Whiskers of the Lion (14 page)

“No, he said, ‘That's not right,' or something like that. Maybe ‘They're not right.'”

“Do you remember how many there were?”

“I only saw two, but Howie said four.”

“When did he say that?”

“In the cab.”

“Did he recognize any of the men?”

Fannie thought, remembered, and said, “He said he recognized the
type
. He said he really did not like the
type
of men they were.”

“That doesn't seem like much,” Armbruster said.

“Well, he had been talking on the bus all the way down to Charlotte. About how those people would be looking for me.”

“Which people, Fannie? Did he say? Did he mean someone in particular? Or someone he actually knew?”

“He just meant the people who killed Ruth Zook,” Fannie said. “And that woman in the gray Buick who came looking for me at my brother's house.”

“Teresa Molina.”

Tears welled in Fannie's eyes, and she whispered, “They must be the same people who killed Howie.” She laid her scissors down and dried her eyes with the hem of her apron. “That must mean that Howie saved my life in Charlotte.”

“Yes, Fannie,” Armbruster said. “In Charlotte that morning, I think he did save your life.”

Thursday, August 18

6:30
P.M.

SHERIFF ROBERTSON drove his Crown Vic northeast through Millersburg on SR 241, angling around the curves and hills of town, headed for Ricky Niell's home in a new development that had been carved out of pastureland a mile beyond the city limit. It was a neighborhood of new ranch homes with uniform design and construction, where the curbs and sidewalks were new and white, and the mailboxes were matched in style. Unlike the rest of Millersburg, which seemed to sprawl haphazardly across the patchwork of steep hills east of the Killbuck marshlands, Ricky and Ellie's neighborhood was a planned community where few trees had made a start and where several homes were still under construction. The lawns were newly sodded, and most of the fences were only partially finished. Ricky and Ellie lived in the second house beyond the main gate. It had been one of the first model homes the developer had constructed, and Ricky and Ellie had bought the home furnished. While Robertson was parking his Crown Vic at the curb in front of their house, a call rang in from Mike Branden.

When he finished with the professor's call, Robertson got out, locked up, and walked along the gentle slope of the drive, up to the brick path that led to the Niells' front door. The sheriff rang the bell, and he heard Ellie sing out from inside, “It's open.”

The sheriff stepped inside and found Ellie stretched out on the living room couch, propped on several bedroom pillows, with her feet up and shoes off, obviously pregnant and shifting uncomfortably on her stacked pillows. By way of a greeting, Ellie said, “Hello, Sheriff. I shouldn't get up.”

“Stay right there,” Robertson said. He sat on the front edge of a soft recliner across from Ellie, and his weight compressed the cushion uncomfortably low to the floor, pinching his legs to an acute angle at the knees. He pushed himself farther back into the seat and said to Ellie, “You don't look very comfortable on those pillows.”

“Sheriff,” Ellie said with her eyes closed, “if only I could tell you.”

“That bad?”

“Worse. The doctor says it has to be either the couch or the bed, and I'm not to get up by myself.”

“But you look good, otherwise,” the sheriff said, trying again for a more agreeable position on the seat of the low recliner. “I mean you look healthy.”

Ellie laughed out a challenge. “A
happy glow
, Sheriff? That's what my father calls it.”

Robertson gave the best smile he could manage and defended himself. “I just mean it's good to see you, Ellie. And I hope you're going to be OK.”

Ellie pushed up on her pillows. “I'll be fine as soon as I can walk by myself and get out of the house. And wear decent shoes again.”

“Can you ride in a chair? Have Ricky wheel you around the neighborhood?”

Ellie laughed with apparent good cheer and wriggled into a better position on her pillows. “Not really,” she said and laughed again. “Picture that, if you can, Sheriff. Wheeling me around on the sidewalks. Anyway, the doctor says no.”

“That's rough.”

“I'll get there,” Ellie answered. “In the meantime, Caroline has been coming to help me every day, and Del Markely has been keeping me up to date.”

Robertson scratched his chin with narrowed eyes. “I'm not sure Del Markely's gonna work out as dispatcher.”

Ellie laid her head back. “You just need to give her time, Bruce. You know you don't like change.”

Robertson shook his head and growled a little to clear his throat. “When can you come back to work, Ellie?”

“We'll see.”

“But you are coming back, right?”

“We'll see.”

