Make Quilts Not War

chapter 24



“Guess what we still have?” Lauren asked and held her keys up, jingling them as she did.

“Your car?” Harriet guessed.

“Geez, those pain meds are dulling your brain. Good thing you’ve got me here to do the thinking.”

“I’m tired. Can you just tell me what you’re talking about without all the commentary on my brain power?”

“You’re no fun.” Lauren put her keys in her pocket. “With all the excitement at the concert, guess where Jenny’s quilt is?”

Harriet sat up straighter in her chair, finally catching some of Lauren’s enthusiasm.

“The back seat of your car?”

“Give the girl a prize. I’ll be right back.”

Lauren slipped into her jacket and went outside, returning a moment later with a pillowcase-covered bundle; Harriet was standing by her large cutting table. She’d cleared the surface so they could spread the quilt out flat.

“Let’s put it face-down,” she suggested. “The bulk of the acid hit the back side corner.”

They bent over the quilt corner to examine the burned area.

“Hold on,” Harriet said. “I’ve got curved tweezers by my serger.” she added referring to the special sewing machine that was used to produce encased edge seams. It was intricate work, and most people used tweezers to help guide the thread through the series of hooks and loops leading to the double needles.

She returned to the table and carefully grasped the blackened, burned edge of the quilt backing, lifting and pulling it to the side.

“That looks weird.” Lauren pointed to the layer of batting exposed by the burned fabric.

Harriet picked at the fuzzy remains of batting with the tweezer tips.

“I don’t think this was regular batting before it was burned. It’s way too thin.”

“What’s that underneath the fuzz?” Lauren went to Harriet’s storage shelf on the back wall for a tabletop Ott light. Harriet plugged it into a power strip mounted under the edge of the cutting table’s top. Lauren flicked the switch, and the bright, natural light illuminated the quilt corner.

“Is that newspaper?” she asked as Harriet gently probed under the batting.

Harriet poked harder, finally penetrating what indeed turned out to be newsprint. She grabbed an edge and pulled, and an inch-square piece of the paper tore loose.

“What does it say?” Lauren asked as Harriet held it under the light.

“It’s from the St. Cloud Times newspaper dated January fifteenth, nineteen-sixty-seven.”

“Where’s St. Cloud?”

Harriet turned the square of paper over and read the printing on the reverse side.

“Looks like Minnesota. This is talking about something in Minneapolis.”

“Isn’t that where Jenny’s commune was?”

“That’s what she claimed, but I’m not sure I believe anything she says at this point.” She turned back to the quilt and poked into the burn hole again. “Hold this,” she told Lauren, pointing to the corner of the quilt. She poked and prodded and finally came out with another piece of paper. This one was green and did not require a high-powered light to identify.

“Is that what I think it is?” Lauren asked.

“If you’re thinking large denomination money, yes. I think it’s a piece of a one hundred-dollar bill.”

“Whoa.”

“Jenny’s been holding out on us. She clearly knows more about the bank robbery than she’s admitted.”

“Like the part where she was there?” Lauren asked.

“Yeah, for starters. For all we know, she could have been the mastermind.”

Harriet spun the quilt until the opposite corner was in front of her. She took a pair of bandage scissors from a holder on her tool shelf, carefully created a hole then a slit along the seam of the first border. With the tweezers, she peeled back the layers of batting and newspaper and exposed more hundred-dollar bills. At the same time, Lauren crumpled another spot in her hands, listening for the crunch of paper.

“It feels like the whole quilt is filled with money,” she said.

“No wonder Jenny was so paranoid about this quilt.”

“So, now what are we going to do?”

“That’s a good question,” Harriet replied. “We should call Detective Morse, but I feel like we should let Jenny have a chance to do the right thing first.”

“Maybe we should call Robin,” Lauren suggested.

“Once we do that, she’ll be required to report it, whether Jenny knows about it or not.”

“We could call your aunt, or Mavis.”

Before Harriet could express an opinion about that idea, her phone rang. She went to her work desk and answered.

