A Plain Disappearance

by Amanda Flower

  Debbie fixed a hair pin that was falling out of her prayer cap. “Are you wearing a wire today?”

  I cringed. “No.”

  “Is that police chief with you?”

  I shook my head. “We heard that Katie worked here.”

  Debbie’s expression was hooded. “She did, but she quit almost six months ago.”

  Six month ago. Why hadn’t Jason mentioned that?

  “Was she a friend of yours?” Tanisha asked while adding a jar of corn relish to her basket. At this rate her mother, who could not cook to save her life, would have a full Amish pantry.

  Debbie glanced at her. She seemed more open to talk to Tee, and that was fine with me. I understood her hesitation around me. “We were friendly, but we weren’t close friends. Katie was always more interested in boys than in girlfriends. There was also a new Amish boy coming around the shop hoping to court her. She was a very pretty girl, so it’s no surprise. When word got around the county she had broken up with Caleb King, it was the worst. There wasn’t a moment of peace in the shop with all the hopeful young men dropping by. It didn’t last long though. She moved on to Nathan Garner within a few weeks.”

  “Why did she quit?” Tanisha asked, taking the lead in questioning.

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you we didn’t talk much unless it was about work, and there is only so much you can say about cheese. She worked here a long time, nearly five years.” She pushed her cart away from the mustard display and in front of the Colby and cheddar cheeses.

  Tanisha sniffed a wedge of white cheddar. “Did she find another job?”

  “I don’t know.” She stacked Colby cheese in a pile on a bed of plastic grass. “I always thought she left because of that Englischer who hung around the shop. He seemed to make her nervous.”

  Jason.

  “What was his name?” I asked.

  Debbie shot me a dirty look. “I heard her call him Jason once.”

  Tanisha added a small round of Colby to her basket. “Did she ever say anything about him?”

  Debbie shook her head. “Nee, but most days when it was near to closing time, he waited for her outside in his car. She was always extra nervous when the Englischer was around. She became clumsy, dropping jars and baskets or tripping over her own two feet when he was outside.”

  “Would she have confided in anyone here at the shop about him?”

  She shook her head. “Like I said, she didn’t really talk to any of the ladies. She was quiet.”

  Debbie straightened the cheddar on the bed of artificial grass. “Mr. Umble, who owns the cheese shop, got tired of the Englischer standing around outside of his shop. One day last summer he went out to confront the boy. He told him that he wasn’t allowed to park in front of the cheese shop anymore. Didn’t make much of a difference. The Englischer just moved his car to a spot by the square where he could continue to watch the store. It was unnerving. I didn’t like to go out there by myself when he was watching. Katie quit a week after that.”

  Debbie peered into Tanisha’s basket. “You have some good stuff there, but have you tried the mint-chocolate cheese?”

  Tanisha’s eyes glowed. “Mint-chocolate cheese? Tell me more.”

  “Follow me.” Debbie led Tee across the room to the specialty sweet cheeses.

  I stayed by the mustard. Debbie’s account of Jason wasn’t meshing with the awkward teen that Tanisha and I questioned at the market. Was he a goofy kid head over heels in love with an Amish girl? Or a crazy stalker? Had I been wrong about him? I hurried over to Debbie and Tanisha, my friend’s basket so full of cheese and other Amish foods she could barely lift it. Debbie grinned ear to ear as she rung up the sale.

  We loaded all the cheese Tanisha bought into my car. “I kind of feel bad that your visit has turned into a murder investigation.”

  Tanisha shrugged. “I don’t mind.”

  “Well, I do. Can you stay an hour longer than planned?”

  “Maybe,” she said with a grin. “What are we going to do?”

  “It’s a surprise. First we need to go back to the house and change into warmer clothes, and then we pick up the Troyer kids.”

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  Thomas and Naomi squealed with delight as they sledded down the hill on a toboggan at the back end of Harshberger’s campus.

  “You’re next,” I told Tanisha, who sat on a second toboggan. I gave her a running start. Her scream was three times louder than the children’s.

