Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) (23 page)

“Then what’s up?”

She took a moment to compose her thoughts and Leroy’s words in such a way as to not waste too much of the detective’s time—time she knew was about to be stretched in far too many directions.

“Claire?” he asked as he inched in her direction. “Did I do something wrong?”

“I was out at Leroy Beiler’s house last night.”

His right eyebrow lifted. “Oh?”

“Eva had her baby yesterday afternoon and I had to bring something out to her sister, Annie.” She took a deep breath and counted to ten in her head, the information she’d all but verified destined to shake Heavenly’s Amish community to its very core. “After Annie went inside to look in on Eva, Leroy and I started talking.”

When Jakob said nothing, she got to the only point that truly mattered. “I mentioned Sadie. Or, to be more specific, the worry her parents must have felt over their daughter’s unexpected disappearance, and the absolute anguish they must feel
now
to realize she’s been dead this whole time.”

“And?”

“He definitely knows what happened to Sadie.”

His eyes bored into hers as he took hold of her hands and held them tightly. “Did he give you details?”

“No, but—”

“I will tell now . . . as I should have told nineteen years ago.”

Pulling her hands from Jakob’s loosening grasp, she turned to see Leroy Beiler standing just below the string of bells neither she nor Jakob had heard.

“Le-Leroy?” she faltered. “I didn’t hear you come in.”

“Leroy, it’s been a long time.” Jakob stepped around Claire and extended his hand to the Amish man. “In fact, when I left, I think you were, what, seventeen? Maybe, eighteen?”

“I know that I was old enough to know right from wrong. Still, I chose to do wrong.”

Jakob responded with a slow but deliberate nod. “Why don’t we step across the street to my office? We can talk in private, there.”

“I would like to speak my piece here, in front of Miss Weatherly.” Leroy took three more steps into the shop and then stopped as if he’d stepped in glue. “Fourteen years ago, someone wanted me to speak the truth, but I did not. Now, because of Miss Weatherly, I am ready to do what I should have done then.”

“Are you talking about Elizabeth Troyer—I mean, Elizabeth Miller?” Jakob pulled a small notebook and pen from his shirt pocket and prepared to record Leroy’s answers to the first of many questions that were sure to follow.

Claire listened for the answer even as she made a mental note of the remaining twenty minutes that stood between them and the standard opening time noted on the shop’s front door.

“Yah.”

“This involves Sadie Lehman, doesn’t it?” Jakob asked.

“Yah.”

“Do you know who killed her?”

“It was all of us.”

Jakob dropped his pen atop his notebook and held up his hand. “Wait. I have to encourage you to get an attorney before you say anything else.”

“I do not need an attorney. It is time to speak a truth God already knows.”

“Are you sure?”

“Yah.”

Jakob exhaled against his open palm before letting it slip back down to reclaim his pen. “Why did you kill her?”

Leroy’s face paled. “We did not set out to kill Sadie. One minute we were talking, laughing, and . . . some of us were drinking.”

“Where did you get the alcohol?” Jakob queried.

“I do not know. It was just on the rocks below the bridge when we met there.”

“Who is ‘we’?” Claire asked before rushing to apologize for her interruption.

“There were five. Sadie, Elizabeth, Miriam, me, and Michael—an Englisher.” Leroy stood ramrod straight as he traveled back nineteen years with Jakob and Claire as his captive companions. “Sadie and Elizabeth did not drink.”

“You mean that night?”

“They did not drink at all.”

Jakob filled the first two pages of his pad with notes and then flipped to a new page. “Why were they with you if they weren’t drinking?”

“Miriam made them feel bad if they did not come.”

“Feel bad?” Claire repeated.

“She told them they had to go, that it was part of Rumspringa to go to the bridge. When that did not work, she would tell Sadie that Michael liked her.”

Jakob’s head snapped up. “Michael and Sadie had a relationship?”

“I do not think so. But it made her smile to hear Miriam speak such things.”

“What happened next? After the five of you were”—Jakob flipped back to the first page and read what he’d written—“talking and laughing . . . and you, Miriam, and Michael were drinking?”

“Michael pulled out a bag of candy and passed it around the circle. We all took some.”

“All?” Jakob clarified.

Leroy nodded. “Yah. All.”

