Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)

by Isabella Alan

  Mom and Dad’s home stood alone on a hill. The front of the house overlooked a large Amish sheep farm. In the back, there was half an acre of lush green lawn and flower beds. This time of year, the gardens were filled with irises, tulips, bleeding heart, and sweet woodruff. Beyond the lawn there was a tree line that led into the woods. In the time that my parents had lived in the house, I’d never been in the woods. I doubted they had either. Mom and Dad weren’t the outdoorsy type.

  To my left there was a small silver construction trailer. A large stack of lumber lay next to it under a blue tarp. The trailer was new. I suspected it was another one of my father’s ideas. I sighed and was about to call my mother for an update when I heard someone inside the house call my name. “Angie!”

  I scooped up Oliver and ran back through the busted French door. I found Jonah and Eban in the kitchen. “You guys got here fast,” I said, slightly out of breath.

  Jonah smiled. “I told you I’d come as quickly as I could.”

  Eban stood beside him, holding a red toolbox. “This is quite a house.”

  I couldn’t argue with that statement. The kitchen was about the same size of the entire first floor of my rental house in Millersburg.

  Jonah whistled as he surveyed the damage to the cabinets and the door. “Your father just went for it, didn’t he?”

  I sighed. “Dad doesn’t do anything by halves.”

  Jonah raised his eyebrows at me. “That reminds me of another Braddock I know.”

  I held Oliver to my chest. “Can you fix it?”

  He nodded. “Not a problem. We’ll clean up the glass, board the doors, and finish taking out the cabinet. If we don’t, it might just fall on its own accord. We don’t want that. How much can we take out?”

  “All of it,” I said. “The plan was to gut the kitchen.”

  His eyes widened. “And your father was going to do the demolition?”

  I nodded.

  He grimaced.

  Eban set down the toolbox. “We should get to work then.”

  “Right,” Jonah agreed.

  My cell phone rang. I pulled it from my pocket and checked the readout. It was my mother. “We’re in the driveway,” Mom said. “I need help getting your father into the house.”

  I told her I would be right there. Jonah and Eban were already sweeping up the broken glass. I took Oliver with me and headed for the front of the house.

  When I exited the front door, Mom was setting up a walker in front of my father by the open passenger side door to her car. A thick lock of hair fell out of her sleek blond bob, which illustrated just how upset she was. My mother’s hair never disobeyed her. Ever. My wild blond curls, however, did whatever they wanted.

  My father took ahold of the walker and winced. My stomach dropped, and I set Oliver on the ground. “Dad, are you okay?”

  He half smiled, half grimaced at me. “Oh, I’ll be all right, AngieBear. Just as soon as the meds the doc gave me take effect.”

  Mom took one of his arms, and I took the other. Together we heaved him to his feet and he took a firm grip on the walker. My father is not a small man and had never been thin. At six feet tall, he was over three hundred pounds. I bit the inside of my lip as I watched him move the walker toward the house. His feet shuffled over the cobblestone walk and, for the first time, I saw my larger-than-life father as fragile. It was the first time that I didn’t believe he would live forever, and realization smacked me like a sledgehammer to the chest. My breath caught.

  “Angela,” my mother barked from her spot next to my dad. “Close the car door and help me get him up the steps.”

  Leave it to my mother to bring me crashing back down to the situation at hand.

  I did as I was told and, finally, Mom and I settled Dad on his huge leather recliner in the living room. It was the one piece of furniture in the house that Mom had allowed Dad to pick out.

  “What did the doctor say?” I asked.

  “Your father has a bulging disc, and because of his weight, it’s much worse than it would normally be. He has to go to physical therapy five days a week, starting the day after tomorrow, and we have pain killers.”

  “Oh, Dad.” I squeezed his hand.

  “I told you I’ll be fine. I might not be wielding a sledgehammer again, but I will be as good as new. You’ll see.” He smiled at me.

  My mother’s face was pinched as she fussed with the pillows around my father.

  “Was that Jonah’s horse I saw outside?” Dad asked.

