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  “Because it’s valuable?”

  “No, ‘cause it can lead to a Viking treasure worth zillions. That ol’ witch knew where it’s hidden.”

  “Dang.”

  “You can say that again, Bud.”

  “Dang.”

  Edgar thought he recognized one of the voices.

  Chapter Nine

  Jasper Beanie’s Hard Year

  Jasper Beanie was sweating it out in an interrogation room at the State Police office in Indianapolis. There were no windows, so he felt a tad claustrophobic. The State Police’s Central District is located in the basement of the Indiana Statehouse, near War Memorial Plaza, a five-city-block memorial built to honor WWI veterans. Only Washington DC has more veterans’ monuments than Indy. But Jasper couldn’t see any of them from this cramped belowground dungeon.

  “We’re looking for your accomplice, a guy named Stickley,” said Lt. Wannamaker, pointing an accusing finger at his prisoner. The tip was yellow with nicotine. The policeman had developed a three-pack-a-day habit. It was a stressful job, catching crooks.

  “Sam Stickley? Yeah, I know ’im, but he ain’t no accomplice of mine.”

  “Admit it,” said Wannamaker. “You slipped ol’ Stickyfingers the alarm code so he could steal the Wilkins Witch Quilt. How are you two splitting the money – fifty-fifty?”

  “Hey, I told you before, that robbery happened on my day off. I wasn’t even there. Matter of fact, I was sleeping one off in the Burpyville jail. They’ll confirm it. I’m a regular there.”

  “You think that gives you an alibi? You’re just as guilty as Sam Stickyfingers if you gave him the code. It’s like one of those contests where you don’t have to be present to win.”

  Jasper Beanie screwed up his face as if about to cry. “You got it all wrong. Sam couldn’t have done it either. He was in jail that same night, arrested for shoplifting light bulbs at Home Depot.”

  “Light bulbs?”

  “Said his apartment was too dark. Needed some 100-watt bulbs.”

  Wannamaker was at a loss for words. If Sam Stickley’s alibi held up, he didn’t have a suspect.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Jasper Beanie had survived a hard year. His wife Nan had divorced him to run off with the former mayor of Caruthers Corners, an old crook named Henry Caruthers. His great-great grandfather had been one of the town’s founding fathers, as had Beau’s.

  The kick in the pants came when Judge Cramer awarded Nan alimony. So in addition to his job as the cemetery’s caretaker, he’d been moonlighting as the Town Hall janitor and as a pool man at the Hoosier State Senior Recreation Center. No wonder he drank, he told himself.

  Now this, being accused of stealing the Wilkins Witch Quilt. He’d surely lose his job at the Town Hall over this. Maybe even be ousted from his cottage at the cemetery. This couldn’t get any worse.

  But it did.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Sam “Stickyfingers” Stickley surrendered to the ISP and offered to turn state’s evidence implicating Jasper Beanie in return for a suspended sentence. He claimed to know where Beanie had hidden the quilt.

  Fact was, both Stickley and Beanie were innocent. But as a career criminal, Stickyfingers was used to playing snitch in return for favors. Truth be damned, this seemed like a good way to get the coppers off his back. And a good way to get back at Jasper for not loaning him the $50 he’d been phoning him about. He needed the money to buy a bus ticket to Des Moines to visit his daughter. His former cellmate had seemed like an easy touch, but no go. He’d be sorry.

  “You’re sure about this?” asked Lt. Wannamaker. He wanted to believe Stickyfingers in the worst way, a chance to wrap up this case. But the Burpyville police confirmed that one Samuel L. Stickley had been their guest on that Monday night in question. Hard to get around that.

  “I swear on my mother’s grave,” the crook raised his hand as if taking an oath. “Me and Jasper did it. He has the quilt hidden in a crypt in the cemetery. Do we have a deal?”

  “Not so fast. We gotta check it out. In the meantime you can bunk down in our holding cell. You’ll find it more comfortable than Burpyville’s accommodations.”

  Burpyville! That’s when Sam Stickley realized his confession was going to be proven false. He wondered how much jail time he’d get for that.

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  On the way back from visiting Professor Pudhomme, the Quilters Club was abuzz with new theories.

