1 The Underhanded Stitch (9 page)

Chapter Twenty-One

M
addy had lived in Caruthers Corners all her life. She’d grown up in that big Victorian house facing the town square, the one with all the gables. The Taylor family had not been as wealthy as the Caruthers or Madisons, but Maddy had not wanted for pretty clothes or trips to a posh summer camp.

She had a great time in high school while still managing to make good grades. And even though she “marched to the tune of her own drummer” so to speak, she was always popular – especially with three of the other in-crowd girls (that being Lizzie, Cookie, and Bootsie). So it came as no surprise when she wound up with the prize catch in the county, Beauregard Madison IV.

They had two fine boys, but Tilly was their only daughter (although Maddy had hoped for more girls). It’d been the happiest day of her life when Tilly married Mark Tidemore, a promising young law student at Ball State University. Little Agnes came a year later, a cute bundle of joy with blue eyes and a quick smile. It was a sad day when Mark moved his family to Los Angeles to accept a junior partnership with a big law firm.

Now here was Mark Tidemore, standing on Maddy’s doorstep, hat in hand, asking if Tilly was home – just like he used to do when he was dating Tilly. Only now the jeans and T-shirt he wore were brand new – still creased from the store folds. The baseball hat he held was new, too.  Probably didn’t have anything besides suites and ties. But he looked like he was happy to be back in clothing that spoke of comfort and home. Seeing him like this again, Maddy could hardly imagine him in those expensive suits that “Mark the Shark” wore.

“I don’t know that she will see you,” Maddy told him frankly. “Her heart’s broken, you know.”

“I’ve handled this badly,” he candidly confessed, not able to look his mother-in-law in the eye. “I got wound up with my job, neglected my family. I didn’t take Tilly seriously enough when she threatened to leave if I kept ignoring her and Agnes. I figured everything would be okay once I slowed down the next month. But the next month never came and when Tilly walked out, I was devastated. So I tried to bully her into coming back by threatening to take Agnes. But I’d never do that, Mrs. Madison. I’d never separate Aggie from her mommy.”

“Come on inside, Mark. No need to stand out here on the doorstep for the neighbors to see. You find a seat in the living room while I go upstairs to see if Tilly’s willing to speak with you.”

“Mr. Madison’s not home, is he?”

“Don’t worry about Beau. He’s at work. My husband’s pretty upset with you, but he will behave as a gentleman. It’s part of his breeding.”

“Thank you, Maddy.” He dared be more familiar, not having had the front door slammed in his face.

“Don’t think you’re off the hook with me, young man. I don’t share my husband’s good breeding. You hurt my daughter and I’ll tear your heart out and serve it up as main course at the Fourth of July barbecue.”

“Yes, ma’am.”

Fifteen minutes later Tilly came down the steps, looking every bit as beautiful as the high school girl Mark Tidemore had married. “Hi, Mark,” she said shyly, as if meeting him on a first date.

“Snookums, I’ve missed you.”

“Don’t, Mark.”

“Look, I’ve come out here to make things up to you – a new start.”

Tilly shook her head, the brown hair brushing her shoulders. “No, Mark, it’s too late. You’ll never change.”

“That’s where you’re wrong, Snookums. It’s never too late. We love each other, you know it.”

“I do still love you, but that’s not enough. You love your job more.”

“Wrong again. I’ve resigned my partnership at Tatum, Bell and Kaczynski. Cashed out my 401K. Put the townhouse up for sale.”

“What? I can’t believe you’d ever do that. So are you going to that firm in New York that was calling you all last year?”

“Nope,” he said with a mischievous grin.

“Where then?”

“Here. I’ve going to work here. Caruthers Corners is the perfect place for a new beginning.”

“Don’t be silly, Mark. What would you do here in Caruthers Corners? Help Dad run the hardware store? You’d be bored in two days.”

“No, I’ve bought Bartholomew Dingley’s law practice. He was planning on retiring. He accepted my offer just this morning.”

“You mean – ?”

“Yes – you, me, and Agnes – together here in Caruthers Corners. And I won’t get bored. Believe it or not, I was getting really tired of those eighty-hour workweeks. Been there, done that. Now I want my life back. I want you and Aggie back.”

L
ogic prevailed. If Jacob Caruthers stole the ring off Colonel Madison’s body at his wake, it would likely have been passed down through the family to great-great grandson Henry, the current mayor of Caruthers Corners. And he wouldn’t have had to steal it from the quilt.

However, if “The Rightful Owner” stole the ring from Martha Ray Johnson’s quilt, replacing it with the $10 costume jewelry, then the culprit had to be the mayor. No one else would have had access to that particular ring marke
d
107
7
inside the band. That meant the real ring had been in the possession of the Jinks family all those years.

Maddy considered this second scenario more likely to be the correct one. No disputing the fact that they’d found the fake ring inside the quilt wrapped in an incriminating note. That mean Ferdinand Jinks did steal the ring, just as the legend suggested!

So far, so good. The mayor had the ruby ring. But knowing
who
had the real ring did not tell you
where
it was.

Nor why Mayor Caruthers considered himself the rightful owner.

She explained her reasoning to the members of the Quilter’s Club, waiting for someone to pick a hole in it. But no one did.

“So what do we do next?” asked Bootsie, unwilling to call it quits.

“Let’s divide up the tasks. Bootsie, you see if you can find out how the mayor might have got access to Tall Paul’s quilt. Swapping that fake ring for the real one couldn’t have been easy.”

“And me?” asked Cookie, eager for an assignment.

“You search the Historical Society archives. See if you can find a reason the mayor might consider himself the rightful owner of that ruby ring.”

“How about me?” Lizzie raised her hand.

“Lizzie, I want you to figure out where the mayor might keep something valuable – like a ruby ring.”

“What can I do, Grammy?” asked Agnes. She’d been left in Maddy’s care while her mother and father shopped for a new home somewhere within the town limits.

“You get to assist me. We’re going to light a fire under Mayor Caruthers. See if we can smoke out the truth.”

≈≈≈

Cookie was the first to report back. She’d found a passage in Jacob Caruthers’ journal that shed some light on original ownership of the ruby ring. “Listen to this,” she said, then read the entry for May 12, 1829:

The Red Indians attacked again last night. We sustained heavy losses. I thought myself a goner when my flintlock misfired and I found myself facing a warrior brandishing a tomahawk. The quick thinking of Ferdinand Jinks saved my life. He struck the assailant with the butt of his rifle, even though it too was empty of powder, rendering the bugger unconscious. As a token of thankfulness, I awarded Ferdinand my most valued possession.

“It has to be the ring,” Cookie tapped the page to make the point. “It was originally Caruthers ring, but he gave it to Jinks.”

“And Jinks gave it to his fiancée,” Maddy completed the thought. “But she dumped him for Colonel Madison taking the ring with her.”

“That’s why everybody wanted the ring,” squealed Agnes, unable to contain her excitement. “Mister Jinks wanted his ring back from his girlfriend. And Mayor Caruthers considers himself the rightful owner since it had belonged to his ancestor to begin with.”

≈≈≈

Lizzie was next to come up with information. “My husband Edgar says Henry Caruthers has a safety deposit box at Caruthers Corners Saving and Loan. Edgar remembers the mayor renting the box back in ’98, shortly after the Centennial festivities,”

“In other words, around the time he bought that fake ring and swapped it for the real one in Tall Paul’s quilt,” surmised Maddy. All the pieces falling into place.

“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.

“Y
ou 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.”