“How’s Ruth?” the shopkeeper asked as her smile faded. “It’s been so long since we’ve gotten together. We used to meet at least once a month, but lately we’ve both been so busy. Has she recovered from that nightmare in Chicago?”
“She’s doing just fine, Tessa. The shop is thriving, and she has three teachers now, and the classrooms are filled most of the time. She’s determined to make quilters out of every resident of Middletown.” Sarah introduced Sophie, and the three women visited for a few minutes until Sophie said she’d like to look around.
“Make yourself at home,” Tessa said. “Take a look at those antique quilts over there in the corner. And you two can ignore the Don’t touch sign since you know how to handle quilts.”
Sarah carefully lifted the first few quilts and examined the ones farther down in the pile. They came to two or three Amish quilts lying together, and they looked at each other wordlessly. They were Ruth’s quilts. It wasn’t until they dug a little deeper that Sophie suddenly screamed out, “It’s Andy’s quilt. Look. It’s Andy’s!”
Tessa was approaching the table. “What’s the problem?” she asked innocently.
“You know perfectly well what the problem is,” Sophie screamed. “You stole my friend’s quilt, and you even stole your own friend’s quilts. These are Ruth’s, and this one belongs to my friend Andy!”
“Sophie,” Sarah said softly, “take another look. Please. This isn’t Andy’s quilt.”
“Well, it …” she began. “Oh,” she added as she lifted a corner and looked at the back. “Okay, so that one isn’t Andy’s, but those are Ruth’s,” she added stubbornly.
“What’s going on here?” Tessa asked.
“I’m sorry, Tessa. It was a mistake. Come on, Sophie. We need to go.” They headed for the door with Sarah practically dragging an objecting Sophie.
“Please wait, Sarah,” Tessa pleaded. “I need to know what’s going on. I just bought those quilts, and if they’re stolen, I need to know it. Please stay and tell me what’s going on.”
“First, I want to talk to my husband,” Sarah said as she pulled out her cell phone and called. “Where are you?” she asked, knowing that Charles had planned to do some shopping and said he might need to go to Hamilton to find what he needed.
“I’m in Hank’s Hardware up in Hamilton. What’s up?”
“I need you to come to the quilt shop right away. It’s an emergency.”
“It’ll take me an hour. …”
“No, the quilt shop here in Hamilton. Sophie and I are here. We’re on Main Street—509, I think.”
“That’s right,” Tessa said in the background.
“I’ll be there in ten minutes,” Charles responded.
While they were waiting for Charles, Sarah began telling Tessa about the robbery, but Tessa immediately said that she knew about it. “Everyone in the quilting community knows about that,” Tessa added. “It was a terrible thing to happen. All those poor people lost family memories. Wait! Are you saying …?”
“Wait until my husband gets here.”
Sophie didn’t speak up, still angry about finding what she thought were stolen quilts in the shop. Sarah and Tessa went back to the table, and Sarah pulled out her cell phone with pictures of most of the stolen quilts. She shared the images with Tessa, who immediately said, “That one is on the pile. That one too,” she exclaimed. “What’s going on here?”
By the time Charles arrived, they had identified seven of the quilts that were stolen from the Cunningham Village quilt show. Tessa had been in the process of explaining where she had gotten them, and she started over for Charles’ benefit.
“The guy was young and sort of scruffy looking. He wasn’t your typical antique dealer, and when I asked about that, he said he procured antiques for his boss, and if I wanted to buy any of them instead, it would save him having to ship them. When I paid him for the seven quilts, he looked happy to see cash and stuffed it in his pocket. I did wonder why he didn’t attempt to keep it separate from his own money, but some people aren’t that organized.”
Tessa was frantic when she realized she had inadvertently been offering stolen merchandise for sale. “We need to report this to the police right away,” she announced to Sophie’s surprise.