  “I’ll bet Mad Matilda belonged to a witches’ coven that used runes as magical incantations,” posited Bootsie. “Maybe those symbols came over from the Old Country and were passed down through the centuries.”

  “Matilda’s maiden name was Süderdithmarschen,” recalled Cookie. This info came from her research in the Historical Society’s archive of Burpyville Gazettes. “That’s a Germanic or Old Norse name.”

  Bootsie nodded. “Norway, they had witches over there, didn’t they?”

  “Dunno,” shrugged Maddy, eyes on the road. Folks in Caruthers Corners spent more time studying the Bible than Scandinavian folklore.

  “No, I don’t think it was anything to do with magic,” disagreed Lizzie. “I think she used that secret alphabet to mark where she hid a treasure.”

  “Where would Mad Matilda get a treasure?” argued Bootsie. “Her family had to be dirt poor, living in a tiny stone cottage in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Legend has it she became wealthy selling potions,” Cookie reminded them.

  “No, I mean Viking treasure,” said Lizzie. “Silver bars.”

  “We don’t know there was a Viking treasure,” Maddy pointed out.

  “That’s what the runes say,” insisted Lizzie. Buying into the theory of Norsemen hiding a treasure while camping near the old Wilkins place.

  “Good point,” Bootsie came around to that way of thinking. “The runes did say there was a treasure. Why would Matilda Wilkins put that message on the quilt if she wasn’t leaving a clue?”

  Cookie shook her head. “I think it’s highly unlikely that an uneducated farmer’s wife in the Midwest would know how to read or write an obscure runic alphabet like Futhark.”

  “Then how did she manage to leave that message if she didn’t know what the symbols meant?” argued Lizzie.

  “Maybe she didn’t know what the symbols meant,” Aggie spoke up from the backseat. “What if she simply copied the markings she found inside the well onto her quilt?”

  “Inside the well?”

  “You said those markings in the well looked like those on the quilt.”

  “Kinda,” said her grandmother. “But we didn’t examine them closely.”

  Aggie gazed out the car window, watching the rolling green countryside slide by. “Like I said, maybe she simply copied the markings she found on those rocks.”

  “Why would she do that?” said Lizzie. Still not convinced, she was stuck on the treasure map scenario.

  “Because they looked like magic markings.”

  “Actually, that makes sense,” admitted Cookie. “Copying those runes inside the well without a clue what they meant.”

  Bootsie wrinkled her brow. “Okay, but how did rocks with Viking writing get inside that well in the first place?”

  “There’s credible documentation that Norsemen visited America 500 years before Columbus,” replied Cookie. “And there’s some evidence they made it this far west. The Kensington Runestone, for example. Also nineteen axes, seven halberds, four swords, twelve spears, five steel fire-strikers, and thirty-eight mooring-hole sites. Even rock carvings in Oklahoma have been attributed to Vikings. Who’s to say these explorers didn’t leave other runestones? Perhaps Mad Matilda’s husband used some of them to build a wall around his well. It’s not hard to imagine she copied the inscriptions onto her quilt because they looked magical.”

  Lizzie looked triumphant. “That would imply there’s a Viking treasure buried near here – just like I said.”

  “Maybe there is,” said Cookie. “People
find pirate treasure all the time in the Caribbean. And sunken ships laden with gold bars and silver coins have been recovered off the Florida Keys. So why not Viking treasure just waiting to be found?”

  “Here in Indiana?” scoffed Bootsie. “This is a long way from Norway.”

  “Maybe so,” said Maddy. “But we all saw the markings inside that well.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Edgar Ridenour caught the police chief at 5:15 p.m., just as he was punching out to go home. Jim Purdue and his four deputies kept track of their hours with a sputtering old time clock.

  “Hold up, Jim,” the retired banker called to his friend. “I’ve got some information you need to hear about.”

  “Can it wait till tomorrow? I promised Bootsie I’d be home on time. She’s making watermelon stew.”

  “Hmm, I do love your wife’s stew.”

  “Come home and join us for dinner. She’ll have made a big pot of that nectar of the gods.”

  “Sorry, but I’ve been fishing all day. Need to get home, take a hot shower. I promised to take Lizzie to that new restaurant in Burpyville – Jack Splat’s.”

