Bethanne was no longer at the desk. Instead, I found Junie dusting the counter.
Her face fell as I approached the desk. “Oh, it’s you.”
“Were you expecting someone else?” I asked.
She was about to say something and then thought better of it.
“I came here looking for you.”
“Me?” she squeaked.
“Did you know about any threatening notes that Eve had been getting?”
She swallowed. “Notes?”
I nodded.
Her eyes flitted around the room. “Nee. I don’t know about anything like that. My sister didn’t tell me if she was in trouble.”
“I met Amber today.”
Junie resumed her dusting.
“Did your sis—”
“A pox on you, sir!” someone shouted from the sitting room.
Oliver ducked behind the registration desk, and an elderly couple reading and drinking coffee beside the Christmas tree fled.
There was a squeal, and then Blake, the stagehand, leapt into the lobby. He held a quilt rod in his hand. “Stand back or I will run you through.”
A second teenager appeared, holding a second quilt rod. “Prepare to meet your Maker.”
“Whoa! Whoa! Whoa!” I said, sounding much like Jonah when he was trying to pull Maggie to a stop.
Both boys froze, with quilt rods held at the ready to strike.
“What in the world are you doing?”
Blake lowered his arm. “Um.”
I held out my hands. “Give those to me!” I made a gimme sign with my hand.
The nameless second actor with the goatee scowled. “Why should we?”
I stared him down. “Because they belong to me. You took them from the sitting room, am I right? Where is the quilt that was on this?”
Blake blushed. “Kyle, give it to her. We’re really sorry.”
“My name is Angie, and you had better hope for your sake none of the quilts were damaged. They are worth a lot of money.”
Kyle snorted. “Why? They are just blankets. I can buy one at Walmart for ten bucks.”
I glared at him. “For your information, these are handmade Amish quilts and worth much more than ten dollars. They are worth more than your paycheck.”
He handed me the rod. “Geez, there’s no reason to get all bent out of shape over it.”
I held my hand out to Blake.
He placed the rod in my palm.
I frowned. “You can’t tell me that swordplay is part of An Amish Christmas.”
Blake’s blush faded, making his freckles more pronounced. “We were just messing around. Practice has been canceled for the rest of the day. There’s not much to do around here.”
“Especially if you don’t have a car,” Kyle grumbled. “We might as well be trapped on a desert island.”
“Polar ice cap,” Blake corrected.
“Why’s practice canceled?”
Kyle narrowed his eyes. “Who are you to ask?”
I tapped the two rods on the floor. “I’m just curious.”
Blake pushed Kyle lightly. “Don’t be so uptight.” He looked at me. “The director said he had business to take care of this afternoon. Practice will resume after dinner.”
“Man,” Kyle complained. “I hate that. We will practice late into the night. I need my Zs. I’m exhausted just thinking about it.”
“What kind of business?”
Blake frowned.
Kyle eyed me. “You ask a lot of questions for a quilt lady.”
“So I’ve been told.” I leaned on the rods as if they were canes. “I don’t remember seeing the two of you in the play. I was there last night.”
“Yeah, we didn’t even get to my scene before Eve fell,” Kyle said.
“Hey, man, show some respect.”
Kyle shoved his friend. “Blake thought he had a chance with her. Everyone knew she was off-limits.”
I straightened up. “Did she have a boyfriend?”
Kyle shook his head. “Don’t know. She made it clear she wasn’t interested in anyone. She said she was focusing on her career.”
Blake shoved his hands into the pockets of his jeans. “I know Ruben had his eye on her too. He probably didn’t take it well when she turned him down cold.”
“I wish I could have seen that. Just because he has an accent, he expects women to fall to his feet. Some do, like Lena.”
“I hope Lena didn’t know he asked Eve out. She would poke Ruben’s eyes out with a butter knife. The girl is vicious.”
Jealous girlfriend. I mentally rubbed my hands together. Tailor-made suspect.
“What has she done?” I asked.
Blake folded his arms. “The female lead of our last production broke her arm when she fell down the stairs at the theater we were performing at.”
“Oh yeah,” Kyle said. “I remember that. It was the gig in Des Moines. Everyone thought Lena pushed the girl down the stairs, but she insisted she tripped, and nothing happened to Lena. The girl went back home to Kansas or wherever she was from. Everyone thought for sure that Lena would have the lead in our next production, and then one day Wade shows up with Eve.
“I thought Lena was going to go all jungle cat on Eve the moment she stepped into the room. I mean, the girl had hate in her eyes.”
Interesting. Very interesting. Lena was looking better and better as a prime suspect for the murder. And there was the matter of the notes too. Could she have been behind them also? The two events had to be connected. I wished I could get my hands on at least one of those notes, but Amber had said that Eve destroyed them the moment she found one.
Kyle gave me a wide grin. “Hey, you should come to another performance to see me in action. I’m pretty good.”
His friend snorted. “Yeah, you do an awesome job playing farmer number one and the love-struck Amish boy.”
