Secrets of Harmony Grove (16 page)

“No. You didn’t,” he said, his voice so emphatic that it startled me.

“Yes, her whole family was killed during the Holocaust—parents, siblings, aunts, uncles, cousins, everybody. She was the only surviving member. Then she ended up dying while giving birth to Emory.”

“So Emory’s Jewish,” Mike said. “I did not realize that.”

“Well, half Jewish, anyway, I guess you could say.” I corrected, closing the trunk and handing him the metal box before getting some extra ammo from the glove compartment. “I guess you could say he’s half Jewish, half Amish. How’s that for a combination?”

“This is unbelievable.”

I wasn’t sure what difference it made, and for a moment I was afraid that the detective was anti-Semitic. Bristling, I was about to call him on it when he saw my face and quickly explained.

“Maybe we weren’t properly introduced before,” he told me, dark eyes meeting mine. “My full name is Mikha’el Weissbaum, born and raised in Elkins Park, Pennsylvania, son of Morty and Rivka Weissbaum.”

I got the point. Mike was Jewish too!

We both laughed over our misunderstanding, but when he saw me grab three extra boxes of .40 S&W ammo on top of what was already in the gun box, our moment of levity evaporated with the seriousness of his face. And I hadn’t even told him about the 125-grain jacketed hollow points in my briefcase.

“I hope you know how to handle those guns. I don’t want you shooting any of my men.”

“Don’t worry. I’m fully trained, and I go to the firing range two or three times a month to keep up my skills.”

Mike replied that whether I was proficient with it or not, I should never let a gun give me a false sense of security, adding that I still always needed to be aware of my surroundings, lock doors, and follow all of the other safety measures that required not much more than presence of mind and common sense.

“You might even want to learn some self-defense techniques,” he said as
we walked back toward the door. “I actually teach a class in Krav Maga if you’re interested.”

“Actually, I’ve taken classes on self-defense before,” I told him, explaining that my favorite was RBSD, which was reality based self-defense. “I also box, and I have a mean uppercut.”

With my free hand I demonstrated my best move, accidentally exposing my bad arm. He looked at my scar, but unlike most people who saw it and then glanced self-consciously away, he allowed his eyes to linger, a question forming there.

For some reason, the disfigurement I was usually careful to hide and rarely talked about outside of my inner circle didn’t seem like such a big deal. I didn’t even mind explaining it to him. There was no need to go into detail. I just told him that when I was in college I had been the victim of a violent crime, and my scars had come from that.

“Hence the guns, and the self-defense, and the boxing, no doubt.”

I smiled. “All on the recommendation of the counselor who helped me work through the trauma,” I replied. “Well, I take that back. She wasn’t too keen on the guns. But the boxing and the self-defense were both her idea.”

He didn’t ask the nature of the incident, though it struck me that as a cop it might not be difficult for him to look me up on some database and read all about it for himself. Somewhere out there were surely reams and reams of police reports, evidence logs, trial transcripts, and more. Smoothing my sleeve back down I told him that the single biggest lesson I had learned in college was that I’d better protect myself because no one else ever would. We reached the door, and I paused, adding, “I just wish I could have protected Troy too.”

“Protected Troy? You weren’t even here.”

“No, but if I had come sooner, maybe I could have gotten here in time to save him.”

I stepped inside, put the ammo down on the table, and took the gun box from Mike. He remained in the doorway, pulling out his car keys, ready to go.

“Maybe,” he said, looking at me intently with those deep, dark eyes. “Then again, maybe you would have arrived in time to be killed right along with him.”

I didn’t realize how exhausted I was until I closed and locked the front door. Wearily, I carried my things up the stairs, through the small upstairs sitting/reading area, and down the hall to the end. This back room was my favorite, the one I stayed in whenever I came here. It was smaller than the other two, but I liked the way it was tucked in at the end of the hall, and it gave the best view from the house of the grove.

As I set my things down and unzipped my suitcase, I thought about how fortunate I was that I still had all the stuff I had packed for my trip to Boston, otherwise I wouldn’t have had toiletries or spare clothes or other things with me now. I sat on the edge of the bed, took a deep breath, and let it out slowly, willing myself to relax. I needed to call my parents and tell them what had been going on here tonight, but it was late, and they would be sound asleep after an incredibly trying day. The news was going to be very upsetting to both of them, I felt sure, and would likely keep them up the rest of the night if I called now. I decided to wait until morning.

Next, I thought about calling Heath, who was also surely asleep by now. If he spotted this mess on the news first, I knew he was going to be upset and hurt that I hadn’t called and told him myself or asked for his help.

So why hadn’t I contacted him yet? Heath was my boyfriend, after all. We had been dating for almost ten months, and intentions on both sides were serious. I loved him, and I had no doubt that he loved me.

