When I reached the county road that led to my parents’ large stone house on the top of the hill, I slowed down. Three county sheriff’s cars were parked in front of it. There was also an ambulance, and Jonah’s horse and wagon loaded with supplies.
I parked on the street and got out. Oliver was on my heels. The front door was open, and Deputy Anderson, a uniformed officer in his mid-twenties, stood underneath my parents’ chandelier in the foyer, asking my mother questions and taking copious notes.
My mother glowered at the young deputy. “I already told you. My husband snores, so I use earplugs to sleep. I didn’t hear a thing.”
“Did your husband hear anything?” the deputy asked.
“You will have to ask him that, won’t you?” My mother patted her perfectly-in-place hair. Even when awakened to hear that a man was dead in her backyard, her hair was perfect. It was mind-boggling. “However, I doubt he heard a thing. Kent slept through a hurricane once when we were vacationing in the Caribbean.” Mom pointed at his notepad and corrected something he recorded. “No, that’s not what I said. I went to bed a little after eleven not around eleven.”
The deputy clutched his pen a little more tightly, but he made the correction.
Mom spotted me in the doorway. “Angie! There you are. I’ve been trying to call you for the last half hour. Why didn’t you answer?” my mother said. “My goodness, your father and I could have been murdered in our bed, and you wouldn’t even know it because you refuse to answer your phone.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “I’m sorry, Mom,” I said sincerely. “Jonah called and told me what happened. I wanted to get here as quickly as possible.”
“You spoke to Jonah but wouldn’t answer your own mother’s call? A man was killed in my house. The least you could do is answer your phone.” She sniffed. I couldn’t tell if it was out of irritation or if she was on the brink of tears.
“I thought he died in the backyard.” I glanced around the foyer and what I could see of the rest of the house from where I stood. I was relieved there wasn’t a dead guy in sight.
“It’s still my home, Angela.” Mom pressed a perfectly folded tissue to the corner of her eye. “Exactly where in my home is irrelevant.”
I raised my hands in surrender. “I know, Mom, and I’m so glad that you’re all right. I’ve been a mess ever since Jonah called. I had to come here to see for myself that you and Dad were okay. How’s Dad?”
She nodded as if my worry somehow appeased her. “He’s fine too. The police are questioning him in the living room. They insisted they couldn’t question us together. It is almost as if they believe”—she paused to give the deputy a pointed glare—“that we have made up these events. Is a dead man in my backyard a lie? You can tell James that I’m not happy about how I have been treated in my own home. I won’t hesitate to give him a piece of my mind when he arrives.”
Poor Mitchell. A suspicious death and a confrontation with my mother in the same morning. He had no idea what he was stepping into.
“And Jonah?” I asked. “How’s Jonah?”
“He’s in the backyard being questioned by another officer,” Deputy Anderson answered before my mother could. “Angie, I’m going to have to ask you to wait in the dining room. I’ll send your mother in there as soon as I’m done questioning her.”
“I will,” I said. “After I check on Jonah.” I started toward the dining room that led into the kitchen.
Deputy Anderson stepped into my path. “You can’t go in the backyard. It’s a crime scene.”
As if the distinction of a place being a crime scene had ever stopped me before. Not to mention, I never listened to Deputy Anderson, and I certainly wasn’t going to start now when there was a dead body in my parents’ backyard. I stepped around him and hurried through the formal dining room into the kitchen.
The young deputy followed me into the kitchen. “Angie, please. The sheriff wouldn’t like it.”
Not a great argument with me either. “Anderson, let me worry about the sheriff.”
He made a frustrated sound but didn’t bother to argue with me anymore. Maybe he was finally realizing that it was waste of time.
Oliver whimpered when we were in the kitchen. I bent over to pick him up. I should have left him at home or at least with my mother in the foyer, but taking Oliver everywhere I went was second nature to me. When I’d left my house in a panic it hadn’t occurred to leave him behind. I tucked him under my arm like a football and surveyed the damage in the kitchen.
