Meg didn’t rise to the bait. “I’ll let you know what the plan is, but it’s kind of hard to stop him when he wants to help. I must say I’m really looking forward to heat again. Even if the fire is nice, it really isn’t very effective at heating the house. Ready when you are.”
“Gimme a sec.” Bree raced up the back stairs to her room, and returned in under a minute. “Let’s go.”
Meg picked up her coat and suited up at the back door. When she opened it, she was struck again by how cold it was, even with the bright sunlight glinting off the ice crystals that had formed on the top layer of snow. At this rate the snow would still be sitting here in April. At least her car started without any trouble, and she and Bree headed toward Amherst. The road over the mountain was reasonably clear, thank goodness, and Meg dropped Bree off in the center of town, then turned around and retraced her route, continuing this time to Gail’s house, the sampler safely stowed in its box on the floor behind the passenger seat.
Gail’s road, in a small residential neighborhood of twentieth-century houses, was still icy in spots. Meg pulled into her driveway, and after collecting the sampler and the notes she had assembled, picked her way carefully to the front door and rang the doorbell. Gail opened it promptly.
“Come in, come in! What a week we’ve had! I have to say I was happy to wave good-bye to that school bus this morning. I love my kids, but after a few days of togetherness we were all driving each other crazy. I made lunch, and you can show me your surprise after we eat, okay?”
“Sounds good to me. I hope I’m not intruding.”
“No problem. I’m happy to have some adult conversation for a change, and I’d hate to think of you sitting at home in the cold. Will your furnace be fixed soon?” Gail asked as she led the way into her sunny kitchen, where the table was nicely set with place mats and china. “I have tomato soup and grilled cheese sandwiches. Coffee?”
“Sounds good. Actually the furnace has given up the ghost, but I’ll be getting a new one tomorrow.”
“Handy having a plumber for a neighbor, isn’t it?” Gail grinned slyly at her.
“That it is.” Meg watched as Gail bustled around the kitchen, doling out coffee. “I thought the roads had been clear for a couple of days. Why’d it take so long for the schools to reopen?”
Gail sat down and ladled soup into bowls. “There aren’t enough snowplows to go around. The main roads are clear, but you saw this one—the buses couldn’t get through everywhere until today. The kids were happy about it, at least at first. I didn’t tell them they’d probably have to make up the time at the end of the school year. So, when did your furnace go out?”
“Right before the storm, naturally, so we’ve been roughing it for days. Luckily the fireplace works, at least in the short run. Then the power went out in the storm, so we were really down to basics. But I can’t complain—the pipes didn’t freeze, and I had enough food on hand to manage.”
“That’s good. You said on the phone that you found something in the house?”
“Yes. We were doing a heavy-duty cleaning to keep warm. At least it kept us moving.”
“‘Us’?” Gail arched an eyebrow.
“Yes, Seth and me.”
“Was Bree chaperoning?”
“No, she was in Amherst with her boyfriend during the storm.”
“I see.” Gail giggled. “So things are moving along nicely. With the house, I mean.”
“Yes, they are.” Meg smiled. “This soup is great, by the way.”
“Opened the can myself. Cream of tomato, and grilled cheese sandwiches. Does life get any better?”
“Works for me.”
They ate quickly. Gail seemed eager to find out what Meg had brought, and as soon as they had finished, she said, “So what’s your surprise? I always love these finds in old houses—and you’ve had quite some luck already. This should be good.”
“Maybe. Can we use your dining room table?”
“Sure.”
In the dining room Meg opened the box, withdrew the wrapped bundle, and spread it out carefully on the clean tabletop. She watched with pleasure as Gail’s eyes widened.
“Oh, my. This is gorgeous,” Gail said, leaning over to study it carefully. “It’s dated,” she added, almost to herself. “Silk on linen, mainly. Beautifully preserved, though badly wrinkled. Where did you say you found it?”
“Wadded up in the back of a closet.”
