Blood of the Prodigal

by Gaus, P. L.

  “I’ve been trying, but I can’t figure out if he’s angry with me or just grumpy.”

  “Might be both,” Branden said. “But there isn’t a disingenuous bone in his body, and if you listen, and work at doing things his way, I think you’ll figure out how to handle him and why he’s so good at what he does.”

  “Handle him,” Ricky said. “That doesn’t seem possible.”

  “Just watch Ellie Troyer. She’s not too much longer on the job than you, and she already has Robertson figured out.”

  “Ellie Troyer?”

  “Right. The only one before her who could handle Robertson was Irene Cotton, and she’s dead.”

  “They say Cotton worked dispatch for Robertson,” Niell said. “They also say Robertson wanted to marry her.”

  Branden nodded.

  “Do you know about that?” Niell asked.

  “It’s a long story, Ricky,” Branden answered. “I’ll tell you all about it someday.”

  “Could you make it soon enough to do me some good?”

  Branden chuckled. “How long have you been working for Robertson, Ricky?”

  “A couple of weeks,” Niell said, as if it had been a lifetime.

  “And he’s already using you in his little skits?”

  “Yes.”

  “Then you’re doing fine,” Branden said, and changed the subject. “Let me ask you something about Hostettler. You said Robertson had him down at the jail yesterday?”

  “Just as soon as we could bring him in,” Niell said.

  “And the interview? How’d that go?” Branden asked.

  “I’m not sure,” Niell said honestly. “I still can’t tell what the sheriff intended or what he thought he’d learned. I know this much, though: We tailed Hostettler for half the night, and when I reported that he’d driven out to the Millers’ house and parked down the lane, smoking in the car with the lights out, the sheriff radioed back twice to check in with me. But Hostettler just sat there a while and then drove home, and the sheriff called off the tail. No explanation. Just brought us in.” Niell added, “With the sheriff, you think you’ve got one thing figured out, and then he pulls you in, and the whole game has changed.”

  “I know,” Branden said. “But Bruce has always got a reason, and once you figure that out, you won’t have a problem.” Then Branden asked, “Ricky, does Robertson have only the Hostettler lead?”

  “He does so far,” Niell said. “I’m supposed to find out where Jonah Miller had lived or worked, and then we’re going there, wherever that turns out to be.”

  “That seems sensible,” Branden said. “Do you have anything yet?”

  “No,” Niell said, unhappily. “Any suggestions?”

  “Not really,” Branden said. “I ran a Net search on the name Jonah Miller and several derivatives, but it didn’t turn up any obvious leads in the area. We tried calling the most likely names and nobody knew our Jonah.”

  “There’s something going on at the coroner’s,” Niell offered.

  “Ricky,” Branden said. “If Bruce takes up any other serious leads, I’d be grateful if you’d let me know.”

  “Why’s that?” Niell asked, immediately on his guard.

  “Because I have a lead or two that I’d like to work myself, and I wouldn’t want to duplicate efforts.”

  “Maybe you’d better let me tell the sheriff what you’ve got,” Niell suggested.

  “Believe me, he won’t think much of it. For what it’s worth, I got a call this morning from a girl who says she knows who killed Jonah Miller.”

  Niell gave him a skeptical look, and Branden said, “I don’t think it’s going to pan out, either, but I’m supposed to talk to her this afternoon.”

  “Then do me a favor, Professor,” Niell said with a broad and mischievous smile. “Tell me what you learn a good half hour before you tell the sheriff.”

  Branden laughed and said, “No problem.”

  Niell climbed into his truck and rolled down the window. As he put the truck in gear, he eyed the professor hesitantly and asked, “Ellie Troyer?”

  Branden said, “Right. You keep your eye on Ellie if you want to know how to handle Bruce Robertson.”

  16

  Tuesday, June 23

  5:00 P.M.

  BRANDEN pulled off Route 62 into the lot beside an Amish restaurant near Wilmot. The old inn was set close to the road and was packed to overflowing almost every day since tourists had made its “discovery.” Now a larger, more modern restaurant and inn was under construction on the hillside behind the original. In front of the restaurant, a Greyhound charter bus was loading passengers. Inside, there were the aromas of beef and chicken gravies, homemade breads, and fresh coffee.

