CHAPTER THREE

 

"Dee sent me over to get you," Emma said before I'd taken a single step in Gil's direction. "She wants to make sure you're enjoying yourself."

There was no denying Emma or Dee, not that I wanted to. I liked them, and I could spare a few minutes before I went home. I finished the last of my cider and tossed my cup into the trash before following Emma back to the last of the long tables topped with sewing machines.

Physically, Dee Madison looked like the stereotype of a quilter: ancient, white haired, and a little stooped. Her businesslike red jacket and skirt messed with the expected image a bit, and anyone who'd spent more than five minutes with her knew she was more like a ruthless entrepreneur than a cuddly grandmother. A few months ago, when Dee had been frustrated by the lack of legal methods to shut down the seller of fake antique quilts, she'd proposed hiring a hit man to take care of the problem, and it hadn't been entirely clear to me that she was joking.

With her friends though, Dee was kind and generous. She patted the seat at the sewing machine next to her. "I saved you a spot."

"Someone who can actually sew should sit there." I remembered only too clearly my one and only experience in a sewing class, which had involved making a simple apron with just two large pieces of fabric, and I'd still managed to make a mess of it. In the wake of Meg's little lecture about precise seams, I wasn't about to try making miniature blocks made out of tiny bits of fabric that needed to be joined with absolute precision.

"These ornaments are so easy a child could make them," Dee said. "The Friendship Star block is particularly good for beginners."

I was familiar with the traditional block, at least in its completed form. It was a nine-patch variation, three rows of three squares each, some of the squares divided diagonally into two triangles of contrasting colors. Keeping with the holiday theme for today's blocks, the middle square was a red print, a red triangle butted up against each side of the center square, and then the four outer corners of the block were a white print. When everything was sewn together, the pieces formed a four-pointed star that looked a bit like a spinning pinwheel. It was a simple block, certainly, but still beyond my sewing skills

"Here," Dee said, picking up a pile of squares that were next to her sewing machine and placing them to the left of the machine she'd assigned me to. "I've already sewn the pairs of triangles into squares. All you have to do is sew the pieces into three rows. It's easy. Emma will iron them for you, and then you can sew the rows together, and you'll have made your very first quilt block."

Dee lined up a white square, another square made up of a red triangle and a white triangle, and then another white square. "Just sew them together in that order."

They were so tiny. Just one-and-a-half-inch square, including the seam allowances. I couldn't imagine how Dee had managed to join the tiny triangles into such a perfect square, and from what I'd heard the instructor say, anything less than perfection was a disaster. "I'm afraid I'll waste all the hard work that's already gone into them."

"Don't worry about it," Dee said. "It's not like someone will die if you mess it up. You can always rip out the seam and do it again. Go ahead and try it."

I glanced at Emma, knowing before I did that she would support whatever Dee wanted, so I wasn't surprised when I got a nod of encouragement in response. I turned back to the sewing machine. In theory, I knew how it worked from my one and only sewing class. But that was a long time ago, before I'd started passing out at the least little bit of stress. I didn't like to think about what could happen to fingers that weren't controlled by a conscious brain and drifted too near the speeding needle.

When I didn't immediately start sewing, Dee said, "You can watch me do a seam first, if you want. Just pick up the first two pieces. Align the two edges like this, and place them on the feed dogs so the needle will be a quarter inch from the raw edge. Drop the foot to hold them in place. Do a few backstitches, and then zoom on down to the other end before doing another bit of backstitching."

Dee demonstrated as she spoke, barely even looking at her hands. When she got to the zooming part, she stomped on the foot pedal like she was the little old lady from Pasadena who couldn't keep her foot off the accelerator.

"Isn't she a beaut?" Emma said from behind us. "It's a semi-industrial machine. Does up to fifteen hundred stitches per minute, about twice what the average home machine does. I don't know if you've met Sunny Kunik yet. She let us borrow the machines from her shop for the day, and now I don't want to go back to my own more basic model at home. I might have to ask Santa to bring me one just like this for Christmas. And I'm definitely getting a pair of Sunny's scissors for someone's stocking."

