Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter (18 page)

Then she spotted Krolich’s business card and quickly scooped it up and rose before the officers noticed her distress. “Here’s his card,” she said, handing it to the first officer.

He glanced at it before tucking it into a pocket. “I assume that as the owner Mr. Krolich has a key to the building?”

“I suppose he must,” said Bonnie. “Why?”

“There’s no sign of forced entry,” said the second officer. “It must have been an inside job, if you’re sure you locked the door.”

“I’m sure, but I really don’t think Gregory Krolich did this.”

The officers nodded noncommittally and resumed their work.

Krolich would likely have access to a key. So would Michael, but not Craig. Michael could have taken Diane’s key from her purse, while Craig had not been within blocks of Bonnie’s key for weeks.

Another officer arrived shortly afterward and began dusting for fingerprints and photographing different areas of the store. The officers’ questions shifted from points of entry and the motives of her enemies to Bonnie herself, and how she felt about her shop. Bonnie supposed they were trying to put her at ease, but explaining that she and her husband were estranged and admitting that Grandma’s Attic was not in the best fiscal health only made her more uncomfortable. Just when she was considering asking them to allow her to sit down for a moment, alone, Summer burst in. The third officer tried to prevent her from entering, but Bonnie was so glad to see her she almost could not tell her what had happened. She clung to her young friend and, finally, let her tears fall when she admitted that Sylvia’s blocks were missing. Why would Michael have done that, when most kids would assume losing the expensive sewing machines would hurt her most deeply? How would Michael have known to do that?

It was midafternoon before the officers said she could straighten up the areas they had already searched and photographed. As soon as they departed, Bonnie and Summer got to work. They had made little progress by the time Gwen arrived several hours later. Since Summer had a tender spot in her heart for Michael, Bonnie waited until she was out of hearing to confide her suspicions to Gwen. At first Gwen denied the possibility that the Michael they had known since childhood could have done such a terrible thing, but soon doubt appeared in her eyes.

Bonnie had no doubts.

A
gnes’s New Year’s resolution was to update her will and get her affairs in order, so after the traditional New Year’s Day feast of honey-glazed ham with all the trimmings, she took her two daughters aside and told them if they especially wanted any of her belongings, they should let her know so she could set them aside.

She was not surprised when both of her girls recoiled. “Mom, that’s morbid,” said Stacy, her eldest. “That’s not something you need to worry about yet.”

Laura, as always, suspected she had not been told the entire story. “Are you ill?”

Agnes laughed. “Of course not. I’m perfectly healthy, or so my doctor tells me. But I’ll be seventy-four in two months, and no one lives forever. I’d like to know things are settled so there won’t be any arguments after I’m gone.”

“You aren’t going anywhere,” Stacy assured her, patting her on the arm and guiding her to a seat on the sofa. “Is something else bothering you?”

Agnes sighed. She should have anticipated this, although she wished her daughters would show more respect for her intelligence. She was well aware she would not be the first immortal woman in the history of the species, but the gentle, soothing tones in her daughters’ voices suggested they thought they could convince her otherwise. “If there’s a certain quilt you would like, for example, or a piece of furniture, let me know so I can put it in writing. Soon,” she added, and hid a smile when they exchanged a look of dismay at the implied urgency. They deserved to be needled a bit for patronizing her.

“Just divide up everything fifty-fifty,” said Laura. “We won’t argue over anything.”

“Of course not,” Stacy chimed in. “For goodness’ sake, Mom, how could we care about
things
when we’ve lost you?”

Laura nodded, so Agnes merely smiled, patted their hands, and suggested they return to the family room where her sons-in-law and grandchildren were watching football on television. Even as youngsters Stacy and Laura had indeed gotten along much better than the average pair of sisters, but Agnes had witnessed the sad legacy of friends whose children’s amicable relationships had fractured into bitter animosity over the ownership of an antique armoire or a set of books worth only sentimental value. She did not want to think of that happening to her girls, nor did she want to stipulate that they sell everything and divide the cash. After seeing what Sylvia had gone through to find her mother’s heirloom quilts Claudia had sold off, Agnes was determined to spare her daughters that ordeal.

The girls said nothing of her proposal for the rest of their visit, so two days after they departed, when their absence and the enduring winter made the house seem especially lonely and quiet, Agnes sorted through her collection of quilts with a pad of paper, a pen, and a box of new safety pins by her side. She admired the handiwork of decades, reminiscing about the creation of each quilt and mulling over who might appreciate it best. Each daughter would receive one of her two queen-size Baltimore Album quilts—Stacy the one in pastels and Laura the one in brighter hues. Sarah, who loved samplers, would adore the floral appliqué wall hanging, and the Pinwheel lap quilt simply had to go to Summer, who had encouraged Agnes to piece it from Summer’s own favorite vivid Amish solids. Come to think of it, she ought to put Summer’s name on the leftover fabric, too, which had sat untouched in her fabric stash since she had completed the quilt five years before.