  Branden caught the eye of a matronly woman in Amish dress and nodded toward the kitchen, silently asking for her permission to slip on back. She recognized him, nodded in reply, and he disappeared through a swinging door. He checked briefly in the kitchen, and then walked out into the employees’ parking lot behind the restaurant.

  At ten after five, a substantial girl in a Dutch costume came out and stood next to Branden. She untied her apron, ducked out of her prayer cap, and wearily shook her hair out of its bun. After drawing a deep breath, she asked, “Mike Branden?”

  “Right. You called this morning. You’re Ester Yoder?”

  The girl nodded and led the way to a black Camaro parked in a far corner of the lot. “I understand you’re working on the Jonah Miller case.”

  Branden followed her to the Camaro with his hands in his pockets and answered simply, “Yes.”

  “I also hear that Jeremiah Miller is still missing.”

  He was startled to hear her say that, and his surprise showed in his expression.

  “Of course I know about Jeremiah,” she said. “Anyone close to the Millers knows Jonah has had him for a long time. I ran into Jonah in Cleveland in the spring and told him he had a son. He’d never known. Can you believe it? Figured then that he’d go for the boy.”

  She seemed eager to talk, and Branden drew closer and listened.

  “So that makes your case a tad different, I would say,” she said. “You’re not looking for Jonah Miller any more. You’re looking for Jeremiah. And now that Jonah’s dead, you’ve got a problem knowing where to look.”

  “I had that problem from the very start,” Branden said. He took his hands out of his pockets. “You knew Jonah had taken Jeremiah. Do you know where?”

  “No. If I knew that I’d get the kid myself, take him back to old man Miller, and work out some reward. Who wouldn’t? I don’t know anyone who has a clue where Jeremiah Miller is now, because nobody knows where Jonah has been the last ten years or so. Except for Cleveland that one day.”

  Ester Yoder smiled with satisfaction, opened her car door and sat behind the wheel. Then she looked up confidently from her low seat, with the car door still ajar. Branden waited, eyeing the blacktop silently.

  “I used to know Jonah,” she said. “Before he went away. Later, I also knew his brother, Isaac.” She paused. “You ever hear of bundling, Professor?”

  Branden nodded that he had.

  “You’ve heard the saying ‘five can be allowed to be an even number when it comes to lovers’?”

  “Meaning the rules can be changed or overlooked for lovers?”

  “Well, me and Isaac—you know,” she said and paused again. She seemed embarrassed, now.

  Branden waited, giving her time with her thoughts. He was astounded that she’d reveal the bundling so forthrightly to him.

  She pulled the door of the Camaro closed, rolled her window down, punched at the cigarette lighter, lit one, blew smoke against the inside of the windshield, and tapped the steering wheel. “Isaac was approved by my parents. Jonah wasn’t,” she explained. “Going the other way,” she added, “Bishop Miller never approved of me.”

  She stopped and considered her next words. There was regret in her voice when she continued. “I loved Jonah, but
I would have settled for Isaac. So that pretty much turned the bishop against me.”

  Branden nodded again and fought an urge to question her.

  “Here’s something else you should know,” the waitress said. “Bishop Eli Miller is almost out of land.” She drew again heavily on the cigarette. “Started with something less than a hundred acres and a good barn his father left him, and got it up to nearly a quarter section when he was young. Since then, it’s been divided to the boys, five of them so far. Jonah was next in line. Two years older than Isaac. Follow me? What you’ve got to ask yourself is, where’d young Isaac be now if Jonah were to be coming home?”

  After starting the engine and putting the transmission into gear, Ester Yoder looked up at Branden and coldly added, “I wonder what that sanctimonious fool would say if he ever found out what his precious sons used to do with us girls in his barn.” With a note of finality, she added, “I’ll bet a week’s tips that it’s land that got Jonah Miller killed.”

