Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery)

by Isabella Alan

  I picked up my nearly full coffee mug and slipped out of the booth. When I reached Sal’s table, I asked, “May I?”

  “Sure, have a seat,” he grunted. “It’s not often I have the company of a pretty girl.”

  Linda walked toward the table with the coffeepot in hand. She filled Sal’s mug with a practiced motion. “You don’t pay any attention to Sal’s flirting,” she advised.

  I smiled. “I don’t mind.”

  Sal grinned. “See, Linda, not every woman ignores me. I’m quite a catch. I’m glad Angie here sees that.”

  Linda snorted. “Angie is Sheriff Mitchell’s girl.”

  Sal appraised me. “You don’t say. I had heard that he’d taken up with someone new since his divorce. You couldn’t be more different from his first wife, could you?”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat.

  Linda smacked him lightly on the back of the head. “You quit that and answer sweet Angie’s questions about Rex.” She moved to the next table with her coffeepot.

  Sal poured cream from a small pitcher into his coffee. “I still don’t know what you want with him. He’s a drunk, and a mean one at that.”

  I thought it was best if I didn’t mention the murder unless Sal brought it up. The fewer people who knew about my investigation, the better.

  I cleared my throat. “He did some work at my friend’s store, and really made a mess of things.” This wasn’t technically a lie, although I didn’t know if Liam would consider me a friend. “I was hoping I could track him down so that I could talk to him about it.”

  Sal nodded. “Your friend should look elsewhere for help.”

  “He already has.” I paused. “But I still want to talk to Rex about it.”

  Sal squinted. I could tell he didn’t buy my story. To be honest, I wouldn’t have either.

  He held his mug up to me as if in a toast. “I like your spunk. It’s about time someone told Rex a thing or two about how to work and how to treat a lady. If you are looking for him, look no further than Eight Lanes.”

  I frowned. “Eight Lanes? What’s that?”

  “It’s a bowling alley in Millersburg,” Linda said as she walked effortlessly carrying two full trays of food. The food was meant for the men sitting in the corner of the room.

  “Rex hangs out in a bowling alley?” I asked.

  Sal shook his head. “He doesn’t hang out there. He lives there. There’s an apartment above the bowling alley. From what I heard, he gets a break on rent to keep up the maintenance of the place, which he needs since he can’t seem to hold down a job.”

  I winced. “It must be hard to sleep.” I imagined bowling balls crashing into pins in the middle of the night. I certainly wouldn’t be able to sleep in such a place. I frowned.

  “Rex could sleep through a hurricane. A few balls crashing into bowling pins aren’t going to bother him.”

  “Where is Eight Lanes located?” I asked.

  “A couple of miles from here on the way to Berlin.” He rattled off the address.

  I stood. “I had better get over there then and see what I can find out.”

  I found Linda standing behind me, free of her trays and again holding her coffeepot. “I wish I could go with you, Angie. I really do, but it’s best for me to leave the sleuthing to you.” She smiled. “You’re the professional.”

  I laughed. “Don’t let the sheriff hear you say that.”

  Oliver and I walked out of the diner. We were only a few steps from my car when Oliver flattened low to the ground and growled.

  “What’s gotten into you?” I asked. Oliver wasn’t a growler.

  “Did you send the police after me?” a gravelly voice asked.

  Chapter Twenty-eight

  I spun around to find Nahum Shetler sitting on a park bench just south of my car. I couldn’t believe I hadn’t spotted him there before. Perhaps I was a little too focused on my mission to talk to Rex Flagg.

  “Excuse me?” I asked.

  Nahum braced a hand to his side and winced as if in pain as he stood up. His grizzled beard that hung down to the middle button of his coat appeared more tangled than usual, and that was saying something. He wore a wool winter coat. It was early May, so it was most definitely not summer in Holmes County, but the temperature now that the line of rain had passed through held steady at sixty degrees. It certainly wasn’t wintercoat weather. Sixty might have been cold in Texas, but since I moved to Ohio, I noticed that people wore shorts and flip-flops when it reached that temperature.

