Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) (7 page)

Rachel smiled sweetly at me as I walked through the door. My friend was the epitome of sweetness and what people who know nothing about the Amish conjure in their minds when they imagine the unique culture. She wore a sky blue plain dress and black apron. A white prayer cap was pinned to the top of her chestnut-colored hair that was pulled back to the nape of her neck in a traditional Amish bun. “Angie,” Rachel said, “I’m so glad that you stopped by. We’ve both been so busy these last few days that I feel like I haven’t seen you in years.”

I laughed. “I feel the same way. We need to make a plan to have coffee at least twice a week even during the busiest times.”

“Agreed.” Rachel bent over and lifted a jar of dog biscuits from a shelf under the display counter. Oliver’s stubby tail jiggled in anticipation. Rachel giggled at his antics and tossed him the biscuit. Oliver caught the biscuit in his mouth and carried it under one of the small round tables in the bakery’s small eat-in area to enjoy in peace.

Rachel poured coffee into two plain white mugs.
She handed the mugs to me over the counter. “Doughnuts or muffins?”

I carried them to one of the round tables. “Definitely doughnuts,” I said. “Make it a double. It’s already been a long morning.”

Rachel selected two glazed Amish doughnuts from the display case and stepped around the counter to join me. “What has happened now?”

“You’re going to want to sit before I tell you.”

Rachel sat, and I relayed the events of the morning. Her mouth fell open as I told her the story.

Rachel’s eyes were worried. “Jonah called you to help him?”

I broke off a piece of my doughnut. Before popping it in my mouth, I said, “The incident happened at my parents’ house. Why wouldn’t he call me?”

“I haven’t heard about it before this. Does his family know?” She held her coffee mug by the handle but didn’t lift it to her lips.

I swallowed, and the doughnut felt like a pebble lodged in the middle of my throat. “I—I don’t know. Maybe not.” I slapped my forehead. “I should have stopped at the Graber farm to tell both Miriam and Anna. Maybe I should go now. The shop can be closed for an hour or so.”

“
Nee.
I think it’s best that Miriam does not hear the news from you,” my friend said.

I took a swig of my coffee, hoping that it would wash down the doughnut. All I managed to do was burn my tongue.

Rachel shook her head and stood. She walked into
the kitchen and returned a moment later with a glass of ice water. She placed it on the table in front of me as she sat down.

“Thanks,” I said, taking hold of the glass. “Jonah told me about his cousin Kamon. Jonah claimed that Griffin Bright, the man who was killed this morning, murdered Kamon.” I sipped my water.

“I haven’t heard the name Kamon in a very long time.” Her brow furrowed as if my mentioning Kamon made this conversation even more worrisome.

I frowned. “Do you know how Kamon died?”

She nodded. “He was electrocuted.”

“E
lectrocuted?” I yelped and nearly knocked over my coffee mug.

Some coffee splashed on the table, but Rachel caught the mug before it could topple over completely. She sopped up the spilled coffee with a paper napkin from the metal dispenser in the middle of the table.

She stacked the wet napkins on my empty plate and switched our two plates, putting her untouched doughnut in front of me.

I broke off a piece of the fresh doughnut. “Tell me.”

“I don’t know everything,” she said. “I was very young. I’m sure Jonah or Anna could tell you all the details.” She wrinkled her nose and added, “Or Sarah Leham.” Sarah was another member of our quilting circle. She was also a notorious gossip. Rachel and Sarah had settled their differences, but I knew Rachel still didn’t approve of Sarah’s gossip-mongering.

“All I know,” Rachel said, “was that Kamon was going to leave the community. He hadn’t before he
died. He was working as an apprentice for Griffin Bright and was killed in an accident on a jobsite.”

“If it was an accident, why does Jonah claim that Griffin killed him?” I popped another bite of doughnut in my mouth.

She shook her head. “You’ll have to ask him that.”

I paused before asking her my next question. “Did you know Jonah considered leaving the Amish like Kamon planned to do? He told me as much when he started to tell me about Kamon.”

She nodded. “I may have not known about it at the time, but I heard others talking about it years later—about how Jonah had made a rapid turnaround back to the Amish way after Kamon’s death. For a while there, everyone thought he would leave the Amish way of life.”

I wrapped my hands around my coffee mug as if I needed the warmth. “That just doesn’t make any sense to me. My whole life it never occurred to me Jonah could be anything other than Amish. Why would he leave? He loves the Amish life.”

“You,” was her simple answer.