  Then she sped off abruptly, flipping the cigarette out her window as she swerved onto Route 62.

  Branden stood in place and watched the black Camaro disappear.

  He strolled around to the front, sat in his truck, and watched absently as the Greyhound eased out onto the highway and headed east. Eventually it would turn north on 250, reach Wooster, and roll towards Cleveland, maybe Toledo. He idly inserted his key in the ignition, but did not turn it.

  Motive, he thought. That was all about motive. She knows what she’s saying. But why?

  She’s not practicing Amish anymore. Obviously.

  So much more a reason to doubt her.

  What had she really said?

  For one thing, she had said that Isaac Miller, Jonah’s younger brother, has motive. Or, at the very least, he stands to benefit from Jonah’s death.

  Is that possible? Murder among the Amish? Plainly, Ester Yoder wants me to think that.

  Evidently it’s the land. If Bishop Miller can’t subdivide his original holdings to all of his sons, they’ll have to move to another district. Perhaps even out of state. Land is everything. And a repentant Jonah Miller would obliterate Isaac Miller’s chances for a farm of his own. And a wife. No land, no wife.

  So why not take a job like Ester Yoder?

  But there’s no other acceptable occupation among Old Order Amish. Either you’re a farmer or you’re not living right.

  Lifestyle’s a matter of salvation. So it’s not likely, he thought, under any circumstances, that Isaac Miller’d simply take a job.

  Then he’d kill his own brother? Can’t believe that. Not for a minute.

  And the bundling. What was that all about? If he had understood her correctly, she had evidently bundled up with two of the sons of Eli Miller. Branden smiled slightly. Bundling used to be more common. Most Amish preachers in recent times had spoken against it. Heavy petting. Premarital intercourse.

  They’re peasants, really, not saints, he reminded himself. No big secret. Branden remembered the stories from his childhood. It used to be that the boys would drive home with girls in buggies, late at night on a Sunday, after a young people’s social, and bundle up in a downstairs bedroom of the girl’s house. Parents’d stay upstairs all night. Discreet. An old custom.

  Not too surprising about the bundling, really. One girl and two boys. Brothers.

  Clearly, she had loved Jonah. She had said it herself. Isaac was approved. Jonah wasn’t. Pity.

  That doesn’t matter here, Branden told himself. Ester Yoder has plainly said that not everyone in the Miller district would have been pleased to see the return of Jonah Miller.

  But Branden would not allow himself to consider Isaac Miller, any Amish for that matter, capable of premeditated murder. Not of murder of any kind. Maybe brief anger, or a long, unspoken resentment. But never murder. Donna Beachey had said as much, herself. The Millers wanted Jonah to come home to them.

  Now, that all meant that his trip had been wasted. Frustration rose up within him. A day was gone, now, and he had seen only the Millers, Ricky Niell, and now the jealous, resentful, former Amish lover of both Jonah and Isaac Miller. The affairs had obviously driven her from her family. Or maybe she had left the sect on her own. Nevertheless, she had wasted his time tonight.

  He thought it curious that she would consider him simple minded enough to have believed such a tale. He also knew he could not entirely dismiss what she had said. If nothing else, she had confirmed that Jonah had not been living in the county. But the day was gone nonetheless.

  In truth, Caroline had admonished him strongly for not taking the whole thing to Bruce Robertson this morning. To her way of thinking, if Jeremiah were missing this long after the death of his father, then he was being held by someone, and it was kidnapping that they were up against. But it was kidnapping from the start, Branden had reminded her. And from the very start, when he had taken his first buggy ride, the bishop had steadfastly held him to the promise that he would not involve the law. Then there had been Donna Beachey’s reassurances last night, and today’s promise to the bishop that he’d give it three more days. Well, now the bishop had two days, Branden thought, sorry he had ever made that promise.

  He hit the ignition and backed out, frustrated by the incongruity of it all. As he turned onto Route 62, he thought again of Ester Yoder, former Amish lass from Bishop Miller’s district. So we have another suspect, Branden thought. Jeff Hostettler, and now Ester Yoder. Had she loved both brothers, or had she loved the bishop’s land? Would the one brother’s coming home change her plans? Or was it just revenge, like Robertson thought of Hostettler? Truthfully, it was Ester Yoder herself who stood the best chance of knowing that Jonah would be coming home the morning he was killed.

