Plain Murder (11 page)

Verna nodded. “He did, and more than that. He cursed your uncle and threatened to start shooting his cows next. I don't know why.”

“
Dat
and Willy had argued over the cows,” Mary Aaron explained. The baby started fussing, and she bounced him. “
Dat
's cows broke through the fence to get to the pond and Willy was angry about it.”

“So, what happened after my uncle shoved Willy against the wall?” Rachel asked.

“Willy swung at Aaron, but Aaron jumped back out of the way. Then he said if Willy ever set foot on his farm, he'd be sorry. And Willy shouted that if the cows ever stepped over onto his property again, he'd be eating steak.”

“Was that the end of it?” Rachel asked.

“
Ya.
About that time the deacon came and talked to Aaron and got him away. By then, some of the English people had called the security man, the man in the white shirt. We saw Willy talking to the security man and waving his arms. We couldn't hear all of what he said, but he was pointing in the direction Aaron had gone and he kept saying his name.”

Rachel was shocked; she'd heard about the argument, but not about the physical altercation. Her uncle must have been furious when he learned that Willy really had killed Bo. She'd heard that Willy could be mean, but she couldn't imagine he could be cruel enough to shoot a dog. Still, for Uncle Aaron to shove Willy in front of witnesses—it would look bad to the police. It would look bad to anyone.

“Don't tell Alvin that I told,” Verna begged. “He would be unhappy with me.” She looked at Rachel timidly. “Do you still want the cheese?”

 

Later, as Rachel and Mary Aaron drove back to Stone Mill House, her cousin folded her arms over her chest and glanced at her. “Goats? And cheese? What are you going to do with goats? And all this cheese?”

Rachel could tell she was trying to make light of what they had learned about her father. “I'll think of something,” she assured her. “And the cheese won't go to waste.”

She was still going over and over again in her head what Verna had told them. If someone had told the police about the argument, which surely someone had, that would be enough reason for them to take Aaron in for questioning. But maybe the police didn't have anything else. Was that possible?

“I guess it's a good thing you didn't want to go to Sampson Miller's farm to ask questions. We would have come home with the Jeep full of pigs.”

Rachel gestured. “We don't have goats in the Jeep.”

“
Ne,
but they're coming tomorrow.”

 

Rachel's cell rang just as she was getting out of the shower. It was ten twenty. She almost didn't pick up. She was dripping water all over her bathroom rug, and if it was Evan, she could call him back. But even as she was hesitating, she grabbed a bath towel, wrapped it around herself, and made a mad dash for the ringing phone.

It will stop ringing just as soon as I grab it,
she thought. True to form, when she did manage a hello, there was a dead silence on the other end of the line. Water dripped onto her floorboards. “Hello?” she repeated.

And then a faint voice asked, “Is this Rachel Mast?”

“Yes, it is.” She thought she recognized the sound of the caller's voice. The women had a slight southern accent. “Dawn? Dawn Clough? Yes, this is Rachel. Thank you so much for—”

“Did Roy put you up to this?”

Roy? Who was Roy?
And then Rachel made the connection. Roy Thompson. The man that Dawn had lived with here in the valley. “No. I'm calling about something else.”

“Do I know you, Rachel?” the woman asked.

“I have the B&B in Stone Mill, and I used to come in to Junior's. You waited on me a couple of times. I'm a redhead. I always sat in the corner booth. English breakfast tea?”

“Oh, yeah. You're the one with the cute cop boyfriend.”

“That's me. He's not exactly my boyfriend . . . never mind. That's not important. Do you remember me now?”

“Yeah. You were a good tipper. I always remember the tightwads and the good tippers. So why are you tryin' to get up with me?”

Rachel sat on the edge of her bed. “You may not have heard, well, I don't suppose you could have . . .” She started again. “Did the police call you about Willy O'Day?”

“Cops? No. What'd Willy say I did?”

“No, nothing like that. Did you know that Willy was missing?”

“Missing? No. What's that got to do with me? I haven't seen him since . . . I don't know. Since I left Stone Mill in October.”

“Yes,” Rachel said eagerly. “I know. I was wondering why it was that you left town so suddenly.”

“Why do you want to know?”

“It's . . . well . . .” She stopped and started again. “The thing is, Willy disappeared the same weekend that you did. Nobody knew where he went. Then, a few days ago, he turned up dead. Murdered.”

Dawn would have had to be a good actress to fake her surprise. And Rachel suspected that she wasn't good at much, least of all acting. “My uncle has been accused of killing Willy. My uncle's Amish.”

