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

by Marjorie Sorrell Rockwell

  “Same one. He’s getting pretty long of tooth now.”

  “Didn’t they make you destroy him after he killed someone?”

  “We told the authorities we did, but we lied. Do you know what a draw it is to a circus to have a man-eating lion?”

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  “Let me get this straight,” said the police chief. “You’re admitting you kidnapped those boys?”

  “No, no,” Big Bill Haney waved away the accusation. “My wife and I took them in. They were runaways. They needed a home, even if it was a traveling circus.”

  “You have a wife?” said Maddy.

  “Yes, Little William. Her name’s really Willamina. She passes as my brother for the sake of the circus. We wanted to call it Haney Bros. – just like Ringling Bros.”

  Bootsie rolled her eyes. “He’s a she?”

  “Every inch of her. We’ve been married nearly fifty years. December will be our golden wedding anniversary.”

  “Congratulations,” said Cookie. She considered wedding anniversaries to be significant historical events.

  “Willamina was a good mother to them boys. Jud made us proud. Bobby Ray died too young. Too bad Tom and Harry turned out to be bad apples.”

  That got the police chief’s attention. “Bad apples, you say?”

  “About four years ago, they stole all the circus’s money and run off. Haven’t heard from them since.”

  “I’m pretty sure they’re the two guys sitting in an Indianapolis jail cell at this very moment,” said Jim Purdue. “Didn’t you hear about them trying to embezzle money from the president of the E Z Seat Company?”

  “I heard something about that, but I didn’t realize it was my two boys.” He shook his head sadly. “I told you they was bad apples. Willamina’s going to be heartbroken.”

  ≈≈≈

  They were mostly silent on the drive home, contemplating the strange turn of events. All the mix-and-match identities had been confusing.

  Harry Periwinkle had pretended to be Bobby Ray Purdue to get at the money in the quilt. Bernard Warbuckle was actually a guy called Tom Appleby, not Jud Watson. And Sprinkles the Clown was really Jud Watson, not Bobby Ray Purdue. And Bobby Ray Purdue … well, he was dead … but mauled to death by a lion, now drowned in a pool of quicksand.

  Even Little William turned out to be Willamina.

  You needed a scorecard.

  Chapter Twenty- Six

  Haney Bros. Circus returned to Caruthers Corners, once more pitching its tents on the Bentley farm. It was a glorious end-of-summer afternoon, the sun glinting off the tin roof of Ben’s big red barn. Happy the elephant seemed, well, happy to be “home,” spraying water in the air with her trunk in celebration.

  Maddy drove out with Freddie and Agnes. Aggie’s curfew had been lifted, since she was being hailed as a hero among family and close friends for retrieving the treasure quilt from Maud Purdue’s attic.

  But with Bobbie Ray gone, there was a question of who might get all that money. Maud Purdue told a newspaper reporter it was hers to keep. However, her son N.L. had filed a claim as Bobby Ray’s next of kin. Brothers trumped mothers in the genetic sweepstakes.

  “Thanks for coming out,” Big Bill Haney greeted the Madisons. “I’m sorry Sprinkles is no longer with the Big Top. I know you liked him.”

  “I like clowns,” Aggie smiled. “But I like elephants too.”

  “Happy will be pleased to see you. She will remember you. Elephants never forget, y’know.”

  “Will you be getting another clown?” asked Freddie. He liked being here at the circus. Nobody seemed to pay any attention to his deformities.

  “Are you applying for the job?” smiled the ringmaster.

  “No, I can’t travel. I have a wife … and maybe a new daughter.”

  “Too bad. The Big Top’s loss.”

  “Do you think I’d make a good clown?”

  Big Bill studied him for a moment. “Yes, I do. All clown’s are slightly sad.”

  Swami Bombay brought Happy the Elephant over to see the visitors. “She saw you from out in the field and insisted on coming to greet you,” said the dark-skinned man.

  “Look,” said Aggie, holding out her hand. “I brought you peanuts, Happy.”

  The elephant trumpeted, then buried her snout in the girl’s hand, scarfing up the peanuts.

  “Happy likes them,” nodded Bombay. “I knew she would. I saw it in a vision.” Reminding them that he did a mind reading act.