“I’ve already alerted them,” Charles announced. “Tell them what you told us, and you’ll probably have to account for how you obtained the other quilts, but you’ll be cleared in the long run, I’m sure.”
When the police arrived, one of the older officers immediately recognized Charles from his days on the force. “Charlie! What are you doing here?”
Charles explained to the officers what had happened, and the younger one spoke up, saying, “That kid is at it again. He’s part of a gang that’s making us crazy. There’s no rhyme or reason to where they hit or what kind of merchandise they’re after. This is the first time we caught them selling stuff instead of stealing it.”
As they continued to talk, Tessa collected the paperwork she had on the other purchases. The younger officer pulled on the frayed edge of one of the older quilts and said, “You mean these old things are worth money?”
Sophie, immediately insulted, straightened up to her almost five feet height and said, “Don’t touch that! Quilts have feelings, you know.”
The officer backed away.
Once the officers were finished at the crime scene, Tessa was told to close the shop, and all four were taken to the police station to be interrogated individually. They were released hours later, exhausted and eager to go home. “May we take the seven quilts that belong to us?” Sophie asked.
“Sorry, miss. They are evidence,” the officer responded. “We’ll be holding them until the investigation is complete.”
“At least we know where they are,” Sarah said as she and Sophie drove home behind Charles.
“I’m going to call Charles,” Sophie announced, “and see if he wants to stop for dinner at the diner, okay?”
“Great plan. This morning I saw that chicken pot pie was the special tonight, and we all need a dose of comfort food.”
Chapter 19
“What did you learn from Hamilton PD?” Charles asked a few days later as he sat in Detective Halifax’s office, sipping what the department fondly referred to as coffee. It hadn’t changed in the many years since Charles had been sitting in this very office, despite the newer coffeepots.
“They’ve been after this gang for several years,” the detective began. “It seems to be a bunch of young guys without much skill and no obvious leader. I don’t know why they can’t catch them, but they don’t seem to follow any pattern.”
“A gang?” Charles asked.
“Not exactly. They seem to be working independently. They work for someone out of town who will take most anything they can get, from fine art to those ragged old quilts.”
“Don’t let my wife hear you say that,” Charles objected. “Those ‘ragged old quilts’ are like family to the people who treasure them. Many of the ones in the show were made in the 1800s. Can you imagine a piece of hand-stitched cloth lasting that many years?”
Hal looked at him like he was a stranger. “What’s with you, Charlie? You getting soft?”
“And that’s another thing,” Charles said emphatically. “I haven’t been Charlie since I left the force a decade ago. If you wouldn’t mind, please call me Charles like everyone else.”
“Sorry, Charlie … I mean Charles. I didn’t know. Matt always called you Charlie.”
“I know,” Charles responded, suddenly looking sad. “Originally, I objected because I was always Charlie on the job, and I wanted to start a new life after I retired, but later when Matt was the only person left who called me Charlie … well, now hearing it reminds me that old Matt is gone.”
Both men remained silent for a while, each lost in his own memories of Lieutenant Matthew Stokely. Matt had been Charles’ lieutenant for many years as well as his closest friend. Matt was there when Charles�
� first wife died, and when Matt’s wife, Doris, was tragically killed, Charles was there. For the past year, Charles had grieved the loss of Matt himself.
Young Halifax, on the other hand, came to Lieutenant Stokely as a new recruit and immediately saw in the man the father he had never had. Matt took on the responsibility willingly, never having had a son himself.
“Okay, let’s deal with this quilt show issue,” Charles began. “Hamilton PD has been after these small-time crooks for two years with no luck.”
“Oh, they’ve caught a few of them. They can describe how it goes down, but they don’t know who the bosses are. They send the merchandise to them by truck.”
“They arranged for a truck? Where does it go?” Charles asked.
“No, they don’t have anything to do with getting the truck. It’s delivered to them as soon as they have enough to make it worthwhile. They call a number that changes weekly. They meet the truck where they are told, and they load it. They couldn’t charge any of the guys with much because they never got their hands on the stolen goods. The merchandise was long gone.”
