“Why did they argue about it?” Jessica asked. “What caused them to dissolve their partnership?”
“Griffin didn’t say, and I didn’t push for the information. I was just happy he was telling me anything about his life at all. I take what I can get with those boys.” Tears sprang to her eyes. “I suppose I’ll take what I can get with Blane now. He’s the only one I have left. Not that I’ve seen him in a very long time. He’s not as good about coming around as his brother was.”
“Did you know about any of Griffin’s other jobs? Aside from the job at my parents’? He mentioned yesterday that he would have to be at my parents’ house early because he had another larger job he was working on.”
She stared at me. “You spoke to him yesterday?”
I nodded.
“How did he seem? Was he happy?” She smiled and pointed at the hanging basket of pansies. “He brought those to me for Mother’s Day. Aren’t they beautiful? He brings me pansies every year. I love them so. Did you know that pansies signify remembrance? I don’t know if that’s why Griff chooses those flowers for me. I like to think that it is.” She leaned forward as if eager for a report of her foster son.
I set my lemonade glass on the tray. “He seemed fine. Happy, I would say. I didn’t have the impression that anything was bothering him. But then again I only met him in passing. He was there to look over the electrical work in my mother’s kitchen.” I didn’t add that Jonah had been there too. I wondered if Linda knew Jonah had been the one to discover Griffin’s body. I wasn’t going to be the one to tell her. I didn’t want her to suspect Jonah in any way. I knew he couldn’t have killed Griffin. There was no way.
“You asked if I knew of any other jobs that Griffin was working on.” She thought for a moment. “He had just signed a big contract with Eby Amish Mercantile. It seems the owner wanted to increase its electrical capacity and bring the wiring that was already there up to code. I got the impression that the wiring in the building was very old.”
“The mercantile in Rolling Brook?” I asked, as if it could be anywhere else. Second only to the Millers’ pie factory, Eby Amish Mercantile was the largest business on Sugartree Street and always a popular stop for the Amish tour buses that made their way through town as they ventured through the county.
She nodded. “Griff said it was under new ownership, and the new owner was the one who wanted all of these improvements. I took that to mean that he was doing more than just updating the outlets.”
I had heard that someone new was planning to buy the mercantile, but I had known it hadn’t happened yet because the sign over the building still read EBY AMISH MERCANTILE. I had assumed that the new owner would have wanted to rename the business. Perhaps I was wrong.
“Was this job at the mercantile before or after the brothers’ partnership broke up?” I asked.
She thought about my question. “I’m not certain, but by the way that Griff had been talking, it all happened around the same time.”
Could have been a coincidence, but I highly doubted that it was.
“Do you know the name of the man Griffin was working for?” I asked.
She shook her head.
Oliver licked his empty bacon plate for every last morsel. A power washer couldn’t have done a better job at cleaning that plate.
I wasn’t worried that Linda didn’t know the name of the new owner of the mercantile. The mercantile was one block from Running Stitch; I could go down there and introduce myself. It was a neighborly thing to welcome a new business owner to the neighborhood and my duty as a township trustee. If I happened to ask a few questions about Griffin while I was at it, there was no harm in that.
“What about Griffin’s fiancée, Mallory Zeff? What can you tell me about her?”
She wrinkled her nose. “I never knew what Griff saw in the woman. At least he had the good sense never to marry her.”
Jessica and I shared a look. Linda’s entire demeanor changed at the mention of Griffin’s fiancée.
“You don’t like her,” Jessica said. It was a statement, not a question.
“I don’t. I always thought she was with Griff for his money. As far as I can tell, she spent more of her time asking him to buy things than anything else.”
“A gold digger?” Jessica arched an eyebrow.
Linda shrugged. “If the shoe fits.”
“If Griffin never married, who gets his business?”
Linda shrugged. “Blane is his only living relative, so I would assume him.” She stared at her hands.
“But . . .” I trailed off.
