4 Hemmed In (12 page)

“Family tradition,”
Becky said modesty.

Chapter Twenty-Seven

Crooks in the Can

A
fter locking Becky Marsch in one of the police station’s two holding cells, Deputy Pete Hitzer picked up Bern Bjorn and put him in the other one with Maury Seiderman. Lt. Neil Wannamaker was on his way down from Indy to pick them up.

“Gotcha, did they?” Seiderman greeted his cousin’s boyfriend.
He’d already claimed the top bunk, giving himself an on-high vantage point.

“Becky squealed on me,”
Bjorn spat out the words. He glanced angrily in her direction.

“No, honeybunch, I didn’t,”
she called to him. “They had us dead to rights. They knew you killed Charlie Aitkens to shut him up about your stealing the quilt.”

“
Shut up, Becky! Don’t say that in front of them.”

“What? That you killed Charlie? You never should’ve told
your buddies about stealing the quilt in the first place.”

“
Charlie was gonna help me sell it. Said he knew a guy in Cincinnati who fenced stolen goods.”

Becky threw a shoe at him. It bounced off the cell’s bars. “I thought you were only interested in
finding the Viking treasure.”

“
That’s true,” he replied. “But I’m not going to turn away a hundred grand. The quilt had served its purpose.”

Maury Seiderman slid off the top bunk, landing on the floor like a 6’ 3” tomcat. “Hold on, chum. You didn’t tell me about the hundred grand. I want my share. You promised me a third of whatever we got.”

Bern Bjorn backed away from the threatening figure. “
Your share, I was taking about the treasure.”

“Well, there
is
no treasure, according to these old biddies.”

“Who are you calling biddies?” protested Bootsie Purdue, standing next to her husband.

“You and your quilting pals,” shouted Seiderman. “You’ve bollixed up this whole deal. Now I’m mixed up in a murder.”

“Keep talking,” grinned Chief Purdue. “We’ve got a station-full of witness
es.” He gestured to the members of the Quilters Club. “No way you’re walking away from this one. But it might go easier on you, if you tell us where to find the Wilkins Witch Quilt.”

“I told you
my great-great grandmother wasn’t really a witch,” shouted Becky. Angry about this turn of events. Being arrested. Her boyfriend turning against her. The treasure still out there unclaimed.

“Who cares whether the old hag was a witch or a Presbyterian,” said Bern Bjorn. “I want to know where that silver is hidden.”

“There is no silver,” Seiderman repeated.

“There was
,” insisted Bjorn. “My son Pinky cracked the code of that message on the quilt.”

“Your son has too much imagination,” groused Seiderman. “Always playing those stupid video games. He probably made the whole thing up.”

“No, Becky’s great-grandmother saw the silver bars.”

“That’s true
,” she called from the next cell.

“
Then where are they?” the skinny man challenged.

“I have
a theory,” said Cookie Bentley.

≈ ≈ ≈

All eyes turned to Cookie. She had everyone’s attention. Even Lt. Wannamaker and the two burly state cops he’d brought with him.

“
My theory is that a small band of Viking explorers made it here, having sailed across the Great Lakes from Newfoundland – or Vinland as they called it. They set up an encampment under the oak trees and dug a well so they’d have plentiful water. Or maybe it was simply meant to be a Money Pit like they’d dug on Oak Island in Nova Scotia.”

“I’ve read about that,” said
the founder of the G.M.O.P.A. “It’s been attributed to pirates, freemasons, and Norsemen. Some have speculated it holds a Viking treasure. Or even Marie Antoinette’s jewels.”

“
Marie Antoinette wasn’t a Viking,” muttered Bjorn. He’d never liked Becky’s know-it-all cousin. It had been her idea to bring him in on this treasure hunt.

Cookie continued
doggedly. “Likely Mad Matilda’s husband found the treasure while deepening the well. Word got out and Rev. Royce and his band of witch hunters saw it as their God-given right to confiscate the treasure from these spawns of Satan.”

