Upon A Winter's Night

by Karen Harper

  “There you are!” a voice boomed. Connor came half walking, half running down the hill, kicking snow ahead of him. For once, he seemed dressed for the cold weather. “What are you two doing out here? You’re supposed to tell your mother when you’re going outside. Lydia?”

  “I saw them doing something they shouldn’t have and came out to talk to them,” she said, edging away. Connor looked furious, unless it was the chill wind and his exertion that made him so red in the face.

  The boy in the orange coat said, “We were throwing snowballs at cars, but not buggies, ’cause we didn’t want to hurt any horses.”

  “Get back to the house, right now!” Connor yelled at his sons. “After what happened to your great-aunt Victoria, we don’t need anyone just disappearing out of the house into the snow. I had to follow your tracks. Get going now!”

  The twins looked at each other as if to say, “Mission accomplished,” but Lydia could tell they were shaky, too. Thinking Connor would follow them, she started away.

  “And you’re guilty as hell, too, aren’t you, though not for throwing snowballs at cars?” Connor demanded, and came after her. He grabbed her arm and swung her back to face him. “Caught just like kids with snow on your hands!”

  “What are you talking about? Let me go!” she shouted back. She was suddenly very afraid of him. Connor could well be the intruder in her house and Josh’s barn.

  He gave her arm another shake. “That story in the Cleveland Plain Dealer could ruin this tree farm and hurt my mother,” he said as she pulled free of his grip and almost went off balance. “You didn’t think of that, did you—hurt your friend Bess?”

  “I said, what are you talking about? The boys mentioned a newspaper article, but—”

  “That reporter Manning wouldn’t even have been around here if it wasn’t for you and your boyfriend getting mixed up in Sandra Myerson’s death.”

  “Roy Manning’s been bothering me, but why should he be after you?”

  “Oh, yeah, play the little Amish innocent! Manning’s the second person you’ve sicced on me. You’re his source, you have to be. You figured out I was spraying diseased trees to sell them fast this season, didn’t you? Gave him that story to get him off your and Yoder’s backs. I believe you that you don’t get the Cleveland paper on your doorstep every morning, but you gave him the info!”

  “No! I suspected what you were doing, but we didn’t even talk about you, except he mentioned you’d talked to Sandra.”

  “Nothing like a little diversion, right? Get him after me, so he’ll let up on you and Yoder as suspects. That woman was running wild, anyway. Did you make a deal with Manning? Forget Sandra’s death, but here—Senator Stark’s son is committing fraud on Christmas shoppers. It’s true the trees were sprayed with green paint and you’re the only one—”

  “Connor, I didn’t say one word to him about you or your trees. I should have talked to you about it, just like I did to your kids when they did something wrong, but I didn’t. But I repeat, I gave Roy Manning no information on you or your trees. And don’t you ever even hint that Josh or I had anything to do with Sandra’s death. Now I have to go to work.”

  “I don’t believe you!” he shouted as she started down the hill toward her house at a good clip. “You’ve always tried to horn in here!”

  She blinked tears onto her cheeks, then brushed them away with a gloved hand. More than once over the years, Connor had shouted at her as she ran from his land. But who indeed had given that story to Roy Manning and the paper? Or, had he been lurking in the Christmas trees while he watched her house, seen the trees and figured it out himself?

  * * *

  Peggy Fencer, the hardware store manager’s wife, who worked in the sheriff’s office, took photos of the bloodred mess painted inside Josh’s barn. The minute she left, he got up on the ladder with a can of gray paint and covered it completely, as if that could end his problems. A cover-up never worked and he knew it, but he had to get rid of the offensive message. Being this close, seeing the quick, angry strokes of crimson hurt and infuriated him. The person who had done this was someone desperate, in a rage—just like he felt right now.

