by Dana R. Lynn
“Do you mind if we wait here until you get final confirmation?” She had to know if it was him.
“I rather expected that you would. This room is yours until we know anything.”
It was hard waiting, the dread building up inside. It felt like she would explode from the pressure building up. At times, she got up to pace, just so she could stretch herself out to give her lungs more room to breathe.
An hour later, they had their confirmation. Evan Stiles had been murdered. Shot in the head, execution-style.
Looking at his photos, she realized with a start how young he was. “He wasn’t much older than a boy.”
Abram put his arm around her shoulder, silently offering comfort and strength. She needed it, too. Part of her worried how she’d get by without it once she returned home.
* * *
Abram knew seeing Evan Stiles dead had affected Katie profoundly. Abram wished there were some way he could comfort her, but sometimes it was just best to be silent.
“Where do we go now?” Katie burst out. They were back in the buggy on their way home. “Gary is in jail, Evan is dead. I have no idea where to look.”
“Did you ever finish going through Beth’s haus?”
He hated the idea of taking her back there, but surely there was something they could use.
“I think that we’ve gotten everything we needed from there. Seriously, I don’t know where else to look. Beth kept pretty much to herself. I think with the exception of Lieutenant Greer, she wasn’t close to anyone.”
He nodded. She was echoing his thoughts exactly. “Do you reckon it would be of use to talk with him again?”
“Nah. He’s pretty much told us everything he can. I need to find another lead. There has to be something more. Something I’m missing.”
“You’ll find it.” He pulled into his driveway. “I have every confidence in you.”
She smiled, pleased. “Thanks. It’s nice to know someone believes in me. I have trouble doing that myself.”
He parked the buggy in front of the haus. A fat drop of water splattered on the center of the protective plastic shielding inside the buggy.
A grimace marred her pretty face. “Ugh. Rain. Again. I am really looking forward to a dry sunny day.”
He chuckled. “You’re in Ohio in the fall. Rain is our norm. Go inside and stay dry. I’ll deal with this and be in.”
He laughed outright at the speed with which she bounded from the buggy.
“Hey, I’m not going to refuse an offer like that. To be in a warm house on a miserable day? Oh, yeah.”
Giving him a thumbs-up, she dashed up the stairs and disappeared inside the haus.
He chuckled at her antics as he coaxed the mare into the barn. A few minutes later, he entered his kitchen, hanging his hat on the hook.
Katie was sitting at the table, his mamm and Adele with her. All three women were ignoring fragrant koffee in their mugs, as they talked. It was something serious. Then he remembered.
Adele had worked at the bed-and-breakfast with Beth. Katie had wanted another lead. Looked like she may have found one. He got down a mug and poured himself a mug of koffee. He had a feeling he was going to be leaving the haus again soon.
Sitting next to Katie, he saw Adele’s expression for the first time. His cousin had been crying. Her lids were red and the whites of her eyes were bloodshot. Clearly, she’d been crying a great deal.
“Adele.”
She shook her head, wiping her eyes on her apron. She lifted a hand toward Katie.
“Abram, your cousin came here today because she talked with Shane. He let slip that we were looking into Beth’s disappearance.”
“He also said that you were at her haus.” Adele stopped sniffling and looked at Abram. “Abram, I liked her. She was nice and never asked nosy questions. But I knew she wasn’t Amish. I didn’t say anything, because I might have been wrong.”
Abram nodded.
“This is as far as we got before you came in. Tell us what happened next, Adele.”
“After I got done talking to Shane, I felt bad. I hadn’t told him something that happened.”
Katie waited. Adele continued after thirty seconds of silence. “A few days ago, I went to Beth’s haus. To see if she’d come home. And she had.”
At this, Katie and Abram both sat straight, jaws nearly hitting the table in their shock.
“She came home?” Kate questioned, her voice taut.
“Ja. She was gathering things she’d need. She didn’t even look at the mess of her haus. Someone had torn it to pieces. She told me not to ask questions. She was in a hurry and didn’t have time to play twenty questions. She was rushing around, desperate, like her life depended on it.”
They nodded. Her life probably had depended on it.
“I heard something ring. She had a cell phone. I knew for sure she wasn’t Amish then. None of us have cell phones in our homes. She didn’t seem to care that I saw the phone, so I figured she was leaving us. Someone called her, and it sounded like it was a boyfriend or something. When she got off the phone, she was smiling.”
Abram immediately thought of Lieutenant Greer. He had said they’d planned to enter the witness protection program together.
“So what happened after she got off the phone with her boyfriend?” Katie’s eyes narrowed as she concentrated. Her mind was processing all the information, sorting it as they talked. He didn’t even need to ask to know this was how she worked.
“Someone else called. Said they had information she was needing. They gave her an address. She wrote it down and took it with her when she left.”
Katie sank back against her chair, a look of defeat on her face. She’d forgotten his cousin’s skill with numbers, Abram realized.
“What was the address, Adele?”
She rattled it off and Katie shot back up, reenergized. “This might be what we need.”
