still cringed in a doorway, her eyes squeezed shut. Nervie stood in the next opening. Both women had their hands over their ears. Nervie’s eyes were open, though, and she stared at a room directly across the gallery.

  “Honest to Pete,” Nervie said through gritted teeth.

  “Sorry, sorry,” a high voice called from the room Nervie had a bead on.

  The cringing woman with the braids opened her eyes, gave her whole body a quick, shuddering shake, and went back into her shop. She might be the jewelry maker, an enamelist Joe had told me about. The braids matched part of his three-word description—braided, brilliant, quiet. I hoped her ears recovered.

  “Honest to Pete,” Nervie said again, this time louder and more clearly.

  “You know I didn’t mean it,” came the singsong answer. The owner of the voice still hadn’t made an appearance. In fact, she sounded farther away.

  Nervie muttered something I didn’t hear but thought I might agree with, and then she went back into her own shop. Neither she nor the enamelist had noticed me at the top of the stairs. I crossed the gallery space toward the suspect door and saw the broad backside of a woman as she leaned over a box. I knocked on the doorframe.

  “I said I’m sorry,” the woman said. She didn’t look up from her rummaging. “I just got confused between the ding dang up and the down buttons. Silly updates. They’re always messing with things.”

  I waited for her to take a breath then knocked again. “Hi. Are you Belinda?”

  “You’d think I killed a cat, for cripe’s sake. Oh.” The woman still bent over, looked at me from under her right arm, and in the half nanosecond between her high-pitched for cripe’s sake and higher-pitched oh, her face went from squint-eyed and complaining to wide-eyed and smiling. “Well, hey,” she said, coming upright. “What can I do for you?”

  “You’re Belinda?”

  “I can’t imagine who else I’d want to be.”

  “I’m Kath Rutledge from over at the Weaver’s Cat.”

  “Nice to meet you. Welcome to Belle’s Vintage and Antique Linens.” Belinda flourished a gesture toward the corner where a sign stood on one end. The ornate, scrolling letters weren’t easy to read sideways. The sign obviously pleased her, though, and I took her word for what it said. Belinda was less ornate. She looked anywhere from mid-forties to late-fifties. Her poufy ’do didn’t bring the top of her head level with my eyes.

  I looked around the space. None of the shops at the Vault were terribly big, and Belle’s was about the size of a small bedroom. Belinda had hung some of her linens and set others in folded stacks on white wire shelves. She still had boxes to unpack. Her vintage and antique linens skewed heavily to the vintage. I’d expected that. They’d be easier to come by. I didn’t spy a fabulous table runner anywhere.

  “What can I do for you, Kathy?”

  “It’s just Kath.”

  Belinda’s smile receded a fraction of an inch, cooling a degree or two as it went. “You know we aren’t open to the public yet, don’t you?”

  “I do, yes, sorry. I stopped by to see your table runner.”

  “And how did you get in? Did someone leave the door unlocked? Again?” Her voice rose in pitch as she aimed those questions out the door. Toward the other women? Toward Nervie? She seemed to be listening for a response from across the gallery. I was glad when I didn’t hear one.

  “Shirley and Mercy sent me over,” I said.

  “Say what now, Kathy?”

  People usually reacted when the twins were mentioned, sometimes favorably. More often they jumped, a reaction Ardis called the Spivey spasm, so Belinda’s blank face surprised me. Plus she’d added a y to my name again, a common enough mistake, but it made me wonder if she’d missed my gentle correction. Maybe she was hard of hearing?

  “But I tell you what,” she said, her blank face recovering and breaking out in another smile, “this’ll be good practice for me. I cannot tell you how excited I am to be part of this new enterprise. Now, what can I show you?”

  “I’m not really a customer—”

  But she’d turned her back to shuffle through boxes and didn’t hear me. I started to repeat myself when she turned around again. I meant to clear up any misunderstanding, but when I saw what lay in the box she held, I was helpless. Silk pansies in purples I could almost taste. Oh, the pretty, dainty thing . . .

  “It’s a handkerchief,” Belinda said. “The amount of work that must’ve gone into it staggers me, and if I’d done the stitching? I couldn’t bear to watch someone blow his nose on it.”

  I had trouble watching her toss the box aside. “Do you embroider?” I asked.

