Bound and Deceased

by Rothery, Tess

  She had six sample blocks of a spool pattern layered and basted like miniature quilts. She would use it to teach tying a quilt, so the knots were little puffballs, how to hand quilt a design, and how to machine quilt, stitch in the ditch style. She was working on the finished blocks now and would do the samples for the camera. The work wasn’t groundbreaking, but the data Belle had shared at their last meeting showed the channel was getting a lot of hits on basic instruction videos. The ad revenue was back up. Not as high as while her mom was living, but enough to show that Taylor needed to keep things going.

  It was closing time when the door jangled open. Taylor wasn’t surprised to hear it, but was very glad when she looked up and saw only Roxy and a woman she didn’t recognize. “Good afternoon.” Taylor trusted her friend not to keep her in the shop after hours.

  “Taylor, meet Hannah.”

  Hannah was tall, slender, and young. Her face was sort of soft, and formless with round patches of not-quite-the-right-pink blush on them. She was blonde in the eyelash-less way that brought to mind summer days in Scandinavia and trips to Ikea. That said, she stood with confidence, her shoulders squared and her smile brave as she handed a piece of paper to Taylor. “I wanted to bring you my resume. Roxy said you were hiring.”

  “Thanks.” Taylor accepted the paper with a tilt of her head. She hadn’t discussed the other interviews with Roxy yet, but was nervous. Would she be expected to hire her friend? It had been hard enough to try and pick from the three other good candidates. Comfort College of Art and Craft wasn’t cheap, and those students needed work.

  “I’ll look this over and give you a call tomorrow.” Taylor turned the resume upside down and set it on the table.

  “Of course. I don’t want to bother you while you’re closing.” Hannah’s smile was relaxed and confident. Her clothes were high end, if a little worn down at the edges. A cotton knit sweater with a Ralph Lauren logo and corduroy pants that looked a couple of years out of style, but still a step up from jeans when job hunting.

  “I’ve been doing interviews in the morning, would tomorrow work?”

  “Of course, what time?”

  “How about nine?”

  “Thanks very much. I look forward to it.”

  The whole exchange was normal, comfortable. Hannah felt like the kind of girl who wouldn’t go off the deep end if she didn’t get the job. They shook hands and she left.

  At the door Roxy paused and gave her a thumbs up. This Hannah could probably handle it if Taylor didn’t hire her, but could Roxy?

  Taylor locked the door behind them and read Hannah’s resume.

  Hannah Warner was a twenty-five-year-old with plenty of retail experience, most of it in tourist towns on the beach. Some of it at a surf shop in Neskowin, contact Guy Sauvage.

  Interesting timing.

  Taylor owed it to Roxy to interview Hannah, even if Taylor didn’t hire her, but it didn’t matter who Taylor owed. She was dying to know what had brought Hannah to town at the same time her old boss’s wife’s ex-husband’s new wife had died unexpectedly.

  Taylor laughed out loud at the string of adjectives needed to describe the relationship between this Hannah and the deceased, and yet, it couldn’t be a coincidence, could it?

  * * *

  Hannah Warner was right on time. She was dressed in khaki slacks and a cream silk button down. Her shoes were sturdy, comfortable, and clean. She definitely knew how to represent a store like this one, and survive a long day working at it.

  Taylor offered her coffee then led her to a stool at the worktable. “So, Hannah, what brings you to Comfort?” This seemed like a good way to start a casual interview and satisfy her curiosity about the ex-employee of Art’s ex-wife at the same time.

  Hannah pressed her lips together and furrowed her brows for a moment. “I’m trying to think of how to describe the chain of events without making it sound like I’m lying.” She shook her head. “Can I just say I came for a job that didn’t work out?”

  “What happened with that job?” Taylor had been inclined to like Roxy’s recommendation, but she’d definitely have to hear whatever this unbelievable story was.

  “I was assistant to a lady who ran a successful vintage clothing online resale business, but she died unexpectedly.”

  “I’m so sorry.” Taylor had brought along the notebook she was using to keep track of things related to Reynette’s death. She opened it and hovered her pen tip over the page. “What happened?”

  “You probably heard about it already.” Hannah folded her hands and rested them on her knee. “She died of kidney failure, something about too much aspirin, but I know she’d been struggling to get her diabetes under control all summer. It was type 1, so a bit less responsive to the old diet and exercise routine.”

  Taylor itched to write that down, but she needed Hannah to think the notes were related to her interview. “What were your responsibilities in this job?”

  “Reynette—my old boss—had her hands in a million pies so I ran quite a few aspects of her online shop. I spent some time sourcing clothes, but most of the time I priced items, handled the online listings, and shipped the items out.”

  “Have you talked to her family about continuing the job?” This time, she could write without looking weird.

  “She just passed away yesterday,” Hannah said. “I am going to fulfill outstanding orders but have paused the ability to take new ones for the time. I don’t want the family to have to worry about that store right now.”