The big sheriff found it impossible to make himself comfortable on the recliner. He also found it impossible to mask his concern for Ellie. So he held to his seat and said softly, “I can't imagine running my department without you.” Then to dispel his embarrassment, he turned awkwardly in his chair to study the room. “Is Ricky doing the housework? Because it looks like he needs some help.”

“Yes, Ricky's doing all the housework. And all the shopping.”

“That where he's at, now?”

“Yes. Are you offering to help with any of this?”

Robertson cleared his throat with difficulty. “Whatever you need, Ellie. You know that.”

“I know, Bruce. Don't worry. We've got it covered.”

To camouflage his unexpected sensitivities, the sheriff said brusquely, “OK, but when can I have Ricky back? I need everyone I can get, Ellie. You know that as well as anyone.”

“Not for a while, Sheriff. Maybe when the doctor says I've stabilized.”

Robertson nodded with an unhappy frown. “I'm really not sure about Del, Ellie. I mean really. She's not anything like you.”

“Ricky says the deputies like her, Bruce. You need to let her settle in.”

“I had hoped you would be back to work before I had to do that.”

“I won't, Bruce. You need to give her a chance.”

“Whatever.” Robertson rubbed anxiously at the top bristles of his gray hair. “Anyway, the Dent murder has us tied in knots.”

Ellie rearranged her pillows to lie back more. She knew that nothing more she might say on the topic of Del Markely would prove effective with the sheriff, so instead of pressing her case, she asked, “How are Stan and Pat doing in Middlefield?”

“Well, they're still up there. With Mike and Caroline. Mike just called.”

“What'd he have for you?”

“Well, Fannie has a fiancé, from Michigan.”

“So, Fannie and Howie weren't in love?”

“Either that or she figured she had to marry Amish.”

“Could be.”

“Mike also said he's going to try to get details from the fiancé, Reuben Gingerich. About how Fannie and Howie moved around this summer. And how they chose their next destinations.”

“What about the yellow VW?” Ellie asked. “Anything there?” She struggled to adjust her pillows.

Robertson popped off his chair. “What can I do?”

Ellie pulled at the corner of one of her pillows. “Just raise this one up. More behind my head.”

Robertson worked with the pillows and felt foolish for being so clumsy. He mumbled, “I'm sorry,” but he persisted. Eventually, Ellie gave him a thumbs-up, and Robertson returned to his chair, asking, “Is that any better?”

Ellie was breathing heavily from her exertions. “A little bit, Sheriff. Caroline or Ricky usually helps me with this sort of thing. So tell me what was in Howie Dent's VW.”

Robertson scratched nervously at his chin. “Ellie, did you know that Caroline Branden suffered a number of miscarriages early in their marriage?”

Ellie answered softly. “Yes, Bruce. She's told me. It's horrible.”

“Does she come here every day?”

“Yes. I've tried to tell her that it isn't necessary.”

“Don't, Ellie. Don't tell her that. She needs to help you. It's good for her. She's always been fragile on this topic. If she's coming here every day, it means that she needs to be here every day.”

“OK, Sheriff. Now tell me about the yellow VW. What was in it?”

“His killers took most of Dent's belongings, Ellie. There's nothing in the car that can help us.”

“Maybe Dent wasn't going back to Middlefield,” Ellie said. “Maybe he was going to leave Fannie with this Gingerich.”

“Then why not just return home to his farm? The Teresa Molina crew has no reason to harm him, because he was never involved in any of the drug smuggling. So, why would he take the car in the night?”

“I suppose.”

“Really, Ellie, I don't think he'd stay with Fannie all summer and then not go back to her with his car. He could have driven her anywhere. It's just what she and Gingerich would need—a ride to anywhere in America. So I can't imagine he wasn't going back to help her.”

“OK,” Ellie asked, “so what did he do in Millersburg to get himself abducted?”

“Right. That's the question. I've been trying to figure where he'd go, once he had retrieved his VW.”

“There has to be something that answers that, Bruce.”

The sheriff's phone rang. He pulled it from his coat pocket and checked the display. “Armbruster,” he said to Ellie, and he answered the call. “What have you got for me, Stan?”

The sheriff listened a bit and then said, “Wait, I'll put you on speaker phone.”

He set the phone on the coffee table, switched to speaker, and said, “I'm with Ellie, Stan. Say that again.”

Armbruster repeated, “I said, Dent was concerned about some men at the bus's breakfast stop last April in Charlotte. That's why he pushed Fannie into a cab. It's why they took a Greyhound to Memphis.”

“Did he think those were Molina's people?” Robertson asked.

