The Underhanded Stitch (Quilters Club Mysteries)

by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell

  “Grammy did most of the work solving the case,” Agnes beamed at her grandmother.

  Maddy waved away the praise. “My husband turned himself in,” she insisted. “Confessed everything to Jim Purdue.”

  “Yes, after you confronted him.” Bootsie pointed out. Being married to the police chief, she had an inside track on such matters.

  “I wanna work on my quilt,” said Agnes, not very interested in the finer points of who did what to whom.

  “Come over to the table here with the pieces of fabric you picked out. I’m going to show you how to measure and cut out your squares so that they will all be exactly the same size,” volunteered Lizzie.

  “Do I use the lines on this plastic matt?”

  “That’s right, honey. This is a measuring and cutting mat. Use the inch marks on the mat to lay out your fabric. Then use this ruler and tailor’s chalk to draw your cutting lines. Let’s make each square six inches on each side. This will be easier to finish and you can hang this on a wall in your bedroom when you’re done.”

  “Neat-o.”

  “Are you angry with Beau?” Bootsie asked her friend. Unable to let the subject go.

  “Not really. Beau’s intentions were good, but he got carried away.”

  “So you’re going to forgive and forget?”

  “He was just trying to aggrandize that stupid old ancestor of his,” Maddy shrugged off her friend’s concern. “No big deal.”

  “Yes, but he committed a crime. Not to mention that he lied to you!”

  “Your husband is overlooking the crime, so why shouldn’t I forgive the lie?”

  “Jim and Beau are buds.”

  “Well, Beau and I are a bit more than that.”

  That was logic Bootsie couldn’t refute. She zipped her lip and concentrated on stitching a straight seam. Easier said than done.

  Cookie was still curious about the details. “How did you know the Colonel’s ring was a fake?” she asked.

  “Grammy took it to a jeweler,” Agnes spoke up. “He told her the ruby was really a piece of red glass.”

  “Gems Galore on North Main,” amplified Maddy. “I was simply hoping he could confirm that it was old, from the eighteen hundreds. You can imagine my surprise when he asked me if I found it in a Cracker Jacks box.”

  “So is Jim going to arrest Tall Paul for fraud, selling fake rings as family heirlooms?” asked Cookie.

  Bootsie shook her head. “Beau refuses to press charges, so Tall Paul gets a free pass – ”

  “ – and gets to keep the thousand dollars,” added Lizzie.

  “There’s that,” Maddy admitted.

  “Is it true Beau paid twelve grand for a stone statue of Colonel Madison?” asked Cookie. Her quilt was nearing completion, so she could stop to talk without missing a stitch.

  Maddy winced. “I’m afraid so. Let’s hope it rivals Michelangelo’s David.”

  “What will he do with it?” Lizzie wanted to know. “I heard Mayor Caruthers has turned it down as a gift for the town square.”

  “So I’m told. My guess is that it will wind up in our backyard overlooking the goldfish pond.”

  “Really,” said Cookie. “What a shame.”

  “Hmph, I’d rather have new kitchen countertops,” snorted Bootsie. Not exactly an art afficinado.

  “Me, I’d take a new car,” said Lizzie. “One of those Japanese SUV’s.”

  “It’s not like I get a choice,” laughed Maddy. “The money has already been spent. On a marble statue. Not kitchen counters or SUV’s or even mink coats.”

  “Mink coats are out,” said her granddaughter. “PETA members would march naked down Main Street if you got one.”

  “I doubt there are many PETA members in Caruthers Corners,” observed Bootsie. “Too many hunters in these parts.”

  “Don’t worry,” Maddy assured them. “We will never see the day when my husband coughs up the money it takes to buy a mink coat.”

  “I haven’t priced one lately,” said Cookie. “But I’ll bet they cost less than twelve grand.”

  “Touché,” said Maddy.

  “Can somebody tell me if I cut this square out OK?”

  “That looks great, honey. Now start cutting your other eight squares. Then I’ll show you how to prepare the seams before you start sewing them together. It takes a little time, but it’ll be worth it when your quilt is finished.

  “Thanks, Lizzie.”

  “If Tall Paul sold Beau a fake ring, does that mean he still has the real one?” mused Cookie.

