The Patchwork Puzzler (Quilter's Club Mysteries)

by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell

  “Somebody stole yours and it was under lock and key. Hers were in an unlocked trunk.”

  “Yes, but – ”

  “Aggie has a point,” interceded Maddy. “Like I say, I think Holly Eberhard was as surprised as we were.”

  “Are you saying Jim has an innocent woman locked up in the police department holding cell?” Bootsie looked like she was ready to pop a blood vessel.

  “To tell the truth, I’m not sure. But we ought to figure out exactly what happened, else we might not be able to sleep at night.”

  Lizzie gave her a stern gaze. “Because we may have accused an innocent person? Or because you can’t rest until you’ve solved the puzzle?”

  “Both, I guess.”

  “Okay, if Holly is innocent, who could have pulled the old switcheroo?” Cookie posed the question. She was almost as compulsive about solving puzzles as Maddy Madison. Every day she tackled The New York Times crosswords, unable to go to bed at night until she’d completed every square.

  “Henry Caruthers,” said Aggie.

  “What makes you say that?” Lizzie played along, amused by the girl’s tenacity.

  “He took Mrs. Beanie’s keys, so he probably stole your quilt. And Holly Everlast – ”

  “Eberhard,” Cookie corrected.

  “ – Eberhard was his cousin, so he could have paid her a visit and switched the two.”

  “But Henry Caruthers left a note in your grandmother’s house claiming he didn’t steal the quilt,” Bootsie reminded the girl. Not that the police chief’s wife actually believed the former mayor to be innocent.

  “Maybe he was telling a fib,” offered eight-year-old N’yen. Maddy had both kids again today. “I sometimes tell fibs when I don’t wanna get caught.”

  “Now there’s a theory I can buy into,” said Lizzie. She’d never truly liked Lefty Caruthers. He’d acted like a total jerk back in high school, when they sat next to each other in English class. She remembered him passing her notes with obscene suggestions. Just because he was the hotshot pitcher on the baseball team, he thought he could get away with murder. The nerve of that guy!

  “Let’s think through this logically,” suggested Maddy. “We know Nan Beanie arranged for Henry Caruthers to take her office keys. She admitted as much. We know the beehive quilt disappeared from the locked conference room. There were only three sets of keys – Nan’s, Beau’s, and Jim’s. If we agree that neither my husband nor Bootsie’s stole the quilt, that leaves Henry because he had Nan’s keys.”

  “So Henry’s a crook. But what about Holly?” Liz was still having trouble believing her quilting idol could have been involved in a heist.

  “Holly was commissioned to sew three replica quilts. One of them – we can tell by the matching thread – was substituted for our quilt. Not just anyone would have known about her assignment to create duplicates or had access to them. But Henry Caruthers, who was Holly’s cousin, might have.”

  “So either she was in league with Mr. Caruthers or he stole her fake quilt on his own, then substituted the real one,” said Aggie. Seemed a simple one-or-the-other to her.

  “Where does this guy Kramer fit in?” asked Cookie. It was all so confusing.

  “We know about him because of that to-do list of Nan’s we found. He ran a quilting store in Indianapolis. Maybe he was going to help them sell the quilt or planned to buy it for himself.”

  “I figured Nan was going to run off with Henry,” said Bootsie. “She worked for him all those years, maybe fell for him. But it looks like she left the country with this Kramer guy instead.”

  “I don’t get that part either,” nodded Cookie.

  “If we found Henry, we could ask him,” said Maddy.

  Chapter Twenty-One

  Stakeout at the Rooming House

  Cookie checked the town’s property records. Henry Caruthers had owned a home on Field Hand Road for twenty-seven years. Never having married, he lived alone. The records showed he also owned a tract of farmland east of town that he leased to a farmer named Cassidy for growing corn. And he also had a part interest in a rooming house over on Fourth Street.

  “Jim has already checked out Henry’s house,” said Bootsie. “He’s definitely not there.”

  “I drove out to that big cornfield,” reported Lizzie. “There’s no house there, just stalks of corn.”

  “What about the rooming house?” asked Maddy.

