“So if we find him, you won’t help him now?”
He examined the tiny chocolate replica of Gigabyte. “I didn’t say that.”
“Do you have an idea where he could be?”
“I’m afraid not. I spoke with Billy when he needed my assistance but didn’t know him well enough to know where he might have gone under these circumstances.” He glanced around the room. “Is Greta here? She said that she might drop in.”
“Becky invited her, but I haven’t seen her.”
He frowned slightly. “Are there any more whoopie pies?”
“I think there might be in the kitchen.”
He nodded to me and headed in that direction.
Across the room, Timothy’s cell phone rang again and he answered. A minute later he walked across the room to me. “I have a Christmas gift for you.”
I touched the necklace around my neck. “You already gave me a gift.”
“I know.” His face broke into a grin. “This one is better.”
The doorbell rang.
“Are you going to answer that?” Timothy asked.
Becky skipped across the room and stood next to her brother.
I looked back from one to the other. “I don’t know what’s going on here, but okay, I will play along.”
The doorbell rang again. Whoever was on the other side was decidedly impatient.
“I’m coming,” I muttered.
I opened the door and stumbled back as the person on the other side catapulted herself into my arms.
I found my voice. “Tee!”
Chapter Sixteen
Are you surprised?” my best friend asked. She bounced up and down and her wild ebony curls flew in all directions.
I wiped away a tear. “Yes, I’m surprised.” I turned to Timothy and Becky. “You two knew about this?”
Tanisha showed off her dazzling white smile. “Of course they did. How else would I know where you lived? Let me tell you, my GPS was no help at all. I would have been here earlier, but my Garmin took me way off course. I had to call Timothy and describe where I was. His directions were to take the right fork at the intersection where the old barn burned down. Who says that? This county really should invest in some road signage.” She spoke a mile a minute just like always. I had to wonder how she taught her Italian students English. It would be an intense class with Tanisha at the helm.
“Let’s sit down,” I said.
Timothy touched my arm. “I’m going to take Aaron home. I’ll be back in a few minutes.”
I noticed guests were beginning to leave. It was nearing ten in the evening. I hadn’t realized that the party had gone so late.
Becky turned toward the kitchen. “Let me grab my coat. I want to go with you.” A second later she reappeared in her winter coat. “I’m ready. Chloe, is it okay if I go? Tanisha, I’m sorry to run out on you like this so fast.”
Tanisha laughed. “I’m sure we will have plenty of time to visit. I’ll be here for a couple of days.”
“You will?” I beamed.
After Becky, Timothy, and Aaron left, followed by the rest of our departing guests, I fell next to Tanisha on the Quills’ flowered couch. She glanced around the room and picked up a porcelain figurine of a ballerina. “Um. Since when have you been into ballet?”
I laughed. “I told you this house came furnished. The elderly couple who lives here is in Florida for the winter. They will be back in April, and then we will have to find a new place to live. Honestly, I hope we do sooner than that. This is too far from town.”
“No kidding. And hello? Did anyone ever hear of streetlights out here?” She removed her magenta-colored coat, revealing her ugly reindeer sweater underneath.
I burst out laughing. “You wore it!”
She tweaked Rudolph on the nose. “I had to wear it. It’s Christmas.”
“Did you already see your parents?”
“Oh yeah.” Tee rolled her eyes. “I would have left earlier, but Mom wouldn’t let me out of her sight. I’m surprised I didn’t lose an arm while leaving the house, she was yanking on it so hard.”
“I don’t want to keep you from your parents.”
“Please.” She whispered out of the side of her mouth. “I had to check out Timmy.” She fanned herself.
I covered my mouth. “I don’t think anyone calls him ‘Timmy.’”
“Good. That can be our thing, then. Timmy and I need a special relationship. I mean I will be the maid of honor at the wedding.”
“Whoa there,” I said, sounding like Grandfather Zook talking to Sparky. “You’re getting a little ahead of yourself.”
“Not that far,” she insisted. “Let me see the necklace.”
I pulled the necklace from its place under my sweater. I had e-mailed her about the gift from Timothy, but I left out the part about finding the dead body by the barn.
The hammer and computer mouse charm reflected the yellow light from the pewter lamp on the end table. “That’s the sweetest gift I have ever seen. How romantic! How did he even think of it? Maybe I need to find me an Amish boy while I’m here. It’s much nicer than anything Cole ever gave me.”
I tucked the necklace back under my sweater. Cole was Tanisha’s former fiancé. He lived in Florida and broke up with her in an e-mail while she was in Italy. “Have you heard from Cole?”
She shook her head. “Not even a Christmas e-card. He wasn’t too happy when I told him I threw his ring into Lake Como. I hope the fish that ate it enjoyed it because I never want to see that ring again.” She bumped my shoulder. “Cole never looked at me like Timmy looks at you. I’ve only been here a few minutes, but I can tell he is completely besotted.”
“Really?” My voice squeaked.
She laughed and stood. “Got any food around here. I’m starved.”
I stood too. “You have a full gourmet spread.”
“What? You moved to the country and learned how to cook? If you tell me you started knitting, I’m going to faint dead away.”
