Dead Wrong

by Vannetta Chapman

  She peered at the sheet, wishing she’d brought her reading glasses. For a moment she leaned closer as if she was missing something, and finally sat back. “What am I looking at?”

  “Documentation of your brother’s accident—the one that killed him and your sister-in-law.”

  “I don’t understand.”

  Kiara frowned at the sheet. “What is this, Detective Bannister, and what does it have to do with the matter at hand?”

  “I’ll tell you what this is—it’s motive.”

  “Motive?” Kiara and Agatha spoke in unison.

  “This document, which we found in Dixon’s briefcase, states that he was employed to investigate the accident that resulted in the death of Samuel and Deborah Lapp—your brother and sister-in-law. It was his job to assess whether a civil suit brought by the deceased’s family had any chance. His conclusion was that no compensation would be due.”

  “According to this, the woman ran into the back of a buggy.” Kiara tapped a well-manicured finger against the form. “Why would benefits be denied?”

  Agatha didn’t wait for Bannister to answer. “First of all, I never filed a claim. I was told by someone that it might be something I’d want to pursue.”

  “Told by whom?” Kiara asked.

  “I don’t remember. Someone in a uniform. It was unimportant, as I’m Amish and we don’t believe in bringing suit against another person.”

  “So you say.” Bannister sat back and crossed his arms.

  Agatha had an intense desire to hand him a dish towel so he could wipe the smug look off his face.

  “You were notified of the findings, which is common practice to avoid needless litigation.” Bannister nodded toward the sheet. “At the bottom of the form, it lists that this report was copied and mailed to Agatha Lapp.”

  Agatha had tried not to dwell on that dreadful time. She still missed Samuel and Deborah terribly. It was the one and only reason she’d moved to Texas, to honor what they’d tried to do. At times the grief of their deaths still threatened to weigh her down. She knew they were in a better place and believed she would see them again, but oh, how she missed them.

  “Samuel hadn’t found the time to add fluorescent triangles on the back of his buggy. They’re not allowed in all communities, though more and more are understanding the necessity. Our Amish community here does more than allow the triangles. They encourage and even insist that members have the reflectors, but Samuel...I suppose he’d forgotten.”

  “So the claim was denied?” Kiara had pulled the paper toward her and was scanning it from top to bottom.

  “There never was a claim.” Agatha still couldn’t imagine what this had to do with a dead guest in Cabin 3.

  “And yet the accident was investigated and the possibility of a claim nipped in the bud by Russell Dixon.”

  “This proves nothing, Bannister.” Kiara pushed the form back across the table.

  Griffin pulled out another sheet of paper, this time without any prompting from Bannister. “This is a copy of the final risk assessment. Note the beneficiary—Agatha Lapp. Mrs. Lapp, you stood to receive two hundred and fifty thousand dollars if the wrongful death case did go forward. Quite a windfall for someone who claims to live a plain and simple life.”

  Agatha understood now where this was going. It was a set up. Bannister was ambitious like Tony had warned her. But the fact that Dixon had investigated any potential future claim didn’t make her guilty of murder.

  She sat back and crossed her arms over her chest.

  “I didn’t realize Mr. Dixon was involved in investigating the accident, and I never attempted to submit a claim.”

  “You must have been angry,” Bannister prodded.

  “I was grieving. There’s a difference.”

  Bannister’s voice took on a conciliatory tone, but his body posture still screamed arrogant jerk. He propped his elbows on the table, tapped his fingertips together and spoke slowly—as if the truth of what he was saying pained him greatly. “His Bed-and-Breakfast was apparently in quite a state of disrepair. That must have been a disappointment. No doubt you didn’t count on having to take a loan out at the bank simply to get the business up and running. Two hundred and fifty thousand dollars would have come in handy, but Russell Dixon stood in the way of you and that money.”

  “I wasn’t looking to make money off my family’s tragic death, and you should be ashamed of yourself for suggesting such a thing.”

