Murder Tightly Knit

by Vannetta Chapman

  She was sure they made quite the image—a middle-aged white woman, a young black woman, and a twentysomething Amish couple, hurrying to the front door of the police station as if they were being chased.

  But perhaps they were.

  She’d felt a hand against her back, pushing her toward this inevitable moment, since the day Gordon appeared in her office telling her about Owen’s death.

  The four of them stopped a foot inside the door.

  Walter Hopkins was the first one to glance up. The wrinkles around his blue eyes crinkled into a smile even as he shook his head no. “If you’re here to see Sergeant Avery—he’s busy.”

  “He’s not too busy to see this.” Amber pointed to the recorder Jesse was holding.

  “And that’s not all we have.” Pam crossed her arms. “He’s going to want to make time to see us.”

  Jasmine, the newest recruit to the Middlebury police department, sat a few desks away, working on a computer. She was young and extremely beautiful—someone Amber would expect to find in a modeling office, not a police station. Her black hair was cut in an attractive, sassy, long shag, and her ebony complexion was flawless. Jasmine was extremely talented with anything web related. She’d proven herself a real asset, helping them find some of the clues to unravel Ethan Gray’s murder, but Amber hadn’t had the opportunity to speak with her since. Jasmine didn’t pause in her typing, but she did look up at them, obviously listening to the conversation.

  Cherry stood and made her way over to where they waited. “You can leave whatever you have with me. I’ll make sure that Sergeant—”

  “No, Cherry. We won’t leave it with you. We won’t leave it with anyone until we speak directly with Gordon, until he hears what we have to say.”

  “Why is it that you think you’re so special?” Cherry stepped closer, narrowing her green eyes to mere slits, displaying an attitude that had thankfully been missing the night before at Dairy Queen. Fortunately, there was still the counter between them. Amber did not need to get into a catfight. She’d promised Tate she would behave while he was gone, not to mention that fighting wasn’t exactly the Christian response to dealing with unpleasant people.

  Cherry pointed her finger at Amber. “We don’t need you on this one, Miss Marple. You can run along home.”

  Pam squealed, “What? You did not just call her Miss Marple. Amber has much better hair and clothes than that woman from an old television show. You should—”

  “You should all calm down.” Gordon approached the group looking tired and markedly older.

  Amber hadn’t heard him walk into the large outer office, but he must have been somewhere close, close enough to hear the hollering.

  “Gordon, we need to talk to you.” Amber gestured toward Jesse, Hannah, and Pam. “We all do.”

  Instead of arguing, he nodded once. “Give me a few minutes.”

  “You heard the boss.” Walter’s eyebrows arched once again, his face a road map of soft lines that reminded Amber of a worn and wrinkled ivory sheet. She liked Walter, though he always seemed to be standing guard between her and Gordon. His voice remained pleasant. “I believe you know where the waiting room is.”

  The waiting room was five feet from where Walter sat, manning the phones. The room looked exactly the same as it had when she’d come in with Mary. Same black leather seats, same long table stacked with the same new magazines. The television in the corner of the waiting room was once again tuned to a twenty-four-hour news channel with the volume muted. Had she been here less than a week ago? This thing that had taken over their lives wasn’t even seven days old. Nothing had changed, but everything felt different.

  They stared at each other as the clock on the wall ticked off the minutes and they waited.

  Finally Jasmine stepped into the waiting area. “Sergeant Avery is ready to see you now.”

  When they all stood, she said, “No. He asked specifically for Mrs. Bowman and no one else.”

  Five minutes after she walked into his office, Gordon picked up his phone and called Jasmine. “Bring the rest in.”

  They barely fit.

  Jasmine had to bring in extra chairs, which were lined up across from Gordon’s desk like eggs in a carton. Amber near the door, then Pam, and finally Hannah and Jesse. When they were all settled, Gordon gestured to Amber to close the door.

  “All right. Amber has explained the basics.” He leaned back in his chair and studied them.

