“What did he tell you about her?”
“Oh, that she was very pretty. All boys think that the girls they like are the prettiest girls in the world. She worked at the cheese shop on the square.” Billy must have noticed the change in my expression. “What?”
I shook my head. “Anything else?”
“He hated her parents and said they are the reason he and this girl could never be together.” He sighed. “I thought it was normal teenage boy hormones, so I let him talk about it at my shop to blow off some steam.”
“Did he say anything in particular about the girl’s parents?”
“Just that they were really strict.” He licked his lips again. “Jason thought the dad might have hit the girl before.”
I closed my eyes for a moment. “And you didn’t tell anyone about this?”
“How could I? I would risk—”
“Revealing your own secret,” I finished for him.
Billy’s face flushed as red as his beard.
“Did you suggest to Jason to tell the police about the possible abuse?”
“Yes, but he said the girl would be angry with him if he did.”
I turned to go. “I hope you feel better, Billy. I really do, and I hope for Timothy’s sake you can put your life back together. He cares about you.”
His eyes watered. “I know. He’s one of the good guys. Don’t ever forget that.”
“I won’t,” I promised, and took the two steps to the door.
“I need to tell you one more thing.”
I placed my hand on the doorknob and half-turned his direction. “What’s that?”
“I’m not a natural redhead.”
“I already know that.” I gave him a small smile. “Even if it’s not natural, we are still the only two bright redheads in town.”
“Thank you,” he whispered. Another tear slid down his cheek.
When I stepped out of Billy’s room, Tyler Hart was gone. Timothy sat in a plastic chair, his head against his hands. It was the same posture I’d found him in an hour before. I held out my hand to him. “Come on. The best way to help Billy is to find out who really killed Katie Lambright. We have a meeting.”
He titled his head up and took my hand. “With who?”
“The orange kid,” I replied.
Timothy’s brow furrowed. “Orange kid?”
I looped my arm through his. “I’ll explain in the car.”
Chapter Twenty-Nine
Since the Quills’ home was on the way to Appleseed Marketplace, Timothy and I drove separately to drop off my car. In the driveway, I hopped out of my Bug and climbed into Timothy’s truck. As we drove the twenty minutes into town I filled him in on the morning’s events.
Timothy took his eyes off the road for a second. “It seems like you had quite a busy day while I was at the hospital. How did you know where to find me?”
I blushed.
He shot a glance over at me again. “What?”
“I used my key and went into your house. I’m sorry. I was worried when I called Uriah and Danny and neither one knew where you were. How did Danny not know that you didn’t spend the night at your house?”
“He got home late from the stables. He probably thought I was asleep in my room.” He tapped the steering wheel. “So you broke into my house to look for me?”
Heat rushed to my face. “I . . . you gave me a key for emergencies. I didn’t know where you were. No one did. I’m sorry.” I clenched my hands in my lap. “It won’t happen again.”
He smiled. “Chloe, don’t apologize. Actually, I’m flattered that you were that worried about me.”
I gave a sigh of relief.
“I’ve never had anyone care about me as much as you do. It’s one of the reasons that I love you,” he said simply.
There they were—the three little words that could change a person’s life. He said them so effortlessly as we drove down the snow-covered country road. I love you. That was it. My automatic response should have been to say, I love you too.” But I didn’t. The words caught in my throat.
Then again, Timothy had said, It’s one of the reasons that I love you. Was that the same as I love you? I worried my lip because I wasn’t sure. I could say that sunshine was one of the reasons I loved summer, but I wasn’t in love with summer. Was Timothy lumping me in with love of summer? Timothy didn’t seem to expect or want a response, and I didn’t know if I should feel relieved by this or concerned. I worried about this the rest of the short ride to the market.
As promised, Officer Nottingham’s patrol car was parked off to the side of the gas station across the street. Nottingham wasn’t inside, but close by and watching our every move. I pointed him out to Timothy.
He nodded. “That was a good idea to call Greta and give her a heads-up.”
“I think we both learned our lesson when it comes to what to tell and what not to tell Chief Rose.”
Timothy grimaced. “Right.”
A snow-covered picnic table sat at one end of the market only a few feet from the dumpsters. In the warmer weather, market employees could take their smoking breaks there. Was it worth the smoke to have to stand by a dumpster to enjoy it? Jason stood nearby, fidgeting. He wore a brown, shapeless coat and gray gloves. Despite the cold, he didn’t wear a hat.
“That’s him,” I said.
“He doesn’t look like he could hurt anyone,” Timothy commented.
“That’s what I thought until I talked to Debbie.”
Timothy parked the pickup a few feet away from where Jason stood. Both of us got out. Jason scowled. “Who’s this? Where’s your friend?”
“Tanisha had to go home. This is Timothy.”
“I didn’t know a guy was coming.”
“Is that a problem?” I asked.
Jason shrugged. “It doesn’t matter to me.”
I folded my arms. “Jason, we need your help in finding Katie’s killer.”
“I told you in the market. I don’t know anything. If I did, I would have told the police. Katie was my friend, and I miss her every day.” His eyes teared up. “I still can’t believe she’s gone.”
