A Killer Carol

by Laura Bradford

  “For any other case, maybe,” Diane protested. “But looking at Ruth and Samuel for the Esch murders is really just taking time away from finding the real killer—time he or she could be using to get as far from Heavenly as possible.”

  “He’ll find the real killer, I’m sure. He just—”

  “He has to do his job.” Claire palmed her mouth as the reality behind Bill’s words churned in her stomach. “I . . . I can’t believe I couldn’t step off my high horse long enough to see it . . . to know Jakob is only doing what he has to do, and that instead of judging him, I should’ve tried hard to be what he needed—a listening and supportive ear.”

  Bill wandered back to the couch but refrained from actually sitting. “So be that now.”

  She knew he was right, she really did. But—

  “I still know, with everything I am, that Ruth and Samuel had nothing to do with Daniel’s and Mary’s murders.”

  “Then help prove that to Jakob.”

  Help prove that to Jakob . . .

  Tossing the pillow to the side, Claire wiggled her way off the lounge chair and onto her feet. “I think it’s time for me to head upstairs. I have a call to make, and an apology to give.”

  She crossed the hooked rug, kissed the top of her aunt’s head, and then covered Bill’s warm hands with her own. “Thank you, Bill. For listening and for helping me to see. You really are a very special person.”

  “As are you, Claire.” Bill pulled her in for a quick hug. “Now go. Make things right. For Jakob and for Ruth.”

  Chapter 7

  One by one they appeared to her left and disappeared to her right, each front bench inhabited by a bearded man in a black-rimmed hat and a woman in her black winter coat and kapp. Some buggies were filled to capacity with children of non–driving age crammed into the back; others carried less. All were pulled by horses tasked with getting their occupants from point A to point B.

  Sighing, Claire made herself step away from the front window and its somber view, the day’s tasks oblivious to the heaviness in the air. The morning had been busy all on its own thanks to the tour bus of senior citizens that had arrived just as shop signs were turned to OPEN up and down Lighted Way. In fact, she’d barely finished filling the register with the day’s starting money when the bell over the front door began to jingle . . . and jingle . . . and jingle still more. The first half dozen or so were those who wanted to know why Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe was closed. When she’d explained it was Amish owned and there was a funeral going on, a few had grumbled and walked out while others had stayed to wander the shop. Those who left still grumbling went in search of Heavenly Brews. Those who opted to stay asked questions, ooh’d and aah’d over the many Amish-made items on her shelves, and, in most cases, made a purchase.

  Annie, like every other Amish employee or shopkeeper along Lighted Way, did not come in to work. Instead, the teenager was likely at the first of three viewings for Mary and Daniel Esch—a viewing Claire, too, hoped to attend with Jakob once the workday was done.

  Jakob . . .

  Glancing at the clock over the register, Claire headed toward her office and the brown bag lunch waiting in her desk’s bottom drawer. More than anything, she wished she could take her sandwich and cookie across the street to the police station in the hope that she and Jakob could eat together, but with Annie gone and Jakob knee deep in yet another murder investigation, a solo lunch at the counter would have to do.

  Still, the handsome detective was uppermost in her thoughts as she retrieved her lunch and carried it back inside the main room. For several stressful moments the previous night, she’d feared he wouldn’t answer the phone when she’d called to apologize. But after the fourth ring, he’d finally picked up, his usual pre-bedtime greeting void of its usual warmth and enthusiasm . . .

  “I have your glove. You left it in the front seat.”

  “I didn’t know I dropped one.”

  “Oh.”

  Before he could say anything else or possibly end the call entirely, she’d stammered on, Bill’s words serving as a road map of sorts. “I . . . I’m calling to apologize. For the way I reacted to you questioning Ruth. I was wrong and I’m sorry. Truly.”

  She set the paper sack beside the register, pulled out her sandwich and napkin, and settled onto one of the two stools tucked behind the counter, the memory of Jakob’s answering sigh of relief stirring up the same emotion she’d experienced during their call.