“No way. Becky’s the chef. I’m clean up.”
She grinned. “Sounds like my kind of arrangement.”
Gigabyte was in the kitchen eating a piece of ham in his dish that Becky must have given to him. Tanisha dropped to all fours. “Gig! I missed you.”
The Siamese cat arched his back and hissed. He then slunk under the kitchen table, the ham clenched between his front teeth.
Tanisha jumped to her feet. “At least some things in your life haven’t changed. Gig is as friendly as ever. He only likes you.”
“He likes Becky.” I lowered my voice. “I think he likes Becky even more than me now. She gives him bacon for breakfast every morning.”
“If someone made me bacon for breakfast every morning, I’d love her too.” She loaded her plate with leftovers from the Christmas party. “So what are we going to do tomorrow? Will I meet Timmy’s family?”
I picked up a baby carrot from the buffet. “Yes, I think so. You will love his grandfather. As for what else we are doing, maybe you can help me with a project.”
She bit into a croissant and closed her eyes for a minute to relish the taste of it. “If it’s something with computers, count me out.”
“No computers,” I promised. “We’re looking for a murderer.”
The croissant dropped from her hand.
Chapter Seventeen
The sun rose just above the stand of evergreen trees that hid the Gundy barn from sight. Tanisha’s leg sank halfway up to her calf in a snowdrift, and she struggled to pull her leg out. “Ugh! Tell me again why you brought me out into the wild.”
I gave her my arm to steady her, and she pulled her leg and foot free. “This was your idea, remember? You were the one that bounced into my room at five thirty in the morning wanting to do something.”
She
carefully edged around the next snowdrift. “I can’t help it. I’m still on Italy time. It’s the afternoon over there. All I said was I wanted to see the sights.”
I pointed to the barn. “This is one of them. Besides, you walk everywhere in Italy.”
“Might I add that walking around Milan is different? I’m not walking through four feet of snow around the duomo.” She brushed snow off her pant leg. “At least Becky and I have the same size feet. Thank goodness she let me borrow her boots.” She held up her foot to show off the sturdy black boot.
“The ones you brought with you are impractical for the country. There’s no duomo or cathedrals around here.”
“Are my boots impractical? Yes. Worth a month of a teacher’s salary? Absolutely.” She sighed when she stepped into another snow drift. “I didn’t see Becky this morning. Where was she?”
“She works at Young’s Family Kitchen, the local Amish restaurant. It’s about two miles from our place. She was filling in at the bakery this morning so she had to leave early to bake pies.”
“I don’t think I’ve ever met a single person who can bake a pie.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“You’re right, but you don’t see Mom trying to bake a pie, do you?”
“That would be a disaster.” Tanisha’s mother was as gifted in the kitchen as Tee and I were. Her lack of cooking prowess led to us not being able to boil water either. But we could dial a phone really well for takeout.
“We’ll swing by Young’s later. Timothy will be there too. He’s the contractor on a job there.” I walked on. “You will love it, and Ellie—she’s the owner—will kill me if I let you leave Knox County without trying a piece of her pie.”
Tanisha caught up with me. “Speaking of killing people, tell me why we are tramping cross-country like a couple of fur traders. Seriously, I feel like it is 1800. If Davy Crockett came out of the woods wearing his coonskin cap, I wouldn’t be a bit surprised.”
“Davy Crockett was never in Knox County, but you might have seen Johnny Appleseed planting trees around here back then.”
“You said that this had something to do with the murder.”
“It does. We are walking to the barn where Timothy and I found Katie.”
“Katie is the dead girl?”
“Yes.” I looked at the unspoiled snow-covered ground. We passed through the stand of pine trees and found pastel-colored sunlight washing over the weathered barn.
Tanisha whistled. “What did they keep in there? Dinosaurs?”
“Horses, I think. The Gundy family that lived here moved to Colorado years ago. Timothy said they still own the land though.”
Tanisha stuck her hands deep into her coat pocket. “Why don’t they sell it? They could make a fortune.”
I shrugged.
Tanisha picked up her pace. Although we could see the barn, it was still a half mile away. She glanced over her shoulder. “What’s taking you so long? Giddyup!”
“I think you’ve been watching too many Westerns in Italy.”
“Hey, I’m starved for English-speaking TV over there. If you’re up late at night they show American Westerns or Seinfeld. I’ve told my students to watch them because listening to English is the best way to learn. But I have noticed that lots of them are getting a Western twang. You should hear it with an Italian accent. It’s hilarious.”
“I hope you like cooking shows because if not, you and Becky will be spending tonight fighting over the remote.”
“As long as they are in English, I’m good.”
The closer we came to the barn, the more nervous I became. Had someone been watching Ruth and me at the Troyer farm yesterday? Was it related to Katie’s death? Would that person come here? I glanced at Tanisha. Maybe I shouldn’t have brought her here. What if something happened? “Tee, maybe we should go back.”
She stopped shaking snow from her boot. “Back? Why?”
“I didn’t think this through . . .”
“Chloe, don’t be such a worrywart. Where did you find her?” Tanisha asked. Her voice had a hushed quality and lost its joking tone.
