A Thread of Truth (32 page)

“Thank you. You may step down.”

 

Next, Franklin surprised everyone by calling Dr. Kittenger back to the stand.

The good doctor looked nervous when the judge reminded him that he was still under oath. Beads of sweat pearled on his brow.

“Dr. Kittenger, you stated before that you and Hodge Edelman are joint owners of the Shady Brook Care Center?”

“Yes.”

“How much money did you have to put up for your half of the partnership?”

Kittenger swallowed. “Nothing. My expertise in medicine was what I brought to the partnership.”

“Ah.” Franklin nodded understandingly. “I see. I did some checking and found that you undertook your medical studies in South America and that you graduated eighty-fifth in your class. Is that right?”

Kittenger looked at Franklin with loathing. “Yes.”

“Eighty-fifth. Out of a class of eighty-nine. I guess Mr. Edelman saw some medical expertise in you that had gone undiscovered by your professors.”

Caldwell objected to that, naturally. Franklin apologized and asked that his comment be stricken from the record before he continued.

“So you oversee the medical aspect of the business, and Mr. Edelman is in charge of finances—is that right?”

“Yes, that's right.” Kittenger squirmed nervously in the witness chair. His eyes darted from Franklin to Hodge and back again. “I have nothing to do with the business side of things. Billing, record-keeping, and such—that's all Hodge's domain. I just take care of the patients.”

“So that would explain why you didn't know anything about the billing errors for Ms. Peterman? All those bills for appointments you kept no records of?”

“Like I told Mr. Kinsella, I have nothing to do with that,” the doctor snapped. “There must have been some sort of accounting error.”

“Well, that's certainly possible. Over the past several years, there've been all kinds of accounting errors at Shady Brook. My next witness, Annie Fielding, is a forensic accountant. She's found over three million dollars in billing errors at Shady Brook, most of them for Medicare patients—patients whose bills are paid by the government. In fact, it's almost exactly the same amount as is contained in the offshore account that Mr. Edelman had his wife open in her name.”

Franklin stopped for a moment, smiled, and scratched his cheek with his index finger. “You know, it's amazing what these forensic accountants can find out once they start digging around. Miss Fielding is very skilled at her job. Tell me, Dr. Kittenger, you like to travel, don't you? Aren't the Cayman Islands one of your favorite destinations?”

And that was it. The loose thread. Franklin gave it a good tug and, right in front of everyone, Kittenger unraveled. The doctor's eyes bulged out of their sockets. He jumped to his feet and pointed at Hodge. “It was Hodge! It was all his idea! I just made the deposits! He talked me into it, all of it! It was never supposed to go this far. He promised me that all I had to do was make the deposits. That's all! I never agreed to the rest of it. The stuff with his wife. Altering the records and saying she'd taken drugs. That was all Hodge's idea! He made me do it!”

Hodge leapt from his chair and screamed, “Sit down, Kittenger! Just shut up and sit down!”

Kittenger took his partner's advice, but it was too late. Wild-eyed and weak, he dropped into his chair and said, “I want a lawyer.” He pointed at Franklin and said, “You! I want you. I plead the Fifth!”

Franklin smoothed his necktie. “We'll discuss that in a moment. In the meantime,” he said, turning around to face the gallery, “there are some gentlemen here who would like to talk with you and Mr. Edelman.”

The two dark-suited men who had been sitting with Annie Fielding got to their feet. Franklin turned his attention toward Judge Maynard. “Your Honor, allow me to introduce Mr. Dowling and Mr. Kirkpatrick. They work for the government, investigating Medicare fraud.”

“B
ack to you, Mary Dell!”

“Thank you, Dale. And be sure and tell all those quilters over at the high school that I'll be heading over to see them in just a few minutes because you know what? It's already time for us to say good-bye!” Mary Dell looked at me, seemingly shocked.

“Evelyn, I don't know how that hour flew by so fast. Do you?”

I shook my head, hoping this was a rhetorical question. As far as I was concerned, this had been the longest hour of my life.

“This has been such a special show. On behalf of Howard, myself, Evelyn, and everybody here at Cobbled Court Quilts, thank you for tuning in. With your help and the help of thousands of Quilt Pink quilters across the country, we can play an important role in detection, treatment, and finding a cure for breast cancer. So spread the word!”

