“Let’s walk over to Eric’s house and see if we can call a taxi back home from there. I just don’t want to be around all that yelling.”
“Let’s go.”
They hadn’t taken two steps when they heard someone calling from the front of the house. “Good morning.”
They had no choice but to turn around. They saw John looking at them and smiling as if nothing had happened.
“Good morning, John. We just came to visit you, and we didn’t see your car anywhere, so we thought you weren’t home.”
“That’s why we didn’t knock,” added Ettie.
“Please, come in, if you don’t mind all the mess. We’re sorting through some things.”
They walked into the house, to see things all over the floor and things pulled out of cupboards and stacked haphazardly on the countertops.
“We’ve emptied out every drawer and cabinet trying to find that eighty thousand dollars that my father said was stolen. We got to thinking maybe he had just misplaced it.”
“Ettie does things like that all the time,” Elsa-May said.
Elsa-May was wrong about that, but Ettie couldn’t disagree. The last thing she wanted was to argue after listening to the fight between John and Connie just now.
“We haven’t found it yet,” Connie snarled.
“Has Eric from next door said anything further about it?” Elsa-May asked.
“He’s putting us under a lot of pressure to sell to him, minus his deposit.”
“That’s why we’re looking around for the money,” Connie said.
“So, you’d consider selling now?” Ettie asked.
“Yes, we absolutely would. One hundred percent,” Connie answered for her husband.
“We’d consider it for the right price, and so far, Eric hasn’t come up with a price that we would consider.”
Ettie got the idea that Connie would’ve expected the place to be worth a lot of money. Maybe they even expected twice what the orchard was worth, simply because the man next door wanted it so badly.
They hadn’t been asked to take a seat, so Ettie and Elsa-May stood awkwardly watching Connie and John sift through Levi’s belongings.
Connie looked up at them. “I suppose you heard about the cremation? Is that why you’re here?”
“We heard something about it.” Ettie then looked at John, hoping he’d explain why he had chosen to cremate his father after he’d been buried.
“It was after the funeral that I remembered the conversation my father and I had many years ago. He expressed his wish to be cremated. I only wished that I had remembered that before the burial. But I remembered and was able to fulfill his wish.”
“Better late than never,” Connie said.
“That’s most unusual, for an Amish person to want to be cremated.”
“My father thought for himself about things like that.”
“He was Amish, and it’s not our way,” Elsa-May said to John.
When Connie and John looked a little bit shocked at Elsa-May’s tone, Ettie knew she’d have to soften her sister’s words. “What Elsa-May means is that it’s an unusual choice, but not one that would affect him being at home with God.”
“That’s exactly what he said, Ettie,” John said.
“Do you think it was that important to him?” Elsa-May asked.
“It cost me a lot of money to do it, Elsa-May—many thousands of dollars. My father and I hadn’t always gotten along. Our relationship was rocky ever since I left the community. This was the last thing I could do for him. If I didn’t think it mattered, I wouldn’t have done it.”
Elsa-May slowly nodded. The way John’s eyes were tearing up while speaking about doing the last thing for his father, Ettie figured he must be genuine. Detective Kelly had thought John was hiding evidence by having Levi’s body exhumed and cremated. It was a suspicious looking move, but talking to the man in front of her, he just seemed like a son wanting to do this one last thing for his father.
“Yes, I would imagine that would’ve cost quite a lot of money.”
Ettie looked at Connie, wondering if she minded spending that much money on something. And that led Ettie to wonder if John had a gambling problem like they’d heard. Would someone with a gambling problem spend money fulfilling his father’s wishes when he could have taken that money and gambled it to feed his addiction? Had they been fighting over the cost of the cremation just now?
“What are your thoughts on the cremation, Connie?” Ettie asked.
“Just another waste of money. John’s father is ending up the same place either way whether he’s buried or cremated. I don’t see the sense in wasting all that money and that’s what I told John.”
“What’s done is done,” John said in a rather firm voice.
When John and Connie kept ignoring them and carried on sifting through everything they could find, Ettie and Elsa-May asked to use their phone, then said goodbye and left them to it.
As they walked to the phone, Ettie said, “It’s unusual that we haven’t heard from Florence.”
“We should stop by her place now and tell her all we’ve learned.”
“She won’t believe any of it.”
Chapter 20
Half an hour later, they were sitting down with Florence, sipping hot tea and nibbling cookies.
“I hope these aren’t the cookies you got from Levi’s house,” Elsa-May joked.
“I didn’t eat them when he was alive and I certainly wouldn’t eat them now. Wherever they are.”
“In evidence,” Ettie said. “I can’t work out whether they’ve got the stale cookies in evidence, or just the box.”
“I suppose it would be the cookies that were in the box,” Elsa-May said, “as well as the box and packaging. They might have put the cookies in those zip lock bags they use for evidence.”
“Seems weird. I just saw cookies in the box when Levi opened it.”
They proceeded to tell Florence everything they knew.
“Levi never mentioned anything to me about wanting to be cremated. It certainly was an unusual choice. I didn’t know what he wanted. The only time he ever talked to me about dying was the day that he died. The only thing he was concerned about then was me getting to the bottom of his murder. And I feel I’ve failed him. I thought the police would listen to me, I really did.”