  “He co-owns it with Holly’s mother.” Cookie held up a copy of the deed.

  “Must not be a very profitable operation,” mused Maddy. “Mrs. Lazynski doesn’t seem to have two nickels to rub together.”

  “Her daughter isn’t doing so bad,” noted Cookie. “I read in the paper she’s getting a two-million dollar settlement in her divorce.”

  “Apparently she married well,” commented Bootsie, an edge of sarcasm in her remark.

  “What’s the name of that rooming house on Fourth Street?” asked Maddy.

  “Mrs. Fogerty’s,” Cookie read off the name.

  “Who’s this Mrs. Fogerty?” Bootsie wanted to know.

  “Deceased. Apparently Henry bought the property from her estate about ten years ago.”

  “Maybe Henry keeps a room there,” Maddy speculated. “What say we go pay Mrs. Fogerty a visit?”

  ≈≈≈

  The rooming house was an old pre-war brick home that had been subdivided into four apartments. The names on the mailboxes identified the residents as T. Kelly, D. Birmingham, M. Martin, and N. Jacz, all neatly typed.

  “Wait a minute,” said Cookie as she studied the mailboxes. “Jacz was Nancy Beanie’s maiden name.”

  “How do you know that?” asked Bootsie, impressed.

  “I recall when she married Jasper Beanie, people joked that she’d gone from Jack’s to the Beanstalk – a play on her names.”

  “Are you saying Nan Beanie has an apartment here?” Lizzie asked.

  “Maybe it’s a love nest,” said Bootsie, back to her theory that Nan Beanie and the former mayor had something romantic going.

  “Henry owns the building,” Maddy agreed. “It would’ve been simple to set aside a room for himself and his lady friend.”

  “We think Nan’s in Canada,” Cookie mused. “But are you saying Henry could be hiding up there in Apartment 4?”

  “Let’s go look,” suggested Lizzie. This was almost as good as reading about Britney Spears in a supermarket tabloid.

  “Maybe we should be cautious,” Maddy said. “Stake the place out until we see him come in or go out.”

  “Why not just call Jim and have him come over with all his deputies?” Bootsie offered another approach.

  “He only has two deputies,” Lizzie pointed out. “Not exactly an army.”

  “That’s three counting Jim, How many is it going to take to arrest a puny little guy like Henry Caruthers.”

  “We should make sure he’s here before we call Jim and his deputies,” advised Maddy. “It would be embarrassing if it turned out to be a false alarm.”

  “I think Maddy’s right,” said Cookie. “Henry may not be in there right now. If Jim pulls up with siren blaring, it could scare him away. We might never see that little weasel again.”

  “Good riddance,” offered Lizzie.

  “Yes, but Henry’s the one who can explain this mystery to us.”

  “Okay, but I’m not going to hide in the bushes waiting for Henry to show up. I don’t even go camping with Edgar if I can avoid it.”

  “We’ll park the car up the street,” suggested Maddy. “We can keep an eye on the front door from there.”

  “What if I have to go to the bathroom,” Lizzie hesitated. She had a weak bladder, all her friends knew that.

  “The Exxon station’s one block over,” Maddy reassured her. “They keep their restrooms nice and clean.”

  “I hope this doesn’t take all day,” grumbled Cookie. “I have a hair appointment at three-thirty.” Now that she was married to Ben Bentley, she’d been pay
ing more attention to her looks. Her naturally gray locks looked good in a frosty shade of blonde.

  “You hair looks fine.”

  “I can’t cancel my appointment. My hairdresser was supposed to have today off, but I talked her into coming in this afternoon.”

  “Okay,” capitulated Maddy. “We’ll keep watch ’til three o’clock. If he doesn’t show up by then, we’ll turn the matter over to Chief Purdue.”

  ≈≈≈

  At precisely 3 p.m. Henry Caruthers strolled down the sidewalk and entered the rooming house. Maddy had her hand on the ignition, ready to call it a day when Cookie pointed and said, “There he is!”

  “Goodness, you were right,” Bootsie admitted. “Now let’s call Jim to come arrest him.”

  “Why don’t we go talk with him first,” proposed Maddy. “I’d like to hear what he has to say.”

