4 Hemmed In (8 page)

Chapter Sixteen

A Magic Potion

T
hat evening the Quilters Club and their mates gathered around the butcher-block counter in Cookie Bentley’s kitchen to study the artifact from the Wilkins well. It was a sealed Mason jar, the name showing in bas-relief on the glass side. Some kind of bloated shape could be seen floating in the murky brown liquid that filled the container.

“A Mason jar. That must be from a picnicker, like the Coke can,” Lizzie sighed. Obviously disappointed with the
singular find.

“Not necessarily,” said Cookie. “Mason jars were
patented on November 30, 1858 by John Landis Mason, a Philadelphia tinsmith. See, there’s the date embossed on the side of the jar along with the name.”

“T
his jar was made in 1858?” marveled Aggie, standing on her tiptoes to see. She was still small for her age, practically the same height as her cousin N’yen.

“Probably not,” Cookie shook her head. “Jars with that date on the side were manufactured well into the 1900s.”

“But it has to be pretty old,” said Ben. “Look how rusty that lid is.”

“What’s that blob inside?” asked N’yen. He squinted at the jar, the
epicanthic folds making this eyes all the more narrow.

“Dunno,” said his grandmother.
“Maybe some old vegetable. A turnip or a cauliflower.”

“Looks more like a chicken gizzard,” Lizzie
offered a guess. Not that she’d ever seen a chicken’s gizzard in her life. She bought Tyson Farms roaster chickens, prepackaged and ready to slide into the oven. Cooking wasn’t exactly her forte.

“I’d say it’s a magic potion,”
guessed Cookie.

Beau
Madison picked up the jar and shook it, just enough to stir up its contents. “Look, there’s a lizard in there too.”

“T
hat looks like a tiny feather floating beside it.”

Jim grimaced. “Hate to tell you, but that blob’s not a turnip or a gizzard. It’s
an eyeball. See, it just shifted so it’s looking at you.”

“
Eek
!” cried Aggie.

“I don’t mean
that it’s really looking at you,” he amended his words. “It just seems like it is.”

“Can we open the jar?” asked N’yen.

“No,” said the police chief. “I’m going to send it over to the state boys to let them analyze it. Better we don’t break the seal.”

“
Ooo
, a pickled eyeball,” said Aggie. “Mad Matilda must’ve been a
really
wicked witch.”

Chapter Seventeen

The Greater Midwest Occult Phenomena Association

M
aury Seiderman hadn’t been entirely honest with the town’s mayor or the Historical Society lady. While it was true that he was a field investigator for G.M.O.P.A., he was also its president, its secretary, and its sergeant at arms. Matter of fact, he was the
only
member of the Greater Midwest Occult Phenomena Association.

Seiderman had grown up in Chicago, always a weird boy, perversely interested in the occult. The term comes from the Latin word
occultus
, meaning hidden or secret. For little Maury it included magic, mysticism, the paranormal, spiritualism, and theosophy. He subscribed to the Goodrick-Clarke thesis that occultism was “a strong desire to reconcile the findings of modern natural science with a religious view that could restore man to a position of centrality and dignity in the universe.”

He was particularly fascinated by witchcraft and Satanism. The Feri Tradition founded by Victor Anderson and his wife Cora.
Stregheria as popularized by Raven Grimassi. Raymond Bowers’s Clan of the Tubal Cain. And especially the Order of the Trapezoid, led by Satan-worshiper Anton LaVey.

Perhaps this interest came fr
om the fact he had a distant relative who’d claimed to be a witch – one Matilda Elizabeth Wilkins.

Seiderman had worked as a clerk at Borders, until the bookstore chain closed down. Now unemployed, he
had nothing better to do than record stories of psychic phenomena he found online into the thick spiral-bound notebooks that lined the bookcases in his Irving Park apartment. This was the so-called database of G.M.O.P.A.

Even that was getting boring.
So you can bet he was excited when his cousin called to ask if he’d help her and her boyfriend look for Viking silver that was described in runes embroidered on the Wilkins Witch Quilt. She knew he was good at research. All he had to do was follow the clues, like a scavenger hunt. She promised they would split the treasure equally, a third to each.