  “Who knows,” said Maddy.

  “Who cares,” added Bootsie.

  Little Agnes looked up from her cutting. “The Quilter’s Club should care,” she declared.

  That got Maddy’s attention. “Why, Aggie?”

  “The mystery isn’t solved until we find out.”

  “No, dear,” contradicted Bootsie Purdue. “We set out to find who stole the Colonel’s bronze bust. Turns out, your grandpa did it.”

  “Not that he meant anything bad by it,” Cookie hastened to amend.

  “But we’ve turned up an even older mystery. What happened to the Colonel’s ruby ring that old Mister Jingo stole.”

  “Jinks, dear. It was Ferdinand Aloysius Jinks.”

  “So where is it – the ring, that is?”

  “Probably in Paul Johnson’s sock drawer,” Bootsie tried to make light of it.

  “I think Aggie’s right,” Cookie Brown spoke up. “The mystery of what happened to Colonel Beauregard Madison’s ring has never been solved. We owe it to history to find it and return it to its rightful owner.”

  “My husband?” said Maddy. “He’s the Colonel’s last living descendant.”

  “No,” said a tiny voice – Agnes. “I am.”

  Chapter Thirteen

  Toe Jam

  Tall Pall Johnson was taken aback to find four ladies and a girl at his front door. “I hope you don’t mind,” smiled Maddy Madison. “We dropped by to see how your toe was healing.”

  “My toe?” He seemed to have forgotten his “lawnmower accident.” No sign of crutches or bandages on his left foot.

  “Yes, you told my husband that you’d hurt it while mowing the lawn,” said Bootsie.

  “Oh, that. Perhaps I exaggerated slightly. More like I stubbed it.”

  “We brought you this nice pot of soup, thinking you couldn’t get around well enough to cook for yourself,” said Cookie, holding up a covered aluminum container.

  “As you can see, that wasn’t necessary. Besides, my wife’s pretty handy in the kitchen.”

  “Here’s the soup anyway,” said Lizzie. “May we come in?”

  It would have been rude to say no, so the giant reluctantly opened the screen door and allowed them to enter. First thing Maddy noticed when they stepped into the living room was the magnificent hand-stitched patchwork quilt hanging over the mantle. The design seemed to be based on Caruthers Corners. She could recognize the familiar landmarks of the town square, the church with its tall spire, the fire station at the end of Main Street, and the old Town Hall.

  “How lovely,” she admired the handiwork.

  “A family heirloom,” muttered Tall Paul. “The only thing handed down on the Jinks side of the tree.”

  “What about the Colonel’s ruby ring?” Cookie got straight to the point. “You claimed you had it when you sold a fake to Maddy’s husband.”

  “Wasn’t the Colonel’s ring in the first place,” the man corrected her. “It belonged to my great-great grandpappy.”

  “Whatever,” Maddy brushed his words aside. No point in arguing. “Fact remains, you sold a fake to my husband.”

  Tall Paul looked embarrassed. “True enough. I never did have that doggone ring. Only heard tales of it when I was a li’l child. My granny used to say the ruby was buried beneath the Town Hall – but she was an old woman, half-crazy at the time. Don’t s’pect it’ll ever be found.”

  “So why did you swindle my husband?” Maddy
asked point blank.

  “Greed, ain’t no other word for it. Beauregard wanted that ring real bad. And when he offered me a thousand dollars, I just couldn’t turn it down. So I sold him a trinket I’d won at the county fair back in ’96. That was the year I met my wife.”

  Everyone hereabouts knew the story, how Tall Paul fell in love with the sideshow tattooed lady and married her in a ceremony right there on the midway. They had toured for a season or two as a couple, him a 7’ giant, and her an example of illustrated skin art. Their traveling came to an end when Emma Johnson developed diabetes and had to retire for health reasons. So she and Tall Paul settled down in this comfortable little house on Easy Chair Lane.

  “Buried under the Town Hall?” repeated Lizzie.

  “Hm, your great-great grandfather burned down the Town Hall,” said Maddy, working on the puzzle. “Maybe he buried the ring on the site before it was rebuilt.”