“What?” I squeaked. At least this time my hands were around the mug, so I didn’t flail them about and knock something else over, like the remainder of my doughnut. It would be truly sad to lose a doughnut like that. “What are you talking about?”

She pursed her lips as if carefully considering her words.

“Rachel, tell me what you mean,” I pleaded.

“Jonah was sweet on you,” she said. “He thought about
leaving the Amish for you. He knew you would never become Amish, so he was willing, at least at that time, to become
Englisch
.”

I shook my head, denying it. “He might have had a boyhood crush on me when we were little kids, but it was nothing more than that. A crush is not enough to walk away from your home, your family, or your entire life.”

Rachel shook her head. “It was more than a little boy’s first crush. I was a child, and even I knew how Jonah felt about the blond
Englisch
girl who visited Eleanor Lapp during the summers. The boys in our district teased him relentlessly about it.”

“I didn’t know Jonah was teased over our friendship.” I frowned. “But I still can’t believe he was thinking about leaving his community for
me
.”

“Why?” she asked. “Your aunt left her life for your uncle Jacob.”

I ran my finger along the mug’s rim. “That’s different.”

“I don’t think it is.” She took a deep breath as if she needed the extra wind power to say what came next. “Haven’t you ever wondered why Miriam doesn’t like you?”

“Miriam hates everyone,” I said.

She shook her head. “
Nee
, Angie. Only you.”

“Ummm . . . ouch.” I winced. “So she doesn’t like me. Don’t tell me it’s because Jonah was going to leave the Amish for me.”

“It is,” she said without an ounce of doubt in her voice.

“That’s ridiculous. Even if what you said is true—which I’m not saying that it is—that was twenty years ago.” I broke off a larger piece of doughnut.

Rachel shook her head. “
Nee
, it is not. I’m sure Jonah told his wife about his feelings for you, which is why she dislikes you so much. That’s the kind of thing an Amish couple would share during courting. Miriam most likely never felt too concerned about it because you were so far away.” She paused. “Then you came back.”

“He’s married,” I protested. Miriam couldn’t possibly think something between Jonah and me could still happen. The idea made me ill. As Jonah had said, we had each chosen our own paths. He was like a brother to me. “I would never—I could never—even if I wasn’t with Mitchell, I would never break up a family! He’s my dear friend—but nothing more.”

She reached across the table and squeezed my hand. “I know that. I’m sure that in her heart Miriam knows that too, but she can’t bring herself to like you because you were Jonah’s first love.”

This couldn’t be true.

She released my hand and was quiet for a moment as if to allow me to absorb this new information.

I tried to imagine what I would do if Jonah had shown up on my Dallas doorstep when I was fifteen, professing his love. I grimaced. It would not have been a pleasant scene. Maybe the Amish, at least some of the Amish, start thinking about courting and marriage at that age, but I hadn’t. I still had a mountain of stuffed animals in the corner of my bedroom at the
time. Ryan had been my first serious boyfriend, and I’d met him in college years later. We were together seven years before I was ready for marriage, but I was already over thirty at that point. Jonah and I couldn’t have been more different in the trajectories of our lives.

Rachel squeezed my hand again. “Did I shock you?”

“Yes,” I said honestly.

Rachel laughed. “It was a long time ago. Those old feelings Jonah had for you are gone now, I am sure. He still cares for you,
ya
, but not in the same way. I suppose Griffin’s death only reminds him of that time. It must be very painful.”

I pushed my coffee mug away. “Rachel, I’m worried.”

“About the murder?”

“Yes, but I’m more worried about Jonah. He’s the main suspect.” I paused, almost afraid to reveal what I was really thinking. “And I’m worried I’ll lose him as my friend over all of this. If Miriam hates me as much as you say she does, this could be the event for her to convince Jonah to stay away from me forever. I was the one who asked him to help my parents with the kitchen. I put him at the scene of the crime.”

“You won’t lose Jonah,” Rachel insisted, gripping my hand just a little bit tighter. “You will solve the murder.” She smiled. “You always do, and then life will go back to the way it was.”

What if this time she was wrong? It was hard to imagine my sibling relationship with Jonah going back to the way it was when I now knew he’d once loved me and had been willing to leave his community for me. I wish I could go back to before I had the knowledge. I
wish we could go back to before Griffin died in my parents’ backyard.

“Are you all right?” Rachel asked this in her quiet and sweet way, and as she did, it reminded me that Jonah had seen a wild man that morning after finding the body. It hadn’t been Nahum if it was the same person or thing that I’d seen. At least, I didn’t think so. In any case, I thought better of mentioning it to Rachel just then. She had hit me with an emotional bombshell. I couldn’t do the same to her and say something that would bring her father to the forefront of her mind.