  Taylor scratched some thoughts on her page. Why wouldn’t this employee not just keep working? The family surely wouldn’t appreciate having their business shut down without their consent. “You’ll want to discuss this with them as soon as possible.”

  “You’re right. I know. I will but it just seemed like they needed some time first.”

  “They’ll want to know you have found new work.” Taylor gave Hannah another long assessing look. Hannah was unruffled and put together. You’d never know from looking that her life plans had just come crumbling apart.

  “I told Roxy all about the problem—how I wasn’t sure they’d want to run the online store with Reynette gone—and she strongly urged me to come by and talk to you. I can afford to work part time for a little while, and then, if they want to continue with the online store, I could easily do both.”

  “I see.” Taylor made a note, though it was more about the future of her own business with Hannah than about Reynette. She didn’t want to hire someone who needed full time income and benefits. But she wanted someone who could easily get all of that somewhere else. Who didn’t? The ideal employee is always someone who could make much more money in a better job but isn’t interested in doing so. Hannah seemed to fit that bill. “And how do you know Roxy?”

  “She’s one of our best customers, actually. She has a good eye for a deal and has nabbed some stuff for her son over the last couple of years. Single moms are savvy shoppers.”

  “Your resume is impressive.”

  Hannah laughed. “Very few people would look at that resume and say it impresses. A string of tourist town gift shops and a thrift store.”

  Taylor joined her in a little laugh. “Yeah, but you can imagine a PhD in economics isn’t useful to me here.” Taylor pushed the resume to the side. “How did you end up working for Reynette? She wasn’t based at the beach, was she?”

  “The thrift store I worked at wasn’t at the coast—Reynette owned it.” Hannah tapped the resume. “We actually developed the online store together.”

  Taylor pressed her lips together for a moment. “You might want to talk to a lawyer. If you developed the store together, and can prove it, you might have some business ownership rights to consider.”

  Hannah nodded. “There are a lot of things I probably ought to do. To be honest, the first thing that came to mind was rent. I have savings, I can make it a little while but not forever.”

  Taylor stood. “Hannah, I like what I see, and I don�
��t want to make you wait unnecessarily. I’m going to call a couple of your references and get back to you as soon as I can.”

  Hannah stood as well. “I understand. Thank you for your time.” She offered another firm confident handshake that seemed a mismatch for her soft-featured face. “I look forward to hearing from you.”

  Taylor locked up behind them and wrote as much as she could remember in her notebook. As for the references, she was going to call the only one she really wanted to talk to, Guy Sauvage at the surf shop. And she didn’t care about his opinion of Hannah. She could have the job. She was clearly qualified and it would be handy to have someone around who had inside knowledge on Reynette Woods and company.

  * * *

  Grandpa Ernie was agitated when Taylor got home that night. She tried to catch a few minutes with Ellery to see what had happened during the day, but he wasn’t about to give her space. He even followed her to the porch.

  They gave up and Taylor let her go, thankful Ellery was willing to be paid via Venmo, so he didn’t have to know anything about it.

  Taylor and Grandpa went back to the living room. “Grandpa what’s bothering you?” The sun had set about an hour ago, and that was usually a trigger for a mood shift, but it just seemed worse today.

  “Where’s Belle?” He stood in the middle of their small living room, leaning on a wooden cane. He didn’t usually walk with a cane, though Taylor was glad to see it. His shuffling step had gotten shufflier in the months since she’d been home.

  “She’s at school.” Taylor scooted past him and into the kitchen. He shuffled after her. Ellery had taken to having an early supper with grandpa, usually soup and half a sandwich. But Taylor was starving and needed to find some kind of dinner.

  “At this hour? She should have been home long ago. Seems like she’s been running around like her mother. She stays in bed all morning and then never comes home at night. I don’t see her anymore.”

  “She’s away at college, Grandpa. That’s why you don’t see her.” Taylor found a box of macaroni and considered it. Empty carbs were so filling but wouldn’t do anything to sharpen her focus tonight. She wanted to focus.

  “How’s she in college? She’s just a girl.”

  “I know. I’m surprised, too, but she’s super smart.”

  “Don’t know how. Her mother was no kind of genius.”

  “Now Grandpa, be nice. Mom was very smart.” Taylor didn’t bother to engage in a nature vs nurture argument, and how being adopted might have given her little sister a head start.

  He huffed into his mustache. “Not your mom. Her mom. That Colleen character was a real twit.”

  “Ah.” It hadn’t occurred to her that Grandpa Ernie remembered who Belle’s bio mom was, much less that he remembered her from her rough teen years.

  “I never wanted that girl hanging around. Always out with the boys, but Delma said we were a good influence on her.” He slowly took a seat at the kitchen table and grunted as he settled into the wooden chair. “I don’t see how, but we used to be able to keep Belle out of trouble. I told your mom she’d have to be careful. Blood will tell.”

