Crewel and Unusual Page 6

  “That’ll make it harder to pin down.”

  But we both looked over at the worktable where Nervie taught her crewelwork class.

  My phone rang: Joe. Geneva came around from behind me so we were face-to-face again.

  “I’m here for you,” she said.

  Even though I could see the others through her, being nose to nose with Geneva gave me a sense of claustrophobia. I made a quarter turn to get away. She followed, wringing her hands. Ardis, seeing my problem, came to the rescue. She went over to the sideboard, picked up a scone, took a bite, and waved it back and forth. She looked eccentric, but I loved her for it.

  “You there?” Joe asked.

  “Sorry, yeah. Is anything else damaged?”

  “I don’t know. Sierra called Cole.”

  I tried not to groan, for Joe’s sake, although he knew my opinion of his brother. He understood it, and often shared it, but he was still a good brother. “I want to see it. If I knock on the door, will you let me in?”

  “You won’t have to knock. I’ll be watching.”

  Joe, a man of his word, had pulled back a corner of the newsprint on one of the windows to watch for me.

  The hush surprised me when I stepped inside. Quiet voices, soft footsteps. Had I expected wailing and gnashing of teeth? Probably not, but I stepped into a hush more like a church before a service, a setting waiting for an event to start.

  The place did suddenly look ready to open. A lot of work had gone into that “suddenly,” but the Blue Plum Vault now looked like the eclectic, artsy indoor mall envisioned by Gar Brown. Shop signs had been hung, and whiffs of polish hung in the air from the newly buffed terrazzo floors. Potted palms stood on either side of the front door and next to the information and sales desk. Our steps, as we headed for the stairs, didn’t echo so much, their sound deadened by merchandise filling the shops.

  More of the merchants were there, too, like actors with opening-night jitters. Joe nodded to the few stepping out of their shops to see who’d arrived. I recognized some of them—the potter, the bookseller, the pastel artist. I wondered which of them were there when it happened. What did they see or hear? Who did they see? Could any of them serve as witnesses? Did one of them know who killed the tablecloth? I wanted to interview all of them. Ask probing questions they couldn’t escape or avoid answering. It’s possible I was getting carried away.

  I nudged Joe. “Is Cole here yet?”

  He shook his head. I read that as, “Murdered tablecloths aren’t high on my brother the esteemed deputy’s list of priorities.” But I still had that carried-away thing going on, so my interpretation might have been unfair.

  Martha the enamelist saw us coming up the stairs. She beckoned, and we followed her into her shop. Lean Joe offered lean introductions.

  “Martha, Kath, you’ve met?”

  “On the wrong foot,” Martha said. She held out her hand. It was warm, and her blue eyes were warmer than they’d been the day Nervie and Belinda erupted. She’d wrapped her braids around her head again. Her untucked work shirt matched her eyes.

  “Martha helped calm Belinda down,” Joe said.

  “Self-preservation as much as anything,” Martha said. She looked quickly toward the door. “Sorry. I really do feel badly for her.”

  “Does anyone have any idea what happened?” I asked.

  Joe started to shake his head, but a look from Martha stopped him.

  “That’s what I wanted to tell you,” she said. “Belinda’s over there making accusations. She’s still very upset. She might be . . . I don’t want to say overreacting, because I don’t know what I’d do if someone came in here and purposefully destroyed even one of my smallest pins.”

  I looked around at her display cases—full of colorful and highly smashable brooches, pins, pendants, and plaques—and hoped the tablecloth didn’t mean the beginning of something awful. The tablecloth seemed so specific, though, and too hidden away.

  “I think I’d be physically ill,” Martha was saying. “But someone should tell Belinda she needs to be careful what she says.”

  “Shouldn’t that be Sierra?” I asked.

  “You’d think,” Martha said. “And she was there. She called the police. But she has a lot on her plate.”