  Something told Amber he wasn’t completely surprised by what she’d told him. Why was that? If he thought Andrew was guilty—and Gordon wouldn’t have arrested the young man if he wasn’t convinced—then why wasn’t he surprised to hear someone else might be responsible?

  “Jesse, first I want to tell you that anything you bring to us is going to be viewed with a degree of skepticism, since you are the brother of the accused.”

  Jesse didn’t look particularly offended or react to Gordon’s words in any way. Quietly and firmly he said, “Andrew is innocent. You need to listen to this recording.”

  He pressed the Play button.

  Amber’s voice came out of the box first, asking Hannah and Jesse to call her. There was a beep, and the recorder’s programmed words, “Message two.” When the message had reached its end, Gordon made a play-it-again gesture. Even sitting in the police station, the second message sent spiders tripping down Amber’s spine. The man’s voice was dark and sinister. She realized, with a start, that she was listening to a message from a killer.

  Gordon hadn’t commented as he listened to the recording both times, his expression giving away nothing. Finally he sat up straight and reached for the box. “Do you mind if I keep this?”

  “Nein. It’s why we brought it to you. Can my bruder go home now?”

  “No, it doesn’t work that way. The voice on this recording could be anyone’s. It could be yours.”

  “Jesse was with me all day. He didn’t have a chance to leave a recording, or I would have heard and seen him do it.” Hannah pushed up her glasses, then crossed her arms.

  “And you’re willing to swear to that in a court of law?”

  “I’ll testify. Yes.”

  Gordon placed his elbows on his desk and interlaced his fingers. “Even so, this is weak at best. It could have been anyone on that recording, and it isn’t necessarily the person who killed Owen. As I explained to your father, Jesse, we wouldn’t have arrested Andrew without evidence.”

  “What evidence?”

  “I can’t share that with you. The prosecuting attorney felt what we had was sufficient to file a probable cause affidavit, and Judge Anderson signed off on the arrest warrant. Andrew is being held until his initial hearing, which will be Thursday, the day after tomorrow. At that point your brother will be given a copy of the charging information—”

  “Charging information. Those are the reasons for his arrest?” Jesse had taken off his hat and was turning it in his hands.

  “Correct. He’s already been advised of his rights, and he’ll be appointed a public defender if he cannot afford to hire one.”

  “A lawyer?” Hannah asked.

  “Yes. A lawyer.”

  “But you haven’t listened to everything we’ve brought.” Pam wriggled to the front of her seat. “You haven’t even seen the note and the butcher paper.”

  Her eyes squinted together and her nose crinkled, as if she were preparing for something that smelled bad, rancid even. She turned to Hannah and Jesse. “Show him. Show them to the sergeant. Then he’ll understand.”

  They spread the note to Mary out on the desk and put the wrapping from Naomi’s box next to it.

  Amber knew Gordon well enough to understand that he wasn’t pleased, but he was interested.

  “Why didn’t Naomi give me this paper when I picked up the box?”

  “I don’t know.” Amber held up her hands, palms out.

  “Actually her daughter Lucy had the paper.” When Gordon remained silent, Hannah added, “She’d un
wrapped it and given the box to her mother but not the paper. After you came and left, she didn’t want to upset her mother by asking her what to do with it. So she took it to the barn and stored the paper in a cubby.”

  “She’s twelve,” Jesse reminded Gordon.

  “I suppose everyone has touched this?”

  Hannah glanced at Amber, then back at Gordon. “Only me, Jesse, Andrew, and Lucy.”

  Gordon sighed and closed his eyes for a moment. “All right. We’ll get your prints before you leave. We already have Andrew’s.”

  He called Cherry into his office and asked her to go to the Graber home and get the prints of the little girl.

  “Why do you need our prints? And Lucy’s?” Jesse shifted uncomfortably in his chair, bumping his knees against the desk.

