Hearse and Buggy (17 page)

So, too, was the renewed sense of dread that came from sharing her memories of Eli’s temper aloud.

She looked out over the water. “Can I ask you a question, Detective?”

“Of course. What’s on your mind?”

Inhaling sharply, she made herself face him on the stump. “How did he die?”

“You mean Snow?” At her nod, he offered a quick shrug. “He was strangled.”

“I know that part but I don’t know
how
. Did they use a rope or something?”

“Nope. The killer used his bare hands.”

She sucked in a breath. “But how could someone do that? Wouldn’t that take …” Her sentence petered out as she looked at the water once again, an image playing in her thoughts while Jakob provided the narration.

“Someone would have to be mighty angry to strangle the life out of another human being like that.”

Oh, Esther …

A muted vibration made them both jump. Standing up, Jakob reached into his pocket and pulled out his phone. “I’m sorry, Claire, but I’ve got to take this. It’s the station.”

At her nod, he flipped it open and held it to his ear. “Detective Fisher.”

She tried to look away, to give him a measure of privacy as he spoke, but it was hard. There was a certain quality about the man that drew her in and made her want to know him better.

“How bad?”

Something about the tone of his voice broke through her woolgathering and made her sit up tall.

“I’ll be right there.” He snapped the phone closed in his left hand and reached for Claire with his right. “C’mon. We’ve gotta go. There’s been a fire at Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe.”

T
he acrid smell of smoke permeated her nose as she stood on the sidewalk watching firefighters enter and exit Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe with decreasing urgency. The shell of the store looked fine, as did the front window and much of what she could see, thanks to the old-fashioned gas-powered streetlamps that bordered Lighted Way. But still, she worried.

Ruth Miller had been through enough the last few weeks, the vast majority of which she’d shouldered alone rather than seek support from her overprotective twin and their older brother. The only reason Claire had become privy to the trials the young Amish woman faced was a simple matter of timing.

“Miss Ruth isn’t going to be able to keep this from her brothers.” Howard Glick rocked back on his heels and shook his head. “There’s nothing in my store that can make remnants of a fire go away before morning.”

“If only there was.” But even as she said the words, she knew the truth was long overdue. Putting isolated incidents off as pranks only worked so long before the cumulative picture became too hard to ignore.

The
clip-clop
of a horse off to their left grew steadily louder until it ceased altogether not more than ten feet from where they stood.

“Here come the real fireworks,” Howard mumbled as Eli’s gloved hands released the reins, and the brothers jumped down from their buggy.

“What happened?” Benjamin barked. “How is there fire?”

Howard stopped Eli’s passage with a firm hand and a soothing voice. “You can’t go in there yet.”

Claire stepped forward and supplied what little information they had. “From what Mr. Glick and I can see, it looks like the fire department has things under control.”

“There was no reason for fire.” Eli pulled his arm from Howard’s grasp and paced in a little circle. “I check every day when I come to collect Ruth.”

“I’m sure Detective Fisher will tell us what he can when he comes out.”

Benjamin’s gaze left the shop long enough to size up Claire. “Jakob is here?”

Before she could answer, the front door of the bake shop opened, and Jakob stepped onto the porch, beckoning for them to come closer. When they did, he gave his assessment. “Thanks to Mr. Glick’s expert nose and the fast action of the Heavenly Fire Department, there is very little damage. What there is is basically confined to the kitchen in back, where it started.”

Eli repeated his earlier assertion. “There was no reason for fire. I check every day when I collect Ruth.”

Jakob sat down on the top porch step and held up his hands. “It didn’t start like that, Eli.”

Benjamin’s eyes widened beneath the brim of his hat. “Then how?”

“We believe it was started with gasoline.”

They were seven simple words but, when put together, they brought a collective gasp from everyone gathered.

Claire and Howard exchanged alarmed looks, while Eli and Benjamin said nothing. “Any chance someone spilled a little bit while filling a lawn mower or an automobile?” Howard finally suggested.

Keeping his gaze locked on the Miller brothers, Jakob gave a quick shake of his head. “Not unless that lawn mower or automobile happened to be sitting inside the kitchen when someone tried to fill it.”

