A Thread of Truth

by Marie Bostwick

  “You’ll know in a minute. You’ve just got to answer a couple of questions. Just get up there and tell the truth. Trust me, Ivy. I know what I’m doing.”

  After the judge reminded me that I was still under oath, Franklin began.

  “Ms. Peterman, we haven’t discussed the testimony you are about to give, have we?”

  “No.” I shrugged. “As far as I knew, I was done when we broke for lunch.”

  “Well, this will just take a few more minutes. Ivy, about two weeks ago, just before nine PM, you left Cobbled Court Quilts and went to your car to find Hodge Edelman waiting for you. Is that right?”

  “Yes. He said he wanted to talk to me.”

  “What about?”

  “He was trying to talk me out of getting a divorce. He told me he wanted us to get back together and wanted the kids and me to move back home to Pennsylvania.”

  “Did he offer to give you anything special if you complied with his request?”

  I had to stop and think for a minute. The searing pain that had coursed through my hand as he’d slammed the car door on it loomed large in my recollections of that night. I’d told Arnie and the police about it at the time, but now it was harder to remember much about the conversation that had taken place before Hodge attacked me.

  “Ummm…he said that if I came home he’d buy me a new car, and get me a cleaning lady.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Oh, yeah. He said we’d go on a trip. Back to the Caribbean. He said he’d already bought tickets and made a reservation at the same hotel we’d gone to on our honeymoon.”

  Franklin pulled on his nose and nodded. “All right. Let me ask you something else. Do you have any bank accounts?”

  “Yes. I’ve got a savings account at New Bern Mutual.”

  “How much money is there in that account?”

  “About twenty-five hundred. I’m saving for the deposit on a new apartment.”

  “Is that all? You have no other bank accounts in your name?”

  “No,” I said.

  “Are you sure? Isn’t there an account registered in your name in the Cayman Islands?”

  I thought for a moment. “Oh! Wait a minute! I do have an account there! A savings account. I forgot all about it. I was already pregnant on our honeymoon and Hodge helped me open a bank account in my name, a college account for the baby. He said the interest rate was better than in the States.”

  “How much would you say is in that account today?”

  “I don’t know. Hodge handled all the financial stuff. We opened it with three thousand dollars ten years ago, so I’d guess now it’s worth…maybe four thousand?”

  The shadow of a smile that played at Franklin’s lips told me I’d said the right thing. “So, Ms. Peterman, you didn’t know that the offshore account your husband had you open in your name contains, at the opening of business today, three million two hundred and thirty-eight thousand dollars and sixty-four cents?”

  For a moment I didn’t breathe. My jaw actually dropped open. Sandwiched between his lawyers, I saw the veins pulse in Hodge’s neck and his jaw tighten. Kittenger was sitting in the gallery behind Hodge. His face went suddenly white.

  “Three million dollars! Are you kidding me?”

  Franklin was done playing straight man. He smiled openly and said, “I take it this information comes as a surprise to you?”

  I let out an incredulous laugh. “Yeah, I’ll say it does! Three million dollars? If I knew I had three million dollars, do you think I’d be living at the Stanton Center and worrying about how I’m going to scrape together enough money for the deposit on a new place?” I laughed again. “Really? Three million. Are you sure?”

  “Thank you. You may step down.”

  Next, Franklin surprised everyone by calling Dr. Kittenger back to the stand.

  The good doctor looked nervous when the judge reminded him that he was still under oath. Beads of sweat pearled on his brow.

  “Dr. Kittenger, you stated before that you and Hodge Edelman are joint owners of the Shady Brook Care Center?”

  “Yes.”

  “How much money did you have to put up for your half of the partnership?”

  Kittenger swallowed. “Nothing. My expertise in medicine was what I brought to the partnership.”

  “Ah.” Franklin nodded understandingly. “I see. I did some checking and found that you undertook your medical studies in South America and that you graduated eighty-fifth in your class. Is that right?”

  Kittenger looked at Franklin with loathing. “Yes.”

  “Eighty-fifth. Out of a class of eighty-nine. I guess Mr. Edelman saw some medical expertise in you that had gone undiscovered by your professors.”