“Go on . . .”

“We sat under the bridge, eating candy and talking. Miriam talked silly and did not make sense in the way drink can do. I talked about Eva and how I was going to marry her one day. Elizabeth suggested ways I could get Eva to notice me. The Englisher tapped his foot against the bridge and sang songs with the radio. Some of the songs I liked, some I did not.”

Claire silently ran through the names Leroy had mentioned and came up with the only one he hadn’t. “And Sadie? What was she doing?”

“She tried to tap her hand to the music, too, but she did not know the songs. After one or two, she stopped and just ate candy.” Leroy wiped a bead of sweat from his brow and continued, his voice raspy, yet firm. “Soon, I heard a thump. Then scream.”

“Who screamed?” Jakob asked.

“Elizabeth.”

“Why did Elizabeth scream?”

“Sadie was on the ground and touching
here
”—Leroy demonstrated on his own throat. “She did not speak. She did not cry. She just closed her eyes.”

“Did anyone touch her?”

Leroy looked at Claire. “When she closed her eyes, yes. Before she closed her eyes, no.”

“Then what?”

“Michael, the English one, put his ear to Sadie’s mouth. Then he put his hands here”—again, he demonstrated, but this time he pointed to his chest instead of his throat. “He pushed and pushed. Miriam tried to make Elizabeth stop crying but she could not.”

“And you?” Jakob prodded. “What did you do, Leroy?”

Leroy’s head dipped downward until all Claire could see of him was the top of his hat, his beard, and his body. His face was hidden in shame. “I did nothing. I did not help, I did not pray, I did not comfort. I just stood and watched.”

“Why didn’t you do anything, Leroy?”

Slowly, solemnly, the Amish man lifted his chin once again, his gaze finding and holding Jakob’s with palpable sadness. “I was afraid.”

Jakob ditched his pen on top of his notepad and reached into the front pocket of his pants to reveal a buzzing cell phone inside his palm. A quick check of the screen had him stepping away from Claire and Leroy to take the call.

While they waited for the detective to return, she tried to think of something to say to ease Leroy’s pain, but everything she came up with seemed grossly inadequate. Fortunately, though, Leroy took care of the silence.

“Last night, you spoke of Zebediah and Waneta. As a young boy, I did not know what it meant to be a parent. I did not think of the hurt such a secret would bring them. I worried only about what my dat would say.

“Today, I do not worry about what Dat will say. I worry only about Eva and the children and how they will get along when I am in English jail.”

Jakob came up behind them, his phone no longer in his hand. “That was the station just now. Seems Miriam and Bishop Hershberger are waiting for me in my office.” He took a moment to give Leroy a thorough once-over and then placed his notepad and pen back into his shirt pocket. “I’m going to have to ask you to come with me, Leroy. I suspect I’m going to have a lot more questions after I speak with Miriam.”

“Atlee is there?”

At Jakob’s nod, Leroy closed his eyes just long enough to take in a fortifying breath and straighten his hat. When he was done, he returned Jakob’s nod, gave a second and slower one to Claire, and then followed the detective to the door.

*   *   *

T
o see a buggy parked along Lighted Way wasn’t really something out of the ordinary. In fact, with the exception of Sundays, and a smattering of Tuesdays and Thursdays during wedding season, their presence was as normal for the tourist-friendly shopping district as their more modern counterparts.

Some of the buggies were owned by Claire’s fellow shopkeepers, others by those who supplied the English-owned shops with authentic Amish food and wares. And, from time to time, they belonged to shoppers themselves, with Amish women purchasing sewing supplies at the Heavenly Stitchery, or their husbands picking up a needed implement at Glick’s Tools ’n More.

But as surely as the hatted and unhatted commingled along Lighted Way on a near-daily basis, there was one building the Amish avoided at all costs.

From the exterior, the Heavenly Police Department looked like every other shop and restaurant that lined the busy street. It boasted the same clapboard siding, the same wide front porch, and the same tastefully written sign above the front door. But, inside, there were no Amish. No Amish in the waiting room, no Amish talking to the dispatcher, no Amish arguing a speeding ticket with the chief.