She met my gaze. “But the last time Griff was here, he told me that he planned to go to a lawyer to write his will. He said he should have done it years ago. In the will, he planned to name me his sole heir.” She blinked back tears. “I thought it was a sweet gesture, and to be honest, I didn’t think any more of it until this moment. I never expected to outlive him. That’s not supposed to happen.” A tear rolled down her weathered cheek.
That made Blane a suspect. I swallowed hard. Because it made Linda a perfect suspect too.
Chapter Fourteen
I picked up my almost full lemonade glass again. I hadn’t drunk from it since the initial swig to prevent it from spilling. Wanting to be polite, I took another sip. My stomach churned as the acidy liquid sloshed around in my empty stomach.
“I’m sorry I’m not good company for you today,” Linda said. The creases in the skin of her face seemed to deepen, and she drooped with fatigue.
I set my glass back on the tray. We had overstayed and worn Linda out. I knew from my own losses that grief was one of the most exhausting conditions in the world. It felt as if you’d just run a marathon and not moved for days all in the same moment.
I stood. “We should go so you can rest.”
“Don’t you worry.” She smiled but didn’t get up from her seat. “I’ll be right as rain tomorrow, and the Double Dime will be open bright and early, ready for business. You come in and bring that sheriff of yours with you, and I will feed you proper.” She narrowed her eyes. “Have you eaten today?”
I could have asked her the same question. “I had a couple of doughnuts for breakfast—and coffee.” I added the coffee because it sounded healthy—sort of, I guessed, in comparison to doughnuts.
She sniffed. “Sugar like that isn’t going to get you through your day, no way. You need a hearty bowl of stew and some crusty bread.”
Linda’s meal prescription sounded right on the mark. She always knew what folks needed to eat when they entered the diner. It was her gift.
I leaned forward and kissed her on the cheek. “I’ll be in tomorrow for that stew. I bet Oliver will be hoping for more bacon too. You spoil him.”
She blushed at my kiss but seemed pleased by it too. “Everyone can use a little spoiling now and again.”
Back in the car, I was quiet as I thought over everything that Jessica and I had learned from Linda during our short visit. As always, Linda proved to be an excellent source of county information, but this time the information she held was her personal story.
Jessica leaned back in her seat. “If Blane is an electrician too, he would know how to electrify those stairs, and he would know his brother would remove his muddy boots before going into the trailer.”
I nodded slowly.
Jessica eyed me. “I thought you’d be more excited that you have a prime suspect that’s not Jonah. Wasn’t that the purpose of coming out here?”
“It was.” I paused. “But if Blane killed his brother and goes to prison because of it, who will Linda have left as far as family goes?”
“It didn’t sound like Blane was much family to her,” Jessica said.
“True,” I said. “But it still might break her heart.”
Jessica didn’t have an answer for my question.
Afte
r I dropped Jessica off at Out of Time, I drove back to Running Stitch. It was after four by the time I got there, and as promised, Sarah had locked the shop up tight. I went out back to check on Petunia.
The goat galloped to me when I stepped into the tiny backyard. “Baaa!” she complained and butted my hip with her head.
I stumbled back but managed to stay upright. You would think that as many times as Petunia had tried to and succeeded to knock me over, I would’ve come to expect it.
“Baaa!” she cried again.
I sighed. “I know you aren’t used to being left alone all day, but I couldn’t have taken you to Linda’s trailer. You would have eaten all her neighbor’s flowers—”
“Angie Braddock,” a clear strong voice rang out. “Are you talking to a goat?”
I glanced over the white picket fence that separated my tiny backyard from the alley and small patio behind Authentic Amish Quilts. “Hello, Martha,” I said, ignoring her question. I wasn’t ashamed to be having a conversation with Petunia. I talked to Oliver and Dodger all the time, but Martha just wouldn’t understand.
