4 Hemmed In
Page 11
“Are you suggesting Becky stole the quilt?” asked Bootsie, always looking for a culprit. A policeman’s wife through and through.
“In a sense. I think she provided the Town Hall’s alarm code to the actual thief. We always knew it was an inside job, but everybody kept focusing on that ol’ reprobate, Jasper Beanie. He was just a red herring.”
“Becky Marsch,” Maddy repeated the name as if trying to get used to this new theory. Her husband’s secretary of all people!
“Why did she do it?” asked Lizzie.
“The money?” said Bootsie. “The thrill? Because she didn’t get a big enough raise?”
“Maybe Becky wanted to reclaim something she thought rightfully belonged to her family,” speculated Maddy.
“I suppose I could understand that,” said Bootsie. “But she certainly went about it the wrong way.”
“Don’t forget that somebody was her accomplice. And he may have killed Boyd’s boy Charlie.”
Lizzie sat down her coffee cup. “How can we find out who was in on it with Becky?”
“Why don’t we just go ask her,” said Aggie as she finished off her chocolate milk. “The Town Hall is only a block and a half away.”
≈ ≈ ≈
They stopped by the police station on the way and picked up Bootsie’s husband. He strapped on his gunbelt, pulled his cap over his balding head, and joined the parade up the sidewalk to the Town Hall.
Jim Purdue was thinking that the state boys were sure going to be irked if he solved both the murder and the theft. Jim had to admit he’d like that. Neil Wannamaker was just too darn pushy for his liking. The Nail indeed!
They found the pretty blonde at her desk, stationed just outside Beau Madison’s inner sanctum. She looked up as the entourage entered and muttered, “Uh-oh.”
“Becky Marsch,” said Chief Purdue, “why didn’t you tell me that you’re related to the woman who created that missing quilt?”
“Uh, I’m only distantly related. Not enough to count.”
“You must have thought it counted for something,” interjected Cookie Bentley. “You updated her genealogy chart only last week.”
“That doesn’t mean I stole the quilt.”
“Makes you our Number One suspect,” countered the police chief. “I think the SBI’s gonna want to talk with you, young lady.”
“Okay, I did it,” she gave in. “But I don’t have the blasted thing.”
“Who does?”
“Bern Bjorn. He took it.”
“Bern?” said Chief Purdue. “We had him in custody only yesterday.” It irked him that Bjorn had been Lt. Wannamaker’s chief suspect. The Nail would never let him live this one down, letting Bjorn go for lack of evidence.
“Why would Bjorn do a fool thing like stealing the quilt?” asked Beau Madison. The mayor had come out of his office when he saw all the people gathered around his secretary’s desk. “Bern’s the manager of the Dairy Queen, for gosh sakes.”
“Just got a confession,” said the police chief. “Becky and Bern Bjorn did it.”
“Y-you’re sure?” sputtered the mayor. Bern Bjorn was a leading citizen. He’d been in Beau’s office the day before the robbery for a meeting of the Town Square Beautification Committee.
Becky Marsch started to cry. “Bern’s my boyfriend. I did it for him.”
“Aha, your mystery man,” said the police chief. Her alibi had been that she’d spent the night with her boyfriend. But she’d never named the man. And small-town decorum had kept Jim from asking.
“I’ve been seeing Bern off-and-on since he and Wanda split up,” she sniveled.
“So you talked him into stealing the quilt?” said Maddy.
“No, the other way round. Stealing the quilt was his idea.”
“Bern’s idea?”
“Yes,” she nodded firmly. “His son Pinky translated the symbols on that ratty old quilt. Told his dad what it said, that there was a treasure buried in my great-great grandmother’s well. He took the quilt so nobody else would be able to figure out the secret message.”
“We have lots of photographs of the Wilkins Witch Quilt,” offered Cookie. “That’s how we figured out what the runes said.”
“Guess he didn’t think of that. Bern’s no genius, that’s for sure. A miracle he has such a smart son.”
“Pinky’s a clever boy,” agreed Bootsie. “I had him in a few classes last year.”
