Hearse and Buggy

by Laura Bradford

  “Why did you say nothing?” Benjamin accused. “Did you think I could not help, Eli?”

  “You would look the other way! As you did with the money he stole.”

  Benjamin’s jaw tightened in matching fashion. “I did not look the other way!”

  “You made me stand up … in front of church … and seek forgiveness for defending my family!” Eli said as he waved a gloved hand in the air.

  “You threatened a man, Eli!”

  “Mr. Snow is no man! He is a crook!”

  “Was a crook,” Jakob’s even-toned voice cut through the argument playing out in front of them. “Was a crook. Walter Snow is dead, remember?”

  “As he deserves,” Eli hissed.

  Claire closed her eyes and tried to block out the statement, but it was too late. The words were out there, and they’d been spoken by the person who appeared to be Jakob’s chief suspect.

  Benjamin opened his mouth to dress down his younger brother but shut it when Jakob waved him off. “Do you not hear what I’m saying? This fire couldn’t have been started by Walter Snow. He’s dead.”

  “But the stolen pie boxes …” Eli raked an angry hand down his face. “And the shattered milk bottles. He was not dead for those.”

  Claire felt Howard’s stare and put words to its meaning. “He was for the paint.”

  The weight of three additional sets of eyes turned in her direction.

  “Paint?” Jakob repeated.

  “There was no paint,” Eli countered.

  Howard’s shoulder brushed against Claire’s in a show of solidarity. “Someone threw paint on Ruth’s front window just the other day.”

  A strangled sound emerged from Eli’s lips as he pushed past Jakob on the stairs. When he reached the top landing, he pointed at the front window. “There is no paint.”

  “That’s because I cleaned it off myself, son. And I can say, with absolute certainty, that there was much too much of it to have been anything but deliberate.”

  “But I know of no paint.”

  Claire took a deep breath, then released it into the night, aware of the potential implications of her words yet knowing they needed to be said. “Because she didn’t want you to know, Eli. She didn’t want to upset you any more than you already were.”

  Jakob dropped his head into his hands only to lift it once again. “How come this stuff wasn’t reported?”

  “I meant to tell you about the paint,” Claire offered. “I really did. I even took pictures with my cell phone to show you. But I guess it slipped my mind in light of everything else going on. I’m sorry.”

  If he accepted her apology, he didn’t show it, choosing to focus on the Miller brothers instead. “I am here in Heavenly as a police officer. The Ordnung doesn’t prevent you from speaking to me.”

  Any residual anger drained out of Benjamin. “I did not know of anything but the note.”

  Jakob looked up at Eli and waited.

  “I do not know why I did not come to you.” Eli leaned against the window in defeat.

  “Well, it needs to stop. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening.” Jakob pushed off the step and stood. “If we’d known, we would have stepped up patrols around the shop. That alone might have been enough to discourage whoever is doing this from trying to burn your shop to the ground.”

  Benjamin broke the silence that followed, his words bringing a catch to Claire’s heart. “Will you help us now?”

  Jakob nodded, any emotion he may have felt at the unexpected request firmly in check. “Can you think of anyone who may have some sort of an ax to grind with either Ruth or your family at large?”

  “No.”

  Eli’s response took a beat longer but matched that of his older brother.

  “Have you seen or heard from anyone involved in that altercation you had outside that bar a few months back?”

  Benjamin stiffened at Jakob’s question but said nothing, opting to wait for Eli’s answer just like everyone else.

  “No!”

  “How about that Englishman who filed a complaint after you cut him off in your buggy two weeks ago?”

  “Eli?”

  Eli averted his brother’s eyes and directed his answer at Jakob. “I do not think so.”

  Without breaking eye contact with Eli, Jakob aimed his next question at Claire and Howard. “Anything going on among the business owners around here? Any sort of ill feelings or issues you think I should know about?”

  “I don’t think so, but I haven’t had the shop for all that long.” Claire handed the question over to the patriarch of Lighted Way. “Mr. Glick?”

  Howard anchored his hands against his upper arms. “Everyone gets along real well around here. Can’t imagine anyone who’d set out to hurt Ruth like this.”

  Ruth.

  The sweetest, most gentle human being Claire had ever met …

  “Mr. Glick is right. Ruth is loved by everyone.”

  For the first time in nearly ten minutes, Jakob turned his gaze on Claire, his words sending a shiver of fear down her spine. “That doesn’t appear to be the case any longer.”

  Chapter 20

  They were silent on the way to the inn, the smell of smoke clinging to their clothes and hair.

  “If Mr. Glick hadn’t chosen tonight to stay late at his shop, Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe wouldn’t be standing the way that it is.” Jakob drove slowly down Lighted Way, peering up at each shop and each home that they passed. “The Millers were lucky. Very, very lucky.”

  She tried his words on for size. “I’m not so sure Eli sees the luck.”

  “That’s what happens when you allow yourself to be blinded by things like rage or resentment.” He released a sigh. “I was guilty of that myself for a time.”

  She glanced at him across the center console, the tense but handsome lines of his face intriguing in the dashboard light. “Oh?”

