Murder Tightly Knit

by Vannetta Chapman

  Jesse wanted to argue with her, but he couldn’t.

  Which left them where they’d started, with no clue as to who had killed Owen Esch.

  Twenty-Four

  Hannah, Amber, and Jesse walked back out to Dairy Queen’s parking lot and stood by Amber’s little red car. The coolness of the October evening felt refreshing to Hannah. She suddenly realized what a long day it had been and how much she wanted to crawl into bed and pull the quilt over her head.

  “So it’s not ISG.” Hannah rested her back against the side of the car. “At least it doesn’t seem to be.”

  “No. I don’t know what I expected to find, but a group focused on conservation and individual rights doesn’t sound like an organization harboring killers.”

  “Someone killed Owen. He didn’t walk into a flying arrow.” Jesse pulled his wool cap down over his ears. “And it seems to me that it was someone he knew, or he would have called out, screamed, tried to run, something. He wouldn’t have stood there as if he trusted the person.”

  The word trust was echoing through Hannah’s mind when hollering erupted from a corner of the parking lot. A pickup truck sat idling behind a horse and buggy.

  Hannah hurried over, trying to keep up with Amber.

  “What’s the problem here?” Amber stood with her hands on her hips and a scowl on her face. Though it was now pitch dark, the parking lot lights revealed that the Englischers were boys—three of them who all looked to be in high school still. One was scrawny, one was huge, and the other was still sitting in the truck behind the steering wheel. Hannah couldn’t see him well enough to determine his size.

  The Amish kids were two couples—Hannah’s brother, Noah, one of his friends, and two girls. They had the closed look of caution that Hannah had seen on Amish folk so many times before. The look seemed to say, “If we’re very still and very quiet, this situation will go away.”

  Amber reminded Hannah of a schoolteacher who had walked in on an unacceptable situation in the classroom.

  “I asked if there was a problem.”

  “Yeah. There is. Their stinky horse and decrepit buggy are taking up two parking spaces.” The boy who said this had long, unkempt hair, was very thin, and wore a black T-shirt.

  “Stop being such a jerk, Cory.” This from an Englisch girl with short blond hair. She had been walking to her car but had stopped to see what was happening. She was holding the hand of a little girl who stepped closer to hide behind her legs.

  “We were trying to teach them some manners.” The big guy must have been an athlete. He crossed his arms in front of him, reminding Hannah of the pictures of the Jolly Green Giant in the ads for vegetables she sometimes saw in the magazines from the library. Except this guy wasn’t green, and he wasn’t taller than buildings. His black hair was cut short—nearly to the scalp. He didn’t look fazed at all by the attention they were drawing.

  “You want to teach them manners?” Amber’s voice sounded to Hannah like the low rumble of an automobile.

  “Yeah. I do.”

  “And who put you in charge of teaching?”

  “Hey, lady.” The scrawny boy, Cory, had sauntered his way forward until he was standing directly in front of Amber. “You don’t want to get involved with their kind of people.” He hooked a thumb toward the Amish kids. “They kill each other with a bow and arrow. How messed up is that?” The kid’s speech was slurred, so it came out sounding to Hannah like “How smeshed uh is dat?”

  Amber pushed Cory aside and stomped over to the driver of the truck. “Are these two here with you?”

  When the boy nodded, Amber pointed a finger at him and said, “Then I suggest you take them home.”

  “Or what?”

  Hannah moved to the right but she still couldn’t clearly see the driver. She could hear the sneer in his voice.

  “Or I call the cops.” Amber whipped out her cell phone. The light on it flashed when she pushed a button. “Is that how you want to spend your evening? Visiting with Middlebury’s finest?”

  The larger of the two boys standing outside the truck had turned his back on Noah and his friends. He had been opening the passenger side door to climb back into the truck. On hearing Amber’s questions, he slammed the door shut and crossed back around the front toward her. He towered over Amber as he moved even closer and snarled, “You should probably stay out of this. We wouldn’t want a little thing like you to get hurt.”

