by Molly Macrae
“And he’s right there. What can you tell me?”
“He’s worried.”
“About what?”
“I haven’t figured that out yet.”
“You, know, it felt a little better knowing they had suspects and the suspects lived other places. Does he have a new suspect? Is his view shared by anyone else?”
“There’s more pounding and swearing going on here than talking.”
“Now I feel bad I crabbed at him for not taking the tablecloth seriously. He must be feeling a lot of pressure on this. But I wish—” I bit that off, because I wished that I could billow like Geneva to get my points across, to make people see things my way. How frustrated she must have been for so many years, to never be heard. And she still only had me and Ardis. I clamped my lips and looked up at the darkening sky. Clouds were drawing in around the moon.
“I know, I know.” Joe’s words tried to pat my back and console me—for what he could only guess, but that didn’t stop him. And it turned out his guess came close. After a few quiet seconds, he said, “He is taking the tablecloth seriously. He’ll be at the opening tomorrow. Rogalla, too, probably just to needle Cole.”
Oh joy. “Okay, a couple of questions and then I’ll let you get back to having fun with hammers and engines. Do you think there’s any chance the scraps are still in the building?”
“No idea.”
“Me, neither. So, what would you say to the two of us doing our own bit of looking around? Later on. Much later on. After everyone’s gone.”
“No.”
“You’re no fun.”
“You know very well I can be lots of fun when we’re alone.”
“Why, yes, I do.”
“We wouldn’t be alone at the Vault, though. Sierra’s in the apartment up top.”
“I forgot that.”
“And Cole says Rogalla and Bruce are spending the night on a cot in the gallery as a favor to Sierra. Guard duty so nothing else happens before the big day.”
How irritating. I put a good face on it, though. “Well, I guess it can’t hurt.”
“That’s not exactly what Cole said, but it’ll do.”
We disconnected, and I walked the rest of the way home wondering about a question I hadn’t asked Joe.
I ate limp leftover salad for supper. For entertainment I finished another baby hat. I would have raised my arms in triumph, but I pictured Thea and Mel finishing three more, each, and tossing them on their piles of a dozen. My lone itty-bitty thing was variegated blue; it matched my mood.
Emails from my former colleagues had straggled in over the past few days, answering my question about stolen or newly discovered Arts and Crafts textiles. Another old friend answered that evening, making it unanimous—none of them had heard any such reports or rumors, but if I had or did, they would love it if I passed them along.
Before I went to bed, I circled back around to thinking about the question I hadn’t asked Joe because I’d dismissed it as ludicrous. After a few false starts, I phrased it as simply as I could, and I sent it in a text to him and the rest of the posse.
Were Nervie and Gar ever a thing?
NINE
Did you eat something rancid last night? Because I mean, really. Nervie and Garland?” Ardis eyed me critically in the kitchen at the Cat the next morning. “What on earth gave you a ludicrous idea like that?”
I could have told her it wasn’t so much something on earth as someone in limbo who’d put the idea in my head. I hadn’t seen Geneva yet this morning, bit in case she drifted down now, I didn’t want to hurt her feelings. Having a friend who could move absolutely silently had its disadvantages.
“You might be losing your touch, hon,” Ardis went on. “This business over the tablecloth might have curdled your clear thinking.”
“Check your messages again.”
“What? Oh.” Ardis fumbled for her phone. “Battling with Daddy every morning curdles any semblance I’ve ever had of being organized.”
To hear her, anyone would think Ardis had lived the model of an orderly personal life before the worries of her father’s fragility and fading memory set in. Everyone who knew her, though, knew the meticulous attention she gave to his care matched the care she took in anything she did for someone else—and was far beyond any organization she’d ever imposed on herself. Her daddy was in the same capable and loving hands the Cat had been for years.
I’d begun to regret the text about Nervie and Gar as soon as I’d hit send the night before. I’d talked myself into letting it go, though. It was what it was, and maybe it would spark thoughts and questions that were a little less out there. That theory had settled in comfortably until about four in the morning. Then I’d groped for my phone and sent another text asking the others to ignore the first. Mel, up early to bake, had just answered the first. Whether she thought the text was a joke or I was wasn’t clear from her all-caps LOLOLOLOLOL.
