The Underhanded Stitch (Quilters Club Mysteries)

by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell

  Tige kept stopping to check his smell-mail, leaving messages of his own. Maddy was amazed the little fur ball had that much liquid in him. “Come along, doggy. No dawdling,” she urged. But Tige didn’t move unless Agnes gave a tiny tug on his leash.

  “Here we are,” announced Cookie, bending down to place a bouquet of yellow flowers on a plot marked as:

  Robert ALFRED Brown

  Loving Husband and Father

  May Angels Fly

  You to Heaven

  On Golden Wings

  “Wow!” said Agnes. “Your husband’s in there?”

  “No, honey. Just his mortal remains. Bob’s in Heaven sitting at the right hand of God.”

  “You mean he’s got a box seat?”

  “Something like that,” Cookie replied, quickly changing the subject. “Here, help me arrange these flowers in the vase.”

  Agnes knew what she meant, even though she pronounced vase like “face,” while Agnes’ father had taught her to say vase like “roz.” She knelt down to fluff at the pretty yellow petals, forgetting to hold onto the leash.

  “Tige, come back here,” called Maddy when she noticed the dog take off after a squirrel, heading down the hill toward an older part of the cemetery.

  “Tige!” Agnes took up the call.

  Cookie just stood there with her hands on her hips, still exasperated over the dog’s presence in the first place. Wasn’t that sign on the gate clear enough?

  Maddy and her granddaughter gave chase, calling the dog’s name as they ran down the hill, dodging tombstones and jumping over graves. “Tige, Tige!”

  Before they knew it, the pair found themselves in the oldest section of the cemetery, the dates on the rough-hewn stones predating Pleasant Glade by a hundred years. There were more crypts here, and a scattering of mausoleums that looked like a village for the dead. “Yipes,” said Agnes as she scooped up her dog. “We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto.” She’d seen a rerun of Wizard of Oz just last week on TV.

  The dog wriggled free, leaping to the ground and heading toward a stone edifice markedMADISON over the doorway. Time had rotted the wooden doorframe, causing one of the hinges to sag and creating a crack about the size of a doggie door. Tige disappeared inside like a mouse taking to its hole in a baseboard. “Tige – ” came Agnes’ plaintive cry as she stared into the dark fissure.

  “My goodness,” said Maddy. “This is my husband’s great-great grandfather’s mausoleum. I came here with him for a memorial service one Easter. It’s a spooky old place.”

  “I’ll say,” agreed Agnes, eyes the size of silver dollars.

  “We should get back up the hill. Cookie will be unhappy that we upset her visit with Bob.”

  “But what about my dog?”

  “Tige will find his way back up the hill. He won’t stray for long.”

  “Grammy, I don’t like him being inside that old stone building. What if a ghost gets him?”

  Maddy patted the girl reassuringly on the shoulder. “There’s no such thing as ghosts, Aggie.”

  “What about Cookie’s husband Bob? Isn’t he a ghost now? Fluttering about up in Heaven like a cloud?”

  “I’m not sure where Bob Brown is residing. He had a wild side to him. The man might be vacationing in a hotter climate, for all I know.”

  Agnes giggled, recognizing her grandmother’s words as a joke. “Don’t tell Cookie that. She might phone up God to ask Him how her husband’s doing.”

  “That would be a long distance call,” laughed Maddy. “Cookie’s too tight with a penny to accept that kind of phone bill.”

  “I’m crawling in there to get Tige,” announced the girl. “He might have fallen into a coffin or something.”

  “No, that’s too dangerous.”

  “I’m not leaving my dog, Grammy. I’ve lost my daddy, I’m not gonna lose Tige too!”

  “Hold on, I’ll go fetch him. You stay out here, okay?”

  Agnes nodded.

  Fishing inside her oversized handbag, Maddy found a tiny Mag-Lite that she used for finding the lock on the front door whenever she and Beau had been out late at the movies. She clicked it on, pointed the bright laser-like beam, and then clamored through the crack at the base of the door. “Heaven help me, this is insane,” Agnes heard her grandmother mutter as she disappeared inside the mausoleum.

