Ada Unraveled (2 page)

Located in the foothills below Cleveland
County, our eighties-era home is on an acre of land just north of
the wild animal park of the San Diego Zoo. If you listen hard while
standing on one of our decks, you can hear the tigers yawning.
Especially at dawn, before the traffic.

The cultural chaos part I mostly love. It’s
very exciting to live in a state that is constantly remaking
itself. The Spanish language part is a little daunting,
however.

On my way to the kitchen I passed the new
ladder-shaped quilt rack I’d just assembled and draped with four of
my latest hand sewn quilts. Each quilt took me about a year to
complete and most of that time was spent doing the top
stitching--which is why I was trying to find a quilting club to
join. Top stitching, despite its name, is the stitching together of
the layers of the quilt (usually three; top, bottom and stuffing.)
So I was looking for a group of hand quilters, one that did old
fashioned sewing bees.

I’d read online that a group of women could
complete the top stitching of a full sized quilt in a day. So if I
found a quilting bee I could spend more time doing my favorite
part, the more creative patchwork, or piecing, of the top
sheet.

There used to be hand quilting groups in
California, but try as I might I couldn’t find one now. Not even
with the aid of the internet. Modern women, especially modern
Californians, didn’t have time to quilt by hand. They were busy
raising kids, keeping house and working full time.

Maybe there weren’t any hand quilting groups
anymore. Or, maybe the ones that existed were very private and
didn’t advertise themselves. But I was still looking.

I began cleaning up, asking myself again why
the local authorities in Cleveland County had not requested my
records of the discovery at Applepine Ridge. I’d submitted our
preliminary report nearly a week ago. Surely there was an inquiry
underway concerning the cause of the old man’s death. It was true
that most of our investigative work took place in San Diego County,
a little in Temecula, even one case in Orange County two years ago.
But we regularly worked with folks in Cleveland County as well, and
I was puzzled why no one was contacting me.

It nagged at me--who was the guy? How did he
die? So I’d asked Matt this morning to learn what he could. The
event was staying with me longer than I wanted. It had taken three
days just to get the smell of death out of my nostrils. I needed
finality.

You might ask, what had gotten us started in
the private investigating business? The answer would be that Matt
had had a brush with the law and he liked the feel of it. Back
somewhere in the middle of his long career in the Marines, Matt had
done a stint as a legal officer. Which meant he’d been involved in
preparing cases for the military court system and did some
investigating, even flying to other countries to investigate
helicopter accidents. He loved the investigative stuff. My training
as a researcher was a natural fit for our new small business.

The idea was off-putting when he first
raised it; I just couldn’t see myself skulking around, sneaking in
and out of people’s lives. Until he explained that what
investigators often do involves researching people, researching
their work and their secrets. A slightly different slant.

But his words awakened in me a side of me
that had gone dormant after so many years of public library and
school library work. I actually was a bit sneaky. I could really be
a big snoop. Frankly loved to break the rules. And the sheer
adventure of it caught my imagination as it had Matt’s. Taking the
various courses in San Diego had cinched it for me. I especially
fell in love with the forensics side of private investigation.

Turning to wipe down the stove on the small
island behind me, I caught my reflection in the glass of the
microwave. My blond hair had only a little gray in it, which barely
showed. And the wrinkles were still few and far between. Not too
bad for a middle-aged gal.

A sharp ringing intruded on my
kitchen-cleaning reverie, and I grabbed the phone and stepped out
onto the porch to get away from the television blare of the movie.
The night was still warm in late September and it greeted me with a
friendly embrace. The air was finally clean enough to breathe
comfortably again after the recent terrible fires. I answered on
the third ring.

It’s a rare thing if you can stand anywhere
in California and not hear the sound of traffic, but on our
sequestered decks in the evening we heard only birds and breezes
through the eucalyptus trees and an occasional neighbor. And a
lowing wildebeest looking for her herd in the darkness.

