“There you are, Ettie. You’ll never guess what happened.”
Ettie managed to get the cup onto the saucer before spilling any of her tea. “What happened?”
“That detective friend of yours came to see me and told me …” She slumped onto the couch right beside Ettie. “He told me about Levi.”
“What did he say?”
“He said Levi died of natural causes. Heart disease, that’s what they said. They released his body and he’s gone to the funeral home.”
“Is John organizing all that?”
“Nee. John will be here tomorrow. He’s staying at his vadder’s haus when he gets here. I suppose it’s his now. The bishop’s organizing the funeral.”
Ettie said, “So Lousy Levi wasn’t killed at all, like he thought he would be?”
“I still think he was.”
Ettie frowned at her sister. “The autopsy would’ve picked it up if he’d been killed.”
Florence pouted. “Is Elsa-May walking Snowy again?”
“Jah. I’m surprised you didn’t drive your buggy past her.”
“She must be walking a different way from the way I came. I’m bothered, Ettie. I’m really bothered.”
“About thinking he was killed?”
“Jah. What if there was something in those cookies to bring about a heart attack?”
“Is that possible?”
“I’m not sure.”
“Did you ask Kelly?”
“Nee, he hasn’t got the results of the cookies back yet. I was hoping you might talk with him for me.”
Ettie couldn’t think of anything worse. Kelly hated it when they interfered on one of his cases. “Me?”
Florence nodded.
“I keep away from Detective Kelly as much as possible.”
“I thought you two were friends.”
“He asks for my help once in a while and that’s it. We didn’t part on the best of terms last time we saw one another.”
“I know he’d take things far more seriously if you were involved. I think that’s the only reason he ordered an autopsy.”
“Why’s that?”
“Because I said I thought he’d been murdered and I repeated what Levi told me right before he died. And because he knows I’m your schweschder. That’s probably the only reason he believed me. Otherwise, I’m just a silly old lady. To him, I wasn’t a silly old fool because I’m your schweschder, don’t you see that?”
Ettie picked up her teacup, and sighed when she imagined the slightly bored stare Detective Kelly would offer her if she were to talk with him about Lousy Levi’s death. He would lower his head with his eyes fastened onto hers, and then his lips would be downturned into a frown, causing deep lines to form between his nose and the corners of his mouth.
Florence took Ettie’s tea away from her, set it down, and took hold of her hand. “Will you do it for me, Ettie?”
Ettie covered her eyes with her spare hand. “If you really want me to, I will.” What hope did she have, being the youngest child with older siblings to boss her about? Even at their current ages she felt the weight that the youngest child must forever carry. It was all about the pecking order.
“Denke. Now I’ll make myself a cup of tea since you didn’t offer.” Florence bounded to her feet and set off toward the kitchen.
“I would’ve made you one. I didn’t have the opportunity because you were telling me something important and holding my hand too tightly.”
“There’s never an excuse for poor manners, Ettie.”
Ettie smiled as she remembered those words of her dear mother’s that Florence had just repeated. She could very well have reminded Florence that most people knock and wait to be let in to someone’s house before they walk on in with no notice. She gave up, and again picked up her special teacup. The tea wasn’t as hot as it would’ve been if she could have sipped it before she’d been interrupted.
Ettie only hoped she wouldn’t have to go alone to see Kelly. If Elsa-May came with her, it wouldn’t be so bad.
Chapter 4
“Mrs. Smith and Mrs. Lutz. You don’t even have to tell me why you’re here. It’s regarding your sister and Levi Hochstetler, isn’t it?”
“Correct. It is. Our sister is worried about—”
“Come into my office.” He spun on his heel and took large strides down the corridor away from the front area of the police station. Ettie and Elsa-May had to hurry to stay close behind. He pushed his door open. “Take a seat.”
When everyone was seated and she had caught her breath, Ettie began, “We’re dreadfully sorry to bother you and we didn’t want to, but Florence is very concerned.”
Elsa-May took over, saying, “She’s convinced that the cookies in Levi’s house were poisoned.”
“I can’t help that. Just because she’s convinced of something doesn’t make it so. There was nothing poisonous in the cookies, just the normal cookie ingredients.” He lifted a file on his desk. “We just got the report back.” He dropped the file and it landed on the desk with a thud. He then tapped his finger up and down on it as he spoke in staccato form as though he were hammering something. “No poison in the cookies.”
Ettie licked her lips. If he’d told Florence that as soon as he’d found out, that might have saved her and Elsa-May a trip to see him. “The other thing we were thinking was that there might not have been poison as such, but could there have been something in those cookies that might have brought on a heart attack if the person had heart problems already?”
Elsa-May added, “If the killer had known that he had heart problems.”
“I understand what you’re saying, but there was absolutely nothing in the cookies. Is that why you’re here? Do you want me to have the cookies retested? At the expense of who? Will you pay for it? I appreciate you ladies always helping me in the past when I’ve asked, but I can’t bend the rules. Trust me, there was no poison in the cookies.”
“We wouldn’t want you to test them again,” Ettie said.
