Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries) (15 page)

CHAPTER THIRTY

Waiting for the Fireworks

S
tinky had shucked his Phantom costume and stuffed it in a garbage can near the gazebo in the town square. They couldn’t arrest him for sitting here on a bench enjoying the night, he told himself. The gazebo would provide a convenient ringside seat for the fireworks.

He watched straggling Trick or Treaters troll the perimeter of the grassy square. The air was nippy enough that he could see his breath. The temperature was dropping. It was almost 10 o’clock, the zero hour. He’d set the Big Ben alarms to detonate the bombs at ten sharp.

This bench was far enough away that he be safe from the blast, yet he expected he’d feel the heat on his face. He wouldn’t mind that. It was chilly out here without a coat.

He hated having to get rid of his Phantom disguise, but that Madison guy would likely give the cops his description. He’d said too much, more than he intended. But in ten more minutes it wouldn’t matter. Freddie Madison and the entire Caruthers Corners Police Department would be French fried right along with Mayor Tidemore.

The nerve of that guy wearing the same costume as him.
He
was the One True Phantom, not some local copycat wearing a plumed hat and cape. But he had to admit, under the mask the guy was a dead ringer for Gerard Butler in that
Phantom of the Opera
movie. He wondered if those scars were real, like the guy claimed.

Suddenly he heard screams and shrieks emanating from the Town Hall. At first he thought some prankster had jacked up the sound system from the haunted house, but no, he could see people streaming out of the big brick building, waving their arms in the air, shouting, “Run, run, it’s a bomb.”

How did they figure that out?

Maybe he did tell Freddie Madison too much.

≈ ≈ ≈

Freddie had cleared out the haunted house and flagged down Chief Jim Purdue. “Evacuate the building. I think there’s a bomb in the haunted house.”

“Think? You don’t know for sure?” responded the police chief. He wasn’t about to set off a panic unless he had clear cause.

“I told you about Stinky Caruthers. And there’s the smell of napalm in there.”

“Calm down, Freddie. Napalm? You sure this isn’t some sort of carryover from your service in Iraq?”

“This isn’t PTSD, Jim. And we didn’t use napalm in the Middle East. The US military hasn’t used it since 1975.”

The police chief looked dubious. “Then how do you know what it smells like?”

“It’s jellied gasoline. It smells like gasoline. I was with a bomb squad; they trained us.”

Fire Chief Pete Watson stepped out of the haunted house. He was a big walrus-looking man with a handlebar mustache. He carried his weight well, but he would never have passed the health exam required of new recruits. He flinched when he saw Freddie’s face without the Phantom mask. “I can smell gas in there, but could find anything. Place is a maze with the haunted house set up. Even with the lights on, I could hardly find my way around.”

“See?” said Jim Purdue. “There’s nothing in there.”

“What about the gasoline smell?” insisted Freddie.

“Maybe there’s a little gas leak,” he allowed.

“Propane doesn’t smell like that. Let me take another look.”

Freddie Madison re-entered the storeroom-cum-haunted-house with the two men at his heels. He sniffed at the air, turning toward a far wall. “Seems stronger over this way,” he said. “It would likely be hidden, maybe in a heating duct or a box or a closet.”

“There’s no closet in here,” said Pete Watson. “It’s one big storeroom if you moved these partitions out.”

Freddie shoved one of the office partitions aside, exposing the east wall. He sighted along the bottom, spotting the metal grill of a heating duct. Pushing aside more partitions, he made his way to it. “Here,” he said, pointing to the grill. One screw lay on the floor beneath it, a sloppy job of putting it back on.

Jim Purdue bent down and sniffed. “The gas smell is stronger, I gotta admit.”

“Anybody got a screwdriver?”

“Use my Swiss Army knife,” offered Pete Watson. “It’s got a screwdriver blade.”

Freddie quickly removed the remaining three screws and pulled away the grill. “Don’t suppose this knife has a flashlight blade?” he said.

“Hang on. Bootsie carries a penlight in her purse. She’s just outside, near the punch bowl.”

“Get it for me, then clear the building – quick.”

Jim Purdue returned on the run, penlight in hand and the mayor a few steps behind. “Freddie, what’s this nonsense about a bomb? Is this more of your cockamamie suspicions about Stinky Caruthers?”

