The Double Wedding Ring Read Online Free PDF Page A

the poor little thing might not live through the day.
    â€œWhat do we call it?” I asked.
    â€œHer.” Eleanor was the only one the kitten would let near her, and we had to trust that she had determined the gender correctly.
    â€œScraps,” Natalie suggested.
    â€œCalico?” I offered.
    Eleanor shook her head. “The black spots on her head look like a four patch to me. Let’s call her Patch.”
    At that the kitten meowed, which we assumed was approval.

C HAPTER 5
    A fter she ate, Patch found a folded quilt on a back table. It was a good choice; a brightly colored churn dash that Eleanor had made as a sample of the new batik fabrics. I’d meant to hang it, but that would have to wait. Patch plopped herself in the middle of it and promptly fell asleep.
    Despite the crazy introduction, she had made it a happy morning, and I’d almost forgotten about my unfinished quilt, my to-do list for the wedding, and the death at Jesse’s. Until the phone rang.
    â€œIt’s me.” Jesse sounded tired and it was only one o’clock. “Lunch?”
    â€œJitters?”
    â€œI’ll be there in five.” He hung up. A nine-word conversation that told me what I needed to know. Jesse was overwhelmed and sad. Although I obviously didn’t want him to be feeling the way he was, I was happy that he’d reached out to me for comfort.
    I walked across the street to Jitters, my favorite hangout in town, and not just for the coffee. The owner, Carrie Brown, was a member of the shop’s Friday quilt group and a close friend. Both Carrie and I were transplants. She’d arrived in Archers Rest just a few years before I had. She was more settled, two kids and a business, but we bonded over the Archers Rest quirks we didn’t always understand. The one thing we both got used to quickly was how fast news spread in town, and Jitters was gossip central.
    She poured me my favorite blend before I’d even ordered, handed me a chocolate cupcake, and sighed. “I’ve been hearing the news all morning and I don’t know which I want to ask about more, the kitten or the body. Do you have a name?”
    â€œPatch.”
    â€œPatch? Was he a pirate?”
    â€œA pirate?” It took me a second to catch on. “No, the
kitten’s
name is Patch, short for Four Patch, I think. The man at Jesse’s was named Roger Leighton. Jesse’s police partner from his days in New York.”
    â€œHow is Jesse?”
    â€œSad. Feeling like he let Roger down somehow,” I said. “I don’t know what he could have done differently. Roger only came into town last night.”
    â€œLast night?” Carrie stared off into space for a moment, thinking. “What did Roger look like?”
    â€œOrdinary, I guess. He was average height, late thirties, light brown hair . . .”
    â€œBlack leather jacket and jeans?”
    â€œYes. How did you know?”
    He was in here last night,” Carrie said. “He had green tea and a gluten-free cookie. He asked if it was organic, which it is.”
    â€œWhat time?”
    â€œSeven, seven-fifteen. It was weird. He wanted his tea in a to-go cup, but then he sat at that table. . . .” She pointed toward a table near the window. “I saw him watching across the street, right at Someday Quilts, like he was, you know, casing the joint.”
    â€œYou watch too many movies.”
    â€œWhat would you call a man who sits and stares at a business, watching people come and go?”
    I shrugged. “Casing the joint, I guess.”
    â€œOkay then.” She sounded victorious. All the members of my grandmother’s quilt group, myself and Carrie included, had turned ourselves into amateur sleuths. Or busybodies, depending on who was doing the describing. In either case, we prided ourselves on our growing knowledge of crime and crime terminology.
    â€œDid he do anything other than