“Does the bishop know that Enoch is back?” I asked. I assumed that Ruth had told her husband, the bishop, the moment she got home from the quilting circle yesterday, but I wanted to know whether Edith knew the word was out that Enoch had returned.
“Nee, I don’t know for sure, but I think Ruth Yoder would have mentioned it if she had known, don’t you?”
Ruth knew Enoch was back, but she had likely been so kerfuffled by the murder and then by my goats, she’d forgotten to question Edith about it. I knew she would soon. Ruth wasn’t going to let something like the return of the district’s most famous prodigal son go by unnoticed.
“Please go, Aenti. Enoch will be here any moment.”
I started to open my mouth to argue but stopped myself. For a very long time, I’d wanted to make things right with Enoch but had no way to reach him. Now was my chance—if not today, soon, because I owed my nephew the apology that had been weighing on my heart these last ten years.
Maybe if I could clear Edith’s name and find out who’d murdered Zeke, then I would be able to right the wrong I’d done the family. More importantly, I would help Edith. I was the best person to do this. The man who’d run away from the greenhouse was Amish. Deputy Aiden would have a very difficult time finding a faceless Amish man in Holmes County, but I could go places he couldn’t, with very little notice. No one would suspect a sweet, older lady like me was poking her nose in where it didn’t belong, which was exactly what I intended to do.
CHAPTER FIFTEEN
In an Amish church, services go all day long and sometimes into the early evening. I knew that everyone in the district would still be at the Yoder farm, which meant that Tucker Leham would most likely be there too. I was willing to risk the gossipmongers in order to find out what Tucker knew about Zeke.
I flicked the reins. “Bessie, back to church.”
She looked over her broad shoulder at me, as if to ask whether I was serious.
I flicked the reins again. “Come on now. We have a murderer to find. There is no time to waste.”
Phillip and Peter ran with me to the end of the driveway and stopped at the road as I had trained them. People said that you can’t train goats. You can with lots of patience and sugar cubes, their favorite snack. I would come back later to fetch them. It would give me an excuse to return and hopefully speak with my nephew.
Bessie turned straight ahead and clip-clopped down the county road with renewed vigor.
The congregation was pouring out of the Yoders’ farmhouse when my buggy turned up the long driveway. The women from the district began setting out the food for the Sunday meal on long tables in the middle of the front yard. Raellen was the first to notice my buggy. She hurried over to me. Four of her nine children followed in her wake.
I pulled the buggy to a halt and climbed down, tethering Bessie to a free hitching post.
“Millie Fisher, oh my word, I have heard the news, and I can hardly believe it. It’s just terrible. A murderer in our district!”
I glanced down at the four little faces behind her skirts and raised my eyebrows. I wasn’t going to talk about this in front of the children, and Raellen wanted very much to talk.
“Children, go play,” their mother said.
They didn’t move.
“Go play! Off with you. Shoo.” She waved them away with her hands.
Finally, they turned and ran off, shouting as they went.
Raellen grabbed my hand. “Oh, Millie. This is horrible. The worst thing that could have happened.” She made a clicking sound with her tongue. “Have the police arrested Edith yet? What will happen to the children? Perhaps I can talk to my husband about taking them in for a time. What’s three more children when you have nine?”
“Raellen, do you think Edith killed Zeke Miller?”
“That’s what everyone is saying.”
I blinked at her. “Edith didn’t kill Zeke.”
She dropped my hand. “She didn’t?”
I pressed my lips together and an old proverb came to mind. “He who talks to you about others will talk to others about you.” As much as I loved Raellen, I knew that was true of my friend and many others in the district.
“Just because everyone is saying it doesn’t make it true. How many times do I have to tell you that, Raellen?”
She ran the back of her hand across her forehead. “Gut. I am glad to be corrected in this case. Very glad. I like Edith very much and was afraid that I was friends with a killer. My husband would not like that in the least. You know how he can be.”
“I would think that most Amish husbands would disapprove of their wives being friends with killers,” I said mildly.
She nodded vigorously, completely missing my sarcasm. “So true, Millie, so true.”
“I do have a favor to ask you, Raellen.”
Her eyes went wide, and she adjusted her glasses on the bridge of her nose. “Anything. You know I always want to help.”
“Can you please spread the word that Edith had nothing to do with this murder? She is heartbroken over Zeke’s death. It’s true that she decided not to marry him, but she cared about him.”
Raellen grabbed my hand and squeezed it. “Oh, I know, I know. She must be completely torn up over this, and for it to happen at her greenhouse too. What a horror. I will make sure that everyone knows the truth. You can count on me, Millie.” She spun around. “I’ll start right now.”
I watched her make a beeline for the ladies setting the food out on the tables. Sometimes it worked to a person’s advantage to be friends with the biggest gossip in the district. I just had to feed Raellen the right information, and she would take care of the rest.