  Joe and I found Belinda in her shop, spitting mad—though quietly and not quite literally, thank goodness, because her anger at full, piercing volume would have been painful. Her quiet anger didn’t look healthy, though. She sat in the back corner, on the trunk where she’d kept the tablecloth, her cheeks splotched with red, her eyes red, too. The shop, except for the empty space on the back wall, looked ready for the opening. Belinda looked as though she, personally, might be shutting down.

  “Shock?” I asked Joe quietly.

  “Can I get you anything, Belinda?” Joe asked. “Water?”

  She answered, but her eyes and her voice were directed at the toes of her shoes. “I don’t need water. I need the police. Sierra said she called the police. I called the police. I don’t see them. Do you? Do you see Sierra? Do you see Nervie Bales?”

  If Nervie were a cockroach, Belinda’s question would have ground her into the floor.

  “When the police get here, I will inform them of what’s happened,” Belinda said to that same spot on the floor. “If they want to postpone the grand opening until they finish their investigation, that’s fine, but it shouldn’t take that long. I can tell them who’s responsible. I know it was Nervie, and I will insist they arrest her. Then I’ll make sure Nervie is no longer part of the Vault. Sierra will have to kick her out; there’s no question. You can’t run a shop when you’re in jail.”

  I moved closer—not too close—and sat on the floor. It’s what I’d done as a child when I tried so hard to convince one of Granny’s cats to sit in my lap. My quiet lap hadn’t worked then, but I’d never given up, and I’d learned a few things along the way. If you tell a cat what you think it should do—purr, play, keep its claws in its paws—it won’t be impressed. If you keep it up, the cat might bite. But if you speak softly, move slowly, don’t ask too much of the cat, and don’t insist on anything, the cat still might bite, but it might not leave a scar.

  So I sat cross-legged and didn’t tell Belinda she should be careful about what she said or who she accused or how loudly she demanded retribution for the loss of that stunning tablecloth. I just asked if I could see it. “Just to see if there’s any way at all it can be mended.”

  The noise she made sounded exactly like one of Granny’s unimpressed cats. But unimpressed didn’t mean ready to bite, so I sat, waiting. Quiet Joe, wily stalker of skittish fish in small creeks, had blended into the background and watched. Belinda made a more resigned noise and hefted herself from the trunk. I wondered if Joe noticed if she used a key to open the trunk. Even if Belinda’s back hadn’t been to me, I might have missed that detail. I was too busy praying.

  Then she put a deep, flat box in my lap, and I opened it. The tablecloth—the appliquéd oaks with their charming squirrels and acorns—had been reduced to a tangle of brown linen strips, threads sliced through, a few left dangling.

  “So, what do you think?” Belinda asked with a sarcastic jab. “Do you see any hope?”

  There was no point in answering. I didn’t see any point in picking up any of the pieces, either. No hope. No possibility of hope. They’re all dead. I’m holding their coffin in my lap.

  “Getting oils from your fingers on it hardly matters at this point.” Belinda stuck her hands in the box and stirred the pieces around, tossing some of them up like a dish of nightmarish pasta. And some of the strands looked . . .

  “Sorry, Belinda. Let me just . . .” Were they singed?

  “Let you just what?”

  “Will you hold those pieces up again?” I pointed to where I thought the shreds with darkened ends had fallen back into the box.

  If she’d said no, it wouldn’t have surprised me. Instead, she shrank away from the box.

  “Wha
t’s the matter?” I asked.

  “You tell me,” Belinda said. “What did you see? Why don’t you pick them up?” Then I heard her mutter something that sounded like phobia, and I sort of didn’t blame her.

  What am I afraid of? When I’d brushed my fingertips against the tablecloth the other day I’d only felt the peace and joy of that woodland. And pleasantly tiddly, as Granny would have said.

  “It’s just kind of a shock to see it like this,” I said. And what if I feel the violence of the attack on that peaceful scene?

