Harmless as Doves: An Amish-Country Mystery

by P. L. Gaus

  “They’ll use those,” Orton said over the phone, “but now they also have the Raider Twenty-fives. The RBS-25. They’re much faster.”

  “We’ll be on one of those?”

  “No, no,” Orton said. “You boys are going out with me, on our police skiff. We’re putting her into the water now. You just pull in at the marina behind the station, and I’ll get you suited up with life vests, because the wind is starting to chop it up, out on the bay. Can you boys swim?”

  “Yes,” Ricky replied, insulted. “We can swim.”

  “Good,” Orton said, taking scant note of Niell’s tone. “We probably won’t see any action, because we’ll be bringing up the rear. And if Render is up there on the Manatee, maybe on a go-fast boat, it’ll be the Coast Guard helicopters that have to chase him down.”

  “We wouldn’t be able to keep up?” Ricky asked.

  “Not even close, Sergeant. Compared to those Coast Guard boats, our skiff is like a bathtub with a motor hanging over the edge. I just thought you might like a boat ride up the river. We’ll hang back and let the sheriff do the hard work. Then, if they do manage to flush Old Connie out of some hole, he’ll have to come back past us.”

  30

  Friday, October 9

  2:40 P.M.

  “MICHAEL,” CAROLINE scolded into her phone, “you let the sheriff hunt down this Render.” She was riding beside Cal in his truck, going south on State Route 83 toward the Doughty Valley, with a cold gray sprinkle of rain wetting the windshield.

  “We’ll just be in a police skiff,” Branden said. “We’re just going to be observers.”

  “Is Ricky driving that boat?” Caroline shot out. “Because if he is, I don’t want you anywhere near it!”

  “Where is this coming from?” Branden asked, surprised by her intensity.

  “Last time you were on a boat with Ricky Niell,” she said, “he almost got you killed.”

  Branden laughed, “That was over ten years ago, Caroline.”

  “I don’t care, Michael.”

  “We won’t be on the lead boat.”

  “I don’t care. I don’t like it.”

  “I’ll be careful. Besides, the life vest is almost bigger than I am.”

  More frustrated than normal, Caroline handed the phone to Cal and said, “You talk to him.”

  Cal held the wheel with one hand, took the phone, and pulled to the side of the road. “Mike,” he said. “You going after Render on a boat?”

  Branden explained the plan to search the Manatee River fish camps, and said, “Tell her we’ll hang back in the rear, Cal.”

  “He says he’ll hang back,” Cal said to Caroline.

  “And you believe him?” Caroline scoffed.

  “She doesn’t believe you,” Cal said into the phone.

  “This is why we’re down here, Cal. We think Conrad Render killed Glenn Spiegle. We know he killed Jacob Miller. Probably he killed Billy Winters, too.”

  “I know,” Cal said looking to Caroline. “But you can let the sheriff down there run this search for Conrad Render, right?”

  “Sure, Cal. Tell her that.”

  To Caroline, Cal said, “He says he’ll let the sheriff down there run this search.”

  Caroline shouted toward the phone, “Not the lead boat, Michael! Don’t you put yourself on that lead boat!”

  Branden gave Cal a self-conscious laugh and said, “Tell her I’ll hang back, OK, Cal?”

  “Right,” Cal said and switched off. He handed the phone back to Caroline and said, “He promised he’ll hang back. He’s not going to be on the lead boat.”

  Agitated, Caroline asked, “And you believe that?”

  Cal pulled back onto the road. “This isn’t like you,” he said. “You usually don’t fret over him like this.”

  Caroline sighed out frustration. “Everything hits me harder, these days. Everything seems so much more troublesome than it should be.”

  “When we’re done here at Jeremiah’s, I want you to go out to Darba’s with me. I want you to talk with Katie Shetler. We’ll try to figure out why you’re so sad.”

  “I know why I’m sad, Cal. It’s all about Eddie.”

  “Yes, but you can let it go. You can set the pain aside.”

  “I told you. I don’t know how to do that.”

  “That’s what I want you to talk to Katie about.”

  “OK, but first, why do you want me to talk with Vesta?”

  “I thought we could both talk with her. She’s going to be sad about her father, and she doesn’t have the resources of her family anymore.”

