Scandal

by Patsy Brookshire

  A fire car pulled up behind the truck, and a man got out. He came towards us across the lawn. His helmet was white with the word CHIEF on the side.

  "This your place? Anyone inside?"

  Len shook his head: no.

  I nodded: yes. "My cat's in the garage."

  Len said, "I think it's a chimney fire, sir."

  "But no people inside?"

  "But my cat--"

  "We'll get to the garage in a bit. Must see to the chimney and building first."

  I knew that Prince Charming was probably flying about in the garage, going from window to window to see what was going on. Of all the cats I'd had, he was the most curious, wanting to be in the center of everything, not making a fast run to hide like many.

  "I have the door opener right here. I'll open it up right now." I had retrieved it while the fire truck had been pulling into the driveway. I went to push the button.

  "Oh, no, ma'am." He took it from my hand and stashed it in one of his many pockets. "We'll want to control the rush of oxygen to the house. My people are on the roof now, and in the house, checking the flow of the fire. They'll camera the wall, go into the crawl space and TIC it." At my mystified look he said, "Oh, sorry, Thermal Image Camera, looking for hot spots." His phone rang, he answered it, listened, said, "Okay. Good. Ready to mist? I'll come help finish it up." To us he said, "Doesn't look to be in the walls, but we have to make sure."

  "Look here, Chief," said Len.

  The chief looked at him. I could see his eyebrows rise at the demanding and self-important tone of Len's voice. He tilted and lowered his head, saying nothing but the movement encouraged Len to continue. Despite the controlled chaos around us Len had his full attention.

  "I just built that fire less than an hour ago. It couldn't have set the house ablaze."

  "That's good to know. How long's it been since you had your chimney cleaned?" Stern. Firm.

  Len took a step back. "Hey! It's not my house."

  "Yours?" His look swung to me and I took a step forward, to him. My guilt made me defensive and aggressive.

  Several men pushed past us, holding and pulling a hose, everybody working together, helping get the hose up to the people on the roof. I pulled my attention back to the chief.

  "Yes. I've been planning on getting it done. Didn't think it was so immediate."

  "I'd say it's right now. Quite immediate. We'll talk about this later. Now I'm going to see what they've found. It was a flue fire. We'll close up the fireplace then mist the chimney. Puts out the fire with a fine spray. You just might have got lucky. This doesn't look to be too serious."

  In fact, I was lucky. They hadn't come in with a hose through the front door and blasted everything to a soaking ruin. The job done, the fire fighters allowed us to return to the living room where we met with the chief. "Well, folks, you can get back to your dinner here. Looks to have been a good one. Sorry it got messed up."

  "Oh, thank you!" I was so grateful that the whole deal had come out all right. The Chief pulled off his hat and shook hands with both of us. He was certainly less severe than he'd been when he was admonishing us for not getting the chimney cleaned.

  "You can find a chimney sweep in the yellow pages. I advise you to call one. They'll come out and fix that for you. Here's my card if you have any more trouble. My cell number is on there if I'm not at the station." He handed me his card, with his name in bold letters, DANIEL DEE. Little wrinkles crinkled at the edge of his golden flecked brown eyes as he smiled at me.

  I smiled back and tucked it into my pocket.

  To his crew he said, "Men, and women, our work here is done. Let's vamoose and leave these people to their dinner. Good thing it didn't burn, huh?"

  With that they all left the house, pulled off the roof, reloaded ladders and hoses back onto the big truck and lumbered out of the driveway, negotiating their way through the gaggle of watchers clogging the entrance to my driveway. The watchers dissipated, eventually.

  Len and I went back inside to the dining table. "Perhaps we could take up where we left off?" he suggested.

  "I'm not sure where that was." Frankly, my desire for him had cooled. "Why do you always have to set people off? Challenge them?"

  He looked at me with wide eyes.

  "Oh, don't wide eyes me. You know you put that fireman on edge. Just like you did the counter girl this afternoon. Why do you do that?"

