Material Witness

by Vannetta Chapman

  He reached into the pocket of his jacket, pulled out a five-by-seven envelope. “Unfortunately our perpetrator didn’t stop with Mrs. Knepp. He also tried to run over Aaron earlier today, as he was crossing the street.”

  Sadie’s hand covered her mouth. “Is he all right?”

  “Yes. It did cause some panic at the festival, and the man did manage to escape. However, two different cameras were able to capture shots of him. We’ve been working on enhancing them.” Shane pulled out the picture as he spoke. He didn’t look at the photo, didn’t have to. He’d memorized the guy’s features hours ago. Instead he watched Levi and Sadie Hochstetler.

  On seeing the photo, Levi’s face lost all color, turning first white, then a chalky gray. Sadie’s hand went from her mouth to her throat, and a small cry escaped as if she’d been hurt.

  “Do you know this man, Levi?”

  “I do not, and I think it’s time for you to leave.”

  “He’s killed once, and he might kill again. He’s after Callie, and Aaron Byer is our material witness — which means he’s a prime target as well. If you know this man, you want to tell me who he is.”

  “I told you I didn’t. Now danki for coming, but it’s late.”

  Shane nodded, placed the photo on the table near their front door. “You can keep this copy. Maybe it’ll jog your memory.”

  Then he took the quilts from Callie and walked with her into the night, toward the Buick.

  He didn’t start the car right away.

  Instead he pulled out his cell phone and called his men at the office in Middlebury. “I want you to access everything you can on Levi Hochstetler. See if he has any brothers, cousins, or uncles who match the description of our perp. Also, call Stan Taylor and tell him I want someone watching Levi’s place. If he leaves, I want to know where. If they’re related, could be he’ll try to meet up with our perp.”

  When he closed the phone, he cranked up the Buick, slipped his arm around Callie, and drove back down the lane. They were closer to solving this than when they’d arrived, and that was a good feeling. This was the part of the hunt he loved, the part where if he was smart enough, if he was vigilant enough, he could put the assailant away.

  Too many ifs, but he’d take the odds on this one.

  This case, he did not plan on losing.

  Winning had always been important, but this time it was personal.

  Personal because it was Shipshe, and to some extent Shipshe was still his town.

  Personal because of Aaron, and Aaron was too much like the young boy he had once been.

  Personal because of Callie.

  She laid her head against his shoulder as they made their way through the night, back toward Reuben’s. He’d said no to love more than once, purposely walked away from it. This time he’d waited for Callie to be ready, waited more than a year. He’d wait longer if he had to, but he wouldn’t lose her to some maniac bent on finding a treasure.

  Or so he told himself, as he sped through the night.

  Chapter 20

  ESTHER WOKE THE NEXT MORNING disoriented at first. When had she grown so used to Tobias sleeping beside her?

  Amazing that love could become such an ordinary thing, like a fire banked in the stove, the horse’s stall cleaned out, and someone’s smile to greet you when you rolled over in bed. She wouldn’t have thought it possible a year ago. Wouldn’t have thought that her life — this life, married, with a father for Leah and a new baby to love and hold — would ever seem normal.

  But it was normal. It was her new normal, and she didn’t want anything to interrupt it.

  She was married, loved, and happy.

  Like Job, God had given her back all she had lost. And more.

  Miracles did happen, and she was proof.

  So when she woke on Saturday morning, when she opened her eyes and saw her freinden spread out around her room instead of her husband, her heart at first beat rapidly, then calmed because she knew the next day or possibly the day after that, everything would return to how it should be.

  It was a marvel she should feel that way, but she did.

  That was the miracle God had worked in her heart. He had given her back her faith in the goodness of life, and Tobias was a large reason for that, but not the only reason for it. The small boppli in the cradle in the corner was another part. And of course the freinden who were stretching and beginning to wake were the other reasons.

