* * *
“Excuse the mess,” Mrs. Anderson said as she led Sarah into the living room crowded with boxes, some sealed and others partially packed. There were stacks of plates and cooking utensils on a card table in the center of the room, along with wrapping paper and rolls of tape. “I’m moving out to Oregon to live with my daughter. No one left here,” she added. “It’s bad when you outlive your friends and family. Lost one son in the Gulf war, one to cancer and now just Alice is left. She’s retiring this year and wants me to come live with her.”
“It’s good you can be together.” Sarah figured Mrs. Anderson was at least seventy. “Do you have anyone to help you with all this?” Sarah asked, looking at the boxes and piles waiting to be packed.
“I’ve hired movers, but I wanted to do my own packing. There’s lots of stuff to get rid of, and I’m the only one who can make those decisions.”
Mrs. Anderson offered Sarah coffee, but Sarah declined, saying, “I don’t want to take up much of your time. I know you’re very busy.”
“So what’s this about the quilt?” the woman asked. “You said you had some questions about that old quilt I lost in the fire.”
Sarah told her about buying the quilt from an thrift shop and that she was trying to find out something about its history. She had brought a photograph, not wanting to handle the quilt any more than necessary. She pulled it out of her purse and showed it to Mrs. Anderson.
The woman laughed and responded almost sarcastically, “It sure hasn’t improved with age. How did you folks find out that it had belonged to me? That was thirty-some years ago.”
“It’s a long story, but briefly, I was able to find the woman who had it most of those years.”
“And how did she get her hands on it?” Mrs. Anderson asked suspiciously. “I thought it burned up.”
“Her grandson gave it to her. She didn’t know it then, but unfortunately, he and his brother had stolen it the night that your house burned.”
“We lost everything that night, what with the fire and then the looting,” Mrs. Anderson responded angrily. “Those boys should have been punished.”
“Well, Mrs. Anderson, they aren’t boys anymore. They’re in their forties, and they are being punished, not for that, of course, but they’re both in prison.”
“Good,” the woman sputtered.
“The younger boy, Darnell, is in jail in Texas on drug charges, and he’s the one that indirectly led me to you. Jerome, his brother, is in prison probably for the rest of his life over in Hamilton. They are …”
“Wait. Are you talking about Jerome and Darnell Davis?”
“You knew them?” Sarah responded with surprise.
“Everyone in the neighbor knew them. Three boys. The two younger ones, Jerome and Darnell, were nothing but trouble. They lived just up the block back then. Mrs. Davis, their mother, died back in the 80s I think. The father took two of the boys to live with their grandmother -- at least that’s what people said. Anyway, the father stayed in the house with the older boy for a few months until he ran off.”
“The boy ran off?” Sarah gasped.
“No, they both just vanished one day. The house sat there empty for nearly two years before anyone did anything. It was a terrible eyesore until someone finally called the city.”
“What did they do?”
“I don’t know for sure. The city came out and the next thing we knew the house was up for sale, foreclosure I think it was. Never saw any of them again. So you say those are the boys that stole our stuff, Jerome and Darnell?”
“Yes, I’m sorry to say, they are the ones, and the only thing that was retrieved, as far as I know, was your quilt.” Again, Sarah felt the sadness of knowing she was going to have to part with the quilt. This woman was the rightful owner. “I can bring it to you tomorrow if you’d like…”
“That old thing?” Sue Anderson responded, brushing the idea away with her hand. “Keep it. I never wanted it in the first place. I just stuck it in the back of our linen closet and never used it. My sister Marilee gave that old thing to us as a wedding present. Can you imagine that? My own sister and that’s the best she could do. My Phil and I bought her a beautiful set of china when she married that fool, and that’s the best she could do for us. No, I never want to see that thing.”
Sarah’s heart leaped with joy when she realized the quilt was still hers to keep -- at least for now. “How long ago did she give it to you, Mrs. Anderson?”
“We’d’ve been married fifty years come September. It was back in the summer of 1966 that she gave it to us.” Sarah saw a look of melancholy briefly cross the woman’s face. “Phil’s been gone now thirteen years.”
“Sorry,” Sarah responded compassionately.
As Sarah was preparing to leave, she thanked Mrs. Anderson and wished her well with her upcoming move when she suddenly turned back and said. “Oh, by the way, do you know where your sister got the quilt?”
“Some junk shop I suppose. She always hung out in those places. She tried to tell me it was a valuable antique. Now, what would I want with a valuable antique anyway?”
“Would you mind if I talked to your sister? I’d like to ask her exactly how she got it.”
“Can’t do that. Marilee died last year. Liver cancer, they say. I can give you the old fool’s number if you want to talk to him, but he probably won’t know anything about it.” She jotted down the name, Harry Wilkinson, and his phone number. “Don’t tell him I sent you. He says I’m an old busybody, but then I say he’s an old fool, so I guess we’re about even,” she chuckled as she held the screen door open for Sarah.
