Plain Murder (21 page)

Today, there were no such problems . . . if you didn't count lumber trucks and tourists who didn't regard the speed limit as gospel. The solid line that ran down the middle of the road meant what it said, and any attempts at passing a slower vehicle were often disastrous for all concerned.

“So fast, you drive,” Aunt Hannah said. She tried to smile. Her freckles stood out on her face like raindrops on a dusty windshield. “But good, you drive good.”

“We'll be fine,” Rachel soothed. The speedometer hovered at thirty, faster than a horse and buggy, but nothing compared to what they'd be doing on the way down the far side of Stone Mountain. “The road is clear.” Ice was the worst, worse even than snow, but they didn't have to worry about either in May.

“How is Uncle Aaron?” she asked in an attempt to take her aunt's attention off the abyss on her right. The rusty tops of vehicles that hadn't made it were bound to give Aunt Hannah a case of nerves. Once a car or truck went over the side, there was no retrieving it. And getting the passengers out was always dicey, provided it wasn't already a case for the coroner. “Did the public defender find your house all right yesterday?” Rachel had heard from Evan that she was going to the Hostetler farm, but nothing more.

“A nice young lady. I gave her coffee and raisin pie. She liked my pie. I gave her a second piece to take home for her supper.” A FedEx truck came around the bend toward them, and Aunt Hannah gasped.

“It's all right,” Rachel soothed. The truck passed them with two feet to spare. “See, no problem. What kind of questions did she ask Uncle Aaron?”

“Nothing. She asked him nothing. But she wanted the recipe for my raisin pie. For her mother. Such a nice girl. And she spoke good English.”

“She's an American, Aunt Hannah, just like you and me.”

“Ya.”
Aunt Hannah nodded. “But maybe I think she is one of those immigrants who come here from Brazil or Cuba or—”

“Or Pittsburgh?”

“Maybe. But she was nice, anyway, not like most Englishers. Good manners. She did not stare at my children or look under the table as if I kept chickens or pigs in my kitchen. She sat right down and drank three cups of my coffee and took plenty of cream with it. A pleasant girl, pretty. Too bad she isn't Amish. My Alan would like her.”

Rachel concentrated on the road. This was the steepest stretch. There was a pull-over at the top where she often stopped to admire the valley scenery, but she doubted Aunt Hannah would want to do that. Her aunt didn't like heights, not even ladders. Her bedroom was on the first floor. “If the good Lord wanted me up in the air, He would have given me wings,” she always said.

“But . . . I don't understand why Ms. . . .” What was her name? Cortez? “Why didn't the woman ask Uncle Aaron anything about Willy? Did she ask where Uncle Aaron was that Friday evening?”

“
Ne.
Nothing. She couldn't.” Her aunt caught her breath as the lookout came into sight. “Now we go down, right?” Aunt Hannah's black leather Sunday worship shoe was planted solidly against the floorboards as if she was ready to brake the Jeep herself, if need be.

“Now we go down. Not so bad.” There were a few hairpin turns—several, in fact—but there was a special lane for trucks. If anything went wrong with their brakes, they could pull over into that lane. “If it bothers you, don't look, Aunt Hannah.”

“
Ya,
better if I don't look.” She pulled a clean handkerchief from her black pocketbook and mopped her brow. “You should have come to the school picnic. Jesse won the spelling bee. The teacher gave him a Bible with his name in it.” She chuckled proudly. “And a box of fishing bobbers and hooks. I think Jesse liked those best.”

“I'm sorry I missed it.” Her aunt was definitely dodging the question about the public defender, and Rachel had a sneaking suspicion that things hadn't gone as well as she'd hoped, or as well as Hannah was pretending. On impulse, she turned into the overlook and stopped the Jeep. “What is it you don't want to tell me about Uncle Aaron and the lawyer?” She exhaled in frustration. “He didn't talk to her, did he?”

“Ne.”
Aunt Hannah sighed, folding her hands in her lap. She glanced away, then turned back to Rachel. “He didn't talk to her. He is a good man, your uncle. A good husband, a good member of the church, and a good father. But he is stubborn. Nobody is as stubborn as the Hostetlers when they set against a thing. The lawyer lady came in the kitchen door, and Aaron, he went out the front. He went into the fields and didn't come back until she drove away. I think she was disappointed. She said she would come again on Thursday, but I don't know if it will do any good. He told me that it is a waste of her time. He trusts in God to see him through this.”

Rachel shut her eyes for a moment and rubbed her temples. She felt a headache coming on. She reached behind her seat into the cooler and brought out two cans of Coke. She tried to avoid sugary drinks, but she had a feeling that a dose of sugar and caffeine was exactly what she needed. And she knew that Aunt Hannah had a secret craving for Coke. She opened the first can and handed it to her aunt. “I don't know what else to do,” she admitted. “I've been talking to people, asking questions . . .”