I picked up the first two pieces the way Dee did and managed to get them under the presser foot. "Are you sure I won't ruin anything?"

"I'm sure," Dee said. "Go ahead and step on the pedal."

My foot hovered. "But what about the seam allowance? How do I know it's right? I just heard Meg saying how important it was, but I didn't get a chance to go look at the sample she said was done so well."

"Don't worry about that," Dee said. "You'll never be as good as Carl Quincy, but that's okay."

Seizing on that as an excuse to avoid demonstrating my incompetence and ruining the pretty little triangles, I said, "Is that the man in denim who stomped out of here? Why was he so upset anyway?"

Dee sighed. "Meg had no way of knowing, but I wish she hadn't chosen Carl's work as an example. He's terribly conflicted about his quilting. It's not a macho enough hobby, you see, and he's terrified his friends on the police force will find out about it."

Emma reached down to realign the pieces under my sewing machine's presser foot. "Dee's been teaching him in private, and we've been trying to get him to come out of the quilting closet, because he really is quite talented. The other guild members could learn so much from him. And vice versa."

"But no," Dee said, shaking her head. "He's an ex-cop, you know. Retired on disability, and he hasn't come to grips with that either, so the idea of his friends knowing he enjoys what he still considers to be a hobby for little old ladies and invalids just makes it that much more difficult. It's such a pity. He loves quilting, and it's helped him cope with his anxiety over being retired, but doing it in public is another matter altogether."

"I was surprised he showed up today, even if it's a pretty safe bet none of his buddies from the force will be here," Emma said, making yet another infinitesimally small adjustment in the placement of the pieces on my sewing machine. "And now I'm not sure he'll ever come to another guild event. What a waste."

"He does really intricate work with near record-setting numbers of tiny pieces in each quilt," Dee said, "so it's not surprising Meg singled him out for his precision. I'm sure she thought he'd be pleased."

Emma reached down to adjust my fabric squares yet again. At this rate, they were going to be frayed to nothing but threads from all the friction against the feed dogs.

I slid out of the seat and stood up. "Why don't we switch places, Emma? You do the stitching, and I'll take the finished pieces to do the ironing. I think that's more my speed anyway. Unless you've got turbo-charged irons too?"

 

*   *   *

 

I carried the quilt pieces over to the ironing board where Stefan had been working, but he wasn't anywhere in the room that I could see. Neither was Meg McLaughlin, who was supposed to be in charge of helping beginners like myself. Even Gil was missing again, although I wasn't sure she knew any more about ironing than I did.

At least the iron didn't appear to be any different from the standard models I'd used before. What stumped me though was what exactly I was supposed to be doing with the three little rows of joined red-and-white fabrics. They weren't exactly wrinkled, so why was I ironing them?

I placed the three rows of the Friendship Star block on the ironing board and picked up the iron. I ran it over the surface of the board to confirm that it was working, and steam swirled up from the base plate. That much I knew how to do. Now what?

My uncertainty must have been obvious, because Meg's assistant came rushing over. She snapped, in her painfully shrill voice, "If you don't know what you're doing, you need to ask someone for instructions."

My pulse spiked as I fought the urge to snap right back at her. I took a calming breath and reminded myself that passing out with an iron in my hand wasn't any safer than losing consciousness with my fingers near the sewing machine's needle. "Okay. Can you help me?"

"Of course." The words were encouraging, but the shrill tone made them sound like an accusation. She took the iron out of my hand and set it down at the wide end of the ironing board. "I'm Jayne Connors. I always assist whenever Meg McLaughlin comes to Danger Cove. She taught me everything I know about quilting."

"Does she give classes in ironing too?"

Jayne didn't respond, but instead took the top row of the block and laid it upside down between us. She pointed at the seam allowances. "They all need to get pushed to one side of the seam, not spread apart like you'd do if you were making clothes." She turned the row over, right side up, and smoothed the seam allowances with her fingers before dropping the iron on the fabric. "Press it carefully until it's flat, making sure not to stretch the pieces out of shape."

Jayne raised the iron to reveal that the row, which had been a puffy blob from the bulk of the seams, was now a perfectly flat rectangle.