  “Mainly so we can rule you out. Anything left might be from the person who wrote this note.” He cleared his throat and then asked directly, “How do I know you aren’t the writer, Jesse? You could have sent both the box and the note to Mary to try to cover what your brother is accused of.”

  Jesse’s face reddened with anger, but he tapped the emotion down. “First of all, I would never do such a thing. Second, I don’t have five hundred dollars lying around to give to Naomi.”

  When Gordon didn’t look convinced, he added, “Check my file at the Village. I had to fill out an employment form. You’ll see that my handwriting is completely different.”

  “All right. I’ll do that. Amber, I assume you can have the paperwork pulled for me?”

  “I’m already e-mailing Elizabeth.” There were times when it did help to carry her tablet with her everywhere she went. Or she could have e-mailed from her phone. My, how she loved technology! “It will be waiting at her desk.”

  Gordon stood, paced behind his desk, and then turned back to the waiting group. “Let’s talk about Mary.”

  Thirty-Six

  He had the sense that things were spiraling out of his control.

  It reminded him of the time, two years before, when they’d had a problem with feral hogs. Over thirty years farming on the same piece of land, and he’d never seen such destruction, except for possibly the times bad weather had skirted their area.

  The weather he could do nothing about.

  The hogs were a different matter, and he’d quickly dispatched them with his crossbow.

  He knew how to take care of problems that required action.

  Which was probably why he’d called the phone shack when Mary Weaver had not appeared at Naomi’s house after the funeral. She should have been there. It looked suspicious for her, for anyone, to be absent.

  So he’d made the phone call, and perhaps that had been hasty.

  To make matters worse, he’d second-guessed himself and gone to the phone shack to delete the message. That was when he’d found the recorder was gone. All that was left was a square on the counter, slightly darker than the rest, an area unbleached by the sun.

  There was a note from whoever took it, but it wasn’t signed. The note just said it would be returned as soon as possible.

  Who had taken it?

  And why?

  Neither of which mattered. It wasn’t as if they could trace a call placed from one phone shack to another—no way to know who was making the call. Now, if he’d used a cell phone, well . . . the expansion of government surveillance was well known. It was one reason he didn’t want one of the newfangled contraptions. A man’s personal business needed to remain private.

  As for Mary, he would find her, and then he would do what needed to be done.

  He wasn’t proud of his actions, but he’d come too far to repent of them now.

  Thirty-Seven

  Amber and Pam stood in the driveway of a large ranch house. So many people had arrived for the meeting that they’d had to park in an adjacent pasture. They should have come earlier to get a good parking place.

  “I didn’t expect so many cars.” Pam hiked her purse strap up on her shoulder.

  “And buggies too.” Amber pointed to an area around the side of the house where the horses and buggies were parked.

  “Are you sure we have the right address? Maybe Tom gave us the time and place for an Amway meeting, or Weight Watchers. This could be a Weight Watcher meeting. I saw a full-size woman walk inside. Plus, this place looks like it belongs to someone very rich.”

  “This is the right place. People who are survivalists can still be wealthy. In fact, maybe it takes a certain amount of money before you begin worrying about the destruction of society.”

  “Yeah, most folks are more concerned about paying this month’s bills.”

  “Exactly. It seems, though, that every time I change my ideas about these people, I meet someone new and have to change my ideas again.”

  “Won’t hold still to be stereotyped.”

  “You wouldn’t know that by reading most of the news articles about them.”

  They were walking toward the front door. The scene before them looked so ordinary, so normal, but Amber wondered, How many people actually worry about a biological attack or a collapse in the monetary system? Although Tom’s reasoning had been logical, the things he described had never been a concern for Amber. It had seemed to her that each day’s problems were enough without imagining what else might go wrong.

  And yet . . .“Their logic is starting to make sense to me,” Pam confessed. “And that is frightening. Yesterday I would have told you the entire group was crazy. After visiting the church . . . I don’t know what to think.”

