Crewel and Unusual Page 4

  “They’re a hoot. Now, Kathy, not meaning any disrespect, but look around. This is a small shop. I need to make the most of the space I’ve got. So, yeah, I fold. It takes up less room.”

  I should have dropped it. I couldn’t. Kath Rutledge, friend of fibers everywhere, forging faithfully onward for their future. “Folding stresses the fibers, though. Eventually they break.”

  “And that’s not my worry. All these things are for sale, and my goal is to sell them before ‘eventually’ arrives. Posterity is for those who don’t have bills to pay.”

  “Your pieces might bring in more money if they’re properly cared for.” Back off, Kath. She doesn’t want your help. Except Shirley and Mercy had said . . . “Shirley and Mercy said you might want help authenticating the table runner.”

  Belinda crossed her arms. “Do you want to see it or not?”

  I did, so I shut up, and she stepped aside, her arms still crossed. I hadn’t made a friend. I didn’t care.

  Forty-eight inches long, eighteen wide, Mercy had said. You can almost smell the strawberries and climbing roses, Shirley had said. And there they were, climbing the whole length of creamy white linen, and I swear I really could smell them. And if I’d touched one of the roses, a petal would fall, and if I plucked one, a thorn would prick my finger and make it bleed. And oh, the colors, they almost took my breath. Scratch that. They took my breath.

  Nervie, on the other hand, had plenty of breath. “It’s a fake,” she said from the doorway.

  “Nervie, sugar, I’m so sorry.” Belinda’s singsong voice went so high it dripped from the ten-foot ceiling. “My mistake with the volume controls upset you more than I realized, and I guess it made me deafer, too.” She wiggled a finger in her right ear and turned the ear toward Nervie. “Did you say something about fate?”

  “If you want to pretend I did, that’s fine,” Nervie said. “You might even say it is fate.”

  A good time for me to bow out, I decided. “Well, I ought to be getting back, now.” Big smile on my face. Optimistically inching past Belinda, who suddenly reminded me of a bristling hedgehog.

  “There is nothing wrong with my linens,” she said.

  “They’re lovely,” I said. Now, could I actually get past Nervie? How could someone so small take up so much space? “Thanks for showing them, Belinda.”

  “They’re made in sweatshops in China, Vietnam, and Laos,” Nervie said. “Her ‘vintage’ is nothing but knockoffs. Her ‘antiques’ are anything but.” Nervie put air quotes around vintage and antiques with the savagery of karate chops. She hadn’t moved from the doorway, and though she didn’t match the decibels of Belinda’s earlier music mishap, her clear voice carried. Anyone on the second floor would hear her, maybe everyone in the building. “And as fate would have it,” she continued, “Blue Plum’s resident textile expert is here to expose you.”

  Waving my hands to dissuade Nervie from saying more wasn’t my smartest move. They didn’t shush Nervie, and they encouraged Belinda to boil over.

  “I thought you were an early bird customer.”

  “I never—”

  “I thought you were like those people who show up the night before a garage sale.”

  “Shirley and Mercy told me about your table runner and said you—”

  “And you came waltzing in here acting like some kind of expert?”

  “I only came—” I didn’t finish because she’d dismissed me. She didn’t care why I was there, didn’t know who I was, didn’t know what I was talking about, and she definitely hadn’t been expecting me. Why, why was I surprised? Spiveys. I flinched and looked around—had I said that out loud?

  Belinda didn’t seem to care if I stayed or went, didn’t care enough to go on about my dishonesty. But she cared plenty about Nervie’s accusations.

  “Well par-don me,” she said in four percussive syllables. “Maybe I haven’t been on the selling end of the business for long, but I know what I’m doing. I have a nose for knowing what’ll sell. I’ve been buying at yard sales and estate sales in the mid-Atlantic and southeast for years, when we lived near DC and since I’ve been here, and I’ve been waiting for the right opportunity to come along. And that’s what this is. I’m no fraud. I’m not selling fakes. They aren’t all valuable, but they’re all pretty, and some of them are beautiful. Even she can tell you that,” she said, jerking her head at me.

  I didn’t object to her aspersion; I tried to shrink and be invisible.