Mary Dell turned in her chair to face camera two so smoothly that you'd never have known the floor director had given her the cue to do so. It was as if her brain had taken a notion to twist to the left and her body followed quite naturally. “But, as always, before we sign off, I want to leave you with a little bit of quilting wisdom from one of our viewers. Today's quilter's quote was sent in by Betty Jura, of Fullerton, California. Evelyn, would you share Betty's thought with everybody?”

I hesitated for a second and Mary Dell said, “It's right there on that card, Baby Girl. Just go ahead and read it.”

I cleared my throat. “When life gives you scraps, make a quilt.”

Mary Dell threw back her head and laughed. “Oh, I love that one! Good advice from one who knows! Thank you for sharing that, Betty.”

The
Quintessential Quilting
theme music began playing softly in the background. “Thanks again for watching. And remember”—Mary Dell's expression became serious as she held up an admonishing finger—“behind every great quilter is a great big pile of fabric. So get back to work! Bye, y'all!”

She laughed and waved. Everyone in the shop, quilters and observers, broke into applause as the theme music increased in volume. I clapped and grinned idiotically at the camera I hoped was the right one.

The floor director held up three fingers, then two, then one. “And we're off the air. Good show, everybody!”

Excited chatter and a few cheers mixed in with the sound of applause. I slumped into my chair, utterly exhausted.

“Baby Girl! You did it!” Mary Dell beamed as she reached over to clasp my sweaty hand. “Now that wasn't so bad, was it? Admit it: You had fun.”

I tilted my head and looked at my friend sideways. “That was, without question, the most miserable sixty minutes of my life. Don't ever ask me to do that again.”

Mary Dell clucked her tongue and blew out a long, disbelieving breath. “Come on now. You did just fine. I was proud of you. You didn't puke once!”

“No.” I chuckled and hoisted myself upright in the chair. “I managed to take care of all that before they turned on the cameras.”

Mary Dell slapped her thigh. “Well, see? There you go! And it'll be even easier next time.”

I gave her an evil glare. There she was, practically a force of nature, feeding off the energy of the cameras, cues, and crowd like a dead battery sucking up volts from a charger. And me? All I wanted to do was lie down and take a nap.

Still wearing her headset, Sandy wended her way through the web of camera cables. “Good show, Evelyn. Everything looked great on the monitor, really. I'll play back the tape for you.”

“Must you?”

Sandy grinned. “Mary Dell, the car is waiting. Howard's already inside. You two had better get over to the gym and start signing those books. We handed out five hundred copies, so it'll take a while. Then you've got to do your thing over on the Green. The barbeque is supposed to start at five, but if the signing is taking too long, you can show up late. Porter says they've got it all worked out.” She grabbed a coiled extension cord from one of the camera people and headed toward the back door to load it into one of the trucks parked in the alley.

“Thanks, honey. Hey! Is there anything to eat around here?”

“There's a six-pack of Dr Pepper and a box of Moon Pies in the car,” she called without turning around. “I already gave them to the driver.”

“Sandy thinks of everything,” Mary Dell said admiringly. “I'm starving! Nothing personal, Baby Girl, and I appreciate the thought, but no matter what Porter says, I just don't have a lot of faith folks around here know how to make decent barbeque.”

“They don't,” I said with a yawn. “Mary Dell, you'd better get over to the gym like Sandy said. I'll see you later. Are you sure you still want to come tonight? Won't you be too tired?”

“Too tired!” she scoffed. “Are you kidding? Skip out on a special meeting of the Cobbled Court Quilt Circle held in my honor? Are you loco? Wild hogs couldn't keep me away.”

 

Mary Dell and Howard went off to the gym to meet the other quilters. I trudged up the stairs to Garrett's apartment, intending to pass out on the sofa until it was time for the barbeque on the Green, but made a visit to the bathroom first. After washing my hands, I peered into the mirror. The face that peered back at me was completely exhausted, but that was all right. I didn't mind.

When I was a little girl, my father liked to begin every family dinner with the same question: “What did you do today?”

My brothers and I would go around the table, in turn, from oldest to youngest, and report on our activities. Some days the news was all good; other days it was punctuated by frustrations with friends, injustices by teachers, or complaints of overwork.

But no matter how good or bad our day had been, my father's closing question never varied: “And did you do any good for someone else today?”