  “She didn’t really like her father, Cal.”

  “Yes,” Cal said, “and that may make it worse for her.”

  * * *

  Cal and Caroline knocked on the front door at Jeremiah Miller’s house, but no one answered. From the barn behind the house, they heard the high scream of a power saw cutting into wood, so they stepped off the porch into the cold drizzle to follow a concrete walkway around to the back of the house. The walkway led further back to a tall, red bank barn, and on the high side of the bank, in the corner of the barn, there was a door into the top level. As Jeremiah’s saw cut into the wood again, a blower at the side of the barn’s top level exhausted dark sawdust through a vent pipe, onto a dark, rain-soaked cone of sawdust on the ground below. It was walnut, today, Cal thought, as he pulled the door open and smelled the wood. It was the sweet aroma of walnut, the best of the forest hardwoods.

  Inside, Cal stepped up to the screened cage where Jeremiah kept his power tools and lumber. He pounded loudly on the cage door and waved to Jeremiah when he turned to look up from his saw. Pulling his earplugs out, Jeremiah switched off his saw, and then he stepped to the far wall and turned off the gasoline engine that ran his drive belts up in the rafters. He brushed the fine, black sawdust off his denim jeans and the sleeves of his blue shirt and stepped out of his workshop cage.

  Jeremiah shook hands with Cal and nodded a greeting to Caroline, and Cal said, “We thought maybe Vesta would be here.”

  Jeremiah led them back toward the house, saying, “They’ll be back soon. They all went over to Becks Mills in the buggy.”

  “Is Vesta doing OK?” Cal asked, as he followed Jeremiah toward the house.

  Jeremiah pulled the back door open, and brought Cal and Caroline into the kitchen, where he helped them out of their raincoats. “She seems fine to me, Cal. She’s not sad, if that’s what you mean.”

  Cal looked to Caroline and back to Jeremiah. “It’s going to hit her sometime, Jeremiah.”

  “Mostly,” Jeremiah said, “I think she’s sad for her family.”

  There came the clatter of buggy wheels and horse’s hooves on the gravel of the drive outside, and Jeremiah pulled curtains aside to look out over the sink. Letting the curtain go slack, he said, “They’re back.”

  * * *

  While Jeremiah and Sara unloaded groceries in the kitchen, Crist and Vesta sat with Cal and Caroline in the front parlor. Vesta was dressed English, in a new pair of loose-fitting Levi jeans, with penny loafers on her feet and a button-front blouse with a bright orange hibiscus pattern. She had a new watch on her left wrist, a black digital Timex that still had the shiny gold price tag wrapped around the strap, and she wore a set of plastic pearls around her neck. Her hair was still up in an Amish bun, but she wore no prayer cap. As small as a woman could be and still not be thought a child, she wore a nervous pride in her new look, seeming to Caroline to be both happy for the transition she was making to the English side of life, and anxious about her new clothes.

  Caroline sat across from her and said, “You look nice in your new outfit, Vesta.”

  Vesta smiled but glanced away, and Crist said, “We still have some shopping to do.”

  Vesta turned back and asked, “Is my father really dead?”

  “Yes,” Cal said. “He was murdered yesterday, down in Florida.”

  Vesta shook her head, seeming more angry than sad. “He sho
uld never have gone down there,” she said and looked away again. “He should never have poked his nose into any of it.”

  “Into any of what?” Cal asked.

  “Herr Spiegle’s business,” Vesta answered, eyes still averted. After a pause, she turned back to Cal and said, “He said he had found out why Herr Spiegle really came up to Ohio in the first place. He said it was going to be his big payday.”

  “Why?” Caroline asked. “Why a big payday?”

  Crist answered. “Everybody knew Herr Spiegle had a lot of cash money. And Jacob Miller wanted him to buy his land for cash. But Bishop Shetler ruled that Herr Spiegle should buy some of Mony Detweiler’s land, instead.”

  Vesta cut in. “My father thought he could get Herr Spiegle to marry me. And the last time he came back from Florida, he told me that Herr Spiegle would have to marry me, now. And he told me I’d have to do as I was told. He said I was responsible for serving a man, raising a family, and it didn’t matter who I married. More than once, he told me it was going to be his big payday, when he got me married to the right man.”

