by Jane Jensen
There’s no more annoying alibi than “He was sleeping beside me all night.” Wives will tell you they are such light sleepers they wake at the drop of a pin, and husbands aren’t about to contradict that and admit that their wives could sleep through a brass band in the bedroom, because that would break their own alibi. Siblings are unlikely to rat on their own flesh and blood out of fear of retaliation, if not loyalty.
We’d asked each family to make a list of anyone who visited their farm on a regular basis and we had a long list of names to check already.
Our last stop was Ezra Beiler. I knew nothing about Beiler except that he owned the farm at 467 Grimlace Lane and that his twenty-five-acre farm was one of the ones with an animal trail to the creek. As we pulled in I saw a sign: Beiler’s Molly Mules. A number of the long-faced creatures were grazing in the fenced pasture along the road. They were big, magnificent animals, light tan in color with tightly groomed manes and squarish heads. They didn’t look anything like donkeys, which is what I would have guessed. They looked more like very homely Clydesdales. I was staring at them as Grady stopped the car and flipped open his notepad.
“Ezra Beiler. Widower. No children. Maybe this one will be quick.”
He sounded relieved. I couldn’t blame him. Birth control was not the Amish way, and we’d interviewed enough people already today to make my voice hoarse and my mind spacey with the weight of all those blank stares. I was looking forward to a hot meal and getting back to the station to put my thoughts in order.
As we got out, I took stock of the property. The farmhouse was a bit small, an old clapboard two-story, the top of which had strongly sloped eaves. I imagined there were only one or two rooms upstairs, the kind where you had to duck your head. But though rough, the house was freshly painted white and had a porch with welcoming tan rockers. In front of the house on the driveway’s left was the winter shell of a kitchen garden. What looked like grapevines and possibly berry canes stretched bare branches along a trio of thick wires. It was neat and clean and probably quite a sight in the summer.
The barn was directly opposite the house on the gravel drive. Everything else appeared to be fenced-in pasture. In the distance I could see the line of trees that marked the creek.
Grady and I looked at the house and the barn for a moment. It was silent, so silent that I could hear the crunch of the mules’ hooves as they walked through the snow and the creak of the trees in the wind. Damn, it was cold. I desperately needed some coffee.
Grady nodded his head at me. “Check the barn. I’ll try the house. After this, we’re going to get some damn lunch.”
I had no argument. I headed for the barn.
The barn was at least a few hundred years old but well kept. There was a big door on a slider and a smaller, human-sized door with a small cement step in front of it. It had a black latch rather than a knob. I opened it.
I’m not sure why, but something compelled me to move quietly. I stepped inside the barn, which was considerably warmer than outside, and closed the door behind me. I turned around—and stared.
An Amish man had his back to me as he stood against a horse stall. One arm was on a post that he leaned against in a posture of despair. His head was laid on his raised arm, his face turned down. His other hand stroked the jaw of a mule that was inside the stall. Its champagne-colored head nuzzled the man’s shoulder playfully. It managed to knock off his hat, revealing a head of long, shining blond hair streaked with the natural light and dark undertones of someone who spends hours in the sun.
I suddenly couldn’t get enough air. The scene was so private and sad. And . . . something else I couldn’t get a handle on. The word “raw” didn’t fit, or “powerful,” though it was both of those things. It was honest in a way that dug little stinging prickles into my numb heart, made the hurried rush of my life stop and be still. The man was frankly beautiful. He wore the common black pants of the Amish. Made of some kind of polyester-like fabric, they stretched and clung to his narrow hips and long legs. His shoulders were broad in a plain white shirt crossed with black suspenders. He had one leg cocked at the knee to rest against the half wall of the wooden stall. I hadn’t even seen his face yet, and I felt like I’d been kicked in the head. I wasn’t sure I wanted to see his face. In fact, I was pretty sure I should turn around and leave.
The spell was broken, and my hopes for escape dashed, when the mule noticed at me and made a blowing noise. The man whirled.
For a second, he seemed embarrassed that I’d caught him in a private moment. But quickly his face fell into a hard stoic expression—or lack thereof.
“What d’ya want?” he asked bluntly. He ran a hand through his hair, noticed his hat on the ground, and did a graceful swoop to pick it up. With it on he looked even more Amish. His complexion was very fair, almost that of a redhead. He had freckles despite the fading tan of summer, and his eyelashes were a light reddish-blond. It was hard to tell the color of his eyes, because after that first glance, he wouldn’t look directly at me and I felt uneasy looking directly at him because, yes, he was even more attractive from the front.
“I’m, um, looking for Ezra Beiler. He around?” My voice sounded softer than my usual bite. I cleared my throat and glowered a bit to make up for it.
“I’m Ezra Beiler.” He walked over to me, stopping a good few feet away, and put his hands on his hips in a way that felt defiant.
“Is . . . do you have a father, Ezra Beiler, who lives here?” I was confused. According to Grady, Ezra Beiler was a widower. This man looked to be in his twenties and he was clean-shaven. Amish men grew a beard once they married.
“I have a father, sure. His name’s not Ezra and he don’t live here. I own this farm. What is it you need?”