  She hurried to the bathroom so she could be done before the others needed it, then put on the coffee. By the time it was percolating on the stove, Simon was awake and ready for his first feeding, and the morning sun had lightened the sky but had not yet peeked its way over the horizon.

  “We survived the night,” Callie murmured as she reached for a coffee mug.

  “Ya, what time did you get in?”

  “Late.” She sat down with the coffee and clutched it as if someone might try to wrestle it away.

  “Thought you had switched to tea,” Deborah said, walking in and looking as fresh as ever. Nothing seemed to perturb Deborah, or at least it didn’t show.

  “Most days. Something tells me today I’ll need coffee. Shane’s putting me back in Perla’s place, or rather taking Perla out of my place, in twenty minutes.” She grimaced. “I need more coffee.”

  “Be careful today, Callie.” Melinda walked into the room and went directly to where Callie nursed her coffee. She sat next to her, pulling her into a hug. “We’ll all be praying, and I know Shane will be watching over you, so you’ll be fine, but just be cautious.”

  “Ya, Shane isn’t going to let anything happen to you.” Deborah grinned mischievously.

  Esther raised Simon to her shoulder when he began to fuss. Teasing Callie about her and Shane courting helped ease the tension in the room, but she knew it was simply a covering for their concern for her safety. “We agree to meet here again tonight, right?”

  “Yes, but we can’t do this every night, Esther. It’s kind of you to offer —”

  “Let’s plan only for tonight, Callie. We agreed this will probably end with the festival, and no one can see further than the current day’s needs. Tonight we’ll meet here again and perhaps this will be done. You do what Shane says.” Everyone turned to look at her, and Esther felt the heat rise in her cheeks. “What? It’s not as if I’m telling her to marry him, but he will keep her safe.”

  “Who’s getting married?” Shane stuck his head in the door, saw all the women, and raised his hands in mock surrender. “I’ll be waiting in the car. Three minutes, Harper.”

  “Did your watch break?” Callie looked down at her coffee, still steaming in front of her. “You said I had until —”

  “Three minutes. Don’t make me come in there.” His voice was gruff, but Esther could tell something had changed with Shane Black. Something she wouldn’t have expected to ever see. Or was she imagining that? Then he turned to go, but the look he gave Callie before he left was almost tender.

  Melinda sighed, confirming Esther’s thoughts. “Smitten. He’s completely smitten, Callie.”

  “He’s going to be smitten if he tries to take my coffee away,” Callie grumbled, pulling on her shoes. “Can I take this with me, Esther?”

  “Sure. No problem.” Esther topped it off with what was left in the pot on the stove. She didn’t want Callie falling asleep on the way to the shop, and her eyes didn’t look quite open yet.

  Clutching the coffee mug, Callie shuffled out the door.

  They heard her murmuring to Max on the porch.

  Melinda glanced at the others in amusement. “I can’t believe Shane convinced her to leave that dog here.”

  “Better here than back at the vet’s. She doesn’t want to put him in harm’s way again, and this man has already gone after him once.” Deborah walked to the sink and looked out the window. “That dog looks as if he’s watching his best friend drive away.”

  “He is,” Esther and Melinda said at the same time, then started gigg
ling.

  Esther was surprised they could find anything to laugh about, but perhaps it was the nervousness fluttering in their stomachs that needed to find a path of escape. Activity helped also, and within thirty minutes there was plenty of that. The house soon resembled a virtual beehive, which could happen when you had three families readying for the day. They had decided the night before that the men would go back to their chores at their respective homes. Deborah and Martha would go into town to help with the festival pie booth and at the quilt shop. Melinda would follow at noon when Deborah would return home to help Esther with preparing the evening meal.

  Except something was off.

  Something more than the fact that they were all starting from the same place and that a killer was afoot. From the kitchen window Esther saw the twins sneaking around the corner of Reuben’s barn. Nothing unusual there. The twins probably had their pockets full of frogs.