  “Thank you for helping clear up the mystery of the Lost Boys,” Maddy said to Big Bill Haney.

  “Lost Boys,” he snorted. “They weren’t lost because they had a home with us. Willamina and I loved those kids, even Tom and Harry. But I have to tell you we mourn the loss of Bobby Ray. Truth be told, he was our favorite. A good kid, a fine young man.”

  “I’m sorry how this turned out for you,” Maddy said, extending a hand politely. “But it’s over now. The Lost Boys have been accounted for.

  Swami Bombay closed his eyes and touched his temples with his fingertips, as if receiving a psychic message. “Ahh, my friends, I hate to tell you this,” he wheezed, “but the story is not over.”

  Chapter Twenty- Seven

  “Excuse me,” said the slender man at the office door. “Are you Mayor Madison?”

  Beau looked up from his paperwork, plans for a new gazebo in the town square. He was slightly irritated to be interrupted. How had this guy gotten past his secretary? Where was Martha? Probably taking another coffee break. She liked to hang out in the coffee room with that girl who worked for the city planner down the hall.

  “Yes, may I help you?’

  “Well, maybe. I am Bobby Ray Purdue.”

  The coffee cup in Beau hand dropped to the desk with a crash! spilling the brownish liquid onto the architectural drawings of the gazebo. “B-but you can’t be,” he stammered. “You’re … I mean Bobby Ray … is dead.”

  “Not any longer,” smiled the blue-eyed visitor.

  ≈≈≈

  “I’ve convinced Judge Cramer to let me resign from representing Harry Periwinkle and Thomas Appleby,” announced Mark the Shark. “After all, the court appointed me to represent Bobby Ray Purdue. Now that we’ve established who he really is, it would be a conflict for me to represent those pretenders.”

  “So this guy – the former Sprinkles the Clown – really is the third Lost Boy?” said the Police Chief, just to get it on the record. He’d called together the Town Council as well as the Quilters Club and assorted friends to help him unravel this ball of twine.

  “That’s correct,” nodded Mark. “We just got the new DNA test back from Burpyville Memorial. And it conclusively proves that this gentleman before you is Bobby Ray Purdue.”

  “How do we know it’s accurate? May I remind you, we’ve been through this once before,” challenged Chief Purdue.

  “You can bet the farm on this one,” Edgar Ridenour spoke up. “I insisted that Virgil Hoffstedder, chief of Burpyville Memorial’s lab division, conduct the analysis himself.”

  This informal gathering in the conference room at the town hall had no official status but Bobby Ray Purdue had agreed to meet with them and help straighten out this case of mistaken identities. As Man of the Hour, he sat quietly at the head of the table, listening to them talk about him like he wasn’t even there.

  “Ahem,” he interrupted the wrangling over his identity. “I am Bobby Ray Purdue and everybody may as well get used to it. I’m back to stay.”

  “Okay, let’s say you are,” conceded Jim Purdue. “But you’ve got lots of explaining to do.”

  “That’s why I’m sitting here.”

  “So tell us the story from the beginning,” said Maddy Madison. “I’d like to know how much we got right.”

  The slender man shifted uncomfortably in the wooden chair, feeling like he was on the witness stand, unofficial proceeding or not. “Well, I guess it goes back to when we ran away from home – me, Jud
Watson, and Harry Periwinkle.”

  “Why did you boys do that?” asked Bootsie.

  Bobby Ray seemed to think about that for a moment before responding. “We all had our reasons,” he said slowly. “Harry hated his father, a man who belittled him and called him a bastard. You see, he wasn’t really Harry’s dad. Harry’s mother had been a hippie, marched in Vietnam War protests, lived in a commune. She never knew who knocked her up. Willard Periwinkle married her, but he never did accept her son Harry.”

  He stopped to take a sip of water from the pitcher in the middle of the conference table, as if his throat were dry. But it may have been a delaying tactic, not eager to relive these memories.

  “Go on,” said Chief Purdue.

  “Jud had to get away from home before his mother killed him. She used to whip him with a belt till his back was raw. He used to come to school with blood seeping through the cloth of his shirt. She was mean as a snake. Blamed him for her husband abandoning them. Left when Jud was still a baby, saying he didn’t want no part of being a family.”

