Whiskers of the Lion

by P. L. Gaus

  “Less, if you hurry. You have to come into town on 87 and then turn north on 608. A right turn puts you on Burton-Windsor, headed east.”

  “Should I call the sheriff?” Armbruster asked. “To tell him where Fannie is?”

  “Not yet, Stan. Wait until you’ve talked with her.”

  “OK, but he’s supposed to call the FBI after we’ve found her.”

  “Right now, Stan, I couldn’t tell you what Fannie is going to decide. She’s crying out for Howie, and she’s completely lost in grief. She’s not taking it well that we found her. She’s in shock, and she’s angry. So if she’s going to trust anyone English like us, it’ll have to be Robertson’s letter that convinces her to do it.”

  19

  Thursday, August 18

  4:10 P.M.

  REUBEN HELPED Fannie to a seat in the Masts’ parlor. He spoke briefly to her in dialect and turned to the professor to offer his hand. “I am Reuben Gingerich,” he said. “I am Fannie’s fiancé. We were posted with the church in Michigan. Just a few weeks after we met.”

  Branden took Reuben’s hand. “Professor Mike Branden. And this is my wife, Caroline.”

  Reuben seemed surprised. “I thought you were a deputy.”

  “I am, Mr. Gingerich. A reserve deputy. I am also a college professor.”

  “That seems an odd mix.”

  “I suppose it is,” Branden said. He sat across from Fannie on a diminutive Shaker sofa made of cherrywood. The seat was upholstered with plain, powder-blue fabric. Caroline sat next to her husband.

  The parlor was plain and simple, with straight lines in an unadorned style. The furniture was all of the Shaker variety—polished red cherry with blue fabrics matching the sofa. The heavy purple curtains on the windows had long pleats and fell straight to the red oak flooring. The baseboard trim and crown molding were made of polished cherry, matching the furniture, as if it all had been made by the same custom craftsman. The walls were stark white and unadorned. On two end tables and on one corner stand, there were lamps with white-ash silk mantles. These were piped for natural gas.

  Outside, dark clouds were piling in from the west on a strong summer breeze. Thunder was cannonading in the northern distance. Cooler temperatures were riding through, ahead of a summer storm.

  From the kitchen doorway, Abel Mast asked if a lamp should be lit, and Reuben replied briefly, “We’ll be fine, Abel,” focusing most of his attention on Fannie. He pulled a Shaker chair out of a corner and set it next to Fannie. Sitting beside her, he asked, “Are you going to be OK, Fannie?”

  Fannie still appeared shaken. She reached a trembling hand out to Reuben. When he took her hand, she clasped her fingers over his.

  From the kitchen, Irma Mast came forward with a tray of drinks. “I have bottled water and lemonade,” she said. She served the drinks from the tray and returned to the kitchen. When she came back into the parlor, her husband, Abel, was with her. They pulled an old deacon’s bench away from the wall and sat down to join the conversation.

  Fannie looked at her fiancé and then at the Brandens. Angrily, she said, “It’s not fair about Howie. He didn’t do anything wrong.”

  Reuben spoke a few soft words in Dietsch to Fannie, and she smiled tragically and explained for the Brandens, “Howie loved that stupid yellow VW.” Then she began to cry again. Reuben pulled her hand into his lap and cradled her fingers.

  Fannie took her hand away from Reuben, pressed her handkerchief to her eyes, and said, “I’m not doing anybody any good, here.”

  “It’s OK,” Irma said. “Take your time.”

  As she dried her eyes, Fannie said to the professor, “I don’t know why you are here. I don’t know why the sheriff didn’t come himself. Or Deputy Lance could have come. I know her.”

  “Pat will be here in about half an hour,” Branden said. “She’s coming with Deputy Armbruster.”

  “Why?” Fannie asked. “Why so many people, just for me?”

  “You’re important, Fannie,” Branden answered. “The government is going to want you to testify against Teresa Molina.”

  “But I only met her once,” Fannie complained. “What does anybody think I could say?”