In actuality it looked much better than it had the day before. The broken French door was boarded up and all the overhead cabinetry had been removed.
A new set of white French doors leaned against the wall.
I stepped through the working side of the French door, which was wide-open.
Outside the activity around the trailer immediately caught my attention. Two crime scene techs walked around the trailer brushing their shoes back and forth over the grass as if looking for something. The coroner, who, in a strange twist of circumstances, I had seen on several occasions since moving back to Ohio, stood at the foot of the trailer writing on a clipboard and shaking his head. I didn’t know his name. All I had ever heard Mitchell call him was “Doc.” I wondered if it was time we were formally introduced since our paths seemed to always be crossing. Two deputies from Mitchell’s department stood on either side of the coroner. All three men were looking down at something on the ground. One of the deputies took pictures of the object with a large and expensive-looking camera. I knew it must be Griffin’s body. Despite my unquenchable curiosity, I was glad I couldn’t see him.
Petunia, Jonah’s one-hundred-plus-pound white, tan, and brown spotted Nubian goat, came up to my side and bumped her head against my hip. According to my Amish friends, she did this because she liked me. I wasn’t so sure. It seemed to me that she did this to see how much force it would take to knock me over. She had knocked me to the ground on more than one occasion.
Right now, it wouldn’t take much to topple me. The news about Griffin’s death still hadn’t completely sunk in.
Oliver wriggled in my arms, and I set him on the ground next to the goat. Petunia gently—much more gently than she ever had to me—bumped his head with hers. “What are you doing here, Petunia?” I asked the goat.
She bumped my hip again. This time with a little more force that made me take a step back.
I pointed at the dog and goat. “You two stay away from the crime scene, okay?”
They both stared up at me with soulful eyes as if they understood my every word. I wouldn’t doubt it for a moment if they did. This wasn’t their first crime scene either.
Jonah stood a few feet away at the edge of my mother’s pristine tulip garden with another deputy. Jonah held his black felt hat in his hands and fiddled with the rim. “Nee. I told you. I arrived here at six this morning. I wanted to have an early start. The Braddocks were eager to complete the project. I thought if I could do some prep work before the rest of my workmen arrived, we could go straight to work. I was about to start taking out the old French doors when I noticed something unusual near the steps of the trailer. I went to check it out.” He gripped his hat a little more tightly. “That’s when I found Griffin.”
“Did the Braddocks let you in the house? How did you get inside?” The deputy wanted to know.
He swallowed. “No. Mrs. Braddock told me where they kept the spare key in the garden yesterday so that I could come and go as I needed for the job.”
“Weren’t you afraid of disturbing the Braddocks so early in the morning? Six o’clock seems to be an early time to be on the job.”
Jonah folded his arms. “Not if you’re Amish. The kitchen is in the back of the house where I wouldn’t disturb them. Their bedroom is in the front. As you can see, it’s a very large home. Besides, Griffin planned to be here at five
, and Mrs. Braddock knew and approved this. I thought me coming at six wouldn’t be any more disruptive than Griffin being here.”
The deputy arched his brow. “You knew what time Griffin Bright planned to come to the Braddocks this morning?”
Jonah nodded. “He told me yesterday.”
In my head, I screamed, “Jonah, stop talking!”
The officer changed his tone to a more conversational one. “Why would Mr. Bright be here so early?”
Jonah’s frown deepened. “He said he had another job to do today, so if he was going to do any work for the Braddocks, it had to be at five.”
The deputy changed the subject. “What did you see outside of the trailer, in detail?”
“Griffin at the base of the stairs leading to the trailer. His neck was at a peculiar angle. He appeared burnt, at least his hands and feet were. He wasn’t wearing any shoes.” He spotted me over the deputy’s shoulder when he said this. “It looked to me like he was electrocuted. I thought the trailer’s generator may have shorted. To be safe, I turned it off before calling the police. I didn’t want anyone else to be hurt.”
“No shoes? That’s strange on a job site, isn’t it?” the coroner asked.