Sarah was surprised when Susan suddenly reached out and gave her a gentle pat on the shoulder. “Give that old quilt a good home,” she said. “I felt bad after it was gone that I’d kept it up in that closet all those years. It deserved better.” She turned abruptly and closed the door.
* * *
“Interesting,” Charles said.
“Yes,” Sarah responded excitedly. “We have one more piece of the quilt’s story.”
“Well, that’s interesting, too, but I meant about the guy running off so abruptly.”
“The guy?”
“Jamal Davis.”
“Charles!”
“Well, why would he do that? Was he running from the police?” Charles asked rhetorically.
“Were they looking for him?” she responded in a disinterested tone.
“Not that I know of, but maybe he was aware that they should be…”
“Charles, you promised. Leave it alone.”
“But he may have done it again.”
“We don’t know that he ever did it – assuming you’re suggesting he killed his wives.”
“And you think we should just let him get away with it?”
“I think,” Sarah said, her voice having raised an octave, “that you should do exactly what you’ve done. You notified the New Orleans investigator about the possibility, and you’ve put them in touch with Maud. Let them do their job. And please try to remember that you’re retired. You know what the doctor said about stress, and this Jamal thing has the potential of bringing on more stress than you should be trying to handle.”
“Nonsense,” her husband remarked as he walked out of the room. “Total nonsense. No doctor knows what I can handle,” she heard him mumble as he walked down the hall toward his computer room.
Sarah sighed deeply. She really didn’t want to be nagging her husband, but the thought of losing him terrified her. I can’t go through that again, she told herself.
Chapter 13
“…and why am I even considering this in the first place,” Martha continued with the rant she had started the moment Sarah picked up the phone. “I’ve been perfectly happy as a single woman. Why would I give all that up to listen to a middle-aged man trying to find himself.”
“What do you mean?” Sarah asked cautiously.
“He hates the idea of sitting home while I go off to w
ork. He says it’s a man’s place to work.”
“Does he want you to quit?”
Martha was quiet for a moment. “He never said that, but I don’t think so. He just seems to think he should be working too.”
“What’s happened with the coaching he does at the Center and the classes he’s been taking?
“He’s still doing all that. He just seems to think he should be going off to a job which provides a paycheck. I remind him that he did that for nearly forty years and that he’s retired and receiving an excellent retirement check, but just the fact that I’m the only one working seems to threaten his manhood. What’s wrong with men, anyway?” she asked but didn’t wait for an answer before continuing her rant. “It’s ridiculous, and I’m getting sick of it. Did you know that he’s been in contact with the companies that are waiting for something to happen with this Keystone pipeline controversy? He has this fantasy that he’ll become involved if it’s ever approved.”
“I wouldn’t worry about that, Martha. That would be years from now, if ever.”
“I know. I just wish he could relax and enjoy the life we’ve talked about having. I’m really beginning to wonder if this is a mistake…”
“I hate to say it, Martha, but I can see his point. He’s pretty young to be a retiree. Has he looked for work?”
“You know he has,” Martha snapped. “Don’t you remember last fall when all he could find was that job in Pennsylvania, and he almost left us all to take it? There’s nothing here in town for a man his age, especially with the economy being what it is,” she added angrily.
Don’t take it out on me, Sarah thought and wanted to say, but didn’t. “Do you want to come over and talk?” Sarah asked her daughter.
“No, there’s nothing left to say. I’m going to have to figure this out for myself, but in the meantime, leave the tags on that dress. I may not be needing it,” she added and hung up the phone.
Sarah sighed and sat down at the kitchen table in front of a cup of coffee that had grown cold. She didn’t know what to tell her daughter; she just knew that her daughter’s relationship with Timothy was the best thing that had ever happened to her, not to mention the bond she had with Timothy’s daughter. Penny was accepting Martha in the role of mother, and Sarah couldn’t stand the thought of Penny losing that again. What can I do to keep this from happening, she wondered, but no immediate answer came to mind.
She was still sitting there when Charles walked in the door. She’d been eager to discuss it with him.
“Charles,” she began…
“Wait,” he countered. “I’ve got something fascinating to tell you. I spent a couple of hours with Susan Anderson’s brother-in-law.”
“Who?” Sarah asked, her mind having left the issue of the quilt and the Andersons.
“You remember. The guy Mrs. Anderson referred to as ‘the old fool.’ Her sister’s husband.”
“Of course. Did he know anything about the quilt?”
“He sure did.”
“Sarah tried hard to put her mind on the project she and her husband had been working on and set her concerns about Martha aside for the time being. “Tell me about it,” she said as she dumped her cold coffee out and poured them each a fresh cup. She reached for the low-fat oatmeal cookies she had made earlier but noticed that her husband wrinkled up his nose and frowned. She pushed the cookie jar aside and sat down. “What did he say?”
“He remembers the very day she brought it home.”
“And?” she responded without much interest.
“He said we can come over tomorrow and talk about it in person. Actually, he sounded lonely and just wanted some company.”
When Sarah didn’t respond, Charles was astonished that his wife seemed to have lost her previous enthusiasm about the quilt. She had been so eager to receive every new piece of information either of them discovered. “What’s wrong, hon?” he asked, and Sarah began to sob.