  “Well, she did take the suitcase from you,” Branden said. “And there’s the Florida end of things, too. You can testify that Jodie Tapp gave you the suitcase to carry home on the bus.”

  “But I did that just once,” Fannie asserted. “And I didn’t know it was drugs. Jodie didn’t know it was drugs, either. It’s just not possible. She’s my friend.”

  “Perhaps she didn’t know, Fannie,” Branden said. “But Ruth Zook did the same thing, and it got her murdered.”

  “The sheriff told me that,” Fannie said. “It’s why we ran.”

  “OK, but now,” Branden said, “the sheriff wants you to let the FBI put you into protective custody. To keep you safe, while they look for Teresa Molina and Jodie Tapp.”

  Inside the pocket of her dress, Fannie’s cell phone rang like a bell. She stood up startled and checked the display. She seemed at first embarrassed, and then she seemed apologetic. “This is my friend,” she said with an awkward smile. “I have to take this outside.”

  • • •

  When Fannie returned to the parlor, the professor asked her, “Fannie, is someone other than Teresa Molina trying to find you?”

  Fannie sat down beside Reuben again and said, “Just a friend.”

  “Will you tell us who that was?” Branden asked.

  “I don’t want to. It was just a friend.”

  “There may be a lot of bad people looking for you,” Branden said. “More than just Teresa Molina.”

  “This was a good friend,” Fannie said. She passed an annoyed glance to Reuben. “She just calls to chat, so I don’t think it’s anything you should take an interest in.”

  Branden looked to Caroline, arched a brow, and turned back to Fannie. Careful not to upset her further with his tone, Branden said gently, “OK, Fannie, but now perhaps you could think about the FBI. The sheriff wants you to go into their protective custody, and they will probably be getting here in the next couple of hours.”

  Broadcasting nervous anxiety, Fannie popped off her Shaker chair and paced in the center of the room. The professor stood, too, and held out Sheriff Robertson’s letter. “Please, Fannie,” he said. “At least read what the sheriff wrote to you. Then if you don’t like any of this, we can talk about it.”

  “And what?” Fannie demanded in place. “Do it my way? Do what I want? Well, I want Howie back! Tell that to the sheriff!”

  Caroline and Irma rose together. Reuben Gingerich stood and tried to embrace Fannie. With her hands raised, palms out, Fannie held them off. “Just tell me what’s in the letter!” she shouted into the room. “What in the world does he want from me, now that Howie is dead?”

  Softly, Irma said, “Fannie, at least you could read what he has written to you. Maybe that’s not asking too much.”

  “Why can’t anybody just tell me what’s in the stupid letter?” Fannie argued, clenching her fists. “What’s so hard about that?”

  Caroline answered, “None of us has read it, Fannie.”

  Irma reached out for Fannie’s elbow. “Please sit down. You’re angry.”

  Reuben sat back on his chair and said, “‘Be ye not angry,’ Fannie. You know this as well as anyone.”

  Startled, Fannie spun around to Reuben. She formed a reply with the leanings of a snarl, but she did not speak it. She looked to Irma, and Irma nodded her agreement with Reuben as she sat back down next to her husband. Abel had held to his seat on the deacon’s bench, staring sadly at the floorboards while Fannie fumed.

  Caroline reclaimed her seat, and the professor sat again, too. In the middle of the room, Fannie stood alone with soft tears spilling from her eyes. She looked long at her fiancé, wrestling with
a tangle of anxieties that showed plainly in the mix of her expressions. She struggled for a moment and then seemed to acquire some degree of resolution. When she sat next to Reuben, she said simply and serenely, “I am sorry, Reuben.”

  He took her hand into his lap without replying.

  Fannie sat with her head bowed and said, “May I have the letter, Professor?”

  Branden rose and handed the sealed envelope across to her. He sat back beside his wife. Fannie tore the edge of the envelope open and took out several folded pages of white paper covered with bold writing.

  Fannie began reading. She progressed slowly through the first page and turned to the second. Before she had finished the second page, she turned back to read the first again. She finished the second page and turned to the third. Then she turned to read the fourth page. When she had finished reading the entire letter, she read it all again slowly, carefully, pausing often to think.