  “Never had the time, but I’ve been collecting for years. I have a good eye for it, and I’ve been lucky a time or two. Or three or four. You liked that handkerchief, didn’t you?” She looked over her shoulder at me, then didn’t wait for an answer before rummaging some more. “So now take a look at this. If I can find it. I knew I should’ve labeled these boxes.”

  “Would you like help?” If she said yes, could I keep myself from shoving her out of the way and opening every box myself? She hadn’t heard me, so I held myself in check.

  “I don’t suppose people really used most of these, or I wouldn’t have them to sell. But that’s what makes them rare and worth every penny. There now.” She turned around with a piece of linen draped over her hands. “I believe this was meant to be a napkin. My luck abandoned me that time. I didn’t find the full set.”

  Oh, but she had been lucky. Silk goldfinches—so realistic they might have been painted by John James Audubon—perched on a spray of blue bachelor’s buttons. The piece wasn’t a napkin. It was more likely a pillow cover. Did she have any idea what she had? I couldn’t help testing her. “What’s the . . .” I wiggled my finger at a goldfinch. “The thread. It’s so bright.”

  “Silk thread on linen.”

  I nodded.

  “They called it Society Silk because ladies in high society sat around drinking tea while they stitched.”

  So she knew something, but she hadn’t dug very deep into the history. She was right about the thread and linen and maybe even about the tea. But the women who’d stitched while they sipped hadn’t called their lovely pieces Society Silk. That was a modern term and not completely accurate. I looked up from studying one of the dear little finches’ feet. Belinda studied me.

  “Do you have larger pieces?” I asked.

  “One or two.” Her answer came curt, cautious. Her head tilted like one of the goldfinches, sizing me up.

  Had my testing gone too far? I knew a way to find out, and as long as I had her attention, I might as well try again. “Shirley and Mercy Spivey said you have a silk embroidered table runner.”

  The high voice kicked up a notch. “You know the twins?” Belinda squealed. “Aren’t they the funniest things? You should’ve said so straight off.”

  Shirley and Mercy, funny? Geneva would no doubt agree. She would love the squeal, too, though my ears, not so much.

  Belinda whipped around so fast I thought the goldfinches would take flight. She laid the pillow cover back in its bo
x and rushed over to a table on the other side of the room. She lifted a layer of cross-stitched hand towels. When I saw the flat box she’d exposed, my heart quivered just a bit. The box was bigger than the one she’d put the pillow cover in, but not big enough.

  “Shirley and Mercy are the ones who told me about the Vault,” Belinda said. If she said something else, I didn’t catch it. I’d been busy beaming a silent message to the table runner: Oh, please tell me she doesn’t have you folded up in there.

  “They introduced me to Simon, too. Do you know him? Selling the books? In the actual vault downstairs? That’s a real nice touch. Primo location. More rent than I can afford, but that’s where a cushy college job gets you.”

  Open the box open the box open the box. Let it out.

  “Simon found a couple of big old books for me. Embroidery, appliqué, history, styles. All that razzmatazz. Some of it maybe even interesting. Come on over here.”

  She couldn’t have stopped me.

  And then she lifted the lid from the box and oh, the razzmatazz of it. I think angels actually sang. Shirley and Mercy, for all their faults, were absolutely right. The table runner’s silk embroidery, what I could see of it, glowed. But the hundred-year-old linen and silk jewel was folded. Only I could hear the screaming in my head.

  “It’s a beauty,” Belinda said. “Here, I’ll shake it out so you can get the full effect.”

  “Wait! Sorry, why don’t you spread it on the table instead?”

  “Bossy, bossy. I see what you mean, though. Table runner. Duh.”

  Her hands seemed to know, better than her words, that the table runner deserved a gentle touch. They spread it out, lifting and shifting rather than flapping and tugging, and I relaxed. A tad. She didn’t give me room to help, and her back blocked my view.

  “Have you thought about rolling your old pieces when you store them?”

  “Move that box, will you?”

  I took the box and tried again. Louder. “The twins have some beautiful pieces. They roll them, kind of loosely, instead of folding them.” Because they’d picked up that caring-for-old-textiles tip from Granny. They listened to expert advice, even if they were ornery.