Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries)

SEWED UP

TIGHT

A Quilters Club Mystery

MARJORY SORRELL ROCKWELL

ABSOLUTELY AMAZING eBOOKS

Published by Whiz Bang LLC, 926 Truman Avenue, Key West, Florida 33040, USA.

Sewed Up Tight
copyright © 2014 by Gee Whiz Entertainment LLC. Electronic compilation/ paperback edition copyright © 2014 by Whiz Bang LLC.

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, scanned, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic or mechanical, including photocopying, recording, or any information storage and retrieval system, without permission in writing from the publisher. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized ebook editions.

This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental. While the author has made every effort to provide accurate information at the time of publication, neither the publisher nor the author assumes any responsibility for errors, or for changes that occur after publication. Further, the publisher does not have any control over and does not assume any responsibility for author or third-party websites or their contents.
How the e-book displays on a given reader is beyond the publisher’s control.

For information contact:

[email protected]

Buttons and patches and the cold wind blowing...

the days pass quickly when I am sewing!

- Old Saying

CHAPTER ONE

I ain’t a-skeered of no ghost!

M
adelyn Agnes Madison did not believe in ghosts. Neither did any of the other members of the Quilters Club. But growing up in Caruthers Corners, they always crossed the street when passing the old Beasley Mansion on Melon Ball Lane. Everybody said it was haunted.

Now in their 50s, married, with grown children, they felt a little silly about this lingering superstition. Like not stepping on a crack to avoid breaking your mother’s back.

However, this adult skepticism was severely challenged last year when Skookie Daniels was frightened to death by a ghost.

Well, that’s what everybody assumed when his body was found stretched out there on the lawn in front of the Beasley Mansion.

The coroner pronounced it a heart attack. But Skookie’s mother maintained that the life had been scared right out of him by an otherworldly apparition.

If that was true, everybody knew the name of the murderer – Major Samuel Elmsford Beasley. Problem is, he’d been dead for over 130 years. The Major had been part of the stranded wagon train that fought off the indigenous inhabitants of this unruly Indian Territory (as Indiana was known back in 1829) to establish the frontier outpost of Caruthers Corners. The big stone mansion was one of the first buildings erected in the fledgling town. Some folks claimed the Major’s ghost still roamed the mansion, angry that his role in founding the town had been usurped by Jacob Abernathy Caruthers, Ferdinand Aloysius Jinks, and Col. Beauregard Hollingsworth Madison.

Maddy’s husband was none other than Beauregard Hollingsworth Madison IV, the great-great grandson of one of the founders. So in theory the ghost should have a grudge against Beau’s family, not Skookie Daniels. The Daniels were descendants of watermelon pickers who migrated here from Georgia a generation or two ago. Relative newcomers.

The Quilters Club – Maddy, along with her pals Cookie Bentley, Lizzie Ridenour, and Bootsie Purdue – met once a week at the Hoosier State Senior Recreation Center. It was a convenient place with a large rec room. This particular Tuesday their talk was more about Skookie’s demise than quilting squares.

Skookie (né Robert Carl Daniels) had been the principal of Caruthers Corners High School for the past ten years. Even the students had called him by his nickname. No need for formality in a small town like this. The school would be closed the entire week in mourning. Flag at half-mast and all that. He’d been a popular educator hereabouts. Even the students liked him.

Maddy passed out the plastic tubs that held the quilting materials, one for each of them, plus one for her granddaughter Agnes, who was an honorary member of the Quilters Club.

“Did a ghost really get Skookie Daniels?” asked the precocious twelve-year-old girl. Her blonde hair had been bobbed to shoulder-length for the new school year, making her look a bit like young Chloë Grace Moretz in the movie
Hugo
.

“There’s no such thing as ghosts,” her Grammy spoke up. Maddy was the unofficial leader of the group. This year the fluffy hairdo surrounding her cherub face was a chestnut brown, quite stylish in a ‘50s retro way. Sometimes it seemed the town was trapped in another era.

“The death of Skookie Daniels has been ruled due to natural causes,” Bootsie Purdue reported, as if that ended the discussion. Her hubby was the town’s police chief, so she usually had the inside scoop on local crime. “Doc Medford confirmed that Skookie had a bad ticker.”

“Yes, but why did it happen in front of the Beasley Mansion?” insisted Lizzie, the most superstitious of the group. The redhead followed her horoscope in the
Burpyville Gazette
every morning. And she carried a lucky rabbit’s foot key ring in her purse (although it hadn’t proved very lucky for the rabbit).

“Skookie’s grandfather picked watermelons for the Beasleys,” pointed out Cookie. As secretary of the Caruthers Corners Historical Society, she knew every family connection in the county. “You remember Sam Jr. used to own a big produce farm north of town.”

