4 Hemmed In

by Marjorie Sorrell Rockwell

  Jim Purdue pulled his squad car next to the pickup. He wondered if Charlie might be inside the barn. “Let’s peek inside before we try the house,” he suggested to his deputy.

  Pete Hitzer nodded as he unholstered his Glock.

  “Hey,” said Jim, “you’re not going to need that.”

  “Don’t be too sure. I know Charlie Aiken. Went to high school with him. He’s a hothead. Got a mean streak.”

  “Keep it holstered.”

  “Yes, chief.”

  The interior of the barn was dark. Jim didn’t like standing there silhouetted in the open door. Pete had spooked him, no doubt. “Hello,” he called. “Anybody in here? It’s Police Chief Jim Purdue.”

  No answer.

  “Hello,” he repeated.

  Same lack of response.

  “Must be over at the house,” said Pete.

  “Wait. Find a light switch.” He had a feeling.

  Click!

  The barn was flooded with bluish light. There in the center of the floor was a body sprawled facedown. Jim Purdue recognized it as the Aitkens boy.

  Talk about a dead end. Without Charlie Aitkens, they’d never be able to identify his buddy who stole the Witch Quilt.

  “Looks like somebody konked him in the head with this rock.” Pete Hitzer pointed to a fragment of stone laying on the dirt floor beside the body.

  “Nothing we can do here. Charlie’s dead as road kill. Let’s see if any suspects are home.”

  “Gee, Jim. I’ve never worked a murder before.”

  “We don’t get many of them around here,” the police chief acknowledged. “I’ve not worked many myself.”

  Pete picked up the murder weapon, unmindful of fingerprints. But it was unlikely the limestone fragment would hold a latent print anyway. “Lookit this,” the deputy said. “Some kind of chicken scratches on this rock.”

  Jim leaned forward to squint at the angular stone. Sort of a trapezoid shape, like it had been broken off a larger chunk. There were markings on it, sort of like stick figures. Where had he seen that before? Then it came to him: These were like the decorative border on the Witch Quilt.

  How did these markings get on a rock used to kill Charlie Aitkens?

  Chapter Eleven

  Cookie in the Witching Well

  On the way back home from their picnic, Maddy and her entourage stopped off at Mad Matilda’s cottage. Well, the ruins of the old farmplace. With all the kids under wing, there were two cars – Maddy’s SUV and Amanda’s hatchback. Maddy’s car led the way down the narrow dirt road that dead-ended at the oasis of oak trees.

  “There’s the well with the funny rocks,” Aggie pointed.

  “Can I see them?” wheedled N’yen, nose pressed against the car window.

  Maddy shook her head. “Too dangerous, young man. The writing’s inside the well. If you slipped and fell your mom would be very upset. You’re her treasure.”

  “I thought we’re looking for silver treasure,” said the boy. Disappointed that he wouldn’t get to see the magic writing.

  Maddy brought the car to a stop. “Everybody out,” she called. “But keep the children away from the well. I’m surprised Boyd Aitkins hasn’t had it topped off. An open hole like this could be a legal liability.”

  The Quilters Club and Aggie stood on one side of the SUV. Amanda and the other children were next to the car in back. “Why did we come back here?” she asked. “This place is kinda spooky, a few trees in the middle of a vast watermelon field. Must’ve been lonely for Matilda Wilkins out here.”

  “No doubt,” said Lizzie. The redhead was feeling a little uneasy herself.

  “Where did they bury Mad Matilda?” Freddie’s wife asked.

  “They didn’t,” replied Cookie. “According to the Gazette they left her body in the well. Too dangerous to retrieve it, 80-feet down.”

  “That’s no big deal,” huffed Bootsie. “They were probably just scared of going down there for a witch’s corpse.”

  “Ooo,” said N’yen. “I’m afraid that ol’ witch’s gonna get me.”

  “Don’t worry, dear,” his grandmother assured him. “Matilda wasn’t really a witch. There’s no such thing. Just a crazy old lady who fell in the well.”

  “Got thrown in,” Aggie corrected her. “By those bad angels.”

  “Well, yes, but –”

  “Don’t sugarcoat it,” said Cookie. “Aggie’s smarter than the lot of us.”

