by Beth Wiseman
“I don’t see anything unusual,” he said.
Martha tapped her pencil against her ledger. She wasn’t sure why she’d brought them, but it felt good to hug something to her chest as she contemplated this strange mystery.
“We could start with what they have in common.” She turned to the back of her ledger and wrote Lot Number 28 at the top of the last page.
Eli was looking at her skeptically, but he didn’t argue.
“So, what do they have in common?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I certainly don’t know. I’m not a furniture expert.”
“They’re all made of northern red oak.”
She wrote Northern red oak in the ledger. “Were there any other pieces sold today made of the same type of wood?”
“Certainly. It’s a common enough wood for furniture making.”
“But Mr. and Mrs. Strange only bought these three pieces.”
Eli smiled, but he didn’t respond to her names for the oddly behaving couple. He rubbed a hand over his jawline, which was beginning to sport a five-o’clock shadow. Did he have to shave every day? Did he wish he’d married when he was younger? Did he iron his own clothes?
Why was she even wondering such things?
She returned her attention to the furniture. “They’re all rather large.”
“True.”
“Lots of large furniture sold today, I suppose.”
“Indeed.”
“What are we missing?”
Eli shrugged. “They’re all made by Jacob Weaver, obviously. It was his lot.”
“Didn’t you sell his shop items several months ago?”
“Nine months ago, I believe. Right before you moved here.”
She was surprised he would remember that she’d been there six months. Some days she wondered if he even knew he had a bookkeeper. Some days he would walk past her desk with barely a word and they wouldn’t speak to each other at all. It was strange that they spent so much time in close proximity but rarely talked. “So you sold his shop pieces earlier in the year, and these pieces—”
“Were from his home.”
Martha wrote Large items and Made by Jacob Weaver in her ledger. They now had three clues. She couldn’t see how they helped. This wasn’t working out the way mysteries did in the books she had borrowed from the local library. Her love of reading was another thing that irritated her aenti Irene, though actually that list would have been quite long if she wrote it in the ledger. That idea bothered her less than it probably should have.
“It’s an odd situation for certain,” Eli said as he removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “However, I can’t see that anything wrong or illegal has been done.”
“Ya, but—”
“The items have been paid for.”
“With a cashier’s check,” she reminded him.
“Which is still good money last I checked.”
“I know it is. The point is that it’s unusual—”
“We should pack everything up and ship it. We do have a shipping address. Don’t we? For . . .” He paused for a moment and then with an impish look in his eyes, continued. “For Mr. and Mrs. Strange?”
“That’s another point. They didn’t put a name on the shipping instructions—only an address.”
“Which is really all we need. If we send these three pieces to the address you have, then we’ll have fulfilled our part of the agreement.” Eli slapped his hat on his head, looking quite pleased with himself.
“What about our mystery?” Martha asked.
“Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved.” Eli gestured toward the outer door, and they both began walking in that direction.
Martha waited until they stepped outside. It was only a few minutes past six, but already the sun was seeking the horizon. The fall evening air was cool and crisp. Martha thought of Ohio and her husband and the life she had left behind. She was pierced momentarily by the sadness and loss of it.
Eli, misunderstanding her sudden melancholy, patted her shoulder in an offhanded, clumsy manner. “Don’t let it bother you. We can’t always know another person’s reasons or intent.”
She shook off her memories. “But mysteries should be solved.”
“I suppose, though some, I’m afraid, are meant to remain a mystery. Don’t look so troubled. Think of it this way—Mr. and Mrs. Strange have given us something to wonder about when we can’t sleep at night.”
Which might have been the most ridiculous line of reasoning Martha had ever heard. She hurried across the parking lot and found her horse and buggy, climbed in, and pulled out onto the two lane. Her aenti’s haus wasn’t far. She almost wished it were a longer ride, as what she had to face back home would be much less peaceful than riding behind a black mare on an Indiana road as day turned to night.
Chapter Five
Eli watched Martha hurry toward her buggy. He had to admit, there was more to the woman than met the eye. Possibly, he’d been so overwhelmed by the potted ferns and coatracks and candy baskets that he’d failed to consider the person.
Martha was the rarity in an Amish community—no children and now no husband. He knew very little about her. Only that the bishop had asked that he give her a job. Her aenti, Irene King, was a member of their district. She was getting on in years and needed help around the house, though she’d leased out the acreage to one of the young men in their church. She could have sold the whole thing, pocketed the money, and gone to live with her husband’s people in Sarasota.
He’d heard Irene’s answer to that idea. “Can you see me riding a bicycle and playing shuffleboard? No danki. I was born here, and I plan to die here.”
Irene was always quick to speak her mind, and it was true that she had a nagging tone. He wondered how the two women were getting along, not that it was any of his business. He’d done what the bishop asked, given Martha Beiler a job. He couldn’t be expected to look after her beyond that.
