Memories flooded in of me with my childhood dog. What a great dog he was, so smart and well-trained. I wasn’t sure I could say exactly the same of Jasper, but he was sheer unadulterated fun and pure endless love. I bent down and hugged him tightly.
* * *
Later that morning, as I hung another antique sampler on the wall at Sometimes a Great Notion, I reflected that my business was about selling memories. The handmade samplers, folk art, quilts, books, furniture, and linens all told a story of past lives. I was simply the caretaker of these treasures to pass along to another generation.
What would my daughter’s generation hand down to their children? People didn’t even print photos anymore. Everything was on their phones. How would they ever preserve the past? I smiled as I thought about Sarah, who, as a kid, never liked having her picture taken. Now one of her favorite things to do when she came home was to go through the old albums.
I read again the verse so carefully stitched by a young girl over a hundred and twenty years ago:
Let them see the error of their ways
Confess their sins to heaven
Accept the light of holy truth
All wouldst be forgiven
Let me not wail and weep
’Tis clear where my path must lie
Now with eyes that see
I follow humbly the heavenly light
Eyes that see. The eyes of a child. The eyes of God.
There was also the eye of a camera. I was sure Alex Roos had captured something on film that someone wanted to keep quiet, but without his cameras, how would we ever know what it was?
I walked over to the counter where I was putting together a couple of glass jars filled with notions for an interior designer who had requested accent pieces for a shelf in her client’s study. I slipped some wooden bobbins into each, together with rolled pieces of tatting lace and spools of white and cream thread.
“I’ll tell you what, Alice; I’m still wondering about Ruth and what her story is.”
I pictured standing on the driveway that night in the falling snow and looking back up at the main house and the master bedroom window. Did Roos see something incriminating the night Stanley died? Threaten to expose her affair? Who knows what he might have seen. After all, he was living in her carriage house, and with a powerful telephoto lens . . .
Thought that Roos said he hadn’t slept at home that night.
I stared at Alice. “Darn it, you’re right. He couldn’t have seen what happened.”
Some customers came in then, and for the next few hours it was a steady stream of business. For a favorite customer, I gift wrapped a lacemakers’ box, which was a workbox fitted with essential tools—a pillow, patterns, scissors, pins, and bobbins. Another woman purchased a rare tatting shuttle case of mother-of-pearl with an abalone inset, made in England in the 1850s.
When I had time to catch a breath, I filled in some spaces in the display in the center of the store with a selection of crochet hooks and darning eggs, made of silver, wood, and Bakelite. I set an emery in the shape of a tomato next to them. It was like a small pincushion containing polishing powder. Pins and needles could be thrust through to remove rust and rough patches. Actually, I thought it would make a nice little thank-you gift to Althea for her help with the sampler pricing, so I set it aside.
It was almost five o’clock when the phone rang.
“I have some intel,” a hoarse voice whispered. “Can you meet me at the pub? Don’t wanna discuss over the phone.”