  At the edge of my vision, Joe shifted his position, a move as good as asking, “Need me?” If I’d nodded, he would have been right there, whether the problem was in front of our eyes or part of something less obvious. He and I had a comfortable relationship, comfortable enough that we didn’t worry about not sharing everything in our lives with each other. We’d connected in a way that surprised me, a way I didn’t completely understand. No more than I understood the connection I’d been feeling with certain textiles since coming back to Blue Plum and taking Granny’s place at the Weaver’s Cat. Literally feeling, like feeling the peace in that poor departed tablecloth’s oaks and squirrels. Joe, being a noticing kind of guy, knew something went on between me and cloth—not all cloth, and only occasional pieces of clothing. He didn’t ask me to explain it. I couldn’t have, anyway.

  “I really don’t understand you,” Belinda said. “Did you come here to gape or help?”

  Before she could take the box away, I took a breath, dipped into it, and lifted a dozen or so strips on my outspread hands. And . . . nothing odd happened. But that’s what was odd—I felt nothing at all from those pieces except my own sadness over the destruction. The peace I’d felt before had trickled away through the raw edges and dangling threads. I didn’t know where the “feelings” came from, and I didn’t like them, but staring at the scraps in my hands, I knew why I felt nothing now. The tablecloth’s soul was gone.

  I found one of the ends that looked singed and rubbed my thumb across it. “It took so much time.”

  “Months. Maybe years,” Belinda said. “I wouldn’t have the patience.”

  I’d meant the destruction—methodical, deliberate, and thorough.

  “That’s enough.” Belinda whisked the box from my lap and snatched the strips from me. “I don’t have time for this.”

  I got to my feet and looked at Joe. He tipped his head toward the door. A good idea.

  “I do thank you for stopping by,” Belinda said as she hugged the box to her. “If the police ever show up, they can’t put it back together any more than you can. But at least you were good for something. You snapped me out of my self-pity. The grand opening’s tomorrow, and now I’ve got more work to do.”

  I nodded at the blank space on the back wall. “What were you going to put there if you sold the tablecloth?”

  “When, not if,” she said. The second part of her answer came with equal firmness, but not as fast. “That’s my plan B.”

  “Do you think she has a plan B?” I asked Joe as we crossed the gallery space toward the stairs.

  “I get the feeling it’s nothing or all. Either she doesn’t have one, or she has plans B, C, D, E, and on down the line. Did you learn anything?”

  “Someone’s got time and a temper.”

  “Nervie?”

  “It’s hard to see how. She had a class at the Cat all afternoon. Has Belinda actually told Sierra she thinks Nervie did it? Where is Sierra?”

  And why did that question sound familiar? Because of Nervie, again. Wednesday lunchtime, when she and Belinda fussed at each other, Sierra had come running up the stairs, when they’d pretty much stopped, and Nervie’s response to her appearance had implied she hadn’t known where Sierra was or where she’d gone. It sounded like that in my memory, anyway.

  Joe took my arm and steered me away from the stairs and toward the back of the gallery.

  “Where are we going?” I asked.

  “Shortcut. She’s probably in her office.”

  “You’ve got a brain in your head, Joe Dunbar.”

  “So do you, but it’s otherwise occupied.”

  Like the Weaver’s Cat, the old bank had a second set of stairs at the back of the building. But if the back stairs were a shortcut to Sierra’s office, why hadn’t she come running up them the other day? Because she wasn’t in her office, I told myself. And that’s no big whoop-de-do.

  We went past Nervie’s shop and two more—a leatherworker and a potter, all stocked over the last few days. I pictured the shops poised and waiting, watching for their first customers. The smell from the leather shop waved for my attention, but a sky blue bowl in the potter’s caught it first.

  “I’ll come see you tomorrow,” I told the bowl.

  “That’s what I tell the browns and the brookies every time I leave a creek,” Joe said.

  During the building’s banking days, the back stairs had been a staff convenience and not for public use. That hadn’t changed in the remodel, and the door shutting off the stairs from public view didn’t look any more inviting than a closet door. As we approached, we heard feet pelting up the stairs. When we reached the door, the feet reversed course and ran back down. And then came up again. As they reached the landing, I reached past Joe and opened the door.

  Sierra, wide-eyed, stopped with one hand on the railing and the other to her chest.

  Joe looked down the stairwell and then looked at Sierra. “You all right?” He pointed down the stairs, up, back down, and up again.