  “I get it, Claire. I really do. And it’s not really fair of me to only appreciate your steadfast loyalty when it works in my favor.”

  There were so many things about Jakob she loved—his kindness, his work ethic, his ability to listen . . . the list went on and on, actually. But perhaps the thing she loved most was his willingness to see things from the perspective of others, a trait that had allowed him to really hear what she’d had to say and to understand that while she knew in her heart Ruth and Samuel were innocent, she knew, too, that Jakob was doing what he needed to do. By the time she’d finished explaining and apologizing for her lack of sensitivity, the warmth he so easily exuded when it came to her was back, enabling her to get at least some sleep when they’d finally ended their call.

  Reaching for the pad of paper she kept on a shelf beneath the register, she flipped to a clean page and took a bite of her sandwich. One of the best ways she could help Jakob was to expedite the removal of Ruth and Samuel from his list of suspects. Yes, he was working on that, but maybe, if she could help do it faster by pointing him in more believable directions, it would help minimize any fallout with Jakob’s former Amish brethren. To do that, though, she had to know more about Daniel and Mary—their business, their family, their neighbors, that sort of thing. How, exactly, she’d go about learning those things, though, was the question.

  She took a second bite of her ham and cheese sandwich and then rested it atop her napkin in exchange for a pen from the holder beside the register. For as far back as she could remember, she’d always been a list maker. In elementary school, her lists had been typical of her age: friends’ names, things to play outside, and who she wanted to come to her birthday parties. In high school, the lists had changed to the more organizational to-do variety: homework assignments, after-school tasks, and job responsibilities. Now that she was an adult and a store owner, her to-do list had morphed into something more road map–like, guiding her through each day in manageable chunks.

  That’s what she needed now—a road map with point A being Daniel’s and Mary’s deaths, and point B being the removal of Ruth and Samuel from any and all cloud of suspicion. To do that, though, meant either proving they had nothing to do with the murders or proving who did.

  Tapping the end of the pen against her lips, she let her gaze wander across the shop, through the front window, across the street, and then left toward the police station she could see in her thoughts if not with her eyes at that very moment. Jakob, too, was a list maker of sorts, with his lists being composed of motives and means and suspects, and being written across the white board in his office rather than in a simple notepad like the one in front of her now. When she’d asked him about it early in their relationship, his reason for liking lists had resonated with her, too. Because really, there was something about seeing things written on paper that made them feel more real, more approachable.

  Her mind made up, Claire dropped her focus back down to the paper and began to write, the words scattered at first and then linking with others to form the beginning of her road map through Ruth’s dilemma.

  Ruth.

  Samuel.

  Mary and Daniel Esch, murdered.

  Ruth and Samuel last to see them alive?

  Ruth: Too sweet, too shy, too gentle.

  Samuel: Never seems to get ruffled by anything. Has a solid customer base both locally and via tourists. Senior community nice push, but okay without, r
ight?

  Claire stopped, doubled back, and reread her last entry. Granted, she wasn’t privy to the financial specifics of her friends’ lives any more than they were of her own, but Samuel’s shop was doing well to the best of her knowledge, and Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe couldn’t be any more successful than it was . . .

  Slipping off her stool, she wandered over to the side window and its view of the alleyway between her own Heavenly Treasures and the bake shop in which Ruth had worked until her wedding to Samuel. Today, the line that so often wound across the front porch and down onto the sidewalk for one of Ruth’s fresh-from-the-oven pies was absent, the bakery’s CLOSED sign and darkened windows slumping more than a few shoulders of passersby. Then again, since Ruth’s wedding and subsequent departure from the day-to-day running of the popular shop, the lines, while still par for the course, weren’t as long anymore. People wanted the tasty treats sold inside, but maybe with a little less intensity as they had when Ruth herself was making them on the premises.

