by P. L. Gaus
“No, but I don’t know where they’re going. I’m going to follow them. I’ve just got a weird impression from what Donna was saying. I mean, from the little bit that I could hear.”
“Saying what, Mike?”
“I didn’t hear much of it. They were concerned. They seemed to be upset about something. I’m just going to follow them.”
“Does Caroline know where you are?”
“She’s my next call.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The professor had his wife on speaker phone while he followed Ed Schell’s blue window van east out of town, on US 62/39. He told Caroline what he was doing, and why he was doing it, and she said only, “Be careful, Michael,” before switching off.
The black-topped road curved and rose and dipped over the hills of the countryside. Businesses lined the way – an auto dealer, a lumbermill, a farm implement outfit and some retail shops. After only a few miles, the van turned south into the farmland on TR-351, and Branden followed, holding back somewhat on the turn.
The road intersected with TR-310, and there they turned east again. A winding and hilly route took them to TR-354, and at a long, sloping field of cut hay, Ed Schell turned right, into a gravel lane.
Branden approached the gravel lane slowly, and he watched as the blue van climbed the hill to a brown-shingled farmhouse at the top, standing out in front of a line of tall pines. The entire house was trimmed with white. It looked as quaint and dark as the gingerbread houses that his grandmother used to make.
The fields on either side of the gravel lane had been mowed recently, and the low and long, pale-green mounds of cut hay were drying in the sun. Branden was able to stop about thirty yards short of the lane. He still had a clear view of the farmhouse, one-hundred and fifty yards up the slope of the long fields. He parked beside the culvert, climbed out with a pair of binoculars from his glove compartment, and leaned over with his elbows braced on the front hood of the truck, to put the binoculars to his eyes.
As the Amish family was getting out of the van, Ed Schell hastened around to the passenger’s door, to help Donna down from her seat. She leaned heavily on his shoulder and she walked with tender care, as if her knees were troubling her greatly. Ed got her van door closed, and he escorted her to the small front porch of the house. There he helped Donna on the steps. When she had reached the porch, she turned around to sit facing out over the sloping field of hay, on a wooden bench that had been constructed with stout planks and concrete end pieces. She breathed heavily while she sat there, and she watched with exhausted disinterest as Ed followed the Amish people up the porch steps. She was rubbing at her sore knees and meddling anxiously with the bandage on her hand.
Once Ed had the four Amish people inside, he came back down the porch steps, took one suitcase at a time into the house, and came out with a plastic tumbler of water for Donna. She thanked him and drank it without making any further remarks, and she remained on the bench when Ed went back inside. Donna was still wrestling with pain. She rubbed continuously at her knees. Branden took the opportunity to study the exterior of the house.
There were two stories on the house, with four large windows across the front of the second floor, and two smaller windows on the first floor, flanking each side of the porch door. A metal garage sat back from the house. Attached to the ginger-brown siding of the house, there was a three-legged metal tower, with a complicated wire TV antenna at the top, rising to something like five yards above the peak of the roof. The electric service and a phone line were fastened at the right front corner of the house, near the roof line.
Lace curtains were drawn back in one of the upper windows, and a light was switched on there. At another window of the second floor, the curtains were also pulled to the sides, but no light came on in that room. Each of the windows remained closed, and as hot as it was that afternoon, Branden trained his binoculars down to study the foundation around the house. As the closed windows suggested, on the left side of the house, he found the air conditioner that he expected. Beside it stood a brown metal box, with a thick black power cable running into the basement. This he assumed was an emergency generator. Away from the house, also on the left, there was a cylindrical tank for natural gas. Electricity, phone, air conditioning, TV, lace curtains and central heat, he thought. Not an Amish house.
As the professor watched from the road down below, Ed Schell started carrying bags of groceries from the back compartment of the van, up the steps and into the house. He had made five trips by the time he got it all inside. Donna pushed up from her bench as he came up the steps with the last of his bags, and she opened the door for her husband, before she followed him inside.
Ten minutes later, the Amish woman came out to sit on the porch bench. Instead of her conservative black Amish attire, she now wore a mint-green dress, full length, with black hose and soft black shoes. She had a plain white apron in front, tied at her waist. These were Mennonite clothes. Instead of a full black Amish bonnet, she wore a simple lace prayer disk pinned to the hair bun at the back of her head.
The young girl came out behind her. She was dressed in similar Mennonite attire, but instead of a simple prayer disk on her head, she wore a white prayer Kapp with string ties. She sat beside the woman, and she leaned her head against her shoulder. The mother put her arm around her daughter, and she drew her closer. She lifted her hand and kissed it. The girl wiped tears from under her eyes, and she spoke a few brief sentences to her mother. Each time that she spoke, mother answered her at length, seeming to explain matters with her words and hand gestures.