  “What if he tries to get away?”

  “Or gets violent?”

  “There are four of us,” said Maddy. “I don’t think he’ll try anything with all of us there.”

  “Let’s hope you’re right,” muttered Lizzie. “I haven’t been in a fight since high school.”

  “You were in a fight?”

  “A girl said my red hair made me look like Bozo the Clown. I decked her.”

  “No kidding? You knocked her down?”

  Lizzie giggled. “Knocked her down and poured a bottle of ink over her head. I got two days suspension. I’m surprised you don’t remember.”

  Bootsie said, “I once got suspended for turning on the gas in the Bunsen burner before chemistry class began. When ol’ Mr. Pinkus struck a match to light it, there was this explosion that took off his eyebrows.”

  “I remember that,” Cookie laughed. “You got kicked out for two weeks. And your mother wouldn’t let you go to the prom.”

  “Just as well. I didn’t have a date. Jim took Judy Jankowitz, as I recall.”

  “Didn’t Judy marry a doctor?”

  “A veterinarian. Almost the same thing.”

  Maddy glared at her friends. “Are we going to talk with Henry Caruthers, or sit here and reminisce about high school?” She knew they were stalling, probably nervous about confronting a criminal on the lam.

  “Oh piffle, I guess we’re going to go nab ol’ Henry,” sighed Cookie Bentley, knowing she was likely to miss her hair appointment.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Henry on the Spot

  Knock! Knock!

  “Who’s there?” came the former mayor’s squeaky voice.

  “It’s Maddy Madison. Don’t bother climbing out the window, Henry. The building’s surrounded by cops,” she lied.

  “Dang.”

  “Open up. It’s not polite to keep guests standing in the hallway.”

  She heard the deadbolt lock turning. “Come on in, if you insist,” the voice invited. “I want to hear how you found me.”

  “Nan told me,” she responded blithely. Liar, liar, pants on fire!

  “Dang,” he repeated. “I can’t believe she turned me in after all we’ve meant to each other.”

  The door swung open. Henry Caruthers stared at the four women standing on his doorstep. “See you didn’t come alone. Where are the cops?”

  “Outside.”

  “Oh well, I knew this wasn’t going to work out. This town’s too small to hide out here forever. Somebody was bound to spot me sooner or later.”

  “As it turned out, sooner.”

  “I left you a note saying I didn’t steal that quilt,” he frowned at Maddy. “That’s the Lord’s truth. It was all Lydia Lazynski’s doing.”

  “Holly Eberhard’s mother?” Maddy threw Holly’s name out there to gauge his reaction. He didn’t blink.

  “Yeah, Lydia’s my aunt. That ol’ witch is the one who snatched that stupid quilt and substituted her daughter’s handiwork.”

  That made some sense, Maddy thought. Lydia Lazynski had access to her daughter’s quilt trunk, stored there in her guest bedroom. “That’s your story?” replied Maddy as if she didn’t believe a word of it. “Surely you can do better than that.”

  “It’s the truth. Didn’t I tell you so in that note?”

  Maddy sat down in an easy chair. She recognized it as the brand made at the chair factory on the other side of town. “Your note wasn’t long on detail.”

  “Like I say, Lydia did it. She saw those copies Holly was doing, then read in the Gazette about them Pennington quilts being exhibited during Watermelon Days. All she had to do was swap ’em.”

  “That’s a pretty story. But how did she get the keys?”

  “From me. But it wasn’t like you think. Nan let me snatch those keys so I could get into Beau’s office. There were some papers in the filing cabinet I needed to get my hands on. A few contributions from land developers that might have been embarrassing.”

  “Proof of your kickbacks,” translated Cookie.

  “Call it what you like. I went over to Lydia’s for dinner one night. I think she stole the keys outta my coat pocket. Or maybe I dropped ’em. Them keys were tagged, didn’t take a genius to figure out which doors they opened.”

  “If you and Nan Beanie weren’t in this together, why did she run?” pressed Bootsie. You could tell she wasn’t buying his story easily.

