Hearse and Buggy (23 page)

“N-no.”

When she was satisfied that she wasn’t missing something in plain view, she focused on Esther once again. “Is it your mother? Your father? Are they sick?”

“It is not Mamm or Dat.” The girl wiggled her hands
from Claire’s grasp and clutched them to her chest as tear after tear continued to fall. “It is Eli.”

She heard herself gasp, the sound bringing Esther’s tears still faster. “Was Eli arrested for Walter Snow’s murder?”

Esther’s eyes widened with horror. “You think they will do that?”

She took a step back to steady her breath. “Esther, please. Just tell me what happened.”

“Last night he came to Eli’s house. He asked questions.” Esther swiped at the tears as they left her cheeks and dropped onto her dress. “He … He said Eli should not leave Heavenly.”

“By he you must mean Jakob.”

“Benjamin could not be found. He was not there to help Eli.”

Guilt flooded her body as she realized where Benjamin had been. “Does he know now?” she finally asked.

“I do not know. Eli did not say.”

She tried to absorb what she was hearing and to say something to wipe the fear from Esther’s face, but she came up empty. “When did you see Eli?”

“He was just here. He told me what has happened.” Esther reached for Claire. “He asked for you.”

She shook her head and forced herself to focus. “Wait. I’m confused. I thought you were talking about Eli, not Jakob.”

“It is Eli I speak of.”

“Eli was looking for
me
?”

“I tell him you are smart. I tell him you are kind to the Amish. I tell him you are friends with Jakob.” Esther spread her arms in pleading. “I tell him you can help.”

Claire spun on her heels and headed across the stockroom, doubling back as she reached the wall. “Esther, I can’t help Eli. I’m not a police officer. I don’t know about any of this stuff, any more than you do.”

“But you can learn,” Esther insisted. “You learned about this shop. You learn about the Amish. You learn about so much. You can learn about this, too.”

She made a second and third trip across the stockroom before stopping midway through her fourth go-round. “Esther, I don’t know what you want me to say. I mean, I want to help … I really do. But I don’t know how.”

Esther bridged the gap between them. “Just speak to him. Maybe it will help.”

“But you said Jakob already did that. Last night, right?”

“That is right.”

“Then what can Eli tell me that he hasn’t already told Jakob?”

“Your ears are not Jakob’s. You do not have”—Esther cast about for the right words—“resentment as Jakob does.”

She wanted to argue, to insist Jakob would be fair in his pursuit of the truth, but Esther didn’t give her a chance. “We need help. Please, Claire.”

T
here were times in her life when she’d second-guessed decisions she’d made—recipes she’d tried and hated, job interview questions she could have answered differently, a marriage proposal she never should have accepted. But none came as quickly and swiftly as the bout that started screaming inside her head before she finished uttering the words Esther had begged to hear.

How, exactly, she was going to help Eli was anyone’s
guess. Including hers. But a promise was a promise, so she was determined to try if nothing else.

The fifty-year-old man behind the counter covered the phone with his hand and chinned her toward the door on his left. “Detective Fisher said you can come on back.”

Hiking the strap of her purse higher on her shoulder, she thanked him and proceeded toward the specified door, her thoughts already skipping ahead to what she could possibly say that would make Jakob share the facts of the case thus far.

Several sets of eyes glanced in her direction as she made her way down an interior hallway that passed a handful of cubicles and a half-dozen or so offices. When she reached the correct office, as evidenced by the gold plate bearing the detective’s name, she knocked on the open door frame.

Jakob looked up and smiled. “Well, isn’t this a nice surprise.” He pushed back his chair and stood, then swept an open palm toward the chair across from his desk. “Please. Come in.”

She pulled her purse onto her lap as she sat and raised his smile with one of her own. “I’m sorry to bother you at work but …” Closing her eyes, she ran through the various ways she’d planned to ask about Eli and his standing as a suspect and settled on the only one that felt right. “I was wondering if we could talk about Walter Snow’s murder and whatever role you think Eli Miller may have played in it.”