Sometimes, we hadn't, and that always got us thinking. Other times, we had, and that always brought a smile to Dad's face. “Well, then,” he'd say. “I guess it was a good day after all.”

The road to Quilt Pink Day had been a weary one, potholed with long hours, hard work, stage fright, misunderstandings, and more than a few petty jealousies. But as I splashed cold water on my face, I didn't remember any of that. Instead, I thought about the quilts we'd made, the money we'd raised, women we'd encouraged, and the lives that might be saved.

Toweling the water from my tired face, I looked into the mirror and smiled. “I guess it was a good day after all.”

P
ulling a naked pork rib from her mouth, Mary Dell leaned over and whispered into my ear, careful to make sure that no one overheard her, “You're right. These Yankees don't know the first thing about barbequing a pig.”

“Told you. Here. Give me your plate and I'll get rid of it for you.”

Mary Dell surreptitiously pushed her plate toward me. “Don't let anyone see you. I wouldn't want to hurt anybody's feelings.”

“Don't worry. I'll give it to Garrett. He'll eat anything.” Holding Mary Dell's plate in my hands, I got up from the picnic table and started looking for Garrett just as Lydia Moss pushed through the crowd, waggling her fingers over her head to flag us down.

“Yoo-hoo! Evelyn! Mary Dell! There you are! I've been looking for you everywhere. I know you've barely had a chance to catch your breath today, Mary Dell, but Porter asked me to find you. He's just about ready to call you up on stage. Are you ready? Did you get enough to eat?”

“More than enough,” Mary Dell answered.

“Wonderful! How did you like the barbeque sauce? That's my grandmother Lydia Lystrom Post's secret recipe. Normally I only make it for family, but the hospitality committee asked if I wouldn't mind parting with the recipe just this once, and since it was for you, of course I said yes.”

“Really? Well, Lydia, you didn't have to do that. Bless your heart. I've never tasted anything like it.”

Lydia beamed. “Oh, good! Really, it couldn't be easier. You just take a bottle of ketchup, a jar of grape jelly, a teaspoon of chili powder, and…oh, darn it. There's Porter coming up to the microphone. I'll write the recipe down and give it to you later.”

“Thank you, Lydia. That'd be real sweet of you. But right now, I'd better scoot.”

Just before wending her way through the crowd, Mary Dell turned to me with a grin and said, “Baby Girl, aren't you going to finish your barbeque? You've just got to, honey. It's like I told Lydia. You've just never tasted anything like it.” She winked and started making her way to the stage, shaking hands as she did.

“Thanks, Mary Dell. Thanks a lot.”

Lydia turned to me with an expectant look on her face. I picked up a pork rib and started gnawing on it.

After the signing at the gym, a few of the kids from the church youth group had drafted Howard onto their team for a softball game. Porter must have pulled him away from his fans because I could see him mounting the stairs to the stage, following right behind the First Selectman, smiling and shaking the hands of people who were standing nearby, and clearly having the time of his life. Porter had to keep a hold on Howard's arm just to make sure he wasn't completely waylaid by admirers.

When they reached the microphone, Porter tapped it a couple of times to make sure it was on, then said, “Ladies and gentlemen, as First Selectman of the village of New Bern and on behalf of the citizens of New Bern, let me thank you all for coming out today in support of such a…”

The microphone squealed, making a sound like nails on a chalk-board. The crowd collectively covered its ears until the squealing stopped. Then someone shouted, “Come on, Porter! You've made enough speeches today! Let Mary Dell and Howard talk already!”

Lydia clucked her tongue with annoyance. “Really. People can be so rude!” she exclaimed, her attention fixed on the stage and her husband's face.

I murmured something agreeable and, taking advantage of the diversion, quietly slipped a piece of pork to a Labrador that was ambling through the crowd, sniffing the ground for scraps.

“All right, all right!” Porter said, lifting his hands and grinning with good humor. “I can take a hint, Steve. Ladies and gentlemen, without further ado, allow me to introduce the people you've all been waiting to see! The hosts of cable television's most successful craft show,
Quintessential Quilting
, Mary Dell and Howard Templeton!”

The crowd broke into thunderous applause as Mary Dell, who reached the top of the stairs on the opposite side of the stage just as Porter finished the introductions, waved, stepped up to the microphone, and said, “Well, thank you, Porter! It's so wonderful to be here! Hello, New Bern!”