  Amber glanced at her friend. The sun was close to setting, but she could see well enough to make out Pam’s expression of honest confusion. “I was thinking the same thing.”

  They were nearly to the porch, but Pam reached out, snagged Amber’s arm, and pulled her away and into the shadows.

  “Explain to me again why we’re here. And what are we going to do if we see him?”

  “That’s not likely. He won’t be wearing a T-shirt that says ‘I Killed Owen Esch.’ ”

  “All right. Then what are we here to find?”

  “We’re fairly sure that whoever the killer is, he is a part of this group. Doesn’t seem to me that he could be a part of Tom’s group, and Owen specifically told Mary that he was planning to attend an ISG meeting.”

  “Could have been a coincidence.”

  “Maybe,” Amber said. “But I don’t trust coincidences.”

  “You and my grammy. She always said when two things happen at the same time and they both make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, you can be certain they’re cousins to one another.”

  “So we agree. The person who killed Owen attends this group?”

  “It makes sense to me.”

  “Then there’s a good chance he’s here tonight.”

  “If he’s here, why isn’t Gordon Avery walking up to the front door instead of us?”

  Amber turned away from a couple walking toward the home and lowered her voice. “Because Gordon thinks he has the guilty person. Not to mention, if he did show up here, even in an unofficial capacity, he wouldn’t learn much. Think about it. Everyone knows who he is. We’re a small town. The killer would be out the back door before Gordon made it through the front. That’s why I also don’t think Shaw will be here just because he knew there was a meeting tonight. If anyone looks like law enforcement even without a uniform, he does.”

  “The killer would know Gordon, but he wouldn’t know us? There’s not that many black women in this town. I’m thinking he can find me if he sets his mind to it.”

  “He could know me too. I’m not exactly a local celebrity, but most folks have had some contact with the Village. The thing is that we can feign interest in learning survivalist tactics to explain why we’re here. We can blend in.”

  Pam rolled her eyes and turned back toward the porch. “You should have told me we were trying to blend. I would have worn something less noticeable, something with less style.”

  Which
made Amber smile and gave her the sense, perhaps the false sense, that things would be all right. With Pam at her side, wearing designer jeans, a black top decorated with sequins in the pattern of a peacock, and a matching turquoise scarf around her neck, they might be able to pull off the image of two gals on a fact-finding mission.

  Except their real mission was to find a killer.

  The room looked like most living rooms, only larger. A large fireplace dominated the center of the far wall. Windows on each side looked out over fields that had been harvested and plowed clean. Through the windows, Amber could make out a barn, rising high above the home, set back on the property and painted red. Inside the living room, folding chairs had been placed here and there to allow seating for the large crowd of people that had arrived.

  “More people than I expected,” Pam muttered as a man and woman walked up, welcomed them, and shook hands.

  Their names went in and out of Amber’s mind faster than water through a cupped hand. She smiled politely, accepted the copy of the agenda, and stepped away.

  “Amish men at two o’clock.”

  “It’s seven.” Pam checked her watch.

  “Near the front of the room, on the right.”

  “Oh. Yeah, they’re pretty easy to pick out in their black jackets and black hats.”

  At that moment one of the men turned and scanned the room, passing over them and then backing up again. He stared for a moment, then spoke to the men on either side of him. Abruptly all three turned and faced the front, effectively cutting off any chance Amber might have had to figure out their identities.

  “That was rude.” Pam sat in the closest chair.

  “And a little odd. The Amish men I know are a little quiet, but most are polite. I’m used to a nod or a little wave.”

  Any further discussion was cut off by the man who had introduced himself to them at the door—Steven . . . Steiner . . . Stewart! That was it—his name was Stewart. He wasn’t the owner of the house. Amber knew that because he turned and thanked Harold for hosting the meeting. While Harold was on the short side, heavy, and balding, this man was taller. He was also trim and fit for a man who had to be approaching senior status. His gray hair was longer, touching the collar of his khaki-colored shirt.