Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries) (3 page)

“Skookie died on the front lawn. He never even entered the house.”

Ben frowned. “Close enough. He’s dead, ain’t he?”

“The ghost of Beasley Manor did it,” said Aggie ominously, carrying her cheese sandwich and milkshake to a Formica table at the front window.

“Don’t say ‘ghost’,” her father warned. “That word is now on the no-say list!” That was the list of bad words young Agnes Tidemore was not allowed to use. The usual cuss words, plus a few other restrictions like calling her Aunt Bootsie fat.

“Whatever,” the girl shrugged, tossing back her blonde locks. “I won’t say the G-word, but somebody better go looking for that nebulous apparition that might be the lost soul of a dead person.”

CHAPTER FOUR

The Big S&L Robbery

O
ver in Burpyville, the county seat, a skinny, semi-balding man known as Morris “Peewee” Hickensmith was talking to his partner in crime, a tubby, BB-eyed guy called Moose. Their heads were nearly touching, their voices low, assuring privacy as they sat there in Mama Leone’s Cheese-Stuffed Pizza Parlor. Mama Leone’s was a hole-in-the-wall joint known for its thick, cheesy pies, more like quiche than pizza. But as Mama Leone (née Myrtle Hickensmith, Morris’s sister) liked to say, “Real men eat pizza, not quiche.”

“We gotta move the money,” Morris Hickensmith was saying. “We was crazy leaving it there so long. Wonder somebody ain’t stumbled on it afore now.”

Moose Johansson crunched on a slice of cheese-stuffed pizza, a little burnt around the crust, but who was complaining as long as he could eat on the house for free. “I agree, Peewee. That’s why I went over to get it. But who knew that schoolteacher was gonna come knocking.”

“A fine mess,” grumbled Morris Hickensmith. He straightened his toupee, a cheap hairpiece that looked like a dead chipmunk sleeping atop his head. But he was too vain to show his bald spot, a hereditary pattern in his family. Even Myrtle’s hair was thin in that same spot, which is why she wore a bun.

“I’ll try again tonight, but you gotta have a car waiting.”

“In that neighborhood? A strange car would stand out like a sore thumb in a punchbowl.”

Myrtle Hickensmith walked over to their table. “Want more pizza?” She was a stocky woman with coal-black eyes and thick unplucked eyebrows. A loose apron hid her widening waistline – the result of a cheese-stuffed pizza diet.

“Naw, enough for me,” Moose held up his hands, palm up. He gave her a smile. He didn’t like her very much, but she was his best friend’s only living relative, so he made allowance. Besides, he liked the free pizza.

“Got any more pepperoni and onion?” asked Morris. He was as thin as his sister was plump. He wore a brown corduroy suit that had seen better days.

“Always got some pepperoni and onion for my baby brother.” She waddled off to retrieve another pie from the oven.

“Surely the heat’s off by now,” whispered Moose. “Let’s take the money and amscray to Chicago. Live high on the hog for awhile.”

“Then what?”

“Then stick up another savings and loan. Worked before.”

“I’m not sure how good it worked. We got the moola but it ain’t doing us no good hidden away in the basement of the old Beasley place. We’d be starving if Myrtle didn’t feed us leftover pizza.”

“Does she know about the heist?”

“Naw. Never told her. She thinks I’m a saint. You, she’s not so sure about.”

Moose let out a loud guffaw that made Myrtle Hickensmith glance up. “Everything all right?” she called to them.

“Hunky-dory,” answered her brother, giving his partner the Evil Eye. Loose lips and all that. He and Moose had been best friends since the third grade at Burpyville Elementary. Some people thought they were gay, but that wasn’t true. It was just that neither man had ever had much luck with women. Now a pair of old bachelors, they had pretty much given up. No wives, no career, no socially redeeming characteristics. A couple of losers who had graduated from holding up 7-11 stores to robbing the Caruthers Corners Savings & Loan.

≈ ≈ ≈

Cornelia Tutley was a nervous woman. She had never entirely recovered from that breakdown she’d suffered two years ago when a pair of masked bandits had held up the Caruthers Corners Savings & Loan. She’d been head teller, the one in charge of the S&L that day. It had been her job to press the alarm connected to the police station, to put the exploding dye pack into the bag with the money, to make sure the stack of twenties with the recorded sequential serial numbers was included with the rest of the stolen money.

But she had panicked.

Cornelia wasn’t used to people waving guns in front of her nose … no-sir-ree.