  “I’ve been looking out my window that same way all morning.”

  Startled, Claire turned away from the window to find the man that matched the voice grinning at her from the front of her shop. “Harold! I . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t hear you come in.”

  “Not sure why.” The balding man shrugged his thick shoulders and stepped farther into the shop. “Bells rang just like they always do. But I’m not surprised, I guess. You sure seemed mighty distracted looking out at Shoo Fly just now.”

  She glanced back at the bake shop across the alleyway and then headed across the carpeted floor, the smile the hardware store owner always managed to elicit twitching at the corners of her lips. “I don’t know, maybe I was dreaming about one of Ruth’s cookies. Or imagining what it would be like to have folks lined up outside my front door the way they do over at Shoo Fly.”

  “You mean the way they used to,” Harold said, tucking his thumbs inside the upper straps of his Glick’s Tools ’n More smock. “Now don’t get me wrong, that little sister of Esther’s is doing a fine job of tempting me up those stairs with her own assortment of treats. But she isn’t Ruth, and Shoo Fly’s most loyal fans know this.”

  “There are still lines,” she protested. “I mean, just this Saturday, the line stretched across the mouth of the alley.”

  Harold poked a finger through the bin of holiday-colored linen napkins to his left and then returned his hand to its normal resting spot atop his stomach. “That’s because it was a Saturday, and the official start of the holiday shopping season. But the week before? The line didn’t even reach the steps.”

  “Ruth had days like that, too,” she said, her words hollow even to her own ears.

  Chuckling, Harold ventured over to the front window and its view of Lighted Way. “You’re right. Ruth did. When she was getting ready to close and there wasn’t much more than a few cookies left in the case . . .”

  Claire swept her own gaze toward the side window and the part of Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe’s white clapboard exterior she could see from where she stood. “Do you think they’re seeing a difference in the bottom line, then? You know, since Ruth left to marry Samuel?”

  “I’m not sure how they couldn’t. A drop in business is a drop in business, even if the drop in question simply went from crazy-good to everybody-else-good,” Harold mused. Abandoning his belly in favor of the five o’clock shadow that was two hours too early, he rocked back on his heels with an audible hmmph. “And then there’s the little matter of having to pay someone to do what Ruth was doing . . . Makes me wonder why the Miller clan didn’t just give the job to the younger girl.”

  “Because Ruth’s younger sister is still in school for another month or so. And even when she finishes, she’ll only be what? Thirteen? Maybe fourteen? That’s probably a bit young to be running a shop all by herself with only occasional check-ins from Ben or Eli, don’t you think?”

  Harold nodded. “I do. But the Amish do things younger than the rest of us, as you know. In fact, I’m not so sure Ruth wasn’t much older than that when the family opened Shoo Fly to begin with. Granted, Eli spent a good part of the day helping his twin back then, but that didn’t stay the case for long. By the time the two of them were fifteen or so, Ruth was running that shop on her own. Course Ben and/or Eli stopped by a half-dozen or so times a day, but that was just to lend a little muscle with shipments. The baking and the running of the store were all on Ruth. Alone.”

  She forced a nod even as her thoughts jumped ahead to a fresh new set of questions and thoughts for her notepad—the kinds of questions and thoughts she hadn’t really entertained until that moment.

  “You planning on going to that double funeral today?”

  Now that Ruth was married, did she have any financial ties to Shoo Fly? If so, how?

  “Claire?”

  She snapped her attention back to the window and the man now studying her with a mixture of curiosity and amusement. “I’m sorry, Harold, I guess I zoned out a little there for a minute. Can you repeat your question?”

  “I can.” He folded his arms and leaned heavily against the room’s lone upright. “I asked if you plan on going to that double funeral I imagine your Annie is at today?”