  "You mad 'cause I was flirting with her a little? Seemed to me you were pretty quick to make sure that guy knows that I don't live here."

  That was so opposite what had happened that I stared at him. I started to clear the dishes off the table. Someone had blown out the candles.

  "You know what? I'm just not hungry anymore. I think it's been a long day and perhaps time for you to go home. This conversation is going nowhere. We're both upset by all this. The house smells like smoke. The dinner is cold. I'll pack up your steak and potato and you can take it home and reheat it. Would you like some salad, too?"

  "Whatever. I didn't mean to make you mad." He tried to put his arms around me, make nice. I wiggled out of his grasp, went to the cupboard where I keep the container boxes, pulled out a couple, dividing up his meal between the two boxes. He watched in silence as I put them in a paper bag.

  "I'm not mad. Just tired, frustrated with myself for not having seen to the chimney. That was something Roger always did, and I just kept putting it off. And I truly am tired. This has been a hellacious week, and tomorrow I have to go back over to Willamina to tend to Magda and Sam. And the quilt."

  With one hand he took the bag, with the other he put his hand behind my head and pulled me to him for a kiss.

  I let him do it but it was one-sided. I wondered what had happened to the passion. Went up in smoke, I guess.

  "I'm going with you, remember?"

  Appalling thought. "No. I'll go by myself. It will be simpler. Bound to be chaotic, the less of us the better."

  He accepted that. Maybe he wanted the space as much as I did.

  "I'll call you tomorrow, on your cell."

  I could barely wait for him to leave. I stood outside on the porch until I was sure he was gone, his headlights shining down the driveway in the dusk. When I went back into the kitchen, I heard a scratching noise. O, Lord, Prince Charming. How had I forgotten him?

  I also realized I had forgotten to take the garage door opener back from the Chief. I opened the door and stepped back as Prince's black and white fuzzy body shot past me with a sharp, "Meow!" His disgruntlement was clear as he passed me, making sure to not brush my legs.

  "Sorry, Prince. I've been a bit involved, here." I followed him to his food bowl, which I topped off. I took his water bowl to the kitchen sink, refilled it from the tap. He was mad at me, didn't even look at me while he nibbled and took a short drink. I took my plate to the fridge and put plastic wrap over the whole thing. Dessert had not gone as I'd planned, so I took out the coffee ice cream from the freezer and spooned myself a decent sized bowl. I ate it while I watched a few minutes of late news.

  The ice-cream took Prince's attention. He came to sit on the floor at my feet. When I was done, I scraped the bowl so the spoon made that particular noise he was waiting for. I handed the bowl down to him. He licked it clean and walked away, satisfied.

  I followed the Prince to our bedroom. He had forgiven me, was lying on the other pillow, waiting for our nightly cuddle. It really had been a long day.

  And I was mad at Roger. Never here when I need him. The Prince helped. He was, in the long run, a forgiving creature. Despite all the drama of the day, I slept well.

  In the morning I had a message on my cell, a short text from Magda: Here? Noon? Sooner? Work to do. Problem with wrestlers. Call me.

  Problems with the wrestlers? What next?

  I called her. She said Sam thought he had an easy fix. I told her about the fire, she told me we'd work on everything when I arrived, that none of this was an emergency.

  Chapter 25


  Putting it together, and taking it apart.

  I felt remarkably light the next morning. Glad I'd not given in to the lusty feeling that Len always aroused in me. My curiosity about sex with him remains a mystery. I had been hoping to prove my theory that mature sex would be more satisfying than when I was barely twenty. Experience does, in the long run, trump the ingénue.

  I ate cold cereal and toast, and coffee. Took a quick shower and dressed in khaki pants and a yellow tee shirt. The chief had told me that I was also lucky because the fire had whooshed up the chimney and quickly burned itself out before filling the house up with smoke. But, still, I would be glad to be away from the faint reminder. Who knew what today would entail? How Tom got dead in the back yard of the quilt cottage? Police activity? And the quilting.

  I was rather anticipating the quilting, spurred by yesterday's purchase of fabric. And intrigued, trying not to be dismayed by Magda's statement, "You won't know whether it all works until it is done."