“Some people have all the luck! I’ve never seen a sampler with this much detail, at least not up close, and there are some really unusual elements—I think, but I’m not an expert. The girl really tried to fit in everything but the kitchen sink, didn’t she?”
“Presumably she wanted to honor her family—all of whom seem to have died by the time she made this.”
“Oh, I hadn’t noticed that. How awful! Of course she would’ve wanted to commemorate them. Do you know anything about the family? And how the sampler got to your house?”
“That’s where I was hoping you could help me. I can’t find any information about any Coxes in this area, or connected to the Warren family, except for a few vague hints. Of course, I’m still pretty new at this kind of research, but they’re not in the simple and obvious places.”
“Ah, I see your problem. So you want me to dig around in my local records for Coxes in Granford?”
“If you would. I love how much stuff is available on the Internet, but I know there’s a lot that doesn’t make it there, or hasn’t yet. If you could come up with at least a clue, it would be a big help.”
“Sure. I love a challenge. Can I take some pictures of the sampler?”
“I already have some on my computer at home. I can e-mail them to you.”
“Great. Ooh, this should be fun!” Gail stopped for a moment, and then grinned. “You know what? I know someone who would love to take a look at this. She’s the textile curator at Sturbridge Village. Have you been there yet?”
“No, what is it?”
“It’s what you’d call a living history museum, one of the biggest in the country. Back in the twenties, I think, there was this industrialist who started collecting New England memorabilia, and it kind of grew from there. In the thirties he and his family bought the site and started moving or creating the buildings. It opened in 1946. Anyway, the founders pulled together all sorts of old buildings from different places, and then reassembled them to look like a small town. I love the place—they’ve got farm animals, and crafts, and reenactors. You really ought to check it out. If you’re there on a day when there aren’t a bunch of school groups, you can almost believe you’ve stepped into the past.”
Meg laughed. “After this past week, I feel like I’m living in another century anyway. But I’ll keep it in mind.”
“You do that—maybe we could go together. Anyway, Janice Fayerweather is something of a local expert on early needlework, and I’m sure she’d know a lot more than I do. And she’d be over the moon to see a sampler as intricate as this one. Want me to give her a call?”
“Sure, why not? Should I go there, or will she come here?”
“I bet if I send her the pictures, she’ll be on your doorstep in hours. This is really a nice piece, Meg.”
“Then by all means, get in touch with her. I want to know how it ended up in my hands. Oh, and I promise this won’t take time away from your cataloging projects.”
Gail waved a hand at her. “Hey, they’ve been waiting this long, they can wait a little longer. Besides, I think this sampler is much more interesting. It must be nice for you to finally have some downtime. Me, I’ve got Christmas and the kids to think about. But at least at this time of year people aren’t looking for a lot of historical information—except you, of course. Enjoy your free time! It won’t be long until the whole apple cycle starts all over again.”
“Tell me about it! But I’m still trying to figure out if I’ve made anything like a profit this year.”
“How do you think you did?” G
ail asked.
“I really don’t know. It’s all too new. Bree’s working on the numbers, but I don’t think her heart is in it.”
“She seems like a good kid, though.”
“Oh, she is, and she’s a hard worker. She just doesn’t like paperwork.”
“Most of us don’t. I’ve got to finish up the numbers for the Historical Society and get them audited, according to our bylaws. At least I know we didn’t make any money,” she said wryly, “but there’s still the accounting for that bequest we got this year, and I have to figure out how to handle that.”
“I don’t know a lot about small nonprofits—I worked primarily for city and state governments when I was in Boston—but I’ll help if I can. Has the estate cleared probate already?”
“It has—it was pretty straightforward, and there was no one to contest it. And I may take you up on that offer to help. I love old records, but my eyes glaze over when I have to sort out modern ones. Oh, shoot, is that the school bus already?”
Meg checked her watch: it was two thirty. “Short school day, isn’t it?”