  “Isn’t that a health food restaurant?”

  Edgar removed his baseball cap and ran his hand through his thinning hair. “Lizzie promises if I’ll take her there, we can go to Big Bob’s Steakhouse this coming weekend. I’m looking forward to chowing down on a 32-ounce Porterhouse, let me tell you that.”

  “So what’s this news that won’t keep?”

  “You know Boyd Atkins’s boy Charlie?”

  “Know Boyd better. He was chairman of the Planning Committee for last year’s Watermelon Days. I had the dubious pleasure of serving on it with that old tyrant.”

  “Well, I was out fishing today. My boat drifted under that bridge out on 101. I overheard Charlie Aitkens telling some fellow called Bud that he knew who stole the quilt.”

  “Probably just big talk.”

  “I don’t think so. They didn’t know I was under the bridge. Sounded pretty serious.”

  “Okay, I’ll check it out. But not until the morning. I’m going home for some of Bootsie’s watermelon stew. It’s her own recipe y’know.”

  Chapter Ten

  A Picnic at Gruesome Gorge

  Maddy got sidetracked again. Her son Bill called to say Kathy had taken a turn for the worse. Her fractured hip had become infected and there was talk of another operation. Maddy knew the couple didn’t have any hospitalization insurance and the bills would be piling up. As inner city youth counselors they barely made minimum wage.

  Bill’s sister Tilly and Mark the Shark decided to drive up. Mark thought he might look into the insurance coverage of the trucking company whose rig had broadsided Bill and Kathy’s Subaru.

  That meant Maddy would be watching over Aggie and her younger siblings as well as N’yen. With four kids underfoot, it would be like running a Day Care. Quite a few years had passed since she’d cared for Bill, Freddie, and Tilly under one roof.

  Thankfully, Freddie’s wife Amanda had offered to help out. But that meant adding her daughter to the milieu.

  “Don’t worry,” Beau assured his grandson. “Your mommy will be just fine. Doctors work miracles these days.”

  “You sure, Grampy?”

  “My word of honor.” He knew the boy was afraid of being orphaned again. “Your Uncle Mark is going up there to see to it.”

  “Can I go too? I want to see my mommy.”

  “Not yet. But soon. Meanwhile, you stay here and I’ll take you fishing. I’ve got a few days of vacation saved up.”

  “Fishing? Oh boy.”

  “And your Uncle Freddie promises to take you out to Haney Bros. Circus. He and Sprinkles have worked up a new clown act.”

  “I like those clowns – even if I know one of them’s Uncle Freddie under the makeup.”

  After being horrible scarred in that fire, Freddie had retired fromAtlanta Fire Rescue Department and moved back to Caruthers Corners with his wife. His disability check allowed him to spend most of his time entertaining local kids as Sparkplug the Clown, his disfigurement hidden behind clown makeup.

  “Meanwhile, your Uncle Mark and Aunt Tilly will check on your mommy and daddy, make sure they’re all right.”

  “Okay. But I still miss them.”

  “I know you do,” Beau Madison nodded. “I know you do.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  “I’m so worried,” Maddy told her friends. She and her

  Quilters Club cronies phoned back and forth every morning. “Kathy has been such a good wife for Bill. He’d be devastated if her lost her. We all would.”

  “This second operation is not life threatening, is it?” asked Lizzie. Always trying to minimize life’s worries, the result of a privileged upbringing.

  “Supposedly not. But you never know what could go wrong.”

  “Nothing’s going to go wrong. They’ll just clean out the infection, pump her full of antibiotics, and send her home before you know it. That’s the way these things work. I have a cousin who had a toenail infection –“

  “Liz Ridenour, don’t tell me that story. Your cousin lost her toe.”

  “Only one. She has nine others.”

  Bootsie was more sympathetic. “Little N’yen has really bonded with Kathy. I know he’s worried about his mom.”

  The adopted Vietnamese boy had been with his new home for about a year, but other than his differing skin tone you would have thought he was born into it. His biological parents had survived the Vietnam War, only to come to America and have a bus hit their Honda Civic. N’yen was the only survivor of the crash, fastened safely in his car seat in the backseat. His folk and the drunken bus driver died. Fortunately, it had been 2 o’clock in the morning and the bus was empty, heading back to the garage. Windy City Transport’s insurance company paid out two million – one mil per parent – to the orphaned infant. The money was tucked away in a college fund. But he’d spent nine years in foster homes before Bill and Kathy came along.

