Elm Creek Quilts [06] The Master Quilter (35 page)

She sat up and wiped her eyes. Of course he had. He had also known that Bonnie would be incapable of hurting Diane by exposing the truth.

Bonnie decided to go home before Agnes phoned, worried about her whereabouts. She gathered her things and locked the door behind her. She headed for Agnes’s house, but after a few blocks, she hesitated and returned to the shop to check the door. It was locked, of course, just as it had been the night of the break-in, as she had known it would be.

The next day at Elm Creek Manor, Bonnie took Summer and Diane aside before their afternoon sessions and shared her plan for one last, great sale. “The shelves will be bare when we’re through,” she said, forcing a laugh. “In fact, if we’re really lucky, there won’t be any shelves or even lightbulbs to see them by when we’re through. But we might just have enough to pay off the last outstanding debts.”

“That’s a great idea,” said Summer, although she looked as if Bonnie had just announced a funeral.

“We’ll help any way we can,” said Diane. “You know that.”

Bonnie nodded. “I know. That’s why—” She took a deep breath. “That’s the only reason why I can say this. I’m sorry, but I have to ask you to help me as friends. I can’t afford to pay you.”

Immediately they assured her that was all right, that they had assumed as much, and that they would have shoved their paychecks back into her hands rather than accept them.

“You might as well,” said Bonnie, laughing to keep from crying. “They’d bounce.”

Diane and Summer laughed and embraced her. She closed her eyes and clung to them.

Three days later, Diane had emptied the last of the bran cereal into her bowl and was crumpling up the box to fit it into the trash can when it made a strange clinking noise. She opened the box, removed the bag, and discovered her key ring at the bottom.

She held perfectly still for a moment, then withdrew her keys and threw the rest away. She wiped off the lingering film of cereal dust and returned the keys to her purse, lost in thought.

The morning passed as she pondered what to do. Tim was out of town at a conference or she might have consulted him, but she knew what he would say. She had to talk to Michael.

The afternoon crawled by as she waited for Michael to come home to do his laundry. Finally, two hours after she was supposed to be at Elm Creek Manor helping to register the latest group of quilt campers, Michael entered, a gray laundry sack slung over one shoulder.

He seemed surprised to see her. “Hey, Mom. Why aren’t you at camp?”

“I needed to speak with you.”

“Yeah?” He grinned and dropped his laundry bag in front of the door to the basement. “So you saw the catalogue? Did you have a chance to talk to Dad?”

Bewildered, she just looked at him until she realized he was talking about the course catalogue and the highlighted passage about Judy’s class. “Yes, I saw it. Your father and I haven’t discussed it yet.”

He frowned briefly. “Oh. Okay. Will you try to soon? Because if I’m going to get a new computer anyway, it would be great to have one before finals.”

“Michael …” She took a shaky breath. “Please. I need you to tell me what you know about the break-in at Grandma’s Attic.”

He shrugged. “I don’t know much. Just what you’ve told me. Why?”

She could not speak.

He watched her in silence for a long moment. “You think I had something to do with it.”

“Michael …” She did not want to admit it; she did not want to believe it. “My keys were missing when I looked for them on the morning before the break-in. I just found them today.”

His voice was hard. “Then you obviously just misplaced them.”

“I found them at the bottom of a cereal box.” For the life of her she could not imagine why he had put them there instead of returning them to her purse. Had someone suddenly walked in on him? Had he hoped to make her think she had absentmindedly put them there herself? “That catalogue you mentioned—I know you came home the night the keys were taken because you left that catalogue right by my purse.”

“Yeah? Well, I’m not the only person with access to your purse, you know. It’s not like you keep it in a bank vault.” He grabbed his laundry bag and glowered at her. “I bet you leave your purse lying around open at quilt camp all the time. I know you think all quilters are wonderful people, but you don’t know them. Who more than a quilter would want a key to a quilt shop?”

She had actually considered that, but the campers would not have known that she had a key to Grandma’s Attic, and even if one had, a burglar with an interest in quilting would have stolen far more and damaged far less.

“I didn’t do it,” he said flatly. “I can’t believe you think I would.”

He turned and headed for the door.

“Michael,” she called, racing after him and touching his shoulder. “Please. Mrs. Markham will lose everything as long as the police believe it was an inside job.”

He jerked away from her. “Yeah? Maybe it was. I don’t know and I don’t care. All I know is I didn’t do it.”

He tore open the door and slammed it shut behind him.

Diane reached for the doorknob, hesitated, and released it. She had rarely seen him so angry, but she had too frequently seen him lie with the same persuasive vehemence.

She turned around and leaned against the door.

A sudden movement caught her eye; she glanced up to find Todd standing frozen on the stairs. He had heard everything.

Todd. Michael was not the only one with access to her purse. No, it was incomprehensible.

“Mom,” said Todd. “Michael wouldn’t do something like that.”

Diane pressed her lips together and forced herself to nod.

Mary Beth sat at the kitchen table going over the social chair’s notes for the end-of-the-year picnic. Less than a third of the members had registered, a fraction of the number who had sent in their deposits by this time last year. At the monthly meeting of the guild the previous evening, the social chair had made another beseeching, bewildered plea for people to get their forms in on time, but attendance had been down sharply, so few of the people who needed to get the message were there to hear it. “I don’t understand,” Dottie whispered, passing Mary Beth on the way back to her seat. “We’ve never had so many people miss the deadline before.”

Mary Beth gave her what she hoped was an encouraging smile, but she doubted two-thirds of the guild had forgotten the date. They simply weren’t coming.

“Mom?”

She looked up, startled from her gloomy reverie. Brent was peeking in the doorway, grinning.