“You will regret saying that when I accept my Oscar someday.”
The two young men strolled away, laughing and pushing each other.
I returned the quilt rods to the sitting room. At least Kyle and Blake had had the decency to fold the quilts before they took off with the rods.
When I returned to the lobby, Junie was gone. She must have made her escape from me while I had been speaking with the actors. In fact, there was no one at the registration desk. An old-fashioned guest book sat in the middle of the desk.
Thanks to Kyle and Blake’s antics, they had scared off the only other guests in the room. It was a golden opportunity. One little peek wouldn’t hurt.
My finger slid down the registry of guest names and stopped at “Shetler, Eve. Room 215.” The check-in date was a week ago Monday. The checkout date was left open. I supposed, to be accurate, yesterday’s date could have been entered there.
What would I do with this information? I knew I should return to the shop to let Sarah go home. I still needed to find out why Mattie ran off without telling me in the middle of the afternoon.
The second floor was just at the top of the staircase. I could dash up there for a quick look. Undoubtedly, the room would be locked and that would be the end of it. However, it might be good to know where Eve’s room was, because that was where the threatening notes were dropped each night.
I stepped around the registration desk to Oliver’s hiding place. “What do you think, Ollie?”
He set a white paw on my boot. He knew as well as I did that my mind was already made up.
Chapter Sixteen
I carried Oliver up the stairs. The grand staircase opened onto the second-floor sitting room. A grand piano stood quietly in the corner. A lone man sat in the corner of the room, talking on his cell phone.
If play practice was postponed until evening, where had the actors gone? Didn’t Blake mention they we
re here without cars? Were they taking a collective nap in their various rooms?
Oliver padded behind me over the flowered carpet on that floor of the hotel. He stopped to smell the legs of a coffee cart piled high with Christmas cookies.
“Oliver, those are for the guests.”
With a sigh, he followed me into the hallway.
Room 215 was halfway down a long corridor. Light shone from the doorway. I slowed my pace. The door was open.
I squatted next to Oliver. “Sit,” I whispered. “And stay.”
The Frenchie wagged his front paw at me in protest.
I pointed to the ground. “Stay.”
He lay down on the flowered carpet with his head on his paws.
I crept the rest of the way to room 215. As I suspected, the door was ajar. My pulse quickened. I heard movement inside. With both hands, I pushed the door open and it banged against the wall.
Junie covered her face and screamed.
“Junie! Junie! Calm down. It’s just me.”
Oliver galloped into the room. His bat ears perked on high alert. He skidded to a stop next to me in the doorway. Frenchie to the rescue.
Junie dropped her hands a fraction of an inch. “You gave me the scare of my life.”
I winced. “I’m sorry. I thought—I don’t know what I thought.” I took a breath. “This was Eve’s room, wasn’t it?”
There was a pile of clothes on one side of the king-sized bed. Next to the clothes two large suitcases sat open.
“You’re packing her things,” I said.
“It has to be done. The room must be turned. Mimi asked me to do it. She wanted someone who knew Eve to do it.” She picked up a T-shirt and folded it with such precision, she put a teenager working at the Gap to shame. “She wasn’t up to doing it herself. She’s broken up over Eve.”
Mimi was too upset to do it but asked Eve’s sister to do it? I wondered. And wasn’t Junie equally broken up over Eve’s death, if not more?
Her brow furrowed as if she were trying to read my thoughts. “And the sheriff said that was all right. The police were here last night. Mimi would not ask me to pack Eve’s things if it wasn’t allowed.”
“No, of course not.” I scanned the pile of clothing on the bed. “Did the police take anything from her room? Did you notice anything missing?”
“I would not know what was missing among her Englisch things.”
“Of course,” I said. I knew Mitchell’s deputies would take anything that might be remotely related to her death. That put my chance of finding one of the threatening notes at zero.
Even with that in mind, I asked, “Care if I have a look around?”
She shrugged and kept folding.
I knelt and peered under the bed. No note. Junie had already emptied the closet and the dresser of Eve’s clothes. I wandered into the bathroom. Eve’s cosmetics stood in a line on the bathroom counter. They were many. The right side of the counter was her everyday toiletries, but the left side was covered with stage makeup.
I poked my head out of the bathroom. “Did Eve do her own makeup for the play?”
Junie shrugged. “I don’t know. I suppose she did.”
That wasn’t too surprising, considering the size of the production. How many stagehands had Mimi said there were? Four: Jasper, Blake, and the two teenagers from Millersburg, doing it for school credit.
I sat on the desk chair. “Do you know if she had a sweetheart?”
“A—a what?”
“Did Eve have a boyfriend?”
“She never said anything about anyone from New York. I told you we didn’t talk much since she’s been away. Eve doesn’t like to write letters, and I don’t have access to a telephone.”
“This hotel is full of telephones.” I pointed to the one on the nightstand.
She folded a pair of jeans. “I can’t make long-distance calls from Mimi’s phones.”
