Ettie walked up to the lady behind the reception desk and Elsa-May stayed back a distance. The place looked a little bleak, with mustard-colored carpet, white framed generic landscape pictures on the walls and a blue geometric-patterned wallpaper. It looked like nothing had been changed in fifty years, although it did look clean.
The receptionist stood up, glanced over at Elsa-May and smiled at Ettie. “Are you looking for a placing for your mother?”
Ettie opened her mouth in shock, realizing the lady thought Elsa-May was her mother. Then she could barely keep the smile from her face.
“We’re not that old yet,” Elsa-May said, not fully hearing the question.
Ettie leaned closer to the woman. “Actually, I think we are old enough to be in one of these places, but my sister and I are not here for that. We called earlier and asked about visiting Edgar Upton.”
Elsa-May pushed Ettie out of the way. “Edgar Upton. Where will we find him?”
The receptionist glanced at the clock on the far wall. “It's eleven o'clock and that means he’ll be in the games room. I'll take you there if you like; it's not too far.”
“Yes please,” Ettie said.
“I'm glad it's not too far because I’m so old,” Elsa-May muttered loud enough for Ettie to hear.
Ettie frowned at her sister. She must’ve pieced together what the receptionist had said.
They were led down a wide corridor, and the second door on the left opened up into a large open space continuing onto an outdoor patio. “This is our games room. Most of our residents gather here before and after lunch.”
“Which one is Edgar?” Ettie asked, looking around the sea of faces.
“He’s right over there, the fellow in the green checked shirt.”
“Thank you,” Elsa-May said.
They walked over to the man she'd indicated. He was playing a game of chess with another man of a similar age. Edgar was a small wizened man who looked a little mischievous.
“Excuse me. Are you Edgar?” Elsa-May asked as she leaned toward him.
His face beamed. “I am, but you don’t have to yell. I’m not deaf.” He looked at Ettie and then Elsa-May.
“Oh, I didn’t know I was.”
“It’s just her normal voice. I’m Ettie Smith and this is my sister, Elsa-May Lutz. We’ve come to ask you about a man you once knew.”
“Jedidiah Shoneberger,” Elsa-May added before Ettie had a chance.
“We’re after a little information about him,” Ettie explained.
Edgar looked away from them and his gaze fixed on the man opposite. “Can we continue this later, Doug?”
“Humph. I was losing anyway. Maybe I should thank you two.” The man gave the ladies a smile and moved his wheelchair away.
There was a nearby chair that Elsa-May pulled to the spot Doug had vacated, and Ettie sat on the one next to Edgar.
Ettie said, “We’re both friends of Jedidiah and the woman he was set to marry. We’re trying to find out what happened to him.”
“Why have you come to me? Do you think I killed him?” He laughed nervously and covered his mouth with his hand.
Ettie didn’t know if he knew that Jedidiah had been found buried at Rose Cottage. Jedidiah's name hadn’t been officially released. They stuck to the story that he’d disappeared. “We don’t think that, but there’s a theory going around that some bank robbers might have killed him thinking he was you.”
“Bank robbers?” Edgar threw his head back and laughed and then started coughing. After a guttural throat clearing, he said, “No. Jedidiah was most likely killed by the man he bought his house from. Either that or he ran from him in fear of his life. That man wasn’t going to give up until that place was his again.”
“The house? Do you mean Rose Cottage?”
“Yes, that was the name of it. Jedidiah wouldn’t stop talking about it and the plans he had for it. It was the strangest thing, no sooner had he bought it than the previous owner wanted it back. He even ended up offering double the price, but Jedidiah still wouldn't sell. At that point, the guy got really mad. I told Jedidiah he should sell it back and buy something bigger and better, but he reckoned his girlfriend had her heart set on that place.”
“Why did the man want to buy it back from him?”
“That's what Jedidiah asked me. He wanted me to see if I could find out for him. I found out, but then he never came back to work. When I went to Rose Cottage to tell him what I’d learned, no one was there. It happened right at the time of my jail incident.”