  I took a step toward him. “Are you all right?”

  He scowled at me as he maneuvered around the bench. “I’m fine.”

  It took everything that I had not to run around the bench and lend him an arm. I knew he never would forgive me if I did.

  “What’s wrong with you?” I asked. The question wasn’t all that polite, but Nahum and I didn’t base our relationship—if you could even call it a relationship—on pleasantries.

  “It’s none of your concern. Why won’t you answer my question? Did you send the police after me?”

  Oliver slunk behind my legs.

  “No,” I said. “Why would you ask me that?”

  “Because the sheriff came to my cabin early this morning wanting to talk to me,” he said with a grunt.

  Cabin was an exaggeration. Nahum lived in the woods in what could only be called a glorified shack, and that was pushing it.

  “The only time,” he went on, “that the police want to talk to me is when you tell them to.”

  “I didn’t ask the police to speak to you,” I said honestly. “What did the sheriff want to know?”

  Nahum frowned and leaned on the mailbox as if he needed the support. Now, I really was becoming worried for him. I guessed Nahum was somewhere in his sixties, but he had always, despite his gray beard, carried himself like someone half his age. Now, he looked as stiff as a ninety-year-old. His face was drawn, and his eyes appeared to be more deeply sunken in too. I bit my tongue to stop myself from asking him if he was okay again.

  “The sheriff wanted to know if I had seen anyone suspicious in the woods in and around the county.”

  “You mean besides you?” I blurted out.

  Nahum narrowed his eyes.

  Okay, that had been the wrong thing to say. “What did you tell him?”

  “I said I hadn’t,” he answered after a long moment of glaring at me. “I always see hunters and teens looking for trouble in the woods, but I couldn’t say any of those people were suspicious in the way he meant.”

  “What way was that?” I asked.

  “He wanted to know if I had seen anyone in the woods wearing a costume like a gorilla suit. I said nee. I would have remembered that.”

  Ah, I thought, Mitchell was following up on the Bigfoot angle. The sheriff left no stone, however ridiculous, unturned when working on a case.

  “That says to me that the police aren’t after you. Sheriff Mitchell was just seeing if you were an eye-witness who he could consult about a case.”

  Nahum held his side. “About a gorilla?”

  From the way he answered, I had a feeling Mitchell didn’t tell Nahum about the Bigfoot sightings in the county.

  “Any involvement with the Englisch police is too much for me.” With care, he pushed off the mailbox. He grimaced as his body made its way to an upright position.

  “Maybe you should see a doctor,” I said.

  The older Amish man glared at me. “I have no need for English doctors.”

  That I knew to be true. Nahum believed that his wife, Rachel’s mother, had been killed by English medicine. His wife had complications with Rachel’s birth. Nahum asked his bishop what he should do. The bishop had told him to go see an English doctor for help. Nahum did as he was told, and although Rachel was saved, her mother died. Nahum could
n’t or wouldn’t care for his baby girl, so he sent her away to be raised by her mother’s family.

  Nahum blamed both the English doctor and his Amish bishop for his beloved wife’s death. That was why he left his Amish district. Now, he was what I called a rogue Amish. To be truly Amish, a person had to be a member of an Amish district. The culture and religion was all about community, but Nahum didn’t live in any Amish district. In most cases, when an Amish person was angry with an Amish community, he left and joined another or became English. Not Nahum. He dressed and acted Amish, but followed his own set of rules of what it meant to be Amish. He didn’t answer to any church elders or bishops and lived alone in the woods.

  “Why would the sheriff want to know about a man in a gorilla suit?” Nahum asked.

  Mitchell most likely didn’t tell Nahum about the Bigfoot sightings for a reason, but I thought Nahum had a right to know, especially since I knew that Bigfoot fans would be or might already be descending on his woods in search of the Sasquatch. It would probably be best for everyone if Nahum knew that they were coming. I didn’t want any visitors to meet the business end of Nahum’s pitchfork.