“That’s a good point. If Eve didn’t have an English boyfriend, did she have an Amish one before she left?”
Silence. She folded three more shirts during the quiet.
I spun the desk chair in her direction. “Junie?”
She played with the edge of her apron. “There was a boy, but it was so long ago. I wouldn’t give him another thought. He’s married to another girl now. He married right after Eve left.”
I leaned forward. “Is it a happy marriage?”
“I think so. They have two children now.”
“What’s his name?”
She scowled, taking her frustration out on an I LOVE NYC hoodie. “It’s bad enough that you come here and pester us with your questions. I won’t let you bother him.”
“Is he a friend of yours?”
She paused. “He was. A long time ago. His name is Nathan Eby, and I am only telling you because you will not leave me alone until I do.”
At least she understood that about me.
“Was it serious?” I opened the closet door. There were a few pairs of jeans and a couple of dresses hanging there. Three pairs of shoes sat at the bottom. They were sturdy and dependable; none of them were that expensive. If her possessions were any indication, Eve lived on a very tight budget.
“They went to singings and on buggy rides. It was a way Eve could pass the time while she decided what to do with her life. I knew nothing would ever come of it.”
If Junie wouldn’t tell me about this mystery boy, maybe Amber would.
Junie wrapped her arms around her waist just above the band in her apron as if she had a stomachache. “I have much work to do. I think you should leave now.”
I stood. “Don’t you want to know what happened to your sister?”
She didn’t say anything.
I turned. “Don’t you?”
Tears welled up in her dark eyes. She removed a white handkerchief from the pocket in her apron. “Finding out what happened won’t bring Eve back.”
I gripped the back of the desk chair. “Junie, we can’t let whoever did this get away with it.”
“The actors will be gone within the week. Let them go and let us forget.” She dropped her gaze back down to the pile of laundry.
“You think this will be over when they are gone. Do you think one of them is behind it?”
“They are all jealous of one another. Look at Lena.”
“You think it’s Lena?”
“I didn’t say she did it, but what does it matter in the end?” she argued. “It’s better to grieve and let Gott do the rest.”
Mimi had been right. There was no doubt that Junie was destined to stay Amish. Her Amish beliefs were cemented in forgiveness and the justice of God.
Junie was right too; I should leave the room and return to Running Stitch. If there were any notes, the sheriff’s department must have already found them. I wondered if Mitchell had heard my voice mail and how that went over.
“Did Eve say anything to you about feeling afraid or threatened?” I asked.
“Nee.” She zipped up the larger of the two suitcases and put it on the floor. “Eve didn’t have a care in the world.”
That I didn’t believe. I shut the dresser drawer. All I learned from searching Eve’s room was that she was really a struggling actress. All of her things were well cared for, but she didn’t have many of them. Many of the clothes had been mended. The only way I knew was I had an eye for seams and thread as a quilter. It made me terribly sad.
“What will happen to her things?” I asked.
“I guess we will give them away. My parents are handling her funeral arrangements. It will be small and not as noteworthy as it would have had she remained Amish.”
“That is kind of them,” I murmured.
“My mother loves—loved Eve.” She wouldn’t meet my eye and continued folding.
“She
must have missed her terribly when she left the community,” I said.
“It broke her heart. My father told her to forget Eve, that it would be easier if she did.” She dropped a pair of socks into the second suitcase. “But you can’t help who you love. It’s not always who you are supposed to.”
“What do you mean by that?” I asked.
“Nothing. My father tells me I should not give in to idle musing. I should focus on the here and now. Eve was the only one with daydreams.” She studied me. “Are you going to marry the nice man from Texas?”
I tripped on the rug and had to brace myself on the side of the bed so that I wouldn’t fall to the carpet. “What? No, of course not. He’s a family friend.”
Her eyes narrowed. “He is very handsome.”
“He is, but I’m still not marrying him.”
“And he loves you.”
I stepped back from the bed. “He might have at one time, but not anymore.”
“You are wrong on that count. He still loves you. You are all he’s spoken about since he got here.” More underwear and socks went into the suitcase.
“You’ve spoken to Ryan?”
“He’s nice and likes to chat. I’m only being kind to a customer of the hotel.”
I bit my tongue to hold back the questions about what Ryan said about me. It didn’t matter what Ryan said about me; that wouldn’t change anything. At the end of the week, he would go back to Dallas, and I would remain here with my quilting circle, Running Stitch, and the sheriff.
Her face darkened. “It must be nice to choose who you want to love because everyone loves you back. Eve was like that. Everyone, even Nathan, knew that Eve was going to leave the Amish life. I think he was just hoping he could talk her out of it. You couldn’t make Eve do anything that she didn’t want to do.” She said it like someone with experience. “So you see, Eve was just like you. She was the one who got to make the decision to walk away and break someone’s heart. Not all of us have that chance.”
I didn’t bother to argue with her or tell her Ryan dumped me, not the other way around. So it wasn’t true. Sometimes the person I loved did not love me back.
Murder, Served Simply Page 12