“On the other side.” We walked around the outside of the barn. I stopped and stared down at the place Timothy and I found Katie. With the freshly fallen snow, our tracks and the impression Katie made in the snow had vanished. It was like she had never even been there.
“Are you okay?” Tee asked.
“I think so. It seems so strange there’s no sign that she was ever here.”
“What was she doing here?” Tee asked the logical question that I had asked myself dozens of times in the last three days.
“I don’t know. I think if we learn the answer to that question, we will learn what really happened. One thing we know for certain was she wasn’t here alone. Someone else was here and strangled her.”
Tanisha’s hand flew to her throat. “How gruesome.”
“I hoped that I would find some kind of clue as to what happened to Katie, but the whole scene is covered by snow.”
“What’s inside of the barn?”
“That’s where it becomes really strange.” As we walked around the side of the barn I filled her in on Billy—who he was and how he was involved in the case.
She stopped and held up a hand. “So you are telling me that this guy who fixes everything with duct tape—and I mean everything—is an escaped convict and has been hiding in Amish country for nearly twelve years.”
“That’s what I’m telling you.”
She raised both palms toward the sky. “See, Mom doesn’t want me to go back to Milan because she’s afraid it’s not safe for a girl on her own, and look at you—exactly how many people have been killed since you moved here?”
“Please don’t tell your parents. The last thing I want them to do is to come down here and get me.”
Tanisha played with the zipper on the parka she borrowed from Beck. “Does your dad know any of this?”
I narrowed my eyes. “Why would he?”
She held up her hands in surrender. “I know the ‘dad’ talk is off-limits.”
“That’s another thing that hasn’t changed in my life.”
Tanisha opened her mouth as if she was about to say something else, but then she snapped her mouth closed again. Fine with me. If it was about my father, I didn’t want to hear it.
We slipped through the broken barn door, and a scraping sound like a piece of metal moving across stone filled the air. Tanisha tugged on my sleeve and opened her mouth. I held a finger to my lips and moved farther into the barn.
The scraping came from the far end of the barn close to where Billy had stashed his extra car parts and became more pronounced as we crept in that direction. A large pen stood between us and the auto graveyard. We stopped. Inside the stall, a thin man bent over and then straightened. Then he did it again. I craned my neck and could just make out the handle of a shovel in his hands.
“He’s digging something,” Tanisha whispered in my ear.
I held my forefinger to my lips again, urging her to stay quiet. Then I felt for my cell phone in the pocket of my winter coat but didn’t remove it. It would take Chief Rose the better part of an hour to reach the Gundy barn, more than that if she was outside of Appleseed Creek. I couldn’t turn and leave. The man in the stall could be the killer. Chief Rose would never forgive me it I let him escape without catching a glimpse of his face.
I cupped my hand over Tanisha’s ear and whispered, “Go wait outside the door and stop him if runs out.”
“What if he tries to hurt you?” she hissed.
“I’ll scream and you come running.”
Her eyes grew wide, her voice hoarse. “I don’t think this a good idea.”
“I have to see who it is.”
She grimaced, but nodded and carefully walked back to the door.
When I saw that she had stepped outside, I tiptoed closer to the man with the shovel, stopping to pick up a tire iron from the stack of Billy’s car parts, its heft reassuring in my hand.
Through the six-inch wide slats that surrounded the stall, I had a clear view of the man. Puffs of his breath were visible as he threw shovelfuls of near-frozen earth into a wheelbarrow. I shivered in my thick coat. The hole he dug was at least two feet deep. I saw the sheen of metal as his exertion revealed the top of whatever had been hidden in that spot. He ran the back of the shovel across the top of the metal object, making that scraping sound again that Tanisha and I first heard when we stepped inside the barn.
He straightened up suddenly, as if sensing my presence. “Who are you? What are you doing here?” he demanded.
I held the tire iron in front of me. “I think you’re the one who should answer that.”
“I’m not the one sneaking up on people.”
“I’m not the one digging a hole in a barn I don’t own.”
He paused, eyeing me. “How do you know this isn’t my barn?”
“Because it belongs to the Gundy’s, and they’re Amish. You’re not.”
He didn’t have a response for that. He stepped into the light for a better look at me. In turn, I was able to get a good look at him. He was a gawky teen, maybe eighteen or nineteen years old with glasses and braces. He wore his sandy-brown hair long and it flopped into his eyes and curled around his ears.
His eyes glowed with recognition when he saw me, but I didn’t recognize him. Could he have seen me in town and remembered me even when I hadn’t noticed him? There weren’t too many redheads in Appleseed Creek, so I tended to stick out in most places around town.
He focused on the tire iron and then looked down at his shovel. “Who are you?”
“My name is Chloe. Now, it’s your turn.”
“Forget it. I’m not telling you anything.” He turned the shovel around in his hand so that the blade end pointed to the sky.
My fingers began to cramp from holding the tire iron so tightly. “You won’t tell me what you’re doing here, or what it has to do with Katie Lambright’s death?”
Appleseed Creek Trilogy, Books 1-3 Page 69