I scanned the members of the district, taking time to examine each of the young men. Was one of them the man I’d seen running away from the greenhouse? I examined their manners and movements to see if they reminded me of the figure chased down by the goats. I couldn’t make the identification by their clothing. All the young men wore plain trousers and shirts. Some wore suspenders and some went without, and most wore broad-brimmed black felt hats. There wasn’t enough variety in the attire to tell the difference between them at a distance, and surely not at the distance I had seen the young man at the greenhouse. I didn’t see any of them with a missing piece of their trousers that might have been ripped away by my rascally goats.
Ruth was standing at the long serving table when she spotted me. I gave her a smile and was more than a little relieved when a church member stopped her before she could come my way. I had come to find Tucker Leham and find out what he knew. I couldn’t do that with Ruth following me around the farm.
Tucker wasn’t with the main group of young men who were lollygagging around the barn. They laughed and clapped each other on the shoulder while the womenfolk got the meal ready. Nor did I see him with the older men who sat on the front porch or with the handful of thoughtful men who were helping the ladies set the table. My Kip would have been with that last group. He never saw much use in loitering when there was work to be done, even work that most in the district would have said was more suited for a woman.
Even from yards away, I felt the women at the table staring at me. Some dabbed at their eyes with handkerchiefs. Even the men, young and old, looked my way and whispered. I felt as nervous as I had been as a young woman when I stepped in front of the church to be baptized into the faith.
Maybe Tucker had left. I felt my heart sink. I could go to his home, but I wasn’t certain where he lived. If I started asking around, soon he and others in the district would know that I was looking for him.
I didn’t know what I was thinking when I decided I was going to find out who’d killed Zeke Miller. I was an Amish matchmaker and quilter, not a detective.
I had turned to walk through the back door of the kitchen when a young man came rushing out and nearly knocked me onto my backside. Even more shocking, it was the person I had been looking for all this time, Tucker Leham.
“I’m so so
rry,” Tucker said quickly. “I didn’t . . .” Whatever else he was planning to say died on his lips as he saw that it was me he’d run into. “Millie!”
“Just the person I was looking for.” I patted my prayer cap to make sure it hadn’t been knocked out of place.
His eyes went wide. “You were looking for me? Why?” He looked back and forth with a panicked expression on his face.
“Because I need to talk to you.”
“I—I don’t know why.”
I put my hands on my hips, hoping that I sounded as stern as Ruth Yoder when she was riled up. “I think you do know why. It’s about Zeke Miller.”
His eyes rolled around in their sockets as he looked for a means of escape. He wouldn’t just walk away from me. He’d been brought up to be respectful of his elders, for which I was grateful.
I put him out of his misery. “What do you know about Zeke?” I asked.
“I don’t know anything about him.”
“Lying is not something that becomes you, Tucker, and I have never known you to lie. What do you know about Zeke? This morning you stopped me when I was leaving to ask if Edith was going to marry him. When I said that she wasn’t, you said that was gut. It seems to me that you have information about Zeke that you were going to tell Edith had she still planned to marry him.”
Tucker stopped looking around the grounds. Behind him, I could see the cluster of young men at the barn. They noticed Tucker and me standing there together and whispered to each other. I guessed that they were wondering what a young gardener and an old matchmaker could be talking about, or perhaps, knowing what had happened to Zeke, they knew exactly what we were discussing.
“What do you know, Tucker? Tell me that, and I will leave you be.”
He shifted back and forth on his feet. His work boots were scuffed and stained from countless hours working in the greenhouse, doing a job that he no longer had. I knew that I would have asked him about losing his job as well, but I didn’t think that was the information he’d wanted to share with Edith. She already knew.
He cleared his throat. “I’m glad that Edith is not going to marry Zeke. I’m sorry he is dead, but I was happy about that.”
“There must be a reason why you feel that way . . .” I trailed off. “Did you know Zeke well?”
“Well enough to know that he wasn’t right for Edith.” His lip curled in disgust. “He was completely the wrong person for her. She’s too kind and sweet to be with a man like that. He would have squashed her spirit. He was just . . .” He trailed off.
“He was just what?” I prompted.
He started to walk away from me. “It doesn’t matter.”
I stepped in front of him. “It does matter; it matters a lot.”
He wouldn’t look at me.
I lowered my voice. “I don’t think you want me to make a scene, especially with that group of young men from the district watching us, but I need your help. If you know something, you have to tell me.”
“Nee, I don’t.” He stepped around me.
“Don’t you care about Edith?” I threw out.
He stopped in his tracks and turned to face me. “Ya, of course I do. I care more for her than . . .” He stopped himself and glanced over his shoulder at the young men.
Now they were making no secret of openly watching us. I knew I had to make this quick before one of them walked over and asked what was going on. “I know you care about Edith,” I said quietly, turning my body away from the group of men. “I can see it on your face anytime her name is mentioned.”
He clenched and unclenched his fists, but I wasn’t afraid. I knew he wouldn’t hurt me when so many people were watching us. Truthfully, even if we’d been alone, I still wouldn’t be worried that Tucker would resort to violence. He was a gut young man. But regardless of his demeanor, at one cry from me, the entire district would come running. I realized with the nosy group of young men looking on, this was the perfect place to talk to someone who might just have a motive for murder.
