Cathedral Windows (2 page)

Chapter 2

“Do you have five yards of this?”

I looked up at the woman in the pink felt hat with a butterfly embellishment, set against a bright teal scarf. On her purple coat she wore a large button declaring, “I'm a stripper and proud of it.” Anywhere else she'd look odd, but in my grandmother's quilt shop, Someday Quilts, she fit right in.

All around her were women wearing bright hats and scarves, sewn vests, and large buttons. It was the Hudson Valley's annual shop hop, a time of year when ten shops in a thirty-mile radius got together to promote quilting and have a little preholiday fun. Shoppers got a stamp at each quilt shop they went to over the weekend, and those who went to all ten received a free pattern and a chance to win a Bernina sewing machine.

The scarves and hats and vests were the quilter's equivalent of name tags. Members of Internet quilt groups wore outrageous items to identify themselves to other members, as they had not yet met in person. Someday Quilts had gotten into the spirit as well. We offered a free bundle of twenty strips of fabric to anyone who bought a book by Eleanor Burns, the first lady of strip quilting, or who wore a button declaring her fanhood of this popular grand dame of quilting. So for anyone who knew quilting, the woman looking for five yards was obviously a member of at least two Internet quilt groups, and an Eleanor Burns fan. And she was also out of luck.

“We only have what's left on the bolt,” I told her, “and I think it's about three yards.”

“Well, I'll take it anyway,” she said. “And all of this.” She piled another five bolts of fabric onto the twenty already on the table. “A half yard each.”

It was busy, it was even a little stressful on days like today, but working at a quilt shop was always fun. The colors, the fabrics, and mainly the people always put me in a good mood. I was halfway through art school and had become a decent and passionate quilter. Even when I wasn't making something myself, being around quilters inspired me. It made me feel a part, even if a small part, of the creative process.

As I cut I noticed a short, blond woman enter the shop. She was about fifty, and she would have been pretty if she weren't so nervous looking. I watched her walk toward the back of the shop, where we had patterns and books, and scan the racks without really looking at anything. She opened her brown wool coat and glanced around. Looking for help, I guessed.

Eleanor was restocking the shelves. When I caught her eye, I nodded toward the blond woman and watched as Eleanor went back to her. I couldn't hear the exchange above the loud chatter of excited shop hoppers, but I could see Eleanor's face, kind but firm, as she spoke to the woman. It looked as if everything was under control, and I turned back to the stack of bolts still needing to be cut. But just as I turned my eye, the blond woman burst into tears, pulled away from Eleanor, and left the shop. Eleanor's expression gave me no clues, just a bland smile before she turned to another customer. My grandmother would have made an excellent professional poker player.

* * *

It took another three hours for us to close the doors to the last “strippers,” leaving Eleanor and me alone in the quiet mess of the shop. As I restocked the shelves, I thought about the woman from earlier, but before I had the chance to ask, Eleanor rolled her eyes and sighed.

“Julie Davis,” she said. “She teaches kindergarten over at the school.”

“Julie Davis,” I repeated. “Is she married to Bill Davis?”

Eleanor nodded. “She was having a rough day.”

“Did it have to do with Charlie? Bill was upset with Charlie today at the school. I couldn't hear why, but he went into the classroom looking for a fight.”

Eleanor shrugged. “Bill is a man with a strong opinion on everything. He probably doesn't like Charlie changing things at the school.”

“Is Charlie changing things?”

“Charlie is trying to get extra tutoring for one of the students on Bill's baseball team. Bill's best player, as a matter of fact. Charlie even told the boy's parents that maybe it would be better if he was off the team until his grades improved,” she said. “Charlie played baseball from when he was a kid, so he knows better than anyone what kind of commitment it is, especially with someone as exacting as Bill Davis coaching. I think Charlie had some ideas on that as well.” She shrugged. “For someone like Bill Davis, it could feel like he's being pushed out. At his age, and with his personality, he doesn't have a lot of options if he lost his job.”

