Coming Unraveled (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 3) (Quilters Club Mysteries)

by Marjorie Sorrell Rockwell

  “Oh boy!”

  “You too,” joked the ringmaster-lion-tamer-owner. “We can bill you as the Alligator Man.”

  Freddie couldn’t help but laugh at this reference to his scarred and scaly skin. “I may need a job. Can’t go back to firefighting.”

  “Lots of ways for a man to be productive,” said Swami Bombay. Maybe he was a mind reader after all.

  “When do you perform in Burpyville?” asked Aggie, remembering the itinerary outlined by the clown.

  “Next week,” said Haney. “We’re putting on six shows at the Burpyville Shopping Center. Free passes if you two decide to drive over to see us.”

  “Thanks,” said Freddie. “We just might do that.”

  ≈≈≈

  Bernard Warbuckle asked for a leave of absence from Burbyville Memorial, went straight home and packed his bags. An extended trip to Canada was in his immediate future.

  Damn that Harry for getting caught like a kid with his hand in the cookie jar. The jerk should have stayed missing.

  Chapter Nine

  Harry Periwinkle was refusing to talk. Maybe he realized he’s said too much already. He sat in the holding cell of the Caruthers Corners Police Department as silent as the statue of Jacob Caruthers in the town square across the street.

  Maud Purdue had surprised him. He hadn’t expected her to bring in the police when he asked her to meet him at the cemetery. He’d been posing as her son, but guess there’s no fooling a mother. DNA results or not, she’d seen through him.

  Now he –

  His thoughts were interrupted when the deputy called his name. “Harry Periwinkle – you’ve got a visitor.” The uniformed man unlocked the cell door to admit his attorney, Mark Tidemore.

  “Hello, Bobby – uh, I mean Harry.” He nodded toward the metal chair. “Mind if I have a seat?”

  The prisoner shrugged. “Help yourself,” he broke his silence. “But I don’t need your services anymore. You’re fired.”

  “I think you do need my services,” said Mark the Shark. “And I hate to tell you, but you can’t fire me – I was appointed by the court.”

  “Either way, I’ve got nothing to say.” He turned his back, again looking out his cell window, staring vacantly at the bronze statue.

  “Harry, you’ve committed a felony. They caught you with your pants down. You’re probably looking at prison time. But maybe I can use your thirty missing years to get them to mitigate the sentence.”

  “Forget it. I’ve said all I’m going to say about that.”

  “All you’ve told them is that Bobby Ray drowned in a bog and that you became a pirate. Not much to go on.”

  “Bobby Ray fell in the quicksand. End of story.”

  “Maybe you could help them find the remains. Give closure to his mother. That might be looked on favorably.”

  “There’s a zillion miles of Never Ending Swamp. I couldn’t find my way back to that patch of quicksand even if I tried.”

  Mark the Shark shifted his weight, making the metal chair screech on the cement floor. “According to the US Park Service it’s slightly over four hundred acres in size.”

  “That’s a zillion acres to twelve-year-old boys,” Harry waved the words away. “Bobby Ray’s dead and gone. So I used his identity as a little joke, big deal.”

  “Not a very good joke. You gave his mother false hope.”

  “Didn’t either. That old biddy never believed I was her son from the git-go.”

  True enough. “What about Jud Watson’s mother. Can’t you let her know what happened to her son?”

  Harry looked out the cell window again, considering his words. “He’s alive,” he said at last. “But I can’t help it if he doesn’t choose to call his mama. He hates her, that old witch. Used to beat him with a belt when he was a boy. I’ve seen the strap marks on his back.”

  “So you know where he is?”

  Harry chuckled. “Not at this precise moment. But I’d guess he’s halfway to Canada.”

  ≈≈≈

  The Quilters Club was holding a meeting at the rec center, an emergency session. “We’ve got to come up with a plan to inspect Maud Purdue’s quilt,” Maddy Madison was insisting. She was a pretty woman, late ‘50s, wheat-blonde hair, maybe 10 pounds overweight – “more to hug,” as her husband Beau liked to say.

  Bootsie, being the police chief’s wife, was more cautious. “We can’t just break in and steal it,” she shook her head. “Maybe we could just ask her to see it?”

