Plain Murder (23 page)

A tear rolled down her cheek. “Sure, George. I can do that.”

“Did you . . . have you said anything to anyone?”

“No. I wanted . . .” She took a breath. “I wanted to talk to you first.”

“Okay, dear. We'll talk. I should be back in Stone Mill in about an hour and a half. I'll come by and you can take me. I have—” His voice cracked. “I have Sophie with me. What am I going to do with Sophie?” Now
he
was crying.

It was funny how neither needed to say what was obvious. That Sophie couldn't go with him where he was going.

“It's okay, George. Maybe Ell—”

“No, Ell doesn't like dogs. She's a cat girl. And she thinks she's allergic. I can't send Sophie to a shelter. You know I can't do that. I'd sooner have her put down.”

“George, don't worry about her.” Rachel couldn't believe she was saying this. But how could she not offer? What George had done didn't negate who he was or who he had been to her. “I'll take Sophie.”

 

It was nearly two hours before George arrived . . . driving his brother's pickup. Rachel was waiting for him and saw him through the dining room windows. It was almost dark.

She ducked out of the house, her bag on her shoulder, her raincoat on her arm. She was still in jeans and a long-sleeve tee. What did you wear to escort your friend to turn himself in for the murder of his brother?

He kept the engine running.

She opened the passenger door. Sophie bounded across the seat toward her, but at least she had enough sense not to jump out of the truck.

“You . . . you want me to drive?” Rachel asked, petting the dog. “We can take my Jeep.”

“I'd like to take Willy's truck.”

“You want to leave Sophie here, George?”

He gripped the steering wheel, staring straight ahead. He was wearing his The George ball cap and a blue canvas jacket. He shook his head. “I thought we'd go for one last run, my girl and I . . . before . . . Jump in.”

She hesitated. Was this foolish? Getting into George's truck with him? She hadn't told anyone she was meeting George. Had that been Willy's mistake?

But George would never hurt her. Would he?

She slipped her phone out of the outside pocket of her leather bag. “Let me answer this,” she said, acting as if she had gotten a text. She texted Evan.
CALL ME. NOW!
All in caps. She got into the truck. George pulled out of the circular drive, but instead of going left, toward the police station, he turned right.

Rachel had just fastened her seat belt. She kept her hand poised over the buckle. The hair bristled on the back of her neck. For the first time in her life, she was afraid of George. Did she open the door and jump? “George—”

“Don't worry, I'm not kidnapping you. I just wanted to ride out . . . to
the property
. I want to explain.” He glanced at her, then back at the road. His eyes were teary. “Sophie and I want to show you what happened.”

 

“George, you don't have to do this.” Rachel had her phone in her right hand. Evan hadn't called or texted her back. They were almost there. This time of evening, there should have been people on the road: a wagon, a buggy, a boy on a push-scooter, a car, someone headed home. But they hadn't passed a soul, Amish or English. A few raindrops fell on the windshield.

Rachel glanced at George. Sophie sat on his lap, looking out the window.

Rachel's brain, her
logic,
told her that she had no reason to fear him, but her
logic
had never suggested that he could have killed Willy. This wasn't the kind of thing she wanted to be wrong about.

“Tell me why, George,” she said quietly. “It had to do with Sophie, didn't it?”

He didn't answer.

“I saw Willy's journal. I know what it said. I know you saw it, too.” She looked straight ahead. He had turned on the windshield wipers, but it wasn't raining hard enough to really need them. The wipers squeaked as they moved across the semidry glass. “What's Sophie's AKC name?” she asked.

He turned off the windshield wipers. “Sophia Lazzaro.”

“Sophia Loren's stage name,” she said.

They were on her uncle's road. She could see his cow pasture up ahead. But instead of continuing toward the Hostetler farm, George surprised her by signaling and turning into the dirt driveway of the property beside the Hostetler property. There was a gate. He stopped there and turned off the engine. They sat in the semidarkness, quiet for a few moments. “He was going to kill her, Rachel.” He stroked the dog on his lap. “Willy was going to kill my Sophie. She chewed the corner of Mother's dresser in his bedroom. Chewed right through the wood. Willy always loved that piece.”

Rachel was still gripping the phone. Wondering why Evan hadn't called her. Wondering if she would answer if he did. George wasn't acting like a killer, but she suspected he hadn't acted like a killer that Friday night when Willy returned home about nine thirty.

“Do you really think he would have done it, though?”