Jonah shook his head. “Not when the ground is muddy like this. It’s etiquette. He took off his work boots to avoid tracking mud into the trailer.”
“Did you know he would have taken off his shoes?” the deputy asked.
Jonah’s brow wrinkled. “Anyone who works on a job like this would have. I took off my boots yesterday anytime I went into the trailer.”
“What’s your relationship with Griffin Bright?” The deputy asked.
Jonah’s eyes flicked in my direction and pleaded with me. I knew what he was asking. He didn’t want me to tell the police what he’d told me the day before about Kamon and Griffin. Even though I didn’t know the entire story about how Kamon died, I knew that Jonah still felt strongly about Griffin because of Kamon’s death, very strongly. But I knew my friend would not feel strongly enough to kill. He was incapable of hurting a soul.
Deputy Anderson appeared at my side. “Angie, please come back into the house.”
His comment caught the attention of the deputy questioning Jonah. The older deputy scowled at me.
“Anderson,” I began, “I’m just checking on my friend.”
I turned to Jonah. “You okay?”
He gave me a quick nod just as Sheriff James Mitchell strode into the yard. Deputy Anderson watched in awe as his hero made his entrance.
I might have had a similar expression if I hadn’t been so freaked-out about someone dying in my parents’ yard and if one of my best friends wasn’t potentially the prime suspect for the murder. If it was murder—it hadn’t been ruled as such yet.
The officer questioning Jonah looked up from his notebook. “Hello, Sheriff. I was just going over a few things with Mr. Graber here. He’s the one who found the victim.”
Mitchell nodded, and then he glanced at me with his beautiful aquamarine eyes. Just for a second his cop face softened, and I saw the compassionate man and devoted father I’d fallen in love with. As quickly as the tender expression appeared it hid behind the seasoned cop face again. “Jonah.” Mitchell nodded at my friend. “Did you see anything unusual when you approached the trailer? Other than Mr. Bright’s body?”
“I—I don’t know,” Jonah stammered. “It’s hard to explain.”
“Tell us,” Mitchell said.
I was grateful Mitchell hadn’t asked me to leave. Maybe he didn’t bother because he knew Jonah would tell me everything anyway. I didn’t care what his reasons for letting me listen in were as long as he did.
Jonah gripped the rim of his felt hat just a little bit tighter. “When I realized that Griffin was dead, I noticed movement in the woods.”
“What was it? A deer?” the other deputy asked.
Jonah paled. “Nee. It looked like a wild man.”
Chapter Six
There was only one man in Holmes County I knew who resembled a wild man: Nahum Shetler. He was a rogue Amish man, who lived outside of any Amish district. He was also Rachel Miller’s estranged father. For nearly a year, I had been hoping father and daughter would reconnect, but Rachel had made it very clear to me that she would deal with her father in her own time. In general, Amish time, especially when it came to relationships, was much slower than English time. The Amish weren’t ones to yell and scream in fits of anger, but they could freeze a person out with a frigidity I would have thought impossible if I hadn’t seen it myself.
Mitchell glanced over at me. I knew he was thinking Nahum too, but he didn’t say the name.
“Was it Nahum?” I asked Jonah.
Jonah shook his head. “Nee. The person was too”—he paused as if searching for the right word—“hairy.”
Mitchell arched an eyebrow. “Hairy?”
“Like Bigfoot?” Deputy Anderson blurted out.
Mitchell scowled at him, and the young deputy shrank back. I felt a twinge of sympathy for Anderson. I had been on the receiving end of Mitchell’s disapproval more than once, and it wasn’t pleasant.
Jonah’s brow knit together. “Big? Foot?”
“He talking about a Sasquatch,” the other deputy said.
Jonah’s frown only deepened. “A what?”
Deputy Anderson attempted to explain who or what Bigfoot was to my Amish friend, but it was clear Jonah didn’t comprehend what the deputy was saying. When Anderson went on to tell him about movies depicting Bigfoot, Jonah was completely lost.