  Caldwell objected to that, naturally. Franklin apologized and asked that his comment be stricken from the record before he continued.

  “So you oversee the medical aspect of the business, and Mr. Edelman is in charge of finances—is that right?”

  “Yes, that’s right.” Kittenger squirmed nervously in the witness chair. His eyes darted from Franklin to Hodge and back again. “I have nothing to do with the business side of things. Billing, record-keeping, and such—that’s all Hodge’s domain. I just take care of the patients.”

  “So that would explain why you didn’t know anything about the billing errors for Ms. Peterman? All those bills for appointments you kept no records of?”

  “Like I told Mr. Kinsella, I have nothing to do with that,” the doctor snapped. “There must have been some sort of accounting error.”

  “Well, that’s certainly possible. Over the past several years, there’ve been all kinds of accounting errors at Shady Brook. My next witness, Annie Fielding, is a forensic accountant. She’s found over three million dollars in billing errors at Shady Brook, most of them for Medicare patients—patients whose bills are paid by the government. In fact, it’s almost exactly the same amount as is contained in the offshore account that Mr. Edelman had his wife open in her name.”

  Franklin stopped for a moment, smiled, and scratched his cheek with his index finger. “You know, it’s amazing what these forensic accountants can find out once they start digging around. Miss Fielding is very skilled at her job. Tell me, Dr. Kittenger, you like to travel, don’t you? Aren’t the Cayman Islands one of your favorite destinations?”

  And that was it. The loose thread. Franklin gave it a good tug and, right in front of everyone, Kittenger unraveled. The doctor’s eyes bulged out of their sockets. He jumped to his feet and pointed at Hodge. “It was Hodge! It was all his idea! I just made the deposits! He talked me into it, all of it! It was never supposed to go this far. He promised me that all I had to do was make the deposits. That’s all! I never agreed to the rest of it. The stuff with his wife. Altering the records and saying she’d taken drugs. That was all Hodge’s idea! He made me do it!”

  Hodge leapt from his chair and screamed, “Sit down, Kittenger! Just shut up and sit down!”

  Kittenger took his partner’s advice, but it was too late. Wild-eyed and weak, he dropped into his chair and said, “I want a lawyer.” He pointed at Franklin and said, “You! I want you. I plead the Fifth!”

  Franklin smoothed his necktie. “We’ll discuss that in a moment. In the meantime,” he said, turning around to face the gallery, “there are some gentlemen here who would like to talk with you and Mr. Edelman.”

  The two dark-suited men who had been sitting with Annie Fielding got to their feet. Franklin turned his attention toward Judge Maynard. “Your Honor, allow me to introduce Mr. Dowling and Mr. Kirkpatrick. They work for the government, investigating Medicare fraud.”

  39

  Evelyn Dixon

  “Back to you, Mary Dell!”

  “Thank you, Dale. And be sure and tell all those quilters over at the high school that I’ll be heading over to see them in just a few minutes because you know what? It’s already time for us to say good-bye!” Mary Dell looked at me, seemingly shocked.


  “Evelyn, I don’t know how that hour flew by so fast. Do you?”

  I shook my head, hoping this was a rhetorical question. As far as I was concerned, this had been the longest hour of my life.

  “This has been such a special show. On behalf of Howard, myself, Evelyn, and everybody here at Cobbled Court Quilts, thank you for tuning in. With your help and the help of thousands of Quilt Pink quilters across the country, we can play an important role in detection, treatment, and finding a cure for breast cancer. So spread the word!”

  Mary Dell turned in her chair to face camera two so smoothly that you’d never have known the floor director had given her the cue to do so. It was as if her brain had taken a notion to twist to the left and her body followed quite naturally. “But, as always, before we sign off, I want to leave you with a little bit of quilting wisdom from one of our viewers. Today’s quilter’s quote was sent in by Betty Jura, of Fullerton, California. Evelyn, would you share Betty’s thought with everybody?”

  I hesitated for a second and Mary Dell said, “It’s right there on that card, Baby Girl. Just go ahead and read it.”