“Are you saying that the boss, or bosses, are running this from out of town? Not the mob, I assume.”
“Nah. Too penny-ante for the mob.”
“You mentioned priceless antiques,” Charles reminded him.
“Yeah, a few were lifted during estate sales. A lot of small stuff as well. These quilts now, I don’t get. They can’t be worth much.”
“Begging to differ, my friend. I’ve been following online sales this week, and I’ve seen them range from $500 to $5,000, and there are probably some for more than that.”
“How about the ones in the show? Are they worth that much?”
“The quilters estimated their average value at around $800, but I think they were underestimating the worth of some of the oldest ones.”
“We believe this is the first time they’ve hit Middletown, assuming it’s the same guys, but we’re going back and looking at some of our open cases. Hamilton has sent the word out to other cities, and it seems to be going on all over the Upper Midwest. No telling where else they’re operating.”
“Where do you suppose this stuff is ending up?”
“No idea. Hamilton found a few pieces in California and New Mexico.”
“How did they find them?” Charles asked.
“Internet sales.”
“Ah. Good idea. So what do you think, Hal? Is this information that you could share with Sarah’s quilt group? They need to hear that something is being done.”
“Yeah, I’ll give them an abbreviated version of what we talked about. Do you suppose these old ladies are computer savvy?”
“First of all, they aren’t ‘old ladies.’ ” Charles hesitated and added, “Well, some are, but that sounds pretty harsh. My wife is one of them, you know.”
“I’d hardly call Sarah an ‘old lady,’ ” Hal responded with a chuckle.
“So, what’s your point, Hal?” Charles asked, trying to hold back his irritation.
“What I was leading up to was whether any of these women could do computer searches and see if they saw their own quilts online anywhere.”
“Hmm. Not a bad idea, but on the other hand, who would be dumb enough to advertise stolen merchandise online so soon after stealing it?”
“That could be true of some rare items, but these guys might think that no one would be searching for quilts that way.”
“Because they probably belong to little old ladies?” Charles responded sarcastically.
“Okay, I get it. I apologize to you and Sarah and all the women in the quilt club,” the detective said, holding his hands up in acquiescence.
“Okay, that’s something you could introduce to the women when you speak to them next week, and they might at least feel like they are doing something. In the meantime, I intend to get on the computer myself and learn where old quilts get listed.”
“Good idea. Let me know if you come up with anything.”
* * * * *
“Okay, Sophie, I’m ready to take a closer look at this scooter of yours.”
Sophie began to dismount her fire-engine red mobility scooter, but Sarah adamantly objected.
“No, no! I don’t want to ride it. I just want to look at it.”
“Well, you can appreciate it more by sitting in it. You won’t believe how comfortable it is.”
“But I’m not ready to ride in it,” Sarah insisted.
“I know. Just sit down.” Sophie moved aside, and Sarah easily slipped onto the seat.
“Wow. This is comfortable,” she remarked, looking surprised. She spread her arms out on the padded armrests and sat back in the seat. “Really comfortable,” she repeated. “And you can drive it on the roads?”
“You can here in the Village, but in town you have to stay on the sidewalk. I only want it for here, but Norman said we might take it to Kentucky when we go to his cabin in the spring. I can drive it around in the park. He said it’s good on grass and gravel. Even rough terrain.”
“How fast can it go?”
“I’ve only gone a few miles an hour, but Norman said it could go up to fifteen miles an hour. I know that’s not very fast, but it’s fine for tooling around here in the Village, and it’s hard for me to walk on rough terrain like they have in the Land Between the Lakes.”
“What’re these switches for?”
“Headlights and turn signals,” Sophie responded expertly. “Norman went over the whole thing with me. I wasn’t sure I wanted to keep it, but it’s convenient for going to the Center or just driving around the community. Besides, it’s fun. Don’t you want to try it?”
