Lost and Fondue (24 page)

To say the least. I didn’t tell him about the missing bricks.

All I said was, “I’m on it.”

Once the girls were tucked into their seat belts, I offered them a choice of activities—going for a cup of cocoa at the diner or spending an hour at Sew Inspired Quilt Shoppe. The rain hadn’t started, but a downpour was supposed to hit any time now, so we needed to do something indoors. Both applauded the second option. About a month ago, I’d bought each of them child-friendly quilting packages that included precut patches, buttons, and thread. They stowed them in a cubby at the shop.

Inside Sew Inspired Quilt Shoppe, Freckles had created an atmosphere of fun and color and whimsy. Beanbag chairs, which were cozy places to knit, cluttered the multicolored carpeted floor. Sewing stations were set in each of the four corners for lessons or personal projects. Beautiful handmade quilts adorned the walls, each with a story to tell about the Providence area. Three were standouts—the first about the path to Ohio’s statehood featuring the bicentennial wagon train, the second honoring the Sternwheel Festival of riverboats along the Ohio River, and the third depicting Amish farmers plowing in the midst of a blizzard. Every time I gazed at the beautiful pieces of art, tears welled in my eyes. Ohio’s history was so beautiful and very much a part of my soul.

“Hey, Charlotte.” Freckles sat on a stool by the store register, her hands folded beneath her very pregnant belly. Behind her were countless rows of fabrics, buttons, and thread, as well as a chalkboard filled with the week’s activities—sewing, quilting, and crocheting classes. Beginner, intermediate, and advanced. I had never made it past the beginner level for knitting. I could purl one, knit two, and that was about it. However, I could sew. I would never forget my first sewing project—a wraparound denim skirt. At the time, Freckles’s mother, now resting peacefully in Kindred Cemetery, had been our Brownie troop leader. She patiently instructed each of us how to use a sewing machine.
Through the rabbit hutch, around the big oak tree, and up the rabbit hole,
she’d say as she advised us how to thread the needle.

Amy and Clair made a beeline for the book rack. Freckles, a clever saleswoman, stocked the Crafty Sleuths book kits that the girls enjoyed.

“Amy! Clair!” Freckles’s twelve-year-old sprite of a daughter, Frenchie, whose christened name was Marie Curie, bounded down a ladder with a bolt of fabric tucked beneath her arm. She jumped to the carpet with a thud. Her red pigtails bounced on her back. Gold filigree threads and what looked like fairy dust poofed up around the hem of her corduroy overalls. I winced as I realized how difficult it must be to keep a fabric shop dust-free. “Come in the back.” Frenchie set down the fabric and waved a hand. “I want to show you my latest creation.” Frenchie, like her namesake, had gravitated to scientific experimentation at an early age. To feed her daughter’s insatiable curiosity, Freckles had set up a science lab in the rear of the store.

“Is it okay, Aunt Charlotte?” Clair asked.

“Have fun.”

“No Bunsen burners,” Freckles shouted. “Not without your dad or me in the room.”

As the girls disappeared through the velvet drapes, the front door to the shop opened. Sylvie paused in the doorway. A gust of icy air preceded her into the place.

How appropriate. She sent chills down my spine. So much for no sightings.

“Where are my babies?” Sylvie waggled her arm. The dozen or more silver bangles she wore clanked like cymbals. “I want them now.”

I pressed my lips together to prevent croaks of disgust from flying out.

“You give them to me now,” she demanded.

Sadly, my lip-pressing didn’t work. “No way!” I said as I marched toward her. “I’ll do no such thing, and you’ll stop ordering Matthew and me around.”

Intent on pushing her out of the shop, I thrust an arm at her. But she was equally determined to stay. She flailed. Hard. Her bangles struck my skin and stung like a rattler’s tail, but I wouldn’t be deterred. I gripped her wrist and twisted her arm behind her. She yelped in pain.

Let’s hear it for the one self-defense move that I’d mastered.

“Sit,” I said.

Flummoxed, she fell backward, landing in a beanbag chair by the front window. The beanbag groaned beneath her weight and looked ready to swallow her whole. Sylvie scrambled to get back on her feet, but I knelt down and pinned her.

“Why did you come to town, Sylvie? The truth.”

“To see my girls. I missed them.”