“Sure,” I said, slightly dazed.

Her large green eyes held understanding. “I guess you will start investigating to find out what happened.”

“I will when I can get away from the shop.”

She stood and picked up our plates from the table. “Why can’t you leave the shop? It’s not the middle of the high season. Mattie can take care of the quilt shop for a little while.”

“Mattie’s not at—” I stopped myself in midsentence. If Rachel thought that Mattie was working at Running Stitch, that could only mean my assistant wasn’t helping Aaron at the factory. Rachel would know if Mattie was at the pie factory.

Rachel set out plates on the counter. “Mattie’s not what?”

I was saved from answering by the arrival of three elderly men who were morning regulars in the bakery. The men made a beeline for the counter and joked with one another as they picked out their doughnuts.

“I had better let you get back to the counter,” I said.

Her brow knit together, but she only nodded as she went to tend to her customers.

As Oliver and I walked back across the street to my shop, my conversation with Rachel haunted me and brought to mind a conversation that I had had with Anna Graber only a few days after I moved back to Holmes County to take over Running Stitch. Anna had said something like, “Jonah moped for days after your family moved to Texas and looked forward to seeing you each summer. It was hard for him when you stopped coming, but it was for the best.”

The conversation had stuck with me nearly two years later, and I remember the pang I had felt when Anna had said that to me. How could my staying away from Holmes County been for the best? I had wondered at the time. I hadn’t fully understood it, but then again, maybe a small part of me had and I pushed it away. Rachel’s revelation confirmed what I might have always known.

And now, I had to worry about Mattie lying to me about working at the pie factory on top of that. I knew that she wasn’t working there, because Rachel would definitely know if Aaron had asked Mattie to help out. Oh yeah, and then there was the murder too.

“Angie!” Willow Moon called to me as my foot hit the sidewalk in front of Running Stitch.

I turned to find Willow standing in the doorway of her place of business, The Dutchman’s Tea Shop, one of the few truly English businesses in Rolling Brook. No one would confuse Willow for an Amish person. She waved her hand at me, causing the gauzy fabric that made up almost all of her blouses to billow around
her face. However, her short spiked purple hair never moved. “Please come over.”

“I need to open the shop,” I said, fearing that Willow needed a tea taste tester. Been there, done that, and I had barely come away with my life, not to mention my taste buds intact. I didn’t know what tealike concoction Willow was brewing up across the street at her tea shop, and I didn’t want to know. They were all horrible.

“I’ll come to you,” she called and made her way across the street to stand next to me on the sidewalk.

I unlocked the front door to Running Stitch and let Oliver and Willow inside before stepping into the shop myself.

“Angie, I’m so glad that I caught you alone,” she said as I entered. “We have important township business to discuss.”

Willow and I were both Rolling Brook township trustees. I had taken the post in order to represent the interests of the Amish in Rolling Brook. The Amish would not run for political office and depended on their English friends to remember them when making laws and rules in the county. I had found that severely lacking when I first moved back to Holmes County, at least in Rolling Brook, and took up their cause. That didn’t mean I enjoyed it. I had found during my time in the positon that most of the work of a township official was boring and tedious. And the long rhetoric-filled meetings were the absolute worst.

Willow and I were usually allies when it came to making decisions for the township. She and I were on one side, and head trustee Caroline Cramer and Jason
Rustle were on the other. Former head trustee—who still acted like and would like everyone to believe he was still in charge—Farley Jung was the tie breaker. It was always a surprise to see on what side of a decision Farley would fall.

“I heard about the accident at your parents’ home today,” she said without preamble.

I turned on the lights and raised my eyebrows. “How’d you hear about it? I just told Rachel, and she didn’t know.”

“Farley called,” she said, as if that was explanation enough. Actually, it was. It seemed that Farley Jung knew everything that happened in the county. “I heard too that there was a Bigfoot sighting there.”

Oh boy. I took a breath and walked over to the cash register. I hit the
NO SALE
button and the drawer flew open. “Willow, it wasn’t Bigfoot. There’s no such thing.”

“That’s not what I heard,” she said, and she lowered her voice even though we were the only two—not counting Oliver—in the shop.

I removed my full money drawer from the locked cabinet under the counter and set it into the cash register. “Willow, you can’t be serious.”

“It was Bigfoot. It’s the only explanation.” She lowered her voice. “I’ve seen him myself.”