I arched my brow at him. “I will after you answer my questions.”
The boys groaned.
“Why would you film where your uncle was working?” I asked.
“I didn’t know Uncle Griff was working there. Honest. I just wanted to film on a remote road that might have a house or two of added drama.” Beads of sweat gathered on Cameron’s forehead. “I would have never filmed there if I knew Uncle Griff was working there. My dad would kill me. He and Uncle Griff don’t get along.”
I rocked back on my heels. “You do know that you need the landowner’s permission to film on private property like that. My parents have a right to sue you if they wanted to.”
Cameron turned a light shade of green. “It was for school.”
Willow emerged out of the wood. “What did I miss?” She took in the scene. “Bigfoot is a pimply teenager?” she whispered to me. “My heart is broken.”
I ignored her and continued with my questioning. “What did you see the morning your uncle was killed?” I nodded to Sam. “I want to know what you saw too.”
“Nothing,” Sam said. “I can barely see where I’m going in this gorilla suit.”
Cameron’s answer didn’t come as quickly. It seemed that he was considering what to say.
I glared at him. “Cameron. Tell me or I will let Nahum at you.”
He opened his mouth as if he was about to tell, but suddenly Nahum dropped his pitchfork and stumbled toward the boys. With the pitchfork no longer holding them at bay, they both jumped away from the Amish man.
For a moment, Nahum regained control of himself.
“Let’s get out of here,” Sam said.
“Stay!” Willow ordered in such a commanding voice, I had to make sure it was coming from her.
Oliver must have thought she was talking to him because he plopped his back end in the mud. He was so going to need a bath later.
Nahum leaned his pitchfork against the shack and staggered.
I took a step forward. “Nahum, are you all right?”
He waved me away, opened his mouth as if to say something, but collapsed onto the muddy ground before he could utter a word.
Chapter Thirty-six
I knelt in the mud next to the prostrate man. “Nahum? Nahum?”
He groaned and squinted at me. He was conscious. That was something. I had to take him to a hospital. There was no telling how long he had been sick or what was wrong with him.
Willow stood over me. “What should we do?”
Nahum stared at me with glassy eyes.
“Can you stand up?” I asked.
He tried to sit up and cried out in pain.
I pushed him back down by the shoulder. “New plan. Don’t get up. We’ll carry you out.”
“Angie, he has to weigh a hundred and eighty pounds. How are we going to carry him?” Willow asked.
“The boys will do it as a favor in return for me not suing them for the video.” I never had any intention of suing Sam and Cameron for the Bigfoot video, but they didn’t know that.
They both swallowed and nodded. No one liked the threat of a lawsuit.
I jumped to my feet and ran into Nahum’s one-room shack that was surprisingly neat and tidy. I knew I was tracking mud on Nahum’s clean floors, but that couldn’t be helped.
I pulled the quilt from his bed and ran outside with it.
“Shouldn’t we call an ambulance and let the EMTs take him?” Sam asked.
“Shh,” I said. “He’ll refuse to go with the EMTs, and he needs to see a doctor.”
As much as it pained me to see the beautiful Log Cabin quilt get covered in dirt, I laid it in the mud and then waved the boys over to help me.
We rolled Nahum as carefully as possible onto the quilt and lifted him up. The quilt made a perfect cocoon for the ill man.
Sam, still wearing his gorilla suit with the mask tucked under his arm, Cameron, and I carried Nahum out of the woods in the quilt. Nahum groaned with every bump, but I was happy he didn’t fight us. Willow and Oliver led the way out of the woods.
We put Nahum in the backseat of my car. The boys said they would meet us at the hospital. I wasn’t sure if they were lying, but I didn’t care. Nahum was my primary concern at the moment.
There was a small private hospital on Route Eighty-three. They would be able to perform only some of the care but would know if Nahum would need to be transported to one of the larger hospitals in Canton or even farther away in Akron.
The ride to the hospital was tense. Nahum groaned with every tiny bump in the road. As I drove, I asked Willow to call Mitchell and tell him what was going on.
I could hear him firing questions at her through her end of the conversation. I gripped the steering wheel, wondering if I should call the bakery and tell Rachel to meet us at the hospital. It would take her some time to reach the hospital by horse and buggy.
We arrived at the hospital before I made my decision. Willow hopped out of the car and ran inside to find help. Three people came out in scrubs and carefully placed Nahum, still wrapped in the mud-covered quilt, on a gurney.
After I parked the car and cracked the windows for Oliver, who I would have to leave inside while in the hospital, I walked into the lobby. Willow handed a pen and chart attached to a clipboard to me. “They want you to fill this out.”
The first question that popped out at me was “emergency contact.” That should be Rachel. Rachel should be filling out this form. But she wouldn’t know any of the answers any more than I did.
I was about to take the clipboard back to the woman at the desk and explain when the automatic hospital doors slid open again, and Mitchell strode inside followed by Rachel.
I jumped out of my seat.
Rachel ran into my arms. She pressed the side of her face into my shoulder. “Where is he?”
“They’re examining him right now.” I guided her to the desk. “The man I brought in a little while ago. This is his daughter,” I told the nurse at the desk.
