Authors: Earlene Fowler
I jerked away from him. “I don’t care. He’s a creep.”
“Nevertheless, right now we need less angry words, not more. Is it true that Mrs. Davenport is in there of her own free will?”
“Absolutely. She’s pretty mad at her son and plans to stay the duration.” I gave him a small smile. “She said his bad genes came from his father’s side.”
His thick mustache twitched slightly. “Let’s not get into genetics here. Why don’t you take Scout and leave for a while?”
“But Dove . . .”
He reached down and trailed a finger down my jaw, tapping it gently on my chin. “Don’t worry about Dove and her friends. I’m going to have officers staked out twenty-four hours a day until this is resolved.”
“I suppose,” I said, my voice doubtful.
He stroked my cheek with the back of his hand. “Don’t worry,
niña,
I’ll make sure our
abuelita
is safe.”
I nodded silently.
His eyes grew sharp and searching. “Is there something else?”
I touched his hand briefly. Now was definitely not the time to tell him about Mr. Chandler’s stolen identity, about my plans to abandon this crazy inheritance. I’d just be there when he got home tonight and explain everything then. “No, I’m just worried.” I kissed his palm. “I’ll talk to you later.”
I retrieved Scout from his teenage admirers and told Emory I’d be in touch. Then I drove out to the ranch to see my dad and find my mother’s quilt. After a friendly but thorough sniff-off with the three ranch dogs, Scout flopped down on the porch.
Inside, Daddy was sitting at the breakfast counter eating a tomato and mayonnaise sandwich.
“How’s Dove?” he asked.
“Fine.”
He nodded at the pot of coffee on the counter. “Want some?”
“No, thanks,” I said, sitting down next to him. I traced a finger over the tiny squares of the blue gingham tablecloth. “There’s quite a hullabaloo going on downtown.”
He nodded and kept eating. “Figured there would be.”
“You okay with this?”
He grunted like an old bull. “Does it matter?”
I laughed lightly. “Guess not. She’s gonna do what she’s gonna do.”
“That’s a natural fact.”
“You got enough food?”
“She left a bunch of casseroles. Reckon she’s been planning this awhile.”
“No doubt. Well, I’ll keep you posted.”
“Figured you would.”
“I’m getting something out of her room.” I paused for a moment. “She’s giving me the baby quilt Mama’s friends made.”
A shadow passed across my father’s face then was gone. “Well,” he said, nodding. “Well, now.”
I stood up. “Don’t worry. Gabe’s going to have officers posted twenty-four hours a day.”
“I trust the boy. Always have.”
“So have I.”
“So, then.” He ate the last of his sandwich and drained his coffee cup. “Got some fence down over in the west pasture. I’ll be over there most the afternoon.”
I nodded, picked up his empty dishes, and set them in the sink.
Entering Dove’s room without her there seemed almost sacrilegious to me. It smelled slightly of the Jean Nate talcum powder she often used and strongly from cedar—she was crazy for cedar chips, believing they kept away everything from moths to mice to head colds to gout. Her old cherry wood Shaker-style furniture—head- and footboard, chest of drawers, one nightstand—were more familiar to me than any piece of furniture I’d ever owned. I sat on her double bed for a moment, studying for the thousandth time the pink and mint-green Arkansas Snowflake quilt. I was eight years old when she and her friends quilted it—in one day—while I lay underneath the quilt rack reading
Black Beauty.
I could close my eyes and still remember the murmuring sound of their voices; the thick, warm summer air; the restless shuffling of their feet; the sight of the fabric pushing toward me as their needles rocked through the layers of cloth. I remember the taste of the lemon cake one of the women brought, how it tasted just like the lemonade Dove had made, and how tickled they got when someone made a joke I’ve long forgotten about men and puckered lips.
I stood up and opened her closet doors. Using a footstool, I looked over the neatly hung flowered blouses and jeans to the top of the closet. Back in the corner, under a teetering bunch of shoe boxes wrapped in a faded blue sheet, lay the quilt. Holding back the shoe boxes with one hand, I pulled it out.