“Oh. Right. Sorry. I . . . I’m Detective Harris with the Lancaster police.” Christ. I wasn’t the type to get tongue-tied over a good-looking man, especially since Terry’s death. But there was something about Ezra Beiler that was throwing me sideways. I resolutely stuck out a hand for a shake and then regretted it. Police detectives didn’t shake hands with persons of interest. Keeping a distance helped create just that extra ounce of authority. But it was too late to pull it back now.
Beiler looked at my hand for a second, then took it. His was rough and warm. So warm. My own hand felt like an icicle in his.
Greenish-brown. His eyes were brown flecked with green, like a summer field.
The door behind me opened, causing me to pull back my hand too quick. God, E, get a grip.
Grady came in. “I see you found him.”
“Yes, this is, uh, Ezra Beiler. Mr. Beiler, this is Detective Grady.”
Ezra nodded but didn’t offer a greeting or his hand.
I put the stiff back in my spine. “Does anyone else live here, Mr. Beiler?”
“Ja. My sister Martha.”
“Anyone else?”
Ezra shook his head, his face unreadable. The warmth of the barn was starting to sink in and all of a sudden I felt exhausted.
“I see. Perhaps you heard about what happened down the road?”
“I heard. You know they say the only thing that travels fast with the Amish is news.” Ezra studied my face and his eyes softened. “Would youse like to come in the house and have some coffee? We can talk better at the table.”
I glanced at Grady. He looked as relieved as I felt.
“I’d love a cup of coffee, thank you,” Grady said.
—
Inside, the house was plain but cozy. There was a round pine table in the kitchen, and we sat there while Ezra made coffee in a regular coffeepot. A lamp on the kitchen counter shone bright in the late afternoon gloom. I knew by now that many of the Amish homes in this area had power—either through gas-powered generators or windmills or solar panels. Power itself wasn’t against their creed, apparently, just being hooked up to the grid. It was reliance on an ou
tside agency they wanted to avoid.
“Is your sister Martha, here? We’d like to speak to her too,” I asked, trying to avoid looking at Ezra’s strong, work-toughened hands as he arranged coffee cups and spoons on the table.
“Ja. I’ll call her out.”
He vanished from the kitchen momentarily and returned with a very large and plain-faced Amish woman. She had Ezra’s blond hair and fair, freckled skin, but she was a big girl—at least five eight and well over two hundred pounds. The bold features on her round face, and the way her hair was pulled back tightly under a white cap, did nothing to soften her. She regarded us with wary interest.
“Martha, this is Detective Harris and Detective Grady, here to ask you and me some questions. Why doncha put some cake out?”
Martha complied without a word. A few minutes later the four of us were seated at the table with coffee and a plate of sliced pound cake. I was starving and I didn’t refuse, nor did Grady, as Martha lifted slices onto four small dessert plates and passed them around. The cake was lemon flavored and good. The coffee was better. Dear God, I needed that.
“Thank you,” I told Ezra with a reluctant smile. “This hits the spot. It’s been a long day.”
“Ya looked tired,” Ezra mumbled, dropping his gaze to his plate.
It was the first time we’d been offered anything all day, even a seat. I suspected it was because we were police more than the fact that we weren’t Amish. Everyone had been cooperative. They’d stood and responded to what was asked, but had been neither welcoming nor overly forthcoming. I’d gotten the impression they wanted us to leave as soon as possible, that they understood our purpose there but didn’t believe it ultimately had anything to do with them. Sitting here in the Beiler house was the first time I’d felt any spark of human connection, though I was probably exaggerating the importance of coffee and cake out of sheer gratitude.
I pulled out my iPad. “I need to record this for our files. And I’d like to get a photo of each of you, for our internal records only.”
Ezra and Martha looked at each other and nodded. I took the photos right there at the table and then turned on the audio recorder. “This is Detective Elizabeth Harris. Detective Mike Grady and I are interviewing Ezra Beiler of Grimlace Lane and his sister Martha Beiler. It’s”—I looked at my watch—“three twenty on Thursday, January twenty-third, 2014.”
I looked at Martha to find her staring at me. She quickly lowered her eyes.
“Martha, can you tell us where you were Tuesday between ten in the morning and four in the afternoon?”
“I did laundry in the mornin’ and cleaned some. After lunch I was workin’ on a baby quilt for my sister Jane till suppertime.”
She poked a finger at a crumb and didn’t raise her eyes from her plate. Her cheeks reddened a bit.
“So you were in the house that entire time?”
“Ja.”
“Was there anyone here with you?”
“Ezra was outside.”
I looked at him expectantly. “What were you doing during those hours?”
“Tuesday I took some rockers over to Hennie’s on Route Thirty. I make rockin’ chairs for ’em.”
“What time was that?”
“Left ’bout eight, after the mornin’ chores.”
“What time did you get back?”
“Well, after I left Hennie’s I stopped at a feed store—Miller’s in Paradise. Got home ’bout noon. Had lunch with Martha ’n’ did some work out to the barn.”
Martha’s color had deepened. When I looked at her again, I caught her staring at me. She looked down at her cake immediately.
“Did you know your brother was gone Tuesday morning?” I asked.
