Threading the Needle (21 page)

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Authors: Marie Bostwick

BOOK: Threading the Needle
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Impulsively, I shoved a twenty-dollar bill into the hand of the young man who helped me carry the pillows to the car. He took it, but he wouldn't look me in the eye. I spent half the drive home debating whether I should have done that or not. Not because of the money. He needed it as much as I did, maybe more. Maybe he has a family. But I wish I'd handled it a little more subtly. I didn't mean to embarrass him.
It was dark by the time I got back to New Bern. My gas tank was almost as empty as my stomach. The money I'd given to the man who loaded my car had been earmarked for a drive-through cheeseburger and a fill-up on the way home. Thankfully, I made it home with an eighth of a tank to spare.
I turned onto Oak Leaf Lane, considering the merits of apple-walnut muffins versus cheddar-jalapeño scones as an accompaniment to my dinner omelet, and saw a crowd of cars and people on the street.
No. Not cars, vans. News vans. And reporters, dozens of them, all crowded in front of Beecher Cottage.
What were they doing here? Obviously, it had something to do with Sterling, but his sentencing was a week off. Surely they weren't on the story already. And even if they were, why would they be bothering with me? How had they found me?
I took my foot off the gas and pressed the brake, but gently, slowing the car gradually, considering my next move. My first thought was to turn around and drive away, but I'd dealt with the media before. One of them was bound to spot me and follow me, and when they did, the rest would follow. Besides, where would I go? I didn't know anyone in New Bern, except for Jake, but I couldn't go to his house trailing this horde of camera-wielding locusts. I considered going to a hotel but then remembered that I had no cash and had used my last check to buy the mattresses. My credit card wouldn't do me any good; I'd maxed it out buying a new washing machine. My only refuge this night was Beecher Cottage.
As soon as I opened the car door, I was surrounded by a press of bodies, the flash of camera bulbs, and a barrage of shouted questions. The din was so loud I couldn't understand what they were saying. I heard my name shouted over and over as the mob competed to get my attention, hoping that I'd look up just long enough for them to snap a shot of me looking scared, or guilty, or angry, or sad, any expression that would look good with a headline.
With my head down, face blank, and keys in hand, I ran for the back door, stopping only long enough to grab a big white shopping bag that was blocking my entrance, shove it inside, and slam the door behind me.
What did they want? Was there some new development in the case? It had to be something big. Charges dismissed on account of some legal technicality? A mistrial? But there hadn't even been a trial. Sterling pled guilty. What could have happened?
I walked around the house, quickly closing the drapes, thankful for the sheers that obscured my features from the cameramen lurking outside, and double-checking the locks on the doors. In the kitchen, I saw the message light blinking on my phone. A quick check of the caller identification menu showed several calls from numbers I didn't recognize and others listed as “private”—probably reporters—and three calls from the Metropolitan Correctional Center.
The phone rang before I could listen to the messages. The caller identification read “Eugene Janders, Atty.”
“Gene? What's going on? There's a swarm of reporters outside my house.”
“Madelyn, where the hell have you been?”
“Out. Buying mattresses. I just got home.”
“You went shopping? Now, of all times, you went shopping?”
Gene's voice was shrill and loud. He reminded me of Sterling when he got angry. I screwed my eyes shut and silently counted to three, determined not to be sucked into a shouting match.
“Gene, I'm asking you again: What is going on? Was there a mistrial? Is there some new evidence? What?”
“No one from the prison called you?”
“They did, but I was out, I told you that. I haven't listened to the messages yet. Tell me what happened.”
A pause. “Sterling is dead.”
My hand flew to cover my mouth. I didn't want to believe it, but the tone of Gene's voice told me it was true. I closed my eyes, trying to take it in, lowered my hand to my breast, feeling my heart beat through my blouse and sweater.
“How? Was it a heart attack? He's been under so much stress, with the sentencing coming.” I pressed my lips together hard, thinking about that last phone message he'd left for me, the message I never returned.
“It wasn't a heart attack.... Madelyn . . . Sterling hanged himself from the bars with his belt. He committed suicide.”
29
Madelyn
W
hy aren't I crying?
My conversation with the warden of the prison was short and to the point. Sterling's death was self-inflicted. He'd been a cooperative, even cheerful prisoner. He hadn't shown any suicidal tendencies, so there had been no reason to put him on a special watch. In fact, Sterling had checked out two library books just that morning.
The warden seemed to genuinely believe that Sterling had acted on impulse, but I knew better. Sterling never did anything without a plan. Checking out the library books, his cheerful and cooperative attitude, I was sure it was part of that plan, a ruse to keep the guards from suspecting anything. Deception was Sterling Baron's stock in trade.