  I nodded. “I asked him to come look at the broken door. He and his friend Eban could finish the whole demo job if you like.” I paused. “I think it’s a good idea.”

  Dad frowned.

  “Kent, you are in no condition to take on this job. Jonah or someone else can do it.” Mom gathered up Dad’s favorite Sudoku books and the day’s paper and set them on the table beside him. “I told you that from the beginning.”

  “It looked so easy on YouTube.” He sighed so deeply, it was as if the whole of the Internet had failed him.

  Mom sniffed. “The Internet makes people overconfident, if you ask me.”

  He gave me a sheepish face. “Maybe I shouldn’t have started right off with the sledgehammer.”

  Mom pursed her lips and turned to me. “If your father doesn’t do well in therapy, he will have to get shots in his back and maybe even surgery.”

  Dad paled at the mention of the shots. I was sure I did too. We had the same loathing of needles. The last time I had a blood test, I fainted before the nurse even took the plastic wrapper off the syringe.

  “I’m sure it won’t come to that,” I said as cheerfully as possible. “Mom, why don’t we let Dad rest, and I can show you what Jonah and Eban are doing in the kitchen?” I pointed at my Frenchie. “Oliver, stay with Grandpa.”

  Oliver jumped on the ottoman at Dad’s feet and sighed contently. I think he wanted to see for himself as much as I had that Dad was okay.

  When we entered the kitchen, we found that Jonah and Eban had already cleaned up all the broken glass, removed the high cabinets from the walls, and were in the process of boarding up the broken French door.

  Mom blinked. “I can’t believe you did this all in such a short amount of time.”

  Jonah grinned. “It wasn’t much trouble.”

  “Do you think you could finish the job?” Mom asked. “My husband is no condition to do any construction. He planned to do everything except the electrical and the plumbing himself. At least he knew he couldn’t do those.”

  Jonah smiled. “We’d be happy to.” He nodded to Eban. “This is my friend Eban Hoch, Mrs. Braddock.”

  “How do you do?” my mother asked formally. “Maybe I should hire a contractor,” Mom mused. “It is a very big job.”

  “Mom,” I said. “I’ve seen Jonah build a barn from the ground up. He’s more than up for the task.”

  “You’re right.” She plastered on her hostess smile. “You’ll have to excuse my rudeness. I’m so distracted by my husband’s injury.”

  “I understand, Mrs. Braddock,” Jonah said. “Is Mr. Braddock okay?”

  “He will be. He hurt his back, but as the doctor told us, it could have been so much worse.”

  “I am glad to hear that. Eban and I will finish boarding up this door, and then you and I can meet and review your blueprints. I want to make sure the door won’t let a drop of rain inside. The forecast predicts another storm. Tomorrow morning, Eban and I’ll get right to work.”

  “More rain?” I asked. After a dry April, May was turning out to be a soggy month. I supposed it was trying to make up for the rain we missed earlier in the spring. The spring flowers might like it, but I wish it didn’t have to catch up all at once. The Amish farmers murmured about the potential for flooding if the persistent rains kept up.

  Flooding woul
d have a devastating effect on many of my Amish friends. I’d learned since moving back to the rural county that many lived or died by the amount of rain they were granted from above. Droughts like those found in Texas were rare in Ohio, but flooding was common, especially in the spring and early summer.

  Jonah ignored my outburst. “We’ll get right to work. I know several good carpenters and masons who work fast and do excellent work. I can call them in if need be. All will be well.”

  Mom clasped her hands in front of her freshly pressed linen blouse. She also wore a single string of pearls, which sat perfectly straight on her throat. Mom wasn’t one to let her Dallas society style lapse just because she and Dad moved back to Ohio for the warmer months.

  “Thank you, Jonah. I know you must be better with your hands than you were as a child when you broke my grandmother’s precious lamp,” my mother said in the light Southern drawl she had picked up when she, my father, and I moved to Texas when I was ten. Funny, Dad and I never lost our flat Midwestern twang.

