Barbara Graham - Quilted 03 - Murder by Music Read Online Free PDF

necklace she wore with her red sweatshirt and jeans. “Can I ask you a couple of questions about it?”
    “Sure.” Theo grinned and pushed her glasses up. “Don't take it too seriously, though. It's not rocket science.” She leaned forward to look at the paper. “What do you want to know?”
    “You say that we need assorted fabrics that are lights, mediums and darks.”
    Theo nodded encouragingly and waited.
    “I guess I'm uncertain how to categorize some of the prints.”
    “Okay.” Theo pointed to a white fabric with black squiggles on it. “I would say that this is light. If you squint at it, it looks white. A black fabric with white lines would appear to be black. For this design, you don't need as much contrast between the dark and the mediums as you do between the mediums and the light. You can do it with either shade or color. Just remember some of your mediums will be darker or lighter than others. It gives the quilt texture. Like the different fabrics in a log cabin.”
    Melissa grinned. “I've got it. If I put this dark yellow against a light blue, it is still easy to see.”
    A wide smile softened the tall woman's face. “So if I want to, I could make it all shades of one color.”
    “Exactly.” Theo said.
    Susan's husband was one of the executives at the new fertilizer plant. Tony understood that sometimes new residents of Silersville felt alienated by the clannish society. He thought the ones who made their way into the quilt shop seemed to be assimilated more quickly.
    With a gleam in her eyes, Susan began pulling blue fabrics and stacking them on the table. “Who's going on the retreat?”
    Listening to his wife's list, he guessed Theo wasn't ready to go home yet, so Tony settled into the man corner and caught up with his reading, studying the statistics of his favorite baseball players. He loved and hated the exciting end of the season. The winter, without baseball, loomed like the dark entrance to a long tunnel.
    “The toilet in the downstairs bathroom doesn't work right,” said Theo. “Do you want to fix it or should I call in the plumber?”
    Tony watched Theo chase a puddle of milk with a rag, racing against Daisy's big pink tongue. The oversized golden retriever was winning. “I'll take a look at it later.” Tony ducked as Theo's flying elbow came perilously close to his nose. “Since there's no baseball game tonight, I'm going to write for a while. Maybe I just need a mental break. An evening in the company of cowboys and buffalo and antelope sounds really good.”
    Tony's mood improved as soon as he entered his study. For a change, the boys were not playing on the computer. Although the room was actually a converted pantry, he considered it his space. Sharing the computer was a necessity, but it rankled a bit when he had to stand in line or throw someone out in order to do his writing. The expensive computer sat on a faux wood desk from one of the discount stores. A yard sale find, the chair was comfortable, if a bit worn, and one of the casters would fall off every time he leaned too far backwards. On the wall to his left was a small corkboard covered with magazine pictures of Montana and Wyoming. His inspiration.
    He opened a file and read through his last typed words. His hero, the marshal, had just ridden out in pursuit of the bank robber when the bad guy circled around and rode back into town. Tony leaned back in the chair and closed his eyes, letting his thoughts drift through the scene. The smell of the sage and the heat of the sun mixed with the constant dust in his imaginary little town.
    Unfortunately, no words made it from his mind to his fingers and, this time, the swirls on his screensaver went undisturbed.

C HAPTER F OUR
    Thursday morning when Tony arrived at his office, Ruth Ann was already at her desk just outside his office door. She smiled at him, not a good sign, when he walked in. She pointed to her companion, and Tony couldn't suppress a groan. Orvan