A fresh wave of applause swelled the air as the citizens of New Bern acknowledged her greeting.

Howard took the microphone from his mother, jumping into the little act they'd worked out between them without missing a beat. “Excuse me, Mama, but that doesn't sound right. What do you say we teach the folks how to say hello Texas style?”

“Howard, that's a wonderful idea. Why don't you do the honors?”

Howard's face broke into a wide grin. He waved his arm over his head like he was signaling a ship and shouted, “Howdy, y'all!” Then he cupped his hand to his ear and leaned toward the audience, mutely inviting them to follow his lead.

They did, enthusiastically mimicking Howard's greeting, complete with waving arms.

Mary Dell took the microphone next, smiling. “Well! That was just wonderful! I tell you, you've made me feel right at home. And I do want to thank y'all for inviting us here today and for everyone who has gone to so much trouble to make New Bern's Quilt Pink Day such a big success. Porter Moss, Dale Barrows, and everyone on the planning committees, thank you so much. And I want to give an especially warm and heartfelt hug of a thank-you to my dear friend Evelyn Dixon, owner of Cobbled Court Quilts and the one responsible for bringing Quilt Pink Day to New Bern in the first place. Let's give her a big round of applause!”

I'm not a shy person, but after the broadcast, I'd had enough notoriety to last me a lifetime. Still, Mary Dell meant well, so I got up from my seat on the picnic bench, waved, and quickly sat down.

After the applause died down, Mary Dell continued. “I'm going to let y'all get back to eating your barbeque in just a minute, but first, Howard and I want to thank you again for treating us right and making us feel so at home. And, to show our appreciation, we want to teach you a little song we like to sing back home called ‘Deep in the Heart of Texas.' Ready, y'all?”

Nobody else could have pulled it off, not with a crowd of buttoned-up, no-nonsense, dyed-in-the-wool New Englanders, most of them directly descended from the purest of Puritan stock, but Mary Dell Templeton was the woman who put the celebration in the word “celebrity.” After a little coaching, she had that audience eating out of the palm of her hand, singing at the top of their lungs and, between choruses, clapping out the song's familiar four-beat rhythm with the gusto of cowhands on rodeo day.

Sitting on my bench, clapping along with everyone else while a fat yellow Labrador stood nearby and wolfed down the leavings of my lunch, I smiled with my whole heart, the kind of smile that brings tears to your eyes, as I watched my dear friend Mary Dell.

Let me tell you: She was a sight to see.

 

After the public revelries wound down, Franklin, Garrett, Bethany, Bobby, and Howard drove to Waterbury for a movie while Mary Dell came back to the shop with me and the rest of the quilt circle for our own private party.

Though he had a strict rule against serving bar food at the Grill on the Green, Charlie put aside principle and made a special batch of buffalo chicken wings for me to serve at the circle meeting. He'd also arranged for his beverage supplier to bring in two cases of Dr Pepper, enough to get Mary Dell and Howard through their weeklong vacation in New Bern.

When I came up the stairs, carrying a platter of wings, Mary Dell dropped the scissors she was holding and practically hooted for joy. “Are those what I think they are?”

She grabbed a chicken wing, dipped it in the accompanying bowl of blue cheese dressing, and took a bite. “Oh my gracious me! I tell you what, I have died and gone to heaven. Girls! Get over here and try some of these. You too, Abigail. You're going to love this.”

Five minutes later, our individual quilting projects abandoned, all of us were sitting at the worktable sucking the meat off chicken wings, our fingers stained red with the hottest of hot sauce—all except Abigail, that is, who insisted on eating hers with a knife and fork.

Between the broadcast and the barbeque, I had managed to sneak upstairs to Garrett's apartment for a refreshing twenty-minute catnap; otherwise, I'd have been dead on my feet. Mary Dell had had no such opportunity, but it didn't seem to matter. She was still bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, and anxious to catch up on all the secondhand news she'd heard from me. She wanted to hear the real scoop, straight from the horses' mouths.

“You are kidding me! So they'd been bilking the government all those years, charging for procedures they'd never performed…”

Ivy nodded confirmation. “Sometimes on patients who had died months before.”

“…and then that little toad of a doctor would fly to the Caymans every month and put the money in your account?” Mary Dell narrowed her eyes and made a hissing noise. “That man is lower than flea skis.”

