Assaulted Pretzel (8 page)

9:55.

Shrugging, she turned on the two-inch heels of her boots and strode into the showroom, Benjamin following at a respectful distance. “Good morning, welcome to Heavenly Treasures…”

The more formal greeting died on her lips at the sight of Jakob standing just inside the shop’s front door with a camera in one hand and a pair of gloves in the other. “Jakob…uh, hi.”

The detective mustered a weak smile for Claire then tipped his head ever so slightly at Benjamin. “Ben. Good. I was hoping to track you down at some point today.”

Before Benjamin could reply, Claire moved still closer to Jakob, the uncharacteristic droop to the man’s broad shoulders sending her antennae pinging. “Jakob? Are you okay?”

“Long, long night. Sorry I couldn’t get to Diane’s before this morning but things were just too busy at the fairgrounds and then back at the station once we were able to locate the victim’s wife.”

“Where was she when everything was happening?” she asked before her brain had a chance to catch up with the inherent nosiness of the question. “Wait. I don’t really expect you to answer that.”

Jakob waved her worries aside and stopped at the counter in the center of Claire’s shop, setting the camera and the gloves down as he did. “Seems she went into Breeze Point
to do a little research at the library and then to an office store to mail some things. She found out about her husband when she called his cell and I answered it.”

She shivered at the notion of such a call. “Did you tell her on the phone?”

“Of course not. I told her who I was and asked her to come to the station.” Jakob lifted his hand to his face and exhaled slowly. “Officer Melnick brought her back to the inn when we were done talking and…you can probably take it from there.”

Once again, the memory of Ann’s cries from the bottom of the stairs looped their way through her thoughts, reminding her of the distraction she desperately needed work to provide for the next seven or so hours.

“Did you see her when you went to the inn this morning?” Benjamin asked from his spot somewhere behind Claire.

“No, she was still sleeping. Diane had made up a room for her on the first floor so I was able to spend time in the room she’d shared on the second floor with the victim without rousing her unnecessarily.”

“Don’t you find it rather ironic that those of us who didn’t even know the man couldn’t sleep in the wake of his murder, yet his own wife could sleep so soundly she didn’t hear the detective assigned to her husband’s case coming and going this morning?” She hadn’t meant to share the observation aloud but sleep deprivation and stress tended to wreak havoc on one’s good sense.

“I suspect her ability to sleep is due to heartache and depression more than anything else.”

And, just like that, Claire found herself feeling like a monster for uttering such a statement in the first place. Jakob
was right. She couldn’t even begin to fathom what Ann Karble was going through at the moment.

Before she could apologize, though, Jakob wiggled the rubber gloves onto his hands and motioned for Claire and Benjamin to join him behind the camera’s viewfinder. “I could use a little help in identifying some of the pictures taken on this camera yesterday.”

“Is that the same camera that was around Rob Karble’s neck when we found him?” she asked as she moved in beside Jakob and waited for Benjamin to do the same.

“Yes.”

Benjamin remained in his spot between the counter and the stockroom door. “I do not understand why you need me to look at pictures.”

She felt Jakob tense in response. “Because I’m trying to figure out what the victim was doing in the hours leading up to his death. If I can, maybe I’ll be able to catch a killer and put him away where he can’t hurt anyone ever again.”

A momentary pause was soon followed by the sound of Benjamin’s work boots against the thinly carpeted floor. When the man was situated just behind the detective’s other shoulder, Jakob pushed a button to the side of a small screen to reveal a crystal clear shot of ham, apple slices, and dumplings, alongside a large salted pretzel. The angle of the shot indicated the person shooting the picture was also the person holding the plate—a person Jakob identified as Rob Karble based on the attire the man was wearing when his body was discovered.

“That is Martha’s pretzel and Hannah Yoder’s Schnitz and Knepp dish,” Benjamin stated in his usual matter-of-fact tone. He turned to her and smiled. “Did you like it, Claire?”

“I never got to try it,” she replied. “That’s what we were on the way to try when we heard Esther’s screams.”

Esther…

Oh, how she hoped Esther was feeling better after a good night’s sleep. Finding Rob Karble’s body behind the Schnitz and Knepp booth was—

“Wait!” At the feel of both Jakob’s and Benjamin’s eyes on her, she pointed to the screen, her own eyes trained on the subtle details around the plate of piping hot food held aloft over a dirt field that had seen its fair share of foot traffic and lazy festivalgoers. Details that put the time the picture was taken not all that long before Esther had found the body.

“This must have been taken shortly before he died,” she mused as she drank in the position of Rob Karble’s shadow in relation to the corner of the Schnitz and Knepp booth barely visible in the upper right-hand corner of the shot.

Jakob nodded. “Since it’s the last picture he took and it shows him having eaten at the very booth closest to where we found him, I’d have to agree.”

She leaned still closer to the screen as Jakob worked backward through the last few hours of Rob Karble’s life.

There was a picture of Martha’s pretzel booth…

There was a picture that showed the main thoroughfare of booths through the center of the festival grounds—the image capturing everything from curiosity to utter joy on the faces of people who never realized their photograph was being taken…

And there was a picture from the hill above the grounds that took in the festival as a whole—the Amish and English intermingling with one another effortlessly.

Claire swallowed and glanced at the ground, the momentary break from the screen affording an opportunity to rein in the emotions that were threatening to hinder her desire to remain upbeat. But it was hard.

It was hard to look at such happy photographs from an
event that so many people—including herself—had looked forward to for months, knowing it had all come to an end in such a tragic way. Murder wasn’t supposed to happen in Heavenly at all. It most certainly wasn’t supposed to happen for the second time in as many months.

It wasn’t right.

It just wasn’t right.

