“I’m surprised he would tell you that much about bank customers,” said Cookie.
“Edgar will tell me anything when I put on that red negligee that matches my hair and crook my little finger.”
Maddy laughed. “More likely, you agreed to let him take you on a fishing trip to Canada.”
“How’d you know that?”
“Your husband invited Beau and me to go along.”
≈≈≈
“Got it,” announced Bootsie.
“What?” said Lizzie. “A case of poison ivy?”
“No, silly. I’ve found out how the mayor pulled the ol’ switcheroo with Tall Paul’s quilt.”
“And – ” prodded Maddy.
“It seems the mayor borrowed the quilt to display in the Town Hall during the Centennial celebration. Not only was the quilt an award-winner, it depicted the town of Caruthers Corners. Well, at least its main buildings.”
“Why would Paul loan him a quilt with a ruby ring in it?” asked Lizzie.
“Remember, Paul didn’t know about the ring being in the quilt. When his granny told him the ring was beneath the Town Hall, he thought she was talking about the real building.”
“But how did the mayor know the ring was hidden in the quilt?” asked Agnes, trying to follow the details.
“He didn’t,” said her grandmother. “He really did borrow the quilt for the Centennial, but he felt a lump inside it when hanging it in the Town Hall. Opening it up, he found the ruby ring.”
“Why did he put the fake in the quilt?” Cookie wanted to know.
“He couldn’t be sure that Paul didn’t know the ring was there, so he took the one he’d bought for his Jacob Caruthers costume and swapped it for the real thing.”
“And the note?” asked Tilly. She and her husband had just put a down payment on that old Victorian on the town square where her mother had grown up.
“Mayor Caruthers has always been jealous of descendants of the other founders, afraid they would steal his limelight. He refused to let Beau put up a statue in honor of the Colonel. And he preferred Paul’s ancestor to remain in obscurity. Ferdinand Jinks has practically been erased from the history books. You see, the mayor’s a bitter man who couldn’t pass up the chance to taunt Jinks’ descendant that he had retrieved the ring. But as it turns out, Paul never found the note. We did.”
“All that theorizing is well and good,” said Ben Bentley who had accompanied Cookie to this meeting of the Quilter’s Club. “But how are you gonna get your hands on that ring in his safe deposit box?”
“That’s where Agnes and I come in,” said Maddy.
Chapter Twenty-Three
A Return Engagement
“You again,” said Tall Paul Johnson, not happy to see her.
Maddy stood her ground. “Oh I think you will want to hear what I have to say this time.”
“What makes you think that? I’m pretty busy here. My wife had a bad day on Sunday. Some kind of cleaning service showed up, but left before they finished. Then a dog got bumped by a car right in front of the house. Taken away by a real ambulance and everything. She’s not used to so much excitement. She’s in frail health, you know.”
“I know where the real ruby ring is.”
“Do tell?” His interest immediately captured. “Does your husband have it?”
“No, the man who stole it from you has it.”
“Stole it from me? I never really had it.”
“Yes, Paul, you did. It was right where your granny said it was – under the Town Hall – in you r quilt.”
He glanced over his shoulder at the patchwork quilt hanging over his mantle. “It’s in there?”
“It was.”
“Where is it now?” His eyes were squinted, studying her carefully to ascertain whether she was telling him the truth or not.
“Like I told you, in the possession of the man who stole it. But you can get it back.”
“How?”
“First, you have to hire a lawyer,” she instructed.
“I don’t know any lawyers,” said Paul. “Old man Dingley used to handle my matters, but he retired.”
“A new attorney is taking over his practice.”
“Oh, is he any good?”
Agnes couldn’t hold back. “My daddy’s the best lawyer in the whole wide world. Grammy says he’s a shark.”
“Well, now. Drumming up a little family business, are we?”
“Do you want to recover the ring?” said Maddy with an air of finality.
“Okay, what’ve I gotta do?”