The implication wasn’t lost on Claire or Howard.

Benjamin shifted his weight away from Jakob, confusion evident in every facet of his handsome face. “I do not understand.”

“Is someone angry with your sister or your family?” Jakob asked.

Benjamin drew back. “Angry? At Ruth?”

Jakob rested his elbows on his thighs and enclosed his mouth in tented fingers for several beats. Claire felt her stomach twist in response.

“When we were told about the note your sister received, you neglected to say anything about the stolen pie boxes or”—Jakob shifted a quick gaze at Claire—“or the broken milk bottles. Had we been told of those incidents as well, I wouldn’t have been so quick to write it off as a harmless teenage prank. But you didn’t.”

“Stolen pie boxes? Broken milk bottles?” Benjamin turned to his brother. “Eli? Do you know of such things?”

Eli toed the ground.

“Eli!”

Eli’s eyes narrowed, and his jaw tightened. “Mr. Snow has done things … to Ruth’s store. To strike at our family.” The young man’s voice roared through the night like a freight train gathering momentum for the mountain climb ahead.

“Why did you say nothing?” Benjamin accused. “Did you think I could not help, Eli?”

“You would look the other way! As you did with the money he stole.”

Benjamin’s jaw tightened in matching fashion. “I did not look the other way!”

“You made me stand up … in front of church … and seek forgiveness for defending my family!” Eli said as he waved a gloved hand in the air.

“You threatened a man, Eli!”

“Mr. Snow is no man! He is a crook!”

“Was a crook,” Jakob’s even-toned voice cut through the argument playing out in front of them. “
Was
a crook. Walter Snow is dead, remember?”

“As he deserves,” Eli hissed.

Claire closed her eyes and tried to block out the statement, but it was too late. The words were out there, and they’d been spoken by the person who appeared to be Jakob’s chief suspect.

Benjamin opened his mouth to dress down his younger brother but shut it when Jakob waved him off. “Do you not hear what I’m saying? This fire couldn’t have been started by Walter Snow. He’s dead.”

“But the stolen pie boxes …” Eli raked an angry hand down his face. “And the shattered milk bottles. He was not dead for those.”

Claire felt Howard’s stare and put words to its meaning. “He was for the paint.”

The weight of three additional sets of eyes turned in her direction.

“Paint?” Jakob repeated.

“There was no paint,” Eli countered.

Howard’s shoulder brushed against Claire’s in a show of solidarity. “Someone threw paint on Ruth’s front window just the other day.”

A strangled sound emerged from Eli’s lips as he pushed past Jakob on the stairs. When he reached the top landing, he pointed at the front window. “There is no paint.”

“That’s because I cleaned it off myself, son. And I can say, with absolute certainty, that there was much too much of it to have been anything but deliberate.”

“But I know of no paint.”

Claire took a deep breath, then released it into the night, aware of the potential implications of her words yet knowing they needed to be said. “Because she didn’t want you to know, Eli. She didn’t want to upset you any more than you already were.”

Jakob dropped his head into his hands only to lift it once again. “How come this stuff wasn’t reported?”

“I meant to tell you about the paint,” Claire offered. “I really did. I even took pictures with my cell phone to show you. But I guess it slipped my mind in light of everything else going on. I’m sorry.”

If he accepted her apology, he didn’t show it, choosing to focus on the Miller brothers instead. “I am here in Heavenly as a police officer. The Ordnung doesn’t prevent you from speaking to me.”

Any residual anger drained out of Benjamin. “I did not know of anything but the note.”

Jakob looked up at Eli and waited.

“I do not know why I did not come to you.” Eli leaned against the window in defeat.

“Well, it needs to stop. I can’t help you if I don’t know what’s happening.” Jakob pushed off the step and stood. “If we’d known, we would have stepped up patrols around the shop. That alone might have been enough to discourage whoever is doing this from trying to burn your shop to the ground.”

Benjamin broke the silence that followed, his words bringing a catch to Claire’s heart. “Will you help us now?”

Jakob nodded, any emotion he may have felt at the unexpected request firmly in check. “Can you think of anyone who may have some sort of an ax to grind with either Ruth or your family at large?”

“No.”