  “People will buy my linens,” Belinda continued. “If nothing else, they’ll cut them up and make the pieces into something else.”

  Cut them up? I barely suppressed a gasp. Nervie barely managed a single shoulder shrug. Belinda’s bosom heaved with completely unsuppressed emotion.

  “I’m pretty sure the table runner is real,” I said quietly to Nervie.

  “And I’m pretty sure I know my business better than you do,” Belinda said to Nervie, not as quietly.

  Nervie gave a slow blink that clearly said, Prove it.

  Belinda’s eyes narrowed.

  Nervie raised her chin half an inch.

  Belinda tightened her lips.

  Showdown at the OK Co-op. Neither of them moved for a count of four, three, two . . .

  Belinda nodded. “Fine. I can prove it. I’ll show you what an expert can find.” She stalked to the back of her shop.

  I raised my eyebrows at Nervie. She ignored me. Invisibility accomplished.

  Belinda moved her sign aside, grunting with the effort. Behind the sign, tucked into the corner, was a trunk, the kind that characters in books find in attics—a storyline forever believable to me, because so many good and true antique textile discoveries start with someone opening a trunk in a parent’s or grandparent’s attic. Belinda shot a look at us over her shoulder (or maybe just at Nervie) then bent to open the trunk.

  “You can see this,” she said when she stood up, cradling her treasure in her arms, “then right back in it goes. It’s entirely extraordinary. It’ll have a place of honor here on the back wall, but it’s staying under wraps until I unveil it at the grand opening.” She raised the piece over her head with her arms spread and let it unfold. “Feast your eyes on this, Nervie Bales.”

  What she had, what she held up so casually, so cavalierly, by two corners, was an Arts and Crafts tablecloth. Thirty-six inches by thirty-six, maybe forty by forty. If authentic, it was at least a hundred years old. Turn of the last century, give or take a decade. Brown linen—typical of that time and style—and embroidered in a jaw-droppingly beautiful pattern of Art Nouveau trees, squirrels, and acorns, all done in greens, blues, and browns. She was right; it was entirely extraordinary. Exquisite. The silk-embroidered table runner, with its strawberries and roses, blew me away. But this piece stirred me so much more. Any museum with a textile collection would love to own it. I wanted to live in it. I wanted to sit under one of those trees and hold the squirrels in my lap. I thought I might cry.

  Nervie had nothing to say, and I couldn’t read her expression. Impressed? Jealous? Foiled?

  “You think you’re an expert?” Belinda jerked her head at me, again, jerking me out of my Arts and Crafts woodland daydream. “Come tell me this isn’t real.”

  Nervie and I both moved closer. Nervie stopped before I did, though, leaving a decent amount of personal space. I went close enough to rub noses with one of the squirrels. We didn’t rub noses, though. I didn’t touch it. I studied the linen, the floss, the stitches, the hem. I stepped to the side to get a look at the back. When I sniffed it, Nervie gave in and came closer, too.

  “What on earth did smelling it tell you?” Nervie asked.

  “It smells right. It smells old.” I pulled out my phone. “Do you mind if I take pictures?”

  “I most certainly do. No pictures. Not before the opening.”

  “Never mind sniffing it or taking pictures,” Nervie said. “You have to touch it.”

  “No, I—”

  Nervie took hold o
f the tablecloth’s edge, swinging it toward us. I stepped back.

  “I don’t want to add my fingers, the oil from them,” I said. “Really. I don’t need to touch it.” Oils were only part of the reason I didn’t want to touch it. Fear was the other part. Odd, but true.

  “She thinks she’s ‘saving’ it,” Nervie explained to Belinda, using her aggressive air quotes again. “You aren’t saving it from anything, Kath. It’s for sale. We’re touching it, and every customer who comes through will touch it.”

  “And I wish they wouldn’t.” That was true, but again, my next statement was only half true. “It’s my training.”

  “What kind of asinine training is that?” Belinda asked.

  I knew a dare when I heard one. I could rise above them, too. But Belinda and Nervie stared at me, and so did one of the embroidered squirrels. The one with tufts on its ears. How had the artist created such a look of longing on its tiny face? It was the squirrel I couldn’t resist, and I reached my fingers out to stroke its ears and tail, its white tummy. Really, I let only the tips of my fingers brush against the squirrel. When they did, I felt an incredible peace wash over me. Nothing more. Thank goodness.