“Sarah Leham closed up for you again,” she said bitterly. “It must be nice to have people willing to fill in for you so much, so you can run around the county and stick your nose in places where it doesn’t belong.”
I walked over to the fence and held on to the top of one of the posts. “What do you mean by that, Martha?”
“Only that everyone in the county has heard by now about the Englischer dying in your parents’ home. I imagine you’ll pry into that investigation as you have so many others . . .”
I held on to the post a little more tightly. The wood dug into my fingers. “What difference does it make to you what I do?”
She jerked her neck back as if I had smacked her, and I immediately regretted my sharp tone. For the last year and a half I had been trying to make peace with this woman, and I certainly wasn’t going to win her over by questioning her.
She sniffed. “I hope you will leave the Amish community out of it this time. You have made enough trouble for us, as is.”
My guard went up. Any investigating I’d done since moving to the county had been to protect the Amish community or individual members of it.
Before I could think of a comeback, Martha went on. “I do have a concern, which I’ll share with you since you are a township trustee.” She said “trustee” as if my status as such was in question.
“I’m happy to share whatever concern you might have with the rest of the trustees,” I said smoothly.
At my feet, I felt Oliver lean against my leg in a show of support. Petunia came to my other side and did the same.
“I heard a wild man was spotted outside your parents’ house this morning. You know the Amish in the county will not receive any fanciful tales like this.”
I swallowed. This wasn’t good if the Amish community was hearing the Bigfoot rumors too. I silently hoped Willow had gotten that post down in time. Maybe she had. It had been nearly six hours since I’d told her to take it down, and I hadn’t heard another peep about it.
I forced a laugh. “Oh, you know how rumors like that can be exaggerated, especially in a township as small as Rolling Brook.”
“So you are saying this is not true?”
“I’m saying that it is nothing to worry about.”
She stared over the top of her wire-rimmed glasses at me. “We will see about that.” And with that, she spun around and marched back into her quilt shop.
Slowly, I let go of the top of the fence. My knuckles cracked with the effort.
Petunia gave me a pitiful look.
I glanced over at Martha’s back patio. I really didn’t want to leave the goat there with Martha keeping watch. I removed Oliver’s leash and clicked it on her collar. “All right. You can tag along with Oliver and me.”
Both animals grinned.
I looked from one to the other. “But you both have to be on your best behavior.”
They blinked at me with solemn faces.
Instead of going back inside of Running Stitch, I walked with Oliver and Petunia down the narrow alley between the two quilt shops and out onto the sidewalk.
On the sidewalk, I turned in front of Authentic Amish Quilts and headed in the direction of the mercantile. Petunia pranced ahead of me on the leash with her head held high and eyes bright as if she were leading some sort of parade. Oliver walked briskly beside her. His legs were much shorter than the goat’s, and he had to take three steps to her one.
The mercantile looked like a general store that was reminiscent of those found in the Western television shows of my parents’ youth. Like all the businesses on Sugartree Street, the Eby Amish Mercantile closed at four, but I was hoping someone who knew about Griffin Bright would still be in the building.
As we drew closer to the mercantile, I noticed it was under construction as Linda had said, but the construction was much more extensive than I had first assumed. Large wooden crates were piled up against the side of the large clapboard building. Above the crates, the siding had three shades of beige paint lined up together as if someone was trying to choose a color. Each shade was slightly darker than the last. I was surprised this was the first time I’d noticed the work being done on the mercantile. Every day, I parked in the community lot across from the Amish store before walking to Running Stitch. I wasn’t as observant as I thought I was.
When I was a child, the mercantile had been a regular stop for Jonah and me. We purchased penny candy with the money that we had scrimped and saved or with the coins that had fallen out of my father’s pockets that I would dig out of the couch cushions. In the time I had owned my quilt shop, I hadn’t been in the mercantile nearly as often. The Ebys and I were civil to one another but, in general, the family and their slew of relatives ignored me. The February before my aunt died, I had visited Holmes County because she was feeling poorly. Her cancer had gotten worse. While I was in the township, I happened to solve a decades-old murder with the help of my aunt and the ladies in the quilting circle that put a member of the Eby family in prison. It goes without saying they weren’t my biggest fans.