“The truth,” I hissed, fed up with her lies.

“That is the—”

“Did you know Harker Fontanne?”

“What?” Her face went as ice-white as her hair. “Are you insinuating that I killed him?” she sputtered. “No, I most certainly did not know him.”

Freckles, who had left the safety of her position behind the register, drew near. She stroked her belly, as if to soothe the baby, and glowered at Sylvie with smoldering intensity.

“Freckles, I’m so sorry,” I said. “I’ll take my inquiry outside.”

“Not on your life. Conflict is good. It stimulates the adrenal glands. Babies like that.”

“Really?” I’d always heard babies liked calm environments.

“It’s a new theory,” Freckles said.

One she’d probably made up on the spot.

“Go on,” she said.

I refocused on Sylvie, who was wiping mascara from underneath her overly made-up eyes. “Why were you at the winery yesterday?”

“How do you know she was at the winery?” Freckles said.

“Because I was there, too.”

Freckles gaped at me. “What were you doing there?”

I didn’t answer. I kept my gaze on my ex-sister-in-law. “Sylvie, answer me.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” Sylvie jutted her chin, but lying in the beanbag chair diminished the effect.

“Jordan followed you from town. He saw you go inside. You ran out when I was running up the cellar stairs.”

“What were you doing in the cellar?” Freckles asked, breathless with curiosity.

I gave a shake of my head, a tacit
not now
. She waved for me to continue.

“Sylvie, you’re not here because you want the girls back,” I said.

“I do so.”

“You don’t. Admit it. You’re a treasure hunter.”

Sylvie sniffed and tried to sit up straighter, but the beanbag didn’t provide the essential structure. She slumped and started to cry. Freckles scurried to the front counter, plucked a tissue from a box, and raced back to Sylvie with it. Sylvie blew her nose.

“Mum!” Clair burst through the velvet drapes. She threw herself into the beanbag and cuddled with her mother. “Amy, Mum’s here!” she cried.

Amy darted out. She skidded to a stop and stared at her mother like she wasn’t sure what to do next. Usually impulsive, she held her ground until Sylvie beckoned her with a finger.

“Please, baby, give Mumsie a hug. I could really use one.”

Amy hunkered into the beanbag with her mother and sister.

Clutching the twins like a fox ready to protect her young from any danger, Sylvie glanced at me through wet lashes. “It’s a long story.”

“I’m all ears.”

“Mum and Dad lost everything in the market two years ago.”

In which scheme did she entice them to invest? I wondered, wanting to pinch myself for such a nasty thought. She wasn’t the only person in the world who had made bad investments of late, except she made them with such regularity.

“They joined a group of investors that made iffy loans,” Sylvie continued. “People didn’t keep current with their payments. We had no recourse, no insurance. We’ve been scraping by ever since.”

“Your folks owned twelve acres of land,” I blurted. “And a castle.”

“They leveraged it.”

“What’s leveraged mean?” Clair asked.

Sylvie ignored her. “All of it’s gone. Repossessed.”

“Couldn’t they have parceled it off before losing everything?” I said.

“They tried, but to no avail.” Sylvie jammed the used tissue into a hole in her fist. “We’re broke, and I’m, well, destitute.”

Was that why she had been peeping into parked cars on Hope Street the other day? Had she been looking for an unlocked car with loose change? Oh, my.

“Needless to say, I like to have a little cash on hand at all times,” she added.

The tune “Baa Baa, Black Sheep” flitted through my mind. Sylvie didn’t like a little cash on hand; she liked
three bags full
.

“Back in December, I saw the notice on the Internet about the fund-raiser for turning the winery into a college,” Sylvie went on. “Now and then, I like to check what’s happening in Providence. Call me a glutton for punishment.”

I could call her a whole lot of other things, but not that.

“The fund-raiser got me to thinking about the treasure that was hidden in the winery.”

“Allegedly hidden,” I corrected.

“Right-o. Anyway, I got to thinking; maybe I should check it out for myself. I could see my babies, and if I could find the treasure, I’d be able to help out Mumsie and Dad.”

Amy and Clair beamed.

“It was the perfect storm,” Sylvie said, misusing the term.

I stifled a snort.
She
was the perfect storm.