  “It’s wonderful.” I sounded far away. “Where did you find it?”

  Belinda’s lips tightened again.

  “How much are you asking for it?” faraway Kath asked. That was one of the problems with being in love with textiles and fibers—wanting to own every hank, ball, skein, length, and every entirely extraordinary tablecloth that, for whatever bizarre reason, made you feel drunk and in another world when you touched it.

  Then, just like that, Belinda whisked the tablecloth away and folded it back into the trunk. When she slammed the lid, I snapped out of my Arts and Crafts euphoria. It wasn’t a pleasant reentry.

  “I see what you two are up to,” Belinda said. “You’re in it together. You’re out to ruin my business.”

  “We aren’t,” I said, but Nervie and I both started backing toward the doorway.

  “You’re trying to bring down the value of my stock by saying I’m a fraud. You’re trying to bring down the prices so you can get that tablecloth on the cheap.”

  Nervie and I backed out of the shop and into the gallery.

  “It’s in your eyes,” Belinda said. “You want it.”

  She’d have to be blind not to see how much I wanted that tablecloth. And although she didn’t come right out and say you can have it over my dead body, I’d have to be deaf to miss that message.

  The woman with the braids—the enamelist—stuck her head out of her shop, then came out into the gallery and suggested we keep it down, with surprising calm, I thought. Nervie and Belinda snapped at her.

  Sierra, the Vault’s manager, came charging up the stairs and planted her fists on her hips. She was trying to look in charge and almost succeeding. Nervie punctured that power stance by being unimpressed.

  “I wondered where you’d gone,” Nervie said. “But that’s okay. There’s nothing left to see.”

  The enamelist looked at each one of us, singled me out, and thanked me for stopping by. Her sarcasm cut as deep as the ice in her blue eyes. Then she went back into her shop. That seemed to be the signal Nervie and Belinda were waiting for. Nervie walked past Sierra and down the stairs. Belinda put her phone to her ear and drifted back to her shop as though nothing had happened.

  I looked at Sierra, shrugged, and said something I hoped would sum up what had happened and my feelings about it. “Yeesh.”

  Sierra might not have caught the nuances available in that word. “Joe’s not here,” she said. “How did you get in?”

  “I knocked on the door.” I looked at her arms now crossed tightly over her chest. “Do you want to know what that fuss was about?”

  “It’s over, right? So, no. On top of everything else in the past few weeks, I don’t need anyone stirring those two up again. If you don’t mind?” She gestured toward the stairs.

  “Sure, sure.” She didn’t follow me, but I mumbled apologies on my way down anyway. She didn’t hear my mumbles, and I didn’t pay much attention to them either. I’d gotten stuck on that word again and all of its nuances. Stir those two up again? Poor Sierra.

  Nervie had surprised me at the door when I arrived, so it fit that she caught me again on my way out. I felt just as nervy when I saw her waiting. She looked as though she had more to say, but I decided to preempt her. I didn’t want to hear about her beef with Belinda, didn’t want to be part of it. There would be no stirring from me to make Sierra’s job harder. But at least we could agree about the tablecloth.

  “You have to admit the tablecloth’s fabulous, Nervie. Better than fabulous.”

  She nodded.

  Excellent. She didn’t smile, and the nod lacked enthusiasm, but maybe we’d found neutral ground. I took a chance and took one more step onto that ground.

  “If you had to sum that tablecloth up in one word,” I said, “what would it be?”

  Nervie looked over her shoulder and then leaned close. “Stolen.”

  FOUR

  It’s the only logical explanation,” Nervie whispered. “The only way Belinda Moyer got her hands on that tablecloth. She stole it.” She closed the door in my face.

  I didn’t knock again.