Mitchell started toward the trailer where the body lay. I still couldn’t see it. He glanced over his shoulder. “Angie, don’t follow me.”
“I’m not following you,” I said sweetly.
“Right.” He stood in my path. “Trust me. You don’t want to see him.” He grimaced. “Electrocution is a gruesome way to die. He will be burnt. I won’t go into detail.”
I stepped back. In this case, I would take his word for it. I had heard Jonah’s description of the scene, and that should be enough.
“Do you think whatever Jonah saw caused Griffin’s death? Like startled him to death and caused a heart attack or something?” I was reaching and we both knew it.
Mitchell gave me a sad smile as if he knew what I was up to. He knew me better than most, so I’m sure he did. “Unless Bigfoot knows how to rig an electrical shortage, I think we can assume he’s not our guy.”
I grimaced. “Maybe it was an accident.”
“Not likely. It was intentional.” Mitchell said this with such certainty that I shivered.
“How do you know?”
Mitchell sighed. “The live wire was intertwined in the metal stairs with enough voltage from the generator to kill a rhino. Griffin never stood a chance being barefoot, and his feet must have been damp from the rains.”
Of all the details I had heard, I was most troubled by the bare feet. If Griffin had been wearing his sturdy boots when he was shocked, he might still be alive. The murder seemed somehow worse because Griffin had been killed with the tools of his own trade, voltage and wire. Was that some sort of message sent by the killer? It seemed like an elaborate and painstaking way to kill someone. How would the murderer know Griffin would be at the trailer at the right time to get the zap? He would if he knew that he was coming to my parents’ house at five in the morning, which Jonah had already admitted to the police that he had.
My chest clenched as I remembered Jonah telling the other deputy that he had turned off the generator. That meant his fingerprints were on it. It didn’t look good for my friend, but I wasn’t going to let Mitchell think that. “In that case, Jonah couldn’t possibly be involved. He’s Amish. He doesn’t work with electricity.”
“I know how to use electricity, Angie,” Jonah said, who must have overheard and was obviously o
ffended by my comment. “The Amish use generators for work. We need to know how to maintain them.”
I could have shaken Jonah just then because his comment was so not helping. However, my annoyance at him fell away when another idea struck me like a four-by-four to the side of the head. “Are you telling me anyone who may have entered that trailer this morning would have been zapped?” I was having trouble breathing as the gravity of the situation hit me. What if Mom or Dad had gone in there? What if Jonah had gone inside before Griffin had? He would have surely taken off his shoes. If Griffin, who was an electrician, hadn’t noticed that live wire, Jonah would never have seen it.
Mitchell squeezed my hand. “Angie, are you all right?”
I swallowed and tried to compose myself. Mom, Dad, and Jonah were all alive and well. Poor Griffin Bright was not. I needed to focus on the fact that people I loved were safe, but that also made me feel ill. There must be people who loved Griffin. He wasn’t safe. He was dead. “I’m fine,” I managed to say after a long second.
Mitchell let go of my hand. He didn’t like displays of affection when he was on the job, which made me even more grateful for his touch. He had broken his unwritten rule when I had needed comforting.
Then I asked the question that was bouncing around in my head, even though I didn’t want to. “What if the killer hadn’t targeted Griffin at all?” I whispered.
“That will have to be a question we’ll ask,” Mitchell said in an equally low voice. “Now, I have to check out the scene.”
I nodded dumbly, still a bit woozy from my morbid thoughts. I had hoped he would have said my idea was impossible, that someone else could have been the intended victim. If it wasn’t impossible, my parents were as likely the intended victims as Griffin had been, maybe even more so because this was their house.
“Angie,” Mitchell said, “why don’t you go inside and check on your parents? My deputies should be done questioning them now.”
Since Anderson was one of the questioning officers and was in the backyard, I knew that to be true, but I had one more question. “I think it’s safe to say whatever Jonah saw wasn’t Bigfoot, but it could have been the killer. Are you going to look for him?”
Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) Page 4