“Zeke shouldn’t have tried to marry her,” Tucker said. “He had no right to ask such a gut woman to marry him. He wasn’t a man worthy of a woman like Edith Hochstetler. He never even tried to prove that he was. He continued with his corrupt life even after she was betrothed to him.”
“Corrupt life?” I asked with a shiver. “What do you mean by that?”
He curled his hands.
My brow went up at Tucker’s emotions. “Tucker, is there something you know about Zeke? Something that could have gotten him into enough trouble to get him killed? You have to understand that I am asking you this because I care for Edith too. She’s in a lot of trouble.”
His brows went up. “What do you mean?”
“What do you think I mean? The police think she killed Zeke in order to escape marrying him.”
“She would never do that!” he shouted. I winced and could not resist looking at the group of young men. They had inched closer to us. They were about halfway between where we stood behind the house and the barn. I thought they were still too far away to hear what we were saying as long as we kept our voices down, which meant no more shouts from Tucker.
“Give me a reason that someone else would then,” I said in a measured voice.
“There is only one reason that makes any sense.”
“And what’s that?” I asked.
“He had another woman on the side.” Tucker’s face turned bright red as he said this.
“On the side? What does that mean?”
“He had another girlfriend who wasn’t Edith.” His face grew even redder. “He always had a woman or two waiting in the wings for him. He was handsome and a charming man. He couldn’t have been more different from me,” he said quietly.
I ignored his comment about himself. “And who was this other woman? Is she a member of this district or another nearby district?”
“Neither.”
“Then what?” I asked, growing more frustrated by the second.
“She’s Englisch.”
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
I stared at Tucker for a long moment. He could have told me that the woman had two heads, and I wouldn’t have been more surprised. For all his faults and mistakes, the one thing I knew about Zeke Miller was he was committed to being Amish. He was baptized in the faith and active in the district. As such, he couldn’t have a romantic relationship with an Englischer even if he weren’t already engaged to my niece.
“Who is she?” I wanted to know.
Tucker looked away. “I don’t know.” By the way he said it, I knew he was lying. He knew exactly who Zeke’s Englisch girlfriend was, and he knew where to find her too. This was information I needed because I very much wanted to find her. She could be the reason that Zeke was dead. He’d been killed with a stone to the head. Either a woman or man could have done it. If she’d caught Zeke off guard, she could have killed him before he even knew what was happening.
I shivered to think what Ruth would say about the thoughts going through my head. She’d believe they weren’t becoming of an Amish woman, and she would be right. The truth was they weren’t becoming of anyone, man or woman. Englisch or Amish. They were dark ideas that I wished circumstances hadn’t forced me to have.
“Don’t you want to help Edith?”
He frowned. “I do. I would do anything for her if she would let me. She doesn’t even know how much I care, or she pretends that she doesn’t.”
Oh, that was a whole other “can of worms,” as the Englisch said. I’d not even acknowledge his comment about Edith pretending not to know of his affection. That was a conversation for a different day—a day when Edith wasn’t a suspect in a murder. I took a deep breath and kept my voice calm. “So who is the Englisch girl?”
“I don’t know her name.”
I sensed he was waffling and was ready to tell me, so I waited.
“I’ve only seen her in the village. She works downtown, near the square.”
“Where?” I
asked. It was clear to me that Tucker was going to make me pry the information from him. He certainly wasn’t proving to be very forthcoming on his own.
He didn’t say anything.
“Where, Tucker?” My voice become more forceful.
“The Sunbeam Café in Harvest,” he said finally.
I felt a gasp rise in my throat, but I tamped it down. “The Sunbeam Café?” I asked as if I’d never heard of it, but of course I knew it. It was the place where I had seen my childhood friend Lois Henry.
“It just opened last month, right after Easter. The girl I have seen with Zeke works there. I have noticed her behind the counter when I walked by.”
“What does she look like?” I wanted to make sure that I had the right girl. And, yes, I had strong suspicions about who the woman was. The tray she dropped on the floor when the quilting circle was talking about Edith and Zeke was telling. But I didn’t want to walk in and accuse the wrong person of having a love affair with an Amish man, and truth be told, I very much wanted to be wrong.
“She’s not Amish, I can tell you that. She has curly blond hair and big blue eyes. She wears Englischer clothes. I don’t know much beyond that. Her hair is very, very curly, so if you go there, you will know who she is right away. I’ve never seen hair like it.”
As I feared, he’d described Lois’s granddaughter Darcy to a T. I tried to hide the disappointment on my face.
He shifted his stance. “If you talk to her, leave me out of it. I’ve told you everything I know.”
I wasn’t certain I believed that he’d told me everything he knew, but I nodded.
He swallowed and his Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “You have to understand, I would do anything for Edith. Anything. I’ve told her that so many times, but she doesn’t listen. She has always been distracted by other men. She never notices the one who is right in front of her.”
I knew this was true about my niece as well, but I said nothing because I wondered if Tucker really meant that he would do anything for Edith. If that were true, did it include killing for her? I prayed I was wrong. I thanked him for the information and walked away, not looking at the whispering young men as I went.
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