“We've transferred the remains to the morgue. Have you made any funeral arrangements?”
“Oh . . . yes. I mean, no. I haven't had time. . . .”
“Let me give you the number for the morgue. I believe the office is closed, but you can call them directly in the morning.”
“Thank you.”
“Oh and, Mrs. Baron? I am sorry for your loss.”
My loss.
I sunk weakly into a kitchen chair. The pile of muffins I'd baked last night was still sitting on a plate on the table, covered by plastic wrap, but I wasn't hungry now. I tipped my head back and closed my eyes.
Why wasn't I crying? I didn't love Sterling, but he was my husband. We were married, for better or worse, mostly worse, but we
were
married. For thirty years, I had been Mrs. Sterling Baron. Who was I now?
He couldn't be dead. His voice was there on my saved messages. If I punched in a few numbers I could hear him, that deep bass voice. Talking. Breathing. Alive.
I wish I could have talked to you one more time, Madelyn.
Now I wished it too. He'd called to say good-bye. I wished I'd called him back. I wished I'd known what he was planning. I wished I could have talked him out of it. Sterling was cruel to me and faithless, but what we'd done, we'd done to each other.
I opened my eyes. Outside I heard voices, someone laughing, the throaty purr of the car engine that suddenly stopped as a late-arriving news crew joined the scrum.
He couldn't be dead, but I knew he was.
That's why they were here laying siege to my house, to me, lying in wait on my lawn, my sidewalk, my door, with microphones and cameras at the ready. I had to get out of here. But how? I couldn't just get in the car and drive off. The reporters would only follow me. I needed someone to
get
me out of here, secretly, and a place to lie low until the frenzy died down.
And I needed to bury Sterling.
Dear God. Why wasn't I crying?
 
I didn't remember that Jake wasn't home until the third ring. He'd gone to a hardware convention in Pittsburgh. If I called him on his cell phone and told him what trouble I was in, I knew he'd drive back, but I didn't have his number. What hotel was he in? I didn't have a computer so I couldn't look up the location of the conference.
I put the kettle on to boil and pulled a tea bag out of the canister, hoping a cup of tea would help me focus. Leaning against the counter, I considered the feasibility of phoning every hotel in Pittsburgh until I found Jake. I couldn't very well ask an operator to give me numbers for every hotel in the city. Could I? It might come to that.
The sugar bowl was empty. I walked toward the pantry to refill it and noticed the white bag sitting on the floor by the back door, the one that had been blocking my way when I came in. Curious, I walked over and looked inside. There was an envelope on top with my name written on it in purple ink. The handwriting was loopy, feminine. Definitely not Jake's.
I picked up the envelope, pulled back several layers of white tissue paper, and saw the quilt. My quilt! The one I'd left behind that day I'd run into Tessa. Someone had brought it back.
I pulled it out of the bag, picking it up by two corners and letting the thick, soft folds of fabric open fully. Someone had repaired it, beautifully.
I stretched it out over the back of two chairs so I could examine it more carefully. The torn seams had been resewn, the pulled quilting restitched, and the whole thing had been cleaned. The brown spot, left when Tessa and I had accidentally spilled our hot chocolate, was gone. I ran my fingers over the place where the stain had been, in the second row of blocks, feeling a little twinge of regret. My loss.
It was a beautiful quilt, there was no denying that. It had a whole new binding. No, not new. Not quite. The blue fabric was soft and slightly faded with age, which looked entirely right with the rest of the quilt. It was a new binding, but the fabric was old, possibly antique. Someone had gone to a lot of trouble to restore this quilt. Who would have gone to such trouble for me, a stranger?
I went back to the bag, picked up the envelope, and opened it. There was a card inside, a picture of two red poppies that I recognized from a Georgia O'Keeffe painting. I opened the card. A black-and-white photograph fell out. I looked at it and gasped.
30
Tessa
“W
e'll talk about all that later. What matters right now is finding a way to get you out of there. Try to get some sleep. I'll talk to you first thing tomorrow morning. Do you need anything? You sure? Okay. Good night.
“Madelyn? . . . I'm so sorry for your loss.”
I hung up the phone. Lee came out of the bathroom with a towel wrapped around his waist.
“Who's calling this time of night? Is Josh all right?”
“It was Madelyn Beecher,” I said quietly.
“Really.” He dropped his towel and climbed back into bed. “Well, that's nice. I guess. She liked the quilt?”