I adjusted my gloves on my wrists. “Katie never turned you down for a ride home?”
His brow creased. “N-no, she didn’t.”
His hesitation told me he was lying.
“What did Mr. Umble say to you when he asked you to stop hanging around the store?”
The stock boy appeared stricken. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“One of Katie’s coworkers at the cheese shop said you were stalking Katie, and Mr. Umble asked you to stay away from the shop. Is that true?”
“No, I mean, yes, I mean, no.” He raised his hands. “I wasn’t stalking Katie. Mr. Umble did ask me to stay away from the shop. He’s a grouchy, old Amish man. He thought I was distracting her from her work.”
“I believe that. But Katie’s coworkers said that she acted afraid when you were around.”
“That’s what the Amish are saying?” His face turned an impossible shade of red. “All they wanted to do was to keep Katie and me apart. They didn’t understand our friendship.” His eyes pleaded with me. “I did not stalk her.”
“She quit her job there to avoid you.”
He balled his fists and got into my face. “That’s not true. If this is what I stayed after work to talk to you about, I’m out of here. I don’t have to take this.”
Timothy stepped between us. “You might want to think twice before you do something you will regret.”
“What do you know about it?”
Timothy stared him down. “A lot more than you do.”
“Katie stopped working at the cheese shop over six months ago, but you never mentioned that. If she stopped, did the rides home stop too?” I asked.
Jason’s shoulders sagged. “I didn’t mean to scare her like that, but I wasn’t stalking her. I was guarding her.”
“Guarding her from what?” Timothy asked.<
br />
Jason examined his boots.
“Jason,” I said in a gentler tone. “If you believe that Katie needed protecting from someone, we need to know who that he or she is. That person is most likely the one who killed her.”
He brought his head back up, and he whisked the tears away from his eyes, streaking the lens of his glasses in the process. “I watched her whenever I could to make sure that the guy was never around.” His face flushed. “She should have been grateful I took such good care of her. Instead she put herself within his reach. Now she’s dead.”
I felt cold, and it wasn’t from the freezing air temperatures. “Who?”
“Caleb King, her ex-boyfriend. If you are looking for the killer, look at him. The guy was awful to her. Treated her more like property than a person. He hit her once, right in front of me because she accepted a ride and he was mad about it.” His head dropped to look at his shoes again. “I just stood there and didn’t do a thing about it. She broke up with him the next day. I vowed I would never let him hurt her again, but I failed. I wouldn’t have treated her like that. That may be the Amish way, but it’s not the right away.”
Timothy balled his fists at his sides. “It is not the Amish way.”
Jason shook his head as if Timothy had no idea what he was talking about. Obviously, Jason didn’t know that Timothy grew up Amish.
“What did you mean when you said she ran right into his reach?” I asked.
“She left the cheese shop to take an office job at Garner Dutch Furniture Warehouse. That’s where Caleb works.”
“Did she tell you why she took that job?”
He turned up his collar. “No. We weren’t speaking then.”
“Why not?”
“She said that she and Nathan were planning to marry and it was her time to be baptized. She had to give up the things of her rumspringa, including our friendship, and be more Amish.” He snorted.
Behind Jason, I saw Officer Nottingham casually making his way across the parking lot. Timothy saw him too.
“Katie left the cheese shop six months ago. You haven’t spoken to her since then?”
He dug the toe of his boot into a small pile of gray slush. “No.”
I tried to gauge if Jason was lying to me again.
“Mr. Catcher,” Nottingham’s voice interrupted our conversation.
Jason jumped, startled when he heard the officer’s voice only a few feet behind him.
Nottingham rested his right hand on the butt of his gun. “I hope you’re keeping yourself out of trouble.”
Jason dug his hands deeper into his jeans pockets. “What are you doing here?”
“We’d like to ask you a few more questions about what you were doing at the Gundy barn. Can you come with me?” Nottingham asked.
Jason lunged at me. “You set me up!”
I jerked back. “I didn’t. I didn’t know that the police wanted to talk to you again.”
Timothy stepped in front of me, and Nottingham clamped a hand onto Jason’s shoulder. “It’s just a few questions, Jason. You’re not under arrest, but if you keep up that attitude toward Ms. Humphrey, you will be.”
“Fine, I’ll go.” Jason shot me one more parting glare as he followed Nottingham across the street to his squad car.
“That went well,” I said as Timothy and I walked back to his truck. It was only four o’clock, but already nearing dusk. I reminded myself that the winter solstice was over and the days grew longer with an upward march to summer.
Timothy just shook his head. “Do you think he did it?”
I frowned. “I don’t know, but I do think that we need to talk to Nathan and Caleb again.”
“Agreed. If Caleb is as awful as Jason says he is, I want to be there when you talk to him.”
I cocked my head. “What do you know about him?”
Timothy shrugged. “I saw him at church when I was Amish and also around town. He always seemed to have a lot of other Amish guys around him who followed his lead. There is too much of a gap in our ages for us to overlap in school much. He couldn’t have been more than eight when I finished eighth grade.”
