Stars for Lydia

by P. L. Gaus

  “Mary Yost?” Branden asked, surprised.

  “Yes,” Ed said, looking up to Branden. “She was supposed to call. She was supposed to have called us by now.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Caroline got them all seated in the living room with several of the lights turned on, and the professor brought glasses of water from the kitchen. Donna and Ed sat together on one sofa, and Mike and Caroline sat across the room, on the other sofa. Cal took an easy chair in the corner of the room. With her right hand, Donna held her sleeping infant against her shoulder. Her left hand, bandaged and apparently still painful to her, rested on the arm of the sofa. Ed let his older daughter lie curled up on the sofa, with her head resting in his lap.

  Caroline asked, “What happened to your hand, Donna?”

  “Oh,” Donna said embarrassed. “I burned it on an oven rack, making cookies this afternoon.”

  “Sorry,” Caroline said, and then of Ed she asked, “How old is Sophie, now?”

  Ed said, “She’s three.”

  “Three and a half,” little Sophie said with a child’s sleepy yawn, eyes closed.

  “Yes, three and a half,” Ed said, smiling. “Donna has Annie, there. Eight weeks old.”

  Donna laid Annie across her knees. She dried her tears with her crumpled hankie, and off-hand, she explained, “I’ve had a knee replacement, and the oven rack burned off some skin, I’m afraid. I’m not supposed to get an infection because of the metal parts of the knee, so I’m worried about this burn. Because of an infection.”

  Caroline said, “Just a minute,” and she got up. Stepping into the guest bathroom in the hallway, she brought out a box of tissues, and she carried them to Donna.

  Donna said, “Thank you,” and she pulled four tissues. She used them right-handed on her eyes first, and then on her nose. She crumpled them into a pocket in her roomy, blue flowered dress, and she said, delicately, “Thanks so much. This is the worst day of our lives. Losing Lydia and Meredith, too. And now Mary is missing.”

  “When was Mary supposed to have called you?” the professor asked Ed.

  “We took her up to the bus in Wooster. On Friday. We gave her a ticket for Cleveland. Round trip. She should have called us Friday. Or Saturday evening, at the latest.”

  “Why was she going to Cleveland?” Caroline asked.

  Donna answered. “We recommended a family counseling program there. In Parma. She was going to try to get her husband to agree to some marriage counseling. She was supposed to have called us by now, to tell us what bus she’d be on, coming back to Wooster.”

  “Donna?” Cal asked. “Had she been staying at your boarding house?”

  Donna shook her head. “Just the one night. Just Thursday night.”

  Cal said to Donna and Ed, “Mike and Caroline need to understand how you operate at Light-Path Ministries.”

  Donna looked to her husband. Ed stroked the hair of his daughter Sophie, asleep by then with her head in his lap. “We have a special calling for Amish families,” he said. “We minister to all people, but we try to help the Amish especially.”

  Cal asked, “You hand out tracts in towns?”

  “We invite people to bible studies,” Donna said. “Couples, if both are willing. But mostly it’s unmarried Amish people. And then it’s mostly people who come to us. You know, the ones who want to know more. If they come to us, we get them into a bible-study group at the church.”

  Caroline asked, “Did you do that with Mary?”

  Ed nodded.

  The professor asked, “Then how did you get started with her? I gather John Yost isn’t the agreeable type?”

  “John wasn’t really involved,” Ed said. “Donna went out to Meredith Silver’s house, and Mary would walk over to meet them there. Mary never came into town. John wouldn’t have permitted it.”

  “Lydia was out with Meredith Silver when she died,” the professor said.

  Donna nodded. “Meredith is who got us started with Mary. She said that Mary needed help. I just went out to talk with her. Just that first time, about six months ago. Then she asked me to come back. Mary did, I mean. She wanted to know more about what is in the Bible.”

  “I would think,” Caroline said cautiously, “that Amish people know all about the Bible.”

  “Not always,” Ed replied with a knowing tone. “The preachers and the bishops don’t always preach from the entire Word of God. They are sometimes very selective. So, if they’ve never read it for themselves, some Amish people really don’t learn that much about faith.”