  As Fannie was folding the letter to put it back into its envelope, Branden asked, “Fannie, do you want one of us to read it, too?”

  “No.”

  “Do you understand what the sheriff has told you?” Branden asked further.

  “Yes.”

  “Then have you decided what you wish to do?”

  “I wish to be protected by the FBI,” Fannie said. “I want to go to the hotel that Sheriff Robertson has decided is best for me.”

  Reuben asked, “Are you certain, Fannie?”

  “Yes, Reuben, I am. Can you wait for me here?”

  Reuben looked to Abel Mast for an answer. Abel nodded his consent.

  To Fannie, Reuben said earnestly, “As long as it takes, Fannie. I’ll wait for you as long as it takes.”

  20

  Thursday, August 18

  5:05 P.M.

  AT THE jail’s radio consoles, Del Markely handed her headset off to Ed Hollings, the night-shift dispatcher. She gathered up personal items from the desks and counter, tossed them into her heavy canvas purse, and stalked down the hallway to the sheriff’s door. There she knocked and entered without waiting for an invitation.

  The sheriff was standing beside his desk, staring thoughtfully at his display of law enforcement arm patches. Del marched in dramatically, clanked her heavy purse onto the old cherry desktop, and took a seat in one of the straight chairs in front of the desk.

  Robertson turned around slowly and drawled, “Are you just visiting, Adele, or do you need a place to stay?”

  “Sheriff, my mother used to call me Adele. I haven’t tolerated that name for twenty-five years.”

  Robertson moved to his chair and sat behind his desk. “What can I do for you, Del?”

  “Some of the deputies are talking.”

  “About me?”

  “About the situation.”

  “And what is that?”

  “You’re flummoxed, and they’re worried.”

  “Flummoxed?”

  “Hesitant, Sheriff, like you don’t know what to do next. They think you’re being too tentative. So they’re talking. Some of them, anyway.”

  “Well, that didn’t take long, did it.”

  “It’s been building since April,” Del said. “Double shifts, extra pressure, the hunt for Fannie Helmuth. At any rate, they’re talking now, some of them, saying that you’re considering whether or not you can still handle the job.”

  “Is anyone actually saying that I cannot handle the job?”

  “No. They’re saying that you don’t think you can handle the job. Or they wonder if you’re hesitating because you don’t want to do it anymore. So, that’s a problem you’ve gotta fix. I just thought you should know.”

  “Anything more, Del, that I should fix?”

  “Well, it’s maybe going around town that this Fannie Helmuth case has you more rattled than it should. Like maybe you’ve been pushin’ your people too hard, for too long, but you haven’t explained to anyone why it’s got you so rattled. Why you’re takin’ it so hard that Fannie ran off with Howie Dent.”

  Robertson leaned his chair back on its springs. He held a brief and unconvincing smile and said, “That’s just it, Del. She walked away from my protection.”

  “Then are you maybe takin’ this too personally?”

  “No,” Robertson huffed. He rocked his chair forward and stood behind his desk. With a frown that seemed to crease every worry line in his face, he said, “It’s not personal, Del. It’s professional. I take it as a professional indictment. An Amish girl chose not to trust us to keep her safe. She thought she’d be safer out there on her own than she would be here with us. And I consider that to be a professional vote of no confidence. It’s a negative judgment about our abilities to do our jobs. She might as well have stuck posters up around town. ‘Robertson can’t handle the job.’ Or ‘You can’t trust Robertson with your life.’ That’s much more than just personal to me, Del. It cuts to the core of who I have always demanded myself to be. It cuts at what I’ve always expected myself to do. And if Fannie gets killed because she figured that she couldn’t trust me, then that’s on my shoulders, isn’t it?”

  • • •

  After Markely left, the sheriff pulled a folded page from his shirt pocket and read Bobby Newell’s list of items found with the yellow VW. Simple items from the glove compartment. The normal contents of a trunk. An empty red backpack.