  Jonah and I shared a look. I bit down hard on my lip to stop myself from bursting into laughter. Jonah didn’t appear half as amused as I was.

  Mom smiled, but she still looked worried. “The electrician should be here soon. I wanted him to install some recessed lighting over the stove area. He promised to stop by to see the extent of work that needed to be done to accomplish that.”

  “Your kitchen is large. It should not interfere with what we have to do on this side of the room.” Jonah paused. “Who’s the electrician?”

  “Griffin Bright,” Mom said.

  Jonah stiffened when he heard the name. I raised my eyebrows at him. Jonah was just about the most outgoing and friendly Amish man—or really any man—in the county. There were very few people who would cause him to flinch like that. Jonah balled his hands at his sides and quickly stretched out his fingers as if he realized he was tensing up. “Perhaps you and I should meet to discuss your plans while Griffin works. I think it would be best if I stayed out of his way.”

  I gave Jonah a questioning look, but he wouldn’t make eye contact. Yep, there was definitely a story there. I would get to the bottom of it. I was nosy like that.

  “That sounds like an excellent plan.” Mom patted his arm. “The blueprints and everything that you need should be in the trailer in the side yard.”

  “I was going to ask you about that. What’s the trailer for?” I asked.

  She sighed. “Your father rented it. He claimed he needed it for the project. I’ve committed to having it for at least another month, so you might as well use it while you can, Jonah.”

  “Danki,” Jonah replied.

  She nodded to Jonah. “I should check on Kent. I’ll leave you to it. When you’re ready to meet with me I’ll be in the living room with my husband.”

  “Since everything is under control now,” I said, “I’d better head back to Running Stitch. Mattie will wonder what became of me.”

  Mom squeezed my hand. “Thank you for coming, Angie.”

  I smiled. “Of course, Mom. If you call and say Dad’s been hurt, Oliver and I will come running.”

  She sighed and left the kitchen.

  After she was gone, I turned to Jonah. “What’s the deal?”

  “What deal?” Jonah asked as he walked up to the French door and held a piece of measuring tape over the wide opening. “Must you always speak in riddles?”

  Eban sent a nail home with the thwack of his hammer. Apparently boarding up doors was old hat for him.

  “What’s the deal with Griffin Bright?” My eyes narrowed. “I saw how you reacted when Mom mentioned his name.”

  Jonah pulled me away from Eban to the far corner of the kitchen. There was pain in his eyes, something that I hadn’t seen since I told him I was moving away when we were kids. “He killed my cousin.”

  Chapter Three

  “What?” I yelped.

  Jonah sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

  “But you clearly haven’t forgotten.” I leaned on my mother’s granite kitchen counter. Who knew what she would replace it with? My money was on marble.

  He met my eyes. “How could I forget? Kamon was my closest friend,” he said in the same hushed tone. “After you stopped visiting your aunt.”

  I could have been wrong, but I thought I heard a twinge of hurt in his voice.

  When I was a child, after moving to Dallas with my parents, I would come spend at least part of my summer with my aunt Eleanor in Ohio. During those summers, I spent much of the time tromping around the countryside with Jonah. Jonah’s mother, Anna, who now was a member of my quilting circle at Running Stitch, had been my aunt’s closest friend. When I visited I always saw Jonah. Our families were so intertwined. When I would arrive in Holmes County, he and I would fall back into our usual sibling banter. Since I was an only child, Jonah was the closest thing I had to a brother. We must have looked like an unusual pair: a tall skinny girl with wild blond curls, in shorts and an oversize T-shirt, and a sandy blond boy with a bowl haircut in Amish clothes. Some of my best childhood memories were from those summer days with Jonah and my aunt.

  When I reached high school that all changed. I became caught up with friends and life in Dallas. I went to college and met my eventual fiancé, Ryan Dickinson, who swept me into a world of Dallas society, urban life, and a cutthroat career in advertising. I didn’t have time for my friends back in Holmes County or my aunt.