≈≈≈
“One more thing,” said Maddy to her granddaughter. “Let’s go sit in on the town selectmen’s meeting. It should be just getting started.”
“Why, Grammy?”
“We want to see the mayor in action.”
“That sounds boring.”
“Maybe, but detective work takes patience. Just like quilt-making.”
They took a seat on the front row, a clear view of the podium. The small auditorium in the Town Hall was filled with long benches, deliberately uncomfortable so no one would be inclined to prolong the meetings.
“I’d like to call this session to order,” said Mayor Henry Caruthers, pounding the gavel with his left hand. “Today, we have a large agenda to cover. First up, a vote on whether the DQ’s sign is too large per town ordinance. Who’s going to speak on behalf of the Dairy Queen?”
“Time to go,” whispered Maddy, slipping out of her seat with the stealth of a ninja.
“Go? We just sat down,” hissed Agnes. “I wanna hear ’bout the Dairy Queen sign.”
“Come along, young lady. We got what we came to see.”
≈≈≈
“Henry Caruthers may be a weasel, but that doesn’t make him a thief,” observed Maddy’s husband. “What makes you so sure he stole the ring?”
“Trust me on this, Beau. I have my reasons.”
“Proof?”
“Sort of.”
“You can’t convict a man on ‘sort of’ proof. Ask your son-in-law if you don’t believe me.”
“Mark the Shark is going to help me nail Henry Caruthers,” she said matter-of-factly.
“So what proof do you have that the mayor’s guilty?”
“He’s bad at sewing.”
Chapter Twenty-Four
Red Letter Day
Mayor Henry Caruthers had been surprised to receive the letter. The letterhead had a Caruthers Corners address, but he’d never heard of the firm.
MARK TIDEMORE
ATTORNEY AT LAW
Attention: Henry Jacob Caruthers,
You are hereby notified of a legal proceeding against you by Paul Ferdinand Johnson (“Complainant”), wherein it is alleged and sworn that you did willfully steal one valuable object, a ring set with a ruby stone (“Property”), on or about May of 1998 from said Complainant, and in addition to filing criminal charges with the Caruthers Corners Police Department, you are hereby being notified of a civil proceeding against you demanding return of said Property.
Et cetera, etc.
Sincerely yours,
Mark Tidemore, Esq.
“Well, jerk my chain and call me stupid,” cursed the mayor. He stormed out of his office, yelling to his assistant that he would be gone for the rest of the day, to cancel all his appointment. He headed straight to Caruthers Corners Savings and Loan on the south end of Main Street, a one-story brick edifice that looked like a cracker box, but was as sturdy as a maximum-security prison.
Mayor Caruthers asked to visit his safe deposit box, flashing his matching key. He kept it on his key chain at all times, along with his other important keys: home, office, Town Hall, car, gate to the town cemetery.
Spending about ten minutes with his lock box, he emerged from the bank like a man on a mission, walking with a fast stride toward his Cadillac Seville. He never made it to the car, intercepted by Chief Purdue and his deputy.
“Excuse me, Henry, but I have a
sworn warrant for your arrest. I’m sure there’s been some mistake, but Paul Johnson claims you possess stolen property belonging to him.”
“Why that’s preposterous, Jim. You know me better’n that.”
Unfortunately, Chief Jim Purdue did know the mayor quite well, having gone to high school with him and worked on his first two election campaigns – before coming to realize the small-town politician was a lying, cheating snake. “I’m gonna have to ask you to show me what’s in that manila envelope in your hand, Henry.”
“This envelope? Personal papers, that’s all.”
“I’m afraid I have to insist.”
Shamefacedly, the mayor upended the manila packet and a ruby ring tumbled out.
Chapter Twenty-Five
Quilter’s Club Triumphant
“I didn’t know you were licensed to practice law in Indiana,” said Mark’s father-in-law, patting him on the back.
“When I graduated from Ball State, I took the bar exam here. For some reason, I kept it up to date, even when we were living in California.”