I stopped in front of the door, and Petunia licked the clapboard siding as if she was giving it a taste test.
I narrowed my eyes. “Don’t eat anything.”
She had the grace to appear sheepish.
I stood in front of the door a little longer, considering my next move. Oliver cocked his head as if to ask me if I was going to knock. His one black ear dipped lower than his white one.
I tried the door to the mercantile. To my surprise, it was unlocked even though the CLOSED sign was flipped outward. I peeked inside. “Hello?”
There was no answer.
Before stepping into the shop, I tied Petunia’s leash to a bench outside. “Stay here. Oliver and I’ll be back.”
Her ears drooped into a pout. Taking Petunia inside of the mercantile with all those Amish delicacies was just too much of a risk.
Inside of the shop, boxes were piled up to my waist, blocking the door from opening the entire way. As carefully as possible, I stepped around them. Oliver wriggled inside around my feet.
Overhead, many of the drop ceiling’s panels were removed, exposing the beams and electrical wires. A stepladder was in the middle of the room in front of the empty sales counter, and electrical wire dangled above the top of the ladder. An open toolbox sat at the foot of the ladder. It was as if whoever was working in that spot had stepped away for a moment with every intention of returning. I couldn’t help thinking that the man who had stepped away might have been Griffin, and those tools waiting for their owner to return had been his as well.
“Hello?” I called out again. “Anyone here?”
Still no answer. Oliver nosed the floorboards around the ladder. He whimpered.
I placed my hands
on my hips. “If you’re trying to tell me there’s a dead body in here, I’m out. One a day is my limit.”
There was a shuffling sound in the back of the store that attracted both Oliver’s and my attention. A rack of hand-carved wooden canes stood by the cash register. I grabbed one of the canes and choked up on it as if it were a baseball bat. “Stay behind me,” I told my dog.
Oliver shuffled backward as I stepped around the ladder.
The shuffling sound came again. It sounded as if someone was moving boxes. I lowered the cane. Moving things around would be expected if the mercantile was in the middle of a major renovation.
I inched down the aisle only faintly aware of Oliver belly-crawling behind me. He stopped crawling, stood at attention, and took off down the aisle with his tongue hanging out.
“Oliver!” I cried. I skidded to a stop at the back of the store. To my right, there was a small office and a man and woman in Amish dress stood in the doorway. Oliver danced around their feet and appeared to be very pleased with his discovery. I dropped the cane on the floor. The man I had never seen before, but the woman I knew. “Mattie?”
Chapter Fifteen
Mattie jumped away from the man as if she had been burned. “Angie! What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” I said. “I thought you were at the pie factory.”
The man stepped forward and extended his hand. “Angie Braddock, I take it. I have seen you in town, but we haven’t formally met.”
I stared at his hand. “No. We haven’t.”
With his hand still extended, he said, “Mattie speaks highly of you. I’m Liam Coblentz. I recently bought the mercantile from the Eby family. I’m new to Rolling Brook, but not to the county. I live over in Berlin.”
“I’ve heard nothing about you.” I gave Mattie a pointed look as I shook his proffered hand. Even though the man was in Amish clothing, the handshake was decidedly English. Typically, Amish men didn’t shake hands with women, especially not with English women they didn’t know.
As I shook his hand, I took time to study him. He was handsome and clean-shaven. His lack of facial hair told me he wasn’t married. A good detail to note since Mattie had been looking deeply into his eyes when I first spied them. He wore plain dress, but his dark hair wasn’t cut exactly in the traditional Amish bowl cut. It was a little longer than the hair of most of the Amish men I knew and curled around his ears. His hazel eyes were kind. I guessed he was around thirty.
Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) Page 10