  There was a nervous moment when Maddy feared she might become stuck, her rump too wide for the narrow opening. Too bad she hadn’t been more faithful to that South Beach Diet she’d tried last summer. But with a plop! she pushed her way into the dark interior of the mausoleum and scrambled to her feet.

  The musty smell made her nose twitch. She thought she heard water dripping. Something scurried in the corner – a rat or the wayward dog? Oh my, was she crazy for doing this? Indiana Jones had not been one of her favorite movies, despite the home-state name. She didn’t have the adventurous fortitude to be a tomb raider, she assured herself.

  “Here, Tige. Nice doggie,” she called to the dark. However, her pencil-thin flashlight beam couldn’t make out any familiar shapes.

  “Arf!”

  She turned the light toward the bark, spotlighting Tige sitting atop a moldy casket – Colonel Madison’s final abode no doubt. But what was that next to the dog? A man’s head?

  “Oh my,” Maddy gasped. There, bronze gleaming in the light of her Mag-Lite, was none other than the missing bust of Colonel Beauregard Hollingsworth Madison.

  Chapter Nine

  Finder of Lost Objects

  “Congratulations,” said the police chief as he posed for a photograph with Maddy Madison. “You gals found the danged statue.” The picture would run on the front page of Caruthers Corners Gazette, the town’s weekly newspaper. “Who would’ve thought to look for it in the cemetery?”

  Not Maddy – but she wasn’t about to give all the glory to a wandering dog. Take credit when you can get it, she told herself.

  Agnes and Tige were in the picture too, standing between Maddy and Chief Jim Purdue. Enough credit to go around, she supposed, although the police chief hadn’t really had a hand in the bronze bust’s recovery.

  “How’d you know the thief hid the goods in that tomb?” asked Beau on their way home from the ceremony returning the Colonel’s head to its marble pedestal.

  “Just a lucky guess,” she said, cutting her eyes to Agnes to signal their shared secret.

  “Question remains, who stole it?” Beau continued, eyes on the road.

  “Why, dear, you did.”

  “W-what?” Her husband nearly ran the Buick off the road.

  “That’s right, but it will remain our family secret. Won’t it, Aggie?”

  “Yes, Grammy. Mum’s the word.”

  “Why would I steal my own forefather’s bust?” sputtered Beau, regaining control of the big gas-guzzler.

  “Because you wanted to replace it with a full-sized marble statue. A bigger honor for the Colonel.”

  “Uh, how did you know?” he asked sheepishly.

  “Most of it was guesswork. But it was a clue when I found a receipt from a sculptor in Chicago and noticed that you’d withdrawn twelve thousand dollars from our joint savings account.”

  ≈≈≈

  “What about the size fourteen footprint?” asked Agnes. A precocious child, as it turned out. “Who did that belong to?”

  “That’s still a mystery, my dear. Beau swears he didn’t have any help in filching the bronze bust.”

  “Do you believe him?”

  “Well, he is my husband.”

  “Yes, Grammy. But do you believe him?”

  “No, Aggie, I don’t. That bronze bust is too heavy for one man to carry. And Beau has a bad back. He can hardly pick up the newspaper. And Gazette’s been pretty thin lately.”

  “Then who?”

  “Has to be Ben Bentley. Of the three men with size fourteen feet, Tall Paul and Denny had alibis. That leaves Ben.”

  “Why do you think Grampy’s protecting
Mr. Bentley?”

  Maddy thought about it for a moment. “Beau’s always been one to stick up for his friends. But I suspect it was something more than that.”

  “What?” Agnes was leaning forward, hanging onto every word, like someone listening to ghost stories around a campfire.

  “Beats me. But there’s something else. I haven’t told anyone this yet – not Cookie or Bootsie or Lizzie – not even your mom – but I found something inside that bronze bust when I came across it there in the mausoleum. At first I tried to pick up the bust, but it was much too heavy. My efforts only succeeded in making something inside it rattle. So I tilted the ol’ thing forward just enough to get my hand inside and there I found it – a ring.”

  “A ring?”

  “This ring,” said Maddy, opening her fist to reveal a golden circlet with a ruby-red stone.