  Josh realized he could have left the horrible graffiti for Hank to see, but why? It was bad enough that Lydia had seen it, suffered for it. He yearned to make peace with her parents and to propose to her. But her mother especially detested him. Josh was pretty sure Gid Reich was just playing nice guy so she’d marry him, with the pressure from her parents and all. Josh wanted her in his bed for good, and, here, someone else was dumping honey on her sheets. But so far she’d stuck with him, as his daad used to say, through thick and thin.

  But, really, what was best for Lydia? Whoever she married, the furniture store would be in her future and running that was way out of his realm. Still, if she insisted on knowing who her real parents were, Sol Brand could be deeply offended and disinherit her. Lydia had been hesitant to hurt her parents before. Now she was terrified she’d trigger another heart attack if she asked Sol about her birth parents, and her mother would probably blow sky-high.

  He was almost tempted to take that burden on himself, to ask the Brands about Lydia’s birth parents and why they would not tell her the truth. What were they hiding or afraid of?

  And then a new thought hit him with stunning force. His father had once told him that his mother, Bethany—called Bessie by her parents, because she couldn’t say her name when she was little—had been a close friend of Sol’s before they went their separate ways and Bessie married his daad. What if Lydia’s mother hated Josh because he was the child of an early rival for Sol’s affections? Could it be she feared Lydia and he would wed and that would remind her that she could have lost Sol to another woman years ago?

  * * *

  Though Lydia was already late for work, she pulled Flower up the long driveway toward the Stark house. Despite the fact she feared running into Connor again, she’d told his twins that she would stop in to be sure they’d told the truth. Telling the truth...she vowed to face Daad down about that today. He was healing, was stronger. Even if he said he’d have to clear telling her about her birth parents with Bishop Esh first, today had to be the day. Because if someone was trying to stop or hurt her, she didn’t want to end up like Sandra. She had to know what she was facing in her search and be sure no one had the chance to shove her off a loft or anything else.

  To her great relief, even though she hated to hurt Bess’s feelings, it was Bess who came to the back door when Lydia knocked.

  “I was waiting for someone else, but come in,” she insisted. “I heard what the boys did. Thanks for stopping them before they hurt someone or got hurt themselves. They are really in trouble with their father, and rightfully so. We don’t need headlines about those two causing a wreck on the road on top of the attack on Connor for spraying trees.”

  “Bess, I can make this quick. I promised the boys I’d stop, that’s all, and I like to keep my promises.”

  “Don’t we all? Come in here, I said. It’s cold. Connor drove Blair and Brad to school, but I need to talk to you for a few minutes.”

  Oh, that’s right, Lydia thought: his name is Blair, not Blaine. She went in, expecting at least the boys’ mother, Heather, to be there, but the big kitchen—two ovens and two refrigerators!—was empty. “I need to get to the furniture store,” Lydia told her, realizing she was repeating herself, “but I told the boys I was going to stop here to be sure they confessed.”

  “They did, apparently happily so, and sadly, just to have Connor’s attention,” she explained, grabbing a carafe of coffee and two cups as she led Lydia down a hall and into an office where she clicked on a light. The outer wall of drapes was still drawn against the cold in the large room. “He’s been so busy and burdened. I do wish you two could get along. Now, I’ll get you on your way soon,” she rushed on, “but I just need to ask you something. Sit, sit. Just a quick warm-up of coffee and a quicker question.”

  Lydia expe
cted it would be something else about her grandsons’ dangerous prank. A prominent picture of them was on her cluttered walnut desk. This must be Bess’s away-from-the-senate office. Family photos and business ones covered the three walls that didn’t have windows, cluttered bookcases and filing cabinets. She saw a photo of Bess with the governor. Oh! Bess with a former president!

  “I had to have that one taken,” she said when she saw Lydia gawking at it. “Respect the office, if not the man, right? I mean like you and Connor getting along like oil and water all these years,” she added, handing her a cup of coffee.

  “He blamed me for the bad newspaper article.”

  “That’s my question, and, unlike him, I will believe you. You say you didn’t tell that Plain Dealer reporter, but did you tell anyone else who might have told him? Josh or Ray-Lynn Freeman, for example?”