Freddie shined the light into the heating duct. “Cockamamie? Looks like some kind of time bomb to me.”

Everybody crowded to look. Sure enough, about two feet inside the metal duct sat a shiny canister with an alarm clock attached by red and green wires. “Holy Toledo, get everybody out of the building,” exclaimed Mark Tidemore.

The police chief scurried away to spread the word. Pete Watson tugged at the mayor’s arm. “You better go too,” he advised.

“Both of you go,” said Freddie.

“But I’m the fire chief. This is my job,” protested Pete Watson, eyes wild with fear. Sweat beaded his forehead.

“You ever disarmed a bomb?”

“Well, no –“

“I have. Both of you get out.”

≈ ≈ ≈

Maddy Madison filed out of the building with the others, making sure her family was in hand. Tilly had her kids, despite Aggie’s protest at leaving Uncle Freddie behind. Amanda had her daughter. Beau and Mark the Shark brought up the rear, ushering everybody out of the building and into the park across the street.

Maddy’s Quilters Club pals and their spouses were all accounted for, with Jim barking orders and directing people to safety.

High-school teachers were taking charge of the students, everything more orderly than one would expect in a situation calling for panic. But terrorist acts and potential disasters were foreign to Caruthers Corners, so this bomb threat seemed more like an obligatory fire drill than not.

As Maddy motherhenned her brood toward the gazebo in the middle of the town square, she noted a lone figure on the nearby bench, sitting there calmly, as if watching a ho-hum sporting event. Something seemed oddly familiar about him.

Then it came back to her: This was the same shadowy figure she’d encountered here in the square the other night. She recognized the spiky hair and gaunt face, a ghost-like figure who struck her as being up to no good.

Somehow it irked her that this fellow remained so placid amid the danger around them, a bomb about to blow up the Town Hall and her courageous, damaged son along with it.

“Stay here,” she ordered her entourage and struck out across the dark grass toward the solitary figure on the bench. “You, hey you,” she called. “I want a word with you.”

On her words, the skinny man stood, looked around for a path through the oncoming crowd, and ran … ran like a prisoner making a jailbreak, bloodhounds at his heels. Or in this case, Maddy Madison.

Lifting her Grecian toga, she kicked off her sandals and gave chase. She moved pretty fast for a slightly overweight middle-aged matron, actually gaining on her prey.

“Hold up there,” she shouted, waving a fist. Upon later reflection, she would admit her actions were largely irrational, her reason for running after the strange man more the result of pent-up emotions than any overt evidence of wrongdoing.

Glancing back over his shoulder at the mad woman in pursuit, Stinky Caruthers did not see the Old Settlers Well looming in the dark before him. He hit the stone wall at full speed, flipping forward, his weigh breaking the rotten planks that covered its mouth. With a surprised “
Aiiiii
!” he tumbled inside.

Fortunately, the dried-up well was only 15-feet deep, the bottom a layer of mud. Stinky wasn’t badly injured, but he was stuck down there until the police chief and his deputy pulled him out about an hour later.

≈ ≈ ≈

Worried about her Uncle Freddie, Aggie Tidemore slipped away from her mom and the others, working her way through the crowd toward the Town Hall. It was like a salmon swimming upstream. Her dad and Uncle Jim were blocking the front entrance, waving people into the park. She skirted them to the right, circling the big brick building. The back door was usually kept locked, but just as she suspected some of the high school boys has opened it earlier in the evening so they could slip out for a cigarette. A nasty habit, but some boys thought this rebellious act made them seem grown up.

Pushing the door open, she entered the hallway where the restrooms were located. In a few steps she was in the atrium, standing in front of the door marked
ABANDON ALL HOPE YE WHO ENTER HERE
.

“Uncle Freddie!” she called. “Are you in there?”

No answer.

“Uncle Freddie, come outside where you’ll be safe!”

No answer.

She pushed the door open. Unlike earlier, when passing as a scary haunted house, the lights were now on and panels were shoved aside. The fake spiderwebs were in shreds. The pop-up zombie lay askew, one arm broken off. A plastic skeleton dangled from a chain in the corner like a forgotten victim. There was a tangle of netting in the far corner, a stand-in for a spider web, decorated with six or eight plastic black widows. The place lay in complete shambles.

