Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries)

by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell

  “Maybe not somebody with malice aforethought, but we still think something gave him a shock.” Malice aforethought – as the daughter of an attorney, she picked up these legal phrases.

  “Could have been the shock of seeing how much the town was planning to charge the high school to rent the old Beasley place,” he quipped, then regretted the bad taste of his joke.

  Aggie prattled on, as if she hadn’t heard the unPC remark. “Can I borrow that big magnifying glass in your office for my Nancy Drew costume? All detectives have magnifying glasses to look for clues.”

  “Oh? Then why don’t members of the Quilters Club have magnifying glasses?”

  “That’s a good point, Daddy. I’m going to suggest to Grammy that she put that in the Quilters Club budget for next year.”

  “There’s a budget?” he said.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Stanley Caruthers was unrecognizable in his disguise, gray coveralls and a painter’s cap that said JIFFY DÉCOR. Thick glasses magnified his eyes like bugs under a microscope. His thin arms were wrapped around a big cardboard box marked HALLOWEEN CONFITTETI. No one gave him a second glance.

  He carried the contraband right past Mayor Tidemore and his daughter. Deliverymen are always invisible, part of the background. The atrium was a-buzz with teenage workers, supervising parents, Town Councilmen, public officials, teachers, and gawkers. The site of the 47th Annual Caruthers Corners High School Halloween Festival was being transformed from quaint Town Hall to a spooky carnival.

  Ducking into the “haunted house,” Stanley navigated past the kids draping spiderwebs and checking out pop-up goblin. Partitions, like you’d find in an office building, were being put in place to create a maze that doubled back on itself, a pathway that led past the various “fright stations,” just as the How to Set Up A Haunted House manual instructed. It was one of Scholastic’s most popular Plan-A-Party books.

  Stanley stepped behind one of the partitions to a spot where he knew from studying the blueprint he’d find a heating duct. Pulling a 5” Phillips screwdriver from his hip pocket, he stooped down to unfasten the metal grill from the wall, slipped the canister of homemade Napalm B into the hole, made certain the white phosphorous was in place, and set the alarm clock.

  Tick, tick, tick.

  Tomorrow night was the Halloween festival

  Trick or treat indeed!

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FOUR

  All Hallows’ Eve

  Goblins and ghosts lined the sidewalks on Melon Pickers Row. Doorbells rang, followed by the gleeful demand of “Trick or treat!” The Duncan boys had already toilet papered three houses, the Madison place being first on their juvenile agenda.

  Overhead the moon hid behind a waft of dark clouds, like a flashlight stuffed under a blanket. The temperature was turning nippy, with most people wearing lightweight jackets. High school students, draped in grotesque costumes, were heading over to the Town Hall. The theme of this year’s Halloween Festival was “Night of the Living Dead.” Zombies lurched all over town, a lumbering two-step that looked like a dance in slow motion.

  Beau Madison ignored his paper-draped trees, planning to clean them off in the morning. Tonight he was one of the chaperons at the Festival, his main duty to confiscate any beer or alcohol. No underage drinking allowed in Caruthers Corners.

  For the event he was dressed as a buccaneer, complete with tricorn hat, boots, puffy shirt, and a plastic cutlass. He refused to wear the eye patch. Maddy looked quite regal as the Greek goddess Athena, known for her wisdom. A garland circling her head, she came down the stairway as if descending from Mount Olympus.

  “Come along, Maddy dear,” her husband urged. “The Halloween Festival’s already underway. We’re late.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Freddie looked quite dapper in his black tuxedo, and when he added his white mask he made a perfect Phantom of the Opera. Scars all hidden. Only those who knew him would appreciate the irony of his disguise. He’d found it at the Dollar General, $39.95 including the plumed hat. A pretty good deal.

  His wife Amanda was dressed as Gilda the Good Witch from The Wizard of Oz. And little Donna Ann looked like an orange ball in her homemade pumpkin outfit.

  “Hurry up,” Amanda urged. “We have to pick up Aggie and her sisters, so Millie can join Mark the Shark at the Halloween Festival.” They were taking the children trick-or-treating before joining the spooky festivities at the Town Hall.