  He met her gaze briefly before turning it back on the empty road. “I was so bitter about being banned by my family that I didn’t embrace my police work in the way that I should have. I was doing what I wanted, what I’d been called to do, but I wasn’t enjoying any of it because I kept looking back at the door that had been slammed shut in my face.”

  The honesty of Jakob’s words left her momentarily speechless. She’d been in that place once, too. “So what changed?” she finally asked.

  “Me. My attitude. When I started looking forward instead of backward, my vision became far less cloudy.”

  The car left the cobblestone surface of Lighted Way in favor of smooth pavement, the irony of the transition not lost on Claire. She leaned her head against the seatback and stared out at the passing scenery. “Too bad we didn’t have that kind of hard-earned wisdom when we were Eli’s age.”

  Jakob nodded. “That guy is his own worst enemy, you know?” The car slowed to a near crawl as Sleep Heavenly sprang into view at the bend in the road. “I mean, look at what happened tonight. What could very possibly have been avoided if he wasn’t the loose cannon everyone knows him to be.”

  She looked up at the inn as they pulled into the near-empty lot, the soft glow of her aunt’s wall sconces peeking out through the parlor draperies. There was certainly a measure of truth in the detective’s assertion regarding Eli, but there were also gaps Claire had failed to fill simply because they hadn’t fit with questions she’d been asked.

  “I realize I haven’t known him long, but there’s more to Eli than just a quick temper.” She shifted in the passenger seat as Jakob cut the engine.

  Dropping his hands from the steering wheel, he looked from her to the inn and back again. “Oh?”

  “He’s also very caring and sweet.”

  “Tell me.”

  She glanced out the window at her aunt’s home, a sense of peace and contentment settling around her for the first time since the call that had sent them running toward town. “He looks after his sister with such love and respect that you can’t help but notice his devotio
n. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, not a day goes by that his buggy doesn’t show up at random times throughout the day just so he can see if she needs anything.”

  Jakob’s nod was barely perceptible but it was indication enough that he was listening. And absorbing.

  “Sometimes that help involves carrying in a shipment of pie boxes that have just arrived. Sometimes it has him carrying the trash out to the bin out back. And sometimes it even has him manning the register while she attends to a special bakery order in the kitchen,” she continued. “But whatever it is, he never seems to complain.”

  “So Ruth and Eli are close then?”

  “As close as any siblings I’ve ever seen.” And it was true. “Benjamin helps, too, but he is more behind the scenes. Like dropping off fresh milk each morning before even Ruth arrives at the store.”

  A wry smile crept across Jakob’s face. “Ahhh, yes. Benjamin Miller. Ever the workhorse.”

  She took a deep breath and then let it release, the man’s open sarcasm difficult to ignore. “You don’t like Benjamin, do you?”

  His smile turned into a soft laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

  “Yes.”

  He palmed the lower quadrant of his face with his left hand, then let it slide down his chin to reveal a mouth that was no longer smiling. “Growing up Amish, we were not supposed to idolize anyone.” Perfection belongs to God and God alone. But, that said, we all had people we respected. Mine was my father.

  “My father was one of the hardest-working men I knew … and that’s saying a lot when the only people you knew were Amish.” Jakob slowly leaned his head against the headrest, his eyes wide yet unfocused. “All I wanted for so long was to be big enough to be just like him. To be the kind of man everyone respected. And, most importantly, to be the kind of man he could respect.”

  She held her breath as he continued.

  “But, try as I might, he’d always come home from whatever barn we helped raise or every church service we attended talking about Benjamin Miller.” His voice morphed into one much deeper. “Ezekiel Miller has got a real hard worker in his son Benjamin. Why, you should see what he did today …”

  The emotion that played across his face broke her heart. Reaching across the center console, she touched his cheek with her hand, the softness of his skin catching her by surprise. She pulled her hand back as he turned his startled eyes in her direction. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

  He stopped her hand midway. “Don’t.”

  She glanced down at her lap, unsure of what to say.

  He released his hold yet kept his focus squarely on her face. “Look, I shouldn’t be unloading this on you. It’s too much. Let’s just leave it at the fact that there’s some bad blood between Benjamin and me, okay?”

  She wanted to argue, to urge him to continue, but she didn’t. She’d broken the spell the second she touched him.

  “Okay,” she whispered.

  An awkward silence settled around them only to be broken by the sound of Jakob clearing his throat. “So, uh, Ruth and Eli are close, you say?”

  She worked her lower lip inward and nodded.

  “Then why would Ruth keep so much from him? Why wouldn’t she tell him about the paint? And why wouldn’t they tell Benjamin?”

  Grateful for the return to solid ground, she did her best to answer with what she knew to be true. “Like everyone else, I guess, Ruth hates to see Eli get so worked up. The way he got so upset over the pie boxes and the note … Well, I guess she wanted to save him the additional angst. Especially in light of the trouble he’d faced at home over his public threats toward Mr. Snow.”

  “So she looks out for him, too, then,” he mused. “Okay, but why not tell the almighty big brother? Surely he could make it all stop on his own.”

  His tone hung heavy in the air only to be waved away by his right hand. “I’m sorry. That was over the top.”

