I arched my brow at her. “Mattie, can I talk to you a moment? Alone?”
Liam smiled. “I need to move some boxes in the office.” Liam got the hint. That was one point in his favor, but the man was working off a deficit in my book.
Even after Liam was gone, I led Mattie away from the back of the store. We stood in an aisle lined with dried Amish noodles of every shape and size on one side and jars of canned goods, from pickled beets to sliced peaches, on the other. “Is he the reason you’ve suddenly had to fill in at the pie factory so often in the last few days?” I hissed.
She stared at her hands.
“Rachel didn’t seem to know that you were working at the factory today. Now I know why— because you hadn’t been working there.”
“I’m so sorry for lying to you, Angie. I know I should have told you the truth, but I just could not bring myself to do it. I will understand if you fire me.”
I took a breath. “No one is getting fired, least of all you. I don’t think that Running Stitch could survive without you.”
“Danki.” Her blue eyes filled with tears. “Did you tell Rachel that I lied to you about working in the factory?”
I shook my head. “No, I didn’t.”
She gave a sign of relief. “Danki, Angie. Danki for covering for me. I know that I don’t deserve it. Lying is wrong—I know this—but there wasn’t any other way that I could . . .” She didn’t finish her thought.
“See Liam?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Mattie, what are you doing sneaking out of work to see a guy? I’ve never known you to behave like this.” As soon as I said that, I realized that I was wrong. Mattie had snuck out to see her previous beau in secret on a number of occasions because Aaron and Rachel had not approved of him. Did that mean there was a reason for them to disapprove of Liam too?
“You make it sound so scandalous,” she said. “We’ve done nothing wrong. We talked and went for a ride. That was all.”
“Does your brother or Rachel know about him?”
“Nee, and please don’t tell them. Liam is only my friend, nothing more. You know how people talk. If I am friends with a man, they will automatically assume that there is something more to our relationship.” She took an unsteady breath. “There is not.”
That might be true on Mattie’s end, but I saw how Liam looked at her. He definitely cared about her.
Oliver whimpered at my feet.
“Can you see why I haven’t told my brother or Rachel or anyone? If you question me about Liam, how much worse do you think Aaron will be?”
My shoulders drooped. “Much worse. Look, I think we still need to finish this conversation, but right now, I need to talk to Liam about Griffin Bright.”
She sighed. “I knew you would find out that Griffin had been working for Liam. I warned him of this. He said that the sheriff was here this afternoon asking him about Griffin.”
As usual, Mitchell was two steps ahead of me. He was the sheriff and had all the resources of his department behind him, but it didn’t irk me any less.
“Does Mitchell know you’re friends with Liam?” I asked.
“Nee. Nee.” She shook her head. “You’re the first to know. I should have been honest with you instead of making up that story about the pie factory. I was just afraid.”
“Afraid of what?” My brow knit together. “Mattie, I don’t care who you date. I’m happy if you finally found a good guy, but you can’t lie to me about it. Why would you? You know I would support you. I want you to be happy.”
“I wasn’t worried about you, but Rachel is your gut friend. What if you told her? It would be a disaster, even if you only told her by accident.”
“I would never tell anyone anything that you told me in confidence,” I said, unable to keep the hurt from my voice.
She hung her head. “I know that.”
I sighed. “I still need to talk to him,” I said after Mattie’s silence stretched into a long minute. I could never keep quiet like the Amish did. I have to fill the empty space with words.
Her shoulders drooped. “Why? Why does it matter that Griffin was his electrician? Griffin had a popular business. He must have had many jobs throughout the county. Will you visit every last one of them?”
“I’m here because this job was the one that was the breaking point between Griffin and his brother,” I said. “It might be significant to the case.”
“You mean Blane,” Liam said behind me.
I jumped.
Liam held up his hand. “I’m sorry to interrupt, but I was finished with everything I could do in the back room. If I moved any more boxes while I waited for the two of you to reappear, I’d just make a bigger mess.” He smiled. “Mattie told me you might drop by with questions. I’m happy to help in any way that I can. I was so very sorry to hear about Griffin’s passing. He was a good electrician and was enthusiastic about the work.”
“What about his brother, Blane?” I asked.
He nodded. “He was with Griffin when they made a bid on the work, but then when the project began Griffin told me that the two of them had parted ways.”
“When did they make the bid?” I asked.
Liam rubbed his clean-shaven chin and thought about that for a moment. “I’d say it was about two months ago when I first took over the mercantile. I asked the Bright brothers and another electrician to come in and give me an estimate. They were the higher of the two bids and so my second choice.”
“Your second choice?” I asked.
“There was another man I hired first.” He pointed toward the front of the store. “He left that mess you saw when you first came into the mercantile. I was sorely disappointed. He had promised me a quick and professional job, and it was anything but. I need the work to be done quickly. I can’t run a business with wires hanging all over the place.”
“What was his name? The other electrician?”
