Clouds Without Rain

by Gaus, P. L.

  “I’ll tell them to stop,” Branden said, and cleared his throat with difficulty.

  Robertson rolled his head slowly from side to side and closed his eyes. When he opened them again, he whispered, “Still there, Mike?”

  “Still here,” Branden said, and, “You need to rest.”

  “Seems like I need to pay more attention to Missy Taggert.”

  “She spoke to you?”

  Robertson nodded weakly.

  “She told me she was going to do that, before they flew you up here.”

  “Got my first ride in a chopper and can’t remember a thing,” Robertson complained, and fell silent. When he spoke again, it was in a softer voice. “Seems I need to let Renie Cotton go.”

  “It’s time, Bruce. Renie’s been gone a long time, now. If you can do it, Taggert’s a fine woman.”

  “I’ve always liked her,” Robertson said quietly. “A lot.”

  “I know.”

  “You knew.”

  “I knew. I wouldn’t say it was obvious, but I knew.”

  “Great. Now I suppose you’re gonna tell me Missy knows, too.”

  “I think she does, Bruce.”

  “I always thought Renie would be the only one.”

  “Kinda gives you something to look forward to.”

  “Don’t kid a kidder, Mike.”

  Branden didn’t respond.

  Robertson squeezed his eyes shut and said, “It’s obvious, Professor. She wouldn’t have told me anything of the sort, if she thought I was for sure gonna make it.”

  “Stop being a knucklehead, Bruce.”

  “A knucklehead.”

  “Right. You’re a giant knucklehead, and you’re gonna pull through just fine.”

  Robertson smiled.

  22

  Sunday, August 13

  3:45 P.M.

  CAL Troyer and Bishop Andy Weaver sat in the afternoon heat on the deacon’s bench on the bishop’s front porch, pondering the troubles J. R. Weaver had dropped into the laps of eight district families before he died. They had been sitting there since the big meal the women had served following church services. Several men stood on the porch, listening, sometimes commenting. Others sat in small groups on chairs in the shade under trees. There were three men on hay bales beside the barn, where the roof overhang provided some shade. Among the older men, a few had lit pipes, and several of the younger men smoked cigarettes. A gang of young boys scampered out of one red barn and into another, shouting boisterously in their game of tag. A small group of girls, perhaps nine or ten years old, stood nearby, laughing, taunting, and making open sport of the boys. Older boys stood here and there, vests undone, talking with men, mostly about farming. One couple, a boy and a girl about sixteen, tried to slip unnoticed behind the house and were immediately set upon by younger children, teasing them mercilessly. A woman wearing a white apron over a dark plum dress came out onto the front porch drying her hands on a kitchen towel. She spoke briefly to the bishop and took his coffee mug back into the house. An elder and his wife waved from their buggy beside the fence and then climbed in and started slowly down the gravel drive, headed home.

  Cal was saying, “I don’t know what to tell you, Andy. It could be anybody’s kids mixed in with this.”

  “It’s hard to imagine there are youngsters like that around here,” Andy said morosely.

  “They’re probably not Amish.”

  “I have to assume that two of them are Amish. Or at least that they could be. The people have been asking.”

  Andy took a toothpick from his shirt pocket and began working it silently between two front teeth. He thought for a while and added, “They are common thieves, nothing better. Robbers, but the masks make it so much worse than folk realize.”

  “It’s not your fault,” Cal said.

  “It falls under my authority,” Andy said. “You know the Ordnung. ”

  Cal nodded his understanding. The Ordnung spelled it all out. Even bishops had little choice, it seemed. “How many buggy robberies have there really been?”

  “I know of nine, starting with John R. Weaver.”

  Cal whistled. “Does the sheriff know about all of those?”

  “No, only four.”

  “You should tell the professor,” Cal said and pointed to the small truck coming down the lane. Weaver put his finger to his lips to tell Cal to keep silent about the boys.