  Caroline bristled at Vesta’s words, but thought better of speaking.

  Cal said to Vesta, “If you could speak to him right now, Vesta, what would you say?”

  Vesta turned her eyes toward the floor and whispered, “I’d tell him how much he hurt me.”

  “And if God were to speak to your father for you,” Cal said, “what would you have Him say?”

  Vesta looked up and studied Cal’s eyes. She thought, measured her emotions carefully, and said, “That he was wrong. He was always so sure of himself, but he was wrong. And he hurt us all. He hurt us so much, Mr. Troyer, especially the women. But what has he done to my brothers? How much has he hurt them? That they might grow up to think like him makes me crazy.”

  “Anything else, Vesta?” Cal asked. “Is there anything else you want your father to know?”

  “No,” Vesta whispered. “Maybe if he could have known what harm he did, I’d like to hear him say that he’s sorry.”

  Cal leaned forward on his seat and said, gently, “He’s saying that, now, Vesta. He knows what harm he did, and he’s saying that he’s sorry.”

  “I don’t understand,” Vesta said. “He’s dead, so how is that possible?”

  “In The Revelation,” Cal said, “it is promised that all the dead stand before God, and the things that they have done are read from the Book of Life. This is done because we each must give account for our own life.”

  Vesta nodded, but seemed puzzled. Cal explained himself.

  “God acquaints each of us with the record kept in the Book of Life. He does it on His perfect terms, with absolute clarity and truth. And He has done this with your father, Vesta. He has shown him all the harm he did to his family, and I promise you, your father is saying that he is sorry. I know this because, once confronted with the truth of his life, he couldn’t do anything else.”

  Vesta looked to Crist, to Caroline, and then down to her hands in her lap. Without looking up, she asked, “He really knows? Really knows how much he hurt us?”

  “Yes,” Cal said. “With God’s perfect truth and clarity.”

  * * *

  “I think you helped, Cal,” Caroline said, riding back toward Millersburg. “But she’s still probably going to be angry with her father for a very long time. She’s going to be angry with him, like I’m still angry about Eddie.”

  Cal drove and shook his head. “Some people get so messed up.”

  “Don’t I know it,” Caroline said. “This Miller guy? Sounds like he was a monster.”

  Cal glanced at her sideways and said, “We’ll take pizzas out to Darba’s place. Katie could use the company.”

  “I thought you said it was me who needed the company.”

  “We’ll be each other’s company,” Cal said and laughed. “We’ll sit, eat some pizza, talk about life, and wait for Mike to call.”

  “All I know, Cal, is that he’d better not be on the lead boat.”

  31

  Friday, October 9

  3:35 P.M.

  RAY LEE Orton’s police skiff rode an angry chop where it was lashed against the pier. Behind it, the flags at the marina snapped at right angles to their poles. On their moorings nearby, sailboats strained at their lines, halyards slapping against aluminum masts, hulls pitching and rolling on the waves.

  As Orton struggled into his life vest, the wind tore at his uniform shirt. Ricky and Branden stood ready on the dock, already vested, and shouted to be heard as they asked Ray Lee questions about the search party that was gathering in boats large and small on the bay waters in view of the Cortez drawbridge.

  Orton’s seemed to be the last vessel to be ready to push off, and by the time Niell and Branden were aboard and Ray Lee had his skiff pointed out into open waters, the lead Coast Guard Raider 25s were already passing under the bridge, throwing spray off their orange hulls, as they pushed for speed over the rough seas. Next, they saw the UTB-41s run under the bridge, their bows striped with the orange Coast Guard insignia, seamen standing ready at the rails or on the bows, the twin diesel inboards roaring with the strain of speed.

  Last, and slower than the rest, came Orton’s skiff. Holding tightly to the gunwale rails, Ricky and the professor stood aft of the wheelhouse where Orton piloted the boat. In the wheelhouse, Orton stood protected from the sun under a green bimini awning, wrestling with the wheel and the throttles.

  On the open waters at the northernmost limit of Sarasota Bay, the chop was fierce, driven by a steady onshore wind, and Orton had trouble pushing his skiff forward toward the bridge. More than once, Branden glanced anxiously sideways at Niell, and more than once, Niell could muster only the most tentative of glances back toward Branden, his knuckles white on the railing, nervous tension in his fixed gaze.