“I want to see my fa . . . I want to see my father,” Rachel said, finally managing to say the words.
The nurse came around the side of the desk. “You can go back, dear, but no one else.” She wrapped her arm around Rachel and led her down the hallway.
I turned to Mitchell with tears in my eyes. “Thank you for bringing Rachel. I didn’t know what to do.”
He smiled. “I thought you might want her here.”
I threw my arms around his neck and kissed the Holmes County sheriff right on the mouth in the middle of the busy waiting room. When I pulled back, Mitchell was bright red, but he was grinning. “If I’d have known the reunion of Rachel and her father would give you that reaction, I would have done it a long time ago.” His tone turned serious, and he led me to a corner of the waiting room. “Tell me what happened.”
I recited my story, including being chased through Sugartree Street by the mob of Bigfooters. At the end of it, I looked around the waiting room. “Cameron and Sam said they would meet us at the hospital.”
Mitchell shook his head. “They probably ran off, but it sounds like it was a good thing that you were there when Nahum collapsed.”
“If he recovers, he’s going to be furious with me. He didn’t want to come to the hospital.” My forehead creased.
Mitchell nodded. “I know.” His cell phone rang and he held up his index finger to me. Stepping away, he answered the call, “Mitchell.” He turned his back to me so I couldn’t eavesdrop. He knew me well.
Less than a minute later, he spun around. “Angie, I have to go. There’s been a serious semi versus Amish buggy accident on a county road.”
My stomach dropped. “Is everyone okay?” I asked.
He grimaced. “I don’t know yet.”
He brushed my lips with his. Was this a new thing that Mitchell
would allow kissing in public? Because that was fine with me.
“I’ll call you later,” he said, and strode out through the automatic doors.
It wasn’t until he was gone that I realized that I’d forgotten to tell him what Blane had told me about the barn fire. It could wait, I thought.
Willow sidled up to me. “You know, I’ve been thinking.” Willow shook her head. “Just because that boy was dressed up in costume doesn’t mean there isn’t a Bigfoot in the county. He’s still out there.”
I sighed and went to the desk to ask after Nahum. The nurse told me that he was undergoing tests, so it might be another hour before I could see him. I relayed this information to Willow.
She sighed. “Do you want me to stay?”
I shook my head. “Go back to Sugartree Street. Bigfoot Day needs you.”
Willow called one of her Bigfoot friends and got a ride back to Rolling Brook. I asked her to take Oliver with her and drop him off at Running Stitch with Mattie. She agreed. I wanted to stay so I could be there when Rachel needed a ride home.
An hour later, I was considering leaving and coming back when a nurse came up to me with a room number for Nahum. He was on the second floor, and I took the elevator up.
The door to Nahum’s room was ajar, and I peeked into the hospital room. Rachel sat at Nahum’s side and held his hand. She murmured to him in Pennsylvania Dutch. She was crying. He was crying too.
I backed out of the room and bumped into someone in the hallway. I was shocked to find Cameron Bright behind me. I’d never expected to see the teen again.
He nervously licked his lips. “Will he be all right?”
“I think so,” I said. “I thought you took off.”
He shoved his hands into his jeans pockets. “I did. I wasn’t going to come back. Sam told me not to but I had to know . . .” He trailed off.
“Know what?” I studied his face. Standing under the hospital’s fluorescent lights, he looked so much younger than nineteen.
“Did I make him have a heart attack or something by trespassing in his wood?” The teen’s brow crinkled in worry.
I patted his shoulder. “No. Nahum is sick. Very sick. There’s something wrong with his kidney. It’s not working right.”
He gave a sigh of relief. “Oh, but will he be okay? Don’t you need your kidneys?”
I patted the boy’s arm. “He will be all right if he concedes to the surgery to remove one of his kidneys. You only need one.”
“He won’t concede because he’s Amish?” Cameron asked.
I glanced through the open door at Rachel’s bent head. “I don’t know. He might now if he has something to live for.”
“I’d better head home then.”
I grabbed his wrist. “Not so fast.” I dragged him to a couple of chairs at the end of the hallway.
“What are you doing?” He tried to pull away, but I outweighed him by a good twenty pounds. He wasn’t leaving until I was ready to let him go.
I sat him in one of the two chairs. “All right. You are going to tell me what you saw outside my parents’ the morning your uncle died.”
He frowned.
“I know you saw something. I could see it on your face when we were in the woods. Who or what did you see?”
His frown deepened. “No one that wasn’t supposed to be there.”
“What does that mean?” I asked.
“The only person I saw there that early was an Amish guy, but I knew he was supposed to be there because I saw Amish working at the house the day before.”
“What Amish guy? Jonah Graber?”
“I don’t know. They all kind of look the same to me.”
I clenched my fists. “What color was his hair?”
He shrugged. “I don’t know that either. It was dark. I mean it was really early in the morning. The sun wasn’t up yet.”
“If you couldn’t see him, how do you know he was Amish?”
“He was walking around the trailer holding a lantern. Only an Amish person would use a lantern.”