She gave the bad guys all the cash she had in the vault, $200,000 give or take, failing to include the dye pack or press the alarm. The crooks had made a clean getaway.

It wasn’t fair that she’d been under suspicion as an accomplice. Anybody could have panicked like that. She’d taken early retirement, rather than be fired. The stigma hung over her head to this day. Being mostly unemployable, she lived off her modest pension of $812 a month plus a $973 disability check. One doctor had compared her condition to PTSD. Just like those boys coming back from Afghanistan.

What she’d never told anyone was that she recognized one of the bandits. She’d been too afraid at the time to mention it to Chief Purdue. The bank robbers might have a score to settle with a squealer. Nobody could ever accuse Cornelia Tutley of that. Her lips were sealed.

She’d been born in Burpyville, a town situated about midway between Caruthers Corners and Indianapolis. And as it happened she’d gone to school with a skinny kid named Morris Hickensmith. He’d been born with a strange birthmark – a port-wine stain on his forearm – shaped like a penis.
Nevus flammeus
is caused by a
capillary
malformation in the skin. Only 3 to 5 cases occur in every 1,000 newborn babies. The Hickensmith boy had won the genetic jackpot … or lost it.

The kids had been cruel (her too), calling him Peewee. Based on that embarrassing birthmark, of course.

That fateful day two years ago Cornelia had noticed that one of the robbers sported a crimson birthmark on his arm. Shaped like a you-know-what. When she’d handed over the money, she’d inadvertently said, “Here you go, Peewee.”

She hoped he didn’t catch her gaffe. For weeks afterward she’d expected him and his accomplice – that would have to be Moose Johansson – to come back and do her in. No living witnesses, wasn’t that the criminal code?

Nowadays her little row house on Melon Ball Lane was fortified like a Maximum Security Prison, although it wasn’t clear whether she was locking Peewee and Moose out or herself in. She’d installed steel doors with triple deadbolts. Barred the windows. Added a burglar alarm system. Video cams. Sirens. Even a 12-guage pump-action shotgun. She rarely went out.

With no close relatives, nobody seemed to notice Cornelia’s withdrawal from public view. It was as if she had moved away, even though she could still be found in the very home she’d lived in all her life.

She’d inherited the place from her parents. Not that it was worth much. This part of town had fallen out of fashion. Unlike the earlier days when the Beasleys lived here, most of the neighbors were elderly and disenfranchised from society. It was rare to see people in their yards or on the sidewalks.

Funny thing, looking out through her peephole the other afternoon, she could swear she’d seen Moose Johansson right there on her street. Big as life, strolling down the sidewalk. Coming for her? She’d sat up all night holding her loaded 12-guage.

Best she could tell, Moose had disappeared round back of the Beasley Mansion. Later on she saw the high school principal stroll down the street, pause, and lay down on the lawn. Then along came some scarred-up monster, a man whose face looked like it had been in a meat grinder. Then came Chief Purdue’s white cruiser, the red and blue lights on its roof blazing. And finally a CCMC ambulance driven by big ol’ Ben Bentley. She never did see what happened to Moose. Maybe he was still there inside the Beasley Mansion, waiting till the time was right to come for her.

Well, she would be prepared, she told herself, cocking the shotgun.

CHAPTER FIVE

The Trouble With Freddie

A
manda Madison dropped by her mother-in-law’s big Victorian house on Melon Pickers Row, apologizing for popping in without notice. “I happened to be passing by,” she explained.

That’s when Maddy’s antennae went up, for Melon Pickers Row didn’t lead to anywhere Amanda was likely to be going. The chair factory around the corner was not a popular destination unless you were an employee. And most of them found better access to the factory’s parking lot by coming in on 4
th
Street.

“Have a cup of coffee,” invited the chubby brunette. “I just baked some ginger cookies.”

“Oh, I love your ginger cookies,” the petite blonde accepted, following Maddy into the kitchen. It was quite cozy, having been remodeled less than six months ago. Custom cabinets and pink granite countertops and a huge Sub Zero refrigerator that would hold enough food to feed Noah’s Ark.

“Let’s sit over here by the window,” suggested Maddy. “It’s such a pretty day.” She pushed the plate of cookies toward her daughter-in-law. And the coffee had taken no time at all, using her new Keurig. A birthday present from Beau.

“Yes, I suppose it is a pretty day,” Amanda admitted, almost reluctantly.

“Sounds like something’s on your mind,” Maddy nudged.

“Well, yes. There is,” the younger woman sighed. “I’m worried about Freddie.”