“I know, I know.” Her aunt patted her arm. “You have a good heart, Rachel. I told your mother. You may have strayed from the flock, but you won't go far, and you always know where home is. Maybe you should try doing as your uncle does. Trust in God that right will prevail. Maybe it is not meant for us to fix this but to wait on Him.”

Rachel took a long sip of her Coke. She rarely got a headache, but she'd never felt this helpless before. It was as if she was standing in the center of the road, a lumber truck was bearing down on her, and she was paralyzed to move, or even scream. Disaster was headed toward her family. This wouldn't end well. She could feel it.

“Be at ease, child,” her aunt said, pressing the cold can against Rachel's temple. “Some of your worries are for nothing. You will see. Whatever you've thought about me . . . about what mischief I was up to with Eli Rust . . .”

Rachel looked up into her twinkling eyes. “I didn't—”

“Shh, shh, do not tell an untruth, Rachel. I would think the same if I saw so much evidence of wrongdoing. But it is not what you think. I have never been unfaithful to your uncle—not by word or by deed. And not in my heart. He may be a stiff, difficult bear of a man, but he is
my
bear.”

Rachel was so touched by her aunt's tender words that she couldn't speak.

“Now start this red monster and drive me down the mountain and on to State College. You will see. And do it now, before I lose my courage and tell you to turn back for home.”

A half hour later Rachel pulled the Jeep into the parking lot of a diner on the outskirts of the college town. What they were doing there, she had no idea. Maybe her aunt had decided she was hungry, or maybe she wanted to use the public phone to make a call. Aunt Hannah was suspicious of cell phones, and although she did use the kitchen phone at Stone Mill House to make doctor or dentist appointments, she'd never consented to use Rachel's cell.

“Are we both going in?” Rachel asked when she'd parked the vehicle. The diner looked busy; the parking lot was more than half full. It was one of those restored '50s eateries with red booths and midcentury décor. They wouldn't likely meet any Amish inside.

“
Ya,
we both go in,” Aunt Hannah said. She was so relieved to be back on flat ground that she was positively beaming. “There is someone I want you to meet here. Someone you know from a long time ago.”

“Someone I know?”

“Ya.”
Aunt Hannah fumbled with the seat belt, found the clip, and unfastened it. She got out with the ease of someone half her age and half her size and strode toward the chrome entrance. Rachel hurried after her.

Rachel was surprised to see Eli when she walked into the diner. He must have been watching out the window, because as soon as they entered, he stood up and waved from a booth halfway down the eating area. “Come,” Aunt Hannah ordered. “Eli is here, and his son Rupert.”

“Rupert?” Rupert was Eli's second or third son, a youth who'd left the Amish sometime before she returned to Stone Mill to live. She did remember him vaguely: a baby-faced boy with a sweet smile. Rupert had always seemed a little backward to her, definitely not someone who would break away from the faith and become English. But it was hard to tell which Amish would stay and which would go. As a child she certainly wouldn't have suspected
she
would leave some day.

A tall young man stood up as they approached the booth. Rachel's mouth dropped open, and she had to catch herself to keep from staring. Rupert Rust was wearing a U.S. Marine uniform. Eli's son had apparently joined the military, an act so un-Amish that she couldn't imagine what the bishop or the church elders would say.

“Rupert goes over the seas,” Aunt Hannah whispered. “To one of those foreign countries where they make a war with guns. Eli's heart is broken, but he cannot let his son go away without giving him his blessing.”

“Oh,” Rachel said, suddenly understanding. Rupert had left the church after his baptism. He was shunned. His father, Eli, and his mother and brothers and sisters were not allowed to eat with him, to speak with him, or to welcome him into their homes.

“Eli might be thrown out of the church if anyone knew he had been meeting his son,” Aunt Hannah confirmed aloud. “He and I . . . we were always friends. He asked me what I would do, if Rupert were my son. I have been counseling him.”

“And you told Eli that he should make his peace with Rupert,” Rachel said.

“
Ya,
I did.” Aunt Hannah said. She smiled at Rupert and Eli. “So you see now what your uncle cannot know, and who Eli was meeting late on the night that Willy O'Day disappeared.”

“Eli was with Rupert that night when he was seen near your place?” Rachel asked.

“
Ya,
he was. So you can rest your heart, Rachel. Eli did not kill anybody. The worst he has done is to be guilty of having a father's heart.”

 

Rachel didn't sleep well that night. She tossed and turned, falling asleep, then waking, then drifting off again. When she was
awake,
she kept going over conversations in her mind: conversations she'd had over the last two weeks with Dawn, Buddy, Eli, Aunt Hannah, Hulda, Mary Aaron, Alvin, Teresa, Blanche, Steve, Uncle Aaron, George, and Ell. Obsessing over them, really.

And when she
did
sleep, she had crazy dreams. Willy came to her like one of the ghosts in Dickens's
A Christmas Carol
. Only Willy wasn't there to lead her to some sort of Amish redemption; he was the Ghost of Murders Past. In the dream, she and Willy stood on the road that ran by the Hostetler farm. He kept pointing with a long finger, with his glistening diamond ring, to her uncle's cow pasture. But it wasn't his grave he was trying to show her; he was pointing at someone. Only she couldn't see who it was. She could just make out a vague form. In the dream, she kept looking away and he kept drawing her attention back to the figure in the mists. Willy, whose pants and coat and shirt pockets were bulging with wads of money wrapped in rubber bands, was trying to tell her something . . . but what?

