The Persian Pickle Club (16 page)

Word got around about what had happened to Rita and me, of course, and the members of the Persian Pickle Club stopped in at our place with their potato salads and burnt-sugar cakes, their prettiest scraps of material and words of concern. I felt better, knowing how much they cared. And I felt safer, sitting in the rocker with Old Bob at my side while they clucked about me like I was a chick and they were biddies.

They called on Rita, too, and said how glad they were that she was all right, and when she explained to them the man had been waiting on the read just for us, they shook their heads and told her to forget about Ben Crook. “No matter who killed Ben, dearie, catching him isn’t worth you and Queenie getting hurt,” Ceres said for all of them.

That didn’t deter Rita. She kept on trying to solve the crime. Sometimes she talked about it as we sat and stitched in the afternoon. I quilted because it was the most comforting thing I knew to do. Rita sewed, too, not because it steadied her nerves but because it kept her from biting her fingernails. We went over and over what had happened. We couldn’t discuss it with the other Pickles because they changed the subject, saying we ought to forget. But Rita and I couldn’t forget, and talking about the man and what Blue had done to him, wondering if he was still in a sickbed or maybe crippled for life, made him smaller, less scary.

Rita was at my house the day Forest Ann called with a pan of divinity. She told us she’d just heard some good news and had rushed over to tell us. “I can’t think of anything that will cheer you more, so I came directly here,” she said, cutting the candy into big pieces and setting them on a plate. Rita took a piece and nibbled at it, while I bit into another. With my mouth full, I raised my eyebrows to Forest Ann to show how good it was.

Forest Ann nodded to accept the compliment. She took a piece herself but set it down so that she could talk. “Just wait until you hear what I have to say. With all the bad that’s been happening lately, we’ve had us at least one blessing.”

“Did the sheriff find that man?” I asked.

Forest Ann wiped a crumb of divinity off her mouth with the heel of her hand. “No, not that. This is really good news. Tyrone’s feeling stouter each and every day. Doc informed Net-tie and me not more than an hour ago that Tyrone doesn’t have the polio, after all. Now isn’t that something to be grateful for!” Forest Ann gave us such a smile of happiness that we had to smile right back at her, even though we hadn’t been worrying much about Tyrone lately.

After she left, Rita set her half-eaten piece of divinity back on the plate. I’d eaten all of mine and already had heartburn.

“Grateful? Grateful because Nettie’s husband doesn’t have polio?” Rita’s voice was so shrill that Old Bob, who was lying in the shade by the porch steps, got up and trotted over to me.

“Just think, Queenie, we almost got killed because that boot-legger Tyrone Burgett had an attack of rheumatism!” Rita snickered. After I thought it over, I giggled. Then the two of us laughed so hard that my divinity came up, and I had to swallow it back down. I think that’s when I began to feel better.

I
wasn’t like Rita. I couldn’t go running all over the county talking to people the way she did—not after what had happened to us. I was ashamed to show my face.

So Tom borrowed the Ritters’ car, and he drove her instead. I know she was disappointed in me, but the farm was the only place I felt safe, and I refused to leave it, even to be with my best friends. I called Forest Ann to say I wouldn’t attend the Persian Pickle Club, which was at her house that day.

Mrs. Judd stopped by for me, anyway. I heard her turn off the motor of the Packard and coast to a stop by my back steps, and I went to the kitchen door to see who it was. Ella peered over the big dashboard and fluttered her hand at me.

Mrs. Judd was already halfway up the stairs when I reached the door. Each step creaked in turn as she put her weight on it. She stopped at the door, breathing hard, the sweat on her face making her warts shine like little steel tacks. “I didn’t know if you were feeling up to driving to Pickle this afternoon. Ella and I came to fetch you,” she said to me through the screen. Old Bob got up off the floor and peered out at her, then wagged his tail. He was good company, but he wasn’t much of a watchdog.

“I’m not going today,” I told her. “Thank you just the same.”