“I think so,” Armbruster said, and he recounted for Robertson and Ellie the details of the scene in the Charlotte restaurant, just as Fannie had described it, with the men searching for her. Then the cab ride to the Greyhound station downtown. Paying the cabbie. Buying the tickets for Memphis.

“At least that's what Fannie says,” Armbruster finished. “But I'll get more if I can. In the meantime, the FBI has arrived here. They want to get Fannie into custody as soon as possible.”

“Then you won't have any more time with her,” Robertson said. “That's a problem.”

“We'll get everything we need from Fannie,” Armbruster chuckled. “The FBI won't be a problem. Caroline and Reuben Gingerich are right up in their faces, and if you want information from Fannie, all you'll have to do is call Caroline.”

“What's going on?”

“Gingerich insists on a proper chaperone for Fannie. He says she's not going to a hotel with four strange men without a woman to chaperone her.”

Ellie leaned from her pillows toward the phone. “Stan, it's Ellie. Caroline could do that. Chaperone.”

“I know,” Armbruster said, laughing. “She's telling them right now that Fannie's not going anywhere without her. It's a showdown out of some classic western movie. You ought to see this. A professor's wife haranguing the FBI.”

 • • • 

As Reuben Gingerich argued with lead agent Parker, Caroline paced behind him, kicking at the gravel beside the FBI's black panel van. Her hands were hanging like stiff cudgels at her sides, and uselessly, her fingers were begging her to make claws. A hoarse rattle had built a nest in her throat, and she felt as if it were hatching chicks there. She growled to clear the tangle in her throat, and Reuben turned momentarily to smile appreciation at her before he resumed his arguments with the agent.

Caroline kicked up a stone and paced. Fannie's protests had counted for nothing. She had retreated to the Daadihaus with Irma. Caroline spun in place and then paced again.

Her husband's credentials as a reserve Holmes County deputy had counted for nothing. He had gone into the kitchen for water. Or so he had said.

Reuben's arguments about the impropriety of an engaged Amish woman staying in a hotel room with four strange men had counted for nothing. The agents, it seemed, cared not a whit for Fannie's sensitivities.

So Caroline was pacing and growling. She felt as if she would not be able to work through her tension unless she could claw something loose from the FBI's wall of intransigence. Unless she could claw something loose from their barricade of practiced indifference.

As Caroline scored the gravel with the toe of her shoe, the professor stepped off the back porch with a bottle of water and said, “Here, Caroline. Drink this.”

Caroline snatched the bottle from his hand and took a single long drink. When she handed the bottle back, she whirled around and pulled gently at Gingerich's sleeve to press forward to the FBI's lead agent. With her index finger punctuating the vacant space in front of the agent's nose, she snapped, “You said it was a suite, Parker. You said it yourself. A suite with two bedrooms. So that puts Fannie and me in one bedroom, and you with all of your roughies in the other. We share the middle space. And we're gonna use the kitchen.”

“It's not big enough for all of us,” Agent Parker said. “And it's not proper procedure.”

“I don't care,” Caroline said more temperately. “It's a suite, and I'm going with Fannie.”

“Not possible,” Parker insisted.

Reuben pressed forward again. “Then Fannie's not going.”

“She has to go,” Parker said. “We need her testimony.”

“Does she have to testify?” Reuben asked. “I mean, does she really
have
to testify?”

“No, Reuben,” Caroline answered authoritatively. “Her testimony is voluntary.”

“Is that right?” Reuben demanded of Parker. “Is it really her decision?”

Parker ignored the question and said to Caroline, “Mrs. Branden, are you prepared to sit indefinitely in a hotel room? Are you prepared to play chaperone until Teresa Molina is caught?”

“I don't
play
at anything,” Caroline said. Her index finger reappeared in front of Parker's nose. “And don't you try to intimidate me.”

“I'm not, Mrs. Branden. But really, have you thought this through?”

“Don't you try to patronize me, either, Agent Parker. I'm going to spend my nights here with Fannie. During the day, I'll be going back and forth to Millersburg. I have a friend there whose pregnancy is not going well, and I'll have to split my time between here and there.”

“You can't be coming and going like that, Mrs. Branden. It'll upset our routines.”

“I'm coming with Fannie, Parker. That's just how it is.”

From behind them, at the open door of the little Daadihaus, Fannie called out, “Stop! Stop arguing, all of you.” She stepped forward on the drive. “It doesn't matter, Agent Parker. If Caroline is not going, then neither am I.”