“And Nathan?”
“I know him just as well. He was always in the gang of Amish guys with Caleb.”
At the truck, I placed a hand on Timothy’s arm. “The day we found Katie, Caleb and Nathan were at your farm.”
Timothy shrank back. “You never told me that before. Why were they there?”
“They were there with Nathan’s father.”
“Levi?”
“That’s right. Levi took some of Grandfather Zook’s woodworking projects on consignment to sell at the warehouse. The warehouse’s wagon was loaded with furniture made by craftsmen from all over the district, and Levi said something that I just remembered.”
Timothy leaned forward. “What?”
His closeness distracted me for a second. “He said, ‘They are in an awful fight over a girl.’”
“Katie?”
I nodded.
He opened the passenger door to the pickup for me. “I guess we need to find out how bad that fight became.”
I climbed inside. “And if Katie was a victim of being caught in the middle.”
Chapter Thirty
I wrapped my hand around the shoulder strap of my seat belt. “Becky went into work early this morning. She’s home by now.” I bit my lip, wondering if she was still mad at me for overreacting about her hair.
“Great. We need a break. Why don’t I go pick up Aaron and we can go get ice cream with him and Becky.”
I shivered. “We just spent a half hour standing outside, freezing to death. It’s too cold for ice cream.”
“It’s never too cold for ice cream,” Timothy assured me. “But we can go to Rita’s Coffee Haus in Mount Vernon, and you can have hot cocoa.”
“It sounds nice, but there’s something I need to tell you about your sister.”
He glanced at me. “I don’t like the sound of that. Is there something wrong with her community service or her probation?”
“No. She’s doing great in both. Her last report was excellent.”
“Then, what is it?”
I swallowed. “She cut her hair.”
His face fell. “Oh.”
“She’s not Amish anymore,” I said in Becky’s defense. “And there’s no reason she shouldn’t cut her hair.”
“She wouldn’t cut it if she thought she’d go back,” he said. “Have my parents seen her?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Daed is not going to be happy. I know he wants Becky to return home and be Amish.” He shot a glance at me. “He wants that for both of us.”
I pulled on my seat belt’s shoulder strap again, holding it away from my neck. “I know.”
“Since so much time has passed for me, he has accepted my decision as permanent. I left the Amish way nearly eight years ago. Becky isn’t so far removed from it that she couldn’t go back. By cutting her hair, though, she is telling the whole world her decision is final.”
The whole world, including Aaron, I thought.
As if he could read my mind, Timothy asked, “Does Aaron know?”
“I don’t know. He might have seen her at Young’s today. I don’t know if he was working.”
“He wasn’t. He told me he had the day off.”
“That’s a relief. I would hate for him to learn about Becky’s haircut at work. He’s bound to have a reaction.”
Timothy wrung his hands on the steering wheel. “He needs to know. It’s a statement as much to him as it is to my father.”
“I know.”
Timothy sighed. “I told him something like this might happen. That my sister is young and doesn’t know what she wants out of her life.”
“Becky is in another place than Aaron is. He’s ready to marry. Clearly, she is not.” I let go of the shoulder strap and it snapped back into place against my heavy winter coat.
Timothy frowned. “Sh
e needs to be the one who tells him, and she needs to be clear. I won’t deliver the message. I don’t want to be trapped between my sister and my best friend.”
“I know she cares about him but maybe not as much as he cares about her.”
Timothy parked the truck in my driveway. “That’s what I’m afraid of.”
I placed a hand on his arm. “Are you mad at her?”
He shifted the truck into park. “No. How could I be? I left too. More than anyone I know what a difficult transition this has been for Becky. You being here made it easier for her. I cringe to think where she might have ended up if you hadn’t come along last summer and saved her from Brock and Curt. The moment you took her in, I knew you weren’t like most Englisch girls. You weren’t like most girls period.” He laughed. “I fell in love with you the moment I saw you pinch your finger while trying to put your bed frame together when you first moved to Appleseed Creek. You were so cute trying to line up the bars and then insisting that you could do it yourself when I offered to help.”
“I eventually did put it together,” I said while thoughts ran through my head. I fell in love with you. There was no question there. There was no way my brain could twist that phrase into meaning less, into something it was not.
I love you too, I wanted to say, but something held me back.
Timothy smiled and leaned over and kissed me, erasing all the thoughts racing through my head. He touched my face. “Okay if we do hot cocoa another night?”
“Of course.”
Timothy nodded. “Let’s go inside. I want to see my sister’s new hairdo.”
“Okay,” I said a little breathless.
I opened the front door and found Becky on the couch examining her appearance in a hand mirror. Her white-blonde hair fell straight and smooth to the shoulder and side-swept bangs crossed her forehead. In her jeans and teal, cable knit sweater, no one would ever know that she spent most of her life wearing plain dresses and a prayer cap. She dropped the mirror into her lap. “You’re home! I was wondering where you were. Did Tanisha leave?”
I removed my coat and hung it on the hall tree by the door. “She had to go back to Cleveland to spend some time with her family before returning to Italy.”
Timothy stepped through the door.
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