It seemed simple enough, but I still wasn't sure I could make the remaining pieces look so perfect. "What if they're not all nice and straight when I'm done?"

"Then you take them back to the sewing machine, rip out the seam, and sew it again until you get it right."

I didn't bother to explain that I hadn't done the sewing. I trusted Dee to have done an acceptable stitching job, so if the finished row wasn't straight, it was more likely due to my ironing than to her stitching. I took the second row, placed it in front of me right side up, did my best to push the seam allowances all to one side, and then reached for the iron.

"No, no, no." Jayne's voice was even sharper than before as she reclaimed the iron. "The seam allowances need to alternate from row to row." Jayne flipped the direction of the two seams, ironed them, and then placed the second row next to the first one she'd ironed so I could see which way the seams fell when the rows butted up against each other.

"Always have a plan for the ironing of the whole block before you start. You want to push the seam allowances toward the darker fabrics whenever possible, but also make sure that they're not both going in the same direction where two rows meet. Then, when the rows are put together, the extra layers alternate, and they don't form a big lump on one side."

While she spoke, she ironed the third row for me, pushing the seams in the right direction without any apparent thought, leaving nothing for me to do, which was probably just as well.

"I never realized how complicated ironing could be."

"Ironing can make or break a quilt," Jayne said. "Meg taught me that. Have you met her yet? She designed the ornaments we're making today."

"I've seen her in passing, but we didn't get formally introduced," I said. "She was in a bit of a hurry at the time."

"You'll love her," Jayne said. "She's easy to talk to, even now that she's famous. I always think of her as Mrs. Claus, even without the hat she's wearing today. Her husband doesn't look anything like Santa, which ruins the image, but he doesn't usually travel with her, so that's okay."

Meg did indeed look like every illustration I'd ever seen of Mrs. Claus: plump, rosy-cheeked, with white hair pulled up into a loose bun, and wearing little round spectacles. The Santa hat and the red-and-white pinafore-style apron that she wore with black pants only added to the impression. Jayne, on the other hand, looked like an oversized elf in her green sweater. A mean elf, gleefully placing lumps of coal in bad kids' stockings.

"Oh no," Jayne said, peering at something on the other side of the room. "That woman is doing it again. I thought Meg was going to talk to her, but it looks like she didn't have a chance. I'd better go deal with it."

"Don't let me stop you." I had no idea what quilting crime was happening on the other side of the room or how Jayne had spotted it. Still, if it meant that I would get off with just a warning from the quilt police, I had to be grateful that someone else was doing something worse than I was.

 

*   *   *

 

I abandoned my short-lived post at the ironing board and carried the ironed pieces back to Emma and Dee. I felt like a fraud, since Jayne had done all the work.

Matt Viera had joined Dee and Emma while I was learning just how much of a science ironing could be. He was perched on the very corner of the table where Dee was seated. As I approached, a woman in her fifties, wearing a quilted red-and-white vest, came over from the refreshments table. "Excuse me, Matteo," she said in a breathless voice. When he turned to look at who was calling him, she waved her phone at him. "May I?"

"Sure." He slid around to the end of the table and held out his arm so she could snuggle in beside him.

She held her phone out, took several selfies, and checked to make sure the images were acceptable before saying, "Thank you. I told my Facebook friends that I'd met you at another quilting event, but they kept saying that without a picture, it didn't happen. Now I've got the proof."

When had arts reporters become such celebrities that people would ask to take pictures with them? Even male fashion models weren't widely known by name, so why would this woman have been bragging about meeting him to her Facebook friends? Or was it just because he was an incredibly good-looking man, even when he wasn't painstakingly cleaned up, dressed and polished for the camera?

Actually, now that I thought about it, I could have sworn that Matt had grown even better looking since I last saw him three months ago. Absence truly did make the heart grow fonder.

The selfie-taker wandered off happily, and Matt turned back to face me and Dee. "Keely, it's good to finally see you again."