  “Some people think they saw a creature in the woods,” I said, and went on to describe what Bigfoot was to the best of my ability.

  “You mean a Sasquatch,” Nahum sniffed. “Englischers aren’t the only ones with that story in their folklore.”

  “Oh,” I said, taken aback. I had not expected Nahum to know what I was talking about. “Have you seen anything like that?”

  “Nee. Crazy Englisch,” he snapped. “I live in those woods and have for over twenty years. I see everything that comes and goes through those trees. If there was such a creature, don’t you think I would have seen it?”

  “Yes, I do,” I said.

  He squinted at me as if I hadn’t given him the answer that he expected to hear.

  “I don’t believe there is a Bigfoot in the woods either. I think someone is pulling a practical joke on the community. The sheriff is worried about it because the person who is doing this was near a murder.”

  “The murder of the Englischer at your parents’ home.” He tugged on his beard.

  “Yes.” I nodded, not the least bit surprised Nahum knew about Griffin’s death.

  “I know what happens in this county,” he said.

  I didn’t doubt that Nahum knew more about what happened in Holmes County than I did.

  “I know,” I said. “Which is why you can help. No one knows these woods as well as you do. You can find out who is playing this trick and prove that it’s just a man wearing a suit.”

  “Why would I want to help?” he asked.

  “Because there are about thirty Bigfoot enthusiasts stomping through the woods looking for the creature. The sooner it’s proven that it’s all a hoax, the sooner they’ll leave.”

  His lip curled as if he smelled something bad. Probably the thought of tourists in his woods made him sick to his stomach. “There are Englischers in my woods?”

  They weren’t technically Nahum’s woods, but I thought it was best not to correct him when I was in need of his help.

  His eyes narrowed. “I will find who’s playing this prank.”

  “Great. And when you do, tell me or the police. The sheriff and his men will take care of him,” I said.

  “Oh no,” he said. “I will take care of him myself.”

  I grimaced. Okay, so telling Nahum about the Bigfoot issue might not have been the best idea in the world. I hated it when Mitchell was right.

  I watched Nahum limp away. All the time, he had a hand braced over where his right kidney would be. If Nahum was sick, I had to tell Rachel, whether or not she was ready to deal with the emotions that came with speaking to her father. She might not have much time left to make amends.

  Chapter Twenty-nine

  I couldn’t remember the last time I had gone bowling. It might have been in elementary school with bumpers. Even with the bumpers to guide my ball down the lane, I hadn’t been very good at the sport. If I remembered correctly, I let the ball go on the backswing and hit my friend’s father in the stomach with it. I hadn’t been invited to go bowling since.

  Not that I was invited to go bowling today either, I thought as I stepped into Eight Lanes Bowling Alley. The business was aptly named because there were eight lanes. Other than the lanes, there was a small snack bar and a Ping-Pong table that looked as if it dated back to the Cold War. That was it. Eight Lanes wasn’t fancy.

  A set of Amish teenagers was at one of the lanes. They laughed and teased one another in Pennsylvania Dutch when one of them threw a blue bowling ball into the gutter of a neighboring lane.

  The rest of the lanes were empty, which was a good thing, considering how well the boys played. Other than the young Amish men, there was an older man sitting at the snack bar, nursing what I hoped was a root beer for this early in the day. There wasn’t a soul behind the counter.

  To be honest, I would have much rather approached the teens with my questions than that rough-looking man and his root beer.

  When I got closer, I noticed the man wasn’t drinking root beer as I first thought. It was birch beer, which was the Amish version of the drink. The soda inside was red and was just a bit smoother than most root beer. It came in a bright yellow can and I had only ever seen the drink in Holmes County.

  “What do you want?” the man asked, taking a swig from his can.