“Now this is where you might come in, Benjamin.” Jakob’s words pulled her focus back to the camera and the first image they’d seen so far that wasn’t taken at or around the festival. “Any idea what this building might be?”

Sure enough, the camera lens had caught a side view of a small wooden structure that wasn’t much bigger than a large shed. Only this particular building was painted white and boasted a flower box outside its solitary yet decent-sized window.

“That is Lapp’s Toy Shop.”

“Are you sure?” Jakob asked.

“Yah. I am sure.” Benjamin swept his hand toward the screen. “He built that window box at Sarah’s request. Sarah is very good with flowers.”

Jakob nodded and then pushed the button that took them to the picture taken just prior to the exterior shot. “And this? What can you tell me about this, Ben?”

She studied the image along with Benjamin, her focus on the elevated wooden track and its matching wooden car while Benjamin merely crossed his arms and rubbed a hand along his jawline. “That is easy. That is Isaac’s roller track. It has a double track so children can race their cars. It is one of the toys Mr. Karble was to have in the new toy line. One that was to be built here, in Heavenly, under Isaac’s supervision.”

“Under Isaac’s supervision,” Jakob mumbled beneath his breath before shaking his head and bringing yet another image of a toy onto the screen in front of them. This time, he didn’t say anything—no question, no muttering, nothing. Instead, he merely waited for Benjamin to speak.

“That is a wooden jigsaw puzzle that Daniel first made for his son Joshua. It is different than English puzzles because it is a puzzle, itself.”

It took Claire a moment to understand what Benjamin meant. But upon closer scrutiny she got it. The entire giraffe was a puzzle—a puzzle that could stand up as a figure when the child was done, unlike the more traditional picture puzzles the English tended to have.

Jakob pressed the button again and again, slowly cycling through toy picture after toy picture until they reached an outdoor shot. Leaning forward, Claire took in the rock wall with a tree-bordered clearing on one side and a gently rolling brook on the other. “Oooh, that’s pretty,” she said as she looked from the screen to Jakob and back again. “Where is that?”

Without taking his attention off the screen, Jakob spoke, his words simple and succinct despite the emotion evident behind them. “That is Miller’s Creek where it begins high on the hill.”

She turned to Benjamin, noting his nod. “
Miller’s
Creek? As in
your
Miller?”

“It is said that my great-grandfather found that creek and that is why it is called Miller’s Creek. All I know is that it is not far from a place I like to go. A place I have shown you as well, Claire.”

She felt Jakob stiffen at the implication and she rushed to explain, the memory she shared meaning far more to her
than she allowed her words to express. “Shortly after Walter Snow was found dead in the alley next to my shop a couple of months ago, I was out walking, needing a place to slip away and think. Benjamin rode up in his buggy and offered to show me his thinking place.” At the feel of Benjamin’s gaze on the side of her face, she continued, her own voice suddenly raspy at the memory of sitting on a rock gazing up at stars with the Amish man. “Only I never saw a creek either time I went there.”

A beat of awkward silence was broken by Jakob. “We used to catch frogs in that creek after the chores were all done.”

“We? You mean you and Martha?” she asked.

“No. Ben and me.”

Before she could make sense of what she was hearing, Benjamin’s hand moved toward the screen once again. “What is that?”

Jakob’s shoulders snapped to attention. “What’s what?”

“That paper and those cups.”

Sure enough, on closer inspection, a stack of papers was visible atop a large, flat rock just to the left of the stone wall. Moving his finger to the top of the camera, Jakob zoomed in closer on the image, the previously nondescript stack of paper now revealing basic drawings and simple measurements housed between two paper coffee cups.

Pressing the zoom one more time, the drawings became crystal clear.

“That is the plan for Isaac’s roller track.”

Jakob met Benjamin’s eyes and held them steady. “Are you sure?”

“You can show the picture to Isaac if you must, but I am sure. He showed them to me when he made them.”

Claire looked back at the plans so obvious now in the
image’s magnification. “But why would Rob Karble have a picture of them in his camera?”

“Perhaps he stole them,” Benjamin mused.

It was a simple sentence yet one that resulted in drawing a faint gasp from her lips and a spine-chilling response from Jakob’s. “And perhaps someone stole them back.”

I
f Jakob sensed her studying him, he gave no indication, his complete focus somewhere other than Heavenly Treasures, or, perhaps, even Heavenly, itself. Something was off about the detective. Something that made her want to ask yet had the simultaneous effect of warning her off any and all questions.

Maybe it was the fact that the dimples that normally came so easily hadn’t made an appearance even once.

Maybe it was the dull, troubled look in his eyes.

Maybe it was his uncharacteristic silence as he stood there, by the side window, staring out at the alley that had long been vacated by Benjamin and his buggy.

And maybe it was because, deep down, she knew what was wrong. It was kind of impossible not to on account of what she knew about the detective’s past.

“You don’t think your brother had anything to do with
the murder, do you?” Claire finally asked if for no other reason than to draw him out and let him know she was there and ready to listen.

Slowly, Jakob turned, his eyes hooded, his shoulders drooping downward. “Until I saw him at the festival yesterday, I hadn’t seen Isaac in sixteen years. I can image what kind of man he has become based on the boy he once was, but I can’t know for sure.”

“How old was he when he came to live with you and your family?” Though she knew details from what Esther had told her, she had yet to ask Jakob directly until that moment. “Had you known him long?”

Jakob closed the gap between the window and the counter, his gaze now fixed on the memories that began to pour from his lips. “Isaac was a newborn when his mother showed up in Heavenly. She’d lost her husband in a farming accident in Indiana and she wanted a change. She came here, with Isaac, and never remarried. Instead, she supported the two of them with the quilts she made and the preserves she canned. Then she became ill and asked my mother and father to look out for Isaac when she passed. They obliged. Isaac was four.”