“Well then,” Ardis said, after she put away her phone. “But were you serious?”
“I’m not sure. Do you mind if I run up and ask Geneva if she wants to come with us?”
“I’ll be in front saying hey to the girls.”
The girls were Debbie, our shepherdess, and Abby, our formerly Goth high school student. Abby had started working weekends for us after she fell under the spell of a spindle whorl. She turned out to be a natural at spinning and completely besotted with all things fiber. Recently, she’d been studying the ordinances about keeping multiple rabbits (angora), a goat (mohair), or a pair of sheep in town. She’d already talked her parents into turning part of their large backyard into a plot for growing flax. They’d said no to an alpaca.
Geneva sat in the window seat again. Argyle purred in a ball of fur next to her. Every so often I sat there with them, cozy with Argyle in my lap. If the three of us sat side by side it got a little cramped. Geneva didn’t disappear or turn her back on me when I walked in, so I hoped she’d forgotten our upset or forgiven me.
“Good morning, you two.” I bent to kiss Argyle between the ears.
“At least it isn’t raining,” Geneva said.
“It’s kind of nice out. How are you guys this morning?”
Argyle purred. Geneva said, “I only saw one piece of litter in the street.”
“Good to know.” Those comments were more upbeat than I’d expected, and not nearly as dismal as some of her other greetings. “Ardis and I are going to the grand opening at the Vault. Why don’t you come with us? It’s in the old bank building. Maybe you banked there.”
When we met, Geneva hadn’t even remembered her name. A hundred and forty years in the oblivion of that cottage would probably do that to anyone. Details fluttered back to her, from time to time, but they were spotty, and sometimes she confused reality with the television shows she’d watched.
“I doubt I had so much money that I needed more than my pocket or a crock to keep it in,” she said. She paused, cocked her head. “Will there be lots to look at? Pretty things?”
“Lots of pretty things, and live music, too.”
“I wonder if the angels who play harps in heaven call their music live.”
“I think they call it celestial music.”
“So they don’t hurt anyone’s feelings. They must be very polite. Tell me about the pretty things.”
“Rare books and old books, turned wood, antiques, there’s a photographer with beautiful pictures of the mountains, pastels, enamel jewelry.”
“I don’t know.”
“Pottery—oh, there’s such a pretty blue bowl. Tooled leather, old tools and scrap metal turned into yard art. The woman who makes them is a welder.”
“Will she use her welding torch? I’ll consider it if she uses her torch. I wouldn’t even have to stand back or wear a mask. I call that a win for being cold but not in my grave.”
Geneva’s love for dangerous tools and any kind of weapon made me glad she had no ability to move objects. A win for everyone.
&nb
sp; “She has her tools there, but she won’t be using them,” I said. “It’s a safety thing. She does her welding in her workshop and brings the artwork in. The yard art is fun. She makes smaller pieces, too.”
“Smaller pieces for someone who has only a very small plot of ground. And a headstone. I can’t quite picture the fun you describe if she isn’t using the blowtorch. But the linens are pretty?”
“The linens. Yes! And Joe’s watercolors are pretty. Some of his flies are, too.”
“Flies aren’t pretty. Their saving grace is that they’re partial to dead things.”
“These flies are fishing lures, made with feathers and fur and different kinds of yarn and fiber. Come with us, Geneva. We’re leaving in a few minutes. We’ll get there early and help make the opening gate a big success. Say yes.”
“Will there be lots of people?”
“Probably.”
She drew her shoulders up and shivered. “The very idea of rubbing elbows with so many living and breathing strangers gives me the heebie-jeebies.”
“Strangers come in here all day long.”
“But they don’t try to sit on my ceiling fan with me or come up to my room. It’s settled. I’ll stay here to keep an eye on the weekend help.”
“I’m sure if Debbie and Abby knew you were doing that, they’d appreciate it.”
“And you can bring me a present.”