  “They’re the most faithful people I know,” the professor argued.

  “Mostly,” Ed said. “Most of them, anyways. Not all, mind you, but most. But the Schwartzentrubers can be different.”

  “This seems improbable to me,” Caroline objected. “You’re talking about the most Godly people in the world.”

  Ed shook his head. He eased forward a bit on the sofa and said, “They are Christians. That is true. But the bishops don’t always preach from the Bible. They mix in a lot of traditional lifestyle rules. They mix in the traditions of the old country. So, they’re all stuck in the past to one extent or another. They won’t accept modern ways.”

  “Like medicines,” Donna said. “They won’t use modern medicines. Or vaccines.”

  “Well, some of them do, certainly,” Branden said.

  “Not Schwartzentrubers,” Ed argued. “Not the most conservative orders. Their children don’t get any vaccinations. A lot of them die young.”

  Interrupting again, Donna said, “Tell them about the store in Mt. Hope.”

  Ed closed his eyes and drew a cleansing breath. “She’s talking about their herbal remedies. They sell hundreds of them at the health food store in Mt. Hope. They’ve got herbals for everything. Even childbirth. But these are just the types of concoctions that they would have had in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. You know. From the old country. They’ll accept those, because they are traditional. The bishops preach about holding true to traditional lifestyles, like it’s straight out of the Bible. But it’s not. They’re just holding to their old-fashioned traditions.”

  The professor spoke up with a question. “This John Yost. If he’s got a mental disorder – a psychiatric condition – he’ll use only the herbal remedies that were available in the old countries?”

  Ed Schell nodded grimly. “He’s a Schwartzentruber. He could be manic-depressive, and the bishop would tell him that it is just his cross to bear. A child could have the mumps, and be at death’s door, and they’d figure it was God’s will. They’re taught that they have to live right. To follow the scriptures and traditions and earn their way into heaven by being faithful to the rules.”

  “Surely not all of them,” Caroline countered. “They can’t be all like that. Cal?”

  “Not all Amish,” Cal said. “Not even most of them. But yes. If any are like that, it’ll be the Schwartzentrubers.”

  “Ed,” Cal offered next. “You sent Mary to see marriage counselors? Right?”

  “Yes,” Ed said, nodding. “It’s a husband and wife team, actually. Paul and Nancy Culp. They specialize in family therapies for church people. You know. Pastors send them to the Culps. Sometimes they actually move into town, to be near a family, for more intensive interaction. It’s very specialized, and we thought it would be just what the Yosts needed. If we could get John Yost to agree to it.”

  “But, have you heard from the Culps?” Cal asked, pressing his question again.

  “We called them Saturday evening. Mary was supposed to see them on Saturday morning. Then she was supposed to come back to Wooster later, on one of the Saturday buses. Or Sunday, if it took longer. But she didn’t, and she didn’t call us.”

  “Did the Culps talk with her?” Caroline asked. “I think that’s what Cal is getting at.”

  “No,” Ed said, sounding defeated. “They never saw her. We don’t know where she is. We’ve been calling hospitals, in case she
went into labor, or something. I don’t know. Maybe she’s injured.”

  “Who took her to the bus in the first place?” Cal asked.

  “I did,” Donna said. “Me and Sophie. It was Friday, around noon. We had lined up a hotel room for her, for Friday night. In Parma, right off I-71. It was for Saturday night, too, if she stayed to talk with the Culps more.”

  “Did she actually spend the night there?” the professor asked.

  “The hotel never saw her,” Ed said, shaking his head.

  “Nobody knows where she is,” Donna whispered.

  “How would she have come back?” Caroline asked. “How would she have traveled back home?”

  “We gave her cash,” Donna said through broken sobs. “We gave her an open return ticket on the bus, and cash for the hotel, meals and such.”

  “So, what?” Cal asked. “She might have taken a bus back to Wooster and a cab home from there?”

  “We don’t know,” Ed Schell said.

  “We don’t know where she is,” Donna Schell cried. “Now Meredith is dead, too. We just don’t know what’s going on.”

  After a pause, the professor asked, “Donna, how did you learn about Lydia?”