  Robertson pocketed the list, took out his cell phone, and tapped in Armbruster’s number. When Armbruster answered, Robertson said, “You should be almost there.”

  “We’re just pulling into the drive, Sheriff.”

  “OK, look, Stan.” Robertson hesitated. “I need you to remember that I do have a plan.”

  “I remember.”

  “And I need you to see this through, Stan, just like I laid it out in our meeting.”

  “I know, Sheriff.”

  “Then there’s one other thing I need from you, Stan. There’s one last thing to check.”

  “Sheriff?”

  “Examine all of our original assumptions, Stan.”

  “OK.”

  “Start with the day Howie and Fannie got off that bus in Charlotte. The day they caught a Greyhound bus to Memphis.”

  “Are you asking why they did that?”

  “Yes. And I’m asking how they did that.”

  “You want me to question Fannie about this?”

  “Yes. Ask her how that bus pulled into the restaurant parking lot for their breakfast stop. Ask her if they actually got any breakfast that day.”

  “Do you want to know about that whole day, Sheriff, or just what happened at the breakfast stop?”

  “The whole day, Stan, but especially everything at the breakfast stop. I want her to tell you everything she can recall. From the moment their bus pulled out of Sugarcreek, until she and Howie were in downtown Charlotte, seated on a Greyhound bus for Memphis. Then I want you to examine the assumptions you made when you first discovered the yellow VW and Dent’s body.”

  “That was just yesterday morning, Sheriff.”

  “I know. But we all made assumptions when we processed the scene. And we all missed something.”

  “What am I looking for, Sheriff?”

  “That’s just it, Stan. I don’t want you to be looking for anything at all. Nothing in particular. Because when you first saw the VW, you had already started making assumptions. And when I questioned the Dents about Howie’s VW, I had already started making my own assumptions. Assumptions that must have been false.”

  “OK, Sheriff,” Armbruster said. “I’ll ask Fannie about the bus stop in Charlotte.”

  “Without making any assumptions,” Robertson answered.

  • • •

  Fannie took Sheriff Robertson’s letter back from Reuben and asked, “Does that mean what I think it means?”

  They were in the front
room of the Daadihaus, behind the Masts’ main residence. Fannie was at the window, watching Pat Lance park her patrol car on the wet gravel pad in front of the barn. It was raining steadily, drearily, like the cold drizzles of April. Skies as gray as cemetery granite.

  “I think so,” Reuben replied cautiously. “I think it means just what it says. And I’ve seen that hotel. It’s big.”

  Looking out at the arriving car, Fannie said, “That’s Deputy Lance.”

  Reuben joined her at the window. “Do you trust her?” he asked.

  “I think so. As much as any English, I suppose. Really, it’s the sheriff who I trust the most.”

  “Because of his letter?”

  “Yes.” Fannie nodded. She watched Pat Lance and Stan Armbruster as they climbed out of the patrol car and hurried in the rain to the back steps. “I never expected that kind of honesty from a lawman.”

  As Lance and Armbruster huddled under an umbrella and knocked on the back porch door of the main house, Reuben asked, “Do you know both of these English?”

  “Just Deputy Lance. But she’s Detective Lance. I spent most of a day with her.”

  “And the other? The man?”

  “I saw him at the jail that day. I think he’s a detective, too.”

  Turning Fannie gently to face him, Reuben asked, “Will I be able to see you at the hotel?”

  “I don’t know, Reuben.”

  Reuben handed the pages of the letter back to Fannie. “Are you certain that you understand the sheriff’s message?”

  Using the gray light at the window, Fannie read the letter a last time.

  Confidential, for Fannie Helmuth

  Sheriff Bruce Robertson

  August 18th

  Millersburg

  Dear Fannie,

  By now you know of Howie Dent’s murder. I am very sorry for your loss.

  By now you also know that I cannot protect you in Holmes County. I know that, too, Fannie, so I won’t ask you to come back here.

  Most people will think, however, that you have come home, and that I am endeavoring to protect you. That is precisely what I want them all to think.