Becky nodded. “True. But he needs to get out more. Always playing those stupid video games. Living off potato chips and Pepsi-Colas. The only friends he has are geeks just like him.”
“Without those video games, he’d never have learned how to read runes,” Cookie pointed out.
“Charlie Aitkens got it right,” said Lizzie, whose husband had overheard the conversation while under the bridge. “A kid with a single mother figured out the message and told someone. But it turns out he told his dad, not his mom’s boyfriend.”
“It’s only natural he’d confide in his dad,” sniffled Becky. “Pinky doesn’t particularly like Teddy Yost.”
Chief Purdue pressed on with his questions. “You’re saying you didn’t want the quilt for yourself?”
“Why would I want that old rag?”
“Well, for one thing, it’s worth a hundred thousand dollars. Some people might find that pretty tempting.”
“Particularly a great-great granddaughter who thought the quilt rightfully belonged to her family,” added Maddy.
“Poo,” replied Becky. “That Viking treasure will be worth millions, so why worry about an old quilt?”
“There is no Viking Treasure,” Maddy told her.
Becky Marsh turned to Cookie. “Mrs. Bentley, you’re the town historian. Tell her she’s wrong.”
“Sorry, honey. There’s no conclusive proof Norsemen ever made it to the Midwest.”
“But my cousin Maury says –“
“So Maury Seiderman’s in on this too?” said the police chief.
“Of course he is. I asked him to help Bern find the treasure. My cousin’s a little nutty, but he’s been chasing treasures all his life. He’s fixated on witches and goblins and ghosts and buried treasures. He’s a one-man paranoid organization.”
“Don’t you mean ‘paranormal’?” corrected Maddy.
“No, I think she’s got it right,” said Chief Jim Purdue. “My night guy says Seiderman has been blathering about how Mad Matilda is gonna come save him from false imprisonment. False imprisonment … in a pig’s eye.”
Aggie yelped, “What is it with pig’s eyes?”
“Mad Matilda certainly seemed fond of using them in her potions,” said Lizzie.
“I think I can answer that,” grinned Cookie. “According to YourAncestors.com, Matilda Süderdithmarschen’s family came from St. Paul, Minnesota. They were chased out of town for being witches. So those potions we found were actually curses on the people of St. Paul. Before its current name was established, the city of Saint Paul was known as Pig’s Eye.”
“You’re making that up,” accused Lizzie.
“No, really. It was nicknamed after a one-eyed tavern keeper, Pierre ‘Pig’s Eye’ Parrant. Today there’s even a Pig’s Eye Brewing Company in St. Paul.”
Bootsie was confused. “Then why would she bury one those curses under the foundation of the Church of Avenging Angels?”
“Simple. The Avenging Angels were witch hunters, a threat to Mad Matilda. So she put a curse on them. Rev. Billingsley Royce was originally from St. Paul.”
“How do you know this?” challenged Bootsie.
“From A Personal History of Caruthers Corners and Surrounding Environs. It says Rev. Royce came from St. Paul. Page 321.”
“That’s true,” admitted Becky Marsch. “My ancestors came here from St. Paul. They were run out of Minnesota by those witch hunters who called themselves the Avenging Angels. Those creeps even followed the Süderdithmarschens to Indiana.”
“And they killed Mad Matilda?” aske
d Lizzie.
Becky nodded. “Matilda’s mother and father died in the Great Tornado of 1889. And a few years later her husband was killed in a farming accident involving a mule. Kicked him in the head. So that left Matilda alone with her daughter to face those religious zealots. They killed my great-great grandmother for the Viking treasure she’d discovered in her well.”
“I told you there’s no Viking Treasure,” Maddy said gently, patting the young woman’s hand. “That was just a silly legend. We would have found it if there had been a hoard of hack silver around here. We’ve certainly looked.”
“No, you’re wrong. A family friend named Reggie Evers took Matilda’s orphaned daughter Griselda – my great grandmother – and raised her as his own. Griselda recalled seeing the silver as a child. ‘A dozen or more thin shiny bars that reflected the sun like a mirror,’ she described them in her diary.”
“Reginald Wentworth Evers was a Master Warlock who lived near Burpyville,” remembered Cookie.