“Yes, honey?” she said. “What is it?”

“I know it’s early.” He emerged from the doorway carrying a large box. “But I know you could use it, so I thought I’d give you your Mother’s Day present now.”

He set the box on the table, and Mary Beth gasped.

“A Bernina?” She reached out eagerly, then shot him a wry look. “Or it’s something else in a Bernina box.”

“Open it and find out.”

Disbelieving, she unpacked the box to find that it indeed contained a new sewing machine, the sewing machine of her dreams, one with a computer touch screen and more features and attachments than she knew existed. “Brent,” she gasped, running her hands over it. “It’s wonderful, it’s perfect, it’s—” She jerked her hands away as if the beautiful sewing machine had scalded her. “How in the world did you afford this? It must have cost you thousands of dollars.”

His grin widened. “It’s rude to ask the price of a gift.”

“Yes, honey, I know, but in this case—” She gazed at the sewing machine longingly. “Is this from you and your brothers? Did your father pitch in?”

“No, it’s just from me, and you’re still close to the borderline of that rudeness thing.”

All at once, she knew. His college fund. “I can’t accept this,” she said, reluctant. “You can’t spend your college fund on gifts for me.”

He laughed. “I didn’t.” He dug in the box for the user’s manual and placed it in her hands. “It didn’t cost me as much as you think, so just say thank you and read the manual.”

“Thank you.” Overwhelmed, she hugged him and kissed him on the forehead. “You are such a dear, sweet boy.”

He strode from the room, pleased and proud, as she pushed the social chairwoman’s notes aside and pulled the shining new sewing machine closer to her place at the table. Then she let out a shriek of delight, tossed the manual aside, and ran upstairs for fabric and thread.

Two days later, Todd slipped into the desk behind Brent, who turned around and said, “Did you get the answer for the third homework problem? I got 2-i, but that can’t be right.”

“I have a better question.” Todd leaned forward and murmured, “Did you trash the quilt shop by yourself or did Will and Greg help?”

Brent blinked, then assumed a quizzical expression. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know you did it, and I know how. What I can’t figure out is why. What do you have against Mrs. Markham? Or was it just for the money?”

Brent shook his head, a small, incredulous grin playing on his lips. “What have you been sniffing?”

“My mother isn’t stupid. She’s going to remember you slept over that night, and she’ll figure out you took her keys. And then …” Todd sat back and shrugged.

At the front of the room, the Calculus teacher began class. Brent shot Todd a vengeful look over his shoulder as he turned to face front.

For the next fifty minutes, Todd took notes and answered questions and grimly watched his best friend, who did not turn around again.

Judy met Gwen for lunch on a Wednesday, the one day that week when neither woman taught at Elm Creek Quilt Camp. They had only an hour, so Gwen raced through an update on her research project so they could discuss Summer’s abrupt break-up with Jeremy and Bonnie’s plans for a going-out-of-business sale, although neither dared to call it that. Gwen was so forthcoming with her concerns about work and her daughter that Judy was tempted to confide her own secret, but she had not heard anything from Penn since her interview more than three weeks before, so she decided to keep quiet.

When she returned to the office after lunch, her grad students reported that Rick had phoned.

She called him back and left a message on his voicemail, then hung around the lab impatiently waiting for him to return her call. She left to teach her afternoon Introduction to Programming class and raced back to snatch up the ringing phone just before voicemail would have answered.

Mercifully, he delivered the news without a lengthy preamble. “The job’s yours if you still want it.”

The official offer had gone out in the afternoon mail, he said, but the terms were just as they had discussed during her interview. Rick promised that the letter contained no surprises and that she would not be disappointed.

“Sign the letter of intent and send it back,” he urged. “If you know what’s good for you. Get out of that hole in the wall and come where the real action is.”

“I’ll let you know,” she told him.

“What? The job of a lifetime gets dumped in your lap and you can’t even give me the courtesy of a straight answer?”

“You can wait a few days. You kept me in suspense for three weeks,” she reminded him.

“It was a tough decision! Do you think we interviewed just anyone?”

“I know you didn’t. Just consider this as a little payback for all the stress you put me through this semester.”

She promised to contact him as soon as she had a chance to review the official offer, and then she called Steve.

“Honey,” she said as soon as her husband answered, “we have a decision to make.”

Mary Beth was so shocked to hear Diane’s voice on the line that she almost dropped the phone.

“I know I’m the last person you expected,” said Diane, and her laugh was, if anything, nervous.

“That’s certainly true.” Diane had not called the Callahan home in years. Did she intend to apologize? If so, it was a long time coming—one month to the day after she had crashed the quilt guild meeting. Mary Beth waited, wondering why Diane bothered this time when she had never expressed regret for any of her previous insults throughout the years. Because of the severity of her offense? She had certainly jeopardized Mary Beth’s standing in the quilt guild, but Diane ought to find that cause for celebration, not remorse.

Then Mary Beth figured it out. Diane wanted the guild’s support for that going-out-of-business sale at Grandma’s Attic next week. Mary Beth had seen the signs in the store windows, but she remained steadfast in her vow never to cross that threshold again. In a hundred years Diane could not grovel enough to change Mary Beth’s mind about that.

After a long pause, Diane said, “I’ll get straight to the point, then.”

“I do wish you would.”

“Have you heard about the burglary at Grandma’s Attic?”

“I read the paper.”

“Yes, well, I wondered if Brent might know anything about it.”

Icily, Mary Beth asked, “What do you mean?”

“I’m not saying he did it, but he might know who did. You see, my key to the shop disappeared after he spent the night here, and the next night the shop was broken into, and there was no sign of forced entry—”