3 Coming Unraveled (5 page)

Chapter Eleven

The Quilters Club looked more like a witches’ cabal at that moment, the four middle-aged women hunched over the faded red-orange-and-yellow quilt as if around a fire. The queen-sized quilt was spread across the big table in the rec room, its patchwork squares looking like lumpy little mattress pads. It gave off a faint odor of rotting leaves and compost.

“Not very elegant,” observed Liz, a woman of style and taste. Even if it was evident her hair was dyed,
you could tell it was an expensive styling job.

“Poor stitching,” agreed Cookie, the most fastidious of the foursome.

“Smells,” Bootsie wriggled her nose, remembering when the mephitic quilt had landed on her head. It took two showers to get rid of the fetid stench.

“What do you make of the design?” Maddy asked.

Cookie, being the most versed on historical quilt patterns, leaned closer to examine the flame-like image. The colors looked washed-out, the pigments deteriorated from sunlight and age. “Nothing special,” she made her appraisal. “No museum would touch it. No collector would want it. A rag picker’s dream.”

“So why would
Harry Periwinkle want it?” posited Maddy.

“Badly enough to trade half of the
E Z Seat chair factory for it,” Bootsie mused out loud.

“Sentimental value?” tried Liz.

“No, it was a Purdue family heirloom,” said Cookie, keeping the genealogy straight. “It had nothing to do with the Periwinkles.”

“Maybe it’s stuffed with money,” joked the banker’s wife. Poking it with her finger, you could hear a rustling sound.

“Sure, like Maud’s husband’s grandmother ever had any money,” laughed Bootsie. “This quilt was made before the family started up the chair factory.”

“So you didn’t marry Jim for his family fortune,” teased Maddy.

“I wish. His side of the family didn’t even have a piece of the chair factory.”

“Where did
Amandine Purdue’s husband get the capital to start a manufacturing business?” asked Lizzie. She was always interested in the money side of things.

“Good question,” shrugged Bootsie. “One day they were poor, the next day rich. Ol’ N.L. refuses to talk about it.
Merely says his great grandfather managed his money well.”

“
So Abner Purdue started up the chair factory,” Cookie traced the history. “He left it to his son Abe who left it to his son Amos – that’s Maud’s husband. And Amos left it to his two sons.”

“Yes, but Bobby Ray never lived to claim his half,” said Bootsie. “That’s how Harry Periwinkle was able to hoodwink them into signing over those shares to him.”

“That will get reversed,” Lizzie pointed out.

“Looks like we’ve hit a dead end,” sighed Maddy. She stared morosely at the lumpy quilt. She’d been so sure it would reveal secrets, but it was just a smelly old family keepsake. “Now we have to figure out how to get it back in the attic.”

“Aggie?” said Liz.

“I don’t know,” replied Maddy. “I was so afraid she would fall out of that tree. It w
as irresponsible of me to let her get involved in this.”

“She wasn’t in any danger,” the
redhead assured her. “That kid climbs like a monkey.”

“Yes, but I want her to be around to see her
new baby sister.”

“Tilly’s having a girl?”

“Has it been confirmed?”

Maddy smiled. “Yes, Tilly went to the doctor yesterday to get the results. A little girl.
That will make three.”

≈≈≈

Judge Horace Cramer refused to accept Mark the Shark’s request to step down. “The man needs a defense, even if he is a scum-sucking no-good hornswoggler who tried to gyp the Purdues out of their family business. The Periwinkles were always shifty, little more than white trash.”

“Are you sure you’re not biased in this case, Judge?”

“No, I’m not. Else I wouldn’t let them keep a sharp Los Angeles lawyer like you on the case.”

“I grew up here,” he reminded the judge.

“Course you did. I knew your daddy well. And you live here now. But you came out of a top-notch LA law firm, don’t think I don’t know it. If anybody can save Harry Periwinkle from twenty years in a state prison, it’s you.”

“Thank you,” Mark said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Not sure he really meant those words.

≈≈≈

Edgar Ridenour got
the phone call he was expecting from the director of Burbyville Memorial. As a board member of the hospital, Edgar was treated with proper deference. He had called for an investigation into how the DNA test on the Lost Boy had gone awry.

“We have a
pretty good idea of what happened,” said Virgil Hoffstedder. You could hear the nervousness in his voice. “The State Police are looking into it as we speak.”

“And
–?”

“We have an employee named Bernard Warbuckle, a lab technician. He ran the DNA test in question. Turns out, he’s gone missing.”

“Missing?”

“Warbuckle didn’t
show up for work today. He didn’t answer his telephone when we called to check on him. The State Police says he’s not at his apartment.”

“You called them before alerting me?”
grumbled Edgar Ridenour. He was head of the malpractice committee. And this was shaping up to be a big-ticket negligence lawsuit.

“When
someone suggested Warbuckle might be guilty of switching the DNA sample, we immediately called the State Police. We didn’t want to let him escape.”

Edgar took a deep breath, then
said, “What do we know about this Warbuckle guy?”

