Free Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries) by Marjory Sorrell Rockwell

afraid we must try again when the signs are right.”
    “When might that be?” asked Maddy.
    “Who knows? That is up to the spirit world.”
    “Can I ask your spirit guide a question?” Maddy continued.
    “Of course, but keep it brief.”
    “¿ Quién usted es, fantasma potente ?”
    “ Whooo .”
    “Poncho asks that you speak in English.”
    “I asked if Skookie was happy in the afterlife.”
    “ Whooo .”
    “Turns out Poncho did understand you after all. He says he will ask Robert when he sees him.”
    “Thank him for me.”
    ≈ ≈ ≈
    After driving back to Caruthers Corners, the Quilters Club stopped at the Cozy Café to reconnoiter. Lizzie had babbled all way back about how she’d actually seen the spirit floating above their heads. The other three remained somewhat silent, not so easily convinced. To them, puffs of smoke and light tricks did not add up to a visitation from the spirit world.
    They took the booth in the corner, ordering coffee and slices of watermelon pie.
    After the pie came, Maddy looked around the table at her friends and announced, “Madam Blatvia is a fake.”
    “But she belongs to the Spiritualist Church,” countered Lizzie. “She studied to become a medium, like getting a college degree. And Cookie said that Lucky Strike place –“
    “– Chesterfield,” Bootsie corrected her.
    “– that Chesterfield place was a historic site.”
    “Historic, but maybe not so credible,” amended Cookie Bentley.
    “What do you mean?” Lizzie looked stricken.
    “Back in 1925 a newspaper reporter went undercover to expose Camp Chesterfield as being fraudulent. Fourteen mediums were arrested for obtaining money by fraudulent means. That is, bilking grieving relatives out of money by pretending to reunite them with dead loved ones.”
    “So what? 1925 was a long time ago,” protested Lizzie.
    “Again, in 1960 the publisher of Psychic Observer arranged to film a séance at Camp Chesterfield using infrared film. He was hoping to obtain scientific proof of spirit materializations, but instead recorded what was obvious chicanery on the part of the medium and her cabinet assistant.”
    “Just two instances –” Lizzie began.
    Cookie Bentley fished a newspaper clipping from her purse. She’d done her homework before visiting Madam Blatvia. “Says here that in 1965 a well-known writer attended séances at Camp Chesterfield. He reported that the spirits a medium claimed to materialize ‘…were all barely visible. Most appeared to be swathed in white drapery, and all were the same height as the medium, and sounded exactly like her.’ ”
    “That’s not conclusive proof,” pouted Lizzie. She hated to be wrong.
    Cookie wasn’t finished. “Then in 1975 a famous Camp Chesterfield medium named M. Lamar Keene wrote a book called The Psychic Mafia in which he admitted the séances were all a clever fraud. He coined the term ‘True Believer Syndrome’ to describe the gullible followers.”
    “Enough.”
    “One more. In 2002 a former stage magician named Joe Nickell pulled off a sting operation at Camp Chesterfield, exposing rampant fraud among the mediums. His findings were published in The Skeptical Inquirer .” She waved a copy of the magazine in front of her stunned friend. “It’s all here.”
    “Okay, okay,” she gave in. “But what makes Maddy call Madam Blatvia a fake?”
    “Because I spoke to the Mexican spirit called Poncho in Spanish and he didn’t understand me.”
    “Madam Blatvia said Poncho did understand you after all and he answered your question.”
    “No, he didn’t. The question I asked in Spanish was ‘Who are you, powerful ghost?’ Not ‘Was Skookie happy in the afterlife,’ as I pretended.”
    “Oh my.”
    “So I think we can safely dismiss Madam Blatvia’s claim that Skookie Daniels was killed by the spirit of Major Samuel Beasley,” said Maddy as she bit into her watermelon pie. “That phony fortune-teller wouldn’t know a spirit unless it