4 Hemmed In (6 page)

Chapter Twelve

Witchcraft in the Midwest

I
n the late 1600s New England was apparently infested with witches – as exemplified by the notorious Salem Witch Trials. And in the 1800s witching covens were scattered across the South, particularly around New Orleans (mostly Vodou cults). However, in the Midwest the history of witchcraft is scant.

Deep in the bowels of
the Indiana State University Library Cookie Bentley had found a rare volume titled
Occult Practices Among Early Settlers of Indiana and Illinois
. This had been a Master’s Thesis by a long-forgotten student named Thaddeus Elmer Wapner.

“According to
Wapner,” Cookie told her comrades, “in 1882 a Master Warlock named Reginald Wentworth Evers settled near Burpyville. He was supposedly an outcast of Salem, Massachusetts, although records do not support this claim – nor does the timing. He established a small coven of eleven members who met on the full moon of each month. One of these was a woman named Elmira Süderdithmarschen.”

“Mad Matilda’s mother?”

“Exactly.”

“So
Matilda Wilkins learned witchcraft at her mother’s knee.”

“Apparently so.
”

Bootsie frowned.
“Does that mean Matilda Süderdithmarschen Wilkins wasn’t mad?”

“Who knows? But she came by her trade of selling love potions and spells honestly,”
said Cookie. “It was the family business.”

“W
hat does that tell us?” sighed Lizzie Ridenour. She was growing impatient with all this old history malarkey. Unlike her friend Cookie, Liz liked to live in the present. No dusty old books and yellowed newspaper clippings for her. She owned a Kindle, for goodness sakes! All the better to read the latest Nora Roberts on.

“Maybe
it tells us nothing,” Cookie admitted. “Other than that the woman who stitched the missing quilt believed in witchcraft.”

“Yes, but did she know about the treasure or simply copy off those runes from the stones in her well?” pressed Lizzie.

“I think we should look into those Vikings,” said little Aggie Tidemore, speaking with childlike insight. “It’s their message on that witchy quilt. And they’re the ones who hid the treasure.”

Bootsie couldn’t help but laugh. “Out of the mouth of babes,” she said.

“Hey, I’m not a baby,” she protested. “I’ll be twelve soon!”

“Hm,” Cookie t
hought it over. “I think Aggie might just be on the right trail.”

“H
ow do we investigate a group of people that even the archeologists can’t prove where here?” grumbled Lizzie.

“Oh, we know they were here,”
said Maddy.

“How so?”

“Because we’ve seen their runestones in that old well.”

≈ ≈ ≈

Lt. Neil “The Nail” Wannamaker may have told Chief Purdue to take over the Charlie Aitkens case, but he had his own men looking into it too. He sensed the murder was somehow connected to that missing quilt. Who would’ve thought an old rag like that could be worth a hundred G's?

The first clue his investigator picked up
had to do with Charlie’s circle of friends. His best pal was a guy named Tommy “Spud” Bodkins, an old football teammate from high school. That was probably who the fisherman – a retired banker – had overheard him speaking with on the bridge. Spud instead of Bud. According to Spud’s mother, the two young men sometimes fished off that particular span of concrete and steel, convinced that there was a good catfish hole under it … but they never caught much.

Unfortunately, Spud
had gone off to Indy for the weekend to catch a Colts game. No one knew where he was staying, so Lt. Wannamaker issued an APB for a 5’ 2” redhead with a potato-shaped birthmark on his left arm. Shouldn’t be too hard to spot a guy of that description, he told himself.

He wonder
ed if the birthmark was the source of Spud’s country-bumpkin nickname?

≈ ≈ ≈

Maddy’s son-in-law Mark the Shark phoned to say Bill and Kathy were on the mend. Bill was up and about; Kathy’s infection had been stemmed with antibiotics. Little N’yen would be seeing his mommy and daddy soon.

While there, Mark had worked out a settlement with the trucking company. Bill and Kathy’s medical expenses would be entirely covered. There was another $200,000 thrown in to cover their “inconvenience.” That was quite a windfall for a couple of youth counselors who worked for an underfunded non-profit NGO.

Maddy’s youngest son Freddie –
A/K/A
Sparkplug the Clown –decided to drive up to Wisconsin with his wife and daughter to check on brother Bill too. Maybe he’d put on a little show for the hospital’s children’s ward while he was up there. He liked his new job of entertaining kids as a member of the Haney Bros. Zoo and Exotic Animal Refuge.

“I was so worried about Bill and Kathy,” Maddy told her husband that night after dinner.
The grandchildren were in bed or she wouldn’t have been so open about her concerns. Some people thought the Law of the Jungle was “Survival of the Fittest,” but Maddy knew it was “Don’t Scare the Animals.” And these were cute little bunnies indeed.