Ettie and Elsa-May looked at one another and Ettie wondered what to say next. Without a murder weapon and with the coroner not finding anything suspicious, there was nothing to go on. Kelly always told them he needed evidence and facts, not assumptions or hunches. The word of a dead man who was liked by no one was not evidence.
“It was just a thought. No need to test them again if there was nothing in them the first time, I suppose,” Elsa-May said.
“Is there anything else I can help you ladies with?”
Ettie had to do her best to put Florence’s mind at rest, and that was to try to uncover anything that might be hidden. “Florence is convinced he was killed. She wasn’t with him at the very time he died—well, she was at the end, but not in the moments before. He left her and he went into the house while she started down the driveway, and then she came back.”
“What Ettie is trying to say is, what if someone killed him in the house before she got back there? Isn’t that right, Ettie?”
“Yes.”
“How would someone go about doing that? By giving him a fright?” Kelly asked. “Jumping out and saying, ‘Boo’? There was no gunshot wound, no entry point of a weapon. Nothing at all.”
Ettie could see it was no use. His mind was made up that there were no suspicious circumstances and that Levi had died of a heart attack, and maybe he was right. Maybe it was Lousy Levi’s paranoia that had allowed him to convince Florence that he was killed.
“We’ll let our sister know that you’ve done everything you can to look into his death.”
“Good.”
“Thank you for your time.” Ettie pushed herself to her feet. When Elsa-May started talking, Ettie sat back down.
“The thing is, Detective, he predicted his own death and told Florence he knew that someone was trying to kill him. It sounded like he’d been threatened or he knew someone was out to kill him and he even said it would look like an accident.”
“It didn’t look like an acci
dent at all. There was nothing suspicious and no signs of an accident. The evidence technicians have been through the house collecting evidence and have come up with nothing. Because your sister was so worked up and because of the things she said, an autopsy was done.” He shook his head. “That was a monumental waste of time and expense. The cookies were sent off for testing and they were just cookies. Do I need to say again that there was nothing in those cookies?”
“No, we got that,” Ettie said.
He rose to his feet. “I suggest that you ladies go back home and put all your concentration into your knitting.”
Ettie and Elsa-May stood up and made their way out of the police station.
“What do you think about that?” Elsa-May asked her sister.
Elsa-May held onto the rail of the steps outside the station. “Nothing’s changed. He’ll never change.”
Ettie walked behind her, figuring if she fell, she’d fall on Elsa-May and have a soft landing. “He didn’t have to be so rude.”
“He’s been like that lately. I knew this would be a waste of time.” Elsa-May reached the pavement and turned to face Ettie, who’d just stepped down in front of her.
“Not if it puts Florence’s mind at rest.”
Chapter 5
They headed to the pay phone to call for a taxi.
“The only thing we can do is tell Florence what we found out.”
“And that’s nothing.”
“It’ll make her feel better.”
Elsa-May shook her head. “She was convinced.”
The ladies reached the pay phone and stood in front of it as they continued their conversation.
“He was old and he was fat. A good recipe for a heart attack.”
“But the two of those don’t go together in every case. Many fat people have no health problems whatsoever.”
“We’ve got nothing to go on. If you think someone killed him, how did they do it?”
“Let’s, just for the purposes of the argument, say that Levi was killed. That would mean that either the medical examiner made a mistake or the person testing the cookies made a mistake. Mistakes do happen.”
“But only in a small percentage of cases, I’m sure.”
“Let’s ask Florence a few more questions, shall we?” Elsa-May looked over Ettie’s shoulder, stepped closer to the road, and hailed a passing taxi. “This is nice. It saved us a phone call.”
* * *
They knocked on Florence’s front door and she opened it.
Her face lit up when she saw them. “Come in.”
“We haven’t found anything out,” Elsa-May said.
Her face fell. “Oh. That’s disappointing. I thought that’s why you were here.”
Elsa-May looked around. “Where shall we sit?”
“Come through to the living room.”
Once they were seated, Florence asked, “What happens now?”
“We visited Detective Kelly and he was no use, no use at all. He just kept saying it was a heart attack. ‘No poison in the cookies,’ he said.”
“And maybe it was.” Elsa-May placed her hands in her lap.
“You should’ve heard Levi, though. He kept on, and on, and on about it. He kept saying, ‘If I die and it looks like an accident, it’s not an accident. I’m trusting you to tell the cops.’ And you know he didn’t have many friends. I was about his only friend. If I don’t do this last thing for him, who will?”
“And he had a lot of enemies,” Ettie said.
Florence nodded. “And it was one of them, most probably, who finally killed him.”
“When you went back into the house the second time, did you see anything suspicious? Did it look like someone had just been there and left?” Elsa-May asked.
“I didn’t even think of that. I was just thinking of Levi and trying to bring him around. It was very frightening. Then he died right there. I was only with him for a few seconds, then he died, and then I ran to call 911 hoping they might be able to revive him.”
“Do you have a pen and paper?” asked Ettie
“I do somewhere.” Florence got up and opened a bureau drawer and handed her a pen and paper. “What’s it for?”
