The Names of Our Tears (28 page)

“Hmmpf.”

“We need a vacation.”

“What?”

“I called the Brandens. They’re going to be at the beach house for another two weeks.”

“What are you talking about?”

“I booked two flights.”

The big sheriff shook his head. Couldn’t think of a single thing to say.

“We leave tomorrow, Bruce.”

“OK, Missy. Who’s gonna run my shop?”

“You have Chief Wilsher and several good captains who can
run your shop
just fine.”

Robertson frowned.

“And you need another detective, so I think you should use Stan Armbruster.”

“I’d already decided that, Missy. Gonna tell him Monday.”

“That’s a good decision, but we’re going to be in Florida on Monday.”

“Then I’ll just call him tonight. Maybe he can move out of that trailer and stop raising rabbit dogs for half his rent.”

Missy smiled and waited while her husband finished his coffee. As he rose with his cup, she said, “Wait, Bruce. Sit a bit.”

“What?” the sheriff asked, keeping to his seat beside her.

“Ellie is pregnant, Bruce.”

Robertson smiled. “Oh, I know that! Who could miss it?”

“You knew?”

“Of course.”

“She’s been worried that you’d react badly.”

“Well, tell her I didn’t.”

“Are you thinking about a replacement?”

“Maybe a temp. But she’ll come back to work when she’s ready.”

“What makes you so sure?”

The sheriff stood and spread his arms with a wide smile. “Missy,” he said, “it’s me, Bruce! How’s she gonna walk away from that?”

WHEN HE first arrived at the Helmuth farm, Ricky thought it was completely deserted. He knocked on the front door and no one answered. At the back door, he got the same result.

Standing on the gravel patch between the barn and the house, he heard a rhythmic chunking sound coming from behind the barn, so he circled around beside it and found twin Amish teenagers sinking postholes in the ground near the back of the barn. They continued working on their holes as Ricky walked up. Off to the side, a wagon sat with a load of fence posts and rolled wire fencing. The horse was still harnessed, straining to nip at the top of the pasture grasses.

“Why the fence?” Niell asked. “And where are the Helmuths?”

The boys regarded him skeptically, and Ricky realized he was dressed in a coat and tie, not his uniform, so he showed them his badge and asked again, “Why are you setting a new fence?”

One of the boys stopped digging and pulled his posthole tool out of a deep hole. He dropped it on the muddy ground at his feet and took out a handkerchief to wipe the inside of his hat. Hat and handkerchief back in place, he said, “Our family—we live right there—is going to work the farm, now. We’re fencing off pastureland.”

“What about the Helmuths?”

“Don’t know,” the lad said. “Father said we wouldn’t need the house.”

“Isn’t anyone going to live here?” Ricky asked.

“You’d have to ask the bishop.”

Ricky started to leave and then turned back. “I’m headed over to see Mervin Byler. Do you know him?”

Both boys smiled, and one said, “You’ll be lucky to catch him at home, as much as he’s taken to Coblentz chocolates.”

*   *   *

Mervin was rocking on his front porch when Ricky drove up. They sat together and remembered the day, only a week earlier, that Mervin had found Ruth Zook’s body in the glade around the corner on TR 165.

“If I never see anything like that again,” Mervin pronounced, “it’ll be too soon.”

“We don’t really know who killed her,” Ricky said. “Don’t know that we ever will.”

“Does it matter?” Byler asked.

Ricky shrugged a reluctant acknowledgment and said, “I suppose not, but the sheriff wants me to go down to Memphis next week.”

“Whatever for?”

“To try to find out where Fannie Helmuth went. He’s not going to give up on this. Not in a million years.”

At the far corner of the big house, the brothers John and Mahlon appeared, walking their white pony by its bridle.

“We’re never too old,” Mervin said. “Never too old to have fun with a pony.”

MERVIN BYLER wore a smile with his best Sunday outfit.

Hadn’t she given him a wink last Friday? The widow Stutzman?

He was at the intersection with busy SR 39, and he intended to take that road, no matter the traffic. Once he had gone the safe way, and clearly that had been a disaster.

But SR 39 was truly a busy road. Maybe even a dangerous one for an old fool in a buggy. Never mind, Mervin thought. Less chance of finding dead bodies.

Was it a wink she had given him, or just a smile? He clicked his horse out onto the blacktop and pointed her toward Walnut Creek. Underneath him, the clatter racket of his buggy wheels on hard blacktop was music to him, the clipping of his horse’s hooves keeping time.

Sure, it could have been just a nod, Byler mused. He wasn’t sure anymore. Still, it had been encouragement.

He had stood at the glass to watch her make the chocolates, and she had definitely given him a look.

Or just a glance?

Still, she was the widow Stutzman, and she might have looked his way.

And as much as he had always favored the salty chips, Mervin Byler found that he was developing a taste for fine Coblentz chocolates.

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