  Branden drove slowly up to the house, raising as little dust as he could. He stopped a dozen-odd yards from the house to let the dust settle and climbed out of his air-conditioned cab into bright afternoon sun.

  As he climbed the porch steps, the men who had gathered around to listen to Cal and the bishop departed quietly, some into the house, some onto the lawn. Branden pulled a wooden chair up backwards in front of Cal and Andy and sat down, legs straddling the seat, arms resting on the back.

  Cal said, “Do you know, Mike, how many buggy robberies the sheriff knows about?”

  “Four, maybe five,” Branden said. To Andy, he asked, “Have there been many in your district?”

  “Can’t be sure,” Andy said, holding his toothpick between his teeth. “They’ve been mostly to the north, up around Wines-burg.”

  “They dress Amish, but I doubt they actually are,” Branden said.

  “Small comfort,” Andy said flatly and eyed Cal sideways.

  After a quiet interlude, the bishop remarked, “Larry Yoder’s parents should not have been seeing him, much less taking meals with him. That only encourages a person to continue a sinful lifestyle. But those are just the rules, the Ordnung. Eventually, I’ve got to get the people back into the scriptures. That’s the real crisis of leadership. Getting at the scriptures on which the Ordnung is based.”

  “Few bishops bother anymore,” Cal said.

  “I’m trying for something better, Cal. But there’s a more immediate problem, Professor. Cal and I have been wondering what to do about our eight families. Dozers and dump trucks are going to show up at one of those farms one day, and then we’ll have to know what to do.”

  “How many options do you really have?” Branden asked.

  Weaver asked, “Have you had a chance to talk to that lawyer?”

  “I’ll try tomorrow. After my appointment at the bank.”

  Weaver sighed, looking resigned to the worst. “Jobs in town are out of the question,” he said.

  “Is there nothing else?” Cal asked.

  “You could fight the eviction in court. Get an injunction,” Branden said.

  Weaver shook his head. “We’ve got a collection started among the families of the district to see if we can buy land hereabouts for the men to farm.”

  “Is there that much land for sale?” Cal asked.

  Weaver leaned over on his elbows and shook his head again, eyes cast down at his feet. “Can you drive me up to Cleveland, tomorrow, Cal?”

  Cal answered, “Yes,” with hesitation.

  Weaver stared at his Sunday brogans for a moment and said, “I’ve sent out a dozen or so letters to settlements in other states.”

  Cal shifted forward on the bench. “Moving?” he asked.

  “Maybe Holmes County is no good for us anymore,” Weaver said. “Land values too high. Too much development.”

  “That’s a lot of people to move,” Cal said.

  “I have to preserve the old ways, Cal.”

  “What about a good old-fashioned protest?” Cal offered.

  Weaver seemed puzzled.

  “You know. A sit-in. Lie down in front of the dozers. Something like that.”

  “Resist the developers?” Weaver asked.

  “Yes,” Branden said. “Make it difficult for them to develop the land.”

  “If we did that, there would be a confrontation,” Weaver said. “That’s not the Amish way. It violates the Ordnung. If people are bent on harming us, we avoid them. No, I am still figuring you can get something from your lawyer.”

  “What are you going to do
in the meantime?” Cal asked.

  “Only one thing we can do, Cal. You and I are going to pay a visit tomorrow to the offices of Holmes Estates.”

  “I thought you didn’t want a confrontation,” Cal said.

  “There is nothing in the Ordnung that forbids good horse trading,” Weaver answered wryly.

  23

  Monday, August 14

  9:55 A.M.

  BRANDEN arrived five minutes early for his appointment with the new trustee of J. R. Weaver’s estate and sat in the second-floor hallway of the bank, two doors down from Britta Sommers’s empty office. At precisely 10:00 A.M., the secretary lifted the phone, announced the professor, listened briefly, and then escorted Branden into Ted Brownell’s small room. Brownell appeared young, maybe thirty-five, and sat in a worn gray suit behind a desk cluttered with loose papers and colored file folders.

  Branden stepped forward, offered his hand, and said, “Ted, it’s been a long time. How are you doing?”