  “We tried that,” Lizzie reminded her. “That’s a dead end, f’sure.”

  “I agree,” admitted Cookie. “But that doesn’t justify burglary.”

  “We’re not stealing the quilt,” Maddy explained. “Merely looking at it.”

  “You’re still talking B&E,” said Bootsie, using the cop lingo she’d heard at home.

  “What’s that?” frowned Maddy.

  “Breaking and entering – a serious crime.”

  “Not if we have permission.”

  “And how do you intend to get that?” Cookie raised her eyebrows. A slender brunette, she was quite attractive, keeping herself up now that she was married to Ben Bentley. Her first husband had died a few years back in a tractor accident.

  “Watch,” said Maddy, picking up her little flat iPhone and tapping in some numbers. “Hello, Maud. This is Maddy Madison. Following up on the other day, can we drop by and see your grandmother’s quilt sometime? Yes? When? Oh, well, call me when it’s convenient. Yes, I know you need time to grieve. Will there be a memorial service, now that you know what happened to your son? Well, let me know.”

  Bootsie wrinkled her forehead. “What was that?”

  “Maud agreed we could see the quilt.”

  “When?”

  “Never probably. But I’m going to take that as an invitation to drop by on our own schedule.”

  That schedule was 2 a.m. the next night.

  Chapter Ten

  “Think you can do it?” Maddy asked her granddaughter. The Quilters Club, including Aggie, was gathered around the big oak tree in Maud Purdue’s yard. They were eyeing the attic window.

  “Of course, I can do it,” replied the girl. “You ought to see me on the monkey bars at school.”

  Agnes Tidewell was spending the night at her grandparents’ house. Her mom and dad had driven down to Indy for dinner and a show, celebrating their two-year anniversary of moving back to Caruthers Corners. At the time they had been on the verge of divorce, but the change of venue had worked wonders. No longer did Mark the Shark work the long hours he’d faced in Los Angeles. Milly had just announced she was expecting a third child, another reason to celebrate.

  “Don’t you go breaking your neck,” admonished Lizzie, having second thoughts about this perilous mission. “You mother would never forgive us.”

  “Don’t worry. A piece of cake,” Aggie said, shimmying up the tree trunk. Climbing limb to limb, she reached her goal in minutes – the small attic window.

  “Is it locked?” whispered Bootsie in a stage voice.

  Aggie tried lifting it, nearly losing her balance.

  “Watch out!” screamed Maddy, loud enough to wake Maud and all the Purdue family ghosts. But nobody seemed to be stirring inside the two-story Victorian structure.

  “It’s open,” Aggie reported, lifting the sill high enough to crawl inside. The window was small, but so was Aggie, about 80 pound tops. She disappeared inside the Purdue attic in about three seconds flat.

  “See? It’s not breaking and entering if the window is unlocked,” rationalized Maddy.

  Bootsie merely rolled her eyes heavenward.

  “It’s packed in a cedar trunk,” hissed Maddy, remembering the words of Maud Purdue.

  Aggie’s honey-blonde head appeared at the window. “Is it reds and oranges, but all faded?” she called down to her co-conspirators.

  “Yes,” nodded Cookie.

  “Did you find it?” asked Maddy.

  Aggie nodded
. “Here it is,” she said, pushing the armful of fabric out the narrow window.

  “I’ve got it,” huffed Bootsie, stepping under the falling quilt. A stocky woman, she’d excelled in volleyball at college and still had good reflexes.

  The patchwork quilt landed on her head, draping over her like a tent. “Mmft, hmpt,” she said from under the thick cloth. It translated into words not meant for Aggie’s ears.

  “Okay, climb down very carefully,” instructed Maddy, shaking a finger at her spunky granddaughter. “But close the window first.”

  Ten minutes later they were in Lizzie’s Lexus heading toward the Madison house on Melon Pickers Row.

  “Good job,” Maddy congratulated the team.

  “Roger that,” replied Aggie, a remark that struck everyone as funny. The four women and young girl all burst into fits of laughter as they pulled into the driveway at 3 a.m., purloined quilt stowed in the back.

