Free 4 Plagued by Quilt by Molly MacRae

by the very wonder of it. She can’t even bring herself to touch it.”
    “That’s her training,” Shirley said. “She’s taken an oath not to touch or breathe on artifacts of a historical nature.”
    “
An
historical nature,” Mercy said with an elbow that caught me instead of her sister. “Oh. I am so sorry, Kath. You can pass it along if you like.”
    I couldn’t be bothered. The quilt was a gem. The colors glowed, and every eccentric piece of velvet and silk was a canvas for embroidered art—intricate flourishes grew into tiny flowers or delicate insects, and extravagant repetitions of looping and feathered stitches surrounded the pieces and drew them together into a carnival of colors. Best of all were whimsical touches such as a pink-and-gray mouse crouched at the edge of a mouse hole–shaped piece of black velvet, nibbling at an adjoining triangle of cheese-colored silk. The whole thing measured only about five feet square, typical of ornate crazy quilts made in the late nineteenth century, but I wished Great-Great-Grandmother Rebecca had let it go on and on.
    “Why do you call it the Plague Quilt?” I asked.
    “It’s what Great-Granny Rebecca called it,” Shirley said.
    “Do you know why she did?”
    “We do,” Mercy said as she started to refold the quilt.
    “Wait—”
    “And we’ll tell you why, and let you look at it again,” Shirley said, holding the bag open as Mercy carefully slid the quilt inside, “for a small consideration.”
    “In exchange,” said Mercy.
    I made my pact with the twin devils—they would be allowed to join the TGIF volunteers helping with the quilting portion of Hands on History, and I would be allowed to spend an equal number of hours alone with the quilt. They were right; it seemed a small enough consideration—the word “sacrifice” sprang more immediately to mind, but I wasn’t going to quibble—if they were letting me get my hands on that beauty. I did ask if they would leave the quilt with me in the meantime.
    “We’d better not,” Shirley said after tut-tutting and shaking her head.
    “We’ll bring it back tomorrow,” said Mercy.
    I watched them go, and sent a silent plea to whatever entity watched over optimists that Zach would forgive me for ensuring a continuing plague of the twins in his life.
    *   *   *
    When I found Nadine, she was sitting at a desk in what must have been Phillip’s office. Less generous than Nadine’s, this was the kind of office I was more familiar with in small museums—uncanny in its resemblance to a glorified supply closet. At least the room had a window at the far end, with a view of the gravel parking lot. If Phillip had pressed one cheek to the window frame and squinted, he could have seen the mules or Portia and her piglets when they were outside in the pens on this side of the barn.
    “I wondered how much longer Deputy Dunbar was going to keep you,” Nadine said, looking and sounding relieved to see me.
    A coat tree stood in one corner. Phillip’s wide-brimmed felt hat hung on it. There was no sign of the purple frock coat Nadine had told me about. A bookcasewith a few dozen reference books stood against one wall. A banjo leaned against a filing cabinet on the other. A copier or printer sat on top of the filing cabinet. Nadine had been leafing through a binder when I came in, but now she watched me as I looked over the room.
    “I didn’t even know he played the banjo,” she said. “I wonder if he sang?”
    “I’m sorry we won’t get the chance to find out. Are you going to want help sorting through things here?” I hesitated, then added, “Or in the cottage? I’ll be happy to do what I can.”
    “I’ll let you know, Kath. Right now it’s one more thing that has to wait until they tell us something. I hate waiting, but not knowing what’s going on is even worse. Did Deputy Dunbar say anything useful?”
    “Sorry, no. But I’m sure he didn’t think I said anything useful, either.” I