“
Seiðr
doesn’t have anything to do with Satan,” Becky objected. “Like I told you, it’s based on Scandinavian mythology.”

“Their religious beliefs must have got corrupted after a couple of generations in America,” Lizzie pointed out. “The Wilkins Witch Quilts shows devils and angels doing battle.”

“And she sold magic potions,” added Bootsie.

The blonde had no response to that. S
o she sat down on her bunk to sulk.

“Old man Wilkins had been kicked in the head by a mule, so it was only Matilda and her daughter at the cottage. Stealing the silver was lik
e taking candy from a baby. Rev. Royce and his followers dumped Matilda in the well and walked off with the loot.”

“But legend ha
s it they buried the silver under the doorstep of their church,” said Maury Seiderman, his face pressed against the bars. “And you didn’t find it when you dug around the foundation. I was there, remember?”

“Th
at legend also said Rev. Royce planned to come back for it,” remembered Maddy. “Perhaps he did.”

“Exactly,” chimed Cookie. “That
Viking treasure is long gone.”

“Damn,” cursed Bern Bjorn. “All this for nothing.”

“You’ve got the quilt,” whined Seiderman. “I want my share of that.”

“Nobody will be getting a share,” snapped Lt. Wannamaker. “You can’t profit from stolen goods.”

Bjorn flashed a wicked grin. “Yeah, but I’ve got the quilt. You’ll never see it again if you don’t let us walk.”

“Might cut some slack for little missy here and your weird friend from Chicago,
” said The Nail, “but no way you’re going to walk on a murder charge.”

“Wasn’t murder,” argued Bjorn. “It was an accident.”

“Oh, that rock fell out of the sky and landed on Charlie Aitkens’s head,” scoffed Chief Purdue.

“No, Charlie was showing me this rock he’d found out in the field. Had some kind of writing on it. Like those markings on the witch’s quilt.
He was starting to figure out there might be more going on here than stealing a ratty old quilt.”

“So you killed him,” said Bootsie.

“Not just like that. He attacked me and I took the rock away from him and hit him with it. Didn’t mean to kill him.”

“That’s your defense?
” said The Nail. “Good luck with that.”

“It’s the truth.”

“Tell it to the judge.”

Bern Bjorn set his jaw stubbornly. “Then you’ll never see that quilt again.”

“I think I know where to find it,” said little Aggie who’d been taking all this in.

Everyone turned to stare at the eleven-year-old girl. In the excitement t
hey had forgotten she was there. “You do?” said her grandmother.

“Maybe. Mr. Bjorn said Charlie was going to help him sell the quilt. They had their fight in the Aikens Produce barn. Why not look
for it there?”

“We searched the barn at the time of the murder,” said Deputy Hitzer.

“But were you looking for a quilt?” asked Aggie.

“Well, no. I was looking for clues to the murder.” This was the young policeman’s first
wrongful death case. His enthusiasm exceeded his experience, as Chief Purdue would later say.

“We’ll take another look,” said Jim Purdue, “with an eye to finding a missing quilt.”

Bern Bjorn cursed again. “Damn, I may as well tell you. It’s hidden in a stack of horse blankets in the tack room. The Aitkenses don’t keep horses no more, so it could’ve sat there till Kingdom Come if this pint-sized Quilters Clubber hadn’t stuck her nose in.”

Aggie smiled, showing her missing tooth. Happy to be recognized as breaking the case for the Quilters Club. “Thank you, Mr. Bjorn. I hope to see you next time I come to the Dairy Queen for a custard parfait.”

“You might have to wait thirty years to life for that,” said Lt. Neil Wannamaker, his dry wit going over the young girl’s head.

“
Hmmpt
, I might not be there,” said Bern Bjorn, “but you tell Maisie the counter girl I said to give you extra sprinkles. You’re smarter than the lot of these lawmen. You’re the one who deserves a reward.”

“Gee, thanks, Mr. Bjorn.”