As for Sylvia—Agnes chuckled as she wrote Sylvia’s name on a piece of paper and carefully pinned it to a cheerful scrap Double Wedding Ring quilt. Surely Sylvia would remember Agnes’s first quilting lessons, when Agnes, who knew nothing of sewing except needlepoint, decided to learn to quilt in order to pass the time while their men were in the service. Sylvia suggested Agnes choose a simple pattern or a sampler as her first project. Then Claudia drew her aside and told her she would master the skills more quickly and thoroughly if she chose a more challenging pattern. Agnes unwisely took her advice, for the bias edges and curved seams of the Double Wedding Ring proved too difficult for her inexpert stitches, and the resulting half-ring buckled in the middle and gapped in the seams. She never finished that quilt—the news of the men’s deaths and Sylvia’s subsequent departure brought the quilting lessons to an abrupt end—but twenty years later she had attempted the pattern again. Practice and a more knowing eye for color and contrast enabled her to create a lovely, comforting reminder of how far she had come since leaving Elm Creek Manor to remarry. If Sylvia inherited that quilt, she would be clever enough to understand the symbolism and generous enough to forgive Agnes one parting joke.

For each quilt and each friend or relation, Agnes affixed an identifying tag and added the information to her list. She intended to type up the list, sign it and date it, and keep it with her will in the fireproof box beneath the bed in Stacy’s old room. After going through the quilts, she would consider the furniture and other belongings. She had already decided what to do with the contents of her sewing room. Since neither of her daughters quilted, she would bequeath her fabric stash, pattern books, and all her tools to Elm Creek Quilt Camp. They would surely find a good use for them.

Agnes was nearly finished when the phone rang. She climbed to her feet, shook the stiffness from her legs, and picked up in her bedroom. “Hello?” she said, gingerly lowering herself onto the edge of the bed. She should have known better than to sit on the floor for so long.

“Grandma?”

“Why, hello, Zachary,” she said. “This is Zach, right, not Norman?” His voice sounded so much like his father’s that it was difficult to tell.

Zach laughed. “Yeah, it’s me.”

“What a lovely surprise. How are you? Are you back at school already?”

“I moved back into the dorm this morning. Classes don’t start until Monday,” her grandson said. “Grandma, the reason I’m calling is that—well, my mom and dad were talking in the car on our way home from your house last week.”

Agnes could guess the topic of discussion, but she said, “Talking about what, honey?”

“About your will. Mom said you asked her and Aunt Stacy what they wanted to inherit, you know, if there was something in particular they wanted.”

“I imagine your mother didn’t discuss this calmly.”

“You know Mom. She was kind of upset, but Dad said it was thoughtful of you to spare them a tough job at what would obviously be a stressful time.”

Good old Norman. “What do you and your sister think?”

“Rebecca’s like Mom. She thinks if you pretend something can’t happen to you, it won’t. She made Mom and Dad stop talking about it.”

“And you?”

“I didn’t like talking about it, either. I don’t want to think about you dying, Grandma. I don’t want you to ever die.”

“I appreciate that, honey.”

“But since you asked—” He paused. “I know you just asked Mom and Aunt Stacy, not the kids, but”

Gently, Agnes asked, “Is there something special you would like?”

“You know that quilt with the different colored triangles and all the black?”

“Of course,” said Agnes, surprised. She was not aware he had ever given the quilt a second glance. “Would you like it?”

“Yes, please. And—your journals.”

“My what?”

“Your journals. You know, the ones you started keeping during World War II.”

Agnes had to think a moment before she understood. Her notebooks. She had begun the first when Richard went off to war to note news from home to include in her letters. After he was killed, she continued out of habit for nearly ten years, filling fifteen notebooks with reminders to herself, appointments, to-do lists, and the like. She wondered when Zach had learned of them, then vaguely remembered an occasion several years before when Laura was filling out a medical form and needed to know if she had ever had a particular illness. Agnes had consulted her notebooks and determined that Laura had been vaccinated at age eight.

“Why would you want those old things?” asked Agnes. “They’re not very interesting, just a lot of lists, mostly. They don’t read like a story, even a dull one.”