  “Nice to see you again, Professor,” Brownell said formally.

  “You graduated maybe fifteen years ago, Ted. I think it’s about time you called me Mike.”

  Brownell shifted uneasily on his feet and said, “Oh, I could never do that, Professor.”

  “What was my nickname then?”

  “Sir?”

  “I get a new nickname from the history majors every few years. What was it when you came through?”

  “I don’t know, Professor.”

  “Sure you do, Ted. These days it’s Doc. I’m sure you must have had one too. About that time it was Getty, I think. Because I started teaching that course on Gettysburg.”

  Brownell’s cheeks flushed a bright rose, as did the tops of his ears. He said, “I don’t know, Professor,” but was altogether unable to mask the smile that formed on his lips.

  Branden eyed him mischievously for a few seconds, laughed, and said, “Anyway, please call me Mike.”

  “OK, Professor.”

  Branden took a seat at the side of Brownell’s desk and laid his right forearm along the top edge of the desk. Leaning forward casually, he said, “I understand Britta Sommers transferred John Weaver’s trust to you.”

  Brownell stretched his arms out to indicate all of the papers and folders on the desktop. “I’ve only now started going through the thing. Sommers was very thorough, it seems, and meticulous.”

  “What all have you got there, Ted?” Branden asked.

  “It looks like the usual records. Stocks, bonds, and mutual funds. Papers of incorporation. Partnerships. A will. Some very current listings of his land holdings, including a recent sale—quite large, really—and estimates of net worth over the years. That sort of thing.”

  “What’s in the will, Ted?”

  “I can’t tell you that, Professor. It hasn’t all been executed, yet. Weaver’s lawyer is working through it, and I’m supposed to get the figures to him this week.”

  “Do you think his lawyer could tell me about the will? What’s his name?”

  “Henry DiSalvo, and I doubt it. There’s a provision that makes the will public only after a certain period of time has elapsed.”

  “I know DiSalvo,” Branden said, casually. “How much time before he announces the will?”

  “Professor, I really can’t say.”

  Branden noticed an uneasiness in Brownell’s voice and changed the subject, trying a different tack. “You went to grad school, didn’t you, Ted?”

  “I took an M.B.A. at Miami University. Then Capital University Law School.”

  “You’ve done well.”

  “I should have practiced law, Professor. Banks don’t pay very much,” Brownell said, fingering the lapel on his well-worn suit.

  Branden let a moment pass, and then Brownell said, “You know, I saw Weaver the day he died.”

  “I didn’t know that.”

  “Yes. He was here to go over some new papers that morning. His last land sale. He and his lawyer had all the work done, and Weaver wanted copies of all the deeds and papers put into his file, here. He did everything that way, it seems, and now I’ve got a desk full of documents to go through.”

  “Any idea how much he was worth?” Branden asked, nonchalantly.

  “Couldn’t say. Wouldn’t be able to tell you anyway. It’s all going to come out when his will is read.”

  “At the right time?” Branden said.

  “And with the right people present,” Brownell answered. “Look, Professor. If you want to get the details on the last big sell-off, they’ll have it all down at the map office. Or it might have gotten to the auditor by now. The recorder will have it in a few days at the most, and it’ll be public record, then. Probably is now, anyway.”

  “Oh, I can wait, Ted. I was just hoping you could give me some of the details.”

  Brownell gave an apologetic shrug of his shoulders.

  “Maybe Britta Sommers’s end of it, then?” Branden asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “Like how much Sommers had mixed in with Weaver’s business.”

  “She shouldn’t have any,” Brownell said and sat up straighter. His eyes focused more sharply on Branden.

  Branden remembered the notations on the numerous files Weaver had kept at his home, indicating a small percentage had gone to Sommers from many of his deals. Discreetly, he said, “Nothing with Sommers?”

  Sternly, Brownell said, “It’s bank policy. Trust officers are not to involve themselves in the business affairs of their clients. She could have lost her job.”