He turned slowly to look toward her. He looked so sad, so . . . resigned. “You saw the journal. He planned to
reconcile
his affairs with her. Besides . . .” He looked away. “I knew he'd do it because that's what happened to Ell's cats.”

“What?” she stared at him.

“Three cats last year. One the previous, but that one wasn't Ell's. That was before she moved into the barn. I don't know who it belonged to. Orange. It was big and orange. Willy didn't like cats. He said they dug in our flower beds and did their business there. Ell's cried to get into her apartment at night, and sometimes she wasn't so quick to let them in.” He shook his head slowly. “I knew Sophie would just . . . disappear like the cats.”

“So what did you do, George?”

He stroked the dog's little head. “That morning, I saw his notebook when we were at breakfast. I knew I had to do something before he . . . took her away from me forever. So . . . that night, when Ell thought she heard his truck . . .”

Rachel nodded expectantly. Darkness was falling quickly; she could still see his face, but not as well as a few minutes ago.

“When Willy came home, I had locked poor Sophie in her kennel in my room. I put her muzzle on her so she wouldn't bark.”

Rachel couldn't stop staring at George. What he was talking about now was premeditation. He hadn't killed his brother in a moment of anger. He had laid out a plan and . . . gone through with it.

“When Willy came home, I was crying. That was real,” he assured her. “But I told him I was crying because I had taken Sophie to the veterinarian and she'd diagnosed her with cancer. I told Willy I had put my Sophie down.” He sniffled. “I even had a cardboard box that looked like the kind they give you at the vet if you want to take your beloved home with you.”

In cartoons, when something came to a character, a lightbulb appeared over his head. Rachel felt as if someone had just drawn a lightbulb over
her
head. “The cardboard box the police found in the back of Willy's truck, this truck,” she said. “With a ham in it.”

He shrugged. “It had to have something about the right weight . . . in case Willy picked up the box. He had to think Sophie was inside.” He hesitated. “Pork butt.”

“I'm sorry?”

“It was a pork butt,” he said quietly. “Not a ham. I put a pork butt in the box. It had been in our freezer.”

“Okay . . . so then what did you do?”

“I asked Willy to ride out with me. To come here.” He nodded, indicating the property where they had parked. “I told him Sophie always liked it here. I told him I wanted it to be her final resting place.” He turned his head slowly to look at her. “Only really, I intended for it to be Willy's final resting place.”

Rachel frowned, thinking before she spoke. “But . . . I don't understand. Willy's body was found on my uncle's property, not yours.” She was beginning to lose a little of her fear. Her morbid curiosity was getting the best of her, and she didn't believe George would really hurt her.

“I thought I had it all planned out.” George tugged on his ball cap. “I was sure it would work. Because I owned this property with Willy, I figured there wasn't much chance anyone would find him. Not, at least, until after I was gone. What I didn't count on,” George said, “was Willy not cooperating once we got here.”

He opened his door, and the overhead light came on. “Let's take a little walk. Sophie probably needs to do her business. There's a flashlight in the glove box.” He climbed out of the truck, taking the dog with him.

Rachel sat on the front seat of the truck for a minute. Take a walk? In the dark? With a man who had just admitted to her that he
planned and executed
the murder of his own brother? A tiny trickle of fear returned.
Are you stupid? Is this the place in the horror movie where the girl knows that a psychopath is loose in the neighborhood and opens the door anyway?

“Good girl, Sophie,” George said, closing his door, leaving Rachel in darkness again. “What a good girl.”

Rachel checked her phone. The ring volume was off, but it was on vibrate. Evan still hadn't called. Slowly, she opened the glove box. Should she go with George?

It was dark in the truck cab, but she could see the outline of a big ring of keys hanging from the ignition. They were Willy's keys, she noted. Which creeped her out even more.

She wondered if she should just slide across the seat and drive away. She could call the police once she got down the road.

As her fingers closed around the flashlight, her door opened, startling her.

“I hope it works. I haven't checked the batteries since I put the thing in there at Christmas.”

Rachel looked at George. Swallowed. He seemed so sweet. So sad. He looked like the same George he had been before she knew he had killed his brother. The George she had known her whole life.

He smiled, his face so poignant. “Don't be afraid, Rachel,” he said gently. “I would never hurt you.”

Guilt washed over her. “No. No, of course not.” Nervously, she climbed out of the truck with the flashlight in her hand. With the other hand, she slipped her iPhone into the back pocket of her jeans. “After . . . you did it, how—” She didn't know how to ask. No matter what George said or did, he was still her friend. She didn't want to see him hurting any more than he obviously already was.