  “I think Eli is trying to find his footing in the world. He wants to take care of things himself rather than always running to Benjamin for help.” She picked at a piece of lint on her pants. “At least that’s what Esther has said.”

  “I guess I can understand that. I mean, I know what it was like to be in that guy’s shadow from three farms away. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to live in it twenty-four/seven.”

  At a loss for how to respond, she merely nodded. And yawned.

  Jakob glanced at his watch. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was. Your aunt is probably worried sick.”

  “Actually, she’s probably fast asleep in preparation for a new round of guests slated for check-in tomorrow.”

  Slowly, he turned his head left, then right. “I was thinking the lot looked rather empty.”

  She pointed to the white sedan in the far corner of the lot. “That’s Diane’s car. It only moves when she has to pick up bulk supplies for the inn or on the rare occasion I take it for a spin. The rest of the time it pretty much stays put.” Then, shifting her hand right, she gestured toward the tired-looking black pickup nestled under the largest shade tree in the lot. “And that one belongs to Mr. Streen.”

  Jakob snorted. “He’s rather irritating, isn’t he?”

  “He can be, most of the time. But every once in a while, he surprises us by being really interesting.” She searched her memory for some of the fun facts she’d learned over the past few weeks. “He’s kept a list of every book he’s read since he was ten years old. And in those fourteen years, he’s read something like two thousand books. And the lion’s share of those books were nonfiction.”

  “A bookworm, huh?”

  “I guess,” she said. “But this guy loves to learn, and he loves to share what he’s learned, too. In fact it’s from talking to him that I have to wonder whether the troubles Ruth has been facing could be some sort of a hate crime against the Amish.”

  “If Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe was the only Amish-run shop on Lighted Way, I’d be inclined to agree. But it’s not.”

  She hadn’t thought of that. But now that Jakob had pointed it out, she couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid. “See? That’s why I’d make a lousy detective.”

  It was his turn to reach across the seat, the warmth of his hand on her arm making her swallow. Hard. “Hey, I’m not saying the notion of a hate crime isn’t a possibility. Especially in light of the fact that both the paint and the fire happened after Walter Snow’s murder. I’m just saying that Ruth’s shop isn’t the only Amish store around here, yet it’s the only one being targeted.”

  “Maybe it’s not Ruth who is being targeted,” she said, the notion surprising her as much as it did Jakob.

  A shrill whistle escaped the detective’s lips. “Wow. That’s certainly something that—”

  “Hey, I’m sorry. I have no idea where that just came from.” She brought her hands to her face and rubbed at her eyes, the absurdity of her amateur sleuthing making her laugh. “Sleep deprivation, perhaps?”

  “No. That actually has some potential …” And just like that, Jakob Fisher slipped into a world of his own only to emerge with a question. “If it’s not Ruth they’re after, then whom? Eli? Benjamin?”

  She could only shrug.

  Slowly, he traced his right index finger around the steering wheel. “The obvious would be Eli. I’m quite certain a kid like that has made his fair share of enemies—not the least of which are the kids he got in that bar brawl with a few months back.”

  “But this stuff has only been happening for a few weeks,” she countered.

  “True.” He pulled his hand through his hair and threw out another idea. “And what about Benjamin? Any chance he’s made an enemy?”

  “I can’t imagine he has.”

  She felt the weight of his gaze on the side of her face for several long moments before he responded. “You think pretty highly of Benjamin, don’t you?”

  “I think he’s very genuine.”

  “Genuine,” he echoed quietly.

/>   She resisted the urge to nod. She didn’t need to push Benjamin’s many attributes in Jakob’s face. He’d had enough of that in his life already. Instead, she searched for a way to explain the man Benjamin Miller was today. “He’s a quiet kind of soul, the way most Amish are, I guess. But there always seems to be a lot going on behind his eyes. I guess it’s all the hurt he’s been through.”

  “Hurt? What hurt?”

  “His wife died not long after they married, and—”

  The sound of Jakob’s gasp brought her up short. “Elizabeth is dead?”

  She met his eyes, the pain she found there so strong it dulled all hint of a sparkle from their depths. “You knew his wife?”

  The only sound that followed her question came from the crickets outside the car and the thump-thump inside her chest. But just as she began to feel as if it was best to leave him alone, he spoke, the agony in his eyes enveloping every word he spoke. “Like my father, Elizabeth preferred Benjamin to me as well.”

  Chapter 21

  “You’re up early.” Diane Weatherly looked up from the assortment of measuring spoons and ingredients spread out across the counter and smiled. “What time did you get in last night?”

  “After midnight.” She wandered over to the breakfast nook and climbed onto the nearest stool. “Making your welcome cookies?”

  “I am. Two couples are checking in this afternoon. One is from Nashville, Tennessee, and the other is from a small town in upstate New York. And both are retired.”

  It was impossible to miss the excitement in her aunt’s voice. Even after twenty years of running the inn, the woman still got a kick out of what she did. And now that Claire was living in Heavenly, she understood it completely.

  “You don’t know, do you?”

  Diane held a bottle of vanilla above her mixing bowl and poured a teaspoon of the pleasant-smelling liquid with a practiced hand. “Know what, dear?”