“Yes you are,” Mrs. Judd said as she yanked at the screen door. It didn’t open because I’d begun putting the hook on when Grover wasn’t in the house. “Thunderation! You’re living like a crow in a cage. Open this door.”

I wanted to tell her it was none of her business if I locked up my house. Instead, I said, “I have a headache. I’m not going.”

“You’ve never had a headache in your life, Queenie Bean. Now unlatch this screen.” Mrs. Judd folded back the veil on her hat and pushed up her sleeves, ready to yank the door off the hinges if I didn’t mind her. So I reached up and lifted the hook, and Mrs. Judd stepped inside. She was still puffing, not just from the exertion of climbing the stairs but from the strain of looking after Ella the past weeks. Ella had gotten even more childlike, and I wondered if she might live with the Judds forever.

Mrs. Judd settled herself on a kitchen chair, intending to stay there until she’d spoken her mind. “Now, Queenie, I know you’ve had a hard time of it. I’m not saying you haven’t. But there’re others less fortunate than you. You don’t know the half of it.” She stopped a minute and frowned, as if she’d said too much.

“You can stay locked up here feeling sorry for yourself like Lizzy Olive would have done, or you can put the bad time behind you like Ella did and think about all the good things the Lord gave you. And He’ll keep on giving them to you if you’ll let Him. But how can you take advantage of His opportunities if you’re sitting behind the kitchen door with the hook on?” Mrs. Judd took a breath and leaned forward, resting her forearms on her thighs.

“Here’s another thing. Forest Ann’s already set in the Celebrity Quilt, and we’re going to start stitching on it this afternoon. You ought to be there, because we’re all so excited about it that we might stay and finish it up by evening, and wouldn’t that be a shame if you didn’t get one stitch on it? So you go put on that orchid dress with the yellow rickrack that makes you look so sweet, and then we’ll be on our way.” Mrs. Judd shifted her weight, putting a strain on the chair, whose joints squeaked in protest. “You got any of Ceres’s burnt-sugar cake left for us to sample? I’ll get it out of the fridge myself. Ella needs something that’ll stick to her bones.” As she got up to rummage through my refrigerator, she called through the door, “Ella, sugar pie, Queenie wants you to come on in here for refreshments while we wait.”

The Celebrity Quilt changed my mind about attending Persian Pickle. I felt more comfortable going now that someone else would take me, because I was afraid that if I got behind the wheel of the Studebaker, I’d shake too much to drive. So I changed my dress and brushed my hair, and by the time I was ready, Ella and Mrs. Judd were rinsing off their plates in the sink. Grover came out of the barn as I got into the Packard. When I told him I was going to club after all, he just nodded, as if he’d expected me to. He and Mrs. Judd might have cooked this up between them.

If they had, I was especially glad, since Rita was there ahead of me. I was surprised, because Rita didn’t like Persian Pickle the way I did, and I’d already told her I wasn’t going. So I thought she’d stay home, too.

She came skipping out of Forest Ann’s house when she saw me and whispered, “I’d think driving with Mrs. Judd would be as scary as … you know. ...” I laughed.

Nettie overheard and was shocked—not because we’d said something against Mrs. Judd’s driving. We all made remarks about that. Nettie acted as if it was blasphemous for us to joke about what had happened to us. Of course, it would have been if our husbands had, or even the other Pickles. But the jokes were a bond between Rita and me, and making fun of that night helped us.

Rita drew me off to one side. “I had a look at the coroner’s report,” she whispered. “Doc Sipes wrote there wasn’t a thing about Ben’s body that proved he’d been murdered. For all he knew, Ben had fallen out of a tree and somebody’d put him in the ground to save the cost of a funeral. Now, why would he say a thing like that?”

I shook my head.

“Why would he unless somebody paid him to?” she asked. “And who’s the only one in Harveyville who has enough money to spend bribing a coroner?” Rita glanced in Mrs. Judd’s direction.

Mrs. Judd saw us looking at her and called me to come inside to see the Celebrity Quilt, and in my excitement, I forgot about Doc Sipes and who might want to pay him to put lies in his report.