  I cleared my throat. “When life gives you scraps, make a quilt.”

  Mary Dell threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I love that one! Good advice from one who knows! Thank you for sharing that, Betty.”

  The Quintessential Quilting theme music began playing softly in the background. “Thanks again for watching. And remember”—Mary Dell’s expression became serious as she held up an admonishing finger—“behind every great quilter is a great big pile of fabric. So get back to work! Bye, y’all!”

  She laughed and waved. Everyone in the shop, quilters and observers, broke into applause as the theme music increased in volume. I clapped and grinned idiotically at the camera I hoped was the right one.

  The floor director held up three fingers, then two, then one. “And we’re off the air. Good show, everybody!”

  Excited chatter and a few cheers mixed in with the sound of applause. I slumped into my chair, utterly exhausted.

  “Baby Girl! You did it!” Mary Dell beamed as she reached over to clasp my sweaty hand. “Now that wasn’t so bad, was it? Admit it: You had fun.”

  I tilted my head and looked at my friend sideways. “That was, without question, the most miserable sixty minutes of my life. Don’t ever ask me to do that again.”

  Mary Dell clucked her tongue and blew out a long, disbelieving breath. “Come on now. You did just fine. I was proud of you. You didn’t puke once!”

  “No.” I chuckled and hoisted myself upright in the chair. “I managed to take care of all that before they turned on the cameras.”

  Mary Dell slapped her thigh. “Well, see? There you go! And it’ll be even easier next time.”

  I gave her an evil glare. There she was, practically a force of nature, feeding off the energy of the cameras, cues, and crowd like a dead battery sucking up volts from a charger. And me? All I wanted to do was lie down and take a nap.

  Still wearing her headset, Sandy wended her way through the web of camera cables. “Good show, Evelyn. Everything looked great on the monitor, really. I’ll play back the tape for you.”

  “Must you?”

  Sandy grinned. “Mary Dell, the car is waiting. Howard’s already inside. You two had better get over to the gym and start signing those books. We handed out five hundred copies, so it’ll take a while. Then you’ve got to do your thing over on the Green. The barbeque is supposed to start at five, but if the signing is taking too long, you can show up late. Porter says they’ve got it all worked out.” She grabbed a coiled extension cord from one of the camera people and headed toward the back door to load it into one of the trucks parked in the alley.

  “Thanks, honey. Hey! Is there anything to eat around here?”

  “There’s a six-pack of Dr Pepper and a box of Moon Pies in the car,” she called without turning around. “I already gave them to the driver.”

  “Sandy thinks of everything,” Mary Dell said admiringly. “I’m starving! Nothing personal, Baby Girl, and I appreciate the thought, but no matter what Porter says, I just don’t have a lot of faith folks around here know how to make decent barbeque.”

  “They don’t,” I said with a yawn. “Mary Dell, you’d better get over to the gym like Sandy said. I’ll see you later. Are you sure you still want to come tonight? Won’t you be too tired?”

  “Too tired!” she scoffed. “Are you kidding? Skip out on a special meeting of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle held in my honor? Are you loco? Wild hogs couldn’t keep me away.”

  Mary Dell and Howard went off to the gym to meet the other quilters. I trudged up the stairs to Garrett’s apartment, intending to pass out on the sofa until it was time for the barbeque on the Green, but made a visit to the bathroom first. After washing my hands, I peered into the mirror. The face that peered back at me was completely exhausted, but that was all right. I didn’t mind.

  When I was a little girl, my father liked to begin every family dinner with the same question: “What did you do today?”

  My brothers and I would go around the table, in turn, from oldest to youngest, and report on our activities. Some days the news was all good; other days it was punctuated by frustrations with friends, injustices by teachers, or complaints of overwork.

  But no matter how good or bad our day had been, my father’s closing question never varied: “And did you do any good for someone else today?”

  Sometimes, we hadn’t, and that always got us thinking. Other times, we had, and that always brought a smile to Dad’s face. “Well, then,” he’d say. “I guess it was a good day after all.”