“Warlock, ha!” snorted Becky. “Reggie Evers and the Süderdithmarschens were members of Seiðr. That’s an Old Norse religion based on Germanic paganism. You can find references to it in Eiríks saga rauða.”
“In what?” said Beau.
“The Saga of Erik the Red, an account of Norse exploration of the Americas.”
“You seem pretty up on all this stuff,” observed Lizzie.
“Family tradition,” Becky said modesty.
Chapter Twenty-Seven
Crooks in the Can
After locking Becky Marsch in one of the police station’s two holding cells, Deputy Pete Hitzer picked up Bern Bjorn and put him in the other one with Maury Seiderman. Lt. Neil Wannamaker was on his way down from Indy to pick them up.
“Gotcha, did they?” Seiderman greeted his cousin’s boyfriend. He’d already claimed the top bunk, giving himself an on-high vantage point.
“Becky squealed on me,” Bjorn spat out the words. He glanced angrily in her direction.
“No, honeybunch, I didn’t,” she called to him. “They had us dead to rights. They knew you killed Charlie Aitkens to shut him up about your stealing the quilt.”
“Shut up, Becky! Don’t say that in front of them.”
“What? That you killed Charlie? You never should’ve told your buddies about stealing the quilt in the first place.”
“Charlie was gonna help me sell it. Said he knew a guy in Cincinnati who fenced stolen goods.”
Becky threw a shoe at him. It bounced off the cell’s bars. “I thought you were only interested in finding the Viking treasure.”
“That’s true,” he replied. “But I’m not going to turn away a hundred grand. The quilt had served its purpose.”
Maury Seiderman slid off the top bunk, landing on the floor like a 6’ 3” tomcat. “Hold on, chum. You didn’t tell me about the hundred grand. I want my share. You promised me a third of whatever we got.”
Bern Bjorn backed away from the threatening figure. “Your share, I was taking about the treasure.”
“Well, there is no treasure, according to these old biddies.”
“Who are you calling biddies?” protested Bootsie Purdue, standing next to her husband.
“You and your quilting pals,” shouted Seiderman. “You’ve bollixed up this whole deal. Now I’m mixed up in a murder.”
“Keep talking,” grinned Chief Purdue. “We’ve got a station-full of witnesses.” He gestured to the members of the Quilters Club. “No way you’re walking away from this one. But it might go easier on you, if you tell us where to find the Wilkins Witch Quilt.”
“I told you my great-great grandmother wasn’t really a witch,” shouted Becky. Angry about this turn of events. Being arrested. Her boyfriend turning against her. The treasure still out there unclaimed.
“Who cares whether the old hag was a witch or a Presbyterian,” said Bern Bjorn. “I want to know where that silver is hidden.”
“There is no silver,” Seiderman repeated.
“There was,” insisted Bjorn. “My son Pinky cracked the code of that message on the quilt.”
“Your son has too much imagination,” groused Seiderman. “Always playing those stupid video games. He probably made the whole thing up.”
“No, Becky’s great-grandmother saw the silver bars.”
“That’s true,” she called from the next cell.
“Then where are they?” the skinny man challenged.
“I have a theory,” said Cookie Bentley.
≈ ≈ ≈
All eyes turned to Cookie. She had everyone’s attention. Even Lt. Wannamaker and the two burly state cops he’d brought with him.
“My theory is that a small band of Viking explorers made it here, having sailed across the Great Lakes from Newfoundland – or Vinland as they called it. They set up an encampment under the oak trees and dug a well so they’d have plentiful water. Or maybe it was simply meant to be a Money Pit like they’d dug on Oak Island in Nova Scotia.”
“I’ve read about that,” said the founder of the G.M.O.P.A. “It’s been attributed to pirates, freemasons, and Norsemen. Some have speculated it holds a Viking treasure. Or even Marie Antoinette’s jewels.”
“Marie Antoinette wasn’t a Viking,” muttered Bjorn. He’d never liked Becky’s know-it-all cousin. It had been her idea to bring him in on this treasure hunt.
