Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries) (7 page)

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

Striking a Happy Medium

H
arry Houdini was a great escape artist, able to slip out of handcuffs, chains, straightjackets, even free himself from sealed milk cans while holding his breath under water. But he achieved an equal fame debunking false psychics. As Houdini’s notoriety as a “ghostbuster” grew, he was forced to attend séances in disguise in order to catch mediums off guard.

Houdini wrote a book about his exploits in exposing fake mediums, titled
A Magician Among the Spirits
. It cost him his friendship with Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, author of the
Sherlock Holmes
stories. Despite his character’s analytical mind, Doyle himself was a firm believer in Spiritualism.

This tradition has been carried on by other stage magicians. The Amazing Dunninger wrote an exposé titled
Inside the Medium’s Cabinet
. James Randi still offers $1,000,000 to anyone who can provide proof of psychic phenomena. And it was magician Joe Nickell who exposed those fake mediums at Camp Chesterfield.

As James Dunninger said, “There is one primary rule in the fakery of spirit mediumship. That is to concentrate upon persons who have suffered a bereavemen
t
.”

Maisie Threadwhistle Daniels had been “bereaving” ever since her husband Joe caught his necktie in a weaving machine at the E Z Seat chair factory. He’d been a shift supervisor so he dressed for success, wearing a so-called power tie. Used to watching the weavers “kiss the shuttle,” he had leaned in too close to inspect the warp and weft of a new design. Goodbye, Joe.

That’s when Maisie started seeing Madam Blatvia. The old mystic had been a great comfort to Maisie, bringing messages from Joe that had helped her manage in his absence.

Skookie had scoffed at the séances, but now his mother expected he’d be singing a different tune as soon as Poncho located him on the Other Side. Madam Blatvia had assured her Skookie would be making contact with them soon.

The timing worked out. Maisie had all but run through Joe’s life insurance money, so thankfully Skookie’s would be kicking soon. The Teacher’s Union offered a pretty good policy for high school principals.

The woman was angry with Police Chief Purdue for not taking her accusation of murder more seriously. That congenital bad heart had thrown him off the trail. That or he didn’t know how to arrest a ghost.

Madam Blatvia had been quite clear: Poncho told her that Major Samuel Beasley was responsible for frightening her son to death. That wicked old spirit wouldn’t get away with this bad deed, no sir. Maisie would see to that.

It took a number of long-distance phone calls, but Maisie finally located a defrocked Catholic priest in Chicago who claimed to do exorcisms. Only $200 plus travel expenses, a bargain. This priest would flush Old Sam out of that confounded haunted house and send him packing off to Hell where he belonged.

≈ ≈ ≈

Police Chief Jim Purdue figured he had much better things to do than go chasing ghosts. Dutifully, he wrote up a report of his inspection of Beasley Mansion … uh, Beasley Arms, as the mayor wanted him to call it. The report detailed how he had arrested a trespasser, thought to be the face in the window that had accidentally frightened Robert “Skookie” Daniels to death. Case closed.

•            
  No charges were filed in the high school principal’s death.
  
•            
  Charges had been made for trespassing on town property.
  
•            
  Other charges were pending (i.e. bank robbery).
  

He called a small press conference at Mark the Shark’s insistence to issue a formal statement. Two reporters showed up, Bradley Hancock from the
Burpyville Gazette
and Lucius Plancus from
WZUR
, a small
AM
station down near Pitsville.

Mark Tidemore was happy with the squib in the
Gazette
:

‘Ghost’ Turns Out to Be Vagrant

The reported sighting of a “ghost” in Caruthers Corners turned out to be Marvin “Moose” Johansson, 34, an unemployed watermelon picker who had been squatting in the abandoned building, according to Police Chief James L. Purdue. Chief Purdue, who personally made the arrest, says he was alerted to the possibility of a trespasser while investigating the recent death of Caruthers Corners High School Principal Robert S. Daniels. The result of natural causes, Daniels had collapsed near the building where Johansson was later arrested. Johansson will be arraigned next Tuesday in county court.