  Thomas and Naomi waited for her at the bottom of the hill, jumping up and down. “Tee! Tee!”

  I smiled. My nickname for Tanisha was much easier for them to pronounce than her given name.

  The trio climbed back up the hill, which wasn’t particularly high compared to the hills that Tanisha and I had sledded down as children. Knox County was much flatter than our hometown in Cuyahoga County. The only thing that would have made the afternoon better was if Ruth had agreed to come with us.

  “It’s your turn,” Thomas shouted and handed me the string of the toboggan.

  I took it. “Okay. Who wants to ride with me?”

  Naomi waved her hand in the air.

  “Let’s do it.” I positioned the toboggan to face downhill and sat on it. Naomi snuggled in front of my lap.

  “I’ll give you a push.” Thomas’s mittened hands dug into the upper part of my back.

  “Not too hard,” I told him. “Naomi is riding with me.”

  “Ya, not too hard,” Thomas assured me.

  I knew that Thomas had every intention of sending us catapulting down the hill. I wrapped my arms around Naomi. “Okay, go!”

  I could no longer feel Thomas’s hands on my back as we flew down the hill. Naomi squealed with delight. I heard myself squeal too. Faintly, I recognized the shouts of Tanisha and Thomas at the top of the hill, cheering us on.

  At the bottom, Naomi and I rolled off the sled in a heap. I tickled her and she giggled. We struggled to our feet and waved to Tee and Thomas above. My wave froze. Behind Tanisha, a man stood watching us—and it looked like Curt. “Tee!” I cried.

  She laughed and waved, but missed the urgency in my voice.

  Naomi clung to my arm. I picked up the rope to the toboggan, and we made our way up the hill. Because of the angle, I could no longer see Curt anymore. “Tee, there’s someone up there with you.”

  This time she heard me and glanced behind her. She looked back at me and held her hands aloft.

  Naomi and I reached the top of the hill, but Curt was nowhere to be seen.

  “I saw him too,” Naomi whispered.

  “Tee, can you keep sledding here with the kids? I thought I saw someone. I’m just going to go check to see if I can find him.”

  Thomas was already on the next toboggan cruising down the hill.

  Tanisha’s forehead crinkled. “Okay.”

  Curt’s footprints were easy to follow in the snow. The sledding hill stood behind the gym, and his footprints stopped at the edge of a large parking lot. Curt’s beat-up green pickup sat near the curb in front of the gymnasium doors. The sight of it made me sick to my stomach.

  I ducked behind the side of the building. Should I stay or should I go? I peeked around the corner. Brock, Curt’s best friend, leaned against the hood of the truck and his voice carried across the still winter air. “If I hear one more thing about that girl I’m going to puke. Seriously man, I can hardly stand you anymore.”

  That girl? Katie? Did Brock and Curt have something to do with her death?

  Curt stuck his hands deep into his jeans pockets. “I think she might be doing something right.”

  Brock sneered, an expression I found disconcerting on his smooth features, “’Course she is. Red is a goody two-shoes. Is that what you want to be too?”

  I took in a sharp breath. Red? They weren’t talking about Katie . . . they were talking about me.

  Curt winced. “If I could talk to her—”

  “That would take guts to go up a
nd talk to her, and you surely haven’t shown any of those lately. I don’t even understand you anymore, man.”

  Curt opened the door to the truck’s cab. “I need time to think.”

  Brock pointed a finger at him. “That right there is your problem.”

  “Let’s just leave, okay?” Curt said.

  “Fine by me,” Brock replied. He stomped around the vehicle to the passenger side of the truck and got in.

  Curt gunned the engine, and the duo peeled away—thankfully in the opposite direction of my hiding place.

  When I could no longer hear the truck, I ran back to Tee and the children.

  “Everything okay?” Tanisha asked when I made it back.

  I nodded, but some of the joy of the day had vanished.

  After we dropped off the children, I drove us back to the house so that Tanisha could pack for Cleveland. Inside the guest room, I felt an ache in my chest as I watched my friend gather her clothes. Even though she had only stayed with Becky and me for two days, her possessions were strewn all over the room. I smiled as I wondered how her roommates in Italy dealt with her messy habits. That was the only thing I didn’t miss about living with Tanisha.