  “No, Bess, I did not. I thought Connor might be doing something wrong when I saw him spraying paint on the trees and using a couple of pitchforks to shake needles loose, but I told no one.”

  “Okay, so that’s out of the way between us. I believe you. The thing is, it not only hurts Connor locally but me statewide, maybe nationally,” she said with a sigh as she sat in the chair beside her and sipped her coffee. “Actually, I’m waiting for someone to help me lay out a campaign for governor.”

  “Can I ask you something, too?”

  Bess looked a bit worried at that, but she said, “Sure. Ask away. Politicians are good at answering questions, you know.”

  “You said once that Sandra Myerson talked to Connor but not to you when she came to your tree farm.”

  “Did I?”

  “That’s what I understood. But someone told me you talked to her, too, and got kind of angry with her. I know that’s secondhand information, but why did—”

  “Yes, my girl, I did talk to her. Because of my high profile, I just didn’t want to be mentioned among the dozens she ticked off around here. I told her to quit nosing around, especially with the Amish, that’s all. So, who came up with that information for you?”

  “Someone who interviewed several workers, I guess.”

  “Lydia, if that someone was Roy Manning, I will still believe you that you’re not the one who told him about Connor spraying trees, even though Connor says you caught him at it and had the motive that he’s not been nice to you for years. Or if you tell me it was Sandra who told Manning—she seemed to know too much about most things—I’ll believe that, too. You were taken in by her. Maybe Josh, too. I don’t mean you weren’t taken in by Josh but that he was taken in by her.”

  They stared unspeaking into each other’s eyes a moment. Bess believed her, yet was still on Connor’s side. Well, of course, she would defend her son. Lydia heard in her words a silent challenge not to ask more questions, but one thing comforted her. Whatever people thought of politicians these days, Bess obviously believed in and cherished the most important things—love and trust.

  “You’d best get going,” Bess said. “I didn’t mean to keep you, but I want you to know, Connor’s opinions aside, you are always welcome here—at least when I’m around.”

  Lydia drank a bit of the coffee she’d almost forgotten about and stood. “Does that mean I’m welcome when you’re in the governor’s mansion and the White House someday, too?” she asked with a little smile.

  Bess, who had seemed so tense, smiled back and gave her that one-armed hug around her shoulders as they walked out of the office and down the hall. Lydia blinked at the brightness of the kitchen with its draperies pulled way open. The entire house seemed lit by the sun glinting off the snow outside, so why was Bess’s office kept so dim with the curtains pulled? She’d said she was waiting for someone to help her plan a campaign, and the driveway passed right outside her office windows so she could watch for a car.

  They said goodbye, and Lydia climbed into her buggy just as a big black car pulled past her and a man got out. Oh, one of the two who had been talking about Bess running for a higher office at Victoria’s funeral luncheon.

  Lydia turned Flower around by the attached garage and started past the house again. Bess had already taken her visitor inside. Lydia caught a movement in the house as Bess evidently pulled her office drapes open. Her face was turned away, so she must be talking already. But it was hard to really see her because there were shelves, lots of them, in front of the windows. Lydia gasped and twisted her neck to look back as Flower pulled the buggy forward. Now that the drapes were no longer drawn, sun poured into the gleaming windows of the office. And there, not only on the windowsills, but on the shelves, were rows and rows of different-size, shining snow globes.

  25

  At the store, Lydia hated to seem uninterested or unfriendly, but she was afraid she was going to cry or completely break down. So she just nodded, waved and blazed her way right through the busy back workshop at the store, then made straight for Daad’s office, where she planned to lock herself in until she got control again.

  It must be pure coincidence, of course, but Bess Stark collected snow globes, ones she might have tried to keep Lydia from noticing. And Daad had said years ago when he gave her the snow globe from her birth mother that... Oh, no. Bess as her birth mother—that could never be.

  The door to Daad’s office stood open. Not Gid in here again, she prayed. She didn’t want to face him now when she needed to be alone.