The Celebrity Quilt was beautiful. Over the summer, as the autographs had come in, we’d embroidered them in red, but we’d waited until fall to put the quilt together, just in case some of the famous people we’d written to had been on vacation and hadn’t gotten their mail. Forest Ann and Mrs. Ritter assembled the embroidered squares into rows, setting off each one with borders of red cotton. Then they stitched the strips together into a quilt. Where the corners met, they added tiny red-and-white nine-patch squares. It was as fresh and as pretty a quilt as I’d ever seen. Forest Ann had set it into the wooden quilt frame in the middle of her dining room, the big oak pedestal table pushed into the corner.

I stood at the edge of the quilt and fingered Lew Ayres’s autograph. Then I ran my hand over “Good Luck, Eleanor Roosevelt,” thinking I’d never met a woman who could look at a piece of material without touching it. I bet even Eleanor Roosevelt had pinched that fabric between her thumb and forefinger before she wrote her name. I looked over the rows of famous names and felt pride that they were all part of a quilt in Harveyville, Kansas—a quilt that’d been my idea.

We stood impatiently, waiting for Forest Ann to assign us places around the quilt, which it was her privilege to do, since we were at her house. Ella was the best quilter, so of course she’d work on the center, where the stitches showed the most. I was surprised when Forest Ann didn’t put her there. She asked Ella to sit on the side. Then she placed Rita next to Ella instead of at the lower end, where the poorest quilter usually sat. That was a nice thing to do, even though Rita didn’t understand what a compliment it was.

Then Forest Ann said, “Queenie, would you sit here, please, where you can work on the center.” Everyone smiled and nodded.

“Ella ought to be there,” I protested.

“No, the Celebrity Quilt was your idea. You deserve the honor,” she replied. “Besides, you’re a fine quilter.”

I blushed and sat down on one of Forest Ann’s dining room chairs. Now I knew why Mrs. Judd had made me come to Persian Pickle. She and Forest Ann had planned this ahead of time. I looked up and saw Mrs. Judd smiling at me, and I felt so lucky to have such good friends that tears came to my eyes. I didn’t want anyone to see, for fear they’d think I was crying over that night, so I picked up my pocketbook and searched for my thimble. Then I threaded my needle and took a stitch, carefully pulling the knot through the quilt top to hide it, and began to make tiny stitches around Edgar Bergen’s autograph.

With all the sorrows we’d been through, we hadn’t had a regular Persian Pickle in the longest time. The last one, in fact, had been at Opalina’s, the day that Hiawatha found Ben Crook’s bones. Of course, with all the troubles, we’d seen plenty of one another, but I realized as I stitched how much I’d missed all of us sitting down and working together. There was something homey and comfortable about the way we bent over the quilt in Forest Ann’s parlor. I had Grover, and I had the Persian Pickle. Some made do with a lot less.

“This sure is a pretty quilt,” Mrs. Ritter said. “Don’t you think so, Rita.”

Rita muttered, “Uh-huh.”

“Are you going to write another newspaper story about it?” Mrs. Judd asked. Rita’s first story about the Celebrity Quilt had been only a paragraph, and it hadn’t included any of our names.

Rita shrugged without looking up. “I’m pretty busy right now.” She yanked at her needle, and the thread pulled out of it. Rita licked the end of the thread, flattened it between her thumb and finger, and pushed it back through the eye of the needle.

Mrs. Judd stopped stitching to watch Rita. “Tell me why people’s so crazy to read about a murder? It seems to me they’d rather read about what a body’s doing for those less fortunate.” Mrs. Judd looked over at Ella, who didn’t seem to be paying attention. Sometimes I wondered if Ella heard one single thing we said anymore. Her mind had always wandered, but since Ben’s funeral, she seemed more than ever to be living in some place that was far off from Harveyville.

Rita looked up and gave Mrs. Judd a smug smile, as if she knew a secret she wasn’t telling. “Really?”

“It would be awful nice if they ran a picture,” Opalina said.

“Of us?” Ada June asked.

