Sew Deadly (5 page)

“What would you do with it?” Rose asked.

“I’d love to paint scenes from famous stories on the walls, scatter beanbag chairs around the room, and—” She stopped, afraid she’d said too much.

“Go on,” Rose prodded.

Setting her pillow to the side, Tori looked around the room at each member of the sewing circle. “I’d like to construct a small stage and add a chest of dress-up clothes so the children could act out their favorite stories.”

Silence fell over the room as looks were exchanged and throats were cleared. And just when Tori thought someone was going to respond, that particular person’s mouth would close.

It was Margaret Louise who finally broke the silence, her breathless voice peppered with excited laughs. “Lulu would love that. She loves the
idea
of books, loves to listen to stories and imagine being in them. But it’s the
reading
she finds so difficult. Maybe something like that would be the trick.”

Leona supplied the identity to go with the name. “Lulu is Margaret Louise’s granddaughter. Shy little thing.”

“I think your idea is marvelous,” Debbie said, her smile one of encouragement and admiration. “Maybe you really should ask Tiffany Ann for help.”

Tori shrugged a smile. “Maybe. But this room is so vivid in my mind, so rooted in my heart . . . I think I want to design it on my own.” She set down her pillow and looked around, her voice breathless. “Can’t you just imagine reading away the hours in a room with a medieval castle or tall prairie grasses painted on the walls?”

Slowly, one by one, each member of the sewing circle conceded it was a good idea. Even Rose.

“These costumes—do you have them already?”

Tori shook her head. “No. But I can make them. It might take a few months until I have enough to partially fill a chest, but it’ll take a while to get the room up and running if I can get it all emptied out.”

“We could sew them,” Georgina bellowed. “We’ve been known to take on a group project or two over the years.”

“Like those Christmas stockings we made in ’93,” offered Margaret Louise. “Do you remember all the hol lerin’ we did over the trim work on those? I thought Rose and Dixie were goin’ to come to blows a few times.”

“And the curtains for town hall.” Debbie waved her hand in Georgina’s direction. “When she took office, she was all tore up about the curtains they had on the office windows. And I mean
all tore up
.”

Margaret Louise snorted. “We got so sick of all her fussin’ we made some new ones.”

Georgina made a face. “I wasn’t that bad.”

“Yes you were,” the members said in unison, bringing a flush to the mayor’s face and a new round of laughter to the room.

“What I think they’re saying is they’d like to help with the costumes,” Leona said, beaming.

“I don’t know what to say,” Tori stammered.

“
Okay
will suffice,” Rose said. “We’ll just need you to come up with a list of character costumes between now and next Monday, is all.”

“Next Monday?”

Georgina grinned. “Next Monday. We meet every Monday, Victoria.”

“But I thought I had to be voted in.” Tori looked from the mayor to each of the other members, her gaze coming to rest on Leona.

“We’ll get to that.” Rose slowly rolled the skirt into a ball and stuffed it into a satchel beside her chair. “We’ve got to make sure
everyone
is on board first before we vote and we’re shy two members tonight.”

“I’m not sure when Melissa will be back. She’s still down in Pine Grove carin’ for her mama.” Margaret Louise folded her blanket and tucked it under her arm. “Jake and I are looking after the six until she gets back.

But I’m sure as anythin’ she’d be tickled to have Victoria in the group . . . someone closer to her own age.”

“I’m only thirty-six, Margaret Louise,” Debbie protested. “What’s Melissa? Thirty? Thirty-one?”

“And I’m only twenty-eight,” Beatrice offered shyly.

“True enough. But the rest of us are old.”

“Speak for yourself, twin. I’m not old,” Leona said, her finger pointing authoritatively at her sister. “I was born after you.”

“By ten seconds,” Margaret Louise retorted.

“There’s still one more vote we need,” Rose interjected through the chorus of halfhearted protests and laughter.

“One more?” Tori asked.

The looks the women exchanged in response told her all she needed to know about the one potential holdout.

Dixie Dunn.

So much for a unanimous vote.

Seeming to sense the flash of doubt that rippled through the room, Leona reached over and squeezed Tori’s hand, her voice audible to no one but her. “Give Dixie time, dear. There’s always a few bumps in the road on the way to anything worthwhile—Dixie just happens to be
your
bump.”

Chapter 4

Exhausted, Tori exhaled a strand of hair from in front of her eyes and leaned against the fifth box of dilapidated books she’d opened so far that morning. Never, in all her years as an assistant librarian in Chicago, had she seen so many worthless books. Sure, people tended to donate the bound copies they didn’t care about, but to drop off books with ketchup stains and missing pages?

“Miss Sinclair?”

“Tori.
Please
.” She pushed off the box and wound her way past six more like it to reach her assistant, Nina Morgan, a petite woman with dark skin, even darker eyes, and a shy smile. “How’s it going out there?”

Since Monday, Tori had spent the bulk of each day culling through the library’s storage room, determined to have it cleared by the time the board met for its monthly meeting next Wednesday night. That gave her the rest of today and the first three days of next week.

A feat of mammoth proportions.

“It’s been fine, Miss Sinclair, until two minutes ago.”

“What happened two minutes ago?” She wondered if Nina could hear her panting, certain the woman noticed the tiny beads of sweat she felt on her forehead.

“Mr. Wentworth and his class are here. For their lesson on pioneers.”

“Mr. Who?” Tori swiped at her forehead with the back of her hand then took a sip from the water bottle she’d propped by the door when she started.

“Mr. Wentworth. He’s the third grade teacher at the elementary school.”

Her assistant’s words finally broke through the mind-numbing exhaustion of the past few hours. “And he’s
here
? With his class?”

“Yes, Miss Sinclair. All sixteen of them.”

Sixteen?