“According to his personnel file, he’s forty-two, graduated from Ball State, has worked here for four years. Clean record, no complaints about his work.”

“Maybe he hasn’t
actually disappeared,” Edgar said desperately. “Maybe he’s just visiting his family.”

“
The file said he has no known relatives.”

“F
riends then …”

“The
State Police said his apartment’s been cleaned out.”

Edgar tried again. “Maybe
he’s been kidnapped …”

“
Not very likely. The State Police says the information in his personnel file is phony. That he never attended Ball State. And his Social Security number belongs to a man who got run over by a tank during Desert Storm.”

The retired banker couldn’t hold back his temper. “Don’t you have any good news to report?” he shouted into the phone.

After a pause, Virgil Hoffstedder said, “I think he left without picking up his last paycheck.”

Chapter
Twelve

Maddy and the Quilters Club agreed that they would have to risk returning Maud Purdue’s quilt the same way they got it: Aggie climbing in through the attic window.

“I can do it,” Aggie assured her grandmother. “I got an A in gym last year.”

“I’m sure you can. But I doubt your mother would approve.”

“Maybe you’ll forget to tell her. After all, you’re getting old and forgetful.” The girl winked to seal the secret.

“Thanks. I’m glad my age is helpful to this plan,” said Maddy. But her granddaughter didn’t catch the sarcasm.

“Lucky I’m two months younger than you,” Lizzie joined the joke. “At least senility hasn’t set in with me yet.”

“Don’t count on that,” said Bootsie. “Remember how you lost your car keys last week?”

“That Lexus is a new car and I’m not used to that funny key. Whatever happened to the old-fashioned kind?”

“Time marches on,” commented Cookie, ever the historian.

Maddy began folding the smelly old quilt
in preparation for their late-night incursion. She had brought a Glad trash bag to carry it in.

“Why does the quilt
make that sound?” asked Aggie, the curiosity of a tween girl.

“What sound?”
replied Lizzie.

“Oh, you mean the crinkling sound?” said Maddy. “That’s whatever it
’s stuffed with. Sounds like paper.”

“That’s an odd stuffing,”
said Bootsie.

“Perhaps it’s old newspapers,” offered Cookie. “That would be interesting, to find old newspapers from 1899.”

“We’ll never know,” sighed Maddy as she continued to fold the quilt. “This unremarkable example of quiltmaking is going home tonight. Right, Aggie?”

“You bet. And I promise to be careful climbing that oak tree.”

“Good girl.”

Cookie fidgeted a tad. “Maybe we could clip a few thread
s and fish a scrap of newspaper out before taking it back.”

“Cookie!” admonished her friend Bootsie. It was bad enough they had completed a burglary, but the idea of damaging the antique quilt was simply unacceptable.

“Oh, I know. But I am the town historian. So you can’t blame me for being curious.”

“Me too,” admitted Lizzie.

“
Why can’t we take a peek?” Aggie weighed in.

Maddy held up her hands to silence them. “Okay, okay. Let’s see if there’s a loose thread.”

Bootsie rolled her eyes, but joined the up-close examination of the quilt. “Here’s a square that’s kinda loose,” she pointed.

“Hand me those tweezers,” Maddy pro
mpted her granddaughter. “Let’s see if I can work it loose without breaking the thread.”

“Pretty shoddy sewing,” harrumphed Liz
zie. “Looks like it was done in haste. No attention to the stitching.”

“I agree,” said Bootsie.
“Surprising that Harry Periwinkle would want this ugly old thing. Poor needlecraft. Boring design. Stuffed with old newspapers. Can’t be worth more than twenty dollars at yard sale.”

“Not newspapers,” said Maddy. Something in her voice got their attention. The women turned to stare at the quilt.

Maddy’s tweezers had extracted a long green piece of paper … US currency featuring the image of some stuffy looking man in formal military attire.

“
T-that’s a thousand dollar bill,” stammered Lizzie. “Look it says so in big numbers on the backside.”

“There no such thing as a
thousand dollar bill,” Bootsie stated flatly. “This must be counterfeit.”

“No,” corrected Cookie, calling on her encyclopedic memory. “
Small-size Federal Reserve notes in the amount of one thousand dollars were first issued in 1890. They bore the portrait of General George Meade.”

“He wasn’t a president,” said Aggie, having studied t
hem in school last year.

“Neither was Ben Franklin or Alexander Hamilton,” Maddy patted her granddaughter’s hand. “And they’re on hundred
s and twenties.”

Maddy fished out another $1
000 bill.

“These are red seal bank notes.
” Cookie pointed to the circular red blob on the front of the bills. “They were known as Grand Watermelons because the zeros
are shaped like large watermelons, oblong and dark green with black streaks.”

“Watermelons,” laughed the mayor’s wife. The town was famous for its annual Watermelon Festival. “How appropriate.”

“Are there more in there?” asked Lizzie.

“Let’s find out,”
said Bootsie, ripping at the stitches she’d earlier tried to protect. “Holy cow! This quilt is filled with thousand dollar bills.”