The Amish man, perhaps in his mid-forties, came out next. He was dressed in a checkered shirt and plain blue jeans. He wore white cotton socks and new cross-trainer shoes. He sat on the porch steps, and he took out a cell phone to make a call. The call was brief, and he made several other calls, similarly brief. Finished for the moment with his calls, he slipped his phone into his jeans pocket and pulled a plastic card from his shirt pocket. It was the size of a driver’s license. He studied the front and back of the card, and he held the card close, to read the information on the front of the card carefully. He turned around to display the card for his wife, and they seemed pleased with it. They seemed to admire it. Then he came down the steps with his phone, placed a call, and talked on his phone, while he walked around the corner of the house, disappearing to the rear of the property.
Next, Ed Schell came back out to the front porch. He spoke briefly to the Amish woman there, and he came out to the driveway and got into his van. He turned around in the gravel drive, and he started the van down the long lane of the hill.
The professor got quickly back into his truck, and he drove past the hay fields before Schell had come more than halfway down the lane. After he had crested a low hill, Branden turned around in a neighbor’s drive, and he followed Ed Schell back toward US 62/39. The van was moving fast, and Branden allowed himself to fall back from it. As he drove, he pushed a speed dial number that rang in the sheriff’s office.
“It’s me again,” he said.
“Where?”
“Out on TR-354. The Schells have a house out here. Two stories, at the top of a long field.”
“Why is that important?”
“The Amish people that I told you about? Well, they’re now wearing Mennonite clothes. They’ve changed. They’re using a cell phone. I’m following behind Ed Schell’s van. Staying back.”
“Is he coming back to Millersburg?”
“That’s my guess. He seems to be done out here. For the time being, anyway.”
“What do you need from us?”
“Property records. Have Rachel search for property that the Schells own out in the country.”
“Rachel has already gone home. Stan has taken more convalescence leave.”
“Can you call her at home?”
“I’ll try.”
“I’m going home, too. Have Rachel call me. If she can’t find that the Schells own any prop
erty out here themselves, she should search to find out if their church owns any property.”
“Really, Mike. What has you following the Schells like this?”
“The Amish people.”
“That’s it?”
“Also, why are the Schells boarding these Amish people out here in the country? And why have they changed to Mennonite attire?”
“OK.”
“And the plates on the van, Bruce? They’re from Iowa. That’s a little bit strange. I’ll give you the digits. Can you run them for me?”
“Sure, Mike, let me know what happens out there. But look. Missy has ruled that Lydia’s death was an unintentional homicide, and Meredith Silver obviously can’t stand for charges. We’re still interested in Silver’s apparent suicide. But all you’ve got there with John and Mary Yost is a domestic dispute. So, we can’t devote any more resources to this. The sheriff’s office is stepping away from this. OK? If you want to hunt for Mary Yost, it’ll be on your time. We can’t keep it going as an official inquiry any longer.”
“I’m surprised,” Branden said. “There’s a lot here that I want to chase down.”
“I understand, Mike. You can certainly do that. But I’m closing the Mary Yost case on my end.”
“Can you at least send some of Lydia’s things over to the house? Like all of the rest of her diaries?”
“I think you already have a lot of them, Mike.”
“Yes, but I want them all. And maybe her laptop, too? And can you send me that recording you made last night of Mary Yost’s phone call? There’s something there that I’d like to pursue.”
“I’ll send Rachel with it all. Once she’s run those plates for you.”
“And the real estate records, Bruce. Don’t forget the real estate records.”
“Why have you got such a bug for this thing, Mike?”
“I owe it to Lydia, to find out what has really happened to Mary. And it rubs me wrong that the Schells are boarding Amish-turned-Mennonite people out in the country. It just rubs me wrong, and I want to look into it. I really want to know what’s going on with Mary Yost.”
“OK, Mike, but like I said, we’re closing the Mary Yost case here. We need to step away from it.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Once Branden had gotten his truck back to the Light-Path Ministries boarding house, the nearest parking spot was three blocks away from the house. He parked, got out, locked up and came forward along the sidewalk. The blue window van from Iowa was parked again in the boarding house driveway. Branden stopped a block short of the boarding house, and he leaned against the trunk of a large oak on the tree lawn across the street. He was thinking about the brown-shingled farmhouse, now occupied by Donna Schell and an Amish family of four, dressed purposefully in new city Mennonite clothes.
The farmhouse had looked old. Long ago, a family had been raised there. Maybe more than one family over the years. Had it been Amish? Now, certainly, it was not.
He had seen no farm equipment on the property, so the fields must be leased to neighbors. These were fields of cut hay for the animals on adjacent farms. Feeling rather melancholy, the professor imagined that once there had been children there. Swing sets, trampolines, volleyball nets, and wading pools. He imagined the chatter of young voices, children at play.
OK, the Schells were not who they had claimed to be. Not entirely. They were more than that. At the country house, they had affected the transformation of Amish people into something new and different. Were they doing more than just preaching modernism at their church? But that was the point, wasn’t it? They were evangelists.
At the Schells boarding house, Ed Schell came out onto the side porch with two people, a married couple the professor surmised, who were holding matching suitcases.
Ed gave the woman a hug, and he shook the hand of the man. They all went down to the blue van on the driveway, and they stowed their suitcases in the side door, on the floor between two of the bench seats. They formed a circle beside the van, held hands, and offered a prayer. Then the couple got into the van, with the man driving, and they backed out of the driveway. Ed Schell stood at the top of the driveway to wave goodbye to them. Then Schell turned and went slowly back into the boarding house.