“You were in jail?”
“No, not me, not then. Other people were in jail.”
“Oh.” Ettie wondered if the man was in his right mind because he wasn’t making much sense.
“Well, what was the reason the man wanted to buy it back? Was gold or oil discovered on the land or something?”
“As good as gold, but not for Jedidiah. The only person the land Rose Cottage sat on was valuable to was the man who sold it. You see, the land was almost like a right-of-way to the corporation that wanted to buy the rest of the man’s land. He didn't know it at the time, obviously, when he sold it. But when the corporation came knocking on his door he soon found out he needed the land back. The corporation didn’t want it without that parcel of land that led to the road.”
Elsa-May and Ettie exchanged glances. What the man said had started making more sense. “Surely the land must’ve had other roads that accessed it?”
“Do you remember what the man's name was?” asked Elsa-May, right overtop of Ettie's question.
“I'm sorry that’s something I don't remember.” He tapped his finger on his head. “I’ve usually got a pretty keen memory.”
“You knew, then, that Jedidiah had disappeared?”
“I did. I found the woman he was marrying at the cottage about a week later and she told me he’d gone missing. I called back a few months later to see if he was coming back to work, but she said he’d never returned. Then she told me about a man who had visited him a couple of times. I knew that the man she’d described was the man trying to buy the land back. I didn’t tell her that. Jedidiah hadn’t told her, by the way she was talking. He probably didn’t want her to worry.”
“He’s been missing all this time and that’s been a lifetime of worry for her.” Ettie nibbled on a fingernail.
“And he worked for you, is that right?” Elsa-May asked.
“How do you know that? Who have you been talking with?”
“You just said that,” Ettie told him.
“We’ve been asking around because we’ve been trying to find out what happened to Jedidiah.”
The man nodded. “If you want to know what happened to him, I just told you. He was either killed by that man who was trying to get his house back, or he ran in fear for his life.”
“But he wasn't the true owner of the house,” Elsa-May said.
“Who wasn't?” he asked.
“Jedidiah only owned it for a short amount of time before he signed it over and put it in the name of the woman he was to marry.”
“Yes, I told him to do that.”
“Why's that?”
“So he wouldn't be in danger of being killed,” Edgar said.
“Wouldn’t that put Nell in danger, then?”
“Who’s Nell? The woman he was supposed to marry?”
“That’s right,” Ettie said.
He shook his head. “I can’t remember. That’s all I can remember.”
“You’ve done very well,” Ettie said, pleased they’d gotten that much out of him. All they had to do now was find the man Jedidiah purchased the property from.
“I think it was something to do with him not having anyone to leave it to, and I said he should do a will before he married. He said he’d give it to her. Would either of you ladies care for a game of chess?”
Ettie shook her head. “No thank you. We don't play.”
“We should go. Thank you for speaking with us,” Elsa-May s
aid as she stood up.
“You weren’t here long. It’s not even lunchtime yet. Will you come back and visit me again?”
“We might,” Elsa-May said with a smile.
“If you come again, can you bring me some licorice?”
Elsa-May chuckled. “Yes, we will.”
On the way out of the building, Ettie asked, “Why did you agree to bring him licorice? That means we’ll have to come again.”
“That won't hurt, will it?”
“I suppose not, but I just didn't think you'd want to with all the knitting we have on our plate.”
“It wouldn't hurt. He might have no one else to bring him some, for all we know.”
“Okay, we’ll buy some next time we’re at the markets. You can learn how to play chess in the meantime, and we’ll come back to see him.”
Elsa-May pulled a face. “I don’t want to learn it. It’s a game based on strategic warfare, if you didn’t know.”
“Well, you said we’d come again.”
“I was just trying to be nice. It wouldn’t hurt to visit again and bring him licorice.”
Ettie sighed. “It’s out of our way. Anyway, forget all that. Wouldn’t Edgar have told Kelly what we just found out?”