  “And you?” asked Maddy.

  The man poured himself another cup of water, drank it slowly, his Adam’s apple bobbing with each gulp. “Do I have to say?” he asked.

  “No, you don’t,” his new attorney interjected. “This conversation is entirely voluntary.”

  “But it would help us better understand,” encouraged Maddy, at her motherly best.

  “Well, okay. In for a dime, in for a dollar. It was because of my brother Newcomb.”

  “N.L.?” blurted Beau. As owner of the E Z Seat factory, Newcomb Lamont Purdue was the richest man in Caruthers Corners. And a big contributor to the mayor’s political campaigns.

  “That’s right, my big brother. He used to beat the holy hell outta me when we were boys. He wasn’t none too happy when mom had me. I think he resented not being the only child. Every time she turned her back he’d pinch me or kick me or smack the bejeebers outta me. I just couldn’t take it any longer.”

  Beau was glad they hadn’t invited the families of the Lost Boys to this meeting. It was like watching someone rip the scab off a painful sore. “So tell us about your running away,” he shifted the conversation.

  “We decided to join the circus. There was an announcement in the paper about one playing up at the Gruesome Gorge Campground. But that was a long hike, unless you cut through Never Ending Swamp. Errol Baumgartner claimed he knew a safe trail, so we talked him into taking us across the swamp. Gave him a Barlow knife I bought off Shorty Yosterman.”

  “So you boys really did join the circus?” said Cookie, mesmerized by the story.

  “Yessum, we did. That is, Big Bill and his wife took us in. They trained us to do circus acts. Made us a part of their family.”

  “Circus acts?” uttered Lizzie, hoping he’d get to the juicy parts.

  “Harry and another kid who joined up developed a juggling act. They dressed like pirates and tossed cutlasses back and forth. Those big knives couldn’t cut butter, but it was dangerous enough to please an audience.”

  “And you?”

  “Me, I was supposed to be a lion tamer, but Grumpy scared the tar outta me. I just didn’t have what it takes.”

  “And Jud?” asked Bootsie. Trying to get them all straight in her mind.

  “He became Sprinkles the Clown. I think he was hiding under that greasepaint in case his mother came looking for him. But she didn’t.”

  “But Big Bill said you got killed by that lion,” prompted the police chief.

  “Wasn’t me, it was Jud. He wanted to try his hand at lion taming, so I let him go into the cage. It turned out bad. That old lion practically tore his head off. You couldn’t even recognize him, mangled as he was.”

  “That’s when you decided to switch places with Jud,” said Maddy, catching on.

  “Right. I put on his clown makeup and pretended to be him. Couldn’t believe I got away with it. I’ve been Sprinkles the Clown for over four years now.”

  “But why?” asked Bootsie.

  “Partly cause I was afraid I’d get blamed for his death, letting him go into that lion’s cage. But mainly because I was afraid of Harry and Tom.”

  “Why would you be afraid of them?” asked Lizzie. Her thickly mascaraed eyes were as wide as silver dollars as she listened to the story.

  “Well, over the years I’d told them about that quilt my great-grandmother had left to me. How one day while playing in the attic, I’d discovered that it was stuffed with money. About a week before the lion got him, Jud overheard them talking about killing me and taking the treasure.”

  “Surely that was just talk,” said Cookie, sometimes too naïve for her own good.

  “Likely not,” interjected Jim Purdue. “Four years later they did follow through with a plan to get their hands on the quilt. That shows some determination.”

  “Where were Harry Periwinkle and Tom Appleby during those four years?” Cookie wanted to know. Connecting the dots.

  “Beats me,” said Bobby Ray. “They robbed the circus of nearly ten thousand dollars and took off. I never heard of them again until Harry showed up here claiming to be me.”

  “As it happens, Harry was doing time in Oklahoma for killing a man in a bar fight,” Mark Tidemore informed them. “So he did have a violent streak.”

  “How do you know this?” demanded the police chief. He hated being caught off-guard with someone knowing more facts than he did.

  “Harry gave a statement to the State Police this week, trying to cut a deal.”

  Chief Purdue was clearly irked that the state boys hadn’t informed him of this. “How did those two get your DNA if you weren’t in on it?” he challenged.

