The Devil's Puzzle (16 page)

Natalie’s eyes got wide. “Like who?”

“I don’t know. At the meeting yesterday there was something weird going on between Glad and Molly. They said they’d never met, but they both seemed uncomfortable.”

“I saw Glad about twenty minutes ago. She was heading to the library. She stopped in to see if you’d found a location for the show. She’s very worried you’re going to mess it up.”

I let that pass without comment. I didn’t have time to be insulted. “I guess I’ll have to reassure her,” I said, and headed out the door to look for her.

As I walked past the movie theater toward the library, I had the same feeling I’d had days earlier, that I was being watched. I caught a glimpse of something in the ticket booth, but when I moved closer, there was nothing there. I really wanted to talk with Glad about Molly, but if someone was watching me, I wanted to know who, so I reached for the door to the theater. Just as I was about to pull on the handle, the door flew open.

I waited. Nothing. I peeked inside. No one was there. All I could see in the darkened theater was a poster for
Friday the 13th
, the movie playing that day. I took a step inside.

From behind me I heard a man call out. “Anything I can do for you, Nell?”

I jumped. When I turned I saw Ed walking up the street, a large to-go coffee in each hand.

“The door opened as I was walking by,” I told him.

He laughed. “Spooky, isn’t it? Unless I lock the door, it does that when the air-conditioning comes on.”

I felt a little foolish. I stepped back onto the street. “No one’s in there?”

He laughed. “It’s just me today. And I went out for a little coffee.” He held up one of the cups.

“It looks like you went out for a lot of coffee.”

“One for now. One for later.” He paused. “I microwave it. Saves me walking up and down the street.” He walked past me and stepped inside the theater. “The movie starts at eight if you want to come back.” Then he put one of the cups on the other and with his free hand pulled the door shut behind him.

Dru Love, the librarian, was deep in a Stephen King novel when I arrived. I was more shaken up by my conversation with Ed than I was by the door opening for no reason. He’d lied to me about what caused it, I knew that much. It was a heavy metal door with a pulldown bar that often took two hands just to open it. Even unlocked, a mere blast of air-conditioning would not have been enough to cause the door to swing open. But unless I could prove it had something to do with the skeleton, Eleanor, or the quilt show, I reminded myself, I had to let it go.

“Dru,” I said once I got her attention. “Have you seen Glad?”

She nodded toward the library conference room. “Private meeting with someone.”

“Who?”

“I didn’t see anyone come in. Must have come in the back way.”

“Do you know what it’s about?”

“All I know is that it’s private. Glad said that no one could disturb them under any circumstances. And you know how Glad is about getting her way.” She pulled her sweater tightly around herself and I could see she was still wearing the anniversary button.

“Molly gave you that,” I said.

“She didn’t want it. Not too fond of this town, I think.”

“But you two seemed to be getting along pretty well the other day. What were you talking about?”

“You, actually. She wanted to know all about you.”

“And what did you say?”

“That if anyone could figure out about that skeleton, and about everything else that’s been going on in town, it would be you and Jesse.”

“Thanks, Dru. And if I were stumped on a literary reference, I’d know just who to ask.”

She blushed. Anyone working closely with Glad probably would go a long time between compliments.

“I wish I knew who Glad was meeting with,” I said.

Dru looked around. “When they built that conference room where the employee lunch area used to be, they only put a thin wall between it and the office. Money saver, that’s what Glad said. If someone were sitting in the library office, right next to the conference room, they probably could hear every word that was being said.”

I smiled. “Enjoy your book, Dru.”

I walked to the office, closing the door behind me, and leaned against the wall it shared with the conference room. It was, as Dru had promised, paper thin. I could hear two very distinct voices: one was Glad and the other was a deep male voice. It took a minute of listening, but I was sure it was the mayor’s voice.

“I don’t know how much more I can do,” the mayor was saying.

“You don’t have any choice,” Glad said. “There is too much at stake here. My reputation. Your reputation. We can’t let that ridiculous woman ruin everything.”

The mayor answered her, but it was muffled, as if he were moving. I took a few steps backward and banged into the desk.

I froze, but I knew I’d been overheard. I could hear the door to the conference room open, and within seconds Glad and Larry were standing in the office, staring at me.

“What in heaven’s name?” Glad said.