“Possibly. Kelly doesn’t tell us everything, you know.”
“Jah, I do know that.”
* * *
Elsa-May and Ettie had the taxi let them out at the bottom of their street. They wanted to call Kelly from the telephone before they walked to their haus.
“Hello, Detective Kelly, it’s Ettie.”
“Is everything okay?”
“Yes. We visited Edgar Upton.” Ettie paused waiting for Kelly to tell her it wasn’t a good idea to stick her nose into things. When he said nothing, she said, “Aren’t you going to say anything?”
“What did he say?”
“You’re not mad that we visited him?”
“Mrs. Smith, I can’t stop a private citizen from talking to another citizen.”
That was news to Ettie and a welcome relief. “He said that someone was angry with Jedidiah because he wouldn’t sell them Rose Cottage.”
“Who was it?” Now, he sounded interested.
“The same man who sold it to him.”
“He wanted it back?”
“That’s right.” Ettie went on to explain what Edgar had told them. By what Kelly said, Ettie knew Mr. Upton hadn’t told him any of that. “You can find out who owned it before Jedidiah can’t you?”
“Yes. I’ll be looking into it. Thank you, Mrs. Smith.”
“I do wish you’d call me Ettie. Don’t you think we know each other well enough by now?”
There was silence at the other end of the phone. “Mrs. Smith suits me fine.”
“No one calls me Mrs. Smith. No adult does, anyway.” In the background, Ettie heard someone calling the detective.
“I’ve got to go. I’ll be in touch, and thanks again.”
A loud click sounded in Ettie’s ear.
“What did he say, Ettie?”
Ettie replaced the receiver and put the coins in the honesty box. “Not much really. He thanked me a couple of times and I don’t think Edgar told him any of what he told us.”
“He can find out who sold Jedidiah the cottage?”
“Yes.” Ettie sighed as she started walking home.
“What’s wrong?”
“I can’t help feeling like we're missing something.”
“We’re missing a whole lot of somethings. We might never find out who killed Jedidiah. All we can do is try, for Nell’s sake. Let’s just put the whole thing out of our minds and have a night where we don’t talk about Nell, or Jedidiah, or what the Charmers are doing.”
Ettie looked up at the Charmers house. There was no sign of them, and the car that usually sat in the driveway wasn’t there.
“I can hear your brain ticking over, Ettie. Can we just have one evening of peace?”
Ettie nodded. “Okay. I’ll put all my attention into knitting some more teddies.”
“That’s what I like to hear. The sooner we get the first lot off to the hospital, the better I’ll feel.”
Chapter 15
After a quiet and peaceful evening followed by a good night's sleep, Ettie and Elsa-May woke early. When breakfast was over, Elsa-May took Snowy for his usual walk and, while her sister was gone, Ettie sat at the window where she could view the Charmers’ house. They hadn’t even said a polite thank you for fixing the fence that was shared between the two properties.
Ettie rubbed her chin and considered pointing out to them that the fence was co-owned. Maybe things were different where they came from. Although, Ettie couldn’t imagine that they would be. The more Ettie thought about it the more she thought it was the right thing to do to inform her neighbors that the fence was owned between them both. Snowy got through the fence because it was so old and, unless they put a new fence up, it might happen again. Perhaps a stronger, better quality fence would be best—a higher one.
As Ettie was pondering what kind of fence she’d like, Greville’s car pulled into the driveway. Then both Greville and Stacey got out of the car. While Greville went inside, Stacey got bags out of the trunk. They’ve been away. If Ettie hurried, she’d be able to talk to Stacey before she got inside, and avoid Greville altogether. Ettie was already dressed for the day except for her shoes, which she grabbed from by the door. She slipped her feet in and quickly did up the laces. Then she opened the door, walked out, and ran right into Detective Kelly.
“Oh, I’m so sorry,” Ettie said.
“Where were you off to in such a hurry?”
