Quilt By Association

'Maybe we can water them down by alternating them with a lot of great batiks.'

'Let's see what we can do with Mavis's piece first,” Beth said. “I took the liberty of loading it onto the machine. I had an idea I want to show you about how to deal with the seam between the old and the new parts.'

Chapter 8

Harriet woke up early on the morning of DeAnn's baby shower. She'd forgotten to put a midnight snack in Fred's food bowl the night before, and he'd punished her by head-butting her awake at six-thirty. By the time she staggered downstairs and provided a gob of the gelatinous goop Aiden had prescribed for Fred to clear up his dandruff, she was wide awake.

'Listen, you little wretch,” she said to him as he circled his dish and rubbed his face on her bare leg. “This was your idea. We could still be in our warm bed.'

She hadn't changed the thermostat on the furnace to fall settings yet, and consequently, the kitchen was freezing. She was in the midst of her daily internal debate over the merits of going out for a walk versus going back to bed for another half-hour when the flashing red light on her answering machine caught her eye.

Aiden, she thought with a smile and picked the phone up. She pushed the play button on the ancient machine and listened in anticipation for the sound of his voice.

'I have to give it to you,” Lauren said. “Your problems are never boring.'

Harriet's shoulders and spirits sagged.

'I haven't found birth or death documents for either of the adults and nothing on the baby.'

'Why are you calling me, then?” Harriet wondered out loud. Fred looked up at the sound of her voice.

'I did find something interesting, though.'

The phone in her hand buzzed, and Harriet startled so hard she again had to juggle the phone to avoid dropping it.

'Hello?'

'Guess what I just found?” Lauren asked.

'I was about to find out from the answering machine, but you cut yourself off.'

'Guess.'

'Lauren, it is not even seven o'clock yet. Could you just cut to the chase?'

'Oh, you're no fun.'

Look who's talking, Harriet thought.

'I suppose going to your computer and watching a YouTube video clip is out of the question.'

'Lauren, if you don't tell me something useful in the next thirty seconds, I'm hanging up.'

'Fine,” she grumbled. “The video clip you refuse to watch shows a woman named Nabirye Obote talking about contaminated water wells near Oraba, Uganda, which is apparently a village or town near the Sudanese border. I think she is saying that the wells were contaminated on purpose, but I'm not sure because my translation program had a hard time with her accent.'

'So, she made a video at some point before she died.'

'You are definitely not a morning person, are you?” Lauren said. “If she'd made a video in the past, I wouldn't be calling you. This video was posted yesterday.'

'Yeah, but couldn't it have been made earlier and just not posted until yesterday?'

'It could have, but why post it after she died, and if you were going to post it after she died, don't you think you'd mention her death?'

'Are you sure it's the woman we're looking for?'

'Of course not, how could I know that? All I can tell you is that a woman named Nabirye Obote made a video in Uganda two days ago. Oh, and she looks to be of childbearing age. I don't know how common the name is, but with nothing else to go on, that's what I've got.'

Harriet sat down on a stool at her kitchen bar, phone in hand.

'That's a lot,” she admitted. “If it is our Nabirye Obote, then she's clearly not dead.'

'Which makes us wonder why her baby is here with some other mother.'

'What it really makes us wonder is if Nabirye has a baby at all.'

'If she's doing politically dangerous work, she might have sent her baby here for safety,” Lauren suggested.

'Or Neelie might be trying to take advantage of her sister's situation and find a better life for her own baby.'

'Didn't you tell me yesterday the baby's eyes were blue? So, we have to believe Neelie just coincidentally had a blue-eyed baby?'

'If she did have a blue-eyed baby, and she'd seen Aiden, it might have given her the idea.'

'It sounds pretty bold, if you ask me.'

'My experience with Neelie is that she's definitely bold enough to try something like that.'

'If she's staying at Aiden's house maybe we can grill her after the shower.'

Harriet could hear the clicking of computer keys in the background.

'I just sent you the link. When you've had your coffee, take a look.'

'Thanks for finding this so quickly,” Harriet said.

'It's what I do,” Lauren said with a long-suffering sigh. “Later,” she added, and hung up without waiting for a response.

Harriet turned on her bar stool.

'This puts a different spin on things, Fred. After that bit of news, I think a walk is in order after all.'

Beth had taken Mavis's quilt piece home the night before, so Harriet spent the morning auditioning fabrics for her dog quilt block. Her plan was to try to fashion a tumbling block pattern using light, medium and dark fabrics, one of which would be a dog print. If her color choices were good, three diamond-shaped pieces would be joined, creating a three-dimensional effect that would make it appear blocks were tumbling out of the quilt.

She cut two diamonds from each of the dog-print fabrics she'd collected then searched through the fabric on her storage shelves to find coordinating shades to complete each trio. It was a slow process-cutting diamonds, arranging the pieces on her flannel design wall and rejecting them when they didn't create the desired effect.

A glance at the clock told her she needed to end the process and get ready for the shower. For all her efforts, she'd found only one trio of colors that looked like they might work.

'Take a message if Aiden calls,” Harriet instructed Fred after she'd showered, dressed and wrapped her shower gift. “And don't open the door for strangers.'

Fred meowed his agreement, and Harriet left for the party.

Chapter 9

Was that Neelie I saw driving your car down the driveway when I came in?” Harriet asked Carla when she entered Aiden's house.

Carla set a bowl of fruit salad down on the dining room buffet.

'I sent her to the store to buy formula and diapers that fit for the baby.'

'Did it occur to you she might just take the car and run?” Harriet asked.

Carla's cheeks turned a dark pink.

'She wants something, and it isn't a car,” she said. “Trust me. My mom had boyfriends with that same look she has.'

'Our Carla's clever enough not to let Neelie take her car without leaving a security deposit,” Mavis said as she came into the dining room carrying Kissa.

'Aren't you the sly one?” Harriet said.

'Not sly enough,” Carla told her. “I didn't get any new information from her.'