  “Hold on, Jim. My client isn’t on trial here.”

  “Sorry, but it’s a legitimate question.”

  Mark held up a hand to stop the argument. “I can answer that based on Harry Periwinkle’s statement,” he said. “Tom had been trying to go straight. He used his share of the stolen circus money to take a community college course that trained him to be a lab technician. He just happened to be working at the hospital when Harry got out of jail.”

  “But Bobby Ray’s DNA –?”

  “Harry still dreamed of getting his hands on that hidden treasure. He came up with this scheme of impersonating Bobby Ray after seeing a movie called Sommersby starring Richard Gere and Jodie Foster. It’s about a man who returns from the army, but people question his true identity.”

  “I remember that film,” said Cookie. “It’s based on a French film called The Return of Martin Guerre. It has the same imposter theme.”

  “So Harry saw his opportunity when he heard Haney Bros. Circus was camping in Ben Bentley’s field. He enlisted Tom in his scheme and they slipped into the Haneys’ tent one night. Seems Willamina kept locks of her boys’ hair in a scrapbook. Tom was able to extract sample DNA from that.”

  “So Harry pretended to be Bobby Ray to get his hands on that quilt full of money and doing that finally flushed our Lost Boy out of hiding,” Maddy summed it up.

  “Hiding in plain sight,” noted Freddie, who had decided to set in on this august gathering.

  “Now I can go back to being Bobby Ray Purdue … and Sprinkles the Clown,” nodded the subject in question. “But first my attorney here is going to help me claim that money. I plan to buy a circus.”

  Epilogue

  Some people like a happy ending. And this latest adventure of the Quilters Club has one, as it turns out.

  Thanks to Mark the Shark’s persuasive argument, Judge Horace Cramer ruled that the money found in the quilt belonged to Bobby Ray Purdue. The quilt had been left to him by his great-grandmother and there was no way to prove where all those antique bank notes came from. The First Wabash National Bank had never reopened its doors after the Great Fire of 1899, so no one spoke up in its behalf.

  Bobby Ray sold the rare bank notes at auction, many of them going to numismatists and other private collectors for
undisclosed sums. Local antiques dealer Daniel Sokolowski upped his estimate to $200 million, but that was just an educated guess.

  What is known is this: Bobby Ray bought his mother a new house on Field Hand Road and set up a $2 million annuity to provide for her. He sold his half of E Z Seat to his brother N.L. for the grand sum of $1. And he paid for the construction of the new gazebo in the town square. After all, his reappearance had caused the mayor to spill his coffee on those fine architectural drawings.

  And more: He bought Rachel McGurty’s old boarding house on Easy Chair Lane, turning it into a home for retired circus performers. Big Bill Haney and his wife Willamina took the entire second floor. Bombay Martinez got a large room in back. There was even room for a couple of former Haney Bros. performers, now retired but eager to rejoin their comrades. Bobby Ray took the cottage out back for himself.

  The big news: Ben Bentley donated that great field behind his house to the town (a referendum passed to annex the land into the city limits) to become a zoo.

  Bobby Ray – the one-time Sprinkles the Clown – donated $100 million dollars to establish the Haney Bros. Zoo and Exotic Animal Refuge. The endowment would provide for the care of Happy, Sneezy, Doc, Grumpy, Dopey, Sleepy, and Bashful, as well as other animals that would join them in entertaining the children of Caruthers Corners and nearby towns. A giraffe and a hippopotamus had already been added. And Big Bill was negotiating with a traveling carnival for an old leopard that needed a good home.

  On weekends, the retired circus performers put on shows at the zoo, free to the public. Bobby Ray would smear on his greasepaint and reprise Sprinkles the Clown. And he was joined by a second clown known as Sparkplug.

  Sparkplug wore a fire chief’s hat and rode around in a miniature red fire engine, squirting seltzer water into the air. Freddie Madison liked his newfound hobby – entertaining kids. Why not? He had a new addition to his own family, 2-year-old Donna Ann Madison. He and his wife had decided to stay in Caruthers Corners. Amanda had gone back to teaching and Freddie happily played Mr. Mom. But on weekends he covered up all those facial scars with white greasepaint and became Sparkplug the Clown. He was having a ball.