His smile still in place, Jakob plucked a pencil from the wooden holder on his desk and turned it round and round between his fingers. “Esther has asked you to help, hasn’t she?”

“Yes.”

“And that’s because Esther is worried I won’t be fair on account of my supposed bitterness toward the Amish in this area, right?”

She watched his fingers slide down the pencil only to flip it over and start once again from the top. It was the kind of motion that could distract her if she allowed it to. “Look, Jakob, I truly believe you’re going to see this case through to the right conclusion wherever that may lead. I really do.”

His smile faltered ever so slightly, but he recovered it so fast that she had to question her eyesight. “That’s nice to hear, Claire. Thank you.”

She forced herself to remain on task, to not be distracted by the memory of his hand on hers … “But, right or wrong, Esther and Eli are concerned. They were just toddlers when you left. They know only what they’ve been told.”

“Which, in my case, was probably nothing until I showed up in Heavenly again.”

She considered his words and discounted them. “Actually, I’m not sure that’s true. Not where Esther was concerned anyway.”

His eyebrows rose in interest, yet he said nothing.

“The first time she saw you, she seemed to know who you were. So Martha must have said something along the way.”

He dropped the pencil back into the holder and rose from his chair once again. Wandering over to the corner window, he stood looking out at the midday hustle and bustle of tourists that was synonymous with Lighted Way. “I’d see that as a sign of encouragement if she weren’t asking you to snoop around in the case.”

She heard the hurt in his voice and felt the renewed desire to help bridge the gap between the detective and his family. “Maybe if I help her, and she sees that you are good and honest, something will change.”

“Nothing will change because the Ordnung will not allow it. But I do want her to know those things about me.” Slowly, he turned from the window and made his way over to a whiteboard that covered one entire wall of his office. He pointed at a series of notations he’d written down the left-hand side of the board with Eli’s name at the top.

1.
Motivation:
Revenge over stolen money.

2.
Opportunity:
Was at Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe daily. Routinely parked buggy in alley where victim was found.

3.
Method:
Strangulation. Suspect had to be both strong and angry in order to choke the life out of another human being with his bare hands. See Motivation.

She read each line several times. It all made sense on so many levels, yet something was holding her back from jumping on the bandwagon with both feet. “Are there any other suspects you’re even considering?”

Jakob pointed to a similar list on the opposite side of the board that named a half-dozen or so other Amish men who could work for the same motivation he had down for Eli, but the opportunity wasn’t there, nor was the well-documented temper of his primary suspect.

“What about the other people who were hurt by Walter Snow’s scheme?”

He pointed to the Amish names a second time. “That’s
why they’re all here. But I just can’t believe any of them would act in a vengeful manner. It’s just not what they believe.”

“It’s not what Eli believes, either.”

“But that hasn’t stopped him from bar fights and threatening to rip a man from limb to limb.”

She couldn’t argue with that. To do so would be pointless. “I’m talking about the non-Amish people who were hurt by Walter’s scheme.”

Jakob pinned her with a curious stare. “What are you talking about? Did he pull the same scheme on other vendors, too?”

“That I can’t answer. Though it’s my understanding that his shop offered only Amish-made items.” She shifted her purse to the floor and then stood awkwardly by Jakob’s desk. “No, I’m talking about the other shopkeepers who were made to suffer the carryover from shattered trust.”

It’s not that she actually thought someone like Howard Glick or Al Gussman was capable of murder, but she also didn’t believe that Eli’s culpability should be a slam dunk, either.

“How did it affect them?” he asked.

“Once you’ve been burned, you’re not as likely to trust the next guy, I guess. And when a person’s business thrives largely on goods made by the Amish, losing that connection is going to hurt a shop’s bottom line.” She hadn’t really thought much about it when Howard first mentioned the struggles his store had endured in the wake of the scandal, but now that she was repeating it out loud, she couldn’t help but give it its proper due.

Jakob ran a hand down his mouth and then looked back at the board, adding a third column in the middle. “What do you know about your fellow shopkeepers?”

