4 Plagued by Quilt Read Online Free PDF

should be here any time, Ms. Solberg. In the meantime, the situation is under control. Hicks and I have worked together on previous recoveries of unexpected remains.”
    “Have you?” Nadine asked. “How interesting.”
    Clod showed the extent of his interest with a shrug. All in a day’s work, apparently.
    Work
.
Oh no.
I pulled my phone out and looked at the time. Barely enough to make it back for a meeting I’d scheduled with a sales rep.
    “Nadine, I’ll see you tomorrow morning. The TGIF quilters are raring to go.”
    “Not sticking around to give a hand with the arm?” Clod asked.
    “Sorry,” I said. “Appointment. Already late. Must dash.”
    “Well, then, watch your speed,” he shouted after me.

Chapter 4
    C lod Dunbar had issued my first—and only—speeding ticket six months earlier. That was also the first time we’d met. The ticket was humiliating, but really only a minor blip of an experience, and it would have been nice if Clod would let the memory of it slink away. He liked bringing it up, though, saying it was for my own safety, as well as the public’s. Because I’d been brought up to be polite, I never told him what I thought every time he delivered his public service announcement.
    I made it to the Weaver’s Cat in good time, without going so much as a hair over the posted speeds. When I turned onto Main Street, I got stuck behind a tourist bus, so speeding wasn’t an option, anyway.
Funny,
I thought
, if I still lived in the big city of Springfield, Illinois, poking along behind a bus would have had me fuming as much as the bus.
But this was a hybrid coach, clean and quiet, letting several dozen folks loose in town. And their pocketbooks would carry them in and out of the shops, including mine, and there wasn’t much about that to make me fume
    Ardis Buchanan, longtime friend and longer-time manager of the Weaver’s Cat, made an art of our front window displays. She knew how to combine colors andtextures that drew eyes and then feet through our front door. I enjoyed looking at her displays as much as our customers did, but recently I’d started bypassing them and taking the less scenic route down the alley behind the shop, to go in through the kitchen. It was all about the door. Our new electronic chime didn’t ring—it bleated. “Baa” was what most people heard when they opened the door, but to me it sounded like “welcome home.”
    One of the reasons I loved that chime was the guy who made it for us—Joe Dunbar. Joe was something of a Renaissance Blue Plum man. He could paddle a canoe, knit a baby hat, and toss a pizza. He painted beautiful miniature watercolors, had an open and curious mind, enjoyed old movies, and read contemporary mysteries. Parts of his life were still a mystery to me, but I was working on that. One unfathomable mystery was how he could possibly be the brother of the lamentable Deputy Clod. That relationship wasn’t something he could help, though, and it would have been unfair to hold it against him.
    Ardis, Geneva, and Argyle, the cat who’d retired from a rough life to live at the shop, were waiting for me in the front room, each in her or his own way. Argyle made happy cat eyes, then curled into a skein of orange tabby fur near the cash register for another appointment in his never-ending schedule of naps. Ardis sat on the tall stool behind the sales counter folding a stack of fat quarters she’d cut from a new line of printed cottons. The fabrics reproduced 1920s patterns and were proving popular with quilters. Geneva perched on top of the button cabinet, watching Ardis and kicking her ghostly heels. There was no sign of the sales rep.
    “Good, she’s not here yet?” I gave Argyle a kiss between his ears, then moved around to the front of the counter so that I was more or less facing both Ardis and Geneva. Ardis might not know Geneva was there, but she was, and it seemed a simple courtesy to make her feel included. Especially because she