“N
-no wonder Harry Periwinkle wanted it,” stammered Maddy. “There must be a million dollars in here.”

“But half interest in
E Z Seat has got to be worth more than that,” said Bootsie.

“This pile of money is worth
much more than its face value,” countered Cookie. “
A $1000 Grand Watermelon is the most expensive US banknote ever sold at auction. One of them went for a world’s record price of $2,255,000.”

“One of them?” gasped the banker’s wife. “There
must be hundreds of them here.”

Cookie nodded, dumbfounded by their discovery. “
Before we opened this old quilt, only two red seal Grand Watermelons were known to still exist. The one that sold at auction and another that’s in the museum at the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco.”

“
Amazing,” muttered Liz. “We’ve just figured out what this Lost Boy charade was all about – a hidden fortune.”

“Yes,” said Maddy Madison. “But now the question is, where did
Amos Purdue’s grandmother get this much money?”

Chapter T
hirteen

The Haney Bros. Circus had returned to the Bentley farm on its way to a gig in Illinois. Ben was a sucker for helping out wayfarers in need of a place to camp out – whether stranded RV’s, itinerant workers, gypsy troupes, or pocket-sized circuses.

Ben even helped the Haneys pitch their two tents. Big Bill and Little William slept in one, Bombay and Sprinkles the Clown
shared the other.

Sneezy the Baboon had his own folding cot in the second tent. The horses were tethered out back.
The elephant was chained to a stake. The lion and tiger had their own cages. And Sleepy the Bear slept in the back of the truck.

“We had a great run at the Burpyville Mall,” crowed Big Bill, still dressed in his ringmaster’s getup, a fr
ayed red jacket and black top hat. His boots looked spit-shined.

“Indeed we did,” confirmed Little William. While
Bill was 6’ 2” tall, William barely reached 5’ even with thick-soled shoes. “It was worth waiting for a slot. Thank goodness that kiddy carnival got canceled because its Ferris wheel failed a safety check.”

“You should have seen Big Bill put Grumpy and Bashful
through their paces,” the clown said to Ben. “He had those cats eating out of his hand – literally.”

“Musta been quite a show,” smiled Ben. “Little Aggie Tidemore talked about it for hours when she got back from Burpyville. It was nice of you to give Aggie and her uncle passes.”

“Took a liking to the little girl,” said Sprinkles. “I hope she’ll come by to say goodbye before we pull up stakes and head to Peoria. We’re playing a waterpark there.”

“Dunno. She’s caught up in some big excitement in town. My wife and some other women found about a zillion dollars stuffed in
side a quilt sewed together by Amos Purdue’s grandma. Somebody’s gonna be rich, once they figure where all that cash came from.”

“That’s
my
money,” blurted Sprinkles the Clown.

≈≈≈

Turns out, there were only five $1000 bills in the old patchwork quilt. But there was a plethora of other denominations: 1880 hundred dollar notes featuring Abraham Lincoln; 1882 twenty dollar gold certificates featuring James A. Garfield; 1891 five dollar silver certificates with Ulysses S. Grant; 1880 two dollar bank notes with Thomas Jefferson; and 1899 one-dollar silver certificate notes also with Abe Lincoln’s portrait.

Some $73,512 in face value, but
Daniel Sokolowski of Dan’s Den of Antiquity estimated that all told it might be worth more than $100 million on the auction block.

Question was, to whom did it belong?

Police Chief Jim Purdue was boiling mad. His own wife involved in a third-rate burglary! Beau Madison was embarrassed by Maddy’s actions. Ben Bentley was proud of his spunky wife. Edgar Ridenour was too distracted with that hospital business to notice. And little Agnes was grounded by her parents for about one hundred years.

Being that this involved prominent families, it was agreed to sweep the “theft” under the rug. The police chief released a story about how the women found the quilt in a
trashcan, not that anyone believed it.

Maud Purdue said she wouldn’t press charges if her rightful property
was returned. She told her cousin Jim that it was none of his business how Grandma Purdue got the money – making the point that the quilt had been handed down to her husband’s side of the family, not his.

She tried to hire Mark the Shark to represent her claim, but he
pointed out that it would be a conflict of interest, him representing the miscreant who pretended to be her son in order to extort the quilt from her.

Maddy raised the question as to how
Harry Periwinkle knew about the money being in the quilt, but it was the consensus that he’d learned about it from Bobby Ray Purdue sometime before his friend stepped into the quicksand.

Cookie had a theory about where the money came from, but she figured now was not the time to speak up. The town was filling with
newspaper reporters and TV crews looking to cover this “hidden treasure” story. Everybody was abuzz. It wasn’t until after midnight when Cookie finally got home that her husband mentioned the strange remark by the circus clown.

“Everybody wishes it was their money,” she yawned. “Me too.”

“Aw, we don’t need the money,” said Ben. “Farm’s doing pretty good.”

“Even so, h
aving an extra hundred million dollars wouldn’t hurt,” Cookie smiled as she turned off the light.