  “I’m ready. Got the car keys in my hand.” They would park their SUV at Mark and Tilly’s house on the square, the proceed from there on foot. People in Caruthers Corners stocked up on Halloween candy for the strolling kids and their parents, a sugary tradition that kept Timothy Yost, the local dentist, in business.

  “You look quite handsome,” Amanda complemented her husband.

  “Sure, as long as I keep the mask on,” he joked. “Otherwise, I’d have to pass as a zombie.”

  “Oh you.”

  “And you look lovely as my favorite oxymoron,” he said.

  “Oxymoron – doesn’t that mean opposites?”

  “Exactly. Like jumbo shrimp. Or army intelligence.”

  “And I’m a –?”

  “– a good witch,” he explained.

  “Oh you.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Aggie was ready when her Uncle Freddie arrived with his family. She wore an Alice in Wonderland costume – a last minute change. Alice's Adventures in Wonderland by Lewis Carroll was one of her very favorite books. The outfit consisted of a blue dress and white apron. With her blonde hair, she perfectly looked the part.

  Coming up with a Nancy Drew outfit had been much too complicated. Besides, she couldn’t find a deerstalker hat. Only this afternoon she’d spotted this Alice costume in the Dollar General window. He mom had advanced her the money against future babysitting.

  Aggie came tearing down the steps to greet Uncle Freddie and his entourage. Her two sisters were already lined up by the front door for inspection.

  Toddler sister Taylor was dressed as a crocodile, a green outfit with felt blades running down the back, the snout (with fierce fabric teeth) sticking out like the bill of a cap. She was cute, in a silly kind of way. An alarm clock hung around her neck on a ribbon, to make it clear she was the croc from Peter Pan, another favorite bedtime story of the Tidemore girls.

  Baby sister Mandy (named after Aunt Amanda) sat in a stroller tricked up to look like a racecar. She wore a pint-sized helmet, like a miniature Mario Andretti. “Bzz-um,” she made car sounds, still being too young to talk.

  “Uncle Freddie, you did it. You came as The Phantom,” squealed Aggie. She knew he’d been debating how to face up to his disfigurement. This was a way to acknowledge it without putting his scars on display.

  “You bet, kiddo. I’m the music of the night.” He smiled brightly, showing more teeth than Taylor’s crocodile.

  “Freddie and Amanda, thank goodness you’re here,” Aggie’s mom greeted them. “I’m only half ready. Mark’s been at the Town Hall for an hour already, overseeing the party.”

  “I thought dad and Chief Purdue were the official chaperons, not Mark.”

  “As mayor, he feels he has to be there to watch out for the Town Hall. Kids can get rowdy on Halloween. You remember how we used to toilet paper dad’s trees in the front lawn.”

  “And blame it on the Duncan kids,” he added.

  “We were terrible,” blushed his sister.

  Amanda cut into their reverie, lest they give their children any ideas. “We’re going to take the kids trick-or-treating along the perimeters of the town square, maybe go down a couple of residential side streets like Second Street and Melon Rind Avenue.”

  “Why’s almost every street named after watermelons?” inquired Aggie, always the curious type. “We have Melon Pickers Row and Melon Ball Lane and Melon Rind Avenue. Didn’t the founding fathers have any other names they could come up with?

  Aggie’s mother smiled. “That’s merely to acknowl
edge our claim of being the Watermelon Capital of the Midwest. According to your Aunt Cookie, old Ferdinand Jinks introduced watermelon farming shortly after the town was settled. That why we have a Watermelon Festival every year, to celebrate our heritage.”

  “Well, I’m only interested in the Halloween Festival tonight,” said Aggie. “Let’s hurry up with the trick-or-treating so I can get to the party at the Town Hall in time to go through the haunted house.”

  “I would have thought you’d got enough of haunted houses by going over to the Beasley Manson with your Grammy,” said her mother. “You couldn’t pay me to go in there.”

  “Oh, it was just a big ol’ empty house, all messy inside. Gotta admit it was kinda disappointing. I didn’t even see a mouse, much less a ghost.”

  “A mouse?”

  “Well, I was hoping for rats.”

  “Why rats?” laughed her Uncle Freddie.

  “Kids at school say when Sam Jr. got locked in the basement, he was eaten by rats.”