  Bannister sat back, apparently surprised that she would shame him.

  “I plan to do more than suggest. I plan to arrest you for the murder of Russell Dixon.”

  Kiara didn’t hesitate for even a second. “Has the ME established that Mr. Dixon was, in fact, murdered?” She wasn’t easily intimidated, and somehow her strength and resolve fueled Agatha’s.

  “What we’ve established is that Mr. Dixon had a deadly peanut allergy, which he put on his reservation form, and don’t say you didn’t know...”

  Griffin handed him yet another sheet of paper.

  “There was also a print-out of his reservation in his briefcase. This is a copy, and I’ll draw your attention to the highlighted portion.”

  “I was aware of Mr. Dixon’s allergy, which is why I was careful to follow his dietary requests for all of his meals.”

  “Then explain to me why our lab found peanuts in the half-eaten muffin on his breakfast tray.”

  Agatha suddenly felt as if she were in an Englisch movie with too much information coming at her too fast. Bannister was talking nonsense, and she’d learned long ago that if you argue with a fool, both of you look stupid. She settled for stating the obvious. “I can’t explain that.”

  “What did you do with his EpiPen?”

  “Excuse me?”

  “Every person with a life-threatening allergy carries an EpiPen on them at all times. What did you do with Dixon’s?”

  “I didn’t do anything with it. I never saw it.”

  “Did you sneak into his cabin and steal it?”

  “Nein.”

  “A warrant was issued by a judge early this morning. I have a crew at your home right now, looking for the pen as well as any other evidence. We’ll find what we need, and when we do we will arrest you for the murder of Russell Dixon.”

  Agatha felt as if the room were beginning to spin. The thought occurred to her that she needed some fresh air, and then she had a vision of herself in prison, behind bars, where fresh air would be a distant memory.

  “We’re done here.” Kiara pushed the sheets of paper back across the table toward Dixon. “You can keep those, and let me know when you have actual charges to bring against my client.”

  Snatching her leather bag off the floor, Kiara scooped up her phone, tapped the off button, and escorted Agatha out of the room.

  Chapter Eleven

  Tony was waiting for them in the lobby of the police station.

  “Not here,” Kiara muttered, sailing through the front door.

  Tony moved next to Agatha, lowered his voice, and said, “Are you okay?”

  “I’d say never better, but that would be a stretch.”

  They stepped outside into a picture perfect day. Sunlight sparkled, the bright blue sky didn’t hold a single cloud, and the temperature hovered in the low 90s. Tony noticed Agatha pause outside the police department’s door and pull in several deep breaths.

  “Agatha?”

  She squared her shoulders and offered a shaky smile.

  Kiara was standing beside her car. She let her gaze travel from Agatha to Tony, then asked, “Sammi’s?”

  Tony nodded. “We’ll follow you.”

  “I need to get home,” Agatha protested as they walked toward Tony’s truck. “Bannister said there’s a crew there going through my house.”

  “There was a crew there, but they’re gone now, and you don’t have to worry about your guests—Gina said she’d stay as long as you need her to.”

  “Okay, but—”


  “We need to talk to Kiara. We want to all be on the same page with this.”

  Tony firmly shut her door, hustled around to the other side, and cranked up the big diesel engine.

  Agatha didn’t wait until he’d pulled out of the parking area. “I appreciate your help, Tony. I really do, but this isn’t your problem.”

  “Are you trying to get rid of me?”

  “Well, no, but...”

  “Good.” As far as he was concerned that put an end to her protests. He was not leaving Agatha to fend for herself with Bannister. The image that popped in his mind was of a lamb being pursued by a wolf. Kiara was a fine lawyer—one of the best, but it would take a team to stand up to Bannister, and he planned on being part of that team. For some reason he hadn’t yet identified, that was important to him.

  Five minutes later they were sitting in the corner booth at Sammi’s, sunlight pouring through the windows, steaming cups of coffee in front of them, and lunch on the way.

