4 Hemmed In (2 page)

Chapter Four

Rev. Royce and the Church of Avenging Angels

I
n addition to being a member of the Quilters Club, Cookie Bentley served as head of the Caruthers Corners Historical Society. So it was no surprise to her friends that she knew all the sordid details about Mad Matilda Wilkins – the town’s alleged witch.

The Quilters Club had gathered
in the cramped quarters of the Historical Society to conspire. Despite last night’s warning, they couldn’t resist looking into the theft.

“Yes,
Matilda Wilkins was certifiably mad,” Cookie affirmed, sitting there behind her antique desk. “The old woman truly believed she was a witch. People came to her to buy love potions, have her to cast spells on their enemies, and predict their future. By all accounts these occult activities made her quite wealthy. But no money was found after her death. Everybody assumed that those fanatics who murdered her took it.”

“Why didn’t they take the quilt?” asked Liz Ridenour. Being a banker’s wife, she always thought in monetary terms.

“We value it today, but back then it was just a fancy bedspread,” explained Cookie. “Besides, all those symbols on the quilt may have scared them. It was said Mad Matilda used it in satanic ceremonies.”

“Why didn’t th
ose people who murdered her get arrested?” asked Bootsie. As the wife of the police chief, she was curious about such details.

Cookie
patted a stack of yellowed newspapers. “According to contemporary reports, all the members of the Church of Avenging Angels left the county in the dark of night. None were ever captured.”

“
Church of Avenging Angels?” repeated Maddy. “That sounds quite ominous.”

“They were an extremist cult.
Believed that violence against evil was justified. Hunted down witches.” She pulled a faded photograph out a drawer. “This is Rev. Billingsley Royce, leader of the Avenging Angels. If anybody got Matilda Wilkins’s money, it was this guy.”

Maddy leaned forward to study the photo.
The man had close-set eyes and spikey, unkempt hair. His pointed chin looked very defiant. A wine-stain birthmark covered half his forehead. He held a coiled snake in his hands. “Scary looking,” she observed.

“Rev. Royce may have been crazier than Mad Matilda. It’s said he slept in a bed of
rattlesnakes. But I suspect that’s just a tall tale,” added Cookie.

“What does any of this have to do with the stolen quilt?” scowled Lizzie
Ridenour. The redhead had a short attention span.

“Maybe nothing,” admitted
Cookie, pushing her wire-rimmed granny glasses back upon the bridge of her thin nose. “But knowing the quilt’s history may be helpful in recovering it.”

“We’re going to recover
it?”

“Don’t you think we should?” responded Cookie.

“Of course,” said Maddy. “After all, we know more about quilts than the State Bureau of Investigation.”

“Jim’s not going to like this,” muttered the police chief’s wife.

Maddy patted her friend’s shoulder. “Then don’t tell him. No need to worry your husband unnecessarily. That’s my policy.”

“
One rumor had it that Matilda Wilkins’s money was buried under the church’s doorstep, awaiting Rev. Royce’s return.”

“Surely people have looked there,” said Bootsie.

“Not really,” Cookie shook her head. Her mousey brown hair glinted with gold from the overhead light. “You see, when the Avenging Angels pulled out, they burned their church to the ground. Or so it was claimed. It could be that the deputized posse looking for them burnt it. After all these years, nobody seems to remember exactly where it was located.”

“How
could you lose a church?”

“The town plats are pretty accurate, but no one paid much attention to the surrounding count
ryside back then. Old newspaper articles say it was on the far side of the Never Ending Swamp, but that’s a lot of empty land. Mostly watermelon fields today.”

“
Okay, then let’s concentrate on the quilt,” decided Maddy. “Do you know if Mad Matilda made others?”

Cookie shook
head. “Not as far as we know. ‘The Battle Between Heaven and Hell’ was the only one.”

“Wow! That’s a pretty dramatic name,”
exclaimed Bootsie.

“That’s the official title given to the Wilkins quilt.”

“I didn’t know that,” Lizzie admitted. “I’ve always heard it referred to as the Wilkins Witch Quilt.”

“The
official title is posted there on a little bronze plaque in the Town Hall,” admonished Cookie. “Anyone could read it if they had a mind to do so.”

“I hardly ever go to the
Town Hall,” rejoined the redhead, sounding a little defensive.

“The title comes from the design on the quilt, angels and demons fighting it out. An apocalyptic vision.”
Cookie pulled out a color photograph of the quilt, taken when it was still hanging on the Town Hall wall. “It’s quite detailed.”