“It certainly is. Of course, most of the sports and afterschool activities are cancelled this week. Normally they’d be home later.”
“I should go anyway. Thanks for your help, Gail. I’ll send you the photos when I get home, and I’ll let you know if I find out anything more.”
“Cool. I’ll see if I can find any other references for you. Hi, kids,” Gail greeted her children as they burst in the door. “Boots off—now! Say hi to Ms. Corey, and then wash up and I’ll get you a snack.”
“Hi, Ms. Corey,” they chimed dutifully, and then lost interest in Meg.
“Bye, Gail,” Meg said, not sure if anyone heard her.
She drove home carefully, since the roads were still icy in shaded places, and made a detour once again at the market to fill in some missing items. The lot was much emptier this time, although the snow piles hadn’t shrunk. Meg tried not to think about what had happened last time she had been there. It was close to four and already getting dark by the time she turned into her own driveway. Meg pulled into the shed and unloaded her bags, then let herself in the back door. After she had tidied up and fed Lolly, she realized that she ought to move the goats inside again. Bree had been taking care of that, but she was gone, and the weather report predicted temperatures in the teens; while the goats didn’t seem to have suffered from their daylight romps, it seemed cruel to leave them outside overnight. Besides, there might be coyotes. Or something. She’d rather be safe than sorry.
She slipped on her work boots and pulled on her heavy jacket before heading outside. “Hi, ladies, how’re you doing?” she greeted Dorcas and Isabel as she approached the fence. They came over to meet her, and Isabel, the younger of the two goats, put her hooves on the fence and stood up to say hello. “Nice to see you, too. Want to go inside now?”
The goats cocked their heads, curious.
“Well, you’re going anyway.” Meg went over to the barn and unlocked the padlock on the door nearest the goat pen. No point in opening the big front doors, even if she could, with now-frozen snow piled against them. Inside the door she flipped the switch to turn on the few bare lightbulbs hanging from the rafters, and found the rope leads dangling from a nail next to the door. By now the goats were accustomed to the routine, and they came eagerly when Meg opened the gate to the outdoor pen and stepped in. She looped the leads around their necks and guided them back to the barn, closing the gate behind her. They didn’t resist; they knew that dinner would be waiting for them in the barn.
Once inside, Meg pulled the door closed—bad enough that the wind whistled through every crack in the place, without inviting it in. At least the goats had a cozy nook, surrounded by the hay bales. She tucked them into their pen, topped off their water, and poured some feed into their buckets. They dug in happily. Meg latched the gate to the pen securely, then went back to the door, hanging up the leads next to it.
When she pulled on the handle, the door didn’t budge. That was odd, since she had come through it only a few minutes earlier. The lock was a basic hasp and padlock, fairly new, and she knew she’d left the open padlock hanging on its hasp outside. She had the key to the padlock in her pocket. But of course, the key was doing her no good inside the building.
She looked around. The barn dated to the middle of the nineteenth century, Seth had guessed, with various patches and additions since, including the most recent, her apple holding chambers. There was more than one door: in addition to the big ones in the front facing the house, there was one on the wall opposite the one she’d used to come in, and she knew Seth had fixed the lock on that one. She walked over to the smaller door. Yes, it was locked, as it should have been. But worse, there were several feet of snow drifted against it, now frozen into place. Ditto with the big front doors. The only door they had cleared since the blizzard was the one closest to the goat pen—the one that didn’t seem to be working at the moment, and she had no idea why.
She was trapped in the barn, and it was getting dark fast.
15
Meg wanted to snarl in frustration. She knew she’d left the door unlocked. The best guess she could come up with was that something had fallen against the door while she was inside, wedging it shut. The less appealing alternative was that someone had made a deliberate effort to shut her in the barn. If somebody wanted to harass her, this was going too far. It was cold in the barn, and going to get colder. She rattled the door again, and again it didn’t move. She stifled an urge to kick it, knowing it would do no good.