“They listened to you and that’s why they ordered an autopsy. If it weren’t for you, they would have just thought it was a heart attack and let it go.”
“I suppose you’re right, but they still haven’t found out anything.”
“If there’s anything to find, Detective Kelly will find it. I know he’s suspicious too, but he just won’t admit it. That’s why he jumped all over the cremation as soon as he got wind of it. He thought there was something suspicious.”
“It’s not uncommon for them to miss things in autopsies,” Elsa-May said. “So I’ve heard, anyway.”
“If there were anything to find out they would’ve found it by now, I’m sure of that,” Florence said. “I still can’t figure out what Justin said to you about the two men liking the same woman. Levi and Tony Troyer. I certainly had no idea that Levi had his eyes on anyone.”
“We guessed it was his sister that Justin was talking about, but he wouldn’t say it.”
“What do we do now?” Florence asked her sisters.
Ettie said, “I don’t know, but I find it odd that Levi would think his son would try to kill him. Justin said Levi borrowed money from Tony to help John out with his debts and maybe he was charging John interest.”
Florence chuckled. “That would be just like him to charge a relative interest. Especially his only son.”
“Only child,” Elsa-May corrected.
“So, it could be that Levi had borrowed a lot of money to help John, and John had a big debt to his father. Now that his father’s gone, that debt has been wiped. Not only that, now John’s inherited the orchard.”
“We should write
all this down, so we don’t forget,” Florence said.
“Why don’t we do just that?” Elsa-May said.
“We’ll put it on one of my spare recipe cards.” Florence pulled out her recipe box from a drawer, and then took out a pen and an empty recipe card. “John’s motive might have been money.” She looked at her two sisters. “Then the man next door’s motives would be what?”
Elsa-May said, “With Levi out of the way, he might’ve thought he had a better chance of getting the orchard.”
Florence scribbled that on her card. “And then we have the nurse.”
“We still don’t know the nurse’s motive. It doesn’t make sense she would kill one of her patients. And now we know Kelly was making that up about the serial killer business. It wasn’t very nice of him.”
“So we’ll put that down as unknown for the nurse’s motive, and then we have Tony Troyer, and his possible motive might’ve been jealousy if the two of them loved the same woman. Maybe she had rejected each of them, and told each that she was interested in the other one.”
“You mean she told Tony she was interested in Levi and told Levi she was interested in Tony?”
“That’s right.” Florence giggled.
“Let’s stay on the track with believable scenarios,” Elsa-May said, looking annoyed with Florence.
“I just don’t see that lovely young woman with either of those men.”
“Neither do I, Ettie,” Elsa-May said. “Unless it’s true that love is blind.”
Ettie giggled at what her older sister said. “Blind, and takes away people’s common sense also.”
“So is that the four people he named taken care of?” Elsa-May asked Florence.
“That’s it.”
“Let me see that list.” Ettie peered at the list. Something was off. None of these were strong enough motives to kill someone. There had to be something else happening that they still didn’t know about.
“What’s the matter, Ettie?”
“Just look at the list, Elsa-May. Let’s just suppose that Levi was right and someone did kill him, and it was one of these four people. You saw how John was highly emotional about performing his father’s last wish. It doesn’t seem likely to me that he would be like that after killing his father.”
“He could’ve, Ettie. He could’ve killed his father and then regretted it deeply. Also, people who habitually lie are often very good at it. They’re called psychopaths.”
Ettie sighed. Her eldest sister would always disagree with her no matter what, even if she really believed the same as she.
“Then why would two Amish men in their seventies like the same woman who was a good twenty years younger, and an Englischer at that? It’s not practical that they would pursue an Englisch woman—the both of them. And then we have the man next door claiming he paid Levi all that money. It’s odd that he’s not making much fuss about it. He’s never gone to the police about it.”
“Levi never went to the police about it either,” Florence pointed out.
“I think we can rule the neighbor out. It doesn’t make sense to kill Levi in the hope that the person who would inherit the farm might want to sell it to him. And why would a nurse turn around and kill a patient?”
“If she’s not guilty, why would she disappear?” Elsa-May asked Ettie.
“I don’t know. She could be frightened. She could think that she appears guilty and can’t face it, especially since she’s been charged once before over something she probably didn’t do.”
“The trouble with you, Ettie, is that you always think people are innocent.”
“That’s not correct. I just see both sides of things.”
Florence said, “The other thing is that Levi could’ve been totally wrong. Nobody might have been out to kill him.”
“Somehow, I believe him,” Ettie said. “I’ve never been one to believe in coincidences. I believe you were meant to be there that day, and something within Levi made him tell you of his fears right then when he did.”
Chapter 21
On their way home, Ettie and Elsa-May stopped at a food store close to their house.
“I feel like something sweet,” Elsa-May said.
“What’s new?” Ettie replied. “We just want something quick and easy for dinner.”
The sisters split up and went to opposite ends of the store. Ettie came across one of the workers she knew stacking the shelves.