I bit the inside of my lip. Could it have been Jonah? He didn’t have an alibi for that morning and refused to tell anyone where he had gone when he left his farm at four a.m. But then Rex gave him an alibi in a way, but was it a real alibi when Rex didn’t even know from where or at what time Jonah picked him up from the side of the road? If Jonah left his farm at four, he could have picked up Rex, dropped him somewhere, and still gotten to my parents’ house in time for the murder. I rejected the idea. Jonah would never hurt anyone. It was impossible. And Eban was Amish too. Could it have been Eban who Cameron saw? But Eban wasn’t there when I arrived at my parents’ house. He came later after the police were already on the scene.
I had to talk to Jonah. I jumped out of my chair as if I had been electrocuted. “The woman in the room with Nahum,” I said to Cameron, “is his daughter, Rachel. Can you tell her that I had to go?” I ran to the elevator before he could say another word.
Chapter Thirty-seven
Outside in the hospital’s parking lot, I called my mother’s cell phone. She answered on the first ring. “Mom,” I said with so much relief as I stumbled into my car.
“Angie, what’s gotten in to you?” she asked.
“There’s no time for that. Are Jonah and Eban there working on the house?”
“No,” she said slowly. “They left for the day. They finished painting the kitchen, and it has to dry before they can do anything else.”
“Oh,” I said.
“Are you all right?” my mother asked.
“Yes,” I said. “I’m fine. I just need to make another call. I’ll talk to you later.” I hung up. Hanging up on my mother would come back to haunt me later, but I needed to think. I considered calling Mitchell, but I knew that he would be dealing with that semi accident somewhere else in the county.
What I wouldn’t give for Jonah to have a cell phone! If I wanted to talk to Jonah, I would have to find him. So the first place I would look was his farm, whether Miriam liked my arrival or not.
As I pulled into the Grabers’ long gravel driveway, Petunia raced to my car before it came to a complete stop. Her tan-colored ears were flopping on the sides of her head. I got out of the car, but when Oliver didn’t follow me, Petunia pulled up short.
The screen door banged against the house as Jonah came out. I recognized Miriam’s silhouette in the doorway as Jonah walked toward me. I waited for Jonah to reach me.
“What?” Jonah asked, peering into the car. “No Oliver?”
I gave him a half smile. “He’s at the shop with Mattie.”
Jonah’s brow knit together. I didn’t have time to answer the unspoken question about Oliver’s whereabouts and why he wasn’t with me. I cut right to the heart of the matter. “Is Eban here?” I asked.
Jonah frowned. “He went home.”
“Oh,” I said. “Where’s he staying?”
“Not home in Holmes County, but home back to his family’s farm in Wayne County.”
“He left Holmes County?” I asked. Suspicion started to tickle the back of my brain. “Why would he leave before you finished the remodel of my mother’s kitchen?”
Jonah nodded and still appeared to be confused over my questions about Eban. “He said he had to go back home to his mother and sisters. Did you come here looking for Eban?”
I shook my head. “Jonah, I need to know where you were the morning Griffin died. It’s important, really important.”
His jaw clenched. “I told you that I wasn’t going to speak of it.”
“I know, but—”
“Angie, please,” his voice was as sharp as I’d ever heard it.
“Rex Flagg saw you that morning,” I blurted out.
He stepped back with confusion written all over his face. “Who?”
“Rex Flagg,” I said. “He was the drunk you picked up in the wee hours and drove into town.”
His mouth hung open. “How could you know about that?”
“It doesn’t matter how I know. Why didn’t you tell the police?”
“Why would I do that and shame a man who was clearly in trouble? It wouldn’t have made any difference for me and could have caused much trouble for him.”
I admired Jonah for his compassion, but this was no time to be chivalrous. “But you’re wrong. It does matter. It gives you at least part of an alibi. That’s a good start. Where were you the rest of that morning before you found Griffin’s body?” I was shouting now. I couldn’t help it.
Jonah glared at me. “Angie, you are going too far this time.”
“I’m asking because I want to help you.” I threw up my hands. “Cameron Bright, Griffin’s nephew, saw an Amish man around the trailer the morning right before his uncle was killed.”
“He saw me?” Jonah asked in disbelief.
“He couldn’t identify you personally, but he said an Amish man. You are the only Amish male suspect. Don’t you see how serious this is?”
Hurt filled his eyes. “Are you asking me if I killed Griffin Bright, Angie? Is that what this is? Do you think I killed him?”
I stepped back. “No. Of course I don’t think that, but it looks bad.”
He turned away from me and faced his house. I wrapped my arms around my waist.
Miriam opened the screen door and stood on the top step that led into their house. I had overstayed my welcome.
I spoke to Jonah’s back. “Believe me when I say that I know you didn’t kill anyone, and I’m only trying to protect you.”
His shoulders sagged, but still he didn’t turn around.
“Don’t worry, Jonah. I’ll prove it with or without your alibi.” I glanced around him at Miriam, who had her arms folded across her chest. “And if it will be easier for you, I won’t come to your farm any longer.”
“Angie,” Jonah said as he turned around, “I don’t want that.”
I met his eyes, and I could feel tears forming in mine. “You might not, but it’s what Miriam wants. I don’t want my presence to cause any pain in your marriage.”
Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) Page 24