She stalked to the middle of the barn and studied her surroundings. Surely there was a way out of the old building. She knew the big double doors in the front were solidly blocked by snow. Back door: locked, with three feet of frozen snow against it; a single high window, too small to crawl through. Door leading toward the goat pen: no window at all. It was an old-fashioned door that hung on a track, like a traditional barn door, and was made up of solid planks of wood. It was old, but the planks were thick and still solid—too solid for her to batter her way through. That door had been working fine up until a few minutes ago. What had happened?
It was a moot point. But if the doors were no-go, how else could she get out of the barn? There were windows, of course. The problem was, the ones on the ground floor were all blocked, one way or another: the holding chambers had covered up the ones on either side nearest the front, and the ones farther back were either obstructed by equipment that Meg had no way of moving, or had been shuttered to conserve warmth—and the shutters were locked, too, also with padlocks, from the outside. When she had started keeping equipment and her apples in here, she’d made sure that the barn was as secure as possible, and apparently she had done a good job.
There were windows on the eaves at either end, twenty feet over her head. There was no ladder in the barn—the antique one that had led to the hayloft had crumbled away years ago. Even if she could get up there, she’d have no way to get down on the other side. Scratch the windows.
Meg eyed her tractor. Would it be possible to ram it against one or another of the doors until the door buckled, enough to let her slip through? Except the tractor was old and cranky, and Meg was pretty sure the rusted frame would crumple like paper if she ran it into anything. Plus, she had no idea if it would start in this weather—and the key was inside the house.
Think, Meg, think. Unfortunately she didn’t like where her thoughts took her. Bree was gone for the night. Seth had said he wasn’t planning to come back until tomorrow when he brought the furnace. That was at least twelve hours away. If she had her cell phone she could call someone, but it was back in the house, safe and sound—and useless.
She had electricity; she could flash the lights to attract attention. Except the barn wasn’t visible from the neighbors’ houses, and the road out front wasn’t very heavily traveled, especially on a cold and icy night like this. No one was likely to notice a light going on and off.
>
She could set the barn on fire. Sure, Meg, that’s a great idea. That would attract attention, no doubt, but it might kill her, not to mention the goats, and would certainly make a mess of the barn, which she kind of needed. And she didn’t have any matches, and she wasn’t sure how she could use electrical wires to start a fire. Another thing her fine education had failed to teach her, along with lockpicking.
So what was she supposed to do? She took inventory: she was wearing a warm coat and gloves. Good. She had water, and, she reminded herself, she had apples: there were a few cases of the varieties that aged well under refrigeration, still stowed in her holding chambers. The biggest problem was going to be the cold, but all she had to do was wait until Seth arrived tomorrow, or Bree came home, whichever came first.
So, how to deal with the cold, without benefit of a heater or a fire?
The answer that came to her made her laugh: the goats. They were coping just fine with the weather. She and Bree and Seth had carefully built them a sheltered corner in the barn, so they wouldn’t be subject to drafts. And they were warm-blooded animals who had to be exuding heat, and some of that heat would be captured in their little nook. Now, how could she take advantage of that?
She approached the stall carefully, and leaned over the railing. “Hi, you two.” Isabel had been lying down, but she scrambled to her feet, and she and Dorcas approached Meg eagerly. “Sorry, no treats. Maybe an apple later? So, listen, do you mind if I share the pen with you?”
The goats didn’t answer, but stared at Meg, their ears flicking back and forth.
“Okay, since you have no objections, let’s give this a try.” Meg unlatched the stall gate and slipped into the pen, latching it behind her again. It measured maybe fifteen feet square, or had before they’d lined it with hay bales for warmth, which reduced the size. Meg was glad to feel that it was perceptibly warmer inside. The goats watched her, curious. What now? She was reluctant to sit on the floor, even though she knew that Bree had replaced the straw that morning. Still . . . If she rearranged the hay bales a little, she could make herself a bench, with bales to lean against. That could work.
Bitter Harvest Page 12