  “Cory, leave her alone!” The Englisch girl fumbled in her purse and pulled out her phone. Would she call the police?

  It was at that point that everything went crazy.

  Hannah and Jesse had been slowly making their way toward Noah and his friends. Noah shook his head once and held up a hand as if to stop them. Hannah glanced over at Amber and saw everything that happened next. She had a perfect view of the big guy, who made a move to push Amber, but she was having none of it. Instead, she darted to the right, then raised her foot and brought it down hard on the big guy’s toe. He let out a howl as Amber’s short, spiky heel pierced his tennis shoe.

  He was hopping around on one foot, shouting and pointing, when the driver put the truck in park and hopped out to join the skirmish. He was also an athletic guy, though not as big as the other. His curly brown hair poked out from under a green-and-gold ball cap.

  Everyone started shouting, and Hannah winced, waiting for the first punch to fly. Except there was no fight. There were four Amish kids standing next to their buggy, Jesse and Hannah in no-man’s land, Amber and the Englisch girl holding their phones, and three Englisch boys wondering whether the brawl they’d been trying to start was worth it.

  At that moment a police siren chirped twice, and a cruiser pulled into the parking lot with its lights flashing, effectively cutting off any escape by the pickup truck.

  A uniformed woman stepped out of the cruiser. She looked young to Hannah, maybe in her twenties, and was thin and muscular. Her long red hair was pulled back with a black elastic band. It hung down her back, nearly reaching her belt.

  “She’s been at the Village before—last spring, I think.” Jesse spoke in a whisper.

  “Ya, her name is a fruit—Cherry. Now I remember. She was helping Sergeant Avery with the investigation.”

  “Everyone needs to take two paces back from where they’re standing.” Cherry’s tone left no room for argument. She’d obviously scanned the scene and seemed to have come up with her own conclusion of what had happened. She spoke into the radio clipped to her shoulder, which squeaked once and then fell silent. Scowling, she waited for everyone to step back and quiet down before she said anything else.

  Cherry walked up to all three boys, closely scrutinizing first the scrawny kid, then the big guy, and finally the driver. “Cory Monroe, Blake Jones, and Sam Hollister. Why am I not surprised that you three are involved in this?”

  “Hey, we didn’t—”

  All three were protesting at once, but Cherry cut them off with a flick of her wrist and the words, “I said to move back.”

  The Amish kids attempted to back up, but they were already standing with their backs against their buggy. So instead, they took two steps to the right, sliding down the side of the buggy. Noah’s face was flushed—a sure sign that he was battling his temper. The other boy with him looked worried, and the two girls were talking quietly to each other.

  In the meantime, Cherry had pulled out her flashlight, flipped it on, and shone it into the truck—first the front seat, then the back, and finally the bed. Apparently she found nothing of interest. She surveyed the group and said, “I had a disturbance call.”

  “From her?” The sports guy pointed an accusing finger at Amber. “She practically broke my toe!”

  “You started it, Cory.” The Englisch girl had picked up the little girl, surely her sister—Hannah could now see the resemblance. She stepped closer to Cherry and said, “I didn’t see it all, but I saw enough. If you need a witness I’d be happy to provide a statement.”

&
nbsp; “Did you call it in, Sandy?” The big guy looked hurt, more hurt than he had been by Amber.

  “You’re such a jerk.” Sandy switched the little girl to her other hip and stomped off to her car.

  “The call came from the manager, who is not happy that you’re disrupting business. Now what exactly is going on here?”

  “We wasn’t doing nothing.” Cory had trouble with the word nothing. It was as if he had a big ol’ mouthful of shoofly pie and couldn’t make his words come out right. He was still trying to back up and talk to Cherry at the same time. It was no surprise that he tripped over the curb and landed on the ground.

  “Have you been drinking, Cory? That is not what your dad is going to want to hear.”