  The road to Quilt Pink Day had been a weary one, potholed with long hours, hard work, stage fright, misunderstandings, and more than a few petty jealousies. But as I splashed cold water on my face, I didn’t remember any of that. Instead, I thought about the quilts we’d made, the money we’d raised, women we’d encouraged, and the lives that might be saved.

  Toweling the water from my tired face, I looked into the mirror and smiled. “I guess it was a good day after all.”

  40

  Evelyn Dixon

  Pulling a naked pork rib from her mouth, Mary Dell leaned over and whispered into my ear, careful to make sure that no one overheard her, “You’re right. These Yankees don’t know the first thing about barbequing a pig.”

  “Told you. Here. Give me your plate and I’ll get rid of it for you.”

  Mary Dell surreptitiously pushed her plate toward me. “Don’t let anyone see you. I wouldn’t want to hurt anybody’s feelings.”

  “Don’t worry. I’ll give it to Garrett. He’ll eat anything.” Holding Mary Dell’s plate in my hands, I got up from the picnic table and started looking for Garrett just as Lydia Moss pushed through the crowd, waggling her fingers over her head to flag us down.

  “Yoo-hoo! Evelyn! Mary Dell! There you are! I’ve been looking for you everywhere. I know you’ve barely had a chance to catch your breath today, Mary Dell, but Porter asked me to find you. He’s just about ready to call you up on stage. Are you ready? Did you get enough to eat?”

  “More than enough,” Mary Dell answered.

  “Wonderful! How did you like the barbeque sauce? That’s my grandmother Lydia Lystrom Post’s secret recipe. Normally I only make it for family, but the hospitality committee asked if I wouldn’t mind parting with the recipe just this once, and since it was for you, of course I said yes.”

  “Really? Well, Lydia, you didn’t have to do that. Bless your heart. I’ve never tasted anything like it.”

  Lydia beamed. “Oh, good! Really, it couldn’t be easier. You just take a bottle of ketchup, a jar of grape jelly, a teaspoon of chili powder, and…oh, darn it. There’s Porter coming up to the microphone. I’ll write the recipe down and give it to you later.”

  “Thank you, Lydia. That’d be real sweet of you. But right now, I’d better scoot.”

  Just before wending her way through the c
rowd, Mary Dell turned to me with a grin and said, “Baby Girl, aren’t you going to finish your barbeque? You’ve just got to, honey. It’s like I told Lydia. You’ve just never tasted anything like it.” She winked and started making her way to the stage, shaking hands as she did.

  “Thanks, Mary Dell. Thanks a lot.”

  Lydia turned to me with an expectant look on her face. I picked up a pork rib and started gnawing on it.

  After the signing at the gym, a few of the kids from the church youth group had drafted Howard onto their team for a softball game. Porter must have pulled him away from his fans because I could see him mounting the stairs to the stage, following right behind the First Selectman, smiling and shaking the hands of people who were standing nearby, and clearly having the time of his life. Porter had to keep a hold on Howard’s arm just to make sure he wasn’t completely waylaid by admirers.

  When they reached the microphone, Porter tapped it a couple of times to make sure it was on, then said, “Ladies and gentlemen, as First Selectman of the village of New Bern and on behalf of the citizens of New Bern, let me thank you all for coming out today in support of such a…”

  The microphone squealed, making a sound like nails on a chalk-board. The crowd collectively covered its ears until the squealing stopped. Then someone shouted, “Come on, Porter! You’ve made enough speeches today! Let Mary Dell and Howard talk already!”

  Lydia clucked her tongue with annoyance. “Really. People can be so rude!” she exclaimed, her attention fixed on the stage and her husband’s face.

  I murmured something agreeable and, taking advantage of the diversion, quietly slipped a piece of pork to a Labrador that was ambling through the crowd, sniffing the ground for scraps.

  “All right, all right!” Porter said, lifting his hands and grinning with good humor. “I can take a hint, Steve. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, allow me to introduce the people you’ve all been waiting to see! The hosts of cable television’s most successful craft show, Quintessential Quilting, Mary Dell and Howard Templeton!”