“Is that why his wife burst into tears?” I knew the answer had to be something more complicated, but it was the best way to find the truth. Eleanor had a very strict rule against mindless gossip. She did, however, answer direct questions, even questions that veered toward gossip. It was a fine line sometimes, but I didn't mind walking it if she didn't.

But this time I was on the tightrope alone. Eleanor's bland smile was back. “Poor woman just needed a safe place to cry,” she said. “And what's a better place, where you're more sure to be surrounded by understanding women, than a quilt shop?”

With that, she opened the cash register and began to count the day's take.

Chapter 3

We had beef stew with homemade bread and ginger cake for dessert. We were all bursting at the seams. My boyfriend, Jesse Dewalt, and Oliver White, my grandmother's fiancé, managed second helpings of dessert while I just sat and digested the heavy meal. Barney, my grandmother's twelve-year-old golden retriever, sat at my feet with the hope of a stray piece of meat finding its way to him. When Eleanor wasn't looking, that's exactly what happened.

Eleanor wasn't just my boss and my grandmother, she was my housemate. I now occupied what had been my mother's childhood bedroom in my grandmother's rambling Victorian house on the edge of town.

“This is different from last year's gingerbread,” I said.

“I'm trying out the ginger recipe for the Christmas party,” Eleanor explained, “though I don't know if I like it.”

Jesse, who had a mouthful of the cake, gave it a thumbs-up, but Eleanor didn't seem pleased with the review. In fact, all evening she hadn't been pleased with anything. Not angry, not even sad, just quiet with an undercurrent of annoyed. She'd been that way since earlier in the day and Julie Davis's mysterious crying jag.

Both men tried to engage Eleanor in conversation, got nowhere, and repeatedly gave me curious looks during dinner, but I had nothing to offer other than a shrug. By dessert they'd given up. Eleanor had promised to see if she could get a hint from Jesse of what he'd like for Christmas. I'd started a quilt but didn't like it, painted a picture that didn't seem special enough, and had gone as far as Peekskill to shop, and had still come up with nothing. But Eleanor seemed to have forgotten her promise, unless I intended to give Jesse more of her gingerbread cake.

“Things have been quiet lately?” Oliver directed the question at Jesse, who was resting his arm around me.

“Very,” Jesse told him. “All we had were four parking tickets for the entire month of November, and so far in December we've had nothing. Not one single call to the station.” Jesse was the chief of police in town, and while it might seem like a quiet job, Archers Rest had more than it needed of serious crimes over the past year. I wasn't sure if Jesse was pleased or bored now that things had calmed down.

“It must give you plenty of time to keep the place organized.”

“It's been organized, and reorganized. We've rearranged the wanted board a dozen times, polished the floors, even purged old cases from the file room. I think it's time to get the officers a hobby.”

“You can always take up quilting,” I said.

He laughed. “If you have a class that starts with how to thread a needle, count me in.”

Just as he finished talking, Jesse's phone rang. His mother was watching Allie, Jesse's six-year-old daughter with his late wife. But the call wasn't about Allie. Jesse's quiet, serious tones made that much clear.

“I'll be there in five,” he said. As he hung up, he turned to us. “I guess we're about to get busy again. There's been a fire at Charlie Lofton's house. No idea if it's bad, but I should get there.”

“We'll follow you in my car,” Eleanor said.

Jesse shook his head. “It's not necessary. It's too cold to stand around outside watching a fire.”

“We can't just sit here,” I said. I can never just sit when there's trouble. I wanted to help, and I knew my grandmother felt the same way.

We had our coats on and were out the door before Jesse could object.

* * *

A light snow was falling, the first in what had been an unusually dry fall and winter. But even this snow was the kind that wouldn't stick to the grass and certainly wouldn't help put out flames. But it did make the scene somehow surreal. While Jesse and the rest of the police force kept order, Charlie's neighbors stood around bundled in winter coats, huddled together. The houses near Charlie's were lit up with colored lights and Santas on rooftops. If I looked toward the crowd with that as my backdrop, the neighbors seemed as if they might start caroling or passing around cider. But instead they stood watching the flames.