“That’s a pretty farfetched reason for Skookie to be at the mansion,” said Bootsie, double chin wagging. She was a tad plump. “He certainly wasn’t there to pick watermelons.”

Lizzie looked up for her stitching. Being the best of the group, she could place precisely twelve stitches to an inch. “Do you think he could’ve been drawn there by psychic forces?”

“Haw,” scoffed Bootsie.

Cookie rolled her eyes.

“I think I can piece that part of it together,” said Maddy, a smile crossing her oval face. Her husband Beau being the former mayor, she had her own inside track. “Skookie was checking out the mansion as a potential site for this year’s Halloween Festival. You know the high school puts on a big fundraising shindig every year.”

“What!” shrieked Lizzie. “A party in that old house – what was he thinking?”

Maddy smiled. “Don’t tell me you believe it’s haunted?”

“No, it’s just … spooky.”

Little Aggie looked up quizzically. “Doesn’t spooky mean the same thing as haunted?”

“No, dear,” Lizzie defended herself. “Spooky is a feeling, a mood. Haunted means an infestation of … well, ghosts.”

“But how can a place be infested if there’s no such thing as ghosts?”

Maddy patted her granddaughter’s arm. “There are different ideas about ghosts,” she said, always the voice of reason. “There’s the Holy Ghost, like you hear about in church. And some people think that souls are kind of like ghosts, floating off to Heaven. But ghosts wearing bed sheets and going ‘Boo!’ are just pretend.”

“Come to think of it, the Beasley Mansion
would
be a perfect place for the Halloween Festival,” the girl allowed. “It’s – what did Aunt Lizzie call it? – spooky.”

“Y-you really think so?” sputtered Lizzie.

Aggie smiled. “Why not?” she said. “The house
looks
haunted – even if ghosts are just pretend.”

“Yes, it does look like something out of a Charles Addams cartoon,” allowed Maddy. She read the
New Yorker
.

“We grew up being scared to walk past that big old empty house,” nodded Cookie. She was a pretty, thin-faced blonde who wore her years well. She’d once been a beauty queen.

“It
was
scary,” admitted Bootsie, her bottom hand steadying the quilt, her top hand moving the needle down into the cotton fabric and up again. “Perhaps we’ve never got over it.”

“I know I didn’t,” said Lizzie. The high-maintenance redhead was afraid of mice and spiders -- and ghosts, if there was such a thing.

Maddy Madison spread out her quilting squares on the large table. She was working on a design based on watermelons, that delicious Cucurbitaceous agricultural product that had become Caruthers Corners’ greatest claim to fame. The town’s annual Watermelon Days Festival was gaining popularity throughout the Midwest. “We were all skittish about walking past that old building. But that still doesn’t explain what scared Skookie Daniels to death,” she came back to the original question.

Bootsie sighed. “Didn’t I just say he had a bad ticker?”

“Yes,” said Maddy, “but something had to set off that bad ticker.”

“Just going up to the front door of Beasley Mansion would give me a heart attack,” Lizzie rolled her eyes. “And I have a
good
ticker.”

Cookie frowned. “I wonder what made Skookie’s mom say he was scared to death. Bootsie’s right – there’s no medical evidence to support that assertion.”

“Perhaps it’s a mother’s intuition,” suggested Maddy. She continued to stitch, keeping one hand underneath the quilt for stability, ensuring that the needle went all way through to the back of the quilt. “Mothers sense things.”

“Madelyn Madison, I can’t believe you said that,” gasped Cookie. “That’s something like Lizzie would say. She’s a closet New Ager, but you’re the practical thinker. Intuition – really?”

“Then let’s call it gut,” responded Maddy. “We all listen to our gut.”

“I know I do,” said Bootsie. “And right now it’s rumbling from hunger. I brought some watermelon cookies. Anybody want one?”

“Me, me,” Aggie raised her hand.

“Me too,” said Cookie with a flick of her blonde hair. A one-time sad sack, she’d come back into her own after marrying Ben Bentley. Her first husband had died in a tractor accident, but that big lug Ben had given her a whole new reason for happiness.

“Maybe half a cookie,” allowed Liz, always a finicky eater. No wonder she was so slender.

“None for me,” declared Maddy, loading several stitches onto her needle and pulling the thread all the way through with an even tension. “I’m too busy noodling this mystery.”

“Mystery?” mumbled Bootsie. “Only to you. A guy drops dead from a heart attack and you make it into a sinister plot involving ghosts.”

“Not ghosts,” she countered.

“If not a ghost, who then?”

“Hmm, that’s the question isn’t it?
Somebody
scared Skookie Daniels to death – but who?”

Little Aggie looked up from her pile of fabric scraps, a kaleidoscope of reds and greens and blues. “Maybe this is a job for the Quilters Club,” she said.