Cancelled by Murder Read Free

were resorting to weather history, reminding us that it had been a good year, without a backbreaking winter storm—lots of snow through January and February but nothing that brought major outages.
    â€œWe should have known there’d be August to pay,” Bonnie said, before Jeff issued warnings for all in the commonwealth to take precautions.
    I switched to another station, where a nameless female lifted our spirits with human interest stories, like the one about a young boy who braved the wind and a flooded backyard to rescue his neighbor’s wayward puppy. A South Ashcot woman had made an enormous pot of soup and delivered portions to residents of a block that had lost power, and our own Main Street Hardware man, Pete Clarkson, had offered to deliver emergency repair supplies to anyone in the city limits of North Ashcot.
    My drive was slow, probably also thanks to the many other workers who’d decided to leave their posts and wait out the storm at home. Most of the shops—the convenience market, bank, nail salon, and bakery—had already closed, or perhaps the owners had taken the forecast seriously and never opened this morning. There were no signs of life, either, in any of the offices above the shops. The lights were on only in Daisy’s Fabrics, on the south side of Main Street, in reality a shop stocked half with bolts of material and half with gift items, and where I’d spent some time lately. I saw the petite Daisy, draped in a yellow anorak, exit the shop, presumably to pull in the container of decorative banners displayed under her canopy. I waved, but apparently she didn’t see me.
    I recalled my first trip into the back room of Daisy Harmon’s shop. I’d almost walked into an ironing board, set up near the doorway, a semicircle of chairs behind it. I hadn’t ironed since my days as a Girl Scout, thanks to permanent-press fabrics and a modest budget for dry cleaning. The modern wrinkles-are-stylish trend didn’t hurt, either.
    Daisy had grabbed my arm as I was turning to leave. “It’s okay, Cassie. Newbies get issued already pressed fabric.” I wondered if she had more than one ironing board, the way most quilters had more than one sewing machine.
    Daisy, about a foot shorter and a few years older than me, with twice my energy, was a born teacher, delighting over small achievements, like when I finally produced a true quarter-inch seam of straight line stitches. Two classes into the course, I’d stopped wishing I’d tried the knitting class instead; I was hooked. I loved working with different textures and so many colors and patterns. For the last several months I’d been laboring steadily on a red, white, and blue block quilt. (Not only was I a postal employee, but I was also a pushover for all patriotic designs.)
    â€œWho’s the quilt for?” members of the circle had asked me.
    â€œIt depends on how it turns out,” I said.
    â€œWe hear you” was the comforting response.
    I thought of stopping now to see if Daisy needed help shutting down but figured her husband would be on hand, since Cliff worked as a security guard in the elementary school across the street. I continued on. At least it was summer and he wouldn’t have classrooms full of students to worry about today.
    On the same side of Main Street as Daisy’s was the darkened Café Mahican I also knew well; the card shop run by Liv Patterson, another quilter (so grumpy today); and Mike’s Bike Shop on the corner of Main and Second. Stopped at a light, I noticed a row of bicycles that were still on the sidewalk in front of Mike’s Shop. Strange, I thought at first, but then figured today’s new materials probably rendered bikes indestructible in the face of wind and rain. The shoplooked dark, but with my rain-streaked windows I couldn’t be sure.
    My final acknowledgment was to the police station on the next corner, where my friend Chief