“Uncle Freddie,” she called.

But the room was empty.

CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

Tick … tick … tick

F
reddie Madison glanced at his watch as he hurried toward the hundreds of people bunched together in the town square. It was 9:56 – only four minutes to go, according to the alarm clock he found hooked to the bomb.

“There you are,” called Mark Tidemore. “Did you get it disarmed?”

“No,” he said. “I couldn’t figure out the wiring. You’d better stand back.”

“A shame,” sighed the mayor. “That’s a fine old historic building.”

“The bomb’s an amateur job. The color-coding of the wires all jumbled. I couldn’t tell which one to clip.”

Mark ran his hand through his hair. “At least we got everybody out.”

As they retreated across the grass, Beau Madison joined them. “Have either of you seen Aggie?” he asked.

“I thought she was with her mother,” said Mark the Shark,

“Apparently not. They got separated in the crowds. I’ve been looking all over for her.”

Mark looked around desperately. “You don’t think she went back in the building, do you?”

“Surely not,” said Beau.

“What do you think, Freddie?” But when Mark looked around Freddie was gone.

≈ ≈ ≈

Frederic Hollingsworth Madison took the front steps in two strides, threw open the front door and disappeared into the Town Hall. “Aggie!” he shouted. “Are you in here?”

“Uncle Freddie,” came her voice.

It emanated from the haunted house ... where the bomb was. He glanced again at his watch as he raced toward the storeroom. Two minutes to go.
ABANDON ALL HOPE
indeed!

“Where are you?” he called as he burst through the doorway. Then he spotted her, trapped in the spider-web netting on the far side of the room.

“I can’t get loose,” she squealed, waving her arms to get his attention. Like the ending in that old Vincent Price movie
The Fly
.

“Hold on,” he said. But realizing there wasn’t enough time left to untangle her.

He turned toward the open heating duct where the firebomb waited, its Big Ben clock ticking away the minutes. The Swiss Army knife lay on the floor where he’d left it.

“Over here, Uncle Freddie. I’m over here,” the girl screamed. But he ignored her, diving toward the duct, sliding across the floor on his belly. He could feel the rug burn, even though there was no carpet on the floor. It reminded him of sliding into home plate that time in the eighth grade, winning the championship for the Caruthers Corners Melons.

Picking up the knife, he flipped it around to expose its wire-cutter blade. Then he pitched himself into the dark hole, disappearing up to his waist. He couldn’t see a thing, but he found Bootsie’s penlight beside the bomb. He flicked it on and the metal tunnel glowed with a yellowish light.

The reason he’d abandoned the bomb before was that he couldn’t figure out which wire to cut. Snip the wrong one and the napalm would blow up in his face, not that there was much more damage to be done there.

The smell of gasoline was almost overwhelming in the closed space of the ductworks. He coughed and cleared his throat. He knew he didn’t have time to examine the wiring again, there was less than a minute left on the clock. So he reached out and cut the first wire he could reach –
klick
!

The alarm went off and he jumped, banging his head hard against the roof of the narrow tunnel. “Ouch!” he said, but realized he was still alive.

Bz-z-z-z
!

The alarm was ringing but no bomb had exploded. He’d clipped the right wire.

≈ ≈ ≈

A loud cheer went up as Freddie walked out of the Town Hall, Aggie at his side. Everybody seemed to sense the danger had passed, and that Maddy and Beau Madison’s youngest boy had somehow saved the Town Hall … and the mayor’s daughter.

Mark and Tilly ran to hug their daughter. Beau Madison pounded his son on his back. Maddy was in tears.

Aggie said, “What’s the big deal? Nothing happened.”

Fire Chief Pete Watson sent his men – Volunteer Unit 1 – into the building to check it out. About an hour later Ben Bentley found the second bomb in the basement. It had failed to go off due to faulty wiring. Freddie showed them how to dismantle it.

Police Chief Jim Purdue and his deputies pulled Stinky Caruthers out of the Old Settlers Well, covered in mud and blathering about his rightful place as leader of the town. He was transported to the Woodwing Psychiatric Center at Burpyville General. On the way there he confessed about making the bombs.