For a moment, I was distracted by the perfect planes of his face and the look in his dark eyes that suggested seeing me again had made his day. Then I remembered the last three months of silence from him. He had my number, and he knew where I lived. If he'd wanted to see me that badly, there hadn't been anything to stop him. I'd believed he was interested in me before, and I'd been wrong. I wasn't going to make that mistake again. This time, I knew there was nothing personal in his attention to me, any more than there had been in his gracious willingness to be in the woman's selfies. His nice-guy persona was just part of his skills as a reporter.

"Nice to see you too," I said politely, but without any warmth. Forewarned was forearmed, and I'd made a whole career out of being prepared to resist any sort of emotional manipulation during negotiations. The only thing I didn't understand was why Matt was even bothering to work his magic on me today. Back in August, he'd needed my help to get the scoop on who had killed Randall Tremain, but there was nothing truly newsworthy about today's event. "You must be here to write about the start of a new holiday tradition at the museum."

"Among other things." He swung one leg back and forth a few inches, drawing my attention to the ridiculous pockets on his thigh and the strong muscles beneath the cotton fabric. "Have they converted you yet?"

"To quilting?" I tossed the ironed rows onto the table next to Dee's sewing machine. "No. I'm only qualified to fetch and carry. I can't even iron properly, apparently. What about you? When are you going to take up quilting?"

"I can sew already. I'm planning to make a couple of the ornaments today. I just wanted to say hi to my favorite quilters first."

Dee's machine stopped. "If you sign the ornaments you make, I bet Gil could auction them off for a fortune after the tree comes down."

He shook his head ever so slightly at Dee and then looked at me again. "Hey, I just remembered. You still owe me a tour of the bank vault in your home. I'll call you next week to set it up."

I knew he didn't mean it, and still I almost believed he'd call this time.

Before I could respond, I was distracted by a commotion over near the refreshments table. Jayne Connors's shrill voice had gotten even louder and harder to ignore. She was shrieking at poor Trudy Kline, making me regret not paying more attention to who had distracted Jayne from lecturing me. Of all the people in the room, Trudy was the least capable of standing up for herself.

Despite Jayne's angry, piercing tone, I only caught about half of the words, something about washing hands thoroughly before returning to the cutting table after eating and the damage that a little bit of grease or chocolate could do to fabric.

Meg McLaughlin came in from yet another trip to the ladies' room just in time to intervene. Living up to her cuddly Mrs. Claus appearance, Meg drew her protégée out into the hallway to cool down, leaving the red-faced Trudy to be surrounded and reassured by other members of the quilt guild. The women seemed to know what would cheer her up, which mostly consisted of talking about her charm bracelet, judging from the way they bent over it and admired it. Trudy preened under their attention, like a recently engaged woman showing off an engagement ring.

Dee sighed. "We have to do something about Jayne. Emma, please make sure to add it to the agenda for our next board meeting. It can go under old business."

"Ancient business." Emma seemed to realize Matt and I didn't know what they were talking about, and she explained. "This isn't the first time she's caused a scene at a guild event. She's a total control freak, and she gets confrontational when things don't go according to her plan. Shouting is only the first stage. She's been known to throw things if she doesn't feel she's being listened to. She stabbed a table with a pair of scissors once when we were working on a quilt for a fundraiser. Fortunately, it wasn't one of Sunny's heavy-duty scissors, or it would have caused a lot more damage."

"Why haven't you banned Jayne from membership if she's that much trouble?"

"We may have to," Dee said. "I'd rather convince her to see a therapist or something. She's really an extraordinary needlewoman, and her quilts are popular at our shows. She won the Best of Show ribbon about five years ago, and she probably deserved it every year since. The quilts are judged without names attached, but I think the judges recognized her style and let their personal dislike sway their votes. They couldn't deny her a blue ribbon, because her quilts are stunning, but they could pass her over for the very top award."

"Still," I said, "it sounds like she could be dangerous. To the guild's property and maybe even to other members."

"It's complicated," Emma said. "It's not just that she's a really good quilter, but she's also close with Meg McLaughlin, and no one's sure how Meg would react if we kicked her friend out of the guild. Meg's the most famous quilter ever to come from Danger Cove, and she teaches all around the world. She lives in Seattle now, but she was originally from here, and she's good about remembering where she came from. She turns down other events if they conflict with our show so she can be here. Her presence at our show brings in a lot of paying visitors who wouldn't come otherwise. Plus, she does one workshop a year for the guild without charge. That's why she's here today and why we have so many volunteers. Your appraisals brought in people too, and some of our guild members would have come just to help out the museum, but most are only here so they can meet Meg and learn from her."