The radio report was a bit more salacious. Citing an exclusive interview with Mrs. Joseph S. Daniels, it claimed that her son Robert had been murdered by “persons unknown” and that the Caruthers Corners Police Department was deliberately covering it up on orders from Mayor Mark Tidemore. During the on-air newscast, ace reporter Lucius Plancus alleged the cover-up was part of a multimillion-dollar real estate deal involving Beasley Mansion, site of the man’s murder.

“Murder!” shouted Mark Tidemore. “What murder? The coroner ruled death due to heart failure.”

“At least, there wasn’t any mention of ghosts,” noted Jim Purdue.

“Jim, we’ve got to find a way to squelch this murder business.”

“It doesn’t help that your brother-in-law saw somebody in the window of that old house,” sighed Jim Purdue. “That fuels the claim of Maisie Daniels that her son was frightened to death by a ghost.”

“Not to mention the babblings of her psychic, Madam Blatvia.”

“Forget that old charlatan. You need to get Freddie to withdraw his statement about seeing somebody in the Beasley house.”

“But he
did
see somebody. And you arrested the guy, Moose Johansson. A trespasser, for god’s sakes. Not a ghost.”

“Don’t know if we can make it stick that Johansson was the guy Freddie saw. Both Morris Hickensmith and his sister Myrtle give him an alibi. They swear he was at the pizza parlor that whole afternoon.”

“Hickensmith’s not a credible witness. You just arrested him for the Savings & Loan robbery, for God’s sake. And his sister has a record for shoplifting – you said so yourself.”

“Still, Freddie can’t positively ID that face in the window as Moose Johansson. So we’re back to a ghost.”

“Don’t say that, Jim. The Beasley Arms project will never get off the ground unless we silence this stupid ghost business. Not even poor folks – uh, I mean low-income citizens – want to live in a haunted house.”

“Can’t say I’d move into an apartment there.”

“I thought you didn’t believe in the supernatural, a hard-nosed cop like you.”

“Don’t. But anybody can get spooked.”

CHAPTER FOURTEEN

All Purpose Doctor

“W
ell, well, well. To what do I owe this visit, Maddy?” clucked Doc Medford. A local physician, he also doubled as coroner. With his office located next door to the Yost & Yost Mortuary, he got a lot of ribbing about the effectiveness of his medical practice. But the funeral home provided storage for any corpses under investigation by Doc when wearing his coroner’s hat.

If there were any questions about Doc, a sign on his door told all:
FRANKLIN D. MEDFORD, MD
. Underneath was listed
GENERAL PRACTITIONER
. Then,
ONCOLOGY AND RADIOLOGY
. Below that,
PODIATRY AND REFLEXOLOGY
. And finally,
COUNTY CORONER AND FORENSIC PATHOLOGIST
. He was literally a one-man medical center.

“Hi Doc, I wonder if you’d be willing to talk with me about Skookie Daniels?” Maddy broached the subject straight-out. She wasn’t the type to beat around the bush.

He smiled. “So the Quilters Club is looking for a ghost, eh?”

“Just the opposite,” she replied firmly. “If anything frightened Skookie, I’m sure it was something – or someone – of this earth.”

“So you think he was scared to death?” He ran his fingers through his snowy hair, an impatient habit. He had a busy schedule.

“Yes. But I want your professional opinion.”

“Impossible to say.” He glanced at his watch as if counting heartbeats. “You see, Skookie had a congenital heart problem. He could have blown an aorta at any given minute. Sure, a bad shock could have precipitated it. But there’s no way to tell.”

“Your best guess?”

Doc Medford shrugged. “I think he just dropped dead.”

≈ ≈ ≈

Maddy reported her findings (such as they were) to her Quilters Club comrades over a cup of coffee at the Cozy Café. Aggie had a chocolate milk instead. This was fast becoming their headquarters.

“So that’s it, Skookie just dropped dead?” said Cookie. “Nothing caused it?”

“That’s what Doc Medford thinks.”