Seiderman had a plan. After he got his share of the treasure, he’d turn the other two in for the murder of that Aitkens boy. Maybe there
was a reward. Or perhaps he could extract money from the boy’s father. Everybody said Boyd Aitkens was richer than Croesus.

H
e’d have to go about it carefully. He didn’t want to get arrested for extortion. Or as an accessory to murder. This called for a clever approach. But Maury’s mother had always said he was a clever boy.

≈ ≈ ≈

Boyd Aitkens wasn’t sure what to make of this odd-looking man who claimed to be an investigator for an Occult Phenomena Association. They were meeting in a back booth at the Cozy Café on South Main Street. The strange man obviously didn’t want the two of them seen together.

“So what’s this about?” demanded
Aitkens. He was a large florid-faced farmer who had made a fortune growing watermelons. Normally, he didn’t meet with nutcases, but this guy claimed he could tell Boyd who was responsible for his son’s death.

“As you know, there are evil forces at large in this country
,” Maury Seiderman began his practiced spiel.

The farmer cut him off.
“Look, Mr. Seiderman, I don’t even go to church. So cut the crap about good and evil, and just tell me who killed my boy.”

“It’s not that simple.”

“And why not?”

“Your land has been defiled
. It was once the home of a witch.” The man dug his fork into the slice of pie on the table before him. Cozy Café was known for its watermelon pie a la mode.

Boyd waved
the words away. “Everybody knows about Mad Matilda. Around the turn of the century, she lived on a parcel of land that I now happen to own. She sold potions to gullible farmers. But what’s that got to do with my son’s murder?”

“Her bones l
ie at the bottom of that well next to the ruins of her cottage. So her spirit is not at rest. Her spirit entered a local man and enticed him to recover her quilt. Then it led this man to kill your son.”

“Okay, I’ll bite. Why?”

“Because your son disturbed her resting place by pumping water out of the well.”

“If you say so. Now why did you ask for this meeting?”

“Because I can identify the man inhabited by Matilda Wilkins’s spirit. The man who killed your son.”

“You need to be talking to the police, not me.”

The field investigator for G.M.O.P.A. finished off his pie, licked his lips, and said, “There are certain expenses involved in locating a wayward spirit. I hoped you might finance the exorcism.”

“Finance? How much money are we talking
here?”

“Forty thousand
ought to do it.”

Boyd Aitkens squinted his eyes, the muscles around his mouth tightening. “For forty G’s you’ll identify my son’s murderer?”

“That is correct.”

The watermelon farmer thought it over.
“You bring me proof and the money’s yours. But no proof, no payment.”

Maury Seiderman
frowned. “Might we discuss a small deposit?”

“No way, Jose.”
Boyd Aitkens stood up, towering over the occult investigator. “You don’t get a thin dime till you identify the killer and I see proof of his guilt.”

“You can count on it, sir.” Maury stood up to shake the farmer’s calloused hand. A deal
struck. Now, after he located the silver, his cousin and her boyfriend were toast.

Chapter
Eighteen

A Pickled Pig’s Eye

“I
t was a pig’s eye,” Lt. Neil Wannamaker reported back to Chief Purdue. “Our forensic pathologist estimated it could be a hundred years old, pickled like that. Much of the tissue had deteriorated, but he had plenty for a DNA test. By the way, ISP will be invoicing your department for that test. Our budget’s a little tight this year.”

“Yours is tight? I don’t even have one,” carp
ed Jim Purdue.

“So you think it was some kind of magical amulet?”

Jim sighed. “Something like that. Hard to say, but we’re dealing with a self-professed witch.”

“Any leads on that Aitkens boy’s murder?”

“No,” Jim lied. He had two very
good
leads from Harry the Hobbit. But he didn’t feel like sharing with the guy who had just stuck him with a $1,000 DNA testing bill. The Nail indeed.

≈ ≈ ≈

Harry Gertner had given them two names, fellow Tolkien fans who lived with single moms. Pinkus “Pinky” Bjork and Gary “the Gollum” Goldberg.

Deputy Pete Hitzer had promised
to put Harry in a “witness protection program,” meaning the police wouldn’t reveal him as the source of these names.