  I stomped my way back to the Weaver’s Cat. I’d fooled myself. How dumb could I be? With each stomp I slammed a litany of hows, wasn’ts, hadn’ts, and nevers into the sidewalk. How could the simple act of gawking at and drooling over embroidery turn into such a shambles? I’d never claimed to have ESP; how was I supposed to know that Nervie and Belinda had some kind of ridiculous rivalry going? I wasn’t a Spivey tool, running around looking for the trouble they’d dumped in my lap. I hadn’t swooped down on the Vault to avert that trouble like the Avenging Angel of Mercy and Shirley. I would never do that—and I would never listen to them again. How did they know so much about what was going on at the Vault, anyway? And maybe I wouldn’t be so cranky if Ardis hadn’t eaten my share of the scones. On top of all that, I’d taken my lunch hour to get involved in this mess and I hadn’t had lunch.

  The stomping helped. Angry toddlers would agree. So would Granny. Get the mad out, Granny used to say. Beat it like a rug or ring it like the neck of a wet towel. Then stop and remember what you’re thankful for.

  I stopped on the sidewalk in front of the fire station and looked down at my feet. I was thankful for my running shoes. I might never run in them, but they were great stompers. I was thankful Joe hadn’t been at the Vault. Maybe the ill will I’d stirred up wouldn’t sift down on him and cause him problems. I was thankful I’d seen the tablecloth.

  Stomping out of my system, I started walking and tried Joe again, thankful also that he finally answered. He told me he’d gone to Asheville to pick up an engine and was on his way back. The engine was for his brother, Cole. Cole, the older brother, got the better deal when their English literature–teaching parents leafed through their Norton Anthology to pick out baby names. He was Coleridge Blake Dunbar to Joe’s Tennyson Yeats. I never heard either of the brothers complain about their names. But Joe had tried out a string of replacements starting in early grade school, and Cole had become a muscled and well-respected sheriff’s deputy. So maybe they’d each rebelled in their own way.

  “It’ll be midafternoon before I’m back,” Joe said. “Then I might watch Cole horse the engine around until he asks for help. If he’s free.”

  “Are you eating something?”

  “Hot Brown. Picked it up on the way out of town.”

  “To go? Kind of a mess, isn’t it?”

  “Kind of cold by now, too. I’m at the Sams Gap overlook. The colors are subtle and deep this year. Did a couple of watercolor sketches.”

  “Isn’t there a trailhead at that overlook? Is parking there a good idea?” I was pretty sure I sounded as alarmed as I felt. Trailheads and people I cared about didn’t mix these days. Gar Brown’s body proved that.

  “It’
s a busy overlook,” Joe said. “Steady stream of people in and out. Not the kind of place you’d pick to smash vehicle windows. And I sat on the rock wall right in front of the truck. Gar liked this view. He liked a good Hot Brown, too.”

  I liked a good Hot Brown, with its turkey, toast, tomato, bacon, and brown, bubbling Mornay sauce. “Eat a bite in his memory for me, will you?”

  “I’ll do that right this minute.”

  “Thank you.” A bite of warm food. An act we take for granted. Hot Brown sacrament. “Have you heard anything new about Gar? Has Cole said anything?”

  “Not much. It’s keeping him busy, though. It’s why I picked up the engine for him. So.” He took another bite. I listened to him chew and swallow. “Something going on?”

  Besides begrudging him the Hot Brown? I didn’t sputter about the Spiveys or purportedly stolen tablecloths, being kind and not wanting to ruin the rest of his peaceful memorial lunch. I did tell him I might have ruined my chance for friendship with the enamelist. “She might want to pin me to the wall with one of her brooches.”

  “Martha? Hard to picture,” he said. “I wouldn’t worry about it too much. She’ll like you when she gets to know you. It took Cole a while, but he came around.”

  “Halfway around, anyway.” It was good to hear his laugh. “What about you?” I asked. “How long did it take you?”

  “I’m smarter than Cole. It took him a while. It only took me half a while.”

  Mood improved, I walked on past the Cat and headed to Mel’s for a spinach salad to go. I sent Ardis a text letting her know I’d be back from lunch a few minutes late. That amounted to distracted walking, though, and when I looked up from the phone, I saw Shirley and Mercy sitting at one of the sidewalk tables outside Mel’s.

  I stomped over, and when one of them started to greet me, I stomped that, too. “Belinda was not expecting me at the Vault.”