Cookie continued doggedly. “Likely Mad Matilda’s husband found the treasure while deepening the well. Word got out and Rev. Royce and his band of witch hunters saw it as their God-given right to confiscate the treasure from these spawns of Satan.”
“Seiðr doesn’t have anything to do with Satan,” Becky objected. “Like I told you, it’s based on Scandinavian mythology.”
“Their religious beliefs must have got corrupted after a couple of generations in America,” Lizzie pointed out. “The Wilkins Witch Quilts shows devils and angels doing battle.”
“And she sold magic potions,” added Bootsie.
The blonde had no response to that. So she sat down on her bunk to sulk.
“Old man Wilkins had been kicked in the head by a mule, so it was only Matilda and her daughter at the cottage. Stealing the silver was like taking candy from a baby. Rev. Royce and his followers dumped Matilda in the well and walked off with the loot.”
“But legend has it they buried the silver under the doorstep of their church,” said Maury Seiderman, his face pressed against the bars. “And you didn’t find it when you dug around the foundation. I was there, remember?”
“That legend also said Rev. Royce planned to come back for it,” remembered Maddy. “Perhaps he did.”
“Exactly,” chimed Cookie. “That Viking treasure is long gone.”
“Damn,” cursed Bern Bjorn. “All this for nothing.”
“You’ve got the quilt,” whined Seiderman. “I want my share of that.”
“Nobody will be getting a share,” snapped Lt. Wannamaker. “You can’t profit from stolen goods.”
Bjorn flashed a wicked grin. “Yeah, but I’ve got the quilt. You’ll never see it again if you don’t let us walk.”
“Might cut some slack for little missy here and your weird friend from Chicago,” said The Nail, “but no way you’re going to walk on a murder charge.”
“Wasn’t murder,” argued Bjorn. “It was an accident.”
“Oh, that rock fell out of the sky and landed on Charlie Aitkens’s head,” scoffed Chief Purdue.
“No, Charlie was showing me this rock he’d found out in the field. Had some kind of writing on it. Like those markings on the witch’s quilt. He was starting to figure out there might be more going on here than stealing a ratty old quilt.”
“So you killed him,” said Bootsie.
“Not just like that. He attacked me and I took the rock away from him and hit him with it. Didn’t mean to kill him.”
“That’s your defense?” said The Nail. “Good luck with that.”
“It’s the truth.”
Bern Bjorn set his jaw stubbornly. “Then you’ll never see that quilt again.”
“I think I know where to find it,” said little Aggie who’d been taking all this in.
Everyone turned to stare at the eleven-year-old girl. In the excitement they had forgotten she was there. “You do?” said her grandmother.
“Maybe. Mr. Bjorn said Charlie was going to help him sell the quilt. They had their fight in the Aikens Produce barn. Why not look for it there?”
“We searched the barn at the time of the murder,” said Deputy Hitzer.
“But were you looking for a quilt?” asked Aggie.
“Well, no. I was looking for clues to the murder.” This was the young policeman’s first wrongful death case. His enthusiasm exceeded his experience, as Chief Purdue would later say.
“We’ll take another look,” said Jim Purdue, “with an eye to finding a missing quilt.”
Bern Bjorn cursed again. “Damn, I may as well tell you. It’s hidden in a stack of horse blankets in the tack room. The Aitkenses don’t keep horses no more, so it could’ve sat there till Kingdom Come if this pint-sized Quilters Clubber hadn’t stuck her nose in.”
Aggie smiled, showing her missing tooth. Happy to be recognized as breaking the case for the Quilters Club. “Thank you, Mr. Bjorn. I hope to see you next time I come to the Dairy Queen for a custard parfait.”
“You might have to wait thirty years to life for that,” said Lt. Neil Wannamaker, his dry wit going over the young girl’s head.
“Hmmpt, I might not be there,” said Bern Bjorn, “but you tell Maisie the counter girl I said to give you extra sprinkles. You’re smarter than the lot of these lawmen. You’re the one who deserves a reward.”
“Gee, thanks, Mr. Bjorn.”
“No reward has been posted –” began Lt. Wannamaker.
“Sprinkles will do,” said Aggie.
Epilogue
It Turns Out Well