Eli’s response took a beat longer but matched that of his older brother.

“Have you seen or heard from anyone involved in that altercation you had outside that bar a few months back?”

Benjamin stiffened at Jakob’s question but said nothing, opting to wait for Eli’s answer just like everyone else.

“No!”

“How about that Englishman who filed a complaint after you cut him off in your buggy two weeks ago?”

“Eli?”

Eli averted his brother’s eyes and directed his answer at Jakob. “I do not think so.”

Without breaking eye contact with Eli, Jakob aimed his next question at Claire and Howard. “Anything going on among the business owners around here? Any sort of ill feelings or issues you think I should know about?”

“I don’t think so, but I haven’t had the shop for all that
long.” Claire handed the question over to the patriarch of Lighted Way. “Mr. Glick?”

Howard anchored his hands against his upper arms. “Everyone gets along real well around here. Can’t imagine anyone who’d set out to hurt Ruth like this.”

Ruth.

The sweetest, most gentle human being Claire had ever met …

“Mr. Glick is right. Ruth is loved by everyone.”

For the first time in nearly ten minutes, Jakob turned his gaze on Claire, his words sending a shiver of fear down her spine. “That doesn’t appear to be the case any longer.”

T
hey were silent on the way to the inn, the smell of smoke clinging to their clothes and hair.

“If Mr. Glick hadn’t chosen tonight to stay late at his shop, Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe wouldn’t be standing the way that it is.” Jakob drove slowly down Lighted Way, peering up at each shop and each home that they passed. “The Millers were lucky. Very, very lucky.”

She tried his words on for size. “I’m not so sure Eli sees the luck.”

“That’s what happens when you allow yourself to be blinded by things like rage or resentment.” He released a sigh. “I was guilty of that myself for a time.”

She glanced at him across the center console, the tense but handsome lines of his face intriguing in the dashboard light. “Oh?”

He met her gaze briefly before turning it back on the empty road. “I was so bitter about being banned by my
family that I didn’t embrace my police work in the way that I should have. I was doing what I wanted, what I’d been called to do, but I wasn’t enjoying any of it because I kept looking back at the door that had been slammed shut in my face.”

The honesty of Jakob’s words left her momentarily speechless. She’d been in that place once, too. “So what changed?” she finally asked.

“Me. My attitude. When I started looking forward instead of backward, my vision became far less cloudy.”

The car left the cobblestone surface of Lighted Way in favor of smooth pavement, the irony of the transition not lost on Claire. She leaned her head against the seatback and stared out at the passing scenery. “Too bad we didn’t have that kind of hard-earned wisdom when we were Eli’s age.”

Jakob nodded. “That guy is his own worst enemy, you know?” The car slowed to a near crawl as Sleep Heavenly sprang into view at the bend in the road. “I mean, look at what happened tonight. What could very possibly have been avoided if he wasn’t the loose cannon everyone knows him to be.”

She looked up at the inn as they pulled into the near-empty lot, the soft glow of her aunt’s wall sconces peeking out through the parlor draperies. There was certainly a measure of truth in the detective’s assertion regarding Eli, but there were also gaps Claire had failed to fill simply because they hadn’t fit with questions she’d been asked.

“I realize I haven’t known him long, but there’s more to Eli than just a quick temper.” She shifted in the passenger seat as Jakob cut the engine.

Dropping his hands from the steering wheel, he looked from her to the inn and back again. “Oh?”

“He’s also very caring and sweet.”

“Tell me.”

She glanced out the window at her aunt’s home, a sense of peace and contentment settling around her for the first time since the call that had sent them running toward town. “He looks after his sister with such love and respect that you can’t help but notice his devotion. In fact, as I’ve mentioned before, not a day goes by that his buggy doesn’t show up at random times throughout the day just so he can see if she needs anything.”

Jakob’s nod was barely perceptible but it was indication enough that he was listening. And absorbing.

“Sometimes that help involves carrying in a shipment of pie boxes that have just arrived. Sometimes it has him carrying the trash out to the bin out back. And sometimes it even has him manning the register while she attends to a special bakery order in the kitchen,” she continued. “But whatever it is, he never seems to complain.”