  “Stress steps,” Sierra gasped. “They keep me from freaking out. Are you on your way down?” She’d started jogging in place on the landing.

  “We were on our way to see you,” I said.

  Her eyes got wider. She motioned us quickly into the stairwell, motioned for me to close the door, and then whispered. “Now what?”

  “Do you want to sit down?” I asked.

  Still jogging, she shook her head. “Just let me know the bad news fast so I know if I have to start running all the way up.”

  The three of us looked up the stairs toward the third floor. I wasn’t sure she’d make it.

  “I thought you should know that Belinda thinks Nervie destroyed the tablecloth,” I said, “and she’s going to ask you to turn Nervie out of the Vault.”

  Sierra might not have heard anything beyond Belinda’s name; she was too busy shaking her fists and silently screaming up to the third floor. When she looked at us, again, her eyes weren’t so much wide as wild.

  “Do you want to know what I’m stressing out about? You wanna guess? You don’t need to. I’ll tell you. It’s everything. The grand opening. The vandalism. But it’s mostly these women acting like middle school girls.”

  She looked about as young and gawky as a teenager herself. She looked nearly hysterical, too. I wondered if it would help her, show that we were there for her, if Joe and I ran up and down a few flights with her.

  “This is my first professional job,” Sierra said. “I know I can do this, and I know we can get past it. But you know what else I’m worried about? Gossip. If this gets out and gets twisted around with small-town gossip and small-town minds—” She stopped, looking horrified. “That was a terrible thing to say; I’m so sorry. You have to believe me. I don’t feel that way about Blue Plum.”

  “It’s the stress talking,” Joe said.

  “I’m appalled.” She looked it.

  “Stress speaks for itself,” I said. “We know you don’t feel that way.”

  She said, “Thank you,” in a tiny voice, and then she closed her eyes and looked as though she was giving herself a good talking to. When she opened her eyes, she appeared calmer. “Here’s how I’m going to go forward. I’ll let the police handle the vandalism. I’ll tell Belinda that’s how it is and that she can’t talk about the incident based on supposition, no matter how well-founded. If asked, I’ll say that despite an unfortunate incident, the grand opening is going forward as planned. How do
es that sound?”

  “Like wow,” I said. “If that’s how you presented yourself to the Arts Council board, when they interviewed you, then I can see why they snapped you up.”

  Even in the poor light of the stairwell, she looked pink and pleased. “You don’t think if people hear there’s a feud they’ll stay away?” she asked.

  Joe laughed. “It’ll bring them in.”

  Sierra’s phone rang. She didn’t jump, a further sign that her nerves were back under control. Joe and I wouldn’t have stayed and listened, except that we heard her say, “Deputy Dunbar,” and she raised her eyebrows at us. Then she listened for a while, which confirmed for me that she was “talking” to Clod. Joe and I looked at each other, shrugged, and waited. Sierra waited, too, pursing her lips and batting at something in front of her face, or maybe batting at Clod droning in her ear.

  “Sorry, what?” Sierra finally said.

  Clod had asked her to meet him at the front door. We decided to keep her company.

  “Have you had many people wander in while your merchants moved their inventory in this week?” I asked as we went down the stairs.

  “No.”

  “I just wondered, because Belinda said something about people forgetting to relock the door.”

  “No.”

  So. I wouldn’t be asking her about that again.

  “There is something else, though.” Sierra stopped abruptly at the bottom of the stairs. From the way she looked over her shoulder, I wondered if she might suddenly bolt back up them. “I didn’t just call the police. I called the fire department, too.”

  “When?” Joe asked. “And why?”

  “And shouldn’t they be here by now?” I asked.

  “Not the department, exactly,” Sierra said. “Someone I know. Because I don’t think . . . and I didn’t want . . . but I wanted to be sure . . .” She definitely wanted those stairs.

  “You looked at the shreds of the tablecloth, didn’t you?” I said. “You saw singed edges.”

  “Burned. They were burned. Someone tried to set the place on fire and burn it down.”