“An Amish man? How is that?”

“Long story,” Rachel said. “Anyway, I'm just trying to talk to anyone who knew Willy. To help my uncle out. I understand the two of you were . . . going out.”

“Going out? No way. I went on two dates with him, but we were never
dating
. Willy was a bigger jerk than Roy, if that's possible. He took me to dinner in Huntingdon and expected me to pay for my own meal. Can you believe that?
And
he shorted the waitress on her tip. You can tell a lot about people by the way they tip. Nice guys leave a good tip. But murdered and dead? That's awful. Willy didn't deserve that.”

“No, he didn't.”

Dawn was quiet for a second, then, “Why would you think that me and Willy were goin' out?”

“George. His brother. He said you two were really friendly at the restaurant. The day he disappeared. Joking around, acting as though . . . you know . . . you were . . . good friends.”

“Honey, I'm a waitress. I get paid by tips. I flirt with
all
the guys because flirting gets you tips. I couldn't get Roy to understand that, either. Roy was jealous—besides being a mean drunk. I thought maybe him and me might have something . . . but I don't stand for being knocked around. Had that with my kids' father, and no more.”

“So you left town to get away from Roy?”

“More or less. My mama tripped over my Tommy's fire truck and broke her wrist. My kids live with her, and with her arm in a cast she was having a hard time with them. She said she'd send me money to come home, and I took it. I'm sorry about Willy, and your uncle, but I don't know anything about it. Sorry. I gotta go.”

“I don't suppose Willy ever said anything about being in trouble with anyone? Or owing a lot of money to anybody or—”

“Nope. Told you. I don't know nothin'. 'Course anything is possible with that one. He liked to gamble, you know. Wanted to take me to Atlantic City with him for a weekend, but I wasn't interested. If you ask me, somebody knocked him over the head for that cash he carried. Anyway, really, I gotta go,” Dawn said. “Sorry about your uncle. Tell the cops to look for some mugger.”

“Thanks.” Bishop jumped up on the bed as Rachel disconnected. “Well, that was a dead end,” she told the cat, tossing her cell on her pillow.

Then she remembered the open grave with Willy's body sprawled in it. And despite the warm May evening, she shivered.

The answer had to be out there. She just had to look harder.

After breakfast, Rachel collected her market baskets and drove her golf cart to the town park. She went to the farmer's market every Saturday.

The commons, which covered most of an ordinary city block, was a grassy area, surrounded by trees, in the center of Stone Mill. Several giant oaks and a few poplars were scattered across the open space. What was significant about the plot was that when the streets were laid out early in the nineteenth century, the land had been designated to be communally owned by the town citizens.

Here, for hundreds of years, craftsmen and farmers had exchanged the fruits of their fields and workshops, children had played, neighbors had gossiped, and news had filtered through from the larger world beyond the mountains. These massive trees with interwoven branches had witnessed weddings and hangings, joyful laughter and more than their share of bitter tears.

During the French and Indian War, when hostile raiding parties of Indians had terrorized the valley, burning and slaughtering peaceful Amish and English settlers alike, a militia had been raised on this spot. A generation later, volunteers had assembled to fight the British in the War of Independence, and nearly a hundred years after that, the sons of farmers, gentlemen, and merchants alike had gathered to march south against Robert E. Lee and the Army of Northern Virginia. Over the centuries, as proclaimed by granite memorials, many of Stone Mill's volunteers hadn't survived to return to their valley home.

Still, the park evoked more pleasant memories for the residents of Stone Mill than sorrowful ones. As a child, Rachel had sneaked away from her father's farm to watch town parades and holiday celebrations here. And if the strict codes of the Amish faith had prevented their followers from actively participating in or even watching the festivities, there was no such prohibition against bringing crafts and produce—and even the occasional lamb, piglet, or chickens—here to sell to the English.

Sometime in the 1980s, the farmer's market had ceased to exist in Stone Mill, and it was Rachel's enthusiastic urging that had brought it back the previous year. At her suggestion, the town charged no fee for valley residents to sell goods. Instead, additional revenues were realized by increased traffic from tourists, shoppers who later might stop for a meal at Junior's or patronize George's bookstore, the pottery or quilt shops, or Russell's Hardware.