  It wasn’t Gid. Marta Kurtz, who usually helped her husband clean the store showroom and offices at night, was dusting. Her mop leaned against the open door as if to let folks know she was busy inside. Marta was a very hard and fast worker. Only her brain worked a little slow.

  “Oh! Lydia. I thought you weren’t in yet. So I’d get this done, all nice and neat for you. Our buggy horse was took sick last night. We couldn’t get here to clean, had to deworm him. When I came in, Mr. Reich was working in here, too. He was surprised I was here early, but it couldn’t be helped with the horse all sick.”

  “I understand,” Lydia told her, trying to keep from bursting into tears in front of the girl. Gid had been in Daad’s office again. Was it on the up-and-up? “So what was Mr. Reich doing in here when you surprised him? He works so hard.”

  “Oh, going through that bottom desk drawer,” she said, pointing. “Left it partly open in his hurry but I closed it. I keep things neat and tidy.”

  “You sure do. We appreciate your work here and we’ll be sure you get your special Christmas envelope. So did Mr. Reich look like he found what he wanted? Did he take something with him?”

  “First, he tells me to get out, then said I could stay. He took a little skinny file with him. Still, I’ll bet he was looking for a big one. I think he keeps your daad’s files real nice.”

  Dust rag in hand, Marta kept edging toward the door and her mop. “I can just get caught up tonight,” she said.

  “That will be fine. Danki, Marta.”

  The girl went out and closed the door. Lydia went over to lock it. Though she’d promised herself a good cry, she went directly to the drawer Gid must have been rifling through, sat in Daad’s chair, opened the file and pulled out folder after folder and fingered through them.

  It sounded like Marta must have seen Gid going through files at other times. With Daad out of the way for now, was he searching for something special? And if he’d been through other drawers—I think he keeps your daad’s files real nice, Marta had said—was he just trying to secretly learn how her father organized his information and ran the business, or was there something else?

  “A waste of time, a dead end,” she said aloud as she pulled out the last folder in the drawer, this one under W and marked Workers. She went through it and found nothing unusual. But as she sighed and started to refile it she saw a folder had either slipped flat to the bottom of the drawer or been placed that way under all the rest. It was plain beige manila like the others and unmarked. Maybe it was even empty.

  But no, it contained several pieces of paper in Daad’s tight hand
writing.

  She gasped and skimmed the first page, then the second. No wonder Gid was desperately searching through these files. Her father’s notes were dated quite recently, from late October on. It looked as if he’d been keeping a list of large projects—church pews for a new Baptist Church nearby; a large dining room set for a hotel in Columbus; an entire array of shelves and cabinets for a store specializing in men’s clothes. And for each of those accounts, her father had recorded an amount of money—several hundred dollars each time that Daad had noted as missing. And in each case, G.R.—Gid Reich?—had arranged and overseen the deal. It had to be. No one else had those initials here.

  Lydia sucked in a breath through flared nostrils. Bess’s snow globes—well, ridiculous to think they were tied to her own pitiful, broken one. But now this. Could the trusted Gid, heir to the throne, as Ray-Lynn had once put it, have been siphoning off money? Embezzling from large accounts where the missing funds wouldn’t be noticed like in small orders? And if Gid suspected Daad was on to him, would that be motive enough not only to search his files but to mess up his blood pressure pills? Daad had evidently brought them with him to the store once or twice. And if her father thought Gid was guilty, maybe that’s why he’d let up on pushing her toward the man as much.

  She shuffled quickly through the few other papers Daad had evidently meant to hide. Sammy’s obituary from The Budget. Maybe he kept that here rather than at home, where Mamm could find it and get upset. A copy of the very article for David and Lena Brand that she and Sandra had found from the Wooster Daily Record! So wasn’t that proof they were her real parents? And a last sheet, handwritten, but not in Daad’s tight script.

  This note was in large writing with fancy loops on some letters. It was addressed to Sweetheart Sol, but it wasn’t in Mamm’s handwriting. Surely, her father had not been untrue to his marriage, however unhappy her parents obviously were.