A Killer Carol

by Laura Bradford

  Esther stopped, mid-chew. “It was better? To have Jakob outside?”

  Uh-oh.

  “With Abe,” she rushed to add. It wasn’t the whole truth, of course, but she wasn’t ready to wiggle that loose tooth just yet. Besides, she was there to learn what she could about the one suspect who could bump Ruth and Samuel off the list completely, not engage in the kind of conversation that would have her bawling in no time. “So what about now?” she asked. “Do you ever see him anymore? Now that he’s English?”

  “No. I have not seen him since he left. I see only Greta now.”

  Again, Claire’s gaze returned to the food table and the woman who’d lost both her parents to a senseless act of violence. “I’ve never heard you mention her before today . . .”

  “I see her on Sundays when there is church in our district, but that is the only time. Eli does not think well of the Chupps.”

  “Is it because of their strictness?”

  Like a periscope rising from the ocean’s waters, Esther straightened her shoulders and her neck; scanned the tables, the yard, and the farmhouse doorway; and then pushed the plate and its pie in front of Claire. “Lloyd and Greta like to make problems where there are none. That is why Eli does not speak when Lloyd is near, why he will only stand near him when others—like Benjamin—are there, too. He says when others are near, Lloyd cannot say things were said that were not said, or say things were done that were not done.

  “Perhaps if Abe had done that, too, he would have been in the barn today with Mary and Daniel instead of sitting on a bench, trying to see them for the last time through the crack of a door.”

  Chapter 19

  Claire was halfway down the driveway when she spotted the twenty-something pacing back and forth behind the barn, smoking a cigarette as if his life depended on it. That voice in her head, the one that knew she should have been back at the shop an hour ago, told her to keep walking—to make her way to the bottom of the driveway . . . to cross the street . . . to get in the car.

  But it was the other voice, the one dictated by her own endless curiosity that won in the end, pulling her off her intended path and putting her square onto the one Tommy Warren was practically wearing into the ground.

  “So how is Abe holding up?” she asked, stepping around the corner of the barn.

  Startled, Tommy stopped, took an elongated drag on his cigarette, and then dropped it onto the ground, toeing it into smithereens. “I don’t know. I offered to go out to the cemetery with him after the caskets were in the ground, but he opted to follow behind the procession with that cop you’re dating.”

  “But everyone from the procession came back thirty minutes ago. At least.”

  “Everyone except Abe and your cop.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to correct his choice of pronoun in relation to talk of Jakob, but she wasn’t there yet. In time, yes, but not yet. Instead, she peered around the edge of the barn toward the tables and chairs still inhabited by more people than one might expect, considering the gathering clouds and dropping temperature. Sure enough, the search she’d refused to make prior to that moment yielded no sign of Jakob or Abe. “They sat outside on that bench for three hours. Maybe they drove into town to grab a bite to eat where it was warm.”

  “Abe wouldn’t do that without checking in first.” Tommy pulled a pack of cigarettes from his pocket, fished out the last smoke, and let it dangle between his lips while he retrieved his lighter. “Especially when he knows we’re waiting here for him,” he corrected, thumbing the needed flame to life.

  Nodding, she traveled her gaze toward the field beyond, the stark brown of the harvested earth stirring a listlessness inside her. “I love this time of year for the holidays, but it always seems kind of wrong when the fields look like this. They’re supposed to be lush and green and filled with promise.”

  Tommy’s answering laugh echoed around them. “You haven’t been out here before, have you?”

  “I’m in Amish country all the time.”

  “Nah, I’m talking here”—he pointed his now-lit cigarette at the ground—“at Chupp’s.”

  “I was here the other night, same as you, remember? For the viewing?”

  “I meant during the day.”

  “Then no.”

  “I figured as much. Because that field right there”—he led her eyes back to the field with his chin—“won’t look any different come spring.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because Lloyd farms like he does everything else.”

  “Meaning?”

  “He doesn’t. He just waits for the magic wand to do it for him.”

  It was her turn to laugh. “As if.”

  “Exactly. But folks feel bad for Greta, so they buy her jams and jellies, and throw just enough odd jobs in Lloyd’s direction so that they don’t have to sell or move . . . yet.” He took a quick drag of nicotine, his jaw tensing. “But Abe? The one who works like a dog all the time? Who still, even now, won’t speak ill about any of them? Yeah, he’s the one who’s made to sit on a bench in thirty-degree weather for three hours to mourn people who turned their back on him . . . And the kicker? He does it!”

  It was a frustration and an anger she knew every bit as well as the tightness moving its way up her throat. “I struggle with the whole banning thing, too. All the time. But it’s what Abe knows, what he was raised to believe. Like Jakob.”

  “Yeah, well, if you ask me, Abe’s too good for all of them.”

  “You and Abe are really close, aren’t you?”

  “We are. Trishy, too. Been that way for years.” He inhaled hard, exhaled harder. “Maw said it was like we filled the hole our dad left in our hearts with Abe.”

  “Did you?”

