All Tangled Up

The Valentine’s Dance That Wasn’t

Maddy Madison had a soft spot in her heart for Valentine’s Day. After all, that was when Beauregard proposed to her lo those many years ago. Her Pooh Bear was a romantic at heart. That’s why she was so disappointed when this year’s PT-A Valentine’s Dance was spoiled by that idiot Herbert Hoople drowning in the punchbowl. The band hadn’t even started playing.

Caruthers High had been very lucky to book Snooky Smith and His Smooth Cruisers, a retro group that did old R&B hits by the Platters, The Flamingoes, The Chords, Nat King Cole, Big Joe Turner, Brook Benton, and Sam Cooke. They were in high demand in Indiana and neighboring Ohio.

Turned out the PT-A had to pay Snooky even though his band didn’t get to perform one single note of Only You (And You Alone). That had been Maddy and Beau’s song.

Damn that Herbert Hoople. How did someone drown in a punchbowl anyway?

That question was posed at the next meeting of the Caruthers Corners Quilters Club. Not that it was much of a formal quilting bee – just four friends who gathered at the Hoosier State Senior Recreation Center every Tuesday. Certainly the girls – if a gaggle of AARP members could be called such – liked to sew quilts. But Maddy Madison, Bootsie Purdue, Lizzie Ridenour, and Cookie Bentley mainly liked each other’s company. Ya-Ya Sisterhood and all that, friends since high school.

The punchbowl barely had room for his big fat head, groused Maddy. How dare he drown and ruin the dance.

He didn’t drown, said Bootsie. She had the inside track, being married to Police Chief Jim Purdue.

"Then how did he die?" quizzed Lizzie. Married to a retired banker, she was the nosey parker of the group.

Poisoned. That’s why he keeled over, face first in the punchbowl.

Did he drown when he hit the punch? asked Cookie. As director of the local Historical Society, she liked to get the details straight.

No, I said he didn’t drown. He was dead before he hit the grape juice.

How do you know? asked Maddy.

No punch in his lungs. If he’d been alive, he’d have ingested some. At least that’s what Jim says. And he got his info straight from the county coroner.

What kind of poison was it? asked Cookie, still digging for facts.

Something called BTX.

Botulinum toxin?

Bootsie looked surprised. Yes, that’s it. How did you know about BTX?

Back in 2007 there was a big recall of Castleberry Food products because eight people contracted botulism poisoning from their products. One of the victims was from here in Indiana. As a local historian, Cookie knew her facts.

Yes, it was that very product that killed Herbert – canned hot dog chili. Cheapskate that he was, he didn’t pay attention to the recall. Had a cabinet full of canned chili.

So it was an accident? said Lizzie, clearly disappointed.

Bootsie nodded. Looks like it. Bernie ate one chilidog too many.

Well, that solves that, said Maddy.

But turns out, it didn’t.

Chapter 2

The Man Who Loved Chilidogs Too Much

Caruthers Corners is a small town – pop. 2,782, give or take – located in northeastern Indiana. It was settled in 1829 when the area was still known as Indian Territory. Three crusty pioneers took credit as the town’s founders, one of them being Beauregard Hollingsworth Madison IV’s great-great-grandfather. With that pedigree it’s no surprise that Beau did a term as mayor, replacing Henry Caruthers, the larcenous scion of another founder. The Jenks side of the trio did little more than lend his name to the history books.

These days Beau and Maddy’s son-in-law, a retired lawyer dubbed Mark the Shark, serves as mayor. He is doing a nice job, according to most townsfolk. His latest success being the new industrial park outside of town. Already two software companies had opened subsidiaries there, the rent being less than Palo Alto, the bucolic country living appealing to reclusive techies, and the Internet allowing them to work from anywhere. The Caruthers Corners Jay-Cees threw a party for the newcomers on the town square, but everyone knew the celebration was really for Mayor Mark Tidemore.

Herbert Hoople had been employed as a night watchman at the new Caruthers Corners Industrial Park, so following ol’ Herb’s death Mark asked his secretary to put an ad in the Burpyville Gazette for a replacement. Burpyville was the nearest town with a newspaper, a midway point between Caruthers Corners and Indianapolis.

Herbert Hoople had always been an odd duck. In fact, he’d been born one, the male member of the famous Hoople Quadruplets – a phrase that usually got boiled down to an alliterative Hoople Quadruples.

Herbert was the firstborn, followed by sisters Hilda, Helga, and Helena. The Hoople family was considered wonky, a touch of bipolarism flowing in the genes. Herbert was survived by sister Hilda. Helena had died in an asylum two years ago. And Helga had committed suicide by jumping into the Blow Hole back in ’82.

The Blow Hole is a little-known local natural phenomenon, a geyser of sorts. Twice a day it gurgled forth a foot-high plume of water. Not nearly as impressive as Yellowstone’s Old Faithful. The Blow Hole is located at the far end of Gruesome Gorge, a nearby state park. These days the trail that leads down to it is blocked off by heavy chains, the site considered hazardous to the public after Helga met her demise there. The woman’s body was never recovered from the Blow Hole’s unplumbed depths, although it’s said a day later the geyser belched up a shoe – size 9, a perfect fit for Helga’s left foot.