Agnes and N’yen were her two favorite grandchildren, though she would never
admit that out loud. Tilly’s little ones – Taylor and Madison – were both too little to bond with. And Freddie’s daughter Donna was just turning three. Besides, Aggie and her Vietnamese cousin were unofficial members of the Quilters Club. What’s more, Aggie was getting quite good at stitching quilting squares!

“Bill and Kathy are going to be just fine,” Beau assured his wife. “That’s what Mark said. And that boy’s never wrong. He gets his facts right. That’s what makes him such a good lawyer.”

“That and his pit-bull personality. Once he clamps down, he never lets go.”

“Determined,
that he is.”

Maddy leaned her head
against her husband’s boney shoulder. “I’m so glad he and Tilly worked through that bad patch a few years back.”

“Me too. If they hadn’t we’d be two grandchildren short.”

“And they wouldn’t be living a few blocks away from us here in Caruthers Corners.” Mark and Tilly had bought the old Taylor House on the town square where Maddy had grown up. She was pleased that her old homeplace was staying in the family.

“Tilly and Freddie have returned to Caruthers Corners,” she said. “I wish Bill would come home too.”

“Maybe with that settlement Mark worked out with the trucking company, they can afford to quit their jobs and move back,” speculated Beau.

“Not likely,” said his wife. “Bill and Kathy are determined to save the world. And there’s more of the world in Chicago than here in this flyspeck of a town.”

“Hey, Caruthers Corners is a nice town,” protested Beau, the mayor in him coming out.

“I know, dear. You and I have lived here all our life. There’s nowhere else I’d want to be.”

“Then Bill and Kathy –”

“– those two kids have lives of their own. They like Chicago. There are plenty of kids who need their help up there.”

“Yeah, I suppose so.”

“But we can still miss them,” his wife said, patting him
reassuringly on the arm. “That’s allowed.”

“Want to watch some television ’fore we turn in?” asked Beau. He liked to have a “little evening” before bedtime. Mindless TV was just the ticket, although he usually sle
pt through the program. “A warm-up for a good night’s sleep,” he called it.

“T
hat would be nice,” nodded Maddy. “Maybe there’s something interesting on the National Geographic Channel.”

There was.

They tuned in just in time to catch a program titled
Severed Ways: The Norse Discovery of America
. The dramatization followed two Norse men struggling to survive in the wilds of North America when abandoned by the rest of their expedition.

Afterwards, there was an interview with filmmaker Tony Stone,
where he explained what got him interested in these early explorers. “I wanted to know more about it when I heard brief mention of it back in the third grade. I wanted to know more about the Viking conquest in our own backyard … ”

Beau’s snores were a soft rumble, but Maddy was leaning toward the TV, her senses on high alert.
This was fascinating. Maybe there was more to this idea of Vikings reaching Indiana than traditional archeologists thought.

“The Norse site at L’Anse Aux Meadows in Newfoundland was discovered by sailing the geographical description written in the
Vinland Sagas, which was Liefsbudir, the base camp Lief Ericson constructed around the year 1000,” the filmmaker was saying. “Many of stories in the Sagas tell of other expeditions that set sail south from there and one expedition describes spending a winter at a location where it did not snow. They could have explored as far south as Virginia or beyond.”

Severed Ways
posited that a couple of scouts had been left behind during one of the Vikings’ battles with “the Skraelings,” as they called the North American Indians.

“
Most historians agree that they probably traveled into the St. Lawrence and down the American coast,” continued the filmmaker. “There just hasn’t been any concrete evidence found yet. And it might never. Any archeological site has probably been trampled and plowed on the American coast. It’s such a populated region. Plows or other modern machines probably have torn up any fire pit or building footprint that might remain. But you never know what we might stumble upon.”

Like a stone well.

Chapter
Thirteen

Runestone of Death

B
ootsie Purdue was having breakfast with her hubby Jim before he went to work. It was a longtime ritual, a little one-on-one time, because the work of a law officer doesn’t always conform to a 9-to-5 routine.

She’d just poured the watermelon juice, when he said, “I’ve gotta go down to Indy today and
pick up Jasper Beanie. He doesn’t have a ride home.” Jim preferred watermelon juice over orange juice, a hometown foible. After all, Caruthers Corners was known as “the Watermelon Capital of Indiana.”

“Now you’re a taxi service?”

“I feel obligated. Jasper’s being falsely accused has disrupted his life, which wasn’t all that good to begin with.”

Bootsie tasted her eggs, a little soft for her liking. She’d been distracted lately with that missing quilt. Her cooking was suffering.
“Is Jasper going to lose his job at the cemetery? That would make him homeless.”

“No, Beau stepped in there. Told the town commissioners that Jasper was going to
continue as caretaker at Pleasant Glade as well as keep his job at the Town Hall.”