“How did I get away with it?” he said for her. “I don't know.” He shrugged and closed the truck door behind her. “I guess I didn't leave too much evidence for the police.” He pointed into the darkness. “Let's take a little walk. That flashlight working?”

Before Rachel could flip the switch, George had the flashlight in his hand. The flashlight was a big red metal one. A Maglite. Heavy. Heavy enough to hit her over the head and knock her out. Heavy enough to kill her. She slipped her hand around to her back pocket and felt for her phone. That made her feel better, though why she wasn't sure. If he hit her over the head with the flashlight, she wouldn't be calling anyone.

“I took the money from Willy because it just seemed like such a waste. You know, to bury it. I thought it might come in handy . . .” George switched on the light. The beam was strong. “Turned out, it did.” He chuckled, though his voice was still thick with sadness.

“It did
how?
” She shivered. Did she really want to know?

He aimed the beam ahead of them, and they walked toward the fence that ran between the O'Day property and the Hostetler cow pasture. Sophie trotted in front of them in the wet grass. “That was the ten thousand five hundred dollars I gave you for Aaron's bail.”

She turned to look at him, certain her mouth was hanging open. “I knew whoever killed him had the money. It just didn't occur to me it was you. When I found out Buddy showed up at your place that Saturday morning with cash to pay his rent, I thought maybe—”

“He paid it with his landlord's money? Oh, goodness, no. Of course not. He would never have killed my brother. Buddy's a nice guy. Just . . . a little lost.” Sophie stopped so George stopped. He was quiet for a minute. “Is that how you figured out that I had killed my brother? Buddy? The keys?”

“Not entirely, but that was a big part of it.” She hung her head, feeling so damned guilty and not sure why. “Evan told me right after Willy was found that the truck had been abandoned, but with no car keys inside. Then Buddy said you took the padlocks off his trailer the day after Willy disappeared. And when I asked you about it. The second time . . .”

“I told you I had used Willy's keys,” he finished for her.

“Yes.”

“I should have thought to take Willy's key ring apart, made copies of the ones I needed and thrown his keys away. That morning when Buddy came with the rent money, though, I felt bad for him. He had the money to pay Willy the previous day, just not the cash. It was illegal of my brother to lock Buddy out of his place. Worse than that for me, is that it was wrong. I just grabbed Willy's keys off the rosewood table. That's where I put them that night. It was where Willy always put them.”

Rachel didn't know what to say. Fortunately, George didn't seem to expect her to say anything.

He sighed. “I should have known I'd never get away with it. But I couldn't stand the thought of him doing to Sophie what he'd done to Ell's cats.” George was quiet again for a moment, then went on. He reached the fence. “I should have known my brother wouldn't go along with my plan. I should have known he would disagree with something. Willy never liked doing things any way but his own.”

Sophie shot under the fence.

“Come on, girl,” George called after her. He turned back and pointed. “See that tree? That's where I was going to bury my brother. It's pretty there, next to the pond. Sophie!”

Rachel could barely make out the white ball that was the little dog.

“Come here, girl.” Again George turned to Rachel. “We got the shovel and the box out of the back of the truck, but Willy wouldn't have it. He insisted I couldn't bury Sophie on our property. He was worried about selling it and the . . .
remains
being an issue.”

“So Willy said you had to bury Sophie in Uncle Aaron's cow pasture?”

“Exactly.” George looked out over the dark field. “Sophie, don't do this. Come on, girl.” He exhaled. “So, anyway, when Willy said we couldn't bury Sophie on our property, I had no choice but to follow him over to Aaron's. We walked just this way. It was dark, just like it is tonight. But later.”

A lump rose in Rachel's throat.

“Willy actually started the digging. Somehow he ended up with the shovel and I had the box. Willy was a hard worker. Always was. He dug a big hole.”

“Big enough to bury a man,” she said softly.

“Almost. Guess it ended up being not quite deep enough.” George's voice took on a far-off sound. “When Willy put down the shovel to pick up the box, I picked up the shovel and I . . . I hit him. I took the money and the keys out of his pocket, rolled him into the hole, and buried him.” George drew in a long breath. “I buried my brother,” he murmured so quietly that she could barely make out his words. “Then I took the box and the shovel, climbed into Willy's truck, and drove back into town.”