The four women studied the picture. The orange-and-red quilt was dazzling to the eye. Each patchwork square was embroidered with tiny figures, some bearing wings, others displaying horns, with monsters scattered among them
– like a scene from a Civil War battle, but being fought with otherworldly soldiers.

“Ooo-ee,”
said Lizzie. “I’ve never looked at the quilt up-close before. Reminds me of a nightmare I might have after eating too much pistachio ice cream.”

“There
’s no such thing as too much pistachio ice cream,” muttered Bootsie, a frequent visitor to the DQ on Main Street. She suffered a little weight problem from time to time.

Cookie described the scene: “Angels attacking devils with thunderbolts. Devils wielding pitchforks. Goblins and half-human monsters gnawing on angels’ legs. Cauldrons boiling with witches’ brew, fires burning, thunderclouds spewing lightning, the
very earth splitting to swallow combatants, all hell breaking loose!”

“What an imagination,” observed Maddy.

“Matilda Wilkins claimed it was a vision of things to come.”

“
Well, it’s now more than a hundred years later and I haven’t noticed any strangers with wings or horns hanging around the gazebo in the town square,” smirked Lizzie. She and her husband Edgar owned a big Victorian house facing the grassy expanse of the square.

“Don’t scoff,”
admonished Bootsie. It wasn’t clear whether she was being superstitious or just overly reverent.

“What about these strange markings around the border?” Maddy pointed. “Do you know what they mean?”

Cookie pulled out a thick book titled
A History of Caruthers Corners and Surrounding Environs
by Martin J. Caruthers. He’d been the father of the former mayor, the scallywag that Beau had defeated in a landslide victory. “Let me read this. Old Martin Caruthers devoted a few paragraphs to the Wilkins quilt.”

Fitting her reading glasses over the narrow bridge of her nose, Cookie
continued:

“
Whereupon an elderly crone named Matilda Elizabeth Wilkins lived on the outskirts of town, we come to a discussion of her subsequent murder and the patchwork prize she left behind. Said to be a sorcerer, Mrs. Wilkins sold magic potions to the lovelorn and vengefuyl. Thus, a religious sect known as the Avenging Angels is thought to have kill’t her. The followers scattered and were never tried for the heinous crime, drowning the old woman in her own water well.

“
A relative rescued a wondrous quilt, purported to be a magical device, from her cottage and turned it over to one of the town fathers (that being my biological pater familias), who preserved it for all to see on display in the governmental building facing the square.

“
This quilt was said to bestow the aspect of invisibility upon its owner. It is embroidered with scenes of the Armageddon, depicting the final battle between Good and Evil. Around the border are indecipherable symbols, thought to be a secret language known only to practitioners of the Dark Arts. Despite its frightening subject matter, the Matilda Wilkins Quilt is an example of superb needlework. It is deserving of preservation as an ignoble chapter in this town’s history, as well as a record of the masterful craftsmanship of its inhabitants.”

“Indecipherable,’ the old man said.” Bootsie looked frustrated. She liked things to be black and white.

“Those markings
must
have some meaning,” insisted Lizzie. “Has anyone ever called in a language or code expert?”

Cookie pulled out a clippin
g. “Says here that back in the ’40s a World War II code breaker took a look at the quit but was stymied.”

“These
markings look like they could be ancient runes or cuneiform writing,” said Maddy. “Maybe it’s not a code at all. Just some kind of little-known hieroglyphics.”

Bootsie said,
“Why not ask Daniel Sokolowski? He has lots of sources when it comes to things like this.” Sokolowski was owner of Dan’s Den of Antiquity, a crowded little shop on Main Street that displayed Tiffany lamps, Chippendale chairs, carousel horses, and a genuine Tlingit totem pole that came all the way from Alaska.

“Surely someone would have recognized it by now,” argued Cookie, not eager to gallop off on a wild goose chase. But when Maddy nodded her head at the suggestion, she knew the plan was approved. The mayor’s wife was sort of the unofficial leader of the Quilters Club.

Chapter Five

An Accident in Wisconsin

T
he Quilters Club’s plan to consult Daniel Sokolowski went astray when Maddy got the phone call from Wisconsin. Bill and Kathy had been in an automobile accident on the way back from the Dells. Her son had a broken leg, his wife a fractured hip. They were in the Aurora St. Luke’s Medical Center, ranked #2 out of 153 hospitals in that state.