  He flicked some ash onto the ground and then took another drag. “I don’t know. Seems like psychobabble to me. We were just kids from very different worlds having fun together. I mean, going to Abe’s house was like going to Disneyland for me and Trishy. We’d be outside for hours; chasing barn cats, jumping into hay, and running for what seemed like miles without having to watch for cars. It was fun, you know?”

  “Always the three of you?”

  “When we were little, yeah. Then, when we got a little older, it was more just Abe and me for a while. Trishy was always smarter than me, more driven. She had all these big ideas for her life. So while she was off doing things, I was sticking like glue to what I knew.”

  “Meaning Abe?”

  Tommy nodded. “Abe was driven, too. But he knew I had nothing—not the grades, not the drive, not the anything.”

  Claire leaned against the aging wood at her back. “I don’t believe that. Everyone is good at something. It’s just a matter of finding what that something is.”

  “You sound like Maw.” He took another, longer drag and then resumed his trek from one corner of the barn to the other, his pace a little calmer, a little slower. “Abe is the one who helped me find it.”

  “You mean the thing you’re good at?”

  Tommy nodded.

  “In cabinetry, right?” she prodded.

  Tommy reached the corner farthest from Claire and then spun back around. “More or less. He talked Daniel into letting me hang around them while they worked. And little by little, I got the hang of what they were doing and how I could fit.”

  “And how was that?”

  “At first, it was about trying to make things run more smoothly. Like getting them the right tools when they asked for them instead of just handing them whatever was closest and slowing the process down, like Lloyd was always doing. And then actually retaining what they told me from one day to the next.” He flicked a line of ash onto the ground next to his boot, curled the remaining cigarette inside his thumb, and held his palm up, revealing what looked to be faded paint nestled in the lines of his hand. “One day, I stayed late
because I had nothing else to do. I knew one of the orders needed to be painted and Lloyd wasn’t gonna get it done in time, so I picked up a brush and did it myself. Daniel thought I did a good job and had me paint another set, too. Back then, I just painted everything whatever color Daniel told me to use. A customer wanted white cabinets, I gave them white. They wanted green, I gave them green. But as Abe began to get more creative with the design of the cabinets, I started getting more creative with the paint brush.

  “We had a good thing going,” he said, tossing the cigarette onto the ground. “Until Abe started getting shunned for stuff he wasn’t doing.”

  Bingo . . .

  “And he just took that?” Claire prodded. “He didn’t argue? Didn’t plead his case?”

  “He tried, but the lies kept coming.”

  “And that’s when he started actually doing the things he was accused of doing? The drinking and stuff?”

  “Yep.”

  “So Abe just gave up?” she argued.

  “When Daniel found him doing the very thing Abe had denied doing for so long, yeah, he gave up. And it was a free fall from there.” Tommy reached into his pocket, looked inside the empty cigarette pack, and shoved it back inside, disappointed. “Until Maw got ahold of him and he finally sobered up.”

  “You said something the other night, about him getting to talk to Mary at some point?”

  Tommy’s shrug was limp at best. “All I know is they talked and he put everything out on the table for her—the shunnings he hadn’t earned, the way they affected him, and why, ultimately, he left.”

  “What did she say?”

  “I don’t know. He didn’t tell me.”

  “But you two are best friends . . .”

  “No doubt. But he knew how I felt about them and how riled up I got anytime he tried to see their point. Drove me nuts.”

  “So he shared no real specifics from their conversation? No actual words?”

  “I know he went ahead and told her he’d been dabbling in cabinet work again, and that he and I were going to bid that Breeze Point job as Abe’s Custom Woodworking.” Tommy stared out over the open field, his eyes hooded. “Turns out that was a big mistake. He told his mamm, she told Daniel, and—wham!—we were undercut by the newly resurrected Esch Cabinetry, only now they were calling themselves Esch Custom Woodworking. Cruel all on its own, sure, but magnified a thousandfold when you stop to consider the fact they were now hurting Abe’s unborn son, too.”

  Abe’s unborn son . . .

  That was it. The missing piece—the moment the present and the past had collided with such force the misjudged son Esther had called kind and gentle had finally snapped.

  A chill like nothing she’d ever felt before reverberated deep inside her core. Everything he was saying, everything she was hearing, pointed to Abe as the—

  “Oh . . . hey . . . are you cold?” Before she could speak, before she could even nod, Tommy shoved his hand into his coat pocket, felt around, and pulled out a single folded black glove, his brow furrowed in confusion. “Okay, well, I’m not sure where I left the other one, but here . . . take this. At least one of your hands will be warm.”

  * * *

  * * *

  Looking back, Claire wasn’t entirely sure how she’d managed to extricate herself from behind the Chupps’ barn without arousing Tommy’s suspicions. She had a vague recollection of faking an incoming text and then saying she had to get back to the shop, but considering her current mental state and the way her lungs were protesting her sudden need to run, rather than walk, to her car, it was more than a little possible she’d just up and took off.

  Either way, she was less than ten strides from her car and no more than a mile—tops—from an answer she both wanted and didn’t want all at the same time. If she was right, Abe hadn’t killed his parents. That, in and of itself, was a victory when everything besides the killing pointed to him as a good and decent guy. But if she was right for the reason she suspected, it just meant Abe was about to be saddled with even more pain than he already knew.