Branden obeyed his instinct to follow the couple in the blue passenger van. They traveled north out of town, on SR 83. At Wooster, the van turned west on US 30. Branden followed as far as the exit for US 250 to Ashland, and there he broke off his route, as the van continued west on RT 30. Driving back to Millersburg, Branden wondered. Was the blue van headed back to Iowa?
As he came into the northern edges of Millersburg, the professor was also thinking on another matter. Where had the Schells’ young children been kept during the evening when Ed and Donna had been away from home? One was merely an infant, only eight weeks old. Were the people from Iowa such close friends of the Schells that they could be trusted with the children? Evidently, they were. They had stayed at the Schells’ boarding house with the Schells’ young children, while Ed and Donna had escorted the Amish-turning-Mennonite family out to the country house. Now Ed was home again, without Donna.
The professor pursed his lips and shook his head slowly. He felt himself frowning as he thought about it. In how many ways was Light-Path Ministries something more than just a gospel church?
Chapter 24
Friday, September 1
8:30 PM
After dinner, Caroline admitted Rachel at the front door and led her back to the kitchen table. Rachel was considerably shorter than the average person, and knowing this, the Brandens kept a stepstool for her in the corner of the kitchen. Rachel pulled it out and used it to climb up to a familiar seat at the Brandens’ kitchen table. She laid printout pages on the table, and she asked Caroline, “Is Mike here?”
“He’ll be down,” Caroline said. “Why is Bruce pulling away from the Mary Yost case?”
“Really, there isn’t any case.”
“Aren’t Niell and Lance going over to Fort Wayne to get her phone?”
“No, that has changed,” Rachel said. “They’re going to mail her phone to us, now.”
“Michael is still interested, Rachel. I have to say, so am I. We’re not convinced that Mary would leave her family behind.”
Rachel tapped a finger on her printed page. “I found some things. Mary might have had some encouragement. She might have had a lot of help, getting out of her sect.”
The professor appeared from upstairs and asked, “You’ve got the Iowa plates?” He sat down beside Caroline.
Rachel slid her printed pages across the table to him. “That van is owned by a church, Mike. It’s the Church of True Believers, in Omaha. It has Iowa plates, but this church is just over the border in Omaha, Nebraska.”
Caroline said, “That church name puts it right out there, doesn’t it? Nothing subtle there.”
“Omaha?” the professor asked, more as a comment than a question.
“It gets better,” Rachel said. “The Schells do own that property that you found, out on 354. They own their church building and their boarding house in town, too. But the Omaha church is listed as co-signers on the mortgages.”
“Just for the house on 354?” Branden asked.
“No, for all three properties. The Omaha church. They call it the CTB for short – The Church of True Believers.”
“Why would they be co-signers?” asked Caroline.
“I checked their website,” Rachel said. “They list a number of missionaries that they support in the U.S. They call them ‘domestic missionaries.’ The Schells are just one of them. They consider the Schells to be their missionaries to the Amish people in Holmes County. The CTB is a big church. An evangelical megachurch.”
“The Schells aren’t just locals?” Branden asked.
“No, and it gets better. The CTB also owns nearly a dozen houses outright, all around the country. They are all near interstates. I printed out one in Fort Wayne and another in Dav
enport. They’re all small houses, two bedrooms and three, but these are the two that are close to Interstate 80.”
The professor said, “Omaha is right on 80, too.”
“Right. You take US 30 over to Fort Wayne, and that puts you at the first house, after an easy one-day drive. It’s another one-day trip up to I-80 and then over to Davenport. The third day gets you to Omaha. I’d guess that their blue van has made this trip before.”
Branden laid his hands flat on the tabletop, and he drummed out a beat with his thumbs. He stared at his hands for a while, and then he looked up at Rachel. “Missionaries?”
Rachel nodded, held a pause and then asked, “Do you still want Lydia’s things?”
“Yes, and her laptop,” Branden answered, still absorbed in thought.
Rachel popped off her chair and retrieved a satchel from just inside the front door where she had dropped it. She hoisted it up to the tabletop and climbed up to her chair again. “The laptop doesn’t have a password. You can see all of her searches, files and emails, but it’s mostly just college stuff.”
“It’s the diaries that are going to be the most interesting,” Branden said. “I need the last one, especially.”
Rachel pulled several more of Lydia’s diaries out of her satchel. “There’s a lot in there about Ed and Donna Schell,” she said. “And this ‘Dithy.’”
“Meredith Silver,” Branden explained.
“Makes sense.”
“What about them?”
“Well, were these friends of Lydia’s?”
“Yes, good friends,” Branden said. “Why?”
“You’ll see, Mike. I don’t think she was very happy with them at the end.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
As he read the entries in Lydia’s last diary, the professor became increasingly concerned. He was even somewhat agitated, and several times he called Caroline into his study to show her some of the entries.
“It’s the midwives, Michael,” she said on her last visit. “She was trying to find the midwife that Mary would use.”