For most of his adult life, Herbert had lived in a modest cottage overlooking the Wabash River, a suitable hideaway for a reclusive bachelor with manic-depressive tendencies. Hilda had remained in the Hoople family manse, a two-story stone edifice over near the chair factory in a once-tony section of town. People said she was mad. That’s a questionable assessment since she hadn’t spoken to anyone in twenty years, all her grocery shopping and outside chores taken care of by a helper paid for by the Hoople Quadruplets Trust Fund, set up by the quad’s wise (and fortunately wealthy) parents.

Henry and Henrietta Hoople, said parents, were descended from ol’ Hawthorne Hatchet-Man Hoople, a member of the wagon train that stalled on the site now known as Caruthers Corners. He’d been a riding buddy with old Ferdinand Jenks, assuring him a prime buildings spot on the slopes of Lookout Hill (now called Hoople Hill). It’s said he was good with a tomahawk, scalping more Potawatomi Indians than they had scalped settlers. The founding fathers had routed the Potawatomi at the Battle of Gruesome Gulch, a bloody encounter that took place at today’s state park. Jacob Caruthers’ journal, now in the archives of the Historical Society, described it as a goode turkee shoot.

Madelyn Agnes Madison (née Taylor) felt that her forefathers acted criminally when forcing the Native Americans off their land. She was something of a bleeding heart in her friend Cookie Bentley’s opinion. As secretary of the Caruthers Corners Historical Society, Cookie took historical events as simply what happened, placing no moral judgments on the participants. Her job was to record them, not assess their correctness.

Cookie’s curiosity sent her to the Historical Society’s back room, or archives as she called it, a hodgepodge of boxes, shelves of books, piles of magazines, and rust-tinged filing cabinets. Along with the scattered artifacts – a wagon wheel, said to be from the original wagon train that got stranded here; bow and quiver of arrows made by the Potawatomi; flintlock rifle belonging to old Samuel Beasley; wooden footstool; small tombstone inscribed Baby Jane - January, 1843; sooty lantern; a stone with runic markings; a leather saddle said to have been owned by Tom Mix; a tomahawk attributed to Hawthorne Hoople; the first chair produced at the EZ Seat Chair Factory; and a framed poster for the Haney Bros. Circus – this collection looked more like the living room of the Collyer Brothers, those famous hoarders, than the stacks of a library or archives of a historical society.

In the third filing cabinet to the left she found a folder marked HOOPLE QUADRUPLES. Yes, that was the one she was looking for. A sheaf of yellowed newspaper clippings told the story of the famous foursome. There was even a page from Life Magazine. At the time they were right up there with the Fischer quintuplets of South Dakota. It had put Caruthers Corners on the map for a moment in time.

The Hoople kids quickly lost favor when it was discovered they were wackos. Here was the National Enquirer piece that had turned the tide, a cover story titled DOCTOR CLAIMS HOPPLE QUADRUPLES BRAIN DEAD! Not exactly accurate, but close enough to make them a national embarrassment. Henry and Henrietta sued the tabloid but the case was thrown out of court on technical grounds.

The Hooples faded into obscurity. After daddy and mommy died in a train accident, the four siblings dispersed into their various forms of madness. Herbert took menial jobs. Hilda locked herself away. Helga wandered about the countryside until she encountered the Blowing Hole. And Helena got locked away after she tried to set the EZ Seat Chair Factory on fire.

Jim Purdue interviewed the waitresses at Cozy Café where Herbert often ate lunch. They ran a tab for him, charged to the Hoople Quadruplets Trust Fund. Everyone agreed, most days he ordered a chilidog.

~ ~ ~

That weekend Maddy and Beau drove over to Burpyville to have dinner with the Purdues at Geppetto’s, an Italian restaurant known for its two-foot-long strands of linguini. The clam sauce was to die for.

They had ordered after-dinner cappuccinos when the conversation shifted to Herbert Hoople. As Police Chief, Jim had been fielding TV camera crews all week. The death of a Hoople Quadruple was national news, their wackiness easily forgotten.

Strangest thing, he was saying. I was re-reading the coroner’s report and there was no sign of hot dog or chili in his stomach.

Maddy’s head snapped up. But I thought he died of botulism from eating that contaminated Castleberry chili.

Well, that’s the theory. The coroner says the tests confirm botulism was the cause of death. And he had a cabinet full of that bad chili, the cans bulging like they’d burst. Ergo –

But there was no chili in his stomach –?

Right.

What about in his kitchen? Any open can on the counter? In the trash?

Come to think of it, no.

How long does it take botulism to kill you? pressed Maddy.

"Depends. Foodborne botulism results from contaminated food in which Clostridium botulinum spores have been allowed to germinate in low-oxygen conditions. Doc Medford says symptoms usually appear 12–36 hours after eating, but in some cases it appears within 2 hours."

Maddy looked thoughtful. So let’s say he ate the chili somewhere between two hours before the Valentine’s Dance and three days.

Okay. I’ll give you that.

Would there have been a trash pickup during that time period?

Now Jim looked thoughtful, his hand stroking his bald head. No, he lived on River Road. Garbage service is only once a week out there. Pickup would have been the Tuesday after Valentine’s Day. And we searched his house on Monday.

And no open tin cans? Bootsie entered the fray.

There might have been a couple of soup cans – I’ll check my notes. But f’sure no chili cans.

So where did he get botulism?

Jim shrugged. Who knows? Maybe from something he ate at Cozy Café.

Beau jumped in. "C’mon, Jim. You and me eat