“I don’t care. They’re an important record of our family history.”

Agnes had to laugh. Her old grocery lists and hairdresser’s appointments, family history? “There aren’t any fascinating family stories in those old notebooks, Zach. I should have thrown them away a long time ago.”

“That’s exactly what you shouldn’t do, and that’s why I want you to set them aside for me. Someone might throw them away not knowing what they are. You’re wrong to think they’re trivial or worthless. They’re irreplaceable and important, and that’s the truth, even if you don’t think so.”

“Why, if they’re that important to you, they’re yours, of course,” said Agnes, surprised.

He thanked her, and they talked of other, more pleasant matters. After they hung up, Agnes rummaged in the kitchen cabinet until she found a large padded envelope. She located her old notebooks under her sweaters in the bottom drawer of her bureau, frowned ruefully at their battered state, and slipped them into the padded envelope with a shrug. She still couldn’t see why Zach wanted them so badly. Likely he would read the first few pages and wonder the same thing. Agnes ought to save him the trouble of discarding them by taking care of the job herself, but she couldn’t now, not after promising to save them.

She wrote his name on the outside of the envelope and added her notebooks to the list on the pad. Then she took Summer’s name from the Pinwheel quilt and pinned Zach’s in its place, marking the change on the list. She would have to find something else for Summer to supplement the leftover Amish solids from her fabric stash. Summer would understand. Friends were dear, but grandchildren came first.

The invitation to participate in Sylvia’s bridal quilt had arrived in the meantime, but Agnes already knew the requirements and had not bothered to read the letter thoroughly. When she had finished sorting out the future ownership of her quilts and a few other special belongings, she filed the list and decided to turn her attention to her quilt block. This time she read the letter over carefully, and tsked when she read that Diane had said Sylvia deserved to go without a wedding quilt since the surprise wedding on Christmas Eve had thwarted her friends’ plans for an elaborate June affair. Agnes could imagine Diane thinking that, briefly, but not blurting it out where someone might overhear. Despite her sometimes abrasive manner, Diane cared for her friends too much to wish them any disappointment. If she had gone a bit overboard in planning the couple’s wedding, it was only from the desire to please them and spare them the trouble.

It was too late to ask Sarah to change the letter, so Agnes could only hope she and Summer had been wise enough not to send Diane a copy, and not only because she might be hurt. They could not afford to discourage anyone from participating, especially one of their own. While Sylvia had many friends and admirers around the world, 140 blocks were a great many to collect in such a short period. Even if Sylvia and Andrew had not surprised them with an early wedding and had married in June, as the Elm Creek Quilters had anticipated, they still should have begun the quilt much earlier, ideally as soon as the couple announced their engagement. Agnes blamed the demise of their weekly quilting bees for the delay. Their business meetings were so full of details for Elm Creek Quilt Camp that the friends rarely had the opportunity to chat just about quilting. Finding such a time when everyone but Sylvia was present was even more difficult, since Sylvia never missed a meeting unless she and Andrew were traveling. Agnes considered the quilt camp a great adventure and was thrilled to be a part of it, but she missed some aspects of the old days.

“So many blocks,” said Agnes with a sigh as she sorted through her fabric stash for hues suiting those described in the guidelines. The other Elm Creek Quilters had gladly accepted her offer when she had volunteered to assemble the blocks into a quilt top, since they knew the task meant much more than simply stitching all 140 blocks together. To avoid a cluttered or chaotic quilt, she might need to separate the blocks with strips of fabric called sashing. If not enough blocks arrived, she would need to employ more elaborate tricks, such as setting the blocks on point or alternating them with squares of solid fabric. Either way, she ought to make a few extra blocks just in case. If, as Summer had predicted, they received enough blocks or more than they needed, she would simply save her extras for another project.

Since she could not think of one single block that represented all that Sylvia meant to her, she decided instead to make blocks reminiscent of their shared history. She began with a Bachelor’s Puzzle block. How shocked Sylvia would be to learn that Agnes had known about the nickname almost from the time the Bergstrom sisters had bestowed it upon her! Long ago, Agnes and Richard had been unable to send word when Agnes decided on the spur of the moment to accompany him home from school in Philadelphia for the Christmas holidays, and her presence—and Richard’s obvious affection for her—had confounded the sisters. Sylvia, especially, was jealous that someone had stolen away her beloved baby brother’s attention, and decided to find nothing redeemable in her rival. She saw Agnes as a flighty, spoiled, pampered princess, and nothing Agnes said or did could persuade her otherwise. It was a puzzle, Sylvia said, what Richard saw in her.