“That was Tom,” she reported after she’d hung up. “He was just checking to make sure nothing else had happened. He also wanted to know if we’d gotten anything resembling an explanation for the attack by the kitchen crew. I said no. I didn’t want to go into the whole ‘they’re probably the bank robbers Jenny worked with when she robbed a bank forty some years ago.’”

“Probably a good idea.”

Harriet felt a small twang of guilt. Tom had been nothing but helpful, but with this latest revelation, and Jenny’s new version of her past life, she just hadn’t had the energy to recount it all.

“I guess we probably shouldn’t tear her quilt apart,” Lauren said with a disappointed sigh.

“Not without Robin or Detective Morse or Jenny or someone else weighing in on the matter.”

“I better go,” Lauren said. “I’ve got an early start tomorrow.”

Harriet started to reply but then froze.

“Did you hear that?”

“What?”

Harriet held her finger to her lips. From outside came the sound of a car door.

Lauren quickly grabbed the quilt and the pillowcase and disappeared into the kitchen. Someone knocked on the door. Harriet got up and looked through the side pane of the bow window.

Colm Byrne stood on her porch holding a large shopping bag. She opened the door.

“I hope it’s not too late to come calling,” he said. “I drove by and saw your lights on and a car in the driveway, so I hoped you’d still be awake.

“Come in,” she said and stepped aside to let him in.

“I know your young friend was hoping to get a CD earlier, and I was hoping you might want a CD set for yourself.” He held the bag up. “Here are sets for both of you, along with tour T-shirts and souvenir scarves.” He pulled the items from the bag and laid them on the seat of one of the wing chairs.

“This is way too generous,” Harriet protested.

“I was hoping we could cash in that rain check from the other day,” he said.

“Now?” Her voice was a little too loud.

“No, no. I thought maybe we could go to dinner tomorrow night. We have to leave town in a few days, and I was hoping, if dinner went well, you’d see me again before that happened.”

Before Harriet could answer, Lauren came back from the kitchen.

“That sounds like a great idea,” she said. “I happen to know Harriet is free tomorrow night. She had to cancel all her plans because of her arm.”

“Speaking of my arm, if you two don’t mind, I’m getting a little tired.”

“Yeah, when you see the doctor tomorrow morning, he’s going to know you haven’t been staying home with it elevated like he told you to do.”

“I’m sorry if that’s my fault,” Colm said, trying to appear sheepish but not succeeding.

“It’s fine,” Harriet assured him. “I wouldn’t have missed your concert for anything.”

“I hope I didn’t disappoint.”

“It was wonderful,” she said. “Especially when you did all the old songs before you did your own. It showed a lot of versatility.”

“Well, thank you,” he said. “My mother used to make me play whatever was popular on American radio at the time. It’s finally paying off.”

Lauren picked up her coat and swung her messenger bag over her shoulder. She stared at Colm.

“I’ll take my leave, too,” he said with obvious reluctance. “I’m glad you were still up and look forward to seeing you tomorrow night.” With that, he turned and went out the door.

“Thanks for accepting an invitation for me,” Harriet complained when he was gone.

“Are you telling me you were going to turn down a date with Colm Byrne?” Lauren asked.

“Don’t you think I have enough men in my life?”

“Yeah, but this isn’t like that. This is just dinner with a rock star and maybe one more date, and then he’s out of here to start his ‘Irish Spring’ tour. I saw it on his web page.”

“You looked him up on his web page? You should go out on a date with him.”

“He didn’t ask me, groupie. Besides, it will make a great picture for your MyFace page.”

“My MyFace page?” Harriet asked. “I don’t have a MyFace, YourFace or AnyoneElse’sFace page.”

“Seriously?” Lauren asked, shock plain on her face. “How can you expect to grow your business without using social media?”

“I don’t know, I guess I’ll just muddle through the old-fashioned way—word of mouth.”

“Geez, do I have to do everything? When this whole festival business is over, I’ll come over and set you up basic pages on the popular apps. We should join you to some of the e-quilting groups, too.”

“Whatever,” Harriet said.

“I’ll call you tomorrow to see what the plan is for tearing your booth down. Do you need help getting into your jammies?”

“No, I can handle it.”

“Good, I hate that sort of thing,” Lauren said as she turned and went out the door.