“You did well, Mark the Shark,” said Maddy.
“Don’t call me that, mother person, or I’ll send you the bill.”
“But Paul Johnson’s your client, not me.”
“Yes, but he never would have come to me – my first client at my new law practice – if you hadn’t put a bug in his ear.”
“He deserved to know.”
Mark turned back to his father-in-law. “Are you going to let Paul Johnson keep that ring? It’s pretty valuable.”
Beau chuckled. “If he returns my thousand dollars. Otherwise you’ll have your second case.”
“Sorry, Dad, but I couldn’t represent you. It’d be a conflict of interest.”
“Well, whattaya know. Back in the family ten minutes, and you’re already working against me.”
“Calm down. I promise to have a word with my client. You’ll either get the ring or the money.”
“Take the thousand dollars,” Maddy advised her husband.
“You might want to think twice about that,” said Mark. “The ring appraised for twenty thousand dollars.”
“It’s historic significance?”
“It’s ruby,” said Mark, his arms around Tilly and Agnes.
≈≈≈
“We still haven’t finished off the mystery,” said Agnes as she licked on an ice cream cone. She and her grandmother were sitting at a picnic table at the DQ, a popular gathering place in Caruthers Corners. Lizzie and her husband Edgar were at the next table sharing a banana split. Cookie and Ben Bentley were two tables over, heads together, like that famous scene from Lady and the Tramp.
“Whatever do you mean, Aggie? We found the ruby ring.”
“Yes, Grammy, but how did you know the mayor was behind all this?”
“Simple my dear,” Maddy said, feeding her ice cream cone to Tige. The shaggy puppy was lying next to Agnes’ feet, already devoted to his new pal. “Mayor Caruthers is left-handed.”
“So what?”
“Well, the stitches in Martha Ray Johnson’s handmade quilt were looped right to left. But the section of the appliquéd Town Hall where the fake ring had been inserted was sewn left to right, the way a left-handed person might have done.”
“But when did you see the stitching. Lizzie’s the one who took the ring from the quilt when she and Bootsie were pretending to be housecleaners.”
“That day we first went to Tall Paul’s house to ask him about his size fourteen shoes, I noticed a lump in the quilt. That’s why I broke the latch on the screen door. I came back alone that same afternoon, when Paul was at the hardware store getting his replacement. Bertha was more than happy to let me look at the quilt. She doesn’t get many visitors.”
“You deliberately broke that latch?”
“Of course. I had to get him out of the house.”
“So why didn’t you look inside the quilt when you went back.”
“Didn’t have a chance. Bertha was hovering all over me, so happy to have a guest.”
“That’s why you refused to pose as one of the housecleaners. Bertha would have recognized you.”
“I was the only one of us she’d seen.”
Agnes giggled at her grandmother’s duplicity. “So Lizzie was wrong when she said you were too good to get your hands dirty.”
“As many a time as I’ve helped her plant flowers at the garden club, she should know better!”
“I like your friends. I like being a member of the Quilter’s Club.”
“You still have a quilt to finish, young lady. Watermelon Days is fast approaching. No slacking off allowed.”
Agnes giggled. “I can’t believe it, Grammy. You solved the mystery because of a stitch. The things you learn when sewing a quilt.”
“Yes dear, the mayor’s stitching was quite amateurish, him doing it backward because he was left-handed.”
Agnes smiled at the thought. “We could call it an underhanded stitch,” she said, her laugher drifting across the town square of Caruthers Corners, her new home.
===
Bonus
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About the Author
Marjory Sorrell Rockwell says needlecraft arts – quilting, crocheting, knitting – are pastimes every woman can appreciate. And she particularly loves quiltmaking. “It’s like painting with cloth,” she says. But when not quilting she writes mysteries about a midwestern sleuth not unlike herself, a middleaged lady with an unpredictable family and loyal friends. And she’s a big fan of watermelon pie.
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The Underhanded Stitch (Quilters Club Mysteries) Page 9