  That may have been true. Her recent school test clocked the girl in with an IQ of 160. Genius level, to be sure.

  “Got your digital camera?” Cookie addressed the redhead. “And do you have the flashlight?” she turned to Maddy.

  “Camera,” Lizzie replied, holding up a boxy little Vivitar.

  “Flashlight,” echoed Maddy, turning it on and off by way of proof. Like the winking of a firefly.

  “I’ve got the rope,” Bootsie volunteered, displaying a strand of nylon cord guaranteed at 200 lb. tensile strength.

  Cookie set her jaw with grim determination. “Okay,” he said, “let’s get proof that these are the exact same runes as shown in the photo of the Wilkins Witch Quilt. Lower me down.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Later, they would laugh about how Cookie nearly fell in the well. Being the lightest of the Quilters Club members (excluding Aggie), she was the one hanging by a rope over the lip of the well to get a digital shot of the runes. Lizzie says her hand slipped, but Cookie accused her of being worried about breaking a nail. Bootsie grabbed the rope just in time to prevent a disaster. Maddy dropped her flashlight in the well as she struggled to help Bootsie with the rope. Amanda fainted, although she later claimed to have tripped on the damp grass.

  The kids thought it was grand fun.

  One thing was settled: The comparison between Cookie’s digital photo of the well stones and the Historical Society’s photograph of the Wilkins Witch Quit was conclusive. Even though the markings on the rocks were hard to see, they clearly matched the quilt markings stroke for stroke.

  “Okay,” Maddy summed it up. “It’s likely Mad Matilda copied the runes on the well stones onto her magical quilt.”

  “And somebody who could read runes finally saw the quilt and stole it,” added Bootsie.

  At this point the women were gathered around the patio table in Maddy’s backyard. Amanda was riding herd on the little kids. Aggie and N’yen were sitting with the grownups, having appointed themselves as Quilters Club detectives.

  “Couldn’t someone have stolen the quilt for itself, not knowing about the secret message on it?” called Amanda from across the yard. Her daughter Donna had managed to turn on the garden hose, squirting one of Tilly’s kids.

  “No,” Bootsie shook her head. “Based on what Lizzie’s husband heard the Aitkens boy saying, the quilt was stolen because some kid translated the runes.”

  “That’s right,” confirmed Lizzie as she refilled her lemonade glass. “Edgar got it straight from the horse’s mouth.”

  “Horse?” asked N’yen.

  “Just an expression,” his grandmother explained.

  “I’d like to have a pony,” said N’yen.

  “I think you’d have trouble keeping one in your Chicago apartment,” laughed his cousin Aggie.

  “Uncle Freddie said I could keep a pony at the Haney Bros. Zoo.”

  “Hey, then I want to get a pony too,” rejoined Aggie.

  “Nobody is getting a pony today,” shushed Maddy. “They cost too much money.”

  “Yes, but we can afford ponies after we find that Viking treasure,” said Aggie.

  “If we find that treasure, all of us can afford ponies,” laughed Lizzie as she inspected her nail polish. She had chipped one out there at the well.

  “First, let’s think about who is dating a single mother with a nerdy son,” Maddy suggested.

  “Why bother,” said Bootie. “Jim and his deputy went out this morning to talk with the Aitkens boy. He can tell us who he was talking
about.”

  “That was hours ago. Hasn’t Jim told you what he learned?”

  “Lordy no. I haven’t heard from Jim all day. I’ve been on a picnic with all of you.”

  “But you have a cellphone …”

  Bootsie shook her head. “Battery’s run down. Forgot to charge it last night.”

  Lizzie held out her iPhone. “Here, use mine. We’re all dying to hear what the Aitkens boy had to say.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Beau Madison was the first person the police chief called after discovering the body of Charlie Aitkens. The second was Lt. Neil Wannamaker of the ISP.

  Both had responded with the same word: “Dead?”

  “That’s right,” Jim Purdue had told Wanamaker. “Head bashed in. Big rock laying nearby covered in blood and hair, clearly the murder weapon.”

  “Any witnesses?”

  “Nobody has turned up. Boy’s father was over in Burpyville buying a new Peterbilt to haul his watermelon crop. Hired hands were in the field. Charlie’s bother Ralph is the foreman. He was out there supervising the pickers.”