“Where you left the truck parked in front of the post office,” she said, unable to imagine George actually doing what he said he had done. Except she knew he had done it—all the evidence she'd found had pointed to just that scenario.

George moved the flashlight, looking for Sophie, leaving Rachel and himself in darkness. “I didn't mean to leave the pork butt in the box in the truck. That was silly. Such a waste of a good piece of meat, but I was so upset, I guess. I forgot. I
did
remember the shovel.”

“Made by Eli Rust.”

“The murder weapon.”

“So then you just walked home?” she asked.

“I did, carrying my shovel. No one saw me. Sophie and I went to bed. Maybe I should have called the police Saturday and reported Willy missing, but I was in shock, you know?”

She didn't say anything.

“Looking back,” he continued, “I guess I should have taken his wallet and the ring. And the notebook.” He glanced at her, moving the flashlight as he spoke. “The notebook.” He shook his head. “It didn't occur to me that anyone would think they could understand any of Willy's gibberish. I rarely did. I didn't think they'd arrest someone based on anything in the notebook. I never meant to hurt your uncle.”

“I know you didn't,” she said.

“He's a good man,” George mused. “He gave Sophie a piece of his sandwich one day at the farmer's market. He likes dogs. You can tell.”

Rachel glanced over her shoulder. She could still see the shadowy outline of Willy's truck. It was beginning to rain again. Lightly. She put up her hood and looked at George again.

“I can't see her. Can you see her?” His voice took on a panicked tone. “Sophie? Sophie, come, girl!”

Rachel couldn't see her, but the flashlight beam only went so far.

“I guess we'll have to go after her.” George held the flashlight with one hand and parted the wire fence with the other. He motioned for Rachel to go first.

What he wanted Rachel to do was bend over and step through.

And leave herself completely vulnerable.

“Sophie!” George continued to call, while waiting for Rachel to climb through the fence.

Rachel's face felt warm, but her palms were cold and sticky. She wasn't really in danger from George . . . was she?

Her phone vibrated in her back pocket, and she almost exhaled audibly in relief. She fumbled to get her phone out of her pocket.

“There you are,” George cried. “Get over here. Silly girl.”

As Rachel answered her phone, she saw a white blur speeding toward them.

“Rache?”

“Evan.”

Before she could speak, he went on. “It's okay if you just bring George into the station. There's no need to send a car, flashing lights, and make a fuss. Unless you're not okay with that?”

Rachel turned her back to George. “I don't understand. You . . . know?”

“George didn't tell you? He called me as he was pulling into your place. He confessed and said he was coming in. He said he just needed a few minutes with you to explain. I think he feels like you're kind of a daughter to him. I didn't call you right away when I got your text because I wanted to have something to tell you. I had to put in a call to the lieutenant on duty.” He paused. “I'm so sorry, Rache.”

Tears welled in her eyes.

“That's my girl,” George called. “That's my Sophie.” He handed Rachel the flashlight and scooped the wet dog up into his arms. “Now Papa needs to talk to you.” He started toward the truck, speaking to her as if she were a child. “Papa has to go somewhere Sophie can't go, but you're in luck because you're going to a very special place. You're going to love Stone Mill House . . .”

George's last words were lost in the wind and the rain that was now coming down harder.

“Rache, you still there?” Evan said in her ear.

She wiped at her tears. “You'll meet us at the station?” she asked. “Because . . . I don't think I can do this without you, Evan.”

“You know I'll be there. I'll always be there when you need me.”

 

Three weeks later, Rachel tentatively entered The George. She'd been wanting to see Ell, to see how the young woman was dealing with everything, but her own concerns and her reluctance to face Ell had kept her away.

Of course, she'd spoken to Ell on the phone several times and seen her once at the courthouse, but that wasn't the same. And the fact that the B&B had been booked solid the past two weeks was no excuse for not being there to support Ell. Rachel supposed that having Stone Mill splashed all over the news again had brought in the tourists . . . or maybe it was just the time of year. June had come, and Stone Mill had become a wonderland of green mountains, sweetgrass, and blooming wildflowers.

Not that Rachel could complain about her booming business. Other than the loss of George, the town was pretty much back to normal. Charges against Uncle Aaron had been dropped, and the Amish community had breathed a huge sigh of relief. Her uncle had even consented to invite her to her aunt's birthday dinner on Sunday. Her own mother and father would be there, as well as her brothers and sisters and most of the church families. Being asked to join them, when she hadn't been welcome at her uncle's table for many years, made her smile every time she thought about it.