  But when Esther went out the back door to give Deborah a box of preserves for the booth, Martha was huddled up with Aaron and Matthew. Seeing Esther, she startled and turned red, then hurried off to help her mother with her younger brother.

  Something was definitely going on with the children.

  As the men pulled out down the lane, past the pond, Esther checked first on Simon, who was sleeping soundly, then hurried over to where Melinda was helping Deborah load her buggy.

  “Do you have a minute before you go?”

  The two turned and looked at her in surprise.

  “I think the kinner are up to something. It has me worried.”

  “Up to something? What could they possibly be up to?” Deborah had one foot in her buggy, but she hopped backwards and frowned at her twins, dusting her hands against her dress.

  “Not those two. I can take care of Jacob and Joseph. I’m worried about the older ones — Martha and Matthew and Aaron.”

  “Matthew asked Tobias if they could take the cart over and help their father for the morning.” Melinda squinted into the rising sun, looking to see where they were. “Tobias said yes, and I agreed there was no harm in it.”

  “Martha’s going into town with me,” Deborah added. “She was here only a minute ago.”

  As they spoke, the three children exited the barn — Aaron already in the cart, his wheelchair fastened to the back. Matt was leading the pony. Martha was walking next to it, her head bent as if she were whispering to the boys. Something about that sight worried Esther, but she couldn’t put her finger on why.

  “See? That’s what concerns me. Every time I’ve seen them they’ve been that way. It’s as if they’re planning something.”

  “They remind me of us when we were younger,” Deborah murmured.

  “Something tells me they are not planning on going to the farm.” Melinda pushed up her glasses.

  Melinda walked straight over to the children. “Aaron and Matthew, tell me straight. Did you lie to me earlier?”

  Both boys looked up, their faces coloring as red as the fall flowers growing by the fence.

  “No, Mamm,” they murmured unconvincingly.

  “So you do mean to take this cart to help your dat and nowhere else?”

  “That’s not what we said,” Aaron spoke to his shoes.

  “Not exactly,” Matthew added.

  “Look at me when you’re speaking. What do you mean that’s not what you said?”

  “I asked if we could take the cart and pony to help Dat, and we do mean to go there. I just didn’t exactly say we didn’t mean to go anywhere else.” Aaron looked pleased with himself for about five seconds, until he saw the expression on his mother’s face.

  Melinda knew all too well what he saw. It was the reflection of the cold fear that gripped her heart tighter than the pain of birth could squeeze a woman’s abdomen, making her double over and cry out in alarm.

  Had she almost fallen for this again?

  What did the boys call it?

  The swap?

  She would make them wish they had something to swap if they didn’t start telling her what they were up to right this minute. How had she been so busy she hadn’t seen what they were doing?

  “Matthew, what do you have to say for yourself?”

  “We would have gone by there. We wouldn’t have lied to you, Mamm.”

  “Not telling the entire truth is still lying. We’ve spoken on this before.” She waited for them to tell the rest, to explain the part that had her heart hammering clear up to her throat.

  But they didn’t.

  They fidgeted and continued to stare at the ground.

  “Martha, how are you involved in this?” Deborah’s voice was soft and sounded much more controlled than Melinda felt.

  Everyone waited, but Martha didn’t speak either. She held the pony’s bridle and looked from one boy to the other, as if they might jump in and offer an answer.

  “I don’t know what’s gotten into them.” Melinda twisted her apron first one direction then the other, as if she were wringing water out of it. “Do they not understand the danger of this situation?”

  “We understand it all too well,” Matthew said, his eyes suddenly dark and serious and so resembling Noah’s that Melinda felt a new fear, the fear that her boy had become a man when she’d been busy with other things. Which was ridiculous, since he was eleven years old.

  Perhaps his maturity exceeded his years.

  Perhaps helping his brother, in addition to the current trials they were all going through, had matured him faster than some.