* * *
The next day Sarah and Charles arrived at Harry Wilkinson’s house, better known to Sarah as ‘the old fool,” however, she was surprised when he opened the door with a broad smile and a friendly greeting. “Come on in, folks. What can I get you? I just made a pitcher of sweet tea.”
“Sounds great,” Charles responded before Sarah could object to the sugar. She decided to let it go.
“Yes, thank you, Mr. Wilkinson,” she responded.
“Call me Harry,” he replied, followed by the long overused comeback, “Mr. Wilkinson was my father.” They all chuckled appropriately and followed him into the living room. “Have a seat. I’ll be right back.”
He returned moments later with three large tumblers and an antique glass pitcher filled with tea. “I float a few sprigs of mint in my tea. Hope you folks don’t mind.”
“I love it that way,” Sarah responded. She always included one bag of mint tea along with the regular tea bags when she made iced tea herself.
Once they were seated and had gone through the ritualistic small talk about the weather, Sarah could see the conversation was moving on to politics. She immediately interrupted, knowing politics was likely to take over the entire visit once she realized that the men were on opposite ends of the spectrum.
“My husband told me that you remember the quilt that you and your wife gave your sister-in-law back in 1966,” she said.
“There’s no way I could ever forget that old quilt,” he responded as he sat back in his chair and put his feet up, apparently prepared for a lengthy visit. “Marilee and I had our worst fight over that thing. I told her it wasn’t appropriate as a wedding gift. It looked like it was a hundred years old and all worn out. I knew her sister would hate it, and she did.”
“She did?” Sarah asked, surprised that Susan would have told her sister how she felt about it.”
“She didn’t exactly say so. It’s just that over the next years, we never saw it in her house. If she even kept it, I suppose it burned up in the fire. Why are you folks asking about it anyway?”
Sarah told him the story of how she came by it and briefly explained where it had been in the meantime. She neglected to suggest that it may be a valuable piece of history. “So,” she added, “I’m interested in finding out something about its history, and I was hoping you would know how your wife happened to have it.”
“I surely do, and that’s partly why I didn’t want her to give it as a gift. She didn’t pay a penny for it. A good friend of hers, Agatha Tarkington, gave it to her.”
Excitedly, Sarah asked if he knew how to reach Agatha.
“Sorry, but she died long ago from cancer, sometime in the 1960’s. Anyway, someone had passed that old quilt to Agatha’s mother back in the 1800s and Agatha told us it was some kind of family treasure. Agatha got it after her mother died, but she really didn’t seem to care anything about it. She just said her mother had wanted it to stay in the family, but Agatha never married, never had kids, and there was no family to take it.”
“Didn’t Agatha have aunts and uncles? There must have had someone in the family to give it to.”
“According to Marilee, Agatha had no family at all.”
So Agatha gave the quilt to your wife?” Sarah asked, surprised that the woman would give away something that had been passed down in her family.
“My Marilee was always interested in antiques, and Agatha was a good friend and Agatha knew her days were numbered. She thought my wife would like to have it since she was into antiques and all, and, like I said, there was no family to pass it on to.”
“But your wife didn’t keep it. She gave it away?”
“Yep, she sure did. Marilee never really wanted it, but she kept it out of respect for Agatha. After Agatha died, Marilee decided to give it to her sister Susan as a wedding present, and, like I said, that was the worst fight we ever had. I wanted to buy something nice for Susan and Phil, but Marilee had her mind made up.”
Once the questions about the quilt were exhausted, the men returned to politics,
but Sarah intervened, suggesting that they needed to get home. “We left the dog in the yard, and I’m afraid he’ll start barking and disturb the neighbors.” Charles looked at his wife and knew she was simply ready to leave. She wasn’t making up the part about Barney being outside, but the pool had been freshly filled, and they both knew Barney was probably laying on his back in the water and ecstatically happy.
Once they got into the car, Sarah said, “This sounds like a dead end to me.”
“Not necessarily,” Charles responded. “There could be relatives, great-aunts, or cousins maybe. You never know.”
Sarah asked if he thought he could find out anything about Agatha’s family tree on the internet.
“Maybe,” he responded, “but I might have to join one of these websites where you can track down your ancestors.”
“Let’s call Paula,” Sarah suggested. Paula was a friend that Sarah met in her water aerobics class the previous year. “She was very involved in searching for her own ancestors, and she’ll help us get started.”
“Good idea,” Charles responded, but seemed distracted.
“You’re turning the wrong way,” Sarah said suddenly realizing that Charles wasn’t headed toward Cunningham Village.
“I know. I want to make a stop on the way. He pulled up in front of the firehouse and indicated that Sarah should go in with him. Once inside, he introduced his wife to Chief Deegan. “Deeg and I have known each other for over thirty years,” Charles said.
“Glad to meet you,” Sarah responded, a bit confused about why they were there, but gracious all the same.
Charles reached into his pocket and pulled out a folder sheet of paper. “Hope this is okay,” he said as he handed the sheet to the fire chief.
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