Free 2 The Patchwork Puzzler by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell Page A

bewilderment. “You’ll have to learn that we members of the Caruthers Corners Quilter’s Club take our stitching pretty seriously.”
    “Ease up, girls,” said Edgar Ridenour, looking almost as fierce with his briar-patch beard as Cookie’s muscle-bound husband. “Ben didn’t mean anything by his remark.”
    “Yeah, you girls should be worrying about catching Henry Caruthers and Nan Beanie,” added Maddy’s husband.
    “No,” she replied. “We’ll leave that up to Chief Purdue. Wouldn’t want to be thrown in jail for worrying him.”
    “Yes, we’d have to call Mark for a habeas corpus,” smiled the policeman’s wife.
    “Don’t worry,” said Jim Purdue. “I’m gonna stake out the Burpyville Trailways station. We’ll pick up Henry and Nan when they try to board the bus for Indy.”
    “You’ll get Nan, but it might be someone other than Henry,” murmured Maddy, almost a throwaway comment.
    “S-someone other than Henry?” sputtered the police chief.
    “You do realize Henry and Nan have an accomplice, don’t you?”
    “Just how do you figure that, Maddy Madison?”
    “We all know it took someone with great sewing skills to make that fake Pennington. Except for using synthetic thread, you can’t tell it from the real thing. Neither Henry nor Nan can sew that well. So they had to have a third partner, someone who’s a master quilt-maker.”

Chapter Fifteen
     
     
     
A New Suspect
     
     
    A ggie put it into perspective for them. “It’s really quite simple,” she said as everyone polished off the last of watermelon pies. “Who d’you know that’s good enough at quilting to make a fake you can’t tell from the original?”
    “I don’t know anyone that good,” admitted Lizzie. “Even I couldn’t do it.” The nimble-fingered redhead was considered to be the best quilter in Caruthers Corners, having won First Prize in the Watermelon Days competition three years in a row.
    “ Some body did it,” Bootsie pointed out.
    “It couldn’t be anyone we know,” insisted Cookie. “Maddy and I already went down that road.”
    “How about Holly Eberhard,” said Bootsie. “I’ll bet she could do it.”
    “Well, of course, she could,” shrugged Lizzie. “After all, she’s the statewide champion.”
    “Yes, but who else?” asked Cookie.
    “Why not Holly Everlast?” asked Aggie.
    “Eberhard,” corrected her grandmother. “Holly Eberhard.”
    “Don’t be silly, Aggie,” her mother spoke up. “Holly Eberhard’s a famous quilt designer written up in all the magazines. I once saw a profile of her in Quilter’s Quarterly . That magazine features the very best quilters in the universe.”
    “Okay, but who else could make a perfect copy?” persisted the ten-year-old girl.
    “Lots of people I’m sure,” said Cookie. “Just not anyone we’d know.”
    “Besides,” added Lizzie, “it wasn’t a perfect copy. Daniel Sokolowski spotted the synthetic thread, proving it wasn’t made back in the 1920s.”
    “Close enough it fooled us,” said Maddy. “We would have never spotted that modern thread.”
    “That’s true,” said Cookie, “but the Smithsonian would’ve when we tried to return a fake instead of the genuine article.” She was dreading tomorrow’s phone call to the famous museum.
    “You know, Holly Eberhard grew up here in Caruthers Corners,” said Beau. “Her mother was a Caruthers.”
    “I didn’t know that,” said Cookie, obviously miffed. She prided herself in being an authority on the town’s genealogy.
    “Beau’s right. She was raised over on Melon Hill,” said Edgar Ridenour. “The Savings and Loan held the family’s mortgage. As I recall, her mother was Henry Caruthers’ aunt. That makes her Henry’s first cousin.”
    “No kidding?” said Tillie, chair pulled back from the kitchen table to make room for her tummy. “She’s related to our criminal mastermind?”
    “Well, that certainly adds her to our suspicious characters list,” said