“I wave to them each day. We get together once a month to brainstorm ways to draw in more customers. And we tell our customers about each other’s shops in an effort to spread the wealth. Beyond that, not all that much.”

He picked up a dry-erase marker from the metal sill below the board and uncapped it, glancing at her over his shoulder as he did. “Any of them have particularly strong hands?”

S
he leaned against the exterior wall of Heavenly Treasures and tried not to look at the spot where Walter Snow’s body had been found. It wasn’t that she was all that squeamish when it came to crime TV or whodunit-style movies, but knowing a chalk outline had been drawn practically outside her doorstep was somehow very different.

Instead, she willed herself to focus on the young man pacing back and forth in front of her as if his life depended on it.

And maybe it did.

“Eli, when was the last time you saw Mr. Snow?”

He stopped pacing long enough to consider her question. “When I said those things.”

“You mean when you threatened to tear him from limb to limb and dump his body in the lake?”

Eli held his finger to his lips and looked nervously toward the screen door that separated them from the interior of
Heavenly Treasures. “Please. I do not want Esther to hear those words.”

She tilted her head to the left and studied the male version of Ruth with increasing curiosity. “Why not? I’m quite certain she knows you threatened him.”

“But she does not know the words. Those things I said brought trouble for me. I do not want to do anything else to make Esther turn away. She is good woman. One I hope to marry and have children with one day.”

Her mouth hung open. “You want to marry Esther?”

“Very much.”

She dropped her voice to a near whisper and beckoned Eli to come closer. “Then why don’t you court her? Why don’t you let her know you like her?”

Eli looked toward the door again and then matched Claire’s volume the best that he could. “Esther’s Dat knows of what I said. He was not happy. I must show him I am a good man for Esther first.”

She inhaled sharply at the fervor in the young man’s words, her desire to help purely out of loyalty to Esther shifting into one based on something she now believed in her gut.

Eli Miller was innocent. He had to be.

Sure, he was a hothead with a lot of growing up to do. But he was also a man who exhibited a rare devotion to his sister and harbored a desire to become a better man for the woman he hoped to marry.

“She doesn’t believe you had anything to do with Mr. Snow’s murder.” She knew it wasn’t her place to say it, but she felt an overwhelming need to throw the guy a bone.

“That is good. But it is not enough. I need to show her I am the better choice. That staying in this life is the better choice.”

“Better choice? I don’t under—”

“Shhh!” Eli raised his finger to his lips and walked quietly to the back of the building just in time to see a stray cat dart behind the trash bin. “I worry about Ruth. I hear sounds and think there are more pranks.”

“I know. I poke my head into the alley many times throughout the day just to make sure no one is hanging around.” She traced his steps to the end of the alley and stopped. “I asked Jakob if he had any leads on the store, and, as of yet, he has nothing. But I know he is turning over every stone he can find.”

Eli looked left and then right, lowering his voice once again. “I think Jakob is good man.”

She took a step backward in surprise. “You do?”

“I know I am wrong to believe that. But I do.”

There was so much she wanted to say in response, but she let it go. There would be a time and place when further discussion about Jakob was warranted. But now was not that time. She needed to get to the bottom of a few lingering questions first.

“Do you remember that day you fixed my back door?”

He nodded. “I do.”

“Did you go into the main room at all while you were inside? Maybe to strike up a conversation with Esther?”

“No.”

“Are you sure?” She wanted to ask him whether he saw Walter’s love letter to Ruth but kept it to herself. There was no sense setting him off unnecessarily.

Eli leaned against the back wall of Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe and lifted his nose to the tantalizing aroma of apple pie spewing its way out the back windows. “I wanted to. She was so pretty that day.”

“Why didn’t you?”

“Because I did not want to cause a problem for Esther.”

She wandered over to Ruth’s back step and sat down. “Why would talking to you cause a problem for Esther?”

“I did not want that woman to speak of my words. I do not want Esther to know. She will make the wrong choice.”

There was the choice thing again … “Eli, I don’t understand what you’re saying. Please, walk me through this, help me to understand.”