  “Oh . . . yes . . . she is. And yes, I . . . I’d like to. I’m actually hoping to go with Jakob when I’ve closed up here for the day.” At Harold’s slow nod, Claire closed the gap between them with her latest question in tow. “Hey, I’ve got an odd question for you . . . Do you happen to know if Ruth is still tied to Shoo Fly in any way?”

  “I know Benjamin delivers some of Ruth’s famous pies to the shop shortly before lunch sometimes. I’ve seen him unloading them from his buggy when I’ve happened past the alley at just the right time. Seeing them makes my mouth water just like always, but the smell? It’s just not the same as it was when the actual pie baking happened”—he nudged his chin to their left—“next door there.”

  It was a daily delivery she well knew, although it wasn’t always Benjamin who made it. In fact, at least several times a week it was Ruth herself who pulled into the alley with at least a half-dozen or so pies to be carried into the shop. Which, now that Claire thought about it, probably meant Ruth was compensated for her contribution in the same way Claire compensated Ben or Esther or Eli when something they made sold at Heavenly Treasures. Still, even with that, the money Ruth made from a handful of pies each week had to be considerably less than what she’d made working at Shoo Fly six days a week, unless . . .

  “Do you, by any chance, happen to know whose name is on the lease for that space?” she asked.

  Harold paused his fingers against his stubbled chin. “Shoo Fly? I imagine the parents—Ruth, Eli, and Benjamin’s, that is. But Al could tell you for sure one way or the other.”

  Al—Al Gussmann. Owner of Gussmann’s General Store and the landlord for most if not all of the businesses on Lighted Way . . .

  “You could ask him next time you see him,” Harold suggested. “It’ll give him a reason to yammer on the way he does.”

  She knew he was talking. Even knew she was missing an opportunity to tease him back. But honestly, the minute he’d mentioned Al, her conscious thought scampered back to her notepad and the pen her fingers were itching to pick up.

  Chapter 8

  The crunch of the sparsely graveled road gave way to silence as Jakob pulled the department-issued sedan onto the shoulder and cut the engine. Glancing across the seat, Claire’s eyes mingled with his before traveling, together, toward the dirt driveway on the opposite side of the street. The season’s early nightfall made it difficult to discern specifics, but the glow of lantern lights made the outlines of certain things easy to pick out.

  To the left of the driveway, and about twenty yards in, were rows of matching rectangular objects lining the vacant field—rectangles Claire knew were all gunmetal gray, the chosen buggy color for the Lancaste
r sect of the Old Order Amish. To the right, under a temporary tent lit by lantern light, were all of the horses, each one sporting a blanket to keep the animal warm in the chilly December air.

  Down the driveway, beyond the buggies and the tent, were flashes of movement; people Claire knew from experience to be clad in simple black coats waiting in line to enter the farmhouse for the viewing part of the funeral. The part of the line that had made it inside the home was surely filing, one by one, past the deceased. Only this time, instead of there being one simple pine casket with a single body lying in rest, there would be two caskets, likely side by side, with the bodies of Mary and Daniel Esch, clothed completely in white.

  The bodies themselves would be embalmed as per state regulations, but there would be no makeup, no attempt to doctor them up for the benefit of the living. Because in death, as they’d been in life, the Amish were modest people . . .

  “Are you ready for this?” Jakob asked, his voice pulling her attention back inside the car and onto him.

  Claire ran her fingers through her auburn-colored hair and then let them drift down to her lap and his waiting hand. “I know I only spoke with them for a few moments at Ruth and Samuel’s wedding, but they both seemed so nice, so unassuming. It just doesn’t make any sense that someone would kill them.”

  “Murder rarely makes sense to anyone but the killer.” He squeezed her hand and then nudged his chin toward the road. “Well? Shall we?”

  Nodding, she opened her car door and stepped out, the quick pop of the gravel beneath her shoes echoing in the still night air. Glancing left and then right, she crossed around the front of the car and joined Jakob on the other side. “Do you think there will be any issues with you being here? From Bishop Hershberger or anyone else?”