  Tanisha chewed on her lower lip. “Chloe, after hearing what Debbie had to say, I don’t know if you should talk to Jason alone. He seemed harmless in person, but she made him out to be a nutcase.”

  “I won’t talk to him alone,” I promised. “I’ll ask Timothy if he will go with me.” If I can find him, I mentally added. I hadn’t heard from Timothy since he dropped me off at the house last night. I called and texted. No answer.

  Tanisha wadded up a T-shirt and threw it into her overnight bag. “What’s that face for?”

  I blinked. “What face?”

  She placed her hands on her hips. “Please. I’ve known you my entire life. When you said Timothy’s name, your face pinched. Is something wrong in paradise?”

  “No. Nothing is wrong. At least I don’t think so. He was just really shook up about what happened in the factory yesterday.”

  “Anyone would be.”

  “It’s more personal for Timothy.” I told her about Aaron’s accident.

  Her brow shot up. “This is the same Aaron that you were all upset about Becky cutting her hair over yesterday?”

  I nodded.

  She gave me a reassuring smile. “I have something to cheer you up—your Christmas gift,” Tanisha said.

  I smoothed the comforter on the bed. “If I’d known you were coming, I would have had something for you too.”

  She placed a hand on her hip. “Please. Those iTunes credits you e-mailed me were perfect. You don’t know how starved I am for music over there.” She rooted through her bag and removed a crumpled business-size envelope and handed it to me. “Merry Christmas.”

  I turned the envelope over in my hand. “This is my gift?”

  “Ignore the presentation. It’s the contents that count. Oh, and the gift is from my parents and me. It was my idea, but their money.”

  Now I was really curious. I opened the envelope and removed a hot pink sheet of paper, which read, “Merry Christmas. This document entitles you to one round-trip airfare to Milan, Italy, at a date of your choosing. With love, The Greens.”

  I let the page float to my lap. “I . . . I . . .”

  Tanisha jumped up and down. “You’re coming to Italy.” She squealed so loud she sounded much like Naomi on the toboggan.

  I didn’t say anything but read the paper over again just to make sure I understood it correctly.

  “You will come, won’t you? I’ve seen your new world, now I want you to see mine. This summer will be perfect. I will be off from teaching, and college here won’t be busy.” She stopped bouncing. “Why aren’t you saying anything?”

  “Tee, your family has already done so much for me. How can I accept this?”

  She sat next to me on the bed. “Because you have to. It’s a rule. You have to accept Christmas gifts. I read it somewhere.”

  I read the paper again and grinned. “Okay, I accept.”

  “Eeee!” She squished me against her in a mammoth hug. “I can’t wait for you to come. We will have so much fun. We can go to Venice and Rome. It will be amazing.”

  “It sounds amazing,” I agreed.

  She hopped off the bed and started to cram everything she had taken out of her bag in search of my gift back into it. “I wish I could stay longer, but I promised Mom that I’d come back home today. I fly back to Italy on New Year’s Eve.” She rolled her eyes. “What a fun way to spend a holiday—in an airport. Mom wants you to come up and spend my last couple of days with us. You should. You don’t have to work.”

  “I can’t. I need to be here for—”

  She grinned. “For Timothy. I get it. Just promise to spend your honeymoon in Italy, and I won’t gripe about not having more time to spend with you.”

  I snorted. “Honeymoon?”

  She smiled knowingly. “Cole never looked at me the way Timothy looks at you, and I never looked at him the way you look at Timothy. That engagement was doomed. We just fell into it because it was the logical next step after dating for such a long time. With you and Timothy it will be different.” She jabbed her fists into her hips. “I’d better be your maid of honor.”

  I leaned forward and hugged her. “I promise that if I ever get married, you will be my maid of honor.”

  “Excellent. I’m going to start dress shopping in Milan. They have some gorgeous options there.”

  “Way out of your price range.” I pointed at her basket. “Especially now that you spent half of your salary on cheese.”