  “Oh,” Donna said thinking. “Oh, it was Meredith. Meredith called me right then. On Monday night, just after the accident.”

  “From the Yost farm?” Branden asked.

  “No. She was already walking home from there. I was in Mt. Hope with the children.”

  “Did you go to see her?”

  “No. The kids were fussy. Sophie was hungry and starting to cry. Annie was screaming. Needed a new diaper and a bottle. I was parked at the hardware store, trying to take care of them. And Meredith said she’d be OK. We made a date for breakfast.”

  Softly, Ed said, “Donna, you can’t blame yourself for any of this. You shouldn’t be beating yourself up over this. We’ll find Mary. You can’t do anything about Lydia. And Meredith is not your fault.’

  “I can’t help it, Ed,” Donna replied, standing up with Annie. “I can’t help but feel that this is all my fault.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Cal walked the Schells out to their car, and once they had left, he went back to the professor, who was standing in the dark, out on the front stoop. “I know you, Mike,” Cal said from the front walk. “What’s troubling you?”

  Stepping down to the walk, Branden said, “It doesn’t add up, Cal.”

  “What?”

  “The Thursday/Friday thing.”

  “Why?”

  “Because Bishop Alva Yost told me that it was a full three weeks ago that Mary left her husband.”

  Cal scratched at an ear, frowned.

  Branden held a pause and then added, “And Mary did make a call, but it was to the sheriff. She left a message on his phone, late this afternoon. She was just up in Wooster, at the Applebees.”

  Chapter 11

  Tuesday, August 29

  7:50 AM

  The professor arrived in the history building at Millersburg College only ten minutes before his Tuesday-Thursday seminar on The American Civil War. It wasn’t so much a formal class on the subject, as it was a guided self-study discussion group for seniors. It carried full class credit for the students, but it gave Branden only half-a-course of teaching credit, because the students were supposed to take the lead in the discussions. Branden served more as an advisor and moderator, than a lecturer. Which suited him just fine that Tuesday morning. His mind wasn’t especially well-focused on the Civil War. During the seminar, none of his students asked about Lydia Schwartz. News of her death was not yet common knowledge on campus.

  When the seminar discussion finished at 9:30, Branden stopped briefly in his office. He told Lawrence Mallory what little he knew about the accident that killed Lydia, and the suicide of Meredith Silver soon after that, and he asked Lawrence to arrange a meeting with President Nora Benetti. He checked his day planner for appointments – a student to see at 3:45 and office hours at 4:00 that afternoon – and he walked directly home to retrieve his truck. He told Caroline that he’d be at the jail on courthouse square, and then he changed into his green and white Millersburg College sweatshirt with blue jeans, and he drove down off the college heights in a morose mood.

  In truth he was grumbling a bit. Lydia Schwartz – a tragic accident. Her sister Mary Yost – missing, along with her little daughter Esther. And the neighbor Meredith Silver? Shot dead in her own home. There were the troubles with John Yost, too. Troubles enough for a year, and all of it happening at the very start of a busy semester. It crossed the professor’s mind that perhaps a move to Emeritus status might make good sense, after all.

  In the sheriff’s office, Branden found Robertson seated at his desk, talking on the phone. Robertson was in a gray suit with no tie, with his new bushy beard spilling out over his unbuttoned white collar.

  “Nothing to suggest criminality in the Lydia Schwartz death?” Robertson was saying, scratching at the scar under his beard. “Just an accident? Because in her suicide note, Meredith says that she actually shoved Lydia in the back.”

  Branden stretched out in the low leather chair in front of Robertson’s desk, and he listened to the sheriff’s end of the conversation.

  “Well, how long is it going to take, Missy?”

  Robertson gave Branden a nod of his head, and he put his call on speaker phone mode. ‘Missy,’ he mouthed for Branden.

  The professor heard Missy Taggert’s response. “A couple of hours, Bruce. She does have a mild contusion over her shoulder blade. So, she might have been shoved. But it wasn’t done forcefully.”

  “OK,” Robertson said, “then what about Silver?”