“No reward has been posted –” began Lt. Wannamaker.

“Sprinkles will do,” said Aggie.

Epilogue

It Turns Out Well

T
he Wilkins Witch Quilt was eventually restored to the wall of the Town Hall. It had been found exactly where Bern Bjorn said, folded in a stack of horse blankets.

Bjorn
was found innocent of negligent homicide, the jury buying his story about hitting Charlie Aitkens during a struggle over the rock. Nobody in Caruthers Corners believed that yarn, but juries in Indy don’t get very indignant about small-town fisticuffs that end with tragic results.

Nonetheless, Bjorn and his girlfriend Becky Marsch left the area. Some said they went to live with her cousin Maury in Chicago. Becky and her cousin had received suspended sentences as accessories after the fact.

Rumor had it that Boyd Aitkens had hired a hitman to avenge his son’s death, but that was never proven. Nor was there any reports of Bjorn’s demise.

Aggie did get the extra sprinkles until the Dairy Queen
closed down. Bjorn’s ex-wife took over the franchise, but she let her boyfriend Ted Yost run it. He was not a very good businessman, as it turned out.

Maddy’s son Bill and his wife made a f
ull recovery. Kathy still walks with a slight limp. N’yen was excited to see them when they drove down from Chicago to take him home.

“It was a great visit,” he exclaimed. “I got to join the Quilters Club and we solved a big murder case.”

Kathy patted him on the head, convinced his imagination had gone wild. “That’s nice, dearie,” she said as he climbed into the car, a new Subaru courtesy of the trucker’s insurance company.

Bill eyed his mother, suspecting there was more truth to the story than not. During their recovery they had not watched the news on TV, so they
’d missed the frenzied coverage of the murder trial. The TV networks had had a field day with the witching angle. Nancy Grace did a segment from the Indianapolis courthouse steps. Piers Morgan had interviewed Christine O’Donnell about witchcraft, with her walking off his show for a second time. Anderson Cooper got an exclusive with Becky Marsch, talking about her great-great grandmother Mad Matilda Wilkins.

The story about the Viking silver never came out. The prosecutor had thought it too diverting
a topic to introduce into the trial. Professor Ezra Pudhomme was disappointed, for he’d hoped to be interviewed about runology and how he’d helped crack the case.

Cookie Bentley did some more research on Rev. Billingsley Royce, leader of the Avenging
Angels. He seemed to have disappeared from history after the 1899 murder of Matilda Wilkins. However, she did find a reference to the formation of a brewery in St. Paul at the turn of the century called Royce’s Beverages. Its motto was “Beer Fit for the Angels.” She wondered if it had been financed with Viking hack silver.

Royce’s Beverages went bust in the 1920s, and records
were lost in a fire. Particulars about its ownership were sketchy.

Freddie’s daughter Donna was cast as Snow White in a kindergarten play. The Haney Bros. Zoo where
Freddie worked part-time as a clown got a new elephant, this one named Rosie. She made a good mate for Happy, the circus’s original pachyderm. An aging lion named Growly was also added to the menagerie. Bombay Martinez was happy with his new charges.

Till
y announced she was pregnant again. Mark the Shark was already handing out cigars. Aggie rolled her eyes at the thought of another sibling.

Boyd Aitkens was good as his word, offering to put up the campaign money for Beauregard Hollingsworth Madison IV’s next mayoral campaign, but Beau surprised everybody by deciding not to run. Mark Tidemore announced his candidacy, and with Beau’s endorsement
was a shoo-in.

Lt. Neil Wannamaker nominated Aggie for an Honorary Lawman of the Year award.
She was all giggly at the idea. She viewed it as validation of the Quilters Club as
real
detectives.

The Nail
also had offered to nominate the other Quilters Club members, but they didn’t have time for such nonsense. Maddy, Cookie, Bootsie, and Lizzie were much too busy, already planning the quilting exhibit for the next Watermelon Day festival.

= = =