  “But—”

  “Don’t move.”

  Cherry turned back to the large boy, Blake. He was walking in a small circle and limping as if he’d had a table dropped on his foot. Hannah almost wanted to laugh. Amber was half his size. There was no chance her weight could have caused any damage, though the spiky heel probably did cause a bit of pain.

  “You ought to arrest her. She stomped that stupid shoe on me for no reason at all—”

  Amber touched a button on her phone, and suddenly they were all hearing again the events of the past few minutes. Hannah wasn’t close enough to see, but the way Cherry was looking at the screen, she suspected that Amber had recorded the entire thing—audio and visual.

  “That’s all I need to see. I’m taking all three of you in for fighting.”

  “But we didn’t even throw a punch,” the driver argued, pulling off his ball cap and then repositioning it on his head.

  “Sam, am I supposed to wait until you hurt someone? Move your truck to an open space, and then you’re coming with me. And don’t even try driving off. I’ve already made a note of your license plate. I’d love to add fleeing arrest to the list of charges.”

  Now Noah stepped forward. “There’ll be no charges. It was only a misunderstanding.”

  Cherry shook her head. “These knuckleheads won’t learn unless you—”

  “Nein. It’s not our way.” Noah looked up, found Hannah and Jesse, and smiled slightly. “Thank you for coming, but now we’ll be going home.”

  The driver laughed and said something under his breath.

  “Amber? Would you like to press charges against this boy?” She pointed at the one Amber had stomped.

  “No. I’m hoping he’s learned an important lesson—such as minding his own business.”

  Cherry shook her head, her lips a thin, straight line. Finally she said, “Go on, then.”

  When Cory attempted to stand, she said, “Not you. I’m taking you in for being under the influence. You are still a minor, Cory.”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “But nothing. Go stand beside my cruiser.”

  Amber continued to talk to Cherry after the truck had pulled away, but Hannah was no longer paying attention. She and Jesse had closed the gap between them and her brother. By the time she was sure everyone was fine, Cherry had placed Cory in the back of her police vehicle and left the parking lot.

  “Are you all good to drive home?” Amber asked.

  Noah reached for the hand of the girl closest to him and said, “Ya. We wouldn’t normally have come in on a weeknight, but most of us are off tomorrow because of the funeral.”

  “I’m sorry this happened.”

  “Not your fault. No need to be sorry.”

  Hannah realized then that her brother was no longer a boy. Sometime when she hadn’t been looking, when he’d been raising dogs and working the farm with her father, Noah had crossed over to being an adult.

  Jesse and Hannah declined to ride back with Noah. Instead, they followed Amber to her car.

  The ride home was quiet, the road swishing by as they drove through the night. By the time they reached Hannah’s home, she’d practically forgotten the scene in the parking lot. Her mind was worrying over the list in Amber’s purse.

  “Thank you both for coming with me.” Amber turned off the engine and cut the lights. “I’m not sure what we accomplished, but I do feel a little better. At least random bits of information aren’t chasing each other around in my brain.”

  “We wouldn’t want that.” Jesse leaned forward and tapped her head with one finger. “Could give you a headache.”

  “Indeed it could.”

  “How about if we each take one person on the list?” Hannah squirmed in her seat so that she was facing Jesse and Amber. “Since our Suspects list isn’t helpful, and our Involved list only contains our names and the police, let’s break up the—”

  “In Danger list.” Amber pulled the pad of paper out of her bag and opened it to the sheet she’d been writing on. She touched a button, and the dome light in the car cast a glow down on the paper.

  “The one name I have any association with is Mary.” Amber tapped the paper. “I could try to speak with her at work on Wednesday.”

  “And I’ll take Naomi.” Hannah knew it was the right thing to do the moment she said it. “I might not be able to talk to her tomorrow, but I can talk to the kids and see how she’s doing. I’ll tell them to call the phone shack or come down to our house if there’s anything that scares them.”