  Kiara caught Tony up while Agatha stared out the window.

  “Good,” Tony said. When both women stared at him in surprise, he added, “It sounds to me like Bannister showed all his cards. As long as we know his game plan, we know what our defense needs to look like.”

  “What makes you think he showed all his cards?” Kiara asked.

  “Jimmy Bannister is a lot of things—motivated, intelligent, ambitious...” He downed half the coffee in his mug, frowned, and added another packet of sugar. “What he’s not, is calculating. He’s never been the kind of guy to hold his cards close to his chest. Whatever evidence he felt he’d discovered, he threw at you this morning.”

  “No holding back?”

  “He never has. He’s been this way since I’ve known him, since I started working with him.”

  Agatha pulled her attention away from the window. “You worked with him?”

  “Sure, and he always wanted to use a frontal attack. It made him crazy when I’d insist on holding something back in a case. He thinks if you dump everything on a suspect at once, they’ll disintegrate before your eyes and confess.”

  “Agatha definitely did not disintegrate.”

  “Which reminds me.” Agatha smiled at Kiara. “Danki for coming simply because Tony called you.”

  “I’ll let you in on a secret...I owe Tony a few favors. Quite a few. This doesn’t begin to cover it.”

  Tony laughed out loud. When he saw the look of surprise on Agatha’s face, he added, “I’ll explain later. No doubt Kiara has a full slate today.”

  “I do, but we need to go over a few things.” She pulled out a tablet—yellow paper and black lines—and started listing items. “Bannister is correct that he has motive.”

  “I honestly didn’t know Mr. Dixon was even involved in my bruder’s case. If I’d seen the name before, I’d forgotten it.”

  “He can’t prove you remembered who Dixon was, and you can’t prove you didn’t. Everything else being equal, it’s enough to establish motive.”

  “And the muffins?” Tony asked.

  “Again, he can’t prove Agatha made them. It doesn’t stand as evidence against her unless he has her fingerprints on them...”

  “I don’t understand that part. I might have forgotten a name on a form from a year ago, but I don’t forget my guests dietary requests. I very specifically made sure everything I made this weekend was peanut free. It’s easier than making separate food for one guest.”

  Tony exchanged a knowing look with Kiara.

  “What?” Agatha asked.

  “Only what you’ve probably already figured out.” Kiara tapped her pen against the pad of paper. “If you didn’t put peanuts in his breakfast muffins...”

  “I didn’t. And I also didn’t steal his EpiPen. I don’t even know what one looks like.”

  “Then someone else did.” Kiara resumed writing on the tablet. “Who else had access to the cabins? Did someone see another person near Dixon’s cabin?”

  “Jasmine claimed to have seen him arguing with the Cox brothers.” Tony gave Kiara a summarized version of what Jasmine had related to Agatha.

  “Did he have other enemies? Had there been threats against him?”

  She waited a moment and when no one had anything else to add to her list, she capped her pen and put everything back in her bag. The waitress deposited their lunch on the table—a club sandwich for Agatha, a chef salad for Kiara, and eggs with tortillas, hot sauce, and possibly the kitchen sink for Tony.

  “A new case always did make me hungry,” he explained before digging in.

  As they ate, they spoke of other things.

  Agatha learned that Kiara lived in one of the new condos farther down the river from her place, she’d been in business for ten years, and she had a full case load.

  “Are you sure you have time to take on my case?”

  “I’ll make time.”

  When they finished eating, Tony tossed several bills down on the table. As they stood outside in the sunshine, next to Tony’s pickup truck and Kiara’s bright yellow Jeep, Agatha reached into her purse and pulled out her wallet. “We didn’t talk about how much I owe you.”

  “Nothing, for the moment. This morning was all my pleasure.” Promising she’d be in touch, Kiara climbed into the vehicle, music pouring out of it as soon as she started the engine, and waved as she pulled out onto the county road.

