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

doing the training. He would be taking over as lion tamer after this season too. A few years younger, Swami Bombay was clearly the “heir apparent.” For years he’d worked as a mind reader and elephant handler and general factotum. He now knew the interworking of a circus as well as Bill and Willamina. Even the interworkings of a circus that had been converted into a children’s zoo.
    Freddie greeted Big Bill and Swami Bombay with a bonhomie that belied his morose state of mind. “Everything set for the afternoon show?” he asked with a strained cheerfulness.
    “Mostly. I think your clown car may need some gas,” answered Big Bill. “But everything else seems to be right on track.”
    “Brought a gallon,” said Freddie, holding up a red gas can. The clown car that looked like a miniature fire truck was actually a children’s pedal car converted to run on a lawn-mower motor.
    “You’ll be performing on your own today,” said Bombay, whose real name was Juan Martinez. For years, the Mexican had passed himself off as an Indian swami while traveling on the carny circuit. Now that Haney Bros. Circus had found a permanent home, it seemed like too much effort to go back to his birth name.
    “What happened to Bobby Ray?”
    “Had to go to Chicago for a bank meeting.” Having come into a fortune, Bobby Ray Purdue had responsibilities that sometimes interfered with his role as Sprinkles the Clown – and Freddie’s new mentor.
    “Nothing serious I hope.”
    “He didn’t say,” shrugged Bombay. Not interested in matters of high finance.
    “Something about a real estate transaction,” offered Big Bill. “He didn’t elaborate. Just asked me to tell you he’d be gone a couple of days.”
    “Oh well,” said Freddie. “The show must go on.”
    “Atta boy,” said Big Bill Haney, a wide grin splitting his walrus moustache. “You’ll knock ‘em dead.”
    ≈ ≈ ≈
    Freddie knew about the real estate deal. Matter of fact, he’d put the idea into Bobby Ray’s head: Buy up all the property on Melon Ball Lane and turn the entire neighborhood into a retirement village. Once the town saw the scope of this plan, it would be motivated to sign over the Beasley Mansion. A retirement village, low-income housing … weren’t they practically the same thing?
    Everybody thought his brother-in-law Mark the Shark was so smart. But Freddie had a card or two up his own sleeve. The town didn’t have the funds to renovate Beasley Mansion, but Bobby Ray did. And that one-time Lost Boy would be lost without Freddie’s advice. This deal was going to show his family that he wasn’t just a barbequed-brain has-been hose-jockey.
     
     

 
    CHAPTER NINE
    A Witness Steps Forth
     
     
    “Find what?” asked Chief Purdue.
    “Never mind,” gulped Moose Johansson, realizing he’d already said too much.
    “Do you mean the money?” asked Maddy Madison, tilting her head as if she expected an answer.
    Moose said nothing.
    “What money?” roared the police chief.
    “I expect the money from that robbery at the savings and loan a couple of years ago.” Maddy held up an empty canvas sack marked CARUTHERS CORNERS SAVINGS & LOAN . “I found this in one of the trunks, but there wasn’t any cash with it.”
    The police chief eyed his prisoner. “Mr. Johansson, now is the time to speak up. Did you have anything to do with that robbery?”
    “What robbery?”
    “The one where this sack was filled with $212,000. Best to confess now or it’ll go much harder on you.”
    “I’ve never seen that sack before.”
    “Oh no? Then what did you mean, asking Mrs. Madison if she’d ‘found it’?”
    Dang! They had him there. But he wasn’t ready to rat out his partner. He was gonna keep his big trap shut. Peewee would do the same for him, wouldn’t he? “I meant my wallet. I dropped it down there. That’s what I was looking for when you nabbed me.”
    “Then what’s that bulge in your back pocket?” asked Little Aggie, standing