  Branden said, “I don’t suppose she has come in recently?”

  “We don’t expect her. Tuesday last week was her last day on the job.”

  Outside, Branden walked north on Clay Street. He was troubled by the revelation that Britta Sommers had rounded off the crisp edges of professional ethics, according to Brownell. He cut across the lawn in front of the courthouse and took Monroe to the county recorder’s offices. Distracted, he barely greeted the two ladies at the front counter. At the computer terminal in the back of the room, he punched mechanically on the keyboard and immediately found a string of entries recording land transactions between Holmes Estates, and Weaver and Sommers. The numbers added up in his mind with a strange sedating effect, so that eventually the millions seemed like trivial sums to him. So that the magnitude of the land sales no longer astonished him. And he realized that there might very well be a good reason why Britta Sommers would leave town so suddenly.

  24

  Monday, August 14

  11:30 A.M.

  HENRY DiSalvo’s one-room law office was on the second floor of an old downtown building. The only indication of its location was faded brown lettering on a narrow, street-level door. Branden pushed through the door and climbed the staircase to the second floor. He knocked on the door at the top of the steps and walked into the office. DiSalvo sat with his back to the door, typing steadily on the keys of an outmoded computer. He turned around, saw the professor, and rose to shake hands.

  “Mike,” DiSalvo said. “Good to see you.”

  “Henry,” Branden said, and glanced around the old-fashioned office, little changed from the days when DiSalvo had managed young Branden’s finances after his parents’ fatal car crash.

  DiSalvo himself had aged markedly in recent years, Branden noted, and what hair remained was white. His tattered suit hinted of an impoverished state, though in fact he was one of the wealthiest men in Millersburg. His office was spartan in appointments, cluttered everywhere with papers, folders, and briefs. An odd assortment of gray metal desks, in a style popular in the fifties, stood along the walls. The floor was of dark wood, the finish worn through in patches. There were no rugs or carpeting, and dust bunnies had gathered in the corners and under furniture. The frames of the photos, plaques, and diplomas were dusty on the top edges, and some hung crooked on the wall. A small window air conditioner rattled and hummed near the floor, at the bottom of one of the tall, street-side windows
. Most of the drapes were pulled closed against the sun, and with only the desk lamp burning next to DiSalvo’s computer, dusk seemed to have fallen in the room.

  DiSalvo came around his desk, moved a stack of papers and books from a chair in front, and offered Branden a seat. As he walked to the other side of his desk and sat down, he asked, “Is your parents’ trust still producing for you?”

  “Very well, Henry. You did an excellent job.”

  “A tragedy, how your parents died,” DiSalvo reflected. “I hope the money has been a help to you over the years.”

  “It was a great help at first, in graduate school and later. Now, I let it accumulate and pay a secretary out of the proceeds.”

  “Secretaries!” DiSalvo exclaimed. “By the time I explain to them what I want, I could have done it myself.”

  “I’ve got a good one, Henry, and I suspect you could find one, too,” Branden said gently, smiling.

  DiSalvo smiled back and then laughed outright. “Not at my age,” he said. “But I doubt you came here to harass me about my personality.”

  “I need to talk to you about J. R. Weaver’s will. His recent land deals, too.”

  “You’re mixed up in that?” DiSalvo asked.

  “Helping the sheriff.”

  “How is he?”

  “Not good. Still at the Akron burn unit. I’m going up there again tonight.”

  “Let me know,” DiSalvo said. “As far as Weaver goes, I really can’t discuss it now. How about Wednesday morning?” DiSalvo turned the pages of his desk calendar and held a pen ready to ink in an appointment.

  Branden said, “Fine. Eleven A.M. suits me.”

  DiSalvo wrote on his calendar and nodded.

  Branden rose and said, “Can you tell me anything about his will?”

  “Not really,” DiSalvo said, seated. “It can’t be disclosed as yet.”

  “Why?”

  “A certain provision says I’m to hold it until specific conditions have been met. I can’t file it until then.”