  “No, that couldn’t be right,” interjected Cookie, the historian of the group. “The Colonel didn’t pass away until just after the new Town Hall was completed. And legend has it Jinks stole the ring off him while he was laid out at his wake.”

  “That’s right,” murmured Bootsie. “The old Town Hall was a wooden structure, but they rebuilt it out of bricks so it wouldn’t burn so easily next time.”

  “But there was never a next time,” said Tall Paul Johnson. “Ferdinand Jinks was killed in a freak electrical storm just a few years after the new Town Hall was built.”

  “God’s punishment,” said Cookie.

  “So what about the ring being buried beneath the Town Hall?” interjected Bootsie.

  “A crazy story,” said Lizzie, her red hair flaming about her face in the sunlight from the window. “It just proves that Paul’s granny was senile like he says.”

  ≈≈≈

  At dinner that night Tilly made an announcement: “It’s official. Mark’s suing for custody of Agnes. He says he has no choice since I won’t bring her home. I told him ‘why would I bring her home to a father who is too important to ever have a minute to spend with his family!’”

  “But I don’t wanna go back to California!” the girl exploded. “I wanna stay here with you and Grammy and Grampy. Why can’t daddy come here instead?” Quite a change of opinion transpiring in the past two weeks.

  “There, there. You’re not going anywhere,” said Beauregard. But his promise sounded hollow to everyone at the table.

  “We’ll get you a good lawyer,” said Maddy. “Fight him.”

  Beau nodded. “I’ll call Bartholomew Dingley. He’ll take the case.”

  “No, Bartholomew’s closing his law practice next month.”

  “Why do that?” puzzled Beau. “He has plenty of clients.”

  “Dear, he’s eighty years old. Give him a break.”

  “Oh.”

  “Don’t worry, Tilly. We’ll find you a lawyer. They have plenty of sharks like Mark down in Indianapolis.”

  “Mom, I already have a good lawyer. Trouble is, Mark’s got lots more money than I have to spend on depositions and interrogatories and motions for summary judgment.”

  “Half of his money is yours,” opined Beau. Not quite sure about the legal status of assets in California.

  “You once told us he made over two hundred thousand dollars a year,” Maddy reminded her daughter. She was confounded by all this legal wrangling. Why couldn’t couples split up on friendly terms? Aggie needed a daddy even if he had turned out to be a selfish scoundrel.

  “Oh he makes a lot more than two hundred thousand when you count in all those bonuses the partners get. But his accountant is claiming heavy expenses.”

  “Mercy, what’s this world coming to?” exclaimed Beau. “I only take home forty thousand after expenses at the hardware store and we live well enough on that.”

  Maddy wasn’t about to cite the heavy expenses of hiring a sculptor to create a life-size marble statue of a man who got rich swindling Indians out of their rightful land. “Pass the butter,” she said instead.

  ≈≈≈

  The next day while mother and daughter were shopping for the week’s provisions at the Food Lion, Maddy casually asked, “What exactly was the trouble between you and Mark? Another woman?”

  “No, mom, nothing like that. It was his job. He works all the time, day, nights, weekends. Look up workaholic in the dictionary and you’ll see his picture.”

  “Oh my, your uncle Joel was like that. Dead at forty with a heart attack.”

  “I worry about Mark’s health. He has high blood pressure. Not exactly a trait you’d want in a high-pressure job like lawyering.”

  “Why so concerned about his health if he’s dumping you?”

  “Mom, I still love the big lug. Just not how he practices his profession. I was patient for a long time. But it never got better. He never had any time for Aggie and me – even when I begged him to consider what should be the most important part of his life.”

  Chapter Fourteen

  Tall Paul’s Granny

  A special meeting of the Quilter’s Club was called to order. Today’s agenda wasn’t fat quarters and fancy borders, but instead its members were concentrating on the mystery of the Colonel’s ruby ring. Maddy was there, along with Cookie, Bootsie, and Lizzie. And the club’s newest member – Agnes – was seated in the big rocking chair.