  Once they had passed under the Cortez Bridge, Orton found fractionally calmer waters, and as he chased the Coast Guard detachment up ahead, he mastered the chop and managed to keep the boat relatively stable. As he piloted the skiff northward into Palma Sola Bay, he occasionally pulled his headphones away to turn and shout back to Ricky about the plan to take Sarasota Pass to the Manatee, and then follow the river eastward for several kilometers to the first of Conrad Render’s fish camps, on a tributary on the north bank of the Upper Manatee.

  Ricky held fast to the railing as he fought the pitch and yaw of the deck under his boots. Catching his attention, Branden flexed his knees to show Ricky how to let his legs take the roll of the waves. Niell tried unsuccessfully at first to mimic the professor’s stance, but then in short order he had managed it, and as they made the turn into the wide mouth of the Manatee, Ricky was getting his sea legs. He was also getting some of his color back, the professor noted, and Branden let go of the railing long enough to give Ricky a thumbs-up.

  On the smoother waters of the river, Orton was able to open up his outboards to full throttle, and soon they were skimming over the water, the boat at maximum speed. Orton waved Ricky up into the wheelhouse, and Ricky handed himself forward along the railing. Beside Orton, Ricky found steady footing on the pilot’s deck, and a good handhold on a port bimini post, and he stood beside the sergeant to listen to the radio traffic coming from the Coast Guard search boats. Eventually, word came over the radio that the first fish camp was deserted. The lead boats were pushing on to the second camp, and a deputy was waiting on the dock at the first camp to guide Orton farther up the river.

  Orton pushed forward on his throttles, wanting all the power he could get, but the skiff had nothing more to give, so he eased back and settled the boat into a less determined pace, saying to Ricky, “No point in burning up all our gas just getting there.”

  After a few more minutes, on the north bank of the river, where a tributary stream joined the broader waters of the Manatee, they saw a sheriff’s deputy waving from the bank. Render’s first fish camp sat at the edge of the water, a ramshackle boat dock leaning into the water in front of a c
abin of weathered boards, with a sunken roof and broken window glass.

  Orton pulled up to the base of the dock where it was strong enough to take some weight, and the deputy scrambled over the old boards and aboard the skiff, saying, “There’s nothing here. Hasn’t been for years. I’m to tell you where the next camp is. It’s hard to find.”

  The deputy stood on the bow and pushed off with a gaff, and then he climbed back to the wheelhouse as Orton swung the skiff around toward the east. Briefly, Orton introduced the three men to each other, and soon he had the skiff up to speed again. Over the roar of the outboards, the deputy shouted, “Three point seven kilometers upriver. Turn into the mangroves on the south bank. There’s a narrow passage there, going back into the marshes. Water’s deep enough down the middle to take our draft, but the UTBs will have to stand off.”

  * * *

  Ray Lee took his skiff into the mangroves slowly, following a narrow passage that snaked for nearly a half kilometer back into the marshes beside the river. The path back in was not always clear, and at one point, he took a wrong turn and dead-ended in a tangle of cypress roots and reeds. But they managed to pole the skiff backward over thirty yards of muddy water, and then they continued farther into the swamplands on the correct course. When they broke into the open waters of a five-acre lake, they saw the Coast Guard and sheriff’s boats pulled up on the sand at the far bank. Orton motored across the water slowly and nosed his skiff up to the sand between two of the orange RBSs, and the four men climbed over the bow railing, onto the wet sand.

  At this fish camp, unlike the first, there were signs of recent use. For a radius of nearly thirty yards around a center cabin, the vegetation had recently been cleared away, and the sand in the clearing was heavily tracked with footprints and off-road tires. A weedy trail led out of the camp toward the south.

  At the edge of the clearing stood tall cypress trees with a scattering of slender solitaire palms mixed in, and a crude fencing of razor wire and barbed wire was lashed to the trunks of the trees, marking the perimeter of the clearing. A little cabin sporting new roofing shingles stood beside the water, and beside the cabin there was a tidy stack of split firewood. The door of the cabin had been propped open with a broom that looked almost store-bought new, and sheriff’s deputies were already carrying boxes of clothes, papers, and kitchen gear out to one of the boats.