  She pulled a brightly colored stocking cap onto her head. “You can’t buy just one.” She picked up her overnight bag. “Tell Becky and Timothy I said good-bye, okay? And tell Grandfather Zook that I want him to adopt me.”

  I laughed. “I will.”

  “And I expect you to go find that handsome carpenter the moment I leave and give him a great big hug.”

  My smile wavered. “I’ll try to do that too.”

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  After Tanisha was gone, I retrieved my cell phone from my purse and called Timothy again. No answer. I knew I shouldn’t be too concerned. Many times when Timothy was on a job with all the power saws and nail guns going off, he didn’t hear his cell phone ring. However after last night, a kernel of anxiety plagued the corner of my mind. Was he avoiding me? I left him a voice mail early that morning telling him Chief Rose wanted us to visit Billy at the Mount Vernon hospital, but had he gotten the message?

  I shook it off. If I couldn’t reach Timothy, Chief Rose was the next best option. After the factory disaster, I planned to keep the chief abreast of all my movements.

  “Chief Rose,” her sharp voice barked into my ear. It lacked all of its typical humor. She was still angry and wanted me to know it.

  “I have some information for you,” I said, keeping my voice businesslike.

  “What is it, Humphrey?”

  “I spoke to Jason Catcher today.”

  “Did you sit on him?” Sarcasm leaked into her voice.

  “No, and neither did Tanisha.”

  “Good to know. I had him down at the station for a couple of hours yesterday. I assume he told you about how Billy a.k.a. Walter was going to pay him for his trouble over the box.”

  “He did. Do you believe his story?”

  “I don’t see any reason not to as long as Walter corroborates it. I’ve seen folks do a lot worse things for five hundred bucks.”

  I was sure she had. “He also told me that he and Katie Lambright were friends, so much so that he gave her a ride home from the cheese shop on the square several times a week.”

  “Interesting,” she said, her voice holding a friendlier quality. “What else you got?”

  “He also alluded that the Lambrights’ home life wasn’t good.”

  “Abuse?” The sound of her voice had turned sharp again.

&nbs
p; “Maybe. I’m going to talk to Anna again about it.”

  “Be careful. If the girls were being abused, too many questions will make her clam up. I will say that when Troyer and I left the Lambrights’ house after delivering the news about Katie, I was happy to go. It was a cold place.”

  I shivered. “After talking to Jason, we stopped by the cheese shop.” I went on to tell her what Debbie said.

  She grunted. “I’m glad Debbie talked to you. Your old Amish whisperer tricks are back.”

  Debbie had talked more to Tanisha, but I didn’t bother to correct her.

  She continued. “That’s interesting, though, Debbie’s take on Jason Catcher. I will stop by the shop later and talk to Mr. Umble about him.”

  “I didn’t talk to Jason as long as I would’ve liked. His coworker thought he was slacking, so he said he would talk to me again after he got off work. I promised to meet him in the market’s parking lot at three.”

  “Whoa, Humphrey, you are telling me about this before it happens?” Her voice grew stronger, bolder. “To what do I owe this honor?”

  I frowned. “Do you want to go with me to talk to him?”

  I heard tapping, as if the police chief drummed her fingers on a table. “If I show up, he won’t say a word. I have to admit, Humphrey, you got some good information here. As much as you and Troyer annoy me, I’m impressed with your ability to convince the Amish to trust you. Something, I’ve unfortunately never been able to do.” She paused. “Is your friend Tanisha going with you? If this Jason kid really is a nut job, you shouldn’t be alone with him.”

  “Tanisha went back home. If you won’t go, I plan to ask Timothy to come with me.”

  “Good. Hold on a minute.”

  I heard the clicking of computer keys.

  “Catcher has a speeding ticket from two years ago. Other than that he has nothing on his record. That doesn’t mean he’s innocent. I don’t trust everything Debbie Stutzman says. As we both know she can lie with the best of them, but I don’t see why she would bother to make this up unless it’s to aggravate you. It is partly your fault that she spent those few days in jail, so I wouldn’t doubt that she holds a nasty grudge against you.”