Sewed Up Tight (A Quilters Club Mystery No. 5) (Quilters Club Mysteries) Read Online Free PDF Page B

orderly appearance. Folks like to think of a cemetery as the front door to Heaven, a serene portal to the Everlasting with everything tidily in its proper place.
    Maisie Daniels was waiting there for him to open the gate. Her son’s funeral had been only yesterday, a big affair with the school band playing “Amazing Grace” at graveside. Some 300 people had turned out.
    Jasper’d had to clean up the gum wrappers and cigarette butts after the service, then he’d gone on a bender. He didn’t remember much of it, other than waking up in the jail cell. If that kept happening, Jim Purdue was liable to start charging him rent.
    “Hurry it up, Jasper Beanie,” snapped Mrs. Daniels. “I don’t have all day.”
    “You’ve got all of eternity,” he muttered under his breath. “Skookie’s not going anywhere.”
    “What did you say?”
    “I said I had to go to Burpyville for supplies,” he amended his words.
    “This cemetery needs mowing,” she complained. “The weeds are higher than some of the tombstones.” A slight exaggeration.
    “Next Monday’s mowing day. MFP finally bought me a new riding mower, an X540 with a 54-inch deck. Power steering, automatic differential, 24 horsepower. Got it at the new John Deere dealer on 4 th Street.”
    “Mr. Beanie, I’m sure I don’t care about your equipment. Just make sure my Skookie is resting next to his father in a well-maintained plot. That’s what my Infinite Care contract with Pleasant Glades calls for.”
    “Yessum. You’ll get what you paid for.”
    “I’ve been waiting here at the gate for a good hour. The Johnsons and the Periwinkles gave up and left. But I brought fresh flowers for Skookie. Wasn’t about to take them home to wilt.”
    “No ma’am.”
    “It’s not fair, you playing favorites.”
    “Playing favorites – what d’you mean?”
    “Locking some of us out, but letting others in while you’re gone to Burpyville.”
    “Someone was inside the cemetery?”
    “That’s right. Don’t you play innocent with me, Jasper Beanie. I saw him up there on the hillside walking down toward the old section.”
    “Did you recognize who it was?”
    “Too far away. But it had to be one of the founding families, going down to visit their forbearers. That’s where all the hoity-toity are buried, right?”
    “The town founders aren’t buried. They each have a crypt inside their family mausoleums.”
    “I couldn’t care less. Never been down there myself. Too muddy by the creek. No wonder they’re interred above ground.”
    “Yessum,” he said. But his mind was wondering who had been wandering down there in the old section. Part of his job was to watch out for grave robbers. He’d best go down there and make sure none of the mausoleums had been broken into.
    ≈ ≈ ≈
    Bobby Ray Purdue had achieved a certain degree of fame as one of the legendary “Lost Boys,” three youngsters who had disappeared into the Never Ending Swamp north of town, never to be seen again until they turned up with the Haney Bros. Circus. As it turned out, Bobby Ray had inherited a fortune, money hidden in his grandmother’s quilt. That’s when he’d put up the funds to turn the traveling circus into a permanent zoo and wild life refuge on the edge of town.
    While Bobby Ray still liked to perform as Sprinkles the Clown, being rich put other obligations on his shoulders. Sometimes he wished he could just give the money back.
    He’d set up a non-profit 501c3 foundation called Animals Anonymous, which guaranteed care and feeding of the zoo animals, as well as financing a new SPCA shelter just off the Burpyville Highway. While the zoo housed lions and tigers and elephants, the shelter claimed 67 homeless dogs and twice as many cats.
    Bobby Ray had also set up a home for aging circus performers. Bill and Willamina Haney had a large apartment on the ground floor. Swami Bombay had a place in back. Recently two midgets and an arthritic acrobat had joined them.
    When Tall Paul