“I used my last penny to get a flight to the States to see you two.” She kissed the girls repeatedly.

I thought I’d heave. Her affections, so lacking in the past, were a little over-the-top. Was she playing me? Playing them? Would she have stayed away from the twins if Matthew had paid her heaps of cash? Oh, if only.

I said, “The night of the event, you left your purse at the winery on purpose. That gave you a reason to come back.”

She blinked an admission. “After the murder, the mansion was locked up tight, but I was pretty sure no one had found the treasure, or the discovery would have been all over the news.”

“Which was what prompted you to go back yesterday.”

She nodded. “When I was shopping, I got to talking to Prudence Hart about the treasure. She encouraged me to go for it. She said I was smart enough to figure out where the treasure was.”

Prudence was craftier than I gave her credit for.

“How much did you spend while she stroked your ego?” I asked.

“I didn’t—” Sylvie sputtered. “Of course, Jordan saw me with packages, didn’t he? All those boxes were empty.”

“I don’t believe you.”

“It was all in fun. Prudence and I hit it off, you might say.”

“You’re kidding!” Freckles giggled, but snipped her laughter short, her face blushing with embarrassment. “What I meant was, nobody hits it off with Prudence Hart, except, well, you know, b—” She slapped her hand over her mouth.

Sylvie shrugged. “Don’t worry, love. I’ve been called the B word before.” She turned her gaze back on me. “I wanted to hurt Matthew. I was mad at him and the world, but in the end, I decided to simply play a prank. I asked Prudence to play along with me. She gave me empty boxes, and I strutted out, hoping Matthew would see me and ...” She swallowed hard. Her eyes pooled with tears. Huge droplets. “I’m a terrible person.”

“No, you’re not,” Clair and Amy chimed.

“Yes, I am, sweethearts, but I’m going to change. I am.”

Why didn’t I believe her?

I caught sight of movement outside the store. Meredith was peering through the window. She looked from the girls to me, her gaze peppered with confusion. I waved her inside, but she shook her head—vehemently—and scurried away.

I tore after her.

I pushed through the front door of the quilt shop and sprinted down the sidewalk yelling, “Meredith, stop!”

She turned left and fled into A Wheel Good Time.

I charged into the pottery shop after her and promptly came to a halt. A birthday party was under way. Girls around the age of seven were seated at the tables. Sparkly balloons strung on curled ribbons decorated the shop. Mothers and fathers stood beside a long party table, draped with a Disney Princess tablecloth. I saw Meredith weave toward the back and veer into the restroom, but I squelched the urge to sprint after her. I could wait her out. The bathroom window was teensy. She couldn’t slip out that way.

From my spot near the door, I could hear the parents, Tyanne Taylor among them, chatting about school and homework and the upcoming spring break.

Jacky, who owned the shop, wandered between tables. Though she was cheerily dressed in a blue-striped shirt, jeans, and paint-splattered smock, she appeared pale—sallow actually—and she seemed jumpy. In a span of a few seconds, she glanced out the window, up at the hand-glazed clock hanging over the kiln, and over at the parents beside the party table. When her gaze met mine, she smiled, but her smile was hesitant and not full of her usual zest.

In a flash, I remembered the conversation with Delilah about Jacky’s possible stalker. Was that why Jacky was edgy? Had she told Jordan?

“Okay, girls, it’s cake time.” Jacky clapped her hands and forced one of her light-up-the-room smiles. “Let’s turn in your pots. Make sure your names or initials are on the bottom, and then bring them to the counter.”

As the party guests assembled in a line with their handmade works of art, Tyanne made a beeline toward me. She had a kid-friendly Parmesan porcupine appetizer pinched between two fingers. I glanced at the restroom. The door was still closed.

“I’m through with Prudence Hart,” Tyanne said, waving the meatball in my face. “Do you know what she did?”

I could only imagine, since Prudence was fast becoming the town’s looniest character.

“She said my little Thomas was a screwup. In front of customers in her shop. How dare she! I’ll show her how cows eat cabbage.” She popped the porcupine appetizer into her mouth and chewed furiously.

I shook my head. What was Prudence thinking? Purchasing the women’s clothing boutique had not been a good move on her part. It was as if the previous owner’s nasty spirit had lingered in the building and was seeping into Prudence’s bones.