“I guess I will. I’ll just go around the edge of our cul-de-sac,” Sarah decided. “How do I start it?”
“Just like a car. Turn the key.”
Sarah started the scooter and suddenly squealed, “How do I make it go? There aren’t any pedals.”
“The speed control lever is on your handle. Squeeze it to move and for more speed.”
“Where’s the lever for stopping?”
“You use the same lever, Sarah. Just let up on it to slow down and stop.”
“It must take a while to get used to that,” Sarah said as she tried moving a few feet forward and then stopping.”
“It doesn’t take long. Just go really slow.”
“I think I’ll go all the way down to the entrance to our street,” Sarah said once she had traveled five or six feet at about one mile an hour.”
“Okay, but pick up your speed just a little,” Sophie suggested as she walked by Sarah’s side.
“I don’t want to go any faster than you can walk,” Sarah responded. “I want you by me.”
“Nonsense,” Sophie responded. “You’re the brave one in this group. Get going. I’ll wait for you in front of your house.”
Sophie watched as Sarah finally reached the end of the block and turned to return to her cul-de-sac. Sophie noticed that her friend stopped the scooter and walked it around until it was facing home. But she hopped right back on and traveled much faster coming back home. She pulled into the driveway with a broad smile. “That was a blast.”
“I knew you’d like it,” Sophie responded. “By the way, how about that chili and cornbread dinner you promised? I’m starving.”
“It’s all made and will only take a short time in the oven once we get in.”
Norman and Charles had been looking at private quilt sales on the internet, but once they realized what was going on out front, they decided to watch from the living room window.
“You drove that thing like a professional,” Charles kidded as Sarah walked in the door.
“You were watching?” she replied, looking embarrassed. “I never got it over five miles an hour.”
“Are you going to want one?” Charles asked with a twinkle in his eye.
“Absolutely not,” she responded emphatically. She wondered about that look. I hope he isn’t planning to surprise me
with one, she thought. “And if I ever change my mind, I’ll let you know,” she added.
The men returned to the computer room, and Sophie and Sarah poured themselves a glass of wine. Sophie sat at the kitchen table and watched as Sarah transferred her Crock-Pot full of chili into a rectangular glass baking dish. She then removed a pitcher from the refrigerator that contained a thick yellow mixture.
“What’s that?” Sophie asked.
“That’s our cornbread. I had it all mixed and ready to bake,” Sarah responded as she carefully poured the mixture over the chili.
“You’re baking it on top of the chili?”
“The best way to do it. You’ll see.”
After dinner, the two friends retired to the sewing room and spent the rest of the evening planning the quilt they were going to make as a fundraiser for the local women’s shelter.
“Will you be asking the quilt group to make some of the blocks?” Sophie asked.
“I think you and I can make this one together. It’s a simple pattern, and I’d like to get it to our quilter right away so we can deliver it to the shelter before their winter fundraiser.”
Sarah pulled out her containers of yellow and blue fabrics, and they chose a variety of pieces in both colors for their scrap quilt. “I’ll cut these into strips tonight, and we can start sewing tomorrow.”
“I’ll be here by 10:00,” Sophie responded as she stood to leave. “Norman wants to get me home early tonight so that he can go home and pack for his trip to Chicago.”
“Event planners’ convention, right?”
“That’s right. He’s retired, but I think Norman is probably as involved as he was before he retired.”
“Did you think about going with him?”
“He asked, but I wanted him to do this by himself. I think it’s important that we both continue to enjoy our own interests.”
“I agree,” Sarah responded. She and Charles enjoyed their time together, but they each had their own hobbies and interests as well.
“Do you really think we can finish the quilt tomorrow?” Sophie asked as she was putting on her coat. She had found the book of patterns in a thrift shop, and it was entitled Quilt in a Day.
Frayed Edges Page 9