  “Shot close range. The manner of death is homicide. The means of death is a gunshot wound to the head. Thirty-eight caliber. I’ve got bullet fragments out of the wall. But there are a lot of thirty-eight caliber bullets. Like three-eighties, thirty-eight specials, 9 millimeters, and three-fifty-seven magnums. So, without the gun? I don’t know. I’ll try to retrieve the other parts of the bullet from the body, but it’ll take some time to get a composite image. One thing, though, we didn’t find any ejected brass at the scene. So, somebody either knew to pick up the spent brass, or they used a revolver.”

  “Gun powder residue, Missy? What about that?”

  “There’s powder blast on Meredith Silver’s face. Stippling. I estimate that she was shot from a distance of only three or four feet.”

  “What about her hands?” the sheriff asked.

  “No gsr, Bruce. But I’m still testing.”

  “What about her phone?” the sheriff asked. “And Lydia’s phone. You said you have them both.”

  “Haven’t gotten to them,” Missy said. “Lydia’s phone is locked, so Stan will be unable to work with that one, unless we can get the key code from someone who knows it. She wasn’t using fingerprint ID. We might need Meredith’s fingerprint to get into her phone. Unless she used only a key code too, and then we’d have the same problem.”

  “When will you know?” Robertson asked.

  “You can’t rush this, Bruce. Let us do our jobs.”

  Robertson nodded. Frowned. “OK, Missy. Lunch today?”

  “Can’t. I’ll just see you for dinner.”

  “OK,” the sheriff said, and he hung up the call. To Branden, he said, “Missy’s going to let us know.”

  Somewhat sourly, Branden said, “No surprise.”

  “You’re having a bad day, Mike?”

  Branden nodded. “Cal brought us some company last night. Ed and Donna Schell. And their two little kids. They say they put Mary Yost on a bus in Wooster, Friday afternoon. Now they say they don’t know where she is.”

  “Yost muttered that she’s been gone for three weeks,” Robertson groused. “What’s going on?”

  “The Schells say that she spent Thursday night with them, and then got on a bus for Cleveland. Well, Parma actually. On Friday afternoon. Donna drove her up to meet
the bus in Wooster.”

  Robertson leaned back in his swivel chair, with his fingers tented over his belly. “So where has she been in the meantime?” he asked the professor. “And where is the little girl?”

  “They don’t know. She’s due to deliver her baby, and they don’t know where they are. Neither do the Culps.”

  “Who?”

  “Paul and Nancy Culp. They’re marriage counselors in Parma. Mary Yost was supposed to see them on Saturday morning. She didn’t show up. And she didn’t show up at her hotel Friday night, either.”

  “Then what was that phone message yesterday afternoon from Applebees?”

  “Don’t know. This thing’s a little cock-eyed if you ask me.”

  “We need to have a conversation with John Yost,” Robertson said, standing.

  “Is he still at Pomerene?”

  “Yes.”

  “I’ll drive,” Branden offered, pushing up from his chair.

  Robertson moved toward his office door. “You brought your little toy truck, Mike?”

  “Yes.”

  Robertson shook his head. “Then we’re taking my Crown Vic.”

  “You can just push the seat back, Sheriff. It’s not that small of a truck.”

  Robertson harrumphed. “The Crown Vic, Mike. I know I can fit into that.”

  Out in the hallway, Robertson asked the professor, “Did the Schells mention the little Yost girl, Esther?”

  “No.”

  “You didn’t ask?”

  Branden shook his head, skirting along in the narrow hallway beside the round sheriff. “I wanted to see if they would bring it up.”

  “And they didn’t?”

  “No.”

  Robertson stopped. “Why didn’t you just ask them about her?”

  “They didn’t seem to know anything about Esther, and I let it stand that way. I think it’s curious.”

  As the two men passed the squad’s duty room, Detective Pat Lance came out into the hallway with her eyes locked on a printed page. Robertson cleared his throat, and she stopped and looked up.

  “Lance,” the sheriff said. “Talk to Ed and Donna Schell. Find out if they’ve heard anything more from this Mary Yost. She was supposed to travel up to Cleveland just this last Friday, but she was also supposed to have left her husband three weeks ago.”