“And the picture, yes. But that's not why she called.” I rolled onto my hip to face my husband. “Madelyn's in trouble. Sterling hanged himself in his jail cell and now the press is surrounding her house. She can't get out and nobody can get in, not without running through a gauntlet of cameras and microphones.”
“He killed himself?” Lee's expression changed from astonishment to disgust. “Sounds like something he'd do, though, doesn't it? Take the easy way out. Coward.”
I couldn't bring myself to think of suicide as the easy way out for anyone, but it was hard to disagree with Lee's assessment of Sterling Baron's character. He was a coward.
“Honey, Madelyn is trapped in that house. We've got to find a way to get her out without the press knowing. I said she could stay with us until things calm down.”
“You said what?”
I didn't bother repeating myself. He'd heard me the first time; he just didn't like what he'd heard. But I know Lee as well as I know myself. And I knew that, in the end, he'd do the right thing. Lee is a good person.
“Tessa, you've got to be kidding.”
“She's got nowhere else to go.”
“You mean her other friends aren't jumping up and down at the prospect of having Madelyn Baron, and the national media, come for a sleepover? I wonder why?”
“She doesn't have any other friends, Lee. Not now. All her old friends dropped her. She doesn't know anybody in New Bern, except Jake, and he's out of town.”
“Yeah. To a hardware conference. He told me.”
Lee was still frowning but he'd lowered his voice, a sure sign that his resolve was weakening. “I still don't see what this has to do with us. Why does she have to come here? What's wrong with a hotel?”
“It wouldn't take five minutes for the press to track her down at a hotel. But no one will think to look for her here.”
“Assuming we could get her away without anyone knowing,” Lee mused. “It'd take some pretty elaborate plan to pull that off.” He stared off into space, his lips working as if he were chewing over the options. After a moment, his shoulders twitched and his eyes refocused.
“No, Tessa. This is crazy. I'm sorry for her troubles. She's gotten a raw deal. But that's not our problem or your fault. Why should you be the one to bail her out?”
“Because. Someone has to. And because I'm her friend.”
“That was a long time ago.”
“I know, but she's alone and her husband is dead. I know he wasn't exactly a model citizen, but she needs help. I think I should give it to her. I think I owe it to her.”
“So this is about assuaging your guilty conscience?”
“A little,” I admitted. “But it's also the right thing to do and the right time to do it. Think about it. Is it a coincidence that Madelyn and I both came back to New Bern now? Or that she left her quilt behind in the coffee shop and that, having just taken up quilting, I found it and decided to restore it? Was it chance that I happened to leave that quilt, and a note with our phone number, on her doorstep exactly at the moment she was facing a huge crisis?”
Lee narrowed his eyes. “So,” he said slowly, “you think you're some kind of divine instrument? That the Almighty is using you to reach out to Madelyn Baron?”
Or her me.
I felt a flush of heat on my cheeks. I knew how crazy this sounded to him.
“It just seems like an awful lot of coincidences, that's all. But more than that, helping Madelyn is just something I want to do. Since coming back here, I've realized that friends are important, as important as family, even, but in a different way. And Madelyn was the best friend I ever had.”
Lee shifted his weight onto his hip and ran his hand down my arm before interlacing his fingers with mine. “Baby, that was so long ago. You and Madelyn have lived whole lives since then. After so many years, you may have nothing in common. People change. Sometimes friendships die. Sometimes with good reason.”
I nodded. “I know. Maybe that's how this will turn out. But I can't just turn my back on someone who needs my help.” I squeezed my husband's hand and looked into his eyes. “I don't think you can either.”
Lee sighed, unlaced his fingers from mine, and reached up to push his hair off his forehead. “Do you see it?”
“See what?”
“The big letter ‘S' on my forehead. Stands for ‘sucker.' ”
I grinned. “You're a good man.”
“Yeah, yeah.” Lee pushed himself into a sitting position and threw off the blankets.
“Well, if we're going to smuggle your long-lost friend out from under the nose of the paparazzi, we're going to need a plan, and reinforcements. Might as well get up and start working on it.”
“Lee? I love you.”
He grinned. “I love you, too, babe. But that doesn't mean I'm not a sucker.”
 
By morning we had a plan and by lunchtime we were ready to put it into action. Jake Kaminski was in on it.
It hadn't been easy to find him, but after we telephoned Josh in Florida (he turned out to be an expert computer sleuth) we were able to find the location of the hardware convention, the hotel it was being held in, and finally, Jake, who had driven from Pittsburgh to New Bern in the middle of the night to help us. The rescue team consisted of Lee, Jake, and Matt, one of Jake's clerks. I was supposed to stay behind.
“Why can't I come along?”