The reason for the group’s aversion to men in blue was hard to nail down completely, but from what Claire had been able to gather from her aunt and Jakob, it came down to their refusal to use force in any situation. For the deeply religious group, those who employed violence under any circumstance refuted Jesus’s command to turn the other cheek. As a result, even when victims of crime themselves, the Amish tended to steer clear of the police—opting to let things like burglary, road rage, and even home invasions go unreported.

So even though she knew the why behind the two buggies parked outside the station, Claire still couldn’t help making periodic checks out her window. On the one hand, she was glad Miriam and Leroy were finally ready to talk about what happened to Sadie Lehman nineteen years earlier. On the other hand, though, she couldn’t keep from thinking about all the new casualties from such a confession.

In particular, the five smiling towheads who’d claimed her heart the previous evening—five towheads and one brand-new baby who needed their father.

Although she knew very little about Miriam Stoltzfus, she did know the woman was a parent—one who, by all accounts, had emerged from her own rebellious Rumspringa stage a different person.

She stepped to the left in the hopes of gaining a slightly better view of the bishop’s buggy but it made no difference. An empty buggy was an empty buggy. Changing positions didn’t change that fact any more than watching a pot made it boil faster.

Whatever was happening inside the walls of the Heavenly Police Department would remain a mystery whether she lingered at the window doing nothing or actually made an effort to cross off a few tasks on her daily to-do list. However, if she focused on the latter, time would go faster and she’d have less hanging over her head when Jakob finally did break free of his interrogation.

Her mind made up, she crossed to the clipboard she’d all but ignored to that point and reacquainted herself with the first two tasks . . .

1. Create a new themed sale event for both April and May.
   
2. Make a list of needed inventory for Martha, Esther, and Eli.
   

Making a mental note to pick Annie’s brain for ideas on the first, Claire moved on to the second task, the first two items for Martha’s list the same as always—painted milk cans and painted wooden spoons. Only this time, she’d specifically request spring and summer scenes for both.

For Esther’s list, there were more Amish dolls, simple shawls in pastel colors, and the wildly popular place mats Claire was having difficulty keeping stocked.

Eli’s list was easy, too. Basically anything he crafted out of wood was a veritable hit, with children’s footstools and fold-up booster seats beginning to rival the always-sought-after blanket chests.

“It’s three minutes past five, Claire. Mind if I steal the fourth?”

She smiled at the familiar voice even as she continued to write one more item for Eli. “You can have the fourth
and
the fifth, Howard. But that’s just because I like you so much.”

“The feeling is mutual.” The balding and plump hardware store owner ambled through the doorway of the gift shop and made a beeline for the front window. “Did you happen to notice the pair of buggies that have been parked outside the police station since before noon?”

She considered feigning surprise but knew it wouldn’t fly around the self-proclaimed, yet lovable busybody of Lighted Way. “I did.”

“Did you happen to see who got out of them?”

Since she hadn’t witnessed the disembarking of the buggies at their current location, she was able to shake her head without too much guilt.

“I couldn’t make out who the tall man from the second buggy was, or even the woman in the first one . . . but I’m certain that the man who escorted her inside was Bishop Hershberger.” Howard patted his stomach and nodded as if he was in conversation with himself as much as Claire. “Now, I’m not a betting man, but if I was, I’d bet it has something to do with those bones they found out at Jeremiah Stoltzfus’s place last week.”

“Oh?” She closed the space between them with several easy strides. When she reached the window, she satisfied her own continued curiosity by taking another look. Sure enough, both buggies remained. “What makes you think that?”

“I always thought something was fishy about that young girl’s sudden disappearance. I didn’t know the Lehmans personally, but I used to see them around from time to time. That little girl never seemed the type to just take off on her mamma like that.” He clicked his tongue against his teeth and peered at Claire atop the reading glasses he’d failed to remove from the bridge of his nose when he left his shop. “No, sirree. Those two were close. Like two peas in a pod, if you ask me.”

“If that was the case, why didn’t the cops follow it up back then?”

“Because her parents never filed a missing person report. They just took the word of Sadie’s friends when they said she ran off to be a star.” Howard lifted his chin, took off his glasses, and scrunched his brow in disbelief. “Me? I never quite bought it. Just like I never bought that whole story about the way
his
”—he hooked his thumb over his shoulder—“wife died, neither.”