  “Here’s what we know,” began Maddy, ticking the facts off one-by-one on her fingers. “Three men founded the town of Caruthers Corners: Colonel Beauregard Madison, Jacob Caruthers, and Ferdinand Jinks. Jinks fell out of favor and retaliated by burning down the Town Hall. He was chased out of town, but returned upon the Colonel’s death to steal a ruby ring off his body. The ring has never been recovered. My husband tried to buy it from the last living descendant of Jinks, but it turned out to be a fake. Paul Johnson, the said descendant, says he never had the ring. He quotes his grandmother as saying the ring was buried beneath the Town Hall, but that can’t be right. The timing’s off.”

  “Pretty well sums it up,” nodded Cookie, taking notes. As secretary of the Historical Society, she was an inveterate record keeper.

  “Why did the three founders get mad at each other in the first place?” asked Agnes.

  “Good question,” said Bootsie. “Cookie, do you know?”

  “Yes, the Historical Society has Jacob Caruthers’ journal in its archives. According to Caruthers, it was a falling out over a woman. Seems that Colonel Madison married Jinks’ betrothed.”

  “I can see why Jinks might have been peeved,” said Lizzie. Always a bit of a femme fatale herself.

  “He was angry enough to burn down the Town Hall,” Bootsie agreed.

  “Yes, but why did he steal the Colonel’s ring?” asked Agnes, her curiosity having the clarity of a ten-year-old mind.

  “Hmm, I don’t know,” admitted Cookie.

  “Spite,” guessed Lizzie.

  “Maybe he was just mean,” tried Bootsie.

  “No, I think it wasn’t his ring to begin with,” said Maddy. “Remember, Tall Paul corrected us when we called it the Colonel’s ring. Maybe Ferdinand Jinks gave the ring to his sweetheart, but she kept it when she ran off with Beauregard Madison.”

  “Could be,” said Cookie. “Records show that Colonel Madison’s wife preceded him. Perhaps he kept the ring in remembrance of her, not knowing it had originally been Jinks’ ring.”

  “So Jinks was merely retrieving the ring he’d given his fiancée before she dumped him for another man,” Maddy summed it up.

  “Then it’s properly Tall Paul’s ring, not mine,” concluded Agnes, sounding disappointed.

  “That aside, where is the blasted ring?” said Lizzie, frustrated by all this speculation.

  “The only clue we have are the words of Tall Paul’s grandmother,” Cookie reminded her.

  “But she was senile,” Lizzie shot back.

  “Maybe, maybe not,” said Maddy.

  ≈≈≈

  “Your grandm
other – what exactly did she say?”

  “Huh?” said Tall Paul. He was surrounded by all the members of the Quilter’s Club, having been cornered on his porch as he came home from the Food Lion, his arms filled with groceries.

  “What were your grandmother’s exact words,” Maddy repeated as the women followed him into his living room.

  Paul Johnson screwed up his face to give it some thought. “She said that the ring was buried beneath the Town Hall,” he replied.

  “Are you sure those were her exact words,” insisted Maddy.

  The man stood two heads taller than the women who surrounded him. He balanced the supermarket shopping bags in his arms and recited: “Your great-great grandpappy’s ring lies beneath the Town Hall.”

  “You said ‘buried’ before,” little Agnes pointed out.

  “Just an expression,” the big man said as he sat his grocery bags on a table and turned to face this invading army. “Now that I think back on it, I’m pretty sure she said ‘lies beneath the Town Hall.’”

  “Plenty of lying going on here,” huffed Bootsie Purdue. As the police chief’s wife, she wasn’t a very trusting soul.

  “Hey now, I’m trying to help you out here. Make amends for gypping Maddy’s husband.”

  “You could try returning the thousand dollars,” said Maddy as she studied the beautiful quilt over the fireplace. She seemed fascinated by the stitching, running her hand over the surface as if tracing the shape of the Town Hall.

  “That money’s long gone,” replied Tall Paul. “My wife needed a gall bladder operation.”

  “Oh my,” said Cookie. “If we’d known, we would have baked her a pie or something.”

  “Bertha’s a private woman. All those years with the carnival, people gawking at her, turned her against folks. She hardly goes outta the house these days.”

  “Sorry to hear that,” said Lizzie. But you couldn’t be certain whether the redhead was being sincere or not.

  “Best we get home,” said Maddy, hand on the latch of the screen door. “Oops.”