I spread the small signature quilt across her bed. It was a Sawtooth Star pattern with sixteen eight-inch squares. The fabrics were primarily pinks and pale blues with a muslin backing, which told me they had probably started the quilt before I was born, since back in the fifties parents didn’t have the medical means to find out the baby’s sex ahead of time. Embroidered names, vines, flowers, and messages decorated ten of the blocks. “When this you see, remember me—Ida Pendleton.” “Welcome, Little One—Rose Mae Lovelis.” “Love to the Little One—Glessie Wilcox.” “Bless you and the little baby—June Willows.” “Happiness Always—Caroline Maplegrove.” “Love from your sister-in-heart—Gwen Swanson.” “Friendship is a Sheltering Tree—Agnes Bickles.” “Hands to Work, Hearts to God—Elizabeth Clark.” “Train up a child in the way he should go—Proverbs 22: 6—Carlene Kelligrew.” “As the twig is bent, so grows the child—Congratulations—Juby Renault.”
The border was a Wild Goose Chase pattern of running triangles. The quilting wasn’t elaborate, but precise and neat. I turned the quilt over to look for a quilt label and was in luck. Back before quilting started its renaissance in the late sixties, it was still considered a craft for bored housewives or old ladies sewing for missionary causes. Not many women back then thought to record the date or the maker of the quilt. These ladies did, though, and the white cotton label said in beautiful, curlicue script:
Presented to Alice Louise Banks by her loving friends in honor of the birth of her first child—Young Women’s Sunday School Class—Little Rock First Baptist Church—March 1, 1958.
Twenty-two days before I was born.
I reread each name, studying their signatures and messages, imagining what these women talked about as they stitched the quilt, who they were to my mother, what their problems were, where they were now.
The quilt looked almost brand-new. Did she ever lay it over me or did she keep it wrapped up, a memory of the friends who so carefully put in every one of these tiny stitches? I read over the names again, a vague déjà vu feeling coming over me. Then it occurred to me. The autograph book in Mr. Chandler’s trunk. This was the second time in less than a week I’d read the long-ago sentiments of a group of people. I glanced over the names on the quilt again, and suddenly one jumped out at me.
Gwen Swanson.
I jumped up and ran into the living room where I’d left my purse, emptying it on the floor, pawing through it until I found the pocket-size notebook where I’d recorded the names of the people in the autograph book.
Gwen Swanson.
I sat down on the floor, my heart racing like it was going for a trophy.
A coincidence? I wanted to think so. But I knew it wasn’t. Somebody named Gwen Swanson had signed an autograph book in the possession of this stranger. Gwen Swanson was also a friend of my mother’s.
There it was.
The thinly threaded link between Mr. Chandler—or whoever he was—and me.
My mother.
I clutched the notebook against my chest, frozen, not knowing what to think, where to go from here.
My mother and ...
And who?
Any plans I had of abandoning the search for Mr. Chandler’s real identity were over now. I didn’t have a choice but to see this thing through all the way to the end, whatever that might be.
10
IT WAS PAST three o’clock when I returned to Morro Bay. I called Gabe’s office, and Maggie, his secretary, informed me he’d gone back to the museum after a morning full of meetings about the incident.
“That grandma of yours is a real kick in the pants,” she said, her voice going into a high-pitched, delightful laugh.
“I’m sure this will look a lot funnier to me in retrospect,” I said with a sigh.
“You’ll be able to dine out on this story for years,” she assured me. “Like I said, the Grand Poobah’s been here and gone already.”
After telling her I’d track him down eventually, I spread the baby blanket over the sofa to look at it again. I pulled out the autograph book and turned to the page Gwen Swanson had signed. There was no doubt about it—the signatures were the same.
What now?
I sat for a moment on the sofa staring at the quilt, then pulled it up to my face and inhaled. What did I expect to smell? I had no conscious memories of my mother’s scent, just a vague one of her voice. My recollections of my mother were as hazy as the perpetual morning fog surrounding Morro Rock. I was barely six when she died of breast cancer, and my image of her was intermingled with that of my first grade teacher, Miss Rodale. My teacher had been a skinny, ginger-haired woman who smelled of spearmint and had long, beige teeth that she covered with a pink-nailed hand whenever she laughed too hard. She was gone when I returned to second grade the next year, and I assumed with the skewed logic of a seven-year-old that she died like my mother had in late June when the wild mustard and monkey flowers were blooming a cheerful yellow on the hills around our ranch. For years I took it for granted that any adult who moved out of my own personal sphere had died, until I grew old enough to understand that there were places outside of San Celina where people continued to live their lives.