  I didn’t answer right away, and he said, “You’re not here to bowl. I can tell when people come to bowl, and you’re not one of them. So I’ll ask you again. What do you want?”

  “I’m looking for Rex Flagg,” I said.

  He held up his birch beer to me. “You found him. What can I do for you?”

  “My name is Angie Braddock, and I—”

  “Braddock!” he bellowed. “You wouldn’t be any relationship to Daphne Braddock, would you?”

  “She’s my mother.”

  The scowl on his wrinkled face deepened. “In that case, I have nothing to say to you.”

  “But—”

  “That heartless woman wouldn’t give me a job.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “What do you mean?”

  “I bid on the electrical job at her house, and she went with another electrician. My guess is you’re here because the electrician she hired bought the farm, and I’m the runner-up. Sorry, miss. I don’t take sloppy seconds. Your mother will just have to find someone else to take over for Griff.”

  I grimaced at his crude language. I hadn’t known that my mother got multiple bids on the electrical work in the kitchen. I should have expected it though. Mom took every aspect of interior design seriously and would have hired only who she thought were the best people for the job. No wonder she was so terrified when Dad said that he was going to demolish the kitchen himself. Mom didn’t believe in doing any work that you could hire someone else to do, especially if that someone could to it better. I thought it was best if I let Rex believe he was right about my reason for visiting Eight Lanes. Maybe I would catch him off guard, and he would reveal what he knew about Griffin’s death, if anything.

  “So you’re not interested in any of the work Griffin Bright left unfinished. Not even the job at the Eby Mercantile?”

  He set his can on the bar and sat up straight. “Is that job back up for grabs? I hadn’t heard anything. The arrogant owner won’t return my calls.”

  I folded my arms. “Why would he after you didn’t show up for work with no explanation?”

  He grunted. “I’d had a rough night before. I needed to sleep it off. Amish don’t know what it’s like to fall off the wagon.” He sipped from his can and some of the red liquid ran down his chin. He wiped it off with the back of his hand. “If Mr. Holier Than Thou would just return my calls, I could have explained what happened. I missed one day, and he
went out and hired the Bright brothers. Those two are the bane of my existence. I used to work with Griffin, you know, before he cast me aside to work with his little brother.” His speech was slightly slurred, and I wondered if he spiked his birch beer with something a bit stronger.

  “You did?” I didn’t even bother to hide my surprise.

  Rex shook his head. “It was a good thing. Being dropped by Griffin spurred me on to starting my own business, and I’ve done all right for myself when I can avoid the drink.”

  I tried not to glance around the bowling alley. I wouldn’t count living over a bowling alley as all right, but what did I know?

  Rex picked up his can again and jiggled the contents inside. “I never liked working with Griff. He was a stickler. I obey the rules to finish the job, but Griff was a fanatic about it. Every ‘I’ had to be dotted and every ‘T’ crossed twice. It was maddening. I shouldn’t be surprised that your mother chose him over me. She seemed to be an ‘I’-dotter and ‘T’-crosser to me.”

  She was that.

  He held up his can to me. “The problem with Griffin was he wasn’t a team player. Guys in our line of work need to look out for one another. Griffin wasn’t like that. If he saw anyone cutting corners, be it a contractor or a plumber, he called them out on it, not only to the plumber or contractor but to the home owner or the business owner, depending on the job. He made a lot of enemies that way.”

  I think my suspect list just increased tenfold. How would I find every contractor and serviceman that Griffin had blown the whistle on?

  “Including you?” I asked the man in front of me.

  “No. I do good work”—he lifted his can—“when I’m sober.”

  “Do you know why Griffin was so strict?”

  “It was the boy he got killed all those years ago. Shoot, it must be over twenty years ago that happened, but if you spoke to Griffin, you’d think it was yesterday. It affected him that much.”

  I froze. “Do you mean Kamon Graber?”

  He shrugged. “I can’t remember the name. That’s an Amish name, isn’t it? That must be right because the kid that died was Amish.”