  “Guess you’ve figured out she was my girlfriend. This apartment’s where we’d meet after hours. She knew about those, uh, contributions from developers. That’s why she helped me get the keys. When you found out about her doing that, she was afraid she’d get arrested for being in on those little financial transactions.”

  “Why didn’t she just take those papers out of the files for you?” asked Maddy.

  “Your husband didn’t let her into that big filing cabinet in his office. No telling what he was hiding in there.”

  “He stores his lunch in there. I pack him a brown bag after day.”

  Henry glanced at the window. “Are the cops really out there?”

  “Don’t even think about running,” warned Bootsie. “Jim will shoot you down like a dog.”

  “I was just asking.”

  Lizzie had a question. “If you and Nan weren’t in on the plan to steal the quilt, how come she bought bus tickets to Indy and rented a hotel room there?”

  “Surely a woman of the world like you, Lizzie Ridenour, can figure that out. We were going to Indy for a romantic weekend. Can’t very well take her out on the town here in Caruthers Corners. Tongues would be wagging.”

  “Oh yeah?” said Cookie. “How do you explain that fence?”

  “What fence? You mean the picket fence I installed at my house on Field Hand Road?”

  “No, I mean that man Kramer who was going to help you sell the stolen quilt.”

  “Robert Kramer? Ha! He’s Nan’s brother. Changed his name from Jacz so he wouldn’t sound so Slavic. Said he got it off some TV show.”

  “Seinfeld.”

  “Who?”

  “Why did he go to Canada?”

  “He accompanied Nan to Vancouver ’cause she was afraid to travel alone.”

  “I heard he wasn’t coming back,” said Maddy.

  “Who knows? He’s been wanting to retire for years. Man’s in his late sixties. Nan was the baby in the family.”

  “They’re from Canada?” asked Cookie. “I though Nan grew up in Caruthers Corners.”

  “Family moved here when she was five. Kramer was fourteen. Another brother, the first-born, stayed behind in Vancouver. Still up there, I’m told.”

  “All this is a pretty story,” challenged Maddy. “But I’d like to see you prove it.”

  “I don’t have to. Send Jim Purdue over to talk with Lydia. Tell her you got the goods on her and she’ll crumble quicker’n a granola bar.”

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Confession Is Good for the Soul

  Lydia Lazynski was a mousy woman, hardly the image you’d expect of a master criminal. And you would be stretching the point to call her that. S
he was more of a criminal opportunist, someone who stole when the occasion presented itself.

  Her biggest score in the past was taking $46.27 from the tithing box at that church with the pointed spire over on Second Street – Our Savior of Souls. Another time she’d filched a $10 bill that had been left as a tip at the Cozy Café. So the idea of stealing a $40,000 quilt stitched by Sarah Connors Pennington wasn’t included in her Master Plans. The opportunity to do so simply fell into place when her daughter showed up with those replicas.

  She knew something about quilts, her daughter being State Quilting Bee Champion and all. But it took her daughter’s getting a commission to make duplicates of the Pennington quilts and that old fool of a cousin dropping his keys to the Town Hall to provide her with the unexpected means to pull a switcheroo.

  As a matter of fact, she’d intended to switch all three replicas, one by one, giving her a haul totaling better than a hundred grand. Even if she sold them for half that amount, it would provide a nice little nest egg for her retirement. It was becoming clear that her spoiled daughter wasn’t going to take care of Lydia in her old age.

  Holly was much too wrapped up in her own success as Quilting Queen to think about others. Narcissistic and egocentric. Wasn’t that why her husband was dumping her? She’d been a selfish child and was now a selfish adult, in her mother’s opinion.

  Trick would be getting these authentic quilts away from Holly after the switches were made. It’d have to happen before her daughter went back to Bloomington, for once the replicas were completed they would be shipped off to the Smithsonian. With two of the three already finished, the clock was ticking.

  Tonight, while her daughter was attending that Watermelon Days meeting, Lydia planned to go down to the Town Hall, keys jangling in her purse, and swap a second quilt, the one with that blue-sky white-cloud design. She carefully took Holly’s copycat quilt out of the storage trunk and spread it out on the bed. Looking at it, she had to admit her daughter was talented.