She grappled with her apron until she found the phone the marshal had given her. Dialing, she waited, her fingers drumming on the hardwood table. “Come on, Shane. Pick up the phone.”
A moment later, she groaned. “Shane, this is Kate. Give me a call, please. I might know where Beth had gone after she left here.”
She tried to reach Marshal Delacure next. No response. “Doesn’t anyone answer their phones?”
Abram would have smiled at her grousing if the situation weren’t so deadly.
“Where is that address?” he asked her when she ended her message.
She tapped out the address in the maps app. Stopped. Then she did it again.
“I don’t know if this is right, but the address is Lake Sutter.”
“Why would someone meet her there?”
“That’s why I’m worried, Abram. At first, I thought maybe she’d gone to meet Lieutenant Greer. But he would have told us that.”
“Ja?” He tried to make sense of what she was saying.
She shook her head. “It’s not ideal for a meeting. But what if the person she was meeting claimed to have the evidence she was looking for? And what if they were really planning on killing her, to stop her from looking into their business? Lake Sutter might be a good place to hide a body.”
FIFTEEN
Kate tried Shane’s number again, but he wasn’t answering his phone. Where on earth could he be? The irony of him being at the Plain and Simple Bed and Breakfast and the lead coming to find her instead didn’t escape her attention. Her stint as an undercover cop had been rather a phenomenal failure, but she tried to remain positive that today would be the day they found Beth.
She started praying that they would find her alive. She took encouragement from the fact that she had been seen alive and well a few days ago.
“Please, God, let her be alive.”
“Amen.” She startled as Abram, Fanny and Adele all r
esponded to her impromptu prayer.
Abram had called for a driver for them. It had taken a full hour before one had arrived. The driver turned out to be a young woman, about twenty years old, with platinum blond hair, huge hoop earrings and a tendency to snap her gum loudly. Her name, she told them, was Trina.
Despite her appearance, Trina was a cautious driver. Her shoulders hunched as she held the steering wheel tightly at three and nine o’clock, exactly the way she’d been taught while studying for her driver’s license, no doubt.
The rain was coming down so hard that Trina had to set the windshield wipers at the highest speed. Each swish sent rivulets of water streaming down the sides of the window. Trina slowed down to half the posted speed. Her mouth pulled down at the corners and her face tensed.
“Are y’all sure you want to be out at the lake on a day like this?” She leaned in, nearly touching the steering wheel with her body. “It’s nasty out there. I can barely see the road.”
“Ja, we have something to do.” Abram’s voice was patient, but his lips were pressed tight together. He wasn’t liking this any more than Trina was.
Kate understood. The same anxiety was running beneath her skin. She hoped she was wrong. That Beth had met someone who had really been intent on giving her good news.
Her gut, however, whispered that the person Beth had gone to meet had lured her to Lake Sutter to end her interference. She wanted to be positive, but in her heart, she believed if they found anything, it would be the former socialite’s body.
She dreaded calling that in and coming face-to-face with Lieutenant Greer. If they found Beth’s body, the lawman would be devastated. Please, God. Let us find her alive. Trina’s tire hit a deep puddle. The water splashed up, covering the windshield, momentarily hiding the road from sight. Kate’s stomach lurched as the car began to hydroplane. It skidded to the side of the road, the wheels going off into a ditch.
They were stuck. The car wasn’t going anywhere. Trina began to cry.
Kate patted her on the shoulder. “Look, Trina. It’ll be fine. Call a tow truck. When they arrive, I’ll take care of it.”
The girl settled down once she knew someone else would pay the bill. Funny how life worked that way. Kate wasn’t going to judge her. Trina needed her car for her work. She had to have one that was reliable. Hopefully, they hadn’t damaged anything when they’d gone over the edge. They’d scraped the grass and gravel with the bottom of the car pretty good.
The tow truck driver arrived twenty minutes later. He pulled the car back onto the road and took a quick look to be sure it was still sound.
Turned out, one of the wheels had been damaged. “It’ll need to be towed. We can fit it in and get you on your way in a jiffy, but can’t do that here.”
“Could you let us pay for it and then you take Trina with you?” Kate couldn’t afford to waste any more time.
“Umm, yes?” He cocked his head at them. “You planning on walking home or something?”
“Or something,” she said, nodding.
When Kate charged the bill to the Wallmer Grove Police Department, his eyebrows had climbed under his shaggy bangs as he glanced over at her and Abram. It didn’t take much imagination to know he was finding the appearance of two people dressed in Amish clothing and a connection to the Wallmer Grove Police Department incongruous, to say the least. It would take too much time to explain it. He would just have to deal with his curiosity.
“Seriously?” The tow truck driver looked like he didn’t know whether to laugh or scoff. In her opinion, either action would probably be valid.
“Yep.” She left it there.
He grinned. Abram didn’t grin, but he did send her a sly wink. He’d found the humor in the situation, as well. He sobered quickly. Remembering, as she did, the gravity of their situation. Every minute they spent not actively searching for Beth was a minute they were less likely to find her alive.