  “Aggie, not in front of your sisters and cousin!”

  “Way I heard it, he merely starved to death,” Freddie corrected his niece’s tall tale. “Lucky you didn’t go down in the basement.”

  “Grammy did, she and Uncle Jim. But they didn’t get locked in. They merely caught that bank robber.”

  “Alleged bank robber,” said Tilly, always politically correct.

  “Oh, that Moose fellow and his partner robbed the Caruthers Corners Savings and Loan. Uncle Jim says they are guilty f’sure.”

  “Not until there’s been due process,” corrected her mother, ever the attorney’s wife. “Remember, people are innocent until proven guilty.”

  “Guilty is guilty, whether you’re able to prove it or not,” argued Aggie, seeing it as black or white. Her grandmother’s genes no doubt.

  “Don’t eat too much candy,” her mother switched topics. No point in arguing jurisprudence with her twelve-year-old daughter without Mark on hand to provide legal authority. Agnes Millicent Tidemore certainly had a mind of her own.

  “No, Mommy,” promised Aggie, a vow sure to be broken. She loved those kernels of Kandy Korn. Her mother had bought a bagful at the Dollar General for Trick or Treaters. Aggie hoped a few mothers along their path tonight had been just as thoughtful.

  “And you have to keep Tige on a leash. No telling what mischief he might get into tonight otherwise. He might bite someone. Dogs don’t like it when people wear masks.”

  “Tige doesn’t growl when Uncle Freddie is dressed up as Sparkplug the Clown.”

  “Your dog knows Uncle Freddie’s smell.”

  “Hey, I don’t smell,” Tilly’s brother complained.

  “Don’t worry, Mommy, I’ll keep Tige on his leash,” nodded Aggie, another questionable vow. She was an honest girl, but her mother hadn’t required her to cross her heart and hope to die – thus making the oath somewhat less bidding in kids’ terms.

  “Arf,” said Tige as the entourage wandered down the sidewalk in search of Halloween candy. A few homes even provided dog biscuits.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  Dressing for Success

  Stanley Caruthers found the perfect Halloween costume at the Dollar General Store on South Main Street, a Phantom of the Opera boxed set that contained a plumed hat, long black cloak, and the iconic bone-white half mask.

  $39.95, it was priced.

  “What happened to the ‘Everything Priced $1’ policy?” he grumbled.

  The clerk shrugged and repeated the price. “Take it or leave it,” she said. There was a long line behind him waiting to pay for purchases.

  The $1 pricing was mostly true. But the local franchisee bent the rules during holidays, offering higher priced items that couldn’t be found anywhere short of a trip to Burpyville. Most people found it a convenience, not a bait-and-switch gambit.

  Stanley was forced to dip into his secret stash to purchase the costume, but it was worth it. He had identified with the phantasmagorical figure for so long he couldn’t pass up the opportunity to wear this perfect disguise while watching tonight’s fireworks at the Town Hall.

  Too bad a few high school kids would likely be killed in the conflagration, but then again he’d never liked high school. Those were among his most miserable years, reduced to being a waterboy for all the BMOC football jocks.

  Football jerks, he used to call them behind their backs.

  Inside his cluttered Buick parked in a far corner of the Home Depot lot, he’d wiggled into his costume, gobbled down some Baby Ruth Bits and swigged a flat Pepsi. Ready to go meet his destiny, he told himself. Main thing tonight was to blow up the mayor so he could step in as the town’s rightful leader.

  He’d read his grandfather’s A History of Caruthers Corners and Surrounding Environs more than a dozen times. The book made it clear that that Jacob Caruthers had nearly singlehandedly founded this town. Being in charge of it was his birthright.

  He’d never gotten over the Town Councilmen changing the rules so he couldn’t succeed his Uncle Henry. That had been a dirty trick. When he took over, they would all be fired. Maybe have to leave town in disgrace.

  Or worse.

  Public executions came to mind.

  The old Beasley place would make a fine Mayor’s Mansion. Too bad Jacob Caruthers had sold his mansion to the Purdues, who had turned it into that ugly old chair factory. What a sacrilege! He’d have to make do with Old Sam’s big stone monolith.