  “It’s pretty,” breathed her granddaughter, bending closer to examine the ring. “Does it belong to Grampy?”

  “Maybe, by rights of inheritance. I suspect this was Colonel Beauregard Madison the First’s ring. I’ve heard Cookie talk about it, a souvenir taken off his dead body by one Ferdinand Jinks – the outcast town founder.”

  “But if Mr. Jinks stole the ring, how did it get in the head of that bronze statue?” Young Agnes exhibited a sense of logic that proved beyond any doubt that she and Maddy Madison shared the same DNA structure.

  “Hm, good question.”

  “So the mystery isn’t solved!”

  “No, not quite yet,” said Maddy.

  Chapter Ten

  Just the Man for Heavy Lifting

  Maddy Madison was a fine looking woman at 58. Even Lizzie, the most critical of her friends, said she had “aged well.” Maddy’s hair was still a light brown – thank you, Lady Clairol – and her complexion was smooth. Thankfully she’d never smoked and was careful to get a full eight hours sleep each night.

  That’s why she wasn’t particularly surprised when Benjamin Bentley gave her a compliment: “I always thought Beau married one of the prettiest ladies in the county,” he said as he served her a sweaty glass of ice tea along with a slice of gingerbread.

  Ben had never married. He shared the sprawling two-story farmhouse with his maiden sister. Looked like the Bentley lineage was coming to a halt with him and Becky.

  Becky Bentley had baked the pan of gingerbread just that afternoon and it was as tasty as it was fresh. She could be heard fussing about in the kitchen while Maddy sat on the front porch with Ben.

  “What a nice thing to say,” she accepted the man’s compliment, knowing it wasn’t meant to be forward. “But Cookie was the homecoming queen, not me, if you’ll recall.”

  “Yessum, I do. Always had a crush on her, but Bobby Brown was in line ahead of me.”

  “Bob’s gone,” she reminded the huge man. “Maybe you ought to invite Cookie over for dinner some night.”

  “Aw, it’s too late for me and her. I’m just an old bachelor, set in my ways.” He nodded toward the house where his sister busied herself in the kitchen. “Besides, Becky’s dependent on me. This is the only life she’s ever known.”

  “Becky’s a strong woman.”

  “Well, I s’pose.”

  “I have to ask you a question, Ben. Don’t mean for you to betray any confidences, but I’m aware that you helped my husband carry off that bust of Colonel Madison and hide it in his tomb.”

  “How come you didn’t tell that to Chief Purdue?”

  “The statue was returned – no harm, no foul.”

  “That’s true. And it weren’t like Beau didn’t donate it to the town in the first place.” He took a sip of his tea before continuing. “So what’s your question, Maddy?”

  “I found something inside that old bronze head. Guess I want to know how it got there.”

  Ben Bentley glanced at Maddy’s granddaughter, silently munching on a slice of gingerbread as she listened to the grownup talk. “All right to talk in front of little missy?” he asked cautiously.

  “Mr. Bentley, I probably know more about this mystery than you do,” responded the girl. Not particularly fond of being referred to as “little missy.”

  “No offense. I’m just trying to be – what’s the word? – discreet.”

  “That you are, Ben,” said Maddy, leaning forward to pat his massive arm. “But let’s not stray from the point.”

  “You wanna know about the ring, right?”

  “Exactly. Last I heard, Ferdinand Jinks had stolen the ring from the Colonel as he lay in his coffin.”

  “True, as far as the legend goes,” nodded the squat man.

  “Then how did you come by it?”

  “Not me, your husband. Quite frankly, ma’am, I’m surprised you’re talking to me instead of him.”

  That stopped her. “Beau had the ring?”

  “That’s right. And he stuck it in that old metal head right ’fore we sealed it up in the tomb. Dunno why.”

  Maddy finished off her tea. “One last question, Ben. Then we’ll be on our way. How did my husband get you involved in this little escapade? I don’t recall you and him being particularly close friends.”

  “No, ma’am. I’ve only come to befriend Beauregard in the last few months, though I attended Caruthers High with both-a you’s. As I recall, you and me had algebra together.”