“Rex Flagg,” he said. “He works out of Millersburg. He seemed to be a nice enough guy,” Liam said as if he felt obligated to compliment the first electrician in some way. “But he was unbearably lazy.”
I tucked the name into the back of my mind to look into later. “When he fell through, you hired the Bright brothers.”
He nodded. “In hindsight, I should have hired them right off and the job would be done by now.”
“When was the last time that you spoke to Blane?” I asked.
“Actually,” Liam said, “I just got off the phone with him while the two of you were out here talking. I called to ask if he would take over the job.”
I frowned.
He grimaced. “I know it must seem callous to you that I’d be calling for a replacement for Griffin so soon, especially his brother, but you’ve seen the condition of the mercantile. I’ve already been closed for two whole days because of the mess. I can’t be closed much longer and hope to come out ahead this month.”
Of all people, I could certainly understand concern for one’s business, but I still thought that it was cold of Liam to call Blane on the day his brother died to take the job. In my estimation, Liam had just lost the one point that he had earned with me. I glanced at Mattie, and she twisted the edge of her apron in her hands.
“What kind of work are you having done?” I asked. “I know it’s electrical, but the job looks more extensive than a repair job.”
“I’m upping the number of wires and outlets in the building. At the same time, I’m having the Internet installed and making general improvements. I thought it was best to get the entire job done at one time. Now that everything is held up with Griffin’s death, I’m no longer so sure of that.”
I frowned. “The Internet?” This announcement was a surprise for an Amish businessman. When I first moved to Holmes County, one the first things I did was increase the electrical capacity of the s
hop and install Wi-Fi, but I was English and needed those things for my business. Did Liam need them too? That didn’t seem like a very Amish necessity to me. Then again, he was from Berlin. Maybe he was from an even more liberal New Order district than the Grabers and Millers were a part of. It wasn’t uncommon for Amish bishops to make exceptions to their limited technology rules if their members were using that technology for business.
He nodded. “The mercantile needs to join the twenty-first century, and that transition includes a Web site. Since I’ll be here all day, I need to be able to work on the Web site while I’m at the mercantile. Eventually, I hope to sell items through an online store.”
“You know how to build a Web site?” I couldn’t keep the doubt from my voice.
“Angie,” Mattie interrupted, “I don’t know what the Internet has to do with Griffin Bright.”
I didn’t either, but I knew the average Amish man didn’t know HTML. I pressed on. “Won’t Blane feel odd working on his brother’s jobsite?”
Liam frowned. “I suppose that’s possible, but he didn’t hesitate to take the job. He starts tomorrow and said that he should finish in a couple of days. I’m glad for that.”
“According to one of Blane and Griffin’s family members,” I said, deciding to leave Linda’s name out of our conversation, “their partnership broke up around the time Griffin took this job.”
“That must be why Blane was only with Griffin on that first day. I don’t know anything about any sort of disagreement that they had. Griffin only told me that he was going to do this job alone. I had already signed the work agreement for the contract, so I wasn’t in a place to argue. As long as he delivered, I didn’t care.”
“And was he delivering?” I asked.
He nodded. “Until today.”
Until today because he was murdered that morning. Liam didn’t need to add that last part. We all knew it.
Liam cleared his throat. “It’s time I head home. It has been a very long day. You look quite tired yourself.”
He didn’t know the half of it, and I still had Petunia to contend with. I couldn’t take the goat back to my parents’ house, where I had promised to spend the night. By now, Mom must have noticed the decapitated tulips that Petunia had left in her wake.
I still had one more question. “Tomorrow, when Blane is here working on your store, I would like to drop in and talk to him about his brother.”
He nodded. “I don’t see any harm in that. I will see you both tomorrow then.”
Mattie nodded and whispered good-bye in Pennsylvania Dutch.
He smiled in return, and I had the sneaking suspicion that my shop assistant’s life was just about to become a lot more complicated.
Chapter Sixteen
As soon as we got outside of the mercantile, Mattie dashed down the sidewalk, saying she had to make it home in time for supper and would see me at Running Stitch later for the quilting circle meeting.
“Why do I think she doesn’t want to talk to us about Liam?” I asked the dog and goat.
Petunia head butted me in the hip, which caused me to fall against the mercantile. I grunted and rubbed my shoulder. “I think it’s high time we got you home.”
“Baa!” Petunia said.
I shepherded the Frenchie and goat to my car and headed for the Graber farm.
Anna, Jonah’s mother, must have heard my car approach because she stood on the front porch of her daddihaus and waited for me. Anna’s husband had built the daddihaus for himself and Anna to retire to when he turned the family farm over to his only son, Jonah. Jonah, Miriam, and their three children lived in the big house where Jonah grew up.
I climbed out of the car and opened the door to the SUV’s backseat. The goat jumped out first as if glad to be home. I didn’t blame her. The vast Graber farm must have been a relief after being stuck in the tiny garden behind the quilt shop all day.