“He said he made an appointment to bring them every Friday for the next month. It’s part of their library unit.”

“An appointment?”

“Yes, Miss Sinclair. Only I didn’t know because—”

“The appointment book disappeared,” Tori finished as she lowered her face into her hands in lieu of the panic that threatened to take hold and render her incapable of intelligent thought. “What did you say they’re studying?”

“Pioneers. Like Laura Ingalls time frame.”

Laura Ingalls. She could
do
Laura Ingalls.

She pulled her head up, dropped her hands to her side. “Where are they now?”

“In the reading circle, waiting. For you.”

Tori resisted the urge to laugh at the mention of the ten by ten piece of carpet near the back of the library that had been dubbed “the reading circle” by her predecessor. Instead, she mentally ran through the supplies she’d hauled in from her car earlier in the week.

“Okay, Nina, here’s what we’re going to do.” Reaching into her purse, Tori extracted a twenty-dollar bill and handed it to her assistant. “I need you to go next door to the market and pick up as much whipping cream as you can buy for twenty dollars.”

“Whipping cream, Miss Sinclair?”

“Yes, Nina. I’m going to grab some of those empty baby food jars I put in the office the other day for future craft time.” Tori ran a moist hand down the front of her dusty rose blouse. “Laura made butter, so
we’re
going to make butter.”

The hint of a sparkle flashed behind Nina’s eyes as she closed her hand over the crisp bill and backed her way out of the storage room doorway. “You are brilliant, Miss Sinclair.”

“Let’s get through the afternoon before you say I’m brilliant.” Tori touched Nina’s forearm and gave it a gentle squeeze. “Now get go—wait. Not yet.” Digging into her purse once again, Tori pulled out a five and held it out to the woman. “And some loaves of bread.”

“For the butter?”

“For the butter.”

As her assistant disappeared out the back door, Tori felt her stomach begin to churn. Shaking jars of whipping cream would kill time—but not all of it.

Oh how she wished the children’s room was ready. Then the children could act out pioneer life—

“That’s it,” she mumbled as she strode into her office long enough to retrieve the box of empty baby food jars from the closet behind her desk. They could make butter, talk about the differences between now and then, and then she could ask them for their thoughts on her room. Thoughts and ideas she could present to the board . . .

Pleased with her resilience, Tori headed into the main section of the library. “Hello, children. I’m Miss Sinclair.”

“Hel-lo Miss Sinclair,” the children dutifully repeated in unison.

She set the box of glass jars on the floor beside her feet and leaned down, her hands gently gripping her thighs. “I’m sorry I wasn’t here to greet you when you walked in, but I was in the back getting a special surprise ready for you.”

Her eyes traveled across each and every little face before coming to rest on the one belonging to their handsome and obviously amused teacher. But before she could give too much thought to the man, Nina ran in, out of breath, the whipping cream and bread hidden inside a brown paper sack.

“Here you go, Miss Sinclair. We got lucky, they had four whole containers of whipping cream.”

“In the back getting ready, huh?”

Uh-oh.

With an apologetic shrug in their teacher’s direction, Tori clapped her hands together and smiled at the students. “You’ve been reading about Laura Ingalls, is that right?”

Heads nodded.

“Does anyone remember where Laura’s food came from?”

A little girl with strawberry blonde hair raised her hand tentatively into the air.

“Yes, sweetheart?”

“Her Pa grew the corn and the wheat. The chickens gave the eggs and the cows made the milk.”

“Excellent.” Tori looked around the room, pointed to another little girl who seemed as if she wanted to add something yet hadn’t raised her hand. “Can you think of anything else?”

The little girl shook her head fiercely, despite the knowledge that shone in her eyes.

“Go ahead, Lulu, it’s okay.” The child’s teacher walked around the back of the circle and lowered himself to the carpet directly beside the girl.

“They made their own butter, too,” the girl whispered.

Tori clapped her hands once again. “Very, very good, Lulu. That’s exactly what they did. Does anyone remember
how
they did it?”

The children looked at one another, their faces blank.

Once again, Lulu’s eyes shone.

“Lulu? Do you remember?” Tori prompted gently.

The child whispered once again. “A churn.”

“You’re exactly right, Lulu. Thank you.” Tori smiled at the shy little girl before addressing the class as a whole once again. “It took a long time to make butter when Laura was alive. A very long time.”

“My mom just goes to the market and buys it in a box,” offered a freckle-faced redhead in the front.

“I bet most people do,” Tori replied. “But today, we’re going to make some butter just like Laura did.”

“Whoa, cool,” several voices said in unison as other students looked at one another with broad smiles on their faces.

“Only instead of taking turns with one churn, you’re each going to get to make your very own lump of butter in one of these jars.” Tori lifted one of the containers into the air and twisted the lid open. “I’m going to give each of you a jar and then Miss Morgan is going to come around and put some whipping cream into each jar.”

“What do we do then?” asked the little boy in the front.

“We shake it.”

Tori grinned. “That’s right, Lulu, we shake it . . . and shake it . . . and shake it.” She handed a jar to each child, stopping to open each and every lid. “And when you think you’re all done shaking, you shake some more.”

Once the students were ready to shake, Tori moved off to the side to watch them in action. Excitement turned to momentary boredom only to be replaced by excitement once again as the whipping cream began to solidify.

“Nice save, Miss Sinclair.”

Tori’s mouth went dry.

“I’m Milo Wentworth.”

She felt his warm hand close over hers. “I’m Tori—I mean, Victoria.”

“
Tori
, huh? That’s pretty.”

She stared at the handsome teacher, resisted the urge to ask if he was feeling ill.

“I’m sorry we barged in on you today, Tori.”

“You didn’t.”

He leaned his mouth closer to her ear. “Nina’s not good at feigning surprise.”