Wild Goose Chase Read Online Free Page A

aisle. A man walking and juggling what looked like pin cushions cut off a trio of women in colorful saris. A neon sign over a booth across the aisle read, “Quilt Naked—Free Your Mind.”
    I had never understood my mother’s need to make quilts, but I was here, in the middle of the West Coast’s biggest quilt show, with entries from the most famous names in the business. Whatever drew my mother to quilting was here at this show. Maybe all I had to do was free my mind.
    As a kid, I’d steered clear of Quilter Paradiso. To my three brothers, sewing was for sissies. They were always poised to catch me doing anything girly and exploit it as a sign of perceived weakness, taunting me mercilessly. One pot holder crocheted on a spool when I was six earned me the nickname of “Knitting Nincompoop” that stuck until I was eleven. Consequently, I’d spent much of my childhood proving I could kick the ball, take a punch, and give a wedgie like a boy. I left my mother to her feminine pastimes and mastered the soccer field instead of a sewing machine. My chosen career was in a man’s world, computer programming. Lately, I had begun to wonder if I had cheated myself.
    Kym tapped Ina on the shoulder when she returned and took over the computer duties. I watched from a safe distance. The computer beeped irritably as Kym tried to push items through the scanner too quickly. I heard another beep as Kym tried a function that wasn’t open. In the hour she’d been gone, she seemed to have forgotten how the system worked.
    I moved closer. The drawer was not opening. Kym tapped on the keyboard. A white-haired lady with dangling purple earrings and two circles of rouge approximately on her cheeks was waiting to pay.
    “I think you forgot to hit the total button.” I tried to insert myself in a non-threatening manner, but Kym turned on me, eyes flashing.
    “I’ve got it,” she snarled. She pressed the correct key, and the drawer flew open.
    I backed off.
    Finding a lighted seam ripper for a smiling Japanese woman with minimal English grabbed my attention for the next few minutes. Her friend wanted the latest ruler. That led to a stilted, half-spoken, half-signed discussion about which ruler was easier to read, the clear or the yellow. I was rubbing my fingernail along the rough surface on the back of the clear ruler to illustrate its usefulness when I noticed a line forming near the register.
    Five customers were waiting to pay. The same white-haired woman was still standing next to Kym, her sale not finalized. Ina was entertaining the waiting customers with knock-knock jokes, talking fast like she did when she was nervous. I heard someone muttering that this used to be her favorite booth, as she put down the hundred-dollar quilt kit she’d been planning to buy and walked away.
    I struggled to see what Kym was doing from where I was positioned. A large woman stepped aside. Suddenly, I had a clear view of Kym pulling the plug out of the laptop.
    I felt heat rush to my face. What did she think she was doing? She knew that wasn’t the right way to shut down. I tried to make my way over, but the line of waiting customers clogged the small inside aisle, and I could make no headway. I had to watch from ten feet away as she tugged on the power cord, dislodging it from the strip underneath the table, and took out a pad of sales slips from her apron.
    Only the presence of customers stopped me from screaming. The sales slips in her apron meant one thing. She’d never intended to use the computer this weekend.
    I leaned over a table toward Ina, who was already in the main aisle and closer to Kym and the cash register. “Go take her place. You and Jenn get these customers moved along quickly.”
    Ina looked startled at my tone of voice. I modulated. “Please. Tell Kym I need to see her.”
    I walked away, wanting to pace but finding no room to take more than two steps without running into a disgruntled customer. I plastered a smile on my face,