“Of the quilt, of course,” Opalina said, but Ada June and I exchanged glances. We both knew Opalina meant of us. I thought it would be awful nice, too.

“Maybe I’ll write about the quilt later on,” Rita said. “Right now, I can’t let Queenie down. After what happened to us, I gave her my word that I’d solve … Mr. Crook’s … you know ...” She glanced at Ella and didn’t finish. I put my needle down, wondering if I should protest. She’d never given me her word she’d find Ben Crook’s killer for my sake. Nor did I ask her to promise any such thing, but I realized the club members knew that. So I kept my mouth shut.

Ceres took a couple of backstitches and bit off her thread with her teeth, then reached for her spool. “If you ask me, it was just your bad luck you getting stopped like you did. There wasn’t anybody after the two of you. The man who did it was only a bum passing through,” she said. “I meant to tell you, Cheed said that he heard a car got stopped over to Emporia last evening because of a stump in the middle of the road.”

Rita and I looked at each other, and Opalina asked, “What happened?”

“Nothing. Two big men got out of the car and moved the stump.”

Opalina cast a sidelong glance at Ceres, waiting for her to continue. When she didn’t, Opalina said, “I don’t get it. If nothing happened, what does that prove?”

“Why, that’s the point of it, dearie. That stump didn’t just sprout by itself. Whoever’s doing this doesn’t have any idea who’ll be coming along. It was an accident that two men were in the car last evening—just like it was an accident that Queenie and Rita were the ones who were stopped here. When that robber saw grown men get out of the car, he stayed hid. There’s your proof.”

“What I think—” Agnes T. Ritter said, but Mrs. Ritter had been watching Rita, who was getting fidgety as she listened to Ceres and Opalina. So she interrupted Agnes T. Ritter.

“I’ve been wondering. How many raffle tickets do you think we’re going to sell on this quilt?” Mrs. Ritter asked.

Agnes T. Ritter was annoyed because she hadn’t been allowed to tell us what she thought, and she opened her mouth to try again. But I didn’t care what she had to say. Besides, like Rita, I didn’t want to hear any more about the men in Emporia. So I piped up, “I’m going to ask Graver to sell the farm and buy all of the chances. That way, I’ll win the quilt.”

“My stars! To think a farm in Harveyville is worth that much,” Mrs. Ritter said.

We talked about the price we’d charge for the tickets and how many we’d print and who would buy them, and before we knew it, Forest Ann called, “Ready to roll?”

“Ready,” I said.

“Just hold your horses,” Mrs. Judd told us. She’d tangled her thread and had to break it off. Then she cut a new length, put it through her needle, and took hurried stitches. As the rest of us completed our sections, we stood up and stretched and admired one another’s stitching. We were making good time.

At last, Mrs. Judd snipped off her thread and said, “Ready to roll.”

We stood back and watched while Forest Ann and Agnes T. Ritter rolled the part of the quilt we’d just stitched over the top of the frame, unrolling an unquilted section from the bottom at the same time.

While they did that, Ada June came over to me and put her arm around my waist. “I’m glad you came, Queenie. That’s my favorite dress of yours,” she said. I thanked her, and she whispered, “Aren’t you glad Mrs. Judd forgot about reading?”

“Oh, boy, am I!” I whispered back, although I wasn’t so sure Mrs. Judd had forgotten. We all felt the need to visit.

As we took our places again, I saw Forest Ann pat Nettie’s arm. Nettie moved her neck as much as she could to smile up at her sister-in-law. Then her mouth trembled, and I wondered if Tyrone’s rheumatism was acting up again. I hoped not. I’d rather slop pigs than have to sit through another evening of tending Tyrone Burgett in a sickbed. Nettie looked worn out, and I thought that with all her worries, she’d been an especially good friend, calling on me with a molasses pie and some of her fruitcake after what had happened to me.

“I hope those pregnant girls appreciate all the work we’re doing on this quilt,” Agnes T. Ritter said after we’d gone back to stitching.

“Agnes! For goodness sakes!” Mrs. Ritter looked at Agnes T. Ritter and shook her head.