“She’s not coming?” Ardis asked as we went down the Cat’s front steps.
“She didn’t like the idea of a crowd. That’s okay. I’d probably worry about losing her if she came along.”
“Wouldn’t she find her way back on her own? She is an adult.”
“An adult with kind of a major difference. You know what she’s like. It’s okay if she’s happier staying home.”
“Of course it is. If she likes the comfort of four walls and a roof—oh.” Ardis grabbed my arm. “That describes a box. Coffins are boxes, hon. Is this an insight into ghost psychology? Do restless spirits yearn for the closure they were denied upon their deaths?”
“Could be.”
“So many ideas to ponder. Ghost psychology. What an interesting field of study that would be.”
“It would, but you want to be careful being effusive about it while you’re walking down Main Street on a Saturday morning. Hey, Rachel. Nice to see you.”
Rachel from the new bank waved back. “Hey, Kath. Hey, Ardis.”
“Walking down any street, any time, and any day of the week,” Ardis said quietly to me. “You and I are in a very peculiar situation, and to think you were doing this on your own since April. No wonder you sometimes looked distracted.”
“It’s been interesting. Think what would happen, though, if she came with us and we lost track of her or wanted to get her attention. Or how hard it could be if she asked a ton of questions and then got upset when we couldn’t answer her.”
“At least with toddlers you have some chance of hanging onto their hands,” Ardis said. “Or you can get one of those harnesses with a leash. I wonder if I could use one with Daddy? Taking him out in the chair is fine, but on his spryer days he likes to walk and he might have a sprint still left in him. But let’s get back to talking about something else so I don’t slip again. Tell me what put that harebrained idea about Nervie and Gar in your head.”
“Geneva,” I said.
“Lord love a duck.”
“And that was only the tail end of everything that went on yesterday. Taken altogether, the afternoon wasn’t much short of quackers.”
I gave her a rundown on the tablecloth shreds, Clod, Rogalla, and Bruce, and then told her Geneva’s “trifecta of browns” theory. Ardis looked suitably appalled—briefly. Then, in true Ardis form, she zeroed in on what we could do and should do and dismissed the rest.
“I’ll check with the embroidery students, find out what time Nervie left,” she said. “It’s possible she ducked out early.”
I quacked what sounded to me like a pretty realistic quack. Ardis turned her grade-school-teacher glare on me, stopping several yards short of the Vault’s front door.
“No more joking around, missy,” she said, her voice low and serious. “Something’s going on in there. Mr. Rogalla might think his dog is a possum expert, and the dog may well be, or that could just be so much twaddle. But I’d be willing to bet Coleridge smelled a rat. And if he plans to hunt it down, then we’ll see if we can’t catch it first, even if we ruffle a few feathers to do it.”
“Even if we have to wing it?”
“Even if we have to duck and run afterward.”
The Vault, without newsprint covering its windows, looked suddenly wide awake that morning. The doors had opened at ten. We arrived about a quarter past, and while we’d stood on the sidewalk making our plans, ten or twelve people went in ahead of us. Each time the door opened, strains of a bluegrass trio playing “Sweet Georgia Brown” slipped out to tap their toes on the worn limestone steps. We climbed those steps behind a young couple with a baby in a kangaroo carrier and went inside.
“Kath! Good morning!” Sierra, looking professionally happy, stood at the door, doling out greetings and exclamation points to people as they came in. “Good morning!” she said to Ardis. “Hello! Welcome to the Vault!” She swished her hand at a couple of tiny bugs. Ardis, taking the hint, closed the door.
“Sierra, I’d like you to meet my good friend and business partner at the Weaver’s Cat, Ardis Buchanan. Ardis, this is Sierra Estep. Sierra’s the director of the Vault.”
“So good to meet you,” Ardis said. She made a show of gazing around the old bank lobby. “The place looks fabulous. How much of this is your doing, Sierra?”
“You’re so sweet! I’m the new girl, though. They just hired me to run the place.”
“And I’m sure you’ll fit the bill,” Ardis said.