She was a perceptive thing. He’d give her that. She missed very little, and she wasn’t shy about voicing her opinion—perhaps that was a trait she’d inherited from her aenti. In every other way, Martha was the opposite from Irene.
Where Irene was painfully thin and fragile, Martha looked robustly healthy.
Irene wore a constant frown, but he’d rarely seen Martha when she wasn’t smiling.
Irene stuck strictly to the Ordnung, seeming to revel in its most extreme interpretation. He’d heard Martha say, “I’m just going to plug my itty-bitty book light into the socket here so it will be charged when I get home.”
For what it was worth, Eli shared Martha’s perspective. The Ordnung was meant to guide them, not bind their hands and hearts.
Eli probably should have gone home, but in truth he wasn’t very hungry yet, and there was plenty of paper work to be completed in his office. A part of him longed to be outside in the fresh fall air, but they’d just recorded their biggest auction day of the year. He could enjoy the festival during the weekend—with its candied apples, cloggers, and chain-saw sculptors. He’d relax better if he wasn’t worried about a pile of paper work waiting on his desk.
He spent the next hour working through his in-box. Martha was good about separating things into folders—colored folders, of course. She’d decided on blue for new contracts that needed his approval. Red for any invoice that needed his signature—auctioneers, employee time sheets, or supplies. Green was for correspondence he had received. He would jot a few notes down on top of the letter, and she would handwrite a response. Her handwriting was certainly better than his.
The yellow folder was Martha’s Employee Suggestions folder, another of her ideas. She would sometimes clip articles and put them inside. Occasionally another employee would stop by the office with a suggestion and she would fill out a suggestion form for them. He picked up the top sheet. Janie over in the food booth thought they should have fans mounted up high on the wall. That wasn’t a bad idea. He’d see
n something similar done in a few of the vendor booths. He scribbled Remind me in May at the top and placed it back into the folder.
Fortunately there were no clipped articles. The last one Martha had given him suggested having a company dog or cat that employees could stop by and dote on if they became stressed. The article claimed that employees who had access to an animal at work actually increased their productivity. Martha had even added a note that said animals adopted from their local shelter were free. Not that the shots, food, or care of the animal was free. Besides, most of his employees had plenty of pets at home, though they generally stayed in the barn.
Probably Martha didn’t. Had she had animals at her home back in Ohio? Had Irene forbid her to bring them? Eli didn’t know and besides, what difference did it make? He was her boss, not her buddy. That was an uncharitable thought, and it was possible that he was reading too much into her requests.
She was a person trying to find her way through a difficult time in her life. Would a kitten help? He honestly didn’t know.
He closed the folder and walked back through her office, avoiding the coatrack and turning off lights. As was his custom, he exited through the auction barn. As he headed that direction, Martha’s words tumbled round and round in his mind. Mysteries should be solved.
He supposed she was right.
He crossed the auction floor and stopped in front of Lot Number 28. Standing in front of the three pieces of furniture, studying them, he didn’t hear George Hasley walk up beside him.
“Scared me, George. Make some noise next time.”
“I was whistling, but I guess you didn’t hear me.”
“No. I was trying to figure out a mystery.”
“Something wrong with the furniture?”
“Only that someone desperately wanted it, and they were willing to pay too much to get it.”
“Doesn’t sound like a problem exactly.”
“I suppose it isn’t.”
George leaned against his broom and motioned toward the furniture. “You plan on shipping it out tomorrow?”
“Ya.” Eli got down on his knees, which was no problem even though he’d recently turned fifty. No, the problem was getting back up. He ran his hand across the top of the coffee table and then down the sides.
“You looking for a secret panel?”
“I don’t know what I’m looking for. Want to help me turn this over?”
“Sure thing.”
Eli pushed himself up, using the table as leverage. Then he and George turned the table over.
“Huh. Looks like someone scratched on it,” George said.
“Except those don’t look like scratches to me.”
“No. Looks more like a map.”
Chapter Six
Martha sat reading her book, doing her best to ignore her aenti Irene’s glare.
“Must be nice to have no darning that needs done.” Irene stabbed a needle through the heel of a sock that had to be older than she was.
“You’re right. It is.”
“Though we are expecting three babies before Christmas.”
“Real blessings.”
“Blessings that will need blankets and booties and sweaters.”
Martha doubted that. Babies born into an Amish church were showered with gifts—not to mention the items used by the previous newborn were often still in good condition. No, she didn’t think any baby would be suffering because she chose to read instead of knit. But she kept that thought to herself. She was learning that it was an exercise in futility to try to change Irene’s opinion about a thing.
Her aenti’s attitude did continue to puzzle her. It was another one of those mysteries that she wondered about when she couldn’t sleep at night. Remembering Eli’s words made her smile. Obviously he had not read any Julianne Deering or Lorena McCourtney or Mary Ellis—all fine Christian mystery authors whose books their local library carried. If he had, he would understand the importance of solving a mystery.
She laughed at something in her book and turned the page.