The market opened every Saturday, rain or shine, from March until December, closing only in the bitterest months, when snow piled high across the commons and black ice made the roads over the mountains dangerous. Emulating a colonial tradition, Stone Mill residents had joined together to erect sturdy wooden stalls, covered by a procession of canvas coverings. Here, amid a fluid mixture of Amish and English merchants, Rachel's sister Annie offered jars and crocks of her valley honey; Coyote Finch displayed hand-thrown mugs, bowls, and plates; and George operated a mini-bookstand. Members of Ada's family displayed whatever fruits, herbs, or vegetables were in season. And Hulda Schenfeld never failed to show up with an array of old-fashioned candy, soda pop, and inexpensive children's toys.

Rachel parked her golf cart near her Aunt Hannah's buggy and scanned the market. The beautiful weather had brought out a lot of sellers. Every stall was buzzing, and a few merchants had set up their wares in the center, some on blankets or simply by arranging their goods on the grass. She caught sight of one of Eli Rust's daughters selling handmade shovels, rakes, and hoes out of an open barrel, and one of the waitresses from Junior's offering tuna and chicken salad sandwiches from an ice chest.

Elsie, her cousin, was at the Hostetler chicken-and-egg stall, but Rachel didn't see her aunt. She usually came to chaperone her daughter, but she never spoke to or waited on any of the English. Rachel was surprised that Elsie had come at all today, but maybe the family was doing its best to get back to normal in spite of the worry about Uncle Aaron. In any case, eggs from free-range chickens, raised without antibiotics, were always in high demand. Some customers came from as far away as Huntingdon and State College to buy them, and they brought a premium price.

Rachel knew almost everyone at the market, and a lot of them were her relatives. It would have been easy to spend the entire morning here, just visiting. She wore her normal clothing: jeans, a short-sleeve T-shirt, and flip-flops. In Amish homes, she wore a long skirt and a kerchief over her hair, but here, even the conservative Amish were used to dealing with outsiders. And oddly enough, at the farmer's market, they treated her as if she were one of the English. There was some logic to the reasoning, but it was difficult for most people to understand. After living two years in Stone Mill in this strange world of hers, being neither English, nor Amish, she simply went with the flow.

“Rachel!” Coyote Finch waved to her from her pottery table. She was a tall, slender blonde who could have graced a magazine cover. “Come and see my rainbow bowl. I'm really happy with the way it turned out.”

As Rachel approached the stall, two little giggling, blue-eyed girls crawled out from under it. They were close in age, both with hair so pale that it seemed almost silver-white, nearly mirror images of their pretty mother. A third little girl, also blond and equally adorable, sat in a stroller inside the booth. Both chubby hands were smeared with honey, and she clutched a turkey feather that she passed back and forth from one set of sticky fingers to the other, all the while squealing happily.

“Mama! Mama! Can we have gingerbread? Please, please, please?” the older girls begged in unison.

“Please, Mama! Please!” The fourth little Finch, a boy with black hair and a round face the exact shade of peach honey, struggled to roll his wheelchair across the grass. “I want one!” Remi's hooded eyes were as black and shiny as ripe elderberries.

Coyote rolled her eyes and handed two dollars to her son. “You'll have to share. And Baby gets some, too.”

“Yes, Mama, we'll share,” Remi promised. Each sister ran to take a position on either side of the back of the wheelchair, and with great effort, the three progressed across the lawn toward the booth selling gingerbread men.

Coyote and her husband, Blade, and their four children were newcomers to Stone Mill—
refugees
from California, as Coyote put it. She was a potter, and they had happily set up a small business down the block from The George. And although the town folk often referred to the Finches as “the hippies,” the family had fit into the community with the ease of an old leather slipper. Coyote's pottery was beautiful, as evidenced by the large bread bowl that she proudly displayed. The swirl of colors in red, yellow, orange, and violet made the piece seem old and new at the same time.

“It's gorgeous.” Rachel ran her fingertips around the bowl. “I love it.”

“It's so big, Blade was afraid it would crack in the kiln, but it didn't.”

“I'm sure it will sell,” Rachel assured her. “At your shop, if not here. When my birthday comes, I want to commission one just like it for myself.”

Two English women stopped to admire Coyote's mugs, and Rachel moved on. She stopped for a moment to speak to George and give Sophie a dog biscuit she had remembered to tuck in her pocket. “You have anything really good this week?” she asked as she offered the little dog the treat.

George had brought an assortment of romances and Pennsylvania Dutch cookbooks, a new science fiction novel written by an author in Harrisburg, and several gardening books. As always, he had a box of used children's books that he gave away to interested kids or their parents.

He adjusted his ball cap. “The usual.”

“You'll never make a profit that way,” Rachel teased, pointing to the box.