As I usually do around dinner time, I
pre-screened calls for annoying telemarketers. I didn’t speak. I
stood silently waiting for a human voice instead of a machine hum
and click. The children know I do this. My good friends know I do
this. All others are selling or begging or politicking and they
don’t belong on my phone.

“Is this Rachel Lyons?” a chocolate voice
finally asked in answer to my subconscious hello.

“Yes, who’s this?”

“I’m Hannah Lilly. You don’t know me however
it’s come to our attention that you’re looking for a group of
hand-quilters to join. We--that is, my quilting group and I--would
like to invite you to our next bee.”

Her voice was soothing and strangely
familiar. But the thrill of excitement quickly morphed into mild
anxiety as I wondered how anyone would have known. I couldn’t think
of any case when I’d spoken of this idea. Perhaps I’d let it slip
at the Cleveland Conservators.

“We meet once a month on the first
Saturday,” she continued after a short pause. “We take turns
supplying a quilt to sew which usually works out to one every eight
months.” Absorbed, fascinated by the sound of her deep voice, I
mostly listened. So there must be eight in the group?

“Are you still there?”

“Yes, yes of course. I’m just surprised. How
did you know...?”

Hannah Lilly continued, not hearing my
question, her voice changing subtly to something more reserved.

“One catch though, our gatherings begin
after six in the evening, always on a Saturday, and we sew until
it’s done, so you should wear comfortable clothes for naps. And
when it’s your turn to host, we sew your quilt and in return you
supply us with snacks. You should understand that we will keep
sewing until the quilt is done.” Her lyrical voice halted
momentarily. “Probably all night.”

“Oh, really.” What on earth was this? I
wasn’t looking for a cult. “What I mean is, yes. I mean, I realize
that’s how quilting bees were sometimes done a long time ago. I
don’t know if I expected that to be the case today, however…staying
up all night…” I was stammering like an idiot.

Again she interrupted. “Well, so many women
work now, it’s the best way we can do this. In fact two of our gals
work on Saturdays. But also, this group has a history of sewing all
night that goes back years. And, we don’t quilt in the summer, in
fact we’ve just started up again…this month, in September.”

Okay, this sounded really bizarre. I found
myself wondering if I had the stamina to sew all night long. I was
really an early-to-bed, early-to-rise kind of person. She continued
to talk through my musings, offering up a little more information
with each halting sentence.

“Our group is made up of women of different
ages, including a couple well into their eighth and ninth decades.
We pace ourselves, sleep occasionally, and eat tons of sugar.”

Eighth and ninth decades? Was she trying to
make me feel silly about the all-nighter thing? But I began
wondering how Matt would take this. Glancing back toward the
kitchen and the sounds of the weather channel changing to the
history channel, I thought he might not even notice I was gone. He
probably thought I was already in bed, reading instead of risking
being eaten by a stray pack of hyenas out on our side deck.

No, that would only be my worry. Wisdom had
finally roused himself enough to come join me. Our old shepherd was
on guard duty. I stroked the fur behind his ears as I listened.

“You must have quite a time finding new
members with the all night thing,” I said.

Matt probably wouldn’t even miss me if I
left for a night, would spend the night channel surfing in his
sleep, I mused. Good grief. Was I talking myself into this
idiocy?

The voice on the other end of the phone
sighed, and said, “You have no idea how hard it is to find new
members, Rachel. Actually it was while talking to someone else,
attempting to convince her it was safe to venture out into the
evening to spend the night with us--that I wasn’t a witch wanting
to start a new coven—that I learned of your interest. The gal who
runs your local quilting store there in Escondido, the Collage
Cottage I think she calls it, she told me about your interest in a
hand quilting group.”

Really? I’d mentioned my interest to
her?

“Karen. You mean Karen Harper.”

But I found myself smiling. The Hannah woman
sounded real enough. Not a whole lot more delusional than the rest
of us. And if the Collage Cottage gave my phone out they must have
felt it was safe.

“Can you send me some information…by email?
Perhaps point me to your web page, or blog or whatever?”