  Tony was driving them toward home when Agatha sighed, turned to him, and said, “She seems to be good at what she does.”

  “Kiara is the best, but more importantly, she’s one of the good ones.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “It’s one thing to be a good lawyer, which she is. But it’s another thing to fight for what’s right, for the innocent. If Kiara’s convinced you’re innocent, she’ll move mountains to convince a judge of the same.”

  Chapter Twelve

  Agatha hadn’t realized she’d missed lunch and actually eaten dinner with Tony and Kiara. She still wasn’t quite used to the long Texas days, and the hours she’d spent inside the Hunt Police Department offices hadn’t helped. She was surprised to climb the steps of her porch, walk into the kitchen, and find Gina doing the dinner dishes.

  “Are you hungry?”

  “Just ate.”

  “Good. I was hoping you weren’t a guest of the Hunt PD this entire time.”

  Gina was fort-nine years old, didn’t bother to dye her short black hair that was shot through with gray, and had the body of a long-distance runner. She wasn’t a long distance runner. She’d never participated in athletics of any sort. She’d shared all that when she’d shown up in answer to Agatha’s ad for help the previous fall. They’d become close friends almost immediately.

  Perhaps that was because they were both single women.

  Perhaps it was because they’d both passed the midlife crisis age.

  Possibly it was because they’d both suffered a fair amount of tragedy in the past.

  Or maybe it was because Gotte had seen that Agatha needed a sympathetic soul in her life, someone who could bridge the gap that existed between the Amish world and the Englisch one. Gina did all of that and more.

  “Sit down and I’ll make you some tea.”

  “I’ve been sitting all day. I’m exhausted and full of energy at the same time.”

  “How about we go out and check your garden, then. I haven’t had time, what with Bannister’s men stomping through the house, turning things inside out and taking whatever they pleased.”

  Agatha peeked from the kitchen into her office, but it looked exactly as she’d left it.

  “I put everything back and cleaned off the finger print powder—as if they’d need that to prove you’d been in your own office. That group reminded me of McGruff the Crime Dog—basically harmless but leaves a lot of work in his wake.”

  Gina marched toward the back porch, assuming Agatha would follow, which she did. An hour outside sounded like just what the doctor would order if she’d gone
to him and said, “I feel all catawampus. What do you recommend?”

  Thirty minutes later, they’d run the green bean shoots up the trellises, threaded new tomato growth through the cages, and pulled a few weeds. Agatha’s apron was dirty, she had soil beneath her nails, and hair was escaping from her kapp. She felt immeasurably better. As they worked, she’d caught Gina up on all that had transpired. Now they sat on a bench she’d positioned at the end of the long garden rows. The bench afforded a nice view of the river.

  “I should go check on my guests.”

  “If they needed you right now, you’d know.”

  “I suppose.”

  They fell into a comfortable silence, broken a few minutes later by Gina exclaiming, “This is a real mess. And I don’t need to point out that it comes at the worst possible time.”

  “Thanks for pointing that out.”

  “Only voicing what you’re thinking.”

  “Exactly.”

  “Your business is just beginning to grow. You had another half dozen reservations made on-line today.”

  “I did?”

  “You’re nearly booked through the fall.”

  “Definitely a good thing.”

  “Unless Bannister arrests you. I can’t run this place by myself.”

  “You probably could.”

  “The sign out front plainly says Agatha’s Amish Bed-and-Breakfast.”

  “True.”

  “And I don’t know how to look after your horse.”

  “I think we’re off topic here.”

  They sighed at the same moment, glanced sideways at one another, and started laughing. Perhaps it was all the pent-up energy or the emotional highs and lows of the day, but Agatha laughed until tears streamed down her face.

  Finally she wiped her eyes with the sleeve of her dress. “Sorry. I was just imagining you driving a buggy.”

  “Or wearing one of those bonnets.”

  “Or living in a house with no television.”