“I might if I turn a few young ones into readers,” he replied with a wry grin. It was a running joke, and one that George always enjoyed and seemed to look forward to. But today, his voice was hoarse and his eyes shadowed. Rachel suspected that the shock of his brother's death was still sinking in.

“Have you made any arrangements?” she asked. “For Willy's services?”

George looked even more distressed. “They haven't released the . . . his remains yet. Your Evan called me; he thinks we'll hear something today. I'm thinking midweek. I'll let you know, of course.” He sank into his folding chair and steepled his hands. “I still wake up in the morning and think it's all a bad dream. I keep thinking . . .” George trailed off. “It shouldn't be this way,” he said. “Twins belong together. It's just wrong.”

“Morning, George.” Bill Billingsly strode toward the bookstall. “Did that
Peterson Field Guide
come in yet? My son's birthday is . . .”

Rachel waved a hello to Bill, nodded to George, and returned to her shopping. She'd hoped to tell George about her visit to Park Estates, but Bill was one of the town's biggest gossips. She liked him well enough, but she didn't want to get into a discussion about her attempts to clear Uncle Aaron with him, and she didn't want the information published in the next edition of the
Stone Mill Gazette
.

Moving from stall to stall, Rachel purchased lettuce, scallions, and asparagus. A young English woman whom Rachel recognized from the next valley over had quarts of strawberries for sale as well as her usual flowers. It seemed early for berries, but when Rachel asked where they were from, Carol explained that her cousin had brought them up from Assateague in Maryland. “They were just picked yesterday,” she added. Rachel took four quarts and two bouquets of flowers.

Her baskets overflowing, Rachel walked back to her golf cart and piled her goodies in open cardboard cartons in the back. As she was transferring them, she couldn't help overhearing an agitated male voice from the far side of her Aunt Hannah's buggy. Whoever it was was speaking in Deitsch.

Rachel didn't want to eavesdrop, especially on a disagreement, but as she turned to walk back to the market area, she heard another voice. The heated retort made her stop and turn back.
It was her Aunt Hannah.

“If not here,” the man said, “where?” Rachel recognized the voice but couldn't place it at once. “I told you—”

“
Ne.
You'll listen to me, Eli. You'll hold your tongue if you know what's—”

The rest was muffled, but Rachel had heard enough to be concerned for her aunt.
Was one of their own accusing Uncle Aaron?
Unable to stand there and allow Aunt Hannah to be confronted that way, Rachel hurried around the buggy.

A red-faced Aunt Hannah caught sight of her and gasped. “Rachel!”

“Hist!” Eli warned Hannah. “Say nothing.” Slowly he turned his gaze to Rachel and nodded. “Hannah and I—”

“This is none of your affair, Niece.” Aunt Hannah's face grew stern. “Best you get on about your own business.”

Stunned, Rachel glanced from one to the other. Her aunt looked almost frightened. No, she decided, not frightened.
Guilty.
But of what? Why would she and her neighbor be having angry words in a place where anyone might hear them? And what could possibly make her aunt so cross with her when she knew that she was doing everything possible to help Uncle Aaron? “I'm sorry,” she murmured. “I heard . . . I thought you . . .”

“
Ne.
It's nothing,” her aunt said. But her words were stilted.

Rachel turned to see Eli's daughter walk around the far end of Hannah's buggy and stop short.

Rachel thought that Barbara was about fifteen, old enough to have left school but not old enough to attend singings yet. She had light-brown hair, brown eyes, and a bad complexion. Her face was now flushed, as if she realized that she'd interrupted something that she shouldn't have.

“
Dat,
there's an Englisher,” Barbara said hesitantly. “He wants to talk to you about an order for ten shovels to sell at his lawn and garden shop in Belleville.”

Eli was known for the fine shovels he made by recycling sheet steel he bought cheaply and adding his own hand-hewn handles. The shovels were not only distinct but well made, too. Practically everyone in Stone Mill owned one; Rachel did.

“Ya,”
he said. “I'm coming.” He looked back at Aunt Hannah, started to say something else, but thought better of it and walked away. His daughter followed him without saying a word.

“How's Uncle Aaron?” Rachel asked her aunt, watching Eli and Barbara go. “Have you heard anything more from the police?”

“
Ne.
Nothing. Your uncle says they must know they made a mistake and are ashamed to admit it.” Her features took on a vulnerable look. “Don't say anything to him about this,” Aunt Hannah said. “With Eli.” She averted her eyes and toyed with one of her
kapp
strings. “He has enough on his mind to worry about without troubling him further.”