  Leah, Hannah, and Joshua were playing on the front porch, and their carefree sounds tumbled across the yard. Melinda, Deborah, and Esther stood there in front of the cart, waiting in the warmth of the morning sunlight. It was a bright fall day. A day they should have been preparing for the festival, looking forward to spending time with friends and family.

  Melinda suddenly wondered what her parents were doing, whether or not they realized how much trouble had visited her family once again. She’d scarcely had time to speak with anyone, though the Amish grapevine did a good job of keeping each family aware of another’s needs.

  She studied the children as a slight breeze played with the hair at the nape of her neck. They squirmed under her gaze, but offered no other details to their story. Maybe she should have left the children with their extended families, but that might be bringing danger into their families’ lives.

  “Not speaking is fine. Might be a gut thing at this point,” Melinda admitted. “Wait here with this buggy, and I’ll follow you to our place before I head into town with Hannah.”

  “But —” Aaron threw a sideways glance at his brother.

  “No buts. It’s the least I can do to make sure my boys are safe. I’ll run inside and collect my things.”

  Deborah crooked a finger at Martha. “If you don’t mind letting go of that pony, go and sit with your bruder. He’s staying with Esther today and after this stunt you may be too.”

  The girl looked back once at the boys but didn’t attempt to say anything to them.

  Melinda stopped halfway between the porch and the barn, halfway between the babies and her half-grown boys. Deborah’s twins, Jacob and Joseph, could be seen in the field with Reuben, and even from a distance she could tell they were covered in dirt.

  “How do they do it?” Deborah asked, walking up next to her. “They haven’t been out there fifteen minutes.”

  “At least they’re safe. What do you think those three were up to?” Melinda sighed heavily, then caught herself because she sounded so much like her mother.

  “Don’t know, but they weren’t headed only to your place. That was all I could tell by the way they were acting, and it doesn’t take much of a puzzle solver to figure it out.” Deborah reached out and tucked her arm through the crook of Melinda’s elbow as they began walking toward the porch again. “The important thing is that we caught them before they could go anywhere they shouldn’t. Maybe that makes us gut parents after all.”

  “Do y
ou know what is worrisome?” Esther asked. “How much those three remind me of the three of us.”

  That statement stopped them all in their tracks.

  “But we didn’t —” Melinda couldn’t seem to find the rest of her sentence.

  “I agree with Melinda.” Deborah stared back toward the boys. They hadn’t moved at all. In fact, they looked almost comical, as if they were frozen there, waiting with the cart and the pony. “We never lied to our parents about our doings.”

  “Don’t be too harsh, either of you.” Esther’s face took on a soft look, and Melinda thought again how much her friend had changed over the last year, since she and Tobias had wed. “They didn’t lie exactly. They’re gut children, and no doubt they thought they had gut reasons for what they were intending to do.”

  “I can’t even imagine what they had planned — the three of them together. If it wasn’t at your farm, Melinda, and it wasn’t here, I’m guessing it was in town.” Deborah looked at Martha, who was now on the porch, holding baby Joshua.

  “And did we stop them, or did we merely change their plans until they can come up with another idea?” Melinda knew her boys. They were good boys, faithful to a fault, and incredibly stubborn. That was the look she’d seen on their faces — not shame, but stubbornness.

  Which worried her more than the thought of their lying to her. The question was, stubborn enough to do what?

  Chapter 21

  DEBORAH STOPPED by her mother-in-law’s farm on the way into town. Ruth had baked dozens of small, single-serve-sized cakes during the past two days. The kitchen smelled of cinnamon, lemon, apple, even blueberry. Deborah wanted to sink into a chair, accept her offer of coffee, and forget the troubles waiting in Shipshewana.

  But she had offered to drive the desserts to the festival. They would be sold in the family booth and the money would be put into Ruth’s jar, which she kept for the grandchildren’s gifts. Ruth and Abe had been blessed with eight children, all married — except for Stephen, who was only twenty years old — and Ruth’s number of grandchildren had quickly grown until she found herself with a total of forty-two.