  Slowing to a walk, she made a visual sweep of the field across the street, her mind’s eye making short work of the few buggies that remained. In warmer months, the people who had assembled for Daniel and Mary’s funeral service might have lingered even longer over food and conversation. But today, the frigid temperature and impending winter storm had mourners beginning to flock to their buggies. She wished she could tell one buggy from the next the way the Amish were so often able to do, but even without that ability, she was fairly certain Annie’s was not one of the ones that remained. That meant the teen was either at her house with her bishop father or, perhaps, relieving Bill from his temporary duties at Heavenly Treasures.

  “Whoa! Don’t take another step . . . You’re not getting away this time, beautiful lady . . .”

  She stopped, squeezed her eyes closed against the traitorous flutter in her chest, and then slowly turned, her eyes meeting Jakob’s through his open passenger side window. “Oh . . . hey.”

  “I tried to find you when I got back from the cemetery, but Esther was under the impression you’d already left.”

  “Esther spoke to you?”

  He shrugged. “Not in words, no. But after my second or third trek around the house, she caught my attention with a well-timed cough and a pointed glance in this direction. But just as I was heading out to find you, I saw an opportunity to talk to Eli and I took it.”

  “Uh-oh. How’d that go?”

  “About what you’d expect at first. He stood there, looking across the fields, steam practically coming out of his ears. But I talked him through my job as a detective and why I can’t cut corners. Ever. I also told him I don’t believe Ruth had anything to do with this.”

  She felt her body sag against the car in relief. “And Samuel? What about him? Are you ready to cross him off your list, too?”

  “Barring some explosive evidence I’m not privy to at this moment, yeah. He’s essentially off already, anyway.”

  Tucking her hand into her jacket’s front left pocket, she fingered her phone, her thoughts zeroing in on the picture of Ruth’s letter she’d yet to share with Jakob. She knew she should show him, but in light of the item in her other pocket, she opted to hold off just a little longer.

  “I know I should take his name off the board completely, but the second I do that, I’m down to Abe,” Jakob continued. “A guy who was spotted at the scene, had a contentious past with the victims, and had been beaten out by one of them for a job he both wanted and needed. He is, in a word, perfect for the crime.”

  “You don’t seem too happy about that . . .”

  His gaze traveled off her face and onto the road in front of them. “I like the guy. I don’t want it to be him.”

  It was on the tip of her tongue to tell him it wasn’t, but to do so would open herself up to questions she wasn’t ready to answer. Not yet, anyway. Besides, on the off chance she was confusing the whole glove thing with something she’d read in one of Aunt Diane’s paperback mystery novels, it was best to wait.

  “But . . .” He waved away the rest of his sentence and, instead, rested his head against the back of his seat. “Fortunately for me, Eli’s immediate focus is his sister. So when I said I didn’t believe she had any involvement in the murders, the anger he was harboring for me seemed to drain right out of him.”

  “I’m glad.” And she was. Because no matter what was going on between her and Jakob, she wanted better for him than Abe had had. She wanted him to know that he still mattered to his family even when the rules they abided by in life told them he shouldn’t. Everyone deserved that. Navigating life without that certainty was simply unfathomable to her.

  “Hey, I’m really sorry about bailing on our call last night, but it couldn’t be helped.”

  She felt her eyebrow rise at his wording. It
couldn’t be helped? Really?

  “Needless to say, when I finally got into bed, I spent the next hour or so staring at the wall, wishing it was next week and . . .” He sat up straight. “Anyway, I better get back to the office. Maybe, with any luck, something’s come in on the tip line or from some misplaced crime scene report that’ll let me go after someone—anyone—other than Abe Esch for these murders.”

  Deep down inside, even knowing Abe’s suspect status was good for Ruth and Samuel, she realized she hadn’t really wanted it to be him, either. Yes, she’d gone looking for dirt on him, but it hadn’t felt right. After all, Abe had picked himself up off the ground . . . He was married . . . He had a baby on the way . . . He had people who loved and believed in him no matter what . . . And Esther had always liked him . . . Guys like that weren’t supposed to be killers. They were supposed to be happy.

  But as she slipped her hand into her right pocket alongside Tommy Warren’s mateless leather glove, she knew Abe’s happiness was about to be shaken to the core.

  Chapter 20

  Annie was staring up at the ornament tree when Claire stepped back into the shop, her cheeks and hands cold from her brief trip into the alley. “If I could actually feel my fingers and you weren’t Amish, I’d take a picture of you right now,” she said, leaning against the open doorway. “You’ve got the Christmas glow I love to see on people at this time of year.”

  “I sometimes wish Dat and I could have a tree like this. The lights and the ornaments are so pretty.” Annie reached up, tilted a newly arrived ornament bearing the Heavenly, Pennsylvania, name toward her for a closer look, and then let it dangle back down into place. “But it is not the Amish way.”

  “You get to have one here, though, right?”

  “Yah.”

  Claire pushed away from the wall to right an overturned novelty sign and then joined Annie by the tree. “I swung by your house when I left the funeral to see if you were there, but your dat said you’d come here.”