“I ’member now he went to Hennie’s after breakfast. Didn’t know he’d been gone so long already.”
“I see.”
If Ezra was telling the truth, it would be easy to corroborate at both stores.
“What about last night? Can you recount what you did?”
Ezra and Martha looked at each other. Martha got a bit of a frown between her brows, but she didn’t speak.
“I had a bad birthin’ last night,” Ezra offered in that broad accent of his. “Had to call the vet. First time I needed help with a birth in a couple a years, but it was twins and the first one was turned and sort of hooked ’round the other. Mother was bleedin’ bad.”
“What time was the vet here?’
“I called around half past eleven. Guess it took him ’bout three-quarters of an hour to come. He was here till nearly mornin’. Had a molly and a john born. We lost the john but saved the molly and the mother.”
“A molly and a john?” Grady asked.
“Mules. A molly mule’s a girl and a john mule’s a boy.”
“Ah.”
“How did you call the vet?” I asked. “Do you have a phone?”
Ezra pulled a cell phone out of his pocket. “It’s allowed, for business use only.”
He wasn’t the first Amish farmer I’d seen with a cell phone, so I wasn’t surprised. “Do you have the vet’s name?”
“Ja. ’Twas Dr. Lane, Ag Vet Associates.”
I glanced at Grady. A vet who’d been in the area overnight could be an important witness.
“During the night, maybe when you were out waiting for the vet to come, or taking a breather, did you see or hear any movement outside, at your neighbors or at the road? A car? A buggy? Even anything you might have thought was normal?”
Ezra gave it a moment’s thought. “Didn’t see anything before the vet come—came. And afterwards things were too worrisome in the barn for us to notice anything, I guess.”
“And you, Martha? Were you assisting with the birth?”
She looked at her brother worriedly, as if asking what she should say.
“Martha was abed,” Ezra answered. “She don’t do well with blood. Anyhow, no point in both us losin’ sleep. There was nothin’ she could do.”
“Ja. Slept gut.” Martha had her hands in her lap and her eyes fixed on them.
“Always somethin’ bein’ born on a farm,” Ezra added, as if to assure his sister it was no big deal she hadn’t helped. He looked at her with something like fondness.
Grady nudged me. Crap. I’d lost the thread of the conversation, too busy staring at Ezra while he was looking at his sister. I straightened up and took a manila folder out of my portfolio. “I have to ask you to look at this photo and tell me if you recognize this girl. It’s a bit grim. I apologize for that, but it’s vital that we learn who she was.”
The photo actually wasn’t too gruesome. It was a close-up picture of the dead girl’s face. Her eyes were open and staring but the blood on the skull wasn’t visible.
Ezra looked at it for a long moment. He shook his head and pushed it across the table toward Martha. She glanced at it, shook her head hard, and looked away, uncomfortable.
“You’ve never seen this girl before? Are you certain?”
“Don’t know her.” Ezra closed the folder and pushed it back toward me, but he didn’t look me in the eyes.
Not that I’d expected a different answer, but these two were the last on Grimlace Lane we had to question, and I felt a burn of disappointment in my throat that we still had no idea who Jane Doe was.
“Right. Last thing. You raise mules for sale?”
“I do.”
“Do you have customers come here? Buyers for the mules or anything else?”
“People come by to see the mules sometimes, and sometimes they order them on the Internet and have a trailer pick ’em up.”
“What about your carpentry?”
“Used to have furniture for sale on the farm but closed that up ’bout a year ago. Now I sell direct to the stores.”
“What about the people who run the stores? Do th
ey ever come here to pick the furniture up?”
Ezra nodded. “Sometimes. And sometimes I take things in if they fit in the buggy. That’s what I did on Tuesday.”
Grady spoke up. “We’d appreciate it if you could make us a list of any English who come by here, anyone at all that you can remember, even if it’s been a few years.”
“Don’t know names for most the people who stopped by, but I can give you some.”
“Just do the best you can.”
I handed over a notepad we’d been using for the purpose and Ezra and Martha set to work on a list.
—
Ten minutes later, Ezra walked us out and stood in the doorway as we stepped off the porch.
“Thanks for the coffee,” I said. I paused, debating with myself. Then I dug a card out of my pocket. “If you can think of anything, anything related to the case or to last night, will you call me?”
Ezra took the card and looked at it a moment too long, as if checking the spelling of my name or memorizing the number. When he looked up he met my eyes, and for a moment I saw something in them other than politeness or distance. It made my stomach flop over. I looked away.
“If I think of anything, I will.”
“Thanks,” I said brusquely as I turned to go.
By the time I’d gotten into the passenger seat of Grady’s car, the door was closed and Ezra was gone.
CHAPTER 3
Bread and Milk
For the next three days we organized, correlated, and tracked down leads working from seven in the morning till after ten at night. Every name the Amish on Grimlace Lane had given us was checked out with the help of Detectives Hernandez and Smith. Though it was faster to call people, I preferred to go to their homes. You could tell a lot about someone by seeing where they lived and looking them in the eye while you asked questions. Most of the time, that personal touch yielded nothing of interest, but sooner or later it would. I was counting on it.