Oliver exited the car with more care. He scanned the area before jumping out of the car. He always approached the Grabers’ farm with some wariness. Jonah had gone through a string of attempts to farm fowl. At first it was geese, which turned out to be a disaster and almost impossible to sell. After the geese he made an even more ill-advised decision to farm turkeys. The turkeys had been worse, a lot worse. The big tom in the flock had had murder in his eyes.
Somehow over the winter, Jonah had managed to unload the turkeys too. I suspected that he sold them at a loss. Until Jonah had taken the construction job at my parents’ house, he had been concentrating on his new business venture of goat land clearing. Petunia would naturally be the lead goat. No one would ever question that.
I frowned as a dark thought hit me. I knew Jonah was helping me and my family when he took the job at my parents’ house, but he must have also taken it for the extra money. I had always worried about Jonah and his tendency to bounce from idea to idea to make the farm viable. He didn’t have the steady temperament of many Amish men, such as Aaron Miller, who was as consistent as bedrock. Everything Aaron did was thorough and measured. Thinking of Aaron brought to mind Mattie and her new friend.
Anna came down the three steps from her wide porch. “I’m glad you’ve come. I was hoping you would. I almost walked to the shed phone to call you.”
“Anna, I’m so sorry about everything. How are you? How is Miriam?” I clasped her hands in my own. They were surprisingly cold. Whenever I thought of Anna, I thought of warmth, so I found it disconcerting that her hands would be chilled.
She gave me a sad smile. “Gott will set it to rights. We will get through this trial as we have so many others.”
I was about to say something more when the front door to the main farmhouse smacked against the house’s wooden siding with a resounding bang, and Jonah’s nine-year-old twins, Ezra and Ethan, dashed down the steps. Their eleven-year-old sister, Emma, moved down the steps at a much slower pace. Miriam was a few steps behind her daughter. Miriam was a beautiful tall woman with fine features and pale skin. Her dark blond hair was pulled back in the standard Amish bun and covered by a prayer cap, but on her, it appeared elegant, almost like a crown, as she held herself perfectly erect.
Rarely did Miriam come out to meet me when I visited the Graber farm. Even when I was a visitor in her house, she barely acknowledged me. Now I knew why. Seeing her stony glare made me realize everything that Rachel had told me about Jonah and his feelings for me when we were children were true, and Miriam would never forgive me for it. I swallowed back an apology that bubbled in the back of my throat. I had nothing to apologize for, I reminded myself, but like always my natural inclination was to fix the situation. I might have apologized to Miriam for something, if I thought it would help, but I knew it wouldn’t. I couldn’t even guess how many times Jonah must have tried.
Miriam came into the yard and stopped ten feet from me. Her lovely face was drawn and she gripped her hands in front of her apron.
“Miriam, how are you?” I asked. “I’m so—”
“What are you doing here?” Jonah’s wife wanted to know. “Where’s Jonah? Have you brought him?”
I looked at Anna. “Jonah’s not here?”
“Nee,” Miriam snapped. “Your sheriff came by an hour ago and took my husband to the police station.”
“Did he arrest him?” I yelped. I should have come sooner. How could Mitchell arrest Jonah without letting me know? I would have thought that my boyfriend would have the courtesy to tell me when he was about to arrest one of my best friends.
“Nee, Angie,” Anna said. “He only wanted to talk to him.”
“Why didn’t someone call me?” I asked. “I would have come and asked Mitchell what was going on. I could have helped.”
Miriam pursed her lips, and Anna gave me a warning look.
“Helped? You? When have you ever helped our family?” Miriam gripped the sides of her apron as if attempting t
o steady herself. “We do not need your help. My husband would not be in this situation if it hadn’t been for you.”
My mouth fell open. I had already thought the same thing, of course, but it didn’t hurt any less hearing it from Jonah’s wife. I tried to remind myself how upset Miriam must feel, how upset I would feel if something like this happened to Mitchell.
When I didn’t say anything, she asked, “You’re the one who asked him to go to your mother’s house. Is that not true?”
“That’s true, but—”
“But nothing,” she snapped. “You caused all of this.”
“I understand why you are upset, but I didn’t cause anything.” I concentrated on keeping my voice even. “Whoever murdered Griffin Bright was the one who caused the trouble, not me.”
“How do we know it wasn’t you?” Miriam asked.
“Miriam,” Anna said in a warning voice, “you know that isn’t fair.”
“What’s not fair is my husband sitting in a jail cell because of her,” Miriam said.
I looked to Anna. “You said he wasn’t arrested.”
“He wasn’t,” Anna reassured me.
“Maybe he wasn’t arrested yet, but he will be. I know it in my heart, just as I knew you coming back to Holmes County would ruin my family.”
“Miriam, I—I—”
“I don’t want to hear what you have to say.” She glared at me. It was as if Miriam was finally releasing all the anger and jealousy she’d stored up against me for the last twenty years. “And he saw Griffin, a man who hurt my husband so deeply when he was young, who killed his closest friend and cousin. You should have known better. You should be ashamed.”
Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) Page 11