“Don’t forget to sign the guest book,” Sierra said. “You might win a door prize!”
The door opened behind us. I grabbed Ardis by the arm and pulled her away. “Before you say another peep.”
We signed the guest book and each helped ourselves to one of Sierra’s business cards.
“Now, where to first?” Ardis asked.
“Joe’s.”
Joe hadn’t given in under pressure from Ardis to tell her anything about his shop while he planned and put it together. I hadn’t told her anything, either, and even though it was the smallest possible space that could still be called a shop, keeping the details secret from her was no minuscule feat. With the trio playing “Brown-Eyed Girl” like angels in the gallery above, I took her to Joe’s and watched her heart melt a little as she looked it over.
His shop was in the original teller’s cage. That included the area behind the barred window, although it measured only three feet by five. It might just be big enough for two or three people to maneuver around each other, provided they were small- to average-sized people. Joe had put the shop together with a carpenter’s skill, an artist’s eye, and the sense of whimsy of a veteran observer of human nature. His wares were his watercolors and hand-tied trout and salmon flies. Salmon didn’t live in our mountains, and probably never had, but the flies they couldn’t resist were as beautiful as Martha’s enamel jewelry. Joe’s shop was beautiful, too, and the whole thing tickled him. He’d named it Brown’s in honor of Gar Brown. Gar would have loved the tribute; he’d started his career in that teller’s cage.
Calling the shop Brown’s worked beyond honoring Gar’s name, too. Joe specialized in pictures of brown trout and the various types of flies called browns. He also had watercolors of garfish and what appeared to be the random addition of sketches and paintings of food. They weren’t random at all; they were Joe’s renditions of Gar’s favorite sandwich, the Hot Brown.
The watercolors Joe had painted at the Sams Gap overlook earlier in the week were on display, as were a couple of pen-and-ink sketches of Gar he’d done for the Vault’s promotional material. The sketches caught a look in Gar
’s eyes that made me think he was about to laugh or launch into a fish story. For some reason, that look reminded me of the squirrels on the ruined tablecloth. Appropriately, they’d been brown squirrels.
“This suits you right down to the ground, Ten,” Ardis said.
Joe, wearing dark brown corduroys and a lighter brown flannel shirt, said, “Thanks.”
“And I don’t know how any fish in its right mind could refuse your flies.” She marveled over gaudy full-dress salmon flies the size of shortbread petticoat tails and peered closely at the more delicate trout flies, some no bigger than brown lentils. “They look tasty enough that I might bite them myself. What’s your favorite?”
“This little feller was Gar’s favorite.” Joe held up a fly so small it could have been a crumb of toast. “It’s a March brown, but Gar called it a sycamore. He’d say, ‘You have to hide behind a sycamore tree when you put it on your line or the fish’ll crawl right up your leg to get at it.’”
“The mind boggles. But which is your favorite?”
“That depends.”
“Spoken like a true and impartial Dunbar,” Ardis said.
“If it’s partiality you’re looking for, then I’ll go with rat-faced McDougals and Scotch poachers.”
“Wonderful. Show me a rat-faced McDougal.”
Joe showed her a row of garbanzo-sized flies bristling with more hair than their neighbors. Ardis carefully plucked one from the display and held it in front of her nose, turning to get it in the best light, then turning again when we heard a harrumphed hey to Joe.
“I think I see why it’s called rat-faced,” Ardis said, looking past the fly. “Hello, Coleridge. I hardly recognize you in your mufti.”
“Ms. Buchanan. Ms. Rutledge.” Clod had dressed for a day off, but neither his jeans nor his T-shirt, nor his posture or surveilling eyes, were believably off-duty. He cast those eyes over the teller’s cage, then they moved on to the sign and settled there. “Nice tribute, Joe,” he said with a fly-sized nod.
Joe returned the nod. He took the fly from Ardis and went to answer questions from a customer looking through the teller’s grill. Clod should have been impressed by Joe’s work, and I chose to believe he was, but from his too-quick perusal and then his turned back, I’d be hard-pressed to explain why I believed that.