  He’d liked living there for the past few months, camping out in that upstairs bedroom, where he could look down the street at Cornelia Tutley’s modest little house. Her family had lived there; now she was last in the Tutley line. But he could change all that – marry her, move her up to the Mayor’s Mansion, and anoint her First Lady of Caruthers Corners. He was sure she’d agree once he proved himself worthy by assuming his rightful place in town society.

  He should be getting over to the Halloween Party, but his head hurt. He’d been having these headaches for well over two years now. The blinding pain made him want to curl into a fetal ball and cry. But he resisted.

  A doctor had said it might be a brain tumor, but he was pretty sure it was merely hypoglycemia. He’d read an article in a magazine at the doctor’s office about the affects of low blood sugar. It could cause headaches. That’s why he kept his glucose level high, practically living off candy bars. He’d bought a big bag of Halloween candy – Baby Ruth Bits – at the Dollar General. That had been only $1. Boy, did he love Baby Ruths.

  He thought about the Halloween Festival. The Napalm was already in place – one canister hidden in the heating duct in the storeroom, another downstairs in the record archives, both hooked to timers. Those battery-powered Big Ben alarm clocks were ticking away as he sat there in his 1982 Buick Regal, holding his head in his hands, trying not to cry over the intense pain in his skull.

  Pull yourself together, he told himself. The time of reckoning was nigh.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Lucius Plancus was a large, florid-faced redhead, weighing over 300 pounds, but with his 6’2” height he carried it reasonably well. The other on-air personalities at the radio station called him The Jolly Red Giant behind his back. But there was nothing jolly about him. He was a dour man, serious of purpose. He fancied himself a crusading journalist, even if he did work for a dinky low-wattage AM radio station in a remote corner of Indiana.

  Plancus was still working on the story about the two Burpyville men arrested for robbing that S&L in Caruthers Corners. He didn’t know if they were innocent or guilty, but he felt the evidence was weak. No money had shown up. And the guy’s sister gave them an alibi. He felt the FBI had nothing to hold them on … as he reported on this afternoon’s Inside Indiana radio show.

  He’d been talking with their lawyer, Barnabas Soltairé. Sure the guy was probably mob connected, but he’d offered Plancus the exclusive if he would leak some helpful info. Like that bit about the accused having an alibi. Never mind that it was by a ch
eck-kiting sister who’d lie at the drop of a hat. A story was a story.

  “Hey, Lucius, how ‘bout covering the Halloween carnival over in Caruthers Corners tonight? You’re up next on the assignment schedule,” said the WZUR station manager.

  “C’mon, Doug, give me a break. I didn’t join the station to cover high school proms and the like. I’m an investigative reporter, for gosh sakes. I’ve got an inside track on that savings and loan robbery. It’s going to be a big story.”

  “You’re an employee who’d like to keep getting a paycheck,” the station manager corrected him. “I don’t have anyone else to send, so you’re it. End of story. Okay?”

  “Okay,” groaned the Jolly Red Giant, his face even redder than usual.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Trick or Treat

  The first house Aggie and her entourage visited was a bonanza, passing out Hershey’s Miniatures – Special Dark Chocolates, Mr. Goodbars, and those crunchy little Krackels. Everybody got a handful.

  The second house offered apples. The Yosts were health nuts. Beside Dr. Tim Yost was the local dentist and couldn’t afford to be caught handing out sugary sweets to his young patients.

  The third house gave them bags of boiled peanuts. Nobody around here seemed to worry about nut allergies. Baby Mandy’s souped-up stroller was being used to store all their Trick-or-Treat goodies like a shopping cart.

  The fourth house offered Hershey’s Kisses, those tinfoil-wrapped drops of chocolate. By brand, Hershey was winning the candy count so far tonight.

  After working their way around the square they turned down Second Street, following the clusters of trick-or-treating children. Most groups had a parent or two lingering on the sidelines. Caruthers Corners wasn’t the type of place you’d worry about those old urban legends of razor blades in apples, but no need to take chances when it came to kids wandering the streets at night. One of Mayor Mark Tidemore’s greatest innovations was organizing neighborhood monitors for Halloween night, friendly eyes to watch over Trick or Treaters.