“Freddie? I thought he was having a ball as Sparkplug the Clown. He likes entertaining the children, doesn’t he?”

“Yes and no. He loves the children, but he misses his old job. Maybe not the job itself, but being a hero, a man who made a difference. Being a clown is somewhat trivial by comparison … at least that’s the way he sees it.”

“Hmm. Is he fretting over his scarred-up face?”

“He pretends not. But I think it bothers him to be – as he puts it – a monster who has to hide behind clown makeup.”

“This is not good.”

“No, Maddy, it isn’t. He’s been pretty difficult to live with. And I worry that he isn’t spending enough time with Donna Ann. She needs a father.”

“You know I’m not a meddling mother-in-law. What would you have me do?”

“Talk with him. See if he’s unhappy with me and Donna Ann. Try to find out what would make him the happy-go-lucky, self-confident guy that I married. Not some embittered curmudgeon who disappears for days at a time, off to who knows where, alone with himself.”

“This is not good,” Maddy repeated.

“He might listen to you. You’re his mother.”

Maddy sighed. “Have another cookie, dear. I’ll do what I can.”

≈ ≈ ≈

The Phantom – for that’s how he thought of himself – walked among the tombstones at Pleasant Glade. The engraved slabs stretched on either side of him like a garden of stone. He wasn’t worried about being spotted because Jasper Beanie was still sleeping off his late-night revelry in a cell at the local police station, and so the front gate remained locked to the consternation of those folks wanting to visit their dearly departed.

He hadn’t always thought of himself in this way, but a few months back he watched the movie version of Andrew Rice Weber’s
Phantom of the Opera
and it had made an impression on him. He was kinda like that dude, haunting the Paris Opera House. But in his case it was the Beasley Mansion.

As The Phantom wandered along the graveled pathway, he read off the names on nearby tombstones – Yost, Wilkins, Taylor, Marsch, Hitzer, Aitkens, Duncan, Johnson, Daniels, Periwinkle, Bentley, etc. But the founders’ names – Caruthers, Jinks, Madison, even Beasley – were etched on the stone lintels of the mausoleums in the older part of the cemetery.

Pleasant Glades had been officially named back in 1943 when taken over by Midwestern Funeral Parlors, now a large conglomerate (MFP, Inc.) that managed more cemeteries than funeral homes. But the site had been used as a cemetery since the founding of the town some 185 years ago. The older portion was down the hill in a little valley near the creek. There the tombstones and crypts were covered with mossy algae, making them appear a greenish gray. Despite the historic “residents,” this section got less maintenance, creating the appearance of an abandoned ghost town.

The Phantom thought that was a most appropriate description of this little village of tumbledown mausoleums: ghost town. He’d been afraid to come here as a child. But his father had been a regular visitor.

He had left town for a while – the necessity of his job – but now he was back he intended to claim his true heritage as one of descendants of the town’s founders. No longer would he be ashamed to show his face. Next election, he would overthrow the current mayor and assume the office himself.

People would soon be looking up to him as a powerful force in local politics. He even had a proper home in mind, a stately edifice that would proclaim his lofty status – the Beasley Mansion. And he had a plan how to acquire it, although it required a degree of stealth and chicanery.

But that was no problem for The Phantom. His bipolarism was given to grandiose thoughts. No matter that this manic-depressive condition vacillated from exhilarating highs to deep funks. He’d been off his meds for a couple of years now, freeing him from a drug-addled state to being his true self. Half crazed, to be sure. But with sharp thinking and a feral cleverness that allowed him to become The Phantom.

Pulling out a rusty key, he placed it in the lock of one of the mausoleums and let himself into the stone edifice. There he unloaded a knapsack containing several bars of polystyrene, a rigid synthetic plastic. Designated as a B3 product, it is highly flammable. He stacked the bars on the far side of the dank room away from the bottles of benzene, itself a colorless and highly flammable liquid derived from petroleum. Its sweet smell permeated the interior of the mausoleum.

Next trip he’d bring in the cans of gasoline. He’d need to buy the gas a few gallons at a time, so as not to arouse suspicion. Pretty soon he’d have all the ingredients to formulate Napalm B, the incendiary agent made famous by Robert Duvall in
Apocalypse Now
, raving about loving its smell in the morning.

The ratio of 21% benzene, 33% gasoline, and 46% polystyrene was pretty easy for a guy with a good knowledge of chemistry. The trick was using an effective pyrotechnic initiator like white phosphorous to set it off. Done right, this firebomb could burn for up to ten minutes.

That ought to take down the Town Hall.