“Oh great! I know this is coming at you out
of left field, and that you don’t know anything about us, but I
assure you we are a safe bunch. The group has been meeting for
forever this way and…we just had a vacancy open. By death,
actually.” She went from hesitant to full-on stop and sighed again.
Wishing she could bite off her tongue, I guessed.

But with quilters in their seventies and
eighties, I wasn’t concerned about her news that one of the members
had died.

I heard Matt calling. So what came out next
was, “Listen, I have to go, Hannah, so where can I read about
you?”

“Actually, we’re registered with the
American Society of Quilters, ASQ--not to be confused with the
American Quilters’ Society. There’s a brief description of us
online at their site and you can contact them with other questions
you may have as well. They’ll vouch for us.”

Hannah Lilly paused, her hand apparently
over the mouth of the phone, then resumed in a tighter voice, I’m
afraid that shout you just heard was my daughter picking a fight
with one of her little brothers and I need to say goodbye now.” She
was a mother. “Our group is named Quilted Secrets. You should
receive a letter in a day or two giving you more details…Deborah
quit teasing Sam!”

She was a
normal
mother. She gave me
the group’s web address and her personal email, and I gave her my
email and told her I would email my address. And then she was gone.
The complete silence that followed her call made me question
whether the conversation had ever really happened. But Matt’s
questing voice had retreated to the back of our house toward our
office and bedroom, so I broke off that line of thinking.

A lion roared in the distance. A Lyon was
roaring in my house.

A hand quilting group. Wow. An actual old
fashioned bee. I was filled with excitement as I walked back inside
to reassure Matt that I hadn’t really just been time-traveling, as
I felt I’d been.

One week later, I was wending my way toward
my first authentic quilting bee under a darkish sky. Totally
energized. A little anxious. But smiling all the way. Matt had been
surprised at first, maybe even concerned, but as we’d sat together
in our office reading the online information on The Quilted Secrets
Bee: A Small Hive of Old Fashioned Hand Quilters webpage, he’d
slowly warmed to the idea. On some level Matt knew I needed this
camaraderie with other women, and for me socializing had always
been easier when combined with an activity--something to help fill
the void when conversations lagged.

The web site also gave me two names to work
with. I already had Hannah Lilly, and her chocolaty voice.
Apparently Hannah was their public contact person. The other name
was Victoria Stowall and she was the leader of the group—perhaps
its originator. But aside from the background photograph of a
beautiful block quilt, there were no photographs.

I looked up at the sky ahead of me at the
low flying gray and charcoal clouds that covered our bit of
California like a lumpy army blanket--damp and stinky. The weather
was so unusual for this time of year. Rain was a rarity anytime in
Southern California—the average rainfall being somewhere around
twelve inches--but it was especially rare in the fall. Tonight the
clouds were supposed to evolve into a drenching storm, an event
that could turn the recent fear of fires into fear of mudslides. My
winding hour-long drive would take me through Julian to I-13, and
then on south into Cleveland County.

Dusk was just settling in under the thick
blanket of clouds as I found my next turn. I passed the ashes of
several burned out neighborhoods, small groups of what were once
homes but now were reduced to lone chimneys sticking up here and
there like giant grave markers. They reminded me of the burned tree
spires at Applepine where we’d stumbled upon a corpse.

I bore right onto I-13 and quickly found the
turnoff to Iguana. I spotted the next sign, a local product far
less welcoming than the one on the freeway. This one needed a coat
of paint, and was a warning not a welcome.

Lovely. But not an unusual sentiment for
over-crowded Southern California.

I passed through a hamlet of meager stores
and starving restaurants, a gas station so old I wondered if it was
up to code with today’s green laws. And finally a small wooden
church, which made me pray I would beat the rain to the front door
of this event. It was going to be a close race. I kept searching
for the elusive dirt road I’d been instructed to find a little past
the old town—something about a low rock wall entrance with the name
in Mexican tiles on it: Stowall.