“So Jim’s right about there being no foul play,” muttered Bootsie, sounding a little disappointed to concede this point to her husband.

“We never said there was a deliberate murder,” Maddy reminded her. “We just wondered if something or someone gave him a shock that caused a heart attack.”

“Like a ghost in the window,” said Lizzie, not quite ready to give up on the supernatural.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” Aggie repeated the mantra, as if it might ward off evil spirits.

“That’s right, dear,” said Maddy. “It’s just that we find it hard to accept that a bright young man in the prime of his life would just drop dead.”

Bootsie nodded. “Yes, a high school principal, engaged to be married, going to pay off the mortgage on his mother’s home …”

“Engaged?” said Lizzie. “To whom?”

“I don’t know,” admitted Bootsie. “But that's what his mother said.”

“Was there been an announcement in the paper?” asked Cookie. A voracious reader, she was sure she couldn’t have missed it. As town historian she paid particular attention to obituaries and birth announcements, weddings and engagements.

“I don’t think so,” said Maddy, thinking over the back issues of
Burpyville Gazette
stacked in her garage. She was saving them for quilt stuffing, the way old-timey needlecrafters used to do it.

“It’s no big secret,” Aggie spoke up as she slurped the last drop of chocolate milk from the bottom of the glass with her straw. “Everybody at school knows Skookie Daniels was sweet on Miss Pritchard, the Latin teacher.”

“They still teach Latin?” said Lizzie, raising her eyebrows in dismay.

“Never mind about Latin,” said Maddy. “Are you sure about this, Aggie.”

The girl nodded, blonde hair catching the sunlight through the café’s plate-glass window. “The kids have been writing
SKOOKIE LOVES ELLIE
on the blackboards. The words get erased but nobody denies it.”

“Ellie?” said Bootsie.

“Eleanor Pritchard,” explained Cookie, keeper of information. “Ellie for short. She transferred in from the Indy school district last year.”

“Skookie works fast,” noted Lizzie, still the romantic under all her cynicism.

“Apparently not fast enough,” said Maddy, reminding them of his current status.

≈ ≈ ≈

That night Maddy and Beau were watching a rerun of
Sanford and Son
on some retro TV channel. Not many people realized that Sanford was comedian Redd Foxx’s real name. Based on BBC’s
Steptoe and Son
, the Norman Lear sitcom had been included on
Time
magazine’s list of the “100 Best TV Shows of All Time.”

Beau laughed out loud every time Fred G. Sanford gripped his chest, looked heavenward, and cried “This is The Big One, Elizabeth! I’m coming to join ya, honey.”

But tonight Maddy wasn’t laughing along with her husband. After her visit to Doc Medford, a heart attack didn’t seem like a joking matter. It seemed as serious as … well, you know.

Despite his impatience, Doc had been very helpful, explaining that an aortic dissection occurs when a tear in the inner wall of the
aorta
causes blood to flow between the layers of the heart. Although fairly rare (about 3 per 100,000), it tends to be more common in males. And 40% of all cases result in rapid death.

The first recorded case was in 1760, a post mortem of King George II of Great Britain.

“It’s a fool’s errand to try to assign blame,” Doc Medford had said to her. “Unless you think someone deliberately tried to frighten him into an acute myocardial infarction, no crime has taken place. Do you know of anyone with a motive to see Skookie Daniels dead?”

“No. I’m just going by his mother’s accusations.”

“And she thinks a ghost did it – Major Samuel Elmsford Beasley, to be exact.”

“Sounds pretty stupid when you put it that way,” Maddy had admitted.

“Maddy!” Her husband’s voice snapped her back to reality. She looked up just in time to see Fred Sanford chasing his son Lamont around a table as the theme music kicked in and the end credits began to roll.

“Yes, dear?” she managed to respond.

“Do we have any watermelon pie left?”

“No, I’m afraid not. But I have some fresh ginger cookies I baked today. I was planning to take them over to Freddie tomorrow, but he won’t miss one or two.”