The police chief’s wife knew both boys. Bootsie sometimes worked as a substitute teacher when needed, so she recognized a lot of the local kids. She’d met Gary’s parents, one of the few Jewish families in Caruthers Corners. Mariam Goldberg was separated from her husband
Haim, but no one had filed for divorce yet. “Just a rough patch,” she told her friends. Bootsie was pretty sure Mariam wasn’t seeing anyone, trying hard to put her marriage back together.

That made Jim and his deputies focus on Pinky Bjork.
Pinky was a withdrawn 16-year-old geek, spending most of his time online with various
Lord of the Rings
role-playing games, living a second-hand life as an avatar. His mother was a frazzled middle-aged blonde named Wanda. She’d been divorced from Bern Bjork, manager at the DQ, for about ten years now. Word had it that she was living with a guy who worked at the chair factory, an upholsterer named Ted Something-or-Other. Nobody knew much about him, but he quickly moved to the top of Chief Purdue’s “Persons of Interest” list.

“Why do you want to talk with me and my son?” demande
d Wanda Bjork when Deputy Hitzer showed up at her front door. The small brick-front bungalow was located on Jinks Lane, a narrow dead-end street named after one of the town’s founders.

“We think your son might be able to help us
with the missing quilt. Somebody said he’s able to read those markings on the border of the quilt.”

“
Pinky’s already translated those old markings,” she smirked. “He’s a very smart kid. Learned how to read that rune writing by playing his video games. Elves or dwarfs or one of them magical characters communicate with that language.”

“Great. I’m sure he’ll be a lot of
assistance to us.”

She eyed the deputy suspiciously. “Why do I have to come along?” she asked, as if suspecting a trap.

“’Cause Pinky’s underage. Gotta have a parent present when we interview him.” True enough for the moment.

“Oh. That makes sense. Let me go get him. Can I ride up front, so the neighbors won’t think I’m getting arrested?”

“No problem, ma’am. I’ll wait here while you go fetch him.” The deputy shifted his weight from foot to foot, a sign of impatience. But he displayed a polite smile, as fixed as the plastic face of a Halloween mask.

Three minutes late
r came a loud shriek.

Pete Hitzer dashed into the
house and ran up the stairs. His 9mm Glock was in his hand. He encountered Wanda Bjorn standing in the narrow hallway, pointing into a bedroom.

“What?” he shouted.

“Pinky,” she said. “He’s gone.”

≈ ≈ ≈

Chief Purdue personally picked up Ted Yost at the E-Z Chair factory. Wanda Bjorn confirmed that Yost was living with her, but denied any knowledge about the theft of the Wilkins Witch Quilt. A search of her house turned up nothing.

She dutifully filled out a missing person report, but there would be no 24-hour waiting
period in this case. Pinky was a material witness in a felony. The police chief already had two deputies scouring the town looking for him.

Ted Yost
sat in the holding cell, whistling to himself like a man who didn’t have a care in the world. He wore faded blue jeans and a red flannel shirt, the appearance of a working-class man. He said he didn’t steal the quilt, but took the Fifth when asked who killed Charlie Aitkens.

Jim was pretty sure he’d solved the murder.

Lt. Neil Wannamaker phoned to say he was on the way to Caruthers Corners.
Yeah, come get involved now so you can take all the credit
, thought Jim in a flash of anger. But he didn’t say anything.

When told of Ted Yost’s arrest,
Mayor Beau Madison figured this wrapped up the town’s crime wave. It was pretty clear this guy Ted also stole the quilt. Edgar Ridenour had overheard it straight from the Aitkens boy. All that remained was to figure out where ol’ Ted had stashed it.

As far as
finding any Viking silver, Beau considered that to be a wild goose chase. There was no real proof Norsemen ever came to the Midwest. This “treasure” was a just a fantasy fostered by his wife and her Quilters Club buddies.

Boyd Aitkens phoned Beau to
thank him for the support in finding his son’s killer. The watermelon farmer assured him he could count on generous financial support come next election.

He
ck, that wasn’t such a big deal, thought Beau. He had only spent $2,000 in his last campaign. Twenty posters and a few radio ads.