So why? At first there was the pride issue, of course; the embarrassment of my suspension at work and my newly precarious financial situation. But beyond that, after I had arrived here and the dominoes began toppling, when I had finally been able to make a call, why had I only dialed Liz and not Heath as well?

I had no doubt he would have come immediately just to support me, to hold my hand, to keep me feeling safe. I should have wanted him here, if for no other reason than the fact that Heath possessed a deep calmness, one born from the time he spent in Bible study, meditation, and prayer. Heath had grown up in a more conservative church than I had, which led to different stands on some theological matters, but at least he and I were in total agreement on what my dad called the “big rock issues” of our faith. On smaller, less important matters, where wise debate could be heard from both sides, we sometimes landed on opposite ends of the spectrum.

The most notable area that had been a bone of contention for us practically since our very first date was the issue of self-defense, pacifism, and nonviolence. I was raised to believe in the concept of just war and the moral obligations of a democratic society, and after what happened to me in college, my willingness to bear arms became much more personal. Heath, on the other hand, had been strongly influenced by Mennonite grandparents, and though he wasn’t a Mennonite himself, their pacifist ideals had resonated with him.

Neither Heath nor I were the type of people who enjoyed unnecessary conflict, so after several strong arguments on this particular topic, we finally agreed to disagree. Ordinarily, that would have been the end of it. But even with our truce, the matter hadn’t been solved but merely shelved. Someday, if we took this relationship all the way to the altar, this issue would have to be figured out. To most people that might have seemed silly, but to me it was deadly serious. Having been a victim of violence once, I couldn’t imagine being married to a pacifist. My bottom line in every discussion had always been that I spoke from experience, which in my opinion trumped theory every time.

Thinking about Heath now, I decided that one reason I hadn’t contacted him was because of his feelings about nonresistance. Heath knew I
had a gun but he hated it, and he absolutely never wanted to be around it or be forced to watch me handling it. Given that, is it any wonder that I actually felt safer without him around? Being here alone, I had the freedom to exercise whatever self-protective options I needed to. Were he here, I might be tempted to defer to his preferences, and that could be a fatal mistake.

Aside from that, I really would have wanted him here. With his calm demeanor and logical thought processes, he was ideal to bounce things off of, whether trivial or significant. He was also incredibly smart, and I had a feeling his medical knowledge would come in quite handy just now. After all, that’s what Mike kept saying: It all comes down to the medical.

Tapping the button for my contacts list, I even went so far as to get Heath’s number up on the screen. I just wanted to hear his voice, to hear him tell me everything would be okay even if we both knew it wouldn’t.

I almost pressed the dial button, but in the end I decided not to call. We could talk in the morning. There was no reason to wake him up just so his night could be as complicated and restless as mine.

I was about to put the phone away when I realized I had one voice mail message waiting, one that had come while I was out in the grove and probably hadn’t heard it ringing. It was Liz, calling to say there were no new developments but that she would keep me posted if anything came up. Listening to her message, I could tell she hadn’t learned anything about what was going on here. No doubt she assumed I was back in Philadelphia, safely tucked up in my own bed, and not in Lancaster County, embroiled in what may very well be a murder investigation. Tomorrow, of course, I’d have to bring her up to speed first thing, right after I spoke to my parents and to Heath.

Putting the phone in my pocket, I turned my attentions to the metal gun box on the bed beside me. Before I went to sleep, I wanted to thoroughly check and load both weapons. I did that now, and when I was finished I focused on my various holster options. Though I usually carried my autoloader in a gun purse and left my revolver in the car as a backup, while I was here I planned to use my fanny pack holster instead so that I would be armed at all times. And I planned on sleeping with both guns in easy reach.

My body was so exhausted that I knew I should climb in bed and try
to get some rest. Unfortunately, my brain wasn’t tired at all. It was firing on all cylinders, and I could tell sleep would be a long time in coming. A night owl by nature, it wasn’t unusual for me to be up this late even on a normal night. If I stayed up another half hour or so, just long enough to settle my mind and leave it more open to the possibility of sleep, I didn’t think that would hurt anything.

I decided to go down to the office and do a little poking around, maybe look for my grandfather’s documents and figure out what had happened to tonight’s guests. Patting the MK40 in my holster and reassuring myself that it was there, I headed downstairs. I may not know Floyd’s office systems or his specific business practices or even the names of our most frequent guests, but I thought if I could orient myself to some of that now, at least it might make me feel a little bit more in control.

I had to say this for Floyd, the office was incredibly neat. There were no sticky notes on the computer, piles on the desk, or scraps of trash around the trash can. Unlike my desks at home and at work, which usually looked as though a tornado had blown through, this place was positively pristine. I had tried to do a little better at Buzz, feeling oddly out of place in a company that practically made neatness a job requirement, but it simply wasn’t in my nature. Even in a fancy tenth floor windowed office full of streamlined furniture and sleek storage devices, I couldn’t seem to hold my act together, at least not perfectly, and certainly not like this.