“Poor Jasper Beanie. He reminds me of that character in the
Li’l Abner
comic strip, the man with the perpetual storm cloud over his head.”

“
Joe Btfsplk.”

“What?”

“Joe Btfsplk, that was the character’s name.” He pronounced it
Buf-spilk
.

“Oh, right.”

“Jasper was always a loser, even in high school,” he sighed. “When his wife ran off with Henry Caruthers, that was the final blow to his self-esteem. No wonder he drinks. That’s why my deputies are instructed to take him home rather than arrest him when they catch him tying one on in the town square.”

“I remember
him in high school. He was the waterboy for the football team.”

“Yeah, he tried out as a player, but didn’t make the grade
.”

Bootsie sighed, remembering those halcyon days of their youth. “You and Beau and Edgar were the school’s star athletes. You the star quarterback. Beau the winning scorer on the basketball team. Edgar still holder of the 100-yard dash record. Ben Bentley the wrestling champ. All of you on the baseball team the year it won the district series.”

“And ol’ Jasper always on the sidelines.”

“This quilt theft is troubling you, isn’t it?”

“Some. But it’s Charlie Atkins’s murder that has me losing sleep.”

“Yes, you tossed and turned all last night.”

Jim Purdue rubbed his balding dome. “I’m getting pressure on both sides. The state boys are giving me a hard time. And Charlie’s father thinks I’m incompetent. Wants Beau to turn the investigation over to the Quilters Club.”

Bootsie almost spilled her watermelon juice. “To us? We’re just a handful of busybodies who do needlework.”

“You gals have developed quite a reputation as crime-solvers.” He stood up and reached for his billed cap with a gold star that said CHIEF. He didn’t feel much like a chief today. All told, he felt more kinship with Jasper Beanie than he’d care to admit. “Gotta go. A meeting with that jerk Wannamaker to report our lack of progress.”

“He’s that ISP lieutenant?”

“Yeah, the one they call The Nail. And with good reason. Every time I meet with him I feel like somebody has driven a sharp object straight into my brain.”

“You have been taking a lot of aspirin lately.” She’d noticed. Wives do that.

“He wants us to turn over any forensic evidence we have in the Aitkens case. But what kind of clues are you going to find on a rock.”

“A rock?”

“That’s right. The boy died of blunt force trauma. Somebody coldcocked him with a rock covered in marks.”

That got his wife’s attention. “What kind of marks?”

“Inscriptions. Engravings. Don’t know what you’d call ’em. Probably a chunk that broke off a tombstone. I’ve assigned a deputy to go over to the cemetery and look for a broken grave marker.”

“W
ere there letters? Words?”

“Naw. Just hen scratchings.”

“Can I see it?”

“Hon, it’s locked up in the safe down at the station. And Wannamaker’s picking it up first thing this morning. Don’t tell me the Quilters Club is actually going to poke into my murder investigation? Are you trying to put me outta work?”

She stood on her tiptoes to plant a kiss on his cheek. They were a cute couple, a middle-aged Mutt and Jeff, each maybe twenty pounds overweight, a foot difference in height. “There, there, dear. I was just curious.”

“Well, if you really want to see it, there
’s a photo of the murder weapon over there in my briefcase. Just picked up the pictures from the crime scene yesterday on the way home from work. Bob Tippey over at the
Burpyville Gazette
develops them on the side. Doesn’t charge anything when I let him use one in the paper.”

Tippey was a small-town newspaper editor who fancied himself a g
onna-break-this-town-wide-open crusading journalist. His father had been editor of the paper before him, and his grandfather before that. A family business since the 1800s.

Before Jim Purdue had finished speaking, his wife had pulled the 8” x 10” color photograph from his battered leather briefcase and was examining it with the eyes of an eagle. “Dear, don’t waste your deputy’s time in the cemetery. This is not a chunk off a tombstone. It’s a fragment from a runestone.”

≈ ≈ ≈

By noon the Quilters Club was back at the university in Indianapolis, waiting outside the door of
visiting professor Ezra Pudhomme. He was running a few minutes late, having just delivered a lecture on Early Sumerian Cuneiform History in Lecture Hall 11-B.

Pudhomme
seemed surprised to see them. “Ladies, to what do I owe this unexpected pleasure?” What he really meant was “unannounced visit.” He preferred people to make appointments. This summer gig at ISU left his calendar with few free moments. His class load and scheduled lectures were quite arduous.

“Sorry, Professor Pudhomme,”
apologized Maddy. “We promise to take only a moment of your time. We need you to tell us what these runes say.” She held out the color photograph that Jim Purdue had reluctantly let his wife borrow on the grounds she would get it translated for him.