Bill and Julie Davis were in the crowd, along with several of the members of the shop's quilt group, the owner of Moran's Bar, and even Jacob Schultz, holding tightly to his father's hand. In fact, several members of the third grade class were there. Emily Long was crying, but the rest of the crowd stood silently.

The Morristown Fire Department was working fast, but more and more of the old house was giving itself up to the flames. Soon there wouldn't be anything left.

“Where's Charlie?” I asked Eleanor.

We looked around. For several minutes there was no sign of him, but eventually his height gave him away. Across the street and several houses down, a tall man stood alone watching the house burn. I started to walk toward him, but when he saw me, Charlie turned and walked the other way, taking long strides so it would be impossible for me to catch up.

Chapter 4

I got into the shop early the next day and sewed the third graders' nine-patch units into a quilt, adding sashing to break up the squares and make the quilt top larger. Natalie, the shop's other employee, had offered to longarm quilt all of the students' tops, so I left them on the cutting table with a note and headed to the school, and the fourth grade.

Bill Davis barely smiled at me, but he did introduce me to the class and stay at his desk while I explained how to make a nine-patch. I had two hours with the students. The fifth grade was this afternoon and then I would be done. The junior high was raising money by making handmade cards, and the high school was offering a “rent a kid” program to seniors looking for computer tutoring and help around the house. I loved that everyone in Archers Rest was pitching in to raise money for the fire department, an urgent need that had become unfortunately real to us in the past twelve hours.

“How's Charlie?” I asked Bill, once the kids were busy sewing their squares.

“Haven't seen him.”

“He hasn't been at school?”

“I don't know.”

“Where's he staying?”

Bill looked up at me and sighed heavily, as if I'd asked for a kidney instead of some information. “How would I know?”

I could have left it there, and probably should have, but I didn't. “How's your wife? Is she feeling any better?”

Bill squinted, trying to get a better look at me. “She isn't sick.”

“I know that.”

“So why did you ask . . .”

“Yesterday at the quilt shop . . .”

“What happened?” His voice moved toward a shout and he sat up in his chair, looking about to leap out at me. But as he moved, a student held up a mangled-looking square and I went to the rescue, saving myself from whatever the easily angered Bill had in store.

* * *

That afternoon I brought the nine-patch units from the two classes back to the shop, and sewed them into quilt tops between turns at the cutting table and cash register. The shop hop was still in full swing, and between the shoppers, the Christmas decorations, the extra bolts of fabric we'd bought, and the students' quilts, there was barely room to move about. Luckily, there was still room for conversation.

“No one has seen him since last night,” I heard Natalie telling her mom, Susanne, an avid art quilter.

“Poor thing. I heard the whole back of the house is destroyed. The kitchen, Charlie's bedroom . . . ,” Susanne said.

“And what didn't get burned got soaked with water from the fire department.”

I moved to join my friends. “Where could he be?”

They didn't have an answer. In fact, as the day turned to evening, and locals and out-of-towners filtered in and out of the shop, no one had an answer. But everyone had a theory.

“The house is eighty years old,” said one person, “The wiring on a place like that can't handle the load of TVs and computers.”

“We've had such a cold winter,” someone else said. “If he put some logs in the fireplace and didn't open the flue . . .”

“Almost two years in Afghanistan, then his mother dies, and now this. It's more than any one person should have to handle,” said a third. And on that, everyone agreed.

“There's wasn't a body in the fire, was there?” Natalie asked me. “I didn't even think of that . . .”

“No body.”

“Did Jesse tell you?”

“He didn't have to.” I told her how I'd seen Charlie walk away the night before without a word to anyone.

“But he must have spoken to Jesse,” Natalie said. “Given a statement about how it started. Jesse must know something.”

She was right. Enough with theories and gossip; I had a way to find out the truth.