1 The Underhanded Stitch (5 page)

Chapter Nine

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 But it was a clue when I found a receipt from a sculptor in Chicago and noticed that you’d withdrawn twelve thousand dollars from our joint savings account.”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

M
addy 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

“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 Chicago 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.”

T
he 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.

“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.”