  I filled the food and water dishes for Prince Charming, cleaned the litter box and locked the cat door. I didn't like him wandering without me at home, nor did I want another creature using it for entry. When I left I could see him sitting on the sill of the laundry room window, watching me.

  When I arrived at Magda's home, her first words when she opened the door were, "You won't believe what that stupid woman has done!"

  My mind reeled with the possibilities of which stupid woman she could mean. "Who? What?" I took off my coat and laid it over the back of a dining room chair.

  Sam came down the hallway from his room. "I'd guess you are talking about the Quilt Show snafu?"

  "How's that?"

  Magda said, "The new girlfriend--okay, maybe she's his wife--who took over scheduling the wrestling meets doesn't even know we exist. I guess. Maybe she hates women who sew." She must have seen my eyebrows lowering, because she came to the point. "She's got us sharing the same space, at the same time."

  "Oh. Well, just get her to change it."

  "Can't. It's printed up on posters already. Gotta give it to those wrestlers, they do promo good."

  "So, she gave 'em a date and didn't check the calendar?"

  "Yes. Can't blame her. Wasn't on there. It's always been the same, second weekend in November. She's new so didn't know it. She's not a quilter." This last was said with a dismissive shake of her shoulders.

  "A real outsider, huh?" I felt protective of this woman I didn't even know.

  Magda looked at me with that lowered head.

  Sam, standing just behind her, grinned and made a face at me that said, let it go. He was right. This little venting of my resistance was getting me nowhere. "Are we going to get some quilting done today? I'm ready to work."

  That got her attention. "I'm ready. We have about an hour before I have to go to the police station. Sammy's gonna go with me." She put her hand on his shoulder and sighed deeply. "You don't know how grateful I am that I don't have to do this alone."

  I followed her to the sewing room, and Sam said he was going to be outside playing at the roses.

  "Can you believe it, Annie, he's going to trim that dang arbor up, make it safe to walk through again. Here." She led me into her quilt room. On the long table were Aunt Sophie's pieces, plus the length we'd bought yesterday.

  "You're ready to go with Aunt Sophie's quilt, I see."

  "No, Annie. If you're gonna work with this you have to make it yours. You need to decide how you want it to go. You can keep to her plan or come up with your own design. With the pieces mostly already cut out, you do have restrictions on what you're gonna have. Unless you want to take all these pieces and cut them into smaller shapes and re-configure them." She was at them, now. Stroking the nap of the purple velvet appeared to calm her.

  I suddenly felt proprietary, walked over and finished the job of laying them out. "Lord, no. I'm just going to get this done, and that's it. I'm not into coming up with my own design."

  Magda laughed. "Well, then let's get this done." She sat down at the sewing machine. "You want to do this or you want me to help you?"

  "If you do any of the sewing, I'll not be able to say that this is my quilt, will I? For the show?" I swear, until I said that I didn't know I was going to enter the quilt.

  "No, you can have help, but, you're right, to make it your own, you need to do the work yourself. But, I can help."

  "I need the pins. And that magnet thing I bought." I pulled up a chair beside her. She led me through the process of threading her machine, and filling bobbins.

  "Here." She handed me my packet of yellow flat-headed pins and the other of round heads. "Try it with both kinds of pins. I'm going to go make us some tea and check on Sammy. I'll be just outside if you need me."

  I hardly knew she was gone. For the next half-hour I played with the pins, joining the pieces together, following Sophie's paper plan. The pins were sharp and I poked my fingers, laughing to myself as I sucked on the little drops of blood.

  Magda came in after a while with a cup of tea that she set down near me. I took a sip then moved it to a side table where I couldn't spill it on the quilt.

  "How's it coming?"

  "Good. No problems. Other than I remember now that I hate working with velvet. The way it slips around, out from under my fingers, like it has a mind of its own. Good thing I have lots of pins. Have to secure it well before I join the stuff to the 'cord."