Trudy had recovered her composure and was over at the fabric-cutting table near the entrance, laughing with a couple of other guild members. They'd hastily braided a simple red-and-white crown out of some fabric strips too narrow to use and bestowed it on her, dubbing her a quilting princess for the day.

Jayne and Meg hadn't returned, and I hoped that Meg had been able to convince Jayne that she'd helped more than enough for the day and should go home.

I still needed to find Gil and give her the papers for the quilt registry. She must have left again while I'd been learning about ironing. She definitely wasn't here now, and if she'd been here when the incident between Jayne and Trudy started, Gil would have kept it from escalating to an uncomfortable situation.

I couldn't go home until I'd handed off the paperwork, but if I didn't get away from Dee and Emma right now, I was going to get roped into operating one of the dangerous weapons that masqueraded as harmless sewing machines. "I'm starved. I think I'll go see if there's anything left at the refreshment table."

"I'll come with you." Matt straightened and ambled across the room with me.

"Stefan was looking for you a few minutes ago. Did he catch you?"

Matt shook his head. "I haven't seen him yet."

I turned to look at the ironing station where I'd seen Stefan earlier, but he still hadn't returned. "He can't have gone far. I doubt he'd leave before he got the chance to introduce you to his girlfriend. They were hoping you'd interview her about her quilt shop's contributions to today's event."

"What did you think of Sunny? Is she as perfect as Stefan says?"

"Sunny seems to be everything that Stefan has ever claimed about her, even the traits that seemed too good to be true." I surveyed the remnants of the refreshments on the conference table. There wasn't even a crumb large enough to tempt a night-before Christmas mouse to stir. "She's obviously devoted to him, and she's lovely, smart, and strong minded."

"I suppose that means that now both of them will be picking on me for my failure to live up to their expectations?"

"From what I've seen, Sunny might think that you're a disappointment, but unlike Stefan, she knows better than to say it out loud."

"Where is she?" Matt said. "I do want to meet her and talk about her shop, but I can't stay for long today."

"A reporter's work is never done?"

"That too," Matt said. "But I've got a meeting with some business associates at the Smugglers' Tavern this afternoon."

Business associates, not fellow reporters. That was odd. None of my business, and I wasn't going to ask.

"Sunny had to go get some supplies at her quilt shop," I said. "She should be back any minute now though. It shouldn't take much more than half an hour to pop over there, get what she needs, and drive back here. It's been at least that long since she left. In fact, that's probably why Stefan isn't here right now. He probably went outside to help her unload her car."

"I'll give them another half hour, just in case she got tied up with an emergency at the shop," Matt said. "It'll give me a chance to make an ornament or two, but then I really need to leave. I can meet Sunny at her shop some other time."

I was lifting the lid on the slow cooker to see if there was any mulled cider left, when screams from outside startled me into dropping it back in place. The room's windows were above eye level, so we couldn't see outside, but even if we could have, the sounds seemed to be coming from the direction of the back parking lot. Someone must have left the back door propped open so the quilters would have easy access to the upstairs boardroom without trekking through the rest of the museum.

Matt and I looked at each other for a moment, and I assumed that, like me, he was remembering the last time we'd been together and heard a woman screaming—the day Randall Tremain's body had been found by his business partner. Just like then, Matt came to his senses before I did and raced out of the boardroom and down the back stairs with me at his heels.

We followed the screams out through the museum's employee-only back door, which had indeed been propped open for today's event. There was a loading dock about halfway down the back of the building, and then beyond it a fenced-in area jutted out into the parking lot to contain the museum's Dumpsters. Sunny Kunik was at the far corner of the fencing, with her back to me and Matt, still screaming hysterically.

It wasn't obvious what the problem was until we stumbled to a stop beside her. There, on the ground just past the trash enclosure, was the bloody and apparently lifeless body of Alan Miller.