Make Quilts Not War - By Arlene Sachitano Page 0,27

chair opposite hers.

“This seat taken?”

“No, sit, please.”

“You here by yourself?”

“The kids woke me up early this morning, and with everything that happened yesterday, there was no hope of going back to sleep.”

“The kids?” He raised his left eyebrow.

“My cat and dog. They’re running my life these days.”

Tom sat down, smiling and shaking his head.

“You laugh, but that’s just because you don’t have any pets.”

“Not true,” he said. “I have a quite elderly cat, but he’s very independent. As long as his food is in his dish on time, he’s happy. When you come visit me, I’ll introduce you.”

“I’ll look forward to it,” Harriet said and took a sip of her cocoa.

“I heard there’s been a shooting. Was it someone you knew?” Tom broke off a piece of his blueberry scone and popped it into his mouth.

“Not exactly,” Harriet said, and then explained Jenny’s connection to the victim.

“She must be shaken up,”

“She’s shocked that the person who replaced her got shot right after she left for her first break, but her reaction was a little weird, and then she revealed she’d been raised in a commune and had been lying about it for all these years. I’m not sure why she felt the need to lie to the group, other than being embarrassed about her lack of traditional education.”

“Interesting she chose now to come clean. You never know—”

Harriet never found out what wisdom was to follow.

“You didn’t let my chair get cold, I see.” Aiden towered over her, his hands on his hips, fire blazing in his ice-blue eyes. “I thought you said you were going to back off,” he said to Tom and then turned back to Harriet. “You didn’t even give me a chance to explain. What? You called him to take my place without any discussion? You’re so insecure you can’t be by yourself for a couple of days while I deal with an emergency?”

Harriet could feel her face burning. She clutched the edge of the table, speechless.

“Sorry I’m late,” Lauren said and put her arms loosely around Tom’s neck. Tom stood and swept Lauren into his arms, dipping her slightly and kissing her.

“No problem,” he said when he’d finished. He kept his arm around Lauren’s shoulders. “You want your usual?” He headed for the coffee bar.

“Have you been struck dumb?” Michelle asked Aiden as she joined the group. He’d frozen when Lauren came in and hadn’t moved or spoken since. No one had noticed his sister come up beside him.

Michelle grabbed his arm and half-dragged him to the upholstered chairs.

“I need to know…” She continued talking at Aiden until they were out of earshot.

“I hate that woman,” Lauren said and sat down in the chair next to Tom’s.

“I hope your regular is a vanilla latte with two shots,” Tom said when he came back to the table, a coffee cup in one hand and a bag with an orange-cranberry muffin in the other.

“Thanks, that works. Can I pay you for it?”

Tom waved her off.

“That was well worth the price,” he said.

“You two are good,” Harriet said. “Or maybe I should say bad.”

“I can sympathize with a guy being mixed-up about how he feels,” Tom continued. “And I can even understand having a difficult family, but there is no excuse for bad behavior. He’s lucky all I did was help Lauren scam him. Next time, I might have to give him an attitude adjustment.”

“I appreciate your help, but I can deal with Aiden,” Harriet said.

“Come on, admit it,” Lauren said with a wicked smile. “Didn’t you enjoy that just a little?”

She smiled. “I did.”

“My report is going to be anticlimactic after all this,” Lauren went on. She pulled her laptop from her canvas messenger bag and plugged its power cord in. “Jenny is the invisible woman. She has nothing on the Internet, and I mean nothing. You have to work really hard to have that low of a profile.

“Of course, ‘Jenny’ might not be her legal name. Her husband’s name is on everything I can find—tax rolls, car registration, address and phones. She must have a driver’s license with her legal name on it, but unless we can figure out what that is, it’s a dead end. And before you ask, I checked the obvious possibilities—Jennifer, Jeanette, Janelle, everything I could think of, but no dice.”

“Thanks for trying,” Harriet said.

“I’m not through here.”

“Sorry. Continue, please.”

“I also checked out that commune. As she reported, it was founded in the late nineteen-sixties by a couple of liberal ex-university professors. I