3 Coming Unraveled by Marjorie Sorrell Rockwell Read Free Book Online

get rid of the fetid stench.
    “What do you make of the design?” Maddy asked.
    Cookie, being the most versed on historical quilt patterns, leaned closer to examine the flame-like image. The colors looked washed-out, the pigments deteriorated from sunlight and age. “Nothing special,” she made her appraisal. “No museum would touch it. No collector would want it. A rag picker’s dream.”
    “So why would Harry Periwinkle want it?” posited Maddy.
    “Badly enough to trade half of the E Z Seat chair factory for it,” Bootsie mused out loud.
    “Sentimental value?” tried Liz.
    “No, it was a Purdue family heirloom,” said Cookie, keeping the genealogy straight. “It had nothing to do with the Periwinkles.”
    “Maybe it’s stuffed with money,” joked the banker’s wife. Poking it with her finger, you could hear a rustling sound.
    “Sure, like Maud’s husband’s grandmother ever had any money,” laughed Bootsie. “This quilt was made before the family started up the chair factory.”
    “So you didn’t marry Jim for his family fortune,” teased Maddy.
    “I wish. His side of the family didn’t even have a piece of the chair factory.”
    “Where did Amandine Purdue’s husband get the capital to start a manufacturing business?” asked Lizzie. She was always interested in the money side of things.
    “Good question,” shrugged Bootsie. “One day they were poor, the next day rich. Ol’ N.L. refuses to talk about it. Merely says his great grandfather managed his money well.”
    “ So Abner Purdue started up the chair factory,” Cookie traced the history. “He left it to his son Abe who left it to his son Amos – that’s Maud’s husband. And Amos left it to his two sons.”
    “Yes, but Bobby Ray never lived to claim his half,” said Bootsie. “That’s how Harry Periwinkle was able to hoodwink them into signing over those shares to him.”
    “That will get reversed,” Lizzie pointed out.
    “Looks like we’ve hit a dead end,” sighed Maddy. She stared morosely at the lumpy quilt. She’d been so sure it would reveal secrets, but it was just a smelly old family keepsake. “Now we have to figure out how to get it back in the attic.”
    “Aggie?” said Liz.
    “I don’t know,” replied Maddy. “I was so afraid she would fall out of that tree. It w as irresponsible of me to let her get involved in this.”
    “She wasn’t in any danger,” the redhead assured her. “That kid climbs like a monkey.”
    “Yes, but I want her to be around to see her new baby sister.”
    “Tilly’s having a girl?”
    “Has it been confirmed?”
    Maddy smiled. “Yes, Tilly went to the doctor yesterday to get the results. A little girl. That will make three.”
    ≈≈≈
    Judge Horace Cramer refused to accept Mark the Shark’s request to step down. “The man needs a defense, even if he is a scum-sucking no-good hornswoggler who tried to gyp the Purdues out of their family business. The Periwinkles were always shifty, little more than white trash.”
    “Are you sure you’re not biased in this case, Judge?”
    “No, I’m not. Else I wouldn’t let them keep a sharp Los Angeles lawyer like you on the case.”
    “I grew up here,” he reminded the judge.
    “Course you did. I knew your daddy well. And you live here now. But you came out of a top-notch LA law firm, don’t think I don’t know it. If anybody can save Harry Periwinkle from twenty years in a state prison, it’s you.”
    “Thank you,” Mark said. “I appreciate the vote of confidence.” Not sure he really meant those words.
    ≈≈≈
    Edgar Ridenour got the phone call he was expecting from the director of Burbyville Memorial. As a board member of the hospital, Edgar was treated with proper deference. He had called for an investigation into how the DNA test on the Lost Boy had gone awry.
    “We have a pretty good idea of what happened,” said Virgil Hoffstedder. You could hear the nervousness in his voice. “The State Police are