  “Nobody else at the farmhouse?”

  “Boyd’s wife died about ten years ago. They have an Amish woman who keeps house, cleans and cooks, but this was her day off.”

  “Well, I can tell you Jasper Beanie and his pal Sam Stickley didn’t do it. We’ve had them in lockup since yesterday.”

  Chief Purdue cleared his throat. “I could’ve told you ol’ Jasper didn’t have anything to do with this. He hasn’t got the gumption to steal a paperclip. Beau Madison only keeps him on as janitor at the Town Hall out of pity. His wife used to be Beau’s secretary before she ran off with the former mayor.”

  “Henry Caruthers? We’ve got a file on him six-inches thick.”

  “There you have it. Point is, we don’t have a suspect.”

  “Sure we do,” Wannamaker contradicted him. “The guy Edgar Ridenour overheard Charlie Aitkens talking about. The one he said stole the quilt. Probably killed the boy to shut him up.”

  Jim Purdue was frustrated. His hand gripped the phone as if he were choking it. “Yeah, but how are we gonna find that guy?”

  “Figure out who Charlie Aitkens was talking to on the bridge and ask him.”

  “Isn’t that your job? You’re the state’s lead investigator.”

  “Don’t like to step on local toes.”

  “You don’t say?” Was he being set up to take blame for a failed investigation? Those state boys were tricky like that.

  Lt. Wannamaker wrapped it up. “I’ll check in tomorrow and see how you’re doing with your murder investigation. We’ll keep looking for the quilt.”

  “Hey, aren’t they the same case?” said Jim Purdue. But the phone clicked in chief Purdue’s ear. Conversation ended.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Beau Madison had already heard from Boyd Aitkens. Distraught over the death of his son, the powerful landowner wanted assurances that the villain who murdered Charlie would be brought to justice. Lynching’s probably what ol’ Boyd had in mind, but he had the smarts not to say it out loud.

  “Beau, I backed you in your election campaigns. If you want to serve another term, you’d better kick Jim Purdue in the butt and get him to find the murderer. Somebody’s gonna pay for this.”

  “Sorry about your boy, Boyd. He was a good kid. I feel for your loss.”

  The farmer’s weathered face looked as sad as Iron Eyes Cody. “Who would’ve done such a thing? Charlie didn’t have an enemy in the world. He was a little lazy, not a go-getter like his older brother. But everybody liked him, what you’d call a hail-fellow-well-met.”

  “Chief Purdue thinks it may have been the person who stole the Wilkins Witch Quilt. Edgar Ridenour overhead Charlie telling somebody that he knew who did it. Jim thinks the thief may have killed Charlie to shut him up.”

  “What would he know about that mangy old quilt? He never paid it no mind.”

  “Don’t know. But you can be sure Jim will find out.”

  “Forget the police. Jim Purdue has got more experience directing traffic than solving murders. Put your wife on the case.”

  “M-my wife?”

  “C’mon, Beau. Everybody knows that her so-called Quilters Club is like an unofficial private detective agency.”

  “Whoa, hold on there, Boyd. You’ve got that all wrong –”

  The watermelon farmer stood up, cutting off the conversation. “Let me put it this way, Beau. You get them gals to find the murderer of my son and I’ll pony up a hundred grand toward your next election. Use it for radio advertising or take a vacation to Cancun, I don’t care which.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Witchcraft in the Midwest

  In the late 1600s New England was apparently infested with witches – as exemplified by the notorious Salem Witch Trials. And in the 1800s witching covens were scattered across the South, particularly around New Orleans (mostly Vodou cults). However, in the Midwest the history of witchcraft is scant.

  Deep in the bowels of the Indiana State University Library Cookie Bentley had found a rare volume titled Occult Practices Among Early Settlers of Indiana and Illinois. This had been a Master’s Thesis by a long-forgotten student named Thaddeus Elmer Wapner.

  “According to Wapner,” Cookie told her comrades, “in 1882 a Master Warlock named Reginald Wentworth Evers settled near Burpyville. He was supposedly an outcast of Salem, Massachusetts, although records do not support this claim – nor does the timing. He established a small coven of eleven members who met on the full moon of each month. One of these was a woman named Elmira Süderdithmarschen.”