“Nowhere.” She looked past him to Elsa-May who was nearly back from her walk with Snowy.
He followed her gaze over his shoulder to Elsa-May, and then he turned back to Ettie. “I’ll wait for your sister to get here. I have something to tell you both.”
“Come in and have a seat.” She stepped outside, so he could walk in and then she motioned for Elsa-May to hurry. “Quick, he’s got something to tell us.”
“I’m hurrying.” Elsa-May walked briskly up the few steps of the porch, then walked Snowy through the house, saying a quick hello to Kelly. Once she had closed Snowy in the backyard, she sat down with Ettie and the detective.
* * *
“Is it bad news?” Elsa-May asked when she saw Detective Kelly's face.
“It's not bad news, it's surprising news. It was a shock for everyone. I've just come from Nell Graber’s house and now I'm here to tell the both of you.”
Both ladies sat still while Kelly inhaled deeply. “It’s not Jedidiah. The body we found at Rose Cottage is not the body of Jedidiah Shoneberger.”
Elsa-May gasped loudly, and Ettie couldn't believe what she was hearing. “Who is it then?” Ettie asked.
“We had dental records of a man who went missing around the same time as Jedidiah. His name is Arnold Salisbury.”
“Who is he?” Elsa-May asked.
“Now this part gets interesting. He’s the same fellow who sold Rose Cottage to Jedidiah. I had two reports handed to me at the same time. One was the identity of the previous owner of Rose Cottage, and the next one was the identity of the body found at Rose Cottage. They were one and the same, Arnold Salisbury.”
Ettie leaned back. “The man who wanted to buy it back, and there are witnesses that he was harassing Jedidiah. That means that Jedidiah could still be out there somewhere—alive.”
“He wouldn't have stayed away this long, Ettie.” Elsa-May shook her head.
“There is that possibility, Mrs. Lutz. Perhaps he killed this man, buried him and fled.”
“Jedidiah would never do anything like that. No one in our community would.”
“There is a very real possibility that it happened just like that. You need to prepare yourselves for whatever will unfold.”
“That explains why the man didn’t harass Nell when she took ownership of the property. He was dead.”
“She was shocked like both of you, but she was a little sad that her question still remains unanswered—what happened to Jedidiah Shoneberger? Now, I’m more interested than ever to find him.” Kelly clenched his jaw.
Ettie didn’t like the sound of that, nor did she like the predatory gleam in Kelly’s eyes.
“Keep in touch and tell me if you find out anything, okay?”
A few seconds after they agreed, Kelly was gone.
“Ettie, we must visit Nell.”
“We should go there now.”
“I’ll just bring Snowy back into the house and get him a drink of water. That walk made me thirsty, so he must be thirsty.” They kept Snowy’s water in the house, just inside the back door.
Chapter 16
When they got out of the taxi at Rose Cottage, Ettie saw the yellow police tape was still up. It was an awful sight, and it must have made Nell feel even more upset.
Nell met them at the front door with Gloria alongside her. “You heard?”
“Jah, Detective Kelly just came by and told us.”
“I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing. I was so sure it was Jedidiah.”
“We all were,” Elsa-May said.
“The man was killed. Who killed him?” Nell clutched at her throat and her granddaughter put her head on Nell's shoulder and wrapped her arm around her grandmother's waist to comfort her.
“The detective will find that out. Don’t worry,” Ettie said.
They stayed at Nell’s house for a couple of hours, making sure she was okay.
* * *
When they got home, Stacey was waving at them as they were walking up their front steps. She was waving a piece of paper. When she got closer, Ettie saw it wasn’t just a piece of paper, it was a letter.
“I’ve got this for you. I saw it hanging out of your mailbox, and I thought it might blow away. I thought it best I keep it safe until you came home.”
The envelope had been opened and there was no sender’s name and it just had the word ‘Ettie’ on the front. Ettie pulled the letter out and read, “Jedidiah is alive.”
Amish Mystery at Rose Cottage Page 8