I remember very little about my mother’s funeral; what I do recall is tinged with a child’s dramatic memory—my father on a rearing horse, cursing and angry, bringing it under control with a crop and racing down the long driveway at the ranch; the sharp, sickening scent of carnations; the cold, sweet taste of chocolate icebox pie that someone fed me, the meringue dissolving like sugared air on my tongue. I remember waking up in Dove’s bed, the very one I sat on this afternoon. It was dark, and she was lying next to me, still wearing her silky Sunday dress. I lay there for the longest time stroking the sleeve and listening to her breathe.
Daddy and I didn’t discuss my mother much as I was growing up. Though he was as Southern as the rest of the Ramsey clan, I’d heard it said by my aunts that when he moved to the Central Coast from Arkansas, he’d taken on a Western taciturnity that seemed to suit his personality better. Most of what I knew about my mother was gleaned from Dove.
I was born in Arkansas, and we came to California when I was barely three, using the small insurance settlement from her parents’ fatal car accident to put a down payment on the Ramsey Ranch. Dove had encouraged them to leave even though she’d miss her oldest son, because she knew he needed to start his own life. He’d carried the burden of being a man since he was fourteen and his own daddy died, leaving Dove with five kids to raise. Later, when Mama was dying, Dove sold her farm, packed up her last child living at home, my uncle Arnie, and came west to help.
I left the quilt spread out on the bed and took Scout out to the backyard. While contemplating this latest discovery, I sat on the bench under the pepper tree and tossed a tennis ball to him. Should I tell Gabe about this new information? The situation in San Celina worried me, and though I knew Gabe wouldn’t let Dove be hurt or arrested, I also knew how hard this was for him, the narrow fence he was being forced to walk. Though I desperately wanted to share with him the connection between Mr. Chandler and my mother, I also didn’t want to add to his stress. I’d give him a day to get used to the situation with Dove and tell him about this tomorrow. Until then, I’d just keep digging.
The question was where? I tossed the ball against the fence, and Scout bounded after it. Just watching his joy at the game relaxed me and put me in a less agitated state of mind.
The gate in the fence opened, and Rich stepped through. Scout ran over to him with the ball. Rich grabbed it from his mouth and tossed it straight up in the air. Scout jumped like a puppy, causing me to laugh out loud.
“You should do that more often,” he said, coming over and sitting down next to me.
“I would if there was more to laugh about.”
“So, what’s new on the investigation?”
I hesitated, tempted to tell him about the discovery of my mother’s connection with Mr. Chandler. But my loyalty toward Gabe stopped me. If I wasn’t going to tell my husband, I shouldn’t tell anyone.
“My friend, the potter, suggested I try Harmony. It’s a little town up the coast where a lot of artists live and work. He said maybe someone there would recognize the pot. And there’s still the Wood-carvers’ Guild. Maybe somebody there . . .” Before I could finish, Scout stood up, tail wagging, and Beau Franklin walked around the corner.
“I came by at ten o’clock, and you weren’t here,” he said, his eyes boring down on me.
My hand flew to my cheek. “Oh, Mr. Franklin, I’m so sorry. I completely forgot about our appointment. I . . . there was a family emergency in the city and, oh, I’ m really sorry.”
He scowled at me. “My time is valuable.”
“Please sit down, and we’ll talk now. Would you like something to drink?”
He shook his head and stood there, his arms folded across his broad chest.
“You need me to stay?” Rich asked in a low voice.
“No, I’ll be fine,” I said. “Thanks, anyway.”
Rich gave Beau an unsubtle, warning look, then left through the side gate. “Come over when you’re through,” he called over his shoulder. “I’ve made tamales.”
“I’ll be there.” I turned back to Mr. Franklin. “I have a couple of questions about Mr. Chandler, if you don’t mind.”
“Before your questions, I have something to tell you. Jake Chandler owed me ten thousand dollars, and I want it back.”
I was speechless for a moment. “Ten thousand dollars?” Then I became suspicious. “For what?”
“None of your concern for what,” he said, his arms still folded. “I want a cashier’s check and I want it today.”
I looked at him for a long moment, then said, “Just a minute. I’ll be right back.” Inside the house I dialed Amanda. Fortunately she was in her office. I explained quickly what Mr. Franklin was demanding.