“Humph. I don’t know how you can be laughing when there is so much hurt in the world.” Irene carefully folded the darned socks and pulled out her knitting needles. The yarn she pulled from a basket was black and gray. Martha hoped she was not using it to make a baby gift.
Martha read.
Irene rocked and sighed dramatically from time to time. Finally she said, “When I think of poor Charity and Joseph, and how they have suffered.”
Martha stared at the page in front of her, but rereading the words wasn’t helping. She simply could not focus on the book in her hands. She’d completely lost the thread of the story, and to think that two pages ago she had thought she had the mystery figured out. Sighing, she carefully placed her marker into the book and set it aside.
“Would you like some herbal tea?”
“I suppose, not that I expect it to help any. My arthritis will be the death of me yet.”
Martha had never read of someone dying from arthritis, but she didn’t think saying so would cheer up Irene. Instead she went into the kitchen, made the tea, and arranged some of the cookies she’d bought on her way home onto a plate.
Irene accepted the tea, but sniffed when Martha set the plate of cookies between them.
“One would think that a woman with your figure would learn to resist sweets, especially at this hour.”
Martha bit into the peanut-butter chocolate-chip cookie, closed her eyes, and relished the taste. When she opened her eyes, Irene was once again knitting.
The Mysterious Ways of Aenti Irene.
It might make a good book title. Irene was only twelve years older, being Martha’s mother’s youngest sister. She’d had five children, all of whom were scattered about the country—Colorado, Kentucky, and even Maine. No doubt they had invited Irene to come and live with them when her husband passed. But Irene was intent on staying put, or it was possible that she simply enjoyed being unhappy. Another letter had come the week before from her husband’s family who were now living down in Sarasota.
She’d read it aloud, and the description of beaches, cottages, and ice-cream shops sounded quite pleasant to Martha. Irene’s reply had been, “They will probably all suffer skin cancer, though I pray it isn’t so.”
She wasn’t a bad-looking woman with a slim figure, good skin, and few wrinkles except for the frown lines around her mouth. It was her demeanor that was the problem.
While Martha had been studying her, she’d been complaining about the young man who was leasing her land. As far as Martha could tell, Simon Miller was hardworking and courteous.
Irene paused in her monologue to sip the nearly cold tea. Martha took advantage of the moment and jumped in with the question that had been on the tip of her tongue all night. “What do you know of Jacob’s woodworking?”
“Jacob Weaver? God bless his soul. To think that man was churning out furniture this time last year and now he can’t even speak.”
“So his woodwork was well regarded?”
“My yes, though Jacob didn’t let pride enter his heart. No, like many of my generation, we understand and abide by the ways of the Ordnung as well as the admonitions in Scripture . . . ‘Pride goeth before destruction, a haughty spirit before a fall.’ Those are words your generation would be wise to heed.”
Martha knew that once Irene started quoting Scripture, she could become quite carried away with it. While she appreciated hearing a Good Word, she had specific questions she needed answered.
“Was any of your furniture made by Jacob?”
“Lands no. We were always careful with our money and never bought anything new. Used is good enough.”
“Eli auctioned the last of Jacob and Charity’s things today.”
“A real shame.”
“Someone purchased the large items, but paid more than they were worth.”
“How people use their money is a mystery to me.”
“They paid more than they needed to
in order to win the bid. It was very strange.”
“I’m not sure you should be working at that place. It was the bishop’s idea more than mine. I suppose he was worried about the financial burden you would be on me.”
Martha happened to know that Bishop Abram had been more concerned about her spending too much time cooped up with Irene. “Gotte makes all sorts—apples and plums and lemons. I can tell by your sunny attitude that you’re an apple.” It went without saying that he considered her aenti a lemon. Martha had thanked him for the job recommendation and gone down to apply that day. The next week she’d begun working at the auction house.
“But why would someone pay more than something is worth? What could it be about Jacob’s furniture that would cause a man to do so?”
“Englisch or Amish?”
“Dressed like Englisch.”
“Which means nothing. Children these days. Did I tell you that I saw the younger Miller boy texting while he was driving his buggy? Irresponsible if you ask me . . .”
Martha tuned out her aenti and tried to figure out how to get the conversation back on track, but what specifically did she think Irene could tell her? It wasn’t like she had a picture to show her of the man in the ball cap or the woman in black. But there had to be something about those specific pieces of furniture, something that would cause a person to spend more than they were worth.
Irene continued to give examples of youth who had gone astray in their community, though she paused now and again to sample the cookies on the tray.
“Then after Peter had left, Jacob had all of these orders to fill and no one to help him. He was in a real pickle, I’ll tell you that. And all because youth do not understand the consequence—”
Martha’s mind belatedly caught up with what Irene had said.
“Who was Peter?”
“Jacob’s apprentice.” Her aenti paused in her knitting to shoot her a reproving look. “If you paid attention to me even half as well as you pay attention to those fairy-tale stories of yours, you wouldn’t have to ask me to repeat myself.”
It was a fair criticism. Martha silently vowed to do better.