“Hello, Mrs. Smith.”
“Hello, Bernie. We’re just having a quick look for something for dinner. What have you got there?”
Bernie laughed. “These are cookies. They won’t be any good, unless you have food allergies and can’t have nuts.”
“I don’t have allergies and neither does my sister.” Ettie stared at the cookies. There were chocolate chip and chocolate covered in the same packet. That’s how Florence had described the cookies that Levi had been given. “Give me a look at one of those.”
Bernie handed the red packet over.
Ettie stared at the package, trying to recall who had said they’d seen someone carrying something red and walking toward Levi’s place. In bold letters, it stated the cookies were gluten free and free of nuts. “Thank you.” She handed the package back.
“No good?”
“Do many people buy these?”
“Enough for us to stock them. We had a man who used to come in for them often, but I heard he died.”
“Levi Hochstetler?”
“I don’t know his name. He was an Amish man, an old Amish man.”
“Thank you, Bernie.”
“You’d probably know him.”
“Yes, I think I do.”
Ettie hurried to Elsa-May and pulled on her arm. “What is it, Ettie?”
“I know what happened. I need to call Detective Kelly.” Without saying anything further, Ettie headed to the pay phone outside the store. Ettie told Kelly she needed to see him at her house as soon as he could get there. Then Ettie went back inside and encouraged her sister to head home.
“We haven’t finished shopping.”
“Just grab anything and let’s go. I’m fairly certain I know what happened to Levi.”
Ettie told Elsa-May she’d called Kelly from the pay phone at the store and asked Kelly to meet them at their house. “I’ve also called a taxi.”
When Detective Kelly got to their home, Ettie led him to the living room. He took a seat and put his hands in his lap. “What is it?”
“The four people Levi mentioned to Florence are innocent. He tried to whisper something to Florence just before he died, but he couldn’t talk.”
“Who do you think killed him?”
“The nurse’s brother, Justin.”
The detective’s face remained deadpan. “Why would this man have killed Levi?”
“He killed Levi because of his sister. I believe she stole the eighty thousand dollars and Justin had to kill him to stop her from going to jail.” Kelly opened his mouth, but Ettie put her hand up. “I’m not finished. At first, Justin made an agreement with Levi that he wouldn’t go to the police, and that’s why Levi never went to the police about the money. Possibly, Justin told him that he’d try to get the money from her, but wasn’t able to because then something changed. Levi felt the financial pressure of his son’s money problems with his gambling habit, and then Eric the neighbor was constantly asking for his money back or insisting he sell the orchard to him as per their original agreement.”
“You’re convinced the nurse’s brother killed Levi?”
“Yes.”
“How?”
“He was the one who left the cookies at the door.”
Kelly’s lip curled. “There was no poison in the cookies. I’ve told you that before.”
“No, there wasn’t. What was in the cookies would’ve been fine for a normal person, but Levi had a severe food allergy. What if he was highly allergic to peanuts? Let’s, for the moment, imagine he had a severe allergy to peanuts. Now, I f
igure that since he had such a bad allergy, he wouldn’t have eaten just any cookies. I figure that they were store bought cookies that were left at his door and he knew they were ones he could eat with no problems. They didn’t have anything in them that he was allergic to. They were a brand he often ate because he knew they had no peanuts in them. That’s the only reason he ate them. He knew the brand.”
“You’re saying he died of anaphylactic shock? Is that what you’re getting at? And not a heart attack?”
“That’s right. I do think so.”
“You might be right.”
Ettie was amazed that he agreed, and kept talking. “A friend of ours was driving her buggy past Levi’s house on the morning Levi died. She saw what she thought was an Englisch woman taking something to the house and there was a red car parked nearby. If I believed in betting, I’d bet on it that Justin disguised himself as a woman to place the lethal peanut-filled cookies on Levi’s doorstep in the early hours of the morning.”
“What color car does Justin drive?” Elsa-May asked the detective.
“I can’t say. I only talked with him the one time, but I’ll certainly talk with him and see what I can find out.
“If he was driving his own car the day we saw him and Nella at Levi’s house, it would be white. But it might have been his sister’s car.”
Ettie resumed her tale. “When Florence left, she noticed Levi didn’t look too good and that was because there was something in the cookies. They’d been tampered with. He had food intolerances—peanuts—and the taste was hidden by the chocolate. It was Justin dressed as a woman delivering the cookies to the door. That way, if anyone saw him, like they did, they would think it was a woman bringing cookies.”
“Yes, I got all that the first time. Well, it’s certainly a convincing story. Is that the only scenario you’ve concocted, Mrs. Smith, or do you have another?”
“That’s all I have so far.”
“I appreciate your thoughts and I’ll have another talk with Mr. Justin Bridges. How did you know about Levi’s food allergy?”
Ettie looked down. “The man shelving cookies at the store mentioned a man always bought that brand—an Amish man—and he said he’d heard that the man had died recently. It had to be Levi he was talking about and the only reason Levi would’ve bought that brand was if he’d had food intolerances. I’m betting someone tampered with the cookies and added peanuts.”
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