“That sounds about right,” said Ivy with a grin. “The plan was to keep working until they had six million in the bank—three for each crook—then Hodge was going to pretend to take me on a second honeymoon, and trick me into withdrawing the money for them. And if anything went wrong, they figured they could pin the whole thing on me since the account had my name on it. Kittenger told the Feds everything.

“Hodge had it all worked out. The one thing he didn't plan on was me growing enough of a spine to actually leave him. Kittenger said Hodge didn't report us missing because he didn't want to attract the attention of the police. He figured I'd come crawling back on my own, but when months passed and I still hadn't turned up, they got nervous. Then one of our neighbors, who knew I'd disappeared with the kids but didn't know why, saw the promotional video and told Hodge where I was…”

Mary Dell's face fell. “Honey, I'm real sorry about that. I never meant to cause you all that trouble.”

“Are you kidding?” Ivy took a sip of her Dr Pepper and paused a moment, waiting to see if she liked it before taking another. “I didn't know it at the time, but that was the best thing that could have happened. If not for that, I'd still be on the lam, dragging my kids from pillar to post, and living a life of lies.

“Now, I've got a career, good friends,” she said, smiling as her eyes scanned the ring of faces, “and a home.”

“And a bank account worth three million dollars!” Mary Dell exclaimed.

Ivy tipped her head to one side. “Not quite. That money was stolen. The government has frozen the account. In fact, they've frozen all of Hodge's accounts, everything. It turns out that there's one thing he wasn't lying about. Other than that money in the Caymans, Hodge was dead broke. He borrowed money like there was no tomorrow, which I guess makes sense if you're planning on skipping the country and you're a thief. But that means I'll get nothing from the divorce. No settlement. No alimony. Zero.”

Mary Dell made a tsk-tsk sound with her tongue. “Ivy, that's terrible.”

“Oh, I don't know,” Ivy said. “I don't have any money, but I didn't have any before, either. Nothing has changed. We'll manage. Evelyn has taught me that I'm perfectly capable of supporting my family.”

“You certainly are,” I agreed.

“It's all good,” she said. “The Petermans are home, in New Bern, to stay. And no one can take my kids away from me, especially Hodge Edelman, because from what I understand, he's going to be in prison for quite some time—years and years. Maybe everything didn't work out the way I planned it, but in the end, it worked out better than I ever could have planned. It's like Margot says: ‘All things work together for good…'”

“‘To them that love God, to them who are called according to His purpose,'” Mary Dell said, finishing the verse, and her eyes misted. “Romans 8:28. That was my old granny's favorite verse.”

“Mine, too,” Margot said with a smile.

“So, Margot, honey, how'd you crack this thing open?”

“Well,” Margot said modestly, “it really was a team effort. When Hodge broke into Ivy's apartment and then her car, it was Arnie who figured out there must be something in Ivy's personal papers that Hodge didn't want anyone else to have. I was just lucky enough to turn over a sheet of paper and see a string of numbers and letters that Hodge had written.”

Liza pulled a chicken bone out from between her lips and made a “get real” face. “Come on, Margot. There was more to it than that. You're the one who finally put two and two together.”

Liza's eyes brightened as she leaned over to fill Mary Dell in on the details. “For the next couple of nights, Margot couldn't sleep. She kept thinking about those numbers, thinking they had to mean something, so she got up in the middle of the night and started reviewing the notes she'd taken when she and Arnie were at the hospital with Ivy. And then, all of a sudden—bam! It hit her! The part about Hodge wanting to take Ivy to the Caribbean, and wanting to do it so bad he'd already bought the tickets!”

“Well, it wasn't quite—bam!” Margot said. “But it got me to wondering. First thing the next morning, I called Annie Fielding and asked her if those scribbles from Hodge couldn't be some kind of account or password. Annie had already noticed some enormous problems with the books at Shady Brook. She thought Hodge was hiding money somewhere, but she couldn't trace it. So she started pulling up online banking sites for every bank in the Caribbean, plugging the numbers into every password prompt she could find until, finally, she found the right one. There it all was! Every deposit, every transaction for the previous eight years! And Franklin took it from there. Arnie had to get back to court, so Franklin only had one hour to talk to Annie, look over the financial evidence, and figure out a strategy. Abigail, your husband is some lawyer!”