As soon as they were sure that Trina would be taken care of, Kate and Abram set out on foot toward Sutter Lake. They had at least a mile, possibly a mile and a half, before they arrived. The rain hadn’t let up at all. They speed-walked, as well as they were able to in the slick conditions. There wasn’t even any room for conversation. They needed to save all their breath for the journey.
By the time they reached the lake, Kate was exhausted. Walking over a mile in the horrible weather, leaning into the wind and the rain pushing against them at every step, was hard work. If they hadn’t been drenched from the rain sloshing down on them, Kate was sure they’d be just as wet from sweating.
When this was over, they’d need hot showers, clean clothes and about an hour in front of the fireplace. Oh, and maybe a forty-eight-hour nap. Give or take an hour or two.
Kate heard a low rumble from beside her. She blinked up at Abram for a moment, uncomprehending. When she heard it again, her eyes widened and her brow arched in question. He shrugged, a half grin, half grimace crossing his face. His stomach was growling.
Add that to the list, she thought.
But first they had to find Beth and whoever had killed Evan Stiles. She knew in her gut it was one and the same person. But she had no idea who. Mentally, she crossed all of their suspects off her list—Gary was in jail; Evan was dead. And even Lieutenant Greer, whom she’d been suspicious of for a millisecond, turned out to be nothing more dangerous than a protective and concerned boyfriend.
When they arrived at the lake, they had to trudge through the overgrown grass around it. Kate’s skirt was dirty and wet, and her legs bore the scratches of thorns and prickly plants by the time they managed to get all the way around the lake.
“How sure are we that this is the right place?” Abram frowned, squinting, at the smallish boathouse near the lake. The dock was about as simple as one could get. There were two small boats tethered to it, covered with tarps that looked about a hundred years old.
Spinning in a circle, Kate considered her options. There was no one, and nothing else, about.
“I can’t promise anything,” she replied, still working, dissecting their position in her mind, “but all my instincts tell me she’s here. Somewhere.”
She didn’t say dead or alive. By the grimness of his expression, he had added that himself.
“Let’s start looking.”
The boathouse door wasn’t locked. It creaked loudly when she pulled it open. Inside it was dark and damp. The odor of mildew and mold nearly overpowered them.
“Whew! Let’s see if there’s a window in this building.” Taking her phone, she shone the flashlight around the interior. There was no window. Nor was there any evidence that Beth or anyone else was inside. Her heart fell.
She’d been hoping, so hard, that they’d find her.
“She’s not here.” The words fell like hard pebbles from her lips.
“We’ll keep looking.” Abram put his arm around her shoulders. “We’ll not give up, Katie. No matter what. We’ll find her.”
“You can’t promise that.” She was grateful and touched by his willingness to walk this path with her, but she needed to be rational about it. “We’re out of clues.”
“We haven’t searched everywhere yet,” she added. Taking a deep breath, she plunged into the conversation she’d never wanted to have. “We need to have the lake dragged.”
“Dragged?”
He knew what she meant; she saw it in his face. He just didn’t want it to be true any more than she did.
“Yes. We need to get the scuba team out here to search the lake for her body.”
Abram closed his eyes but nodded his acceptance.
“Ja. That would be logical. Even if we don’t want it to be true. We need to know.”
A sudden dread entered her heart. How would they tell Lieutenant Greer if she were correct?
Moving away from the boathouse, she called Marshal Delacure
’s cell, leaving her a message that they were at Lake Sutter and wanted to have the lake dragged. She knew the woman would immediately understand what she was getting at, but she spelled it out, just in case. Then she left a message for Shane to meet her at the lake.
Hanging up, she turned to tell Abram it was done.
He was standing still, his body poised, head tilted. He was listening for something. She copied his posture.
There. She heard it. A woman’s moan.
Her blood pumped hard in her ears, excitement growing. Where was the sound coming from? She spun in each direction, trying to localize the noise. It seemed to be directly ahead, near the water.
Was Beth in the water?
Keeping her head low, she struggled to hear the noise over the wind and rain. “Beth? Beth! Where are you?”
She waited, holding her breath. A low moan answered her. Hurrying forward, she rushed to the edge of the dock, Abram dashing to her side. They knelt together. Carefully, she leaned over to look under the dock. It wasn’t that high off the ground, but the rocks lining the ground sloping to the water were dangerous-looking. They were dark with the water, and some of them were jagged and sharp.
Beth wasn’t anywhere.
The moan came again. She crawled to the other side of the dock. “In the boats.”
Scrambling down, they slipped and skittered toward the two boats connected to the dock by thick ropes. The boats were small, no more than canoes. One of them seemed to sag into the water. As if the water was slowly leaking into it and it was sinking.
Clutching the wet tarp, which was slimy with algae, she dragged it back from the boat and gasped.
At the bottom of the boat, a woman in a blue Amish dress with a kapp that was no longer white lay still at the bottom of the boat. Water lapped gently around her still body, dark and deadly. Her shoulder was darkened and there was a hole in her dress. She’d been shot.
They’d found Beth.
