"Well, you're not a virgin anymore." Bernie poured me a second glass of wine.
"Honestly, Bernadette," Maggie said, "you have the oddest way of putting things."
"It's okay," I laughed. "I guess I'm a quilter now."
"Well, you hang out with the wrong crowd and you're going to pick up some bad habits." Nancy patted me on the shoulder.
I looked over at my grandmother sitting on a chair, her broken leg propped up. She smiled at me and I smiled back. I could finally see what had brought her to quilting. It was creative, it was practical and it was tradition. Passed down from one generation of women to the next going back hundreds of years, no matter the circumstance. From the slaves in the pre-Civil War South, who sewed scraps to warm themselves and celebrate their individuality… to Victorian-day women who showed off their high social station by making elaborate embroidered pieces on silks and satins to display both their wealth and the amount of leisure time they had… to the Amish women who even today use bright colors and elaborate stitching to showcase their abilities, while still remaining humble… to the women in this room with their unique styles, often strange personalities and strong friendships. I was proud to be considered one of them, even if only for one night.
"Isn't there still a lot of work to do?" I finally asked.
"Tomorrow," Nancy laughed. "Unless you can figure out a way to stall Tom."
"I guess I should get home to the baby," Natalie sighed.
"Oh, yeah. Children," Carrie said. "I should go too."
Nancy and Bernie agreed to stay behind and clean up the dining room so it would be ready for customers in the morning. I walked Barney, who had spent most of the evening in the kitchen.
"What is his problem?" I asked Eleanor, who was making herself tea when I got back to the house.
"He's not used to so many people, all day long," she said as Barney dropped into his dog bed. "I think the poor thing is petted out."
I petted him anyway, and he did his best to ignore me. And then I did the dishes.
"Well, you've put that one to work, haven't you," Bernie said to Eleanor as she walked in the kitchen.
"She has," I admitted. "And I've got the dishpan hands to prove it." I held up my dry hands in kind of show-and-tell.
Bernie reached into her purse and took out a small jar. "Try this," she said, and tossed it to me. "It's quilter's hand wax."
"What makes it for quilters?"
"It's not specifically," Eleanor said. "It's just a great waxy moisturizer that softens hands but won't get greasy and ruin fabric, so you can use it while you're sewing."
I opened the jar and smelled it. It didn't smell like anything. I dipped in. It was, as described, waxy. I spread a little on my hands and rubbed it in. My hands felt softer, but she was right-there was no greasiness. I put my finger back in the jar and took a little more. It seemed familiar. It seemed like the same stuff that had been on the stairs in the shop-the stairs Eleanor and I had both slipped on.
"Where did you get this, Bernie?" I asked.
"At the shop. Your grandmother sells it by the truckload." Eleanor nodded.
I turned the jar upside down. "What are you doing?" Eleanor asked.
"I'm just trying to see if it spills. If it could have been accidentally spilled on the steps."
"Doesn't budge."
"No, Grandma, it doesn't."
"Well, it's a lovely science experiment, dear, but I should be going." Bernie patted Eleanor's arm. "Good work today, I think."
"It was."
Bernie walked over to me. "I almost forgot. I wrote down my fudge recipe for you." She pulled out a piece of pink paper from her purse and handed it to me, smiling. "Maybe you'll make it for a future meeting."
I looked at the pink paper for a long second. That didn't make sense. But when I looked up, Bernie was gone and Nancy had entered the kitchen to say good night.
CHAPTER 52
"Please don't say it." Jesse was laughing the next morning when I called him about the pink paper and the hand wax.
"It's not impossible. Bernie told me herself that she had more lovers than she can remember."
"Stop. Now."
"She could have been having an affair with Marc."
"Mrs. Avallone is a friend of my mother's."
"Then explain the pink paper. Explain the hand wax."
"Okay," Jesse said. "The stationery store said that at least a dozen pads of the same paper have been sold in the last six months. And the wax comes from the quilt shop. All of those women probably have some."
"I don't think the paper is a coincidence."
"I tell you what-you follow up on that lead and I'll work on figuring out where Marc could have gotten the money. Last night I was thinking that maybe he was blackmailing someone and when the person came to pay, he or she instead decided to kill him."
"You think he was blackmailing Bernie about their secret affair? " I said, only half kidding.
"I don't want to have that image in my head. Mrs. Avallone plays cards with my mother every Tuesday." I could hear the smile in his voice, and it felt nice. "But the wax is another story. Who went up and down those stairs?"
"Everyone. The bathroom was downstairs and all the regulars at the shop had access to it."
"So it could have been meant for someone else. Someone like you."
"Why would anyone want to hurt me?"
"Why would anyone want to hurt Eleanor?"
I didn't know the answer, but I promised to be careful as we hung up. My cell phone rang again and I was sure it was Jesse calling back, but when I looked at the caller ID, I saw it was Ryan. I just kept looking at the number as the phone rang until it went silent.
I went downstairs where Nancy and Eleanor were already set up for another day of quilting. Nancy was positioning and repositioning the flowers I had so carefully cut out. She tried them on the long plain strips of purple fabric that made up the borders of the quilt, but they didn't work. Then she tried to place them in the blocks.
"No," I said. "That's too busy."
"Any suggestions?" She turned to me.
"The whole quilt feels like a painting, and then when you put the flowers on it, it sort of takes away from it." I touched the soft fabric of the quilt. "I wish you could paint flowers on the borders. That would be cool."
"You can," Eleanor said. "They make paints that you can put on fabric."
"Well, I can't," Nancy protested. "I'm not much of a painter."
"Nell can." Eleanor sat up in her chair. "She used to paint all the time."
"I don't know if I was any good," I protested.
Eleanor dismissed me with a wave. "Nancy, we have some fabric paints, don't we?"
Nancy sorted through several boxes until she found what she was looking for. "I don't know how to paint on fabric," I said. "And I'm certainly not going to ruin this."
"Paint flowers on the borders. That's just plain fabric," Nancy said. "If we hate it, we'll just cut more fabric."
I laid some paper on the ironing board, then put a long strip of the purple border fabric on the board and pinned it down. I was nervous enough without having the fabric move around as I painted. I ordered Nancy and Eleanor out of the room and arranged the paints. Then I stared at the fabric. I had an image in my head of how it should look, but I couldn't figure out where to start.
"Nature isn't perfect, you know," Nancy said from the hallway.
"Better than me," I sighed.