  "Yeah. Not something I would have chosen." She stood back and looked down at Sophie's pattern. "But then, I wouldn't be making up my own design, either."

  I was back at it, holding the fabrics firm as I led the needle through them. "It really will be my quilt. Sophie's and mine."

  "You can get part of the front piece done this morning. I've got a couple calls to make, and then Sammy and I are going over to the Hall. Sammy swears we can do both, the wrestling and the quilt show in the same place."

  "At the same time?"

  "No, silly. But we need to take a tape measure over there, and meet with the manager of the Hall. Then we're going to the police station. You can stay here and work on your quilt. Or if you want to come with us we can pick you up on our way back."

  The last place I wanted to go to was the police station. "I'll be good and keep the home fires burning, safely, and work on the quilt. Want me to make lunch?"

  "We'll pick something up. You just relax. Only thing I'm going to need when I get home is hot tea. If I get home. If they don't throw me in the hoosegow for not knowing what happened to Tommy." Her face started to twist up like she was gonna cry. I was happy to have Sam appear right then.

  He must have seen what was about to happen. "Hey! We've got things to do. No time to worry right now. Save it for later. If they throw you in the clink I'll organize a rescue party and we'll break you out." He patted her shoulder.

  She laughed a little through the tears that she reined in with a swallow and a deep breath. "Okay."

  They left and I fell into the stitching. My fingers moved along the ribs of corduroy. I was glad that I'd done all that pinning as I held my tongue tight against my top lip to help my fingers keep the velvet and corduroy on track under the steady click-click of the machine needle.

  The flathead pins were easier to pull out as I went along, but the round heads were easier to grab. I kept the yellow dish close by my right hand, it was a tiny pleasure dropping the pin to the holder and having the magnet grab it. Oh, I am easily amused.

  Pleasure was growing within me as the pieces began to form a shape. Curiosity tickled my mind in a new place it had not been touched before. I seldom thought about Len. The fire chief, however, did come into my mind. As did the events that Magda and Sam were working through. With relief, I returned to the stitching.

  Chapter 26

  Sam's Report on Scheduling Snafu

  God only knows what is going on in the minds of these women, I'm glad to be able to be here to help straighten them out.

  We were to meet Lena a
t the VFW hall, where they show their quilts. The representative of the lodge and the representative of the Wrestling Meet were both to meet us there. Magda knew the lodge guy "from way back," a man by the name of Russ Thompson. The wrestler fella was Big Juan. I kid you not.

  Lena is the co-coordinator of the show this year. According to Magda, she'd lobbied hard to get the job. She had presented a list of the quilts she'd entered over the years, and the number of times she had won Best Quilt Over All--three--not to mention the number of times--eight--that she had taken the Blue Ribbon for Best Hand-Quilted Quilt.

  Magda parked us by the back door. As we went in we heard shouting. In the middle of the room was our feisty Lena up in the face of a man dressed in skin tight leopard pants. She was yelling, "You can't have your smelly bodies anywhere around our quilts!"

  Leopard Pants shouted back, "Then, get your quilts outa here."

  By the time we made it across the room, another man, his arms in the air, looked to be trying to defuse the altercation, had lost his cool and shouted, "Come on, now. No need to be screaming at each other."

  Magda stepped around him to take Lena by the arm. She gave a good jerk and Lena had to step back or fall on her butt.

  While Magda took Lena aside for a heart-to-heart. I introduced myself to the peacemaker--Russ, he said he was--and said to Leopard Pants, "Big Juan?"

  "Sure am. Just call me 'Big'." His sleeveless t-shirt allowed his muscles to flex, which they did now. Close up to this full glory I restrained an urge to put my hands over my eyes. Instead, I focused on his feet, shod in shiny gold brogues. Where did this man buy his clothes?

  We all shook hands as I said, "I'm Sam Smithers, here with Mrs. Buler to help iron out this problem."

  "She's the problem to fix," Big said.

  Magda kept one restraining hand on Lena's arm. Her other hand went to her mouth to cover her smile as she took in the full splendor of Big.