“I was waiting to talk to you,” I said. “I had a question about the quilt show.”

“What about it?”

“Is there,” I stammered, “a limit on the number of quilts I can have in the show? I’m getting quite a lot of interest.”

“Isn’t that more or less up to you, as the chairperson of the quilt show?” the mayor asked.

I smiled nervously and moved toward the door. “Well, that answers that.”

“That’s why you were sitting in the office?” Glad clearly wasn’t buying it.

“Not entirely,” I admitted. “I also wanted to ask you about Molly. How do you know her? And don’t say you met at the meeting, because that’s obviously not true. Neither of you liked each other, before you’d even been introduced.”

“If you must know, Nell, and obviously you must, Molly came to me and asked for a job with the historical society, and I turned her down,” Glad said. “Too inexperienced. The next thing I heard she was interning for the mayor.”

“You had a problem with that?”

“No. But I did have a problem with the fact that she was snooping around in the office of the historical society, much as you’re doing now at the library.”

“I was waiting for you.”

“And she said she was lost. But you were both snooping. I don’t know why Jesse finds that an attractive quality, Nell, but he may tire of it. I would watch all your interfering, or you’ll lose him to someone better suited to a man in his official position.”

CHAPTER 25

“T
onight, my house?” Jesse called my cell as I was leaving the library, my thigh bruised from the desk and my ego from Glad’s scolding. “I got the note you left. I think I may have a surprise for you.”

“You’ve ID’d the skeleton as Winston?” British, no?

“Not exactly. Come to the station around four.”

“Any hints?”

“You’re going to laugh.”

Four o’clock was a long way away, so I headed back to the shop. Natalie was there, but she was busy with customers, so I couldn’t fill her in on what I’d been up to. As much as I tried, I could not figure out what Jesse had in his office that would make me laugh, so I decided not to focus on it. Instead, I started work on my devil’s puzzle quilt.

Like so many quilt blocks, it looks complicated—intersecting rows form secondary patterns and it’s hard to see where one block starts and another ends. But it’s actually quite a simple quilt. I used just three fabrics: a bubblegum pink, a dark brown, and an olive green. An odd color combination for today’s quilter but quite in keeping with the period I was representing. I reminded myself that having an odd-looking quilt was not my biggest problem and set to work cutting the rectangles and triangles that would make up the quilt.

By midafternoon I’d sewn my blocks—brown rectangles with a pink triangle sewn to each long side and pink rectangles with a green triangle sewn to either long side. Using the felt design wall we had in the shop’s classroom, I positioned my blocks, alternating colors, and stepped back to admire my work. I still had to sew the blocks together, add borders, and quilt it, but for a day’s work it wasn’t bad.

It was almost three o’clock and I’d forgotten to eat, so I was about to run across the street to Jitters for a sandwich when I saw Oliver pacing outside.

“What are you doing?” I opened the door to the shop and invited him in. Well, forced him in would be more accurate, as he seemed unusually reluctant to cross the threshold.

“Just came to see Eleanor.”

“You’re not going to . . .” I whispered. “I don’t think you should right now.”

“No. I thought about what you said, about it not being the right time. It’s just . . . I have to talk to her about something else.”

He looked past my shoulder to Eleanor’s office and saw what I saw—Barney’s paw. And where Barney was, Eleanor was. He took a deep breath and stepped toward the office before I could stop him. If he proposed now, it would likely be a disaster.

I started to follow him, hoping that somehow I could delay his mission, but before I could reach the office, Oliver closed the door.

At four o’clock Eleanor’s door was still closed. I couldn’t hear anything coming from inside, which probably was a good sign. As much as I wanted to stay and make sure everything was okay, I had to get to the police station. I hurried over there and saw Jesse standing outside the door to his office.

“So what will make me laugh?” I asked.

“Nell Fitzgerald, meet Molly O’Brien.”

“We’ve already met,” I pointed out.

“Not officially.” Jesse smiled broadly. “Molly is . . .”

I remembered Elizabeth’s Christmas card, and the mention of a grandchild in college in Boston. The mayor said Molly was going to college in Newton. I hadn’t put it together before, but Newton is a town just outside the city and home of Boston College. Suddenly it all made sense—why someone like Molly would practically insist on an internship at city hall, even after Glad turned her down. “You’re Grace’s—”