  “Mad Matilda’s mother?”

  “Exactly.”

  “So Matilda Wilkins learned witchcraft at her mother’s knee.”

  “Apparently so.”

  Bootsie frowned. “Does that mean Matilda Süderdithmarschen Wilkins wasn’t mad?”

  “Who knows? But she came by her trade of selling love potions and spells honestly,” said Cookie. “It was the family business.”

  “What does that tell us?” sighed Lizzie Ridenour. She was growing impatient with all this old history malarkey. Unlike her friend Cookie, Liz liked to live in the present. No dusty old books and yellowed newspaper clippings for her. She owned a Kindle, for goodness sakes! All the better to read the latest Nora Roberts on.

  “Maybe it tells us nothing,” Cookie admitted. “Other than that the woman who stitched the missing quilt believed in witchcraft.”

  “Yes, but did she know about the treasure or simply copy off those runes from the stones in her well?” pressed Lizzie.

  “I think we should look into those Vikings,” said little Aggie Tidemore, speaking with childlike insight. “It’s their message on that witchy quilt. And they’re the ones who hid the treasure.”

  Bootsie couldn’t help but laugh. “Out of the mouth of babes,” she said.

  “Hey, I’m not a baby,” she protested. “I’ll be twelve soon!”

  “Hm,” Cookie thought it over. “I think Aggie might just be on the right trail.”

  “How do we investigate a group of people that even the archeologists can’t prove where here?” grumbled Lizzie.

  “Oh, we know they were here,” said Maddy.

  “How so?”

  “Because we’ve seen their runestones in that old well.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Lt. Neil “The Nail” Wannamaker may have told Chief Purdue to take over the Charlie Aitkens case, but he had his own men looking into it too. He sensed the murder was somehow connected to that missing quilt. Who would’ve thought an old rag like that could be worth a hundred G's?

  The first clue his investigator picked up had to do with Charlie’s circle of friends. His best pal was a guy named Tommy “Spud” Bodkins, an old football teammate from high school. That was probably who the fisherman – a retired banker – had overheard him speaking with on the bridge. Spud instead of Bud. According to Spud’s mother, the two young men s
ometimes fished off that particular span of concrete and steel, convinced that there was a good catfish hole under it … but they never caught much.

  Unfortunately, Spud had gone off to Indy for the weekend to catch a Colts game. No one knew where he was staying, so Lt. Wannamaker issued an APB for a 5’ 2” redhead with a potato-shaped birthmark on his left arm. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot a guy of that description, he told himself.

  He wondered if the birthmark was the source of Spud’s country-bumpkin nickname?

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Maddy’s son-in-law Mark the Shark phoned to say Bill and Kathy were on the mend. Bill was up and about; Kathy’s infection had been stemmed with antibiotics. Little N’yen would be seeing his mommy and daddy soon.

  While there, Mark had worked out a settlement with the trucking company. Bill and Kathy’s medical expenses would be entirely covered. There was another $200,000 thrown in to cover their “inconvenience.” That was quite a windfall for a couple of youth counselors who worked for an underfunded non-profit NGO.

  Maddy’s youngest son Freddie – A/K/A Sparkplug the Clown –decided to drive up to Wisconsin with his wife and daughter to check on brother Bill too. Maybe he’d put on a little show for the hospital’s children’s ward while he was up there. He liked his new job of entertaining kids as a member of the Haney Bros. Zoo and Exotic Animal Refuge.

  “I was so worried about Bill and Kathy,” Maddy told her husband that night after dinner. The grandchildren were in bed or she wouldn’t have been so open about her concerns. Some people thought the Law of the Jungle was “Survival of the Fittest,” but Maddy knew it was “Don’t Scare the Animals.” And these were cute little bunnies indeed.

  Agnes and N’yen were her two favorite grandchildren, though she would never admit that out loud. Tilly’s little ones – Taylor and Madison – were both too little to bond with. And Freddie’s daughter Donna was just turning three. Besides, Aggie and her Vietnamese cousin were unofficial members of the Quilters Club. What’s more, Aggie was getting quite good at stitching quilting squares!