  ≈≈≈

  “Did you go out last night?” Beau Madison asked over breakfast. He liked a hearty Midwestern starter for his day – scrambled eggs, bacon, toast, OJ.

  “Why do you ask?” his wife dodged the question.

  “Someone forgot to close the garage door.”

  “That was when I was putting the garbage out,” she said, shoveling another helping of eggs onto his plate. “City pickup this morning,” she reminded him, not that he wouldn’t know as mayor. Monday morning and Thursday morning, contracted out to Pete Turner, who had a dump on the west side of town. Turner’s Trash Heap, it was called.

  “Oh right,” he mumbled, studying the Burbyville Gazette. He tried to stay up on local happenings. “I see Janey Baumgartner had twins,” he added. “Bet her husband Errol didn’t bargain for that windfall.”

  Maddy glanced up from the sink, where she was soaking the cast-iron skillet. “Errol? Isn’t he Edwin Baumgartner’s grandson?”

  “You mean the old coot who owned the farm next to the Never Ending Swamp? Yeah, I think so.”

  “I wonder if the family knows more about what Edwin saw the day those boys disappeared.”

  Beau looked up from the paper. “I’m sure Jim Purdue’s already questioned them about it. Him or the State Police.”

  “Or the news media. There was quite a stir when everyone thought Bobby Ray had returned from a soggy grave. Even you got interviewed by CNN.”

  “My fifteen minutes of fame,” he chuckled. “Sure do wonder what happened to those boys.”

  “So do I,” said Maddy.

  ≈≈≈

  Being that school hadn’t started yet, Aggie got to go to Burpyville to see the Haney Bros. Circus and Petting Zoo with her Uncle Freddie. Maddy and Amanda agreed that it was a good thing to encourage Freddie to go out in public. He couldn’t hide away like the Elephant Man for the rest of his life.

  A date had opened up at the Burpyville Mall, so the Haney Bros. Circus pulled up stakes. Another member of the circus – Big Bill Haney’s brother William – showed up with a large truck and the caravan carrying elephant and lion and horses, etc. lumbered off toward the adjacent county.

  Big Bill and Little William Haney stopped by the mayor’s office on the way out of town to leave a handful of free passes. Although they claimed to be twins, they looked more like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Danny DeVito in that movie called Twins.

  Aggie had mixed feeling about going to the circus. This was the day that the Quilters Club had set aside to examine Maud Purdue’s lumpy old patchwork quilt for clues. They had waited a couple of days to see if the woman noticed that it was missing, then with a collective sigh agreed to meet today at 2 o’clock at the rec center.

  Nonetheless, Aggie laughed and giggled as Sprinkles the Clown did a dance with Sneezy the Baboon. Big Bill Haney made the lion jump through a hoop and Little William led Sleepy the Bear around like a puppy on a leash – a fuzzy, 300-pound puppy that is. And best of all, Bombay gave her a ride atop Happy the Elephant.

  Whoooo-ee!

  Chapter Eleven

  The Quilters Club looked more like a witches’ cabal at that moment, the four middle-aged women hunched over the faded red-orange-and-yellow quilt as if around a fire. The queen-sized quilt was spread across the big table in the rec room, its patchwork squares looking like lumpy little mattress pads. It gave off a faint odor of rotting leaves and compost.

  “Not very elegant,” observed Liz, a woman of style and taste. Even if it was evident her hair was dyed, you could tell it was an expensive styling job.

  “Poor stitching,” agreed Cookie, the most fastidious of the foursome.

  “Smells,” Bootsie wriggled her nose, remembering when the mephitic quilt had landed on her head. It took two showers to get rid of the fetid stench.

  “What do you make of the design?” Maddy asked.

  Cookie, being the most versed on historical quilt patterns, leaned closer to examine the flame-like image. The colors looked washed-out, the pigments deteriorated from sunlight and age. “Nothing special,” she made her appraisal. “No museum would touch it. No collector would want it. A rag picker’s dream.”

  “So why would Harry Periwinkle want it?” posited Maddy.

  “Badly enough to trade half of the E Z Seat chair factory for it,” Bootsie mused out loud.

  “Sentimental value?” tried Liz.