“More runes? Wherever are you getting these? Did someone
come back from a vacation in Scandinavia?”

“No
, these are local,” interjected Cookie. “We think it’s proof of Viking incursions into the Midwest.”

“Proof, you say?
”

“Even better than the Kensington Runestone.”

The fat professor smiled as if appreciating some private joke. “The Kensington Runestone has never truly been authenticated,” he said. “Jansson, Moltke, Nielsen, Anderson, and Wahlgren, among others, have asserted that the stone is a forgery.”

“What about Hall, Holland, Thalbitzer, and Hagen?” responded Cookie
Bentley. “Those experts argued that it’s real. And the Smithsonian displayed the Kensington Runestone in 1949, not exactly an institution known for supporting fakes.”

“Hm, you’ve
been doing your homework. Very well, let me see your photograph.”

Pudhomme pulled out a 3
x magnifying glass to help him inspect the image in the photo. His nose hovered inches from the glossy surface as he moved the glass from rune to rune, studying each letter like a Treasury Agent examining a counterfeit twenty.

“Well
–?” said Lizzie. Impatient as usual.

“Don’t rush me. This is interesting.”

“What does it say?” asked Bootsie, antsy to get a translation. She’d promised Jim.

“This is only a fragment, so it is difficult to say. Something about digging a hole
–”

“A hole?” said Lizzie, the banker’s wife. “You mean like a place to bury treasure?”

“This fragment says nothing about money or treasure.”

“But the runes on the Wilkins Witch Quilt mentioned a buried treasure,” challenged Bootsie.

“Not exactly,” corrected the professor. “The quilt inscription that you showed me contained the rune for
fehu
. That can mean either money or cattle.”

“Cattle?” blurted Lizzie. Disappointed that this mystery could be about a herd of cows.

“The fragment in this photo does not contain the symbol
fehu
. Just something about digging a hole.”

“You mean like a well?” asked Maddy.

“A water well, buried treasure – who knows?” exclaimed the professor. He was becoming exasperated with these ladies. What did they know of disciplined research and scientific method and responsible translations? Just a small-town coffee klatch sticking their nose where it didn’t belong. If this was a photograph of an artifact found locally, it should be the province of archeologists and linguists like himself.

“Thank you for your time,” said Maddy, sensing that they had overstayed their welcome.
She was disappointed they hadn’t learned more. Digging a hole indeed!

“Wait,”
grunted Professor Pudhomme. “Are you sure the stone in this picture was found in Indiana? That would be a remarkable discovery.”

“Who can say,” Bootsie interjected. “It was recovered at a crime scene.”

“Oh my.”

Maddy repeated, “Thanks for your time, professor. We’ve got to get home in time to fix dinners for our husbands.
A housewife’s job is never done.”

He didn’t pick up on her sarcasm.

≈ ≈ ≈

In the car on the way back, the women
were trying to sort through the facts as they knew them. This was more difficult than those Sudoku puzzles in the
Indianapolis Star
.

“Fact One,” said Maddy, keeping her eyes on the road as she drove. “Somebody stole the
Wilkins Witch Quilt.”

“And the Indiana State Police have determined it was an inside job,” added Lizzie.

“Hey, Jim came to that same conclusion,” Bootsie defended her husband.

Maddy
didn’t see any point of reminding them that her grandson N’yen had been first to put forth that theory.

“
Fact Two, we determined that the markings on the quilt were runes, an ancient Norse language,” said Cookie. “And that Mad Matilda Wilkins copied those symbols off stones inside her well.”

“Fact Three,” added Lizzie, “
the runes say there’s a treasure hidden in a deep hole. Do you think it meant inside the well?”

“
It
has
to be down there,” said Bootsie. “The message was carved there at the top of a deep hole.”

Lizzie
continued that line of thought. “And the rock that killed Charlie Aitkens confirms that Vikings dug the well, not Matilda’s husband.”

Cookie nodded.
“A Viking well.”

“Now we’re getting somewhere,” said Maddy. “We may have
located a Viking treasure. Bars of silver at the bottom of the well.”

“Don’t forget,” warne
d Bootsie, “the bones of Mad Matilda are down there too.”

“That’s right,” said
Cookie. “The townspeople left her down there after the Avenging Angels drowned her.”

“That’s scary,” shudd
ered Aggie in the back seat. “This is like a ghost tale.”

“No ghosts,” her grandmother assured her. “Just something bad that happened a long time ago.”

“So who stole the quilt?” asked Bootsie, still a policeman’s wife.

“A guy whose girlfriend has a teenage son,” offered Lizzie. “That’s what Edgar hear
d Charlie Aitkens say.”

“
Oh, that reminds me,” said Bootsie. “Boyd Aitkens wants the Quilters Club to find out who killed his son.”