  He drove for home, nervously tapping the steering wheel. He briefly tried the radio, then switched it off.

  I don’t like it, Branden thought. Why didn’t Isaac Miller marry Ester Yoder?

  He settled lower in the seat and drove slowly along the turns and hills of 62, southwest toward Winesburg.

  OK, figure the bishop.

  No, it’s the two of them, both Isaac and his father Eli.

  Headlights appeared suddenly in his rearview mirror. The car came around with its horn shrieking and mounted the next hill too fast for roads in Amish country. Branden saw the tail lights disappear over the crest and then shortly reappear on the following hill, swerving suddenly left into the oncoming lane. Branden shook his head, came over the hill and slowly up to the buggy he knew to expect, and eased gingerly around. He caught the driver’s eye and waved. The buggy driver acknowledged him with silent reserve, nodding from under a black hat.

  His thoughts turned to Robertson, “locked on Jeff Hostettler” as Niell had said. An apt description of the tenacious sheriff.

  A vision crossed his mind of Robertson in a yellow slicker, intently working the murder scene in the Doughty Valley, and Branden smiled.

  It began again to rain lightly, and a shuddering film of water gathered on the side window, collected into drops, and flowed back with the wind, along the glass at an angle.

  He rolled slowly through Winesburg in the rain. Most of the shops were closed. At the antique store, the lights were out, but Annie Tedrow was at the front door, letting out one last customer. Annie’d stay open to sell a roll top desk, he thought. Probably nothing less. She’d been there twenty years. One of the first English to have recognized the coming market in Amish sales. Now the town, and others nearby, were filled with the shops of the non-Amish. Cheese Haven this, or Gingerbread that. Authentic Dutch. Real Amish. Millers and Troyers and Hershbergers. Only the locals knew the difference anymore. And de Hoche tourists seemed not to care. They gleefully bought everything that was offered for sale. It was Amish country. It had to be good.

  What had Ester Yoder really said? That she was in love with Jonah Miller. Then later with Isaac Miller. She could well have loved them both. Now, one of them was dead.

  A pedestrian in denim
shot by in the rain outside his window, and the crime scene came to him again, with the image of Jonah Miller, sprawled face up in the mud, freshly dressed, and cleanly shaved. Washed by the rain amidst a crowd of onlookers.

  A sudden, curious thought sprang into his mind. Why wasn’t Eli Miller there?

  Miller was the key. He had surely been nearby, if Donna Beachey knew what she was talking about. At the house. Actually, Branden remembered, in the barn with the deacons. Isaac himself had said so. What were they doing?

  And why all the people? Isaac had said on the porch, “As you can see, Professor, the family is gathering.” What did that mean? Where was Jeremiah Miller?

  He came up Bunker Hill into Berlin and stopped at the intersection with Route 39. The Berlin House Restaurant was open for a heavy evening trade, the large parking lot full of cars out back. He turned right to follow 62.

  At the quilt shop, there was the dull orange glow of a lantern in a back room. Somebody’s working late, he thought. Finishing quilts that couldn’t be stitched properly with tourists in the store.

  If Bishop Miller had known of the death of Jonah, then why . . . ? Why what?

  It wasn’t just a single question. That was it, wasn’t it? More than one question came to mind. The answer to all of them probably hinged on one solitary fact not yet understood.

  Surely Miller had known something. What was it?

  The rain spattering the windshield reminded him of the face of Jonah Miller, washed clean of mud, and nicked by a straight razor.

  If the bishop had ever thought either Jonah or Jeremiah was in danger for his life, then why not tell us that up front?

  The rain came harder now, pelting the windshield.

  When he knew his son Jonah was dead, why hadn’t Miller told the sheriff, there and then, about young Jeremiah’s being missing?

  He remembered the body on the coroner’s table, a new straw hat laid beside it.