  “No, it was a Purdue family heirloom,” said Cookie, keeping the genealogy straight. “It had nothing to do with the Periwinkles.”

  “Maybe it’s stuffed with money,” joked the banker’s wife. Poking it with her finger, you could hear a rustling sound.

  “Sure, like Maud’s husband’s grandmother ever had any money,” laughed Bootsie. “This quilt was made before the family started up the chair factory.”

  “So you didn’t marry Jim for his family fortune,” teased Maddy.

  “I wish. His side of the family didn’t even have a piece of the chair factory.”

  “Where did Amandine Purdue’s husband get the capital to start a manufacturing business?” asked Lizzie. She was always interested in the money side of things.

  “Good question,” shrugged Bootsie. “One day they were poor, the next day rich. Ol’ N.L. refuses to talk about it. Merely says his great grandfather managed his money well.”

  “So Abner Purdue started up the chair factory,” Cookie traced the history. “He left it to his son Abe who left it to his son Amos – that’s Maud’s husband. And Amos left it to his two sons.”

  “Yes, but Bobby Ray never lived to claim his half,” said Bootsie. “That’s how Harry Periwinkle was able to hoodwink them into signing over those shares to him.”

  “That will get reversed,” Lizzie pointed out.

  “Looks like we’ve hit a dead end,” sighed Maddy. She stared morosely at the lumpy quilt. She’d been so sure it would reveal secrets, but it was just a smelly old family keepsake. “Now we have to figure out how to get it back in the attic.”

  “Aggie?” said Liz.

  “I don’t know,” replied Maddy. “I was so afraid she would fall out of that tree. It was irresponsible of me to let her get involved in this.”

  “She wasn’t in any danger,” the redhead assured her. “That kid climbs like a monkey.”

  “Yes, but I want her to be around to see her new baby sister.”

  “Tilly’s having a girl?”

  “Has it been confirmed?”

  Maddy smiled. “Yes, Tilly went to the doctor yesterday to get the results. A little girl. That will make three.”

  ≈≈≈

  Judge Horace Cramer refused to accept Mark the Shark’s request to step down. “The man needs a defense, even if he is a scum-sucking no-good hornswoggler who tried to gyp the Purdues out of their family business. The Periwinkles were always shifty, little more than white trash.”

  “Are you sure you’re not biased in this case, Judge?”

  “No, I’m not. Else I wouldn’t let them keep a sharp Los Angeles lawyer like you on the case.”

  “I gr
ew up here,” he reminded the judge.

  “Course you did. I knew your daddy well. And you live here now. But you came out of a top-notch LA law firm, don’t think I don’t know it. If anybody can save Harry Periwinkle from twenty years in a state prison, it’s you.”

  “Thank you,” Mark said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Not sure he really meant those words.

  ≈≈≈

  Edgar Ridenour got the phone call he was expecting from the director of Burbyville Memorial. As a board member of the hospital, Edgar was treated with proper deference. He had called for an investigation into how the DNA test on the Lost Boy had gone awry.

  “We have a pretty good idea of what happened,” said Virgil Hoffstedder. You could hear the nervousness in his voice. “The State Police are looking into it as we speak.”

  “And –?”

  “We have an employee named Bernard Warbuckle, a lab technician. He ran the DNA test in question. Turns out, he’s gone missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Warbuckle didn’t show up for work today. He didn’t answer his telephone when we called to check on him. The State Police says he’s not at his apartment.”

  “You called them before alerting me?” grumbled Edgar Ridenour. He was head of the malpractice committee. And this was shaping up to be a big-ticket negligence lawsuit.

  “When someone suggested Warbuckle might be guilty of switching the DNA sample, we immediately called the State Police. We didn’t want to let him escape.”

  Edgar took a deep breath, then said, “What do we know about this Warbuckle guy?”

  “According to his personnel file, he’s forty-two, graduated from Ball State, has worked here for four years. Clean record, no complaints about his work.”

  “Maybe he hasn’t actually disappeared,” Edgar said desperately. “Maybe he’s just visiting his family.”

  “The file said he has no known relatives.”

  “Friends then …”

  “The State Police said his apartment’s been cleaned out.”

  Edgar tried again. “Maybe he’s been kidnapped …”