  Cookie came through in a more practical way. With all the children under Maddy’s care, she organized a day at Gruesome Gorge. Despite its name, Gruesome Gorge was a wonderful state park with a campground, hiking trails, and a waterfall that flowed into a lovely oval-shaped pond. There on the small sandy beach the Quilters Club had a picnic with the menagerie of kids. Aggie and N’yen splashed about under Bootsie’s supervision in Bottomless Pond. (Contrary to its dread description, the pond was no deeper than three feet at any given point.)

  “This was a good idea,” Maddy told her friend Cookie. “Everybody seems to be having fun.” She was cradling her daughter Tilly’s youngest in her arms, the infant zonked out after a bottle of warm milk. Lizzie was watching the others.

  The sun was bright in a cloudless sky, a perfect day for an outing. The mood belied the park’s sordid history, hinted at in its name. Back in the early 1800’s, Indian fighters slaughtered a tribe of Potawatomi, trapping them in the gorge like fish in a barrel. No one wrote of this shameful episode in the history books, merely implying that settlers pushed the indigenous natives off their lands.

  The state's name actually means “Indian Land,” an appellation that dates back to the 1760s. Then in 1800 Congress officially incorporated Indiana Territory, setting it off from the Northwest Territory.

  Picnickers sometimes found arrowheads and pottery shards on the grounds of Gruesome Gorge, the only remnants of the Potawatomi. The 1838 removal of the Potawatomi in northern Indiana to designated areas west of the Mississippi was known as the “Trail of Death” (not to be confused with the Cherokee’s “Trail of Tears” – although both were carried out under the Indian Removal Act signed into law by President Andrew Jackson).

  “We need to go back to Mad Matilda’s cottage and check out those runes in the well,” Cookie was saying.

  “Not really,” argued Maddy. “The old woman copied them onto her quilt, and we have a picture of the quilt. Professor Pudhomme gave us a good enough tr
anslation. We know all that we’re going to know about the location of the treasure.”

  “An excursion of thirty Norsemen could have carried quite a lot of silver. It would be a valuable find.”

  “More valuable than a hundred thousand dollar quilt?”

  “Oh yes. Millions maybe.”

  “But anyone who knew runology could have translated the message without having to steal the quilt.”

  Cookie laughed. “True. But what a clever double crime, the thief got the quilt and the treasure map in one fell swoop.”

  Lizzie wandered over to join Maddy and Cookie in the shade of a leafy elm tree. “According to Edgar’s story,” she interjected, “it was a Lord of the Rings fan who spotted the runes. His mother’s boyfriend stole it.”

  “Who do we know that’s dating a single mom?” Bootsie called from the water’s edge. Sound carried in this boxy canyon.

  Maddy turned in her direction. “Good question. But we’ll find out. The guy Edgar overheard was Boyd Atkins’s son, Charlie. I imagine your husband is calling on him at this very moment to find out his buddy’s name.”

  “Yes,” said Bootsie. Her short dark hair was plastered against her head from standing under the waterfall. She looked like a plump little sausage in her black one-piece swimsuit. “I predict we’ll have that quilt back on the wall of the Town Hall by the end of the week.”

  “Wouldn’t that be nice,” sighed Cookie. As secretary of the Historical Society, she felt responsible for the quilt.

  “Don’t worry,” said little Aggie. “The Quilters Club will find it.”

  ≈ ≈ ≈

  Police Chief Jim Purdue and his deputy drove out to Aitkens Produce to interview Charlie. This was a delicate matter, considering his father was the biggest landholder in the county. The farmer pulled a lot of weight on the town council.

  The main house reminded you of South Fork, that stately edifice you see on the opening credits of Dallas. Over to the west was a gigantic watermelon warehouse, a steel-framed building as big as a city block. Positioned between them was a two-story red barn. A blue Ram pickup was parked in front of the open barn door. The vanity plate – Aitkens 3 – identified it as Charlie’s. Boyd was Aitkens 1 and his oldest boy Ralph was Aitkens 2.