“No, don’t fly up here, mom,” Bill said firmly. “Kathy and I are getting good care. We just want to make sure you’re okay with N’yen staying with you and dad for a
few weeks. Give me and Kathy time to get back on our feet. So to speak.” Her son had a way of laughing at adversity.

“Of course,”
Maddy replied. “You know how fond we are of N’yen. And he loves being here with Aggie. They’re inseparable.”

“Thanks, mom.”

“Nonetheless, I think I should fly up there for a day, just to check on your medical care and help with anything you might need. N’yen can spend the night at Aggie’s. Your sister Tilly won’t mind.”

“One day. No more. You know how fidgety dad gets when you leave him to fend for himself.”

“I’ll head to the airport in Indy this afternoon. You’re sure you two are all right?”

“As they say, sticks and stone can break my bones. Apparently an eighteen-wheeler can do that too. My femur got cracked, my nose got bloodied, Kathy broke her hip, and the Subaru
was totaled. Thank goodness for airbags – and Subaru’s reinforced frame body structure!”

≈ ≈ ≈

Maddy was actually gone for three days. By the time she returned from Milwaukee, the Indiana State Bureau of Investigation had determined that the thief had hidden inside the Town Hall until after hours, removed the quilt from the wall using a step ladder stored in the janitor’s closet, reset the alarm, then slipped out into the night.

A brilliant deduction.

Just as N’yen had said.

The SBI questioned the boy to determine how he knew the
modus operandi
of the thief, but gave up after he described the plot of a movie called
Flawless
in which a janitor robs a diamond distributor, an inside job.

They did, however, give Jasper Beanie a hard time. In addition to being the cemetery’s caretaker,
Jasper acted as the Town Hall’s janitor. Fortunately for him, he only worked on Wednesdays and Fridays, so he wasn’t there that Monday when a culprit had hidden inside the building to rob it.

Chief Purdue cleared
all the town officials.

Like Beau Madison, the
Town Clerk had been home with his wife … and new baby. Being colicky, the tot had kept the couple up half the night.

The Tax Assessor had played poker with his cronies until 3 in the morning, then sacked ou
t on his friend’s couch. Divorced, he didn’t have to report home to a wife.

Becky
Marsch, Beau’s new secretary, had spent the night with her boyfriend, though she’d been reluctant to admit the affair. After all, this was a small town.

Jim
Purdue had also phoned Big Elk Lodge, the resort in Idaho where the director of Public Works was vacationing. Turns out, George Wilkerson had bagged an elk on Tuesday. Got his picture in the
Big Elk Gazette
.

And Do
c Habegger confirmed that Ferdinand Gilmore, the Planning and Zoning guy, was in bed with a temperature of 102°. “If he’s able to go out and steal quilts, it’d be a modern-day medical miracle,” the doctor had said.

The list of people
who had been in the Town Hall on Monday was lengthy. Even so, many visitors were likely overlooked. With property taxes coming due, Arthur Rutledge had processed 127 payments that day despite his usual hangover.

Rutledge printed out the list of people he’d process
ed, but he couldn’t be sure who had accompanied them – wives, brothers, miscellaneous friends.

The Town Clerk added 32 names to the list. And Becky contributed 13 more from Beau’s appointment book.

The SBI was studying all the names with the diligence of high school seniors cramming for their final exam.

“The state boy’s will never catch the crook this way,” Beau told his wife over supper. W
hat with N’yen and Aggie joining them, watermelon à la mode was on the desert menu.

“Why not?” Maddy
asked.

“Too many suspects. If the
Wilkins Witch Quilt is ever recovered, it will likely be by some unscrupulous art fence turning in the seller for a fat reward.”

≈ ≈ ≈

After dinner (the chili was great!), the phone rang. Aggie was first to pick it up. “Madison residence,” she said with the aplomb of an experienced receptionist. “Whom may I say is calling?”

It
was one of the state boys, a gruff agent known behind his back as The Nail. Lieutenant Neil Wannamaker was acting as lead investigator on the case. Aggie handed the phone to her grandfather, whispering, “It’s a man named Wanna-something. He sounds scary.”

Beau took the phone. “Yes,
Lt. Wannamaker, I’d be happy to go over my appointments with you. But all the names on that list are leading citizens. I’d vouch for each and every one of the people I met with on Monday. First thing in the morning at my office? Fine.”

“A waste of time,” Beau grunted as he put the phone down. “But gotta go through the motions, I suppose.”

“
Some
body stole that quilt,” Maddy reminded him. “I just hope it’s not anyone we know.”