  “I’ll take Andrew.” Jesse was once again leaning between the two front seats.

  Hannah’s heart always beat faster when he was standing or sitting close to her. Was that love? Would her heart constantly trip at a faster rhythm if they were to marry?

  Marrying would also mean they would know each other better than they knew any other person. That was happening already. She could tell by his scowl that he was worried, not angry. He was also determined. She’d seen that expression often enough.

  Jesse glanced up at her, then over at Amber. “One way or another, my bruder is going to talk to me.”

  Twenty-Five

  He was not happy about being back in Middlebury. His plan had been to stay in South Bend until at least Tuesday evening, maybe Wednesday. Then he’d seen the notice in the local paper about Owen’s funeral—front-page news because of the sensational way he’d done it. There weren’t too many murders with bows and arrows. It wouldn’t do for him to miss the funeral. Might arouse suspicion. Theirs was a fairly small community, and everyone was expected to turn out and support the family of the deceased.

  He’d caught a ride back home with an old gent in a decrepit-looking pickup truck. Little chance their paths would ever cross again.

  Now he sat in his buggy, in a long line of buggies, as they made their way toward Owen’s final resting place. A steady downpour obscured most everything around them. The rain was a blessing, though—would help the land and the animals. It would also help to cover any tracks he might have left on his errands.

  “Terrible thing about Owen,” his wife said. The observation was delivered in a flat tone and with no expression at all. Typical.

  “Ya, God has numbered each of our days.”

  The words slipped out before he had a chance to consider them. As silence once again reclaimed the buggy, he realized that perhaps he’d hit on something. God did number each of their days. The psalmist proclaimed as much.

  Did he have the power to overrule God? Nein. It wasn’t possible. So perhaps Owen would have died anyway—hit by a car or seized by a terrible illness.

  Perhaps he had no reason to feel at fault.

  Glancing toward her, he saw the pinched face and too-thin figure, and guilt flooded his heart, but not because of Owen. There were times he didn’t think he could stand up to this responsibility one more day.

  The Amish did divorce.

  It was rare, but it had been done.

  The bishop couldn’t disallow what the law provided for—the dissolution of a marriage. However, within their community he would pay the price. He’d be banned from the church and need to leave the area for good. What would become of his farm? Was he willing to go that far?

  It might be ne
cessary. He acknowledged the possibility to himself for the first time. It wasn’t the solution he would choose, but it might be the only solution if his situation became worse.

  Not now, of course. Best to wait for things to settle down.

  A sigh escaped his lips as he focused on the road and followed slowly in the long line of buggies to the graveyard. He didn’t relish leaving her alone, with no one to provide for her—but then again, the community would provide.

  It wasn’t the future he’d hoped for, but then, life hadn’t turned out according to his wishes. Which was why he’d had to take matters into his own hands.

  What was it the Englisch said?

  Drastic times called for drastic measures.

  In his case, that had certainly held true.

  Twenty-Six

  Rain pelted against the roof and thunder rumbled in the distance. Amber sat in her office, sharing a cup of coffee with Elizabeth.

  “So you told Tate all that has happened with Owen’s case?”

  “Yes.” Amber shook her head. “I didn’t intend to. I didn’t want to worry him, but somehow when we were on the phone the words spilled out of their own accord.”

  “It’s part of being married, the need to share everything with one another.”

  “I suppose. Fortunately, he took it all in stride, which is Tate’s way.”

  “He wasn’t worried about the altercation with the teenagers?”

  “Not at all. He knows all three families, and he said their parents would take care of things.”

  “And what did he think of your list?”

  “His exact words were ‘Agatha is at it again.’ ”

  “Still teasing you about the books you read.”

  “He is! But he also understands my concern for Mary.”

  “She’s a kind woman, and she has always been a good employee.”

  “How could she be tied up in this?” Amber reached for her cup of fruit. The idea occurred to her that if she’d been eating a cinnamon roll she could probably think better.