“Sit down,” she said to Florence who was standing over her. Once Florence sat down again, Ettie said, “I’m making a list of all the names he mentioned that day, his last day.”
“Very well. To start with, there was the man next door. He was very angry with him because—”
“At this stage, don’t tell us why they were angry with him. Just tell us all the names he mentioned.” Elsa-May spoke in her usual abrupt oldest-sister tone.
Florence didn’t seem to notice, or if she did, didn’t take offense. “Very well then. There was the man next door, there was his son John, and the nurse that he seemed to be upset with, and the man he was thinking of going into business with years ago; I forget his name now. It’s on the tip of my tongue.”
“Don’t worry. We can find that out,” Elsa-May said.
Ettie looked down the list. “The man next door, the nurse, his son, the man he was in business with years ago.”
“Is that all?”
“They are the only people he mentioned. He was only thinking of going into business with that man. It never actually happened.”
“You said that already.” Elsa-May turned and said to Ettie, “This all could be a big waste of time.”
Ettie pressed her lips firmly together. “You don’t have to be involved. You can go back to your knitting like Kelly suggested. It’s not as though we’ve got anything else to do with our time these days.”
Elsa-May sighed. “I just hope this is not all for nothing.”
“I know how you feel, Elsa-May, and I wouldn’t be bothering the both of you with it, but Levi was so insistent with me. He begged me for my help if something happened to him. And now that something has, I owe it to him to look into it. And you’re right, it might come to nothing, but on the other hand …”
“Okay, okay. Let’s do this.” Elsa-May looked over Ettie’s shoulder at her list.
“Let’s start with the man next door, shall we?” Ettie suggested.
“The man next door was upset with Levi because he lost his organic farming accreditation because Levi used so much fertilizer and sprays, and of course those things weren’t compatible with what the next-door neighbor was trying to do.”
“I can see how that would be a problem,” Ettie said. “That would’ve crushed his business.”
“He would’ve lost his customers, I suppose. Did Levi feel bad about that?” Elsa-May asked Florence.
Florence’s eyes grew wide. “Not in the least.”
Ettie chuckled. “No wonder they didn’t get along.”
“Then there’s his son, John, and he said John will get it all when he goes.”
“And I’m guessing he didn’t get along with his son in the past few years?” Ettie asked.
“John left the community, as you know. Levi wasn’t very welcoming anytime John tried to visit.”
“That doesn’t mean John killed him,” Elsa-May said.
Ettie ignored Elsa-May’s comment. “And the next on the list is the nurse. What do we know about her?”
“I don’t know very much about her. I know that Levi had just recovered from a bad leg and the nurse had come to his home a few times. I think it was a severe case of gout. I have no idea why Levi was upset with her, but he was.”
“And then there’s the man he was going to go into partnership with, but didn’t. What do you know about that, Florence?”
“Not a lot. I do remember his name now; it was Troyer. Jah, Tony Troyer. I think they had a deal worked out, but from what Levi said, the man couldn’t raise the money to buy the share they’d agreed on. From memory, Levi was going to retain a larger percentage.”
“That sounds about right. Lousy Levi wouldn’t have gone fifty-fifty with anyone.” Ettie chuckled.
“Shall we start asking Troyer questions?”
Elsa-May asked Ettie.
“I think so. Nee, come to think of it, we’ll ask the closest people geographically and work our way out. Like starting in the center of a wheel and working our way out to the rim.”
“Very good,” Elsa-May said.
“Denke to the both of you for helping me,” Florence said. “I thought that detective friend of yours was going to be good, but then he turned on me.”
“He can be quite abrupt and almost rude sometimes,” Ettie said. “We very often don’t know what mood we’ll find him in. I suppose that might be due to the stresses of the job. He works such long hours.”
“Tomorrow, we’ll visit the neighbor and see what we can find out. Oh, Florence, where’s John?”
“He’s on his way back here in time for the funeral.”
“Who’s making all the arrangements then, if not his son?” Elsa-May asked.
“The bishop has looked after it since Levi has no relatives here in the community.”
Ettie nodded. “I forgot to tell you that, Elsa-May.”
“Both of you can talk to the neighbor. There’s no reason for me to be involved. Snowy and I will stay here,” Elsa-May said.
Ettie didn’t mind who went with her as long as she didn’t have to go on her own. “Will you collect me tomorrow, Florence?”
“Okay, and then we’ll see the neighbor together.”
“Does he have a name?” Elsa-May asked.
“Of course he does,” Florence said with a giggle. “Hmm, I heard it once. His first name starts with ‘E.’ Errol or Eric, I think. I’ll know him when I see him.”
Normally, Ettie thought over breakfast, she wouldn’t have minded helping Florence, but that meant she’d miss out on the quiet time of day she’d grown used to.
“When are you taking Snowy for a walk?” Ettie had hoped she might have a slice of time to herself that morning, before Florence arrived, but it hadn’t happened.
“I’ll take him soon. Why?” Elsa-May asked.
“Wouldn’t you prefer to go when I come home?”
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