  “Yes, I remember. You sat behind Cookie.”

  “That was so I could admire her from afar.”

  “You really should give her a call.”

  “Aw, I’m too busy, what with the farm and on the weekends I’m a voluntary ambulance driver with Caruthers Corners Fire and Rescue. Don’t have much spare time.”

  “Be that as it may, Ben. You still haven’t answered my question about how you got mixed up in all this.”

  “Simple answer. Your husband needed some heavy lifting. And when I came into Ace Hardware to buy some wood screws he remembered I’d been weightlifting champion two years in a row back when we were in high school.”

  “I’d forgotten that. You set a state record, now that I think back.”

  “Been broken since. But I was a right brawny guy back then.”

  “Those size fourteen feet certainly prove you’re still no lightweight.”

  “Feel bad about tracking mud into the Town Hall. We’d been down to the Colonel’s tomb to pry the door open. Broke one-a the hinges doing it. It’s pretty muddy after a rainfall down in that part of the cemetery.”

  “And you don’t know how my husband got the ring?”

  “Nary a clue.”

  Chapter Eleven

  Guilty As Charged

  Beauregard Madison IV was not thrilled at having to face his wife that night. She had every reason to be upset with him. He’d fibbed to her, committed a crime (of sorts), and spent $12,000 of their retirement funds without consulting her. All this was totally unlike the Pooh Bear she’d been married to for nearly forty years.

  “Honey, I’m home,” he called. That line from countless TV sitcoms, Father Knows Best to Leave It to Beaver. It had been good for many laughs over the years, but Maddy wasn’t even smiling when she met him in the living room.

  “Sit down, Beau. We need to talk.”

  “Yes, dear. I know.”

  “Tilly took Aggie to the movies. A new Disney film about a princess.”

  “Look, what I did was wrong – ” he began weakly.

  “You mean stealing the statue? Or lying to me about it?”

  “I didn’t exactly lie. I just played dumb when you got caught up in playing Murder She Wrote.”

  That irked her. She looked nothing like Angela Lansbury. The woman was twenty years older than her. “I understand what you were trying to do. You wanted to honor your great-great grandfather with a bigger statue, but you knew Mayor Caruthers wouldn’t accept a second one. So you had to get rid of the first statue. You got Ben Bentley to help you haul it off in the dead of night, stashing it in the family mausoleum. Meanwhile, you had a sculptor in Chic
ago chipping away on a marble replica of that old hornswoggler as a replacement.”

  “Guilty as charged.”

  “Now tell me about the ring.” She tossed it onto the coffee table with a ka-thunk!

  “I wondered what happened to that. It wasn’t inside the bronze bust when Chief Purdue hauled it back to the Town Hall.”

  “No, because I took it. But the question is, how did you come to have it? Cookie says that Ferdinand Jinks stole it back in the eighteen hundreds, his revenge for being kicked out of the town he helped found.”

  “Well, he did burn down the Town Hall,” her husband pointed out.

  “Don’t evade the question.”

  “Sorry. I bought it from Tall Paul. You know he was a descendant of Jinks. The ring had been passed down father to son.”

  “I thought he was related on his mother’s side.”

  “True. They had to make an exception there. His mother was an only child, no brothers to get the ring.”

  “Why did you hide the ring inside the bust?”

  “Stashing it away. I was planning on donating it to the Historical Society when the new statue got erected.”

  Maddy sighed. “Tell me this, how much did you pay Tall Paul for the ring?”

  “A thousand dollars.”

  “I’m afraid you got gypped, Pooh Bear. This ring is a fake.”

  Chapter Twelve

  History’s Mystery

  The next day was Tuesday, the regularly scheduled meeting of the Quilter’s Club. It was a tossup as to whether Agnes was more excited over starting on her quilt or reporting on their sleuthing.

  “Hi, Aggie,” waved Cookie.

  “Ready to start on your quilt now that you’ve done so much practicing on your stitches?” asked Lizzie.

  “Sure.”

  “After that, maybe you can solve another mystery,” teased Bootsie. She’d seen the picture in the Gazette – her husband and Maddy, Aggie and that cute little dog.