Free 4 Hemmed In by Marjorie Sorrell Rockwell

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