“Because you'll attract attention, that's why. We don't want them getting suspicious, Tessa. These aren't small-town reporters we're talking. These are the big guns—the networks, Fox, CNN. . . .”
“
Entertainment Tonight,
” Jake offered as he zipped a pair of white coveralls over his jeans and T-shirt. “They're going to be on the lookout for just this kind of thing and if they see a woman in the truck, they'll know something is up.”
“My UPS man is a woman. Women can deliver things.”
“They can,” Lee agreed, “but they usually don't, not big things like furniture. You don't want to endanger this operation, do you? We'll be right back.”
“The operation? Why do I suddenly hear the sound track to
Mission: Impossible
playing in the background?”
“Well,” Lee grinned, “you have to admit, this does have a 007 feel to it.”
He checked to make sure his coveralls were zipped, then settled his baseball cap squarely on his head. He looked at Jake, then Matt, and nodded. “Gentlemen? Let's roll!”
They were gone five hours. I was worried sick.
In spite of their attempts to look as much like a mattress delivery company as possible, a couple of the reporters eyed them suspiciously as they carried in the five large mattress boxes. After delivering the mattresses that Madelyn had bought the day before—she'd called and had them sent to my house instead of Beecher Cottage—and carrying the “empty” boxes back out to the plain white panel truck Jake used at the store, two of the news vans had followed them.
They had no choice but to drive the truck, which had a top speed of about fifty miles an hour, down the highway and all the way back down to the mattress factory in Norwalk.
“You should have seen those guys.” Lee laughed. “They wouldn't give up. But Jake brazened it out. He drove up to the factory gate, told the guard we had a return to make, and sailed on through like he owned the place. Jake, you are one cool customer.”
“I sure wasn't feeling cool. I was beginning to think it wasn't going to work. But after we went through the gate, the reporters decided we were legit. Good thing the guard bought my story. Nice work, fellas.”
Jake and Lee high-fived each other and then did the same to Matt, who was grinning like the cat who ate the canary. Boys.
“Did it occur to any of you to pick up the phone and tell me what was taking so long? I just about wore a hole in the rug with all my pacing.”
“We didn't want to take the risk. We thought they might have had some kind of special listening equipment or something, you know. Something that could tap into an unsecured line.”
I looked at Jake and raised my eyebrows, silently questioning the logic of this, but he just nodded.
“Lee's right. They do have things like that. I saw them when I was in Washington, DC, at the Spy Museum.”
I rolled my eyes. “Whatever. The main thing is you're here and nobody followed you. Thanks, guys. Where is Madelyn? You didn't leave her locked in the truck, did you?”
“She's outside,” Jake said. “She said she needed a minute.”
“Do you think she'd like a cup of tea? Or a sandwich?”
Jake nodded. “Good idea. I'm sure she hasn't eaten.”
I turned to head for the kitchen. The front door opened and Madelyn walked in carrying a beige overnight bag.
Without thinking, I walked toward her with my arms open, ready to comfort her, give her a hug, but she shrank back. I felt a twinge of disappointment but told myself it didn't matter. She'd had a hard day, a hard life. And, I reminded myself, she wasn't here to bury the hatchet and catch up with an old friend who had treated her poorly. She was here because she had no one else to turn to and nowhere else to go. I dropped my arms to my sides.
“It's good to see you, Madelyn. It really is. Lee, can you take Madelyn's suitcase to the guest room?”
“Sure.” Lee smiled as he took her bag and headed down the hall.
Jake said he and Matt should get going, then said his good-byes, telling Madelyn not to worry and he'd see her soon. She gave him a half-smile and nodded.
When everyone was gone, I turned back to Madelyn. “Are you hungry? I've got sandwiches in the kitchen. Have you eaten today?”
She blinked a couple of times, as if surprised by the question and trying to remember the answer. “Um. No. I don't think so. But I'm not really hungry.”
“Well, then I'll just make you a half sandwich,” I said, using the technique my mother had always employed when dealing with her picky eater—me. Don't give them the option of saying no. “Come on into the kitchen.”
I smiled and began walking toward the door, hoping she'd follow. Instead, she reached out and grabbed at my elbow, stopping me.
“Tessa? I just want you to know, if the press finds out I'm here, I'll go. I don't want to cause you any more trouble than I already have. I won't stay long.”
“Stay as long as you want to. I meant what I said; it's good to see you. I only wish it weren't under such sad circumstances.”
She let go of my elbow and stood there for a moment, pressing her lips together. “Thank you. I . . . Well . . . I don't know what else to say, Tessa. Just . . . thanks.”
“You don't need to say anything else. Not tonight. We've got plenty of time for that.”

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