  That did it. Taylor needed comfort food more than focus. She filled a little pot with water and put it on to boil. “Belle’s not running around wild, Grandpa. She’s off at college. Maybe we can visit her this weekend.”

  “What did she want to go to college for? Isn’t she going to run the shop?”

  “I don’t know what she’s going to do, but with a smart brain like hers she can do anything.”

  “You went away to college and then ran off to the city. Belle should stay here and run the shop.”

  “But I’m here running the shop now.”

  He grunted again and furrowed his brow.

  “I’d like it if she came back and worked with me too.” Taylor was doing her darndest not to argue with him in the evening. She had done some reading online and knew it was useless, but it was hard to remember, when hanging out with him. He was in his eighties, but it didn’t feel like that was old enough for this. Even after all these months, she wasn’t used to it yet.

  “She coming home for Thanksgiving at least?”

  As their plans were still up in the air, Taylor couldn’t answer that one. “Do you want some macaroni?”

  “No. I want a steak. Why can’t I ever have steak anymore? That girl that comes here always makes me eat soup and I don’t want soup.”

  “I’ll get you some steak tomorrow, Grandpa. I have the afternoon off.”

  “That’s another thing,” he said. “You take too many days off. When I ran that place, I worked six days a week. It was my job and I did it.”

  Taylor bit her tongue. She started most days at seven in the morning and ended at seven in the evening. She did work six days a week, and sometimes seven.

  She and Roxy each took an afternoon off a week. Or sometimes more, when business was slow. For their mental health. As far as Taylor knew, this wasn’t a big priority in the seventies when Grandpa had been tailoring men’s suits from the storefront that would become Flour Sax quilts. But even with those afternoons off, she worked far more than the forty-hour work week adults pretended was normal.

  The chair scraped on the linoleum floor and Grandpa stood slowly. “I’m going to my room.” He headed out, leaving his cane resting on the edge of the table. His steps were slow, and careful. She watched as he navigated the slight threshold between the kitchen and the living room with a lump in her throat. He did need the help during the day, but even their little house was becoming hard for him to manage. He needed something better. But was that really a room in a nursing home? There were quite a few single-story new construction homes on the other side of town. Maybe it was time to sell this old place with its unevenly settled foundation, narrow doors, and unmodified bathrooms. She’d certainly like living in a new construction home better than this one, even though she had grown up here.

  Taylor traced a strawberry on the kitchen wallpaper. All of her mom’s heart and energy had gone into Flour Sax. Keeping her Grandma Delma’s quilt shop dream alive had meant taking what she could get in her own home, and not worrying about updating or style. When they had moved in here many years ago, Taylor had been horrified by the wallpaper. But it was old enough now it was almost back in style.

  John Hancock, the handsome banker she had met when she moved home had been pushing her to do something with the equity from the sale of her condo in Portland. Taylor needed to. Between that home and this one she could buy something in that new neighborhood out right.

  While Hancock had been impressed with how Taylor handled setting up a trust for her sister, he was about done with her and her slowness regarding her own funds. He hated to see it just sitting there, not earning her anything.

  John Hancock was another one Taylor had gone out with a few times. She liked him. He was smart and funny. He didn’t seem any more interested in a long-term relationship than she was either.

  There had been times when Hudson and Taylor had gone out and all she could think of was how much more fun she would have had with John. There was an underlying vibe when Taylor was with Hudson, that idea that he was waiting to pounce. Waiting for her to come around and decide he was “the one.” Taylor had done that “he’s the one” thing already in life and wasn’t impressed.

  As she pondered the idea of selling, moving, and grabbing a bite next week with John, her phone rang.

  “Yes?” Taylor poured the noodles into the boiling water as she answered.

  “So, what did you think?” Roxy asked. “She’s good, isn’t she?”

  “It’s a funny coincidence that she used to work for Reynette, don’t you think?” Taylor asked.

  Roxy laughed. “Coincidence? But Taylor, that’s why I brought her to you! When I spotted her at the Tillamook Cheese Outlet next door to us, I almost fell over. We talked for five minutes and I learned she’d need work, so I dragged her in.”

  “She had her resume with her?”
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  “Yup, that was why she was at Tillamook. She was going up and down Main Street looking for anything. I pulled her in because I knew you might close up before she got there. Donna was in the Cheese Shop and you know what she’s like once she gets talking,”

  “I have one question.” Taylor stirred her noodles. “If I hire her to help myself find out what happened to Reynette, will I also get a good employee?”

  “Totally. She’s great. I’d have suggested her even if you weren’t on the case, so to speak.”

  “Awesome. I’ll call Guy right now and then get back to Hannah in the morning.”

  “Thanks, Taylor. Can I just say you are a pleasure to work for?”

  “Sure, say it as often as you like.”

  Roxy laughed and rang off.

  Taylor took a few minutes to think of questions while she finished fixing her quickie dinner, then she called the number Hannah had listed for the surf shop on her resume.