She'd gone to bed thinking her investigation had been a total failure. And she
felt
like a failure. She had promised Mary Aaron that she would help Aaron, whether he wanted her help or not. She had promised her family that she would prove Uncle Aaron hadn't killed Willy.

She'd coerced Evan into giving her criminal evidence, an act that could get them both in a lot of trouble, possibly costing him his job. She ended up with lists of suspects, which, to her shame, had even included Aunt Hannah and her neighbor Eli, who'd risked everything to make peace with his son. She'd pried into people's secrets and lies, and all for nothing.
Admit it,
she told herself.
You're just no good at this.

Was it time to just give up? Give in, and pray that the legal system worked the way it was supposed to? That's what Evan wanted her to do, no doubt . . . what Aunt Hannah had advised her.

Completely awake now, Rachel punched her pillow and rolled over to stare at the bedside digital clock. It said 4:43 a.m. She groaned and rolled onto her back and stared at the ceiling fan.

What had she missed in her investigation?

All day she had gotten the feeling that the answer was right there . . . she just couldn't quite see it. Where had she made her mistake? Surely she'd misinterpreted some crucial piece of information.

Rachel had a logical mind: her Wharton business school education, no doubt. She had investigated logically, tracking Willy's movements that last day, talking to people who had interacted with him in his last hours. What
hadn't
she done? Maybe Willy's killer really had been a stranger who robbed him, like so many in the town had suggested. The problem with that idea was that no one had seen him with a stranger. Though plenty of people had come in contact with Willy that day, no one had seen anything odd. The police had determined that the previous October when he went missing, and she'd confirmed it over the last three weeks.

So what had she and the police missed? She thought about Willy's journal. Was the answer there?

She was already sure that the entry “Fencing Fred” meant Willy had meant to meet with Fred about fencing in the pond. Fred had confirmed it. She was also convinced that Willy had noted he was to see Alvin Herschberger—to collect what Alvin owed him on the personal loan. And “stamp collecting” was a reference to a simple stop at the post office. So what about the last entry? “Sophia Loren” . . . Sophia Loren . . . It made no sense. She was an Italian actress. Willy had no connection to Hollywood or Italy or . . . She groaned, out of ideas.

Rachel lay in bed for a few more minutes. She closed her eyes. She tried not to think about Willy's notebook. Or Willy's body the way she had seen it that day. Or her uncle. Or George's sad eyes. But it was like the elephant in the room. The more she tried not to think about the journal, the more she thought about it.

At 5:05 she surrendered. She turned on the bedside light.

Bishop, who had been sleeping on the corner of her bed, protested loudly, then curled into a tighter ball and went back to sleep. Rachel padded barefoot, in her white-and-pink PJs, to the whiteboard on the wall. She turned on a desk lamp and stared at the board. It seemed to stare back.

In the center of the board, inside the rectangle she'd drawn, she'd written out the entries on the last page of Willy's journal. She took a red dry-erase marker and crossed off
Fencing Fred
. She added a question mark beside
Bearded A
. Then, after thinking about it for a moment, she crossed it off. She didn't care what the police thought; she knew it wasn't a reference to her uncle.

She stepped back and stared at the board, then crossed off
Stamp Collecting
. She chewed on the cap on the pen and studied the names written on both sides of the rectangle.
Dawn:
crossed out.
Buddy:
crossed out.
Steve:
crossed out.
Verna & Alvin:
crossed out.
Blanche:
crossed out. Several other renters she'd tracked down whose names she'd added were also crossed out.

She turned on her electric teakettle and dropped a tea bag into a mug on her desk. While she waited for the hot water, she went back to the board. She crossed off Eli's name and Teresa's. No names were left but Willy's and George's.

When the kettle whistled, she poured hot water into her mug. She tugged on the tag and the tea bag bobbed. When the tea was sufficiently strong, she removed the tea bag and added a big squirt of her sister's honey. She couldn't find a spoon, so she used a pen to stir the tea. Taking the mug with her, she went back to the dry-erase board.

She stared at it. Everything was crossed out but
Sophia Loren
in the center . . . and
Willy
and
George
. Sophia Loren . . . Sophia.

She sipped her tea and thought and stared.

Sophia . . .
Sophie?

She closed her eyes as she vaguely remembered George referring to the dog as Sophia Lazzaro. Where? When? In the bookstore, maybe? Right after Willy had been found? Was that the dog's AKC name?

It had to be.

She went to her laptop and did a search on Sophia Lazzaro. She got multiple hits. Sophia Lazzaro was one of Sophia Loren's stage names. She got up to look at the white board again. Wasn't Willy clever? He had been referring to George's Sophie.