  Part of me wanted to apologize to Jonah for, in effect, deserting him all those years ago, but I stopped myself. We had both chosen our own paths. Jonah was married now with a working farm and three children, two of whom were the most mischievous twins on planet Earth. I had had a fast-paced career in Dallas until a succession of events occurred: Ryan dumped me right before our big Texas wedding, my aunt Eleanor died of cancer, and I inherited Running Stitch, which brought me back to Ohio. Somehow, we’d ended up back in the same place. We were different people now because of the time we had spent apart, but we had been able to take up a close friendship again much to the disdain of his wife, Miriam. Some would call it fate, but my Amish friends would call it God’s providence. I didn’t have a word for it myself other than knowing I was happier in Holmes County than I had ever been in Dallas.

  Oliver trundled into the kitchen as if he knew I needed backup for this conversation. No one understood me like my Frenchie, not even my boyfriend, Sheriff James Mitchell.

  “What happened? How did your cousin die?”

  Jonah groaned and some of the twinkle was back in his eye. “I’m sorry I brought it up. You aren’t going to leave me alone until I tell you the whole story, are you?”

  “Nope.” I grinned.

  He glanced at Eban. “I can tell you while I search for some more boards. I don’t want your mother to accuse me of slacking off. She’s already mentioned the lamp incident once. I’d rather not hear about it again.” He walked across the kitchen and opened the working side of the French doors, stepping out onto the deck.

  I turned back to the house and surveyed the broken door.

  The small construction trailer was back near the woods. It was close enough to the house so that my dad had easy access to it, but far enough away not to bother my mother too much.

  I followed Jonah to the trailer, admiring my mother’s flowers as I went. I was happy to see so many of the bulbs came up. Zander, Mitchell’s nine-year-old son, and I had planted them in the fall. We planted another set around the house he shared with his dad and my little rented house in Millersburg. By the end of it, I was pretty tired of digging in the dirt. Now that I saw the payoff, I forgot how tedious the task had been.

  “I should check out the blueprint before I meet with your mom,” Jonah said, and started to untie his bootlaces.

  “Why are you taking your shoes off?”

  “You don’t go into a work trailer wi
th muddy boots on,” Jonah said. “It’s just not done.”

  He left his boots at the foot of the stairs and went inside. I removed my beloved cowboy boots and did the same. The steps that led into the trailer were metal and hinged and creaked when I stepped on them.

  The inside of the trailer was neat. The blueprints for the kitchen sat in the middle of a waist-high island in the middle of the room.

  I hadn’t seen many blueprints since I was in college. As part of my graphic design degree, I’d taken mechanical drawing as an elective. Even with my rudimentary understanding of how to read a blueprint, I could see the kitchen was in for a major transformation.

  Jonah rubbed his beard as he looked over the plans. “It is gut for me to see these before I meet with your mother. Now, I have an idea of what her plans are. It’s a much bigger job than I expected.” He rolled up the blueprint and tucked it under his arm. “I’ll take this inside to meet with her.”

  Outside of the trailer, Jonah laced up his boots, and I slipped on mine again. I was about to ask him again about Kamon, when he handed me the rolled-up blueprint.

  Jonah walked over to a pile of lumber, threw back the edge of the tarp, and pointed to a four-by-four piece of plank wood. “That will do nicely. It’s not too wet from the rain. There’s a tarp under the wood as well, which is a gut thing. It’ll save me time from going to the lumberyard. All I need to do is cut them down to the right size. It will really only need to be there for about a day. I can install the new door tomorrow.”

  “Are you going to tell me more about Kamon? You can’t just say Griffin Bright murdered him and leave it at that.”

  He started to move the smaller pieces of wood off the plank. “Kamon was the son of my father’s brother. His parents died when he was boy and he lived with his mother’s family most of his life. When he was seventeen, he came to live with us. I was fifteen at the time, just started my rumspringa, and Kamon”—he paused as if searching for the right word—“he already knew the ways of the Englisch world. I admired him. He was trouble and caused trouble. He planned to leave the Amish. At the time, I thought he was what I wanted to be.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.