Murder, Plain and Simple

by Isabella Alan

  “Absolutely not. She would not have done that without telling me. If there was another key to Running Stitch, I would know about it.” Martha scowled into her coffee. “You must have left the door unlocked.”

  “I didn’t,” I said, but doubt crept into my voice. Had I locked the door? I thought that I had, but I couldn’t remember with one hundred percent certainty. I remembered letting Oliver into the backyard for a potty break after the quilters left. Did I lock it when he came back inside the store? I must have.

  “Did Joseph and his killer enter the store together?” Anna asked.

  “What?” I asked.

  “Did they go in together or separately? Who was there first?”

  “I—I don’t know,” I said.

  “How did Joseph die?” Martha sipped her coffee.

  The room grew warmer, and I placed my mug of coffee back on the end table. It was too hot to hold in this humidity. The Amish didn’t air-condition their homes, and little breeze came through the screen door and open windows. I didn’t want to tell them the fabric cutters they teased me about had been used as the murder weapon.

  “Gude mariye!” Sarah Leham’s shrill voice rang through the front door. Despite Rachel’s obvious misgivings about the nosy quilter, I couldn’t be more relieved to see her.

  The screen door smacked against its frame as Sarah hurried into the room, carrying an enormous basket. She set the basket by the door. “I didn’t know which project we’d be working on, so I brought everything.”

  Martha arched an eyebrow. “Since the quilt frame is stuck in the shop, we will be piecing today.”

  Sarah grinned. “Gut. I brought two projects that need piecing. It’s always so difficult to decide which one to work on. My husband says that I should stick to one project to the end, but when I think of a new pattern or see a new bolt of fabric, I want to jump into a fresh project right away. My husband says I’m far too impulsive for an Amish woman, but that is just my way.” She took a breath.

  Martha pursed her lips. “Your husband is right. If you start something, you should finish it.”

  Sarah shrugged off Martha’s criticism as Anna stepped into the room. “Fix your kaffi and find a place. The Lord said idle hands can lead to trouble.”

  Sarah picked up a cup of coffee and added cream and sugar. “I’m glad you called this meeting, Anna. There is so much we need to discuss. I think we should get right to it.”

  I didn’t like the sound of that.

  Rachel kept her head bent down over her fabric pieces. Oliver belly-crawled over to her and lay on her right foot. Oliver loved feet almost as much as he feared birds. I smiled to myself as I remembered the way he would lick Ryan’s toes, much to my former fiancé’s disdain. At the time, I had been embarrassed by Oliver’s behavior. Now I relished the memory.

  Sarah settled on one end of the sofa closest to the coffee tray. “What makes you smile, Angie?”

  It sounded like an innocent question, but considering its source, I doubted it. “Oliver likes Abram and Rachel. I’m glad he’s making friends. It’s been a tough adjustment for him.”

  Martha glanced at Oliver, who had fallen asleep the second his head hit Rachel’s big toe. “He’s a dog. Why would he need adjusting?”

  I bit my tongue. Literally.

  Anna sat on a small easy chair and began to remove dozens of two-inch-by-one-inch lavender, cornflower blue, and cream diamond fabric from her basket. “Angie sees her dog as a member of the family.”

  Martha pulled four shoofly quilt squares from her basket. They were already pieced together. She began pinning the squares to one another, so that she could sew them together. “With managing Running Stitch these last two years, I haven’t had much time to spend with animals.”

  My brow creased. Was that what this was about? Martha was upset about working at the quilt shop? I opened my mouth to ask, but Sarah was much faster with the tongue. “I can imagine that caring for the shop while Eleanor was ill was difficult. You must be happy Angie is here now to take that burden. Why, I can see her making all kinds of improvements. Maybe Angie being here will attract even more Englischers to the shop.” She turned to me. “Surely, you will know what appeals to them better than we would.”

  Martha concentrated on the pieces of cloth in her lap, but I didn’t get the impression that Sarah’s declaration brought her much comfort.

  Anna gathered up her pieces and pulled up the bottom of her black apron so they were cradled into its fold. “Sarah, switch places with me, so that I can instruct Angie how to piece.”

  Sarah stood without complaint and moved her enormous basket beside the chair Anna vacated.

  The older woman sat next to me on the sofa and laid small diamond pieces out on the cushion between us.

  I picked up two of the diamonds and placed one on top of the other. They were perfectly cut and exactly the same size. Many times when I cut fabric, there were frayed edges that I didn’t mind because I knew they would disappear into the quilt when the pieces were sewn together. I had a suspicion that every one of Anna’s quilts was perfect, inside and out. “Ever since I moved to Texas, I’ve done all my piecing on my sewing machine.”

  “Some Amish in Holmes County do it that way on a treadle sewing machine, but your aenti was a firm believer in keeping the traditional hand-quilting ways alive. She only made hand-pieced and hand-stitched quilts. She said that doing it by machine would make a quilter lazy.”

  I thought of the dozens of frayed edges that were buried in the middle of the many quilts I had made for family and friends back in Texas. Was I a lazy quilter? Apparently.

  Anna handed me a tiny plastic box of straight pins. “Start pinning and then we will work on stitches.”

  Rachel gave Abram a sandwich bag of animal crackers. He removed one and crushed it into the quilt. I winced, but Rachel seemed unconcerned that her son marred such a beautiful piece of art. To the Amish, quilts were first and foremost practical items, only extremely beautiful practical items.

  Martha, Sarah, and Rachel all worked on new piecing projects too. While I pinned, Anna removed a twelve-inch-by-twelve-inch wall quilt from her basket. It was pieced in the bear-paw pattern and basted together. Basting was a way to hold the quilt’s three layers, the top, the batting, and the bottom, with long pieces of loose thread. The thread typically was a bright color so that it could be removed with little trouble when the quilting was done.

  Anna had basted her quilt with bright orange thread. Barely glancing at the tiny quilter’s needle between her left thumb and forefinger, she threaded her quilting needle by feel. “This is a size eight quilter’s needle. I like to use a small-sized needle because it’s easier to keep your stitches small if the needle is smaller.”

  “Size eight. Got it.” The needle was much smaller than any I had used before. I wondered how many I would lose in the couch cushions, and who the unlucky ones would be who would find them when they sat on Anna’s couch.

  Anna set her needle to the fabric and eyed me. “Why aren’t you pinning?”

  My hands had stilled on my lap as I watched Anna work. “I was paying attention to you.”

  “You can do that and pin at the same time. Isn’t that what you Englischers call multitasking?”

  I gathered another handful of fabric diamonds from the middle cushion.

  She nodded approval. “Just like on a sewing machine, you follow the line from the quilt pattern.” She traced a finger along the drawn-on blue line on the fabric. “This looks dark, but it will wash out after the quilt is complete like it was never there. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, so I use bright blue to make my stitch lines. You can see from the blue line that this quilt is set for a wave pattern. I chose that because it’s one of the easiest and a good place for you to start. Just follow the curve of the wave.”

  Anna dipped her needle in and out of t
he fabric five times before she pulled the needle through slowly. I knew she decreased her pace for my benefit. When the thread was taut, there were five identical millimeter-long stitches.

  “That’s amazing,” I said, knowing my own stitches would never be that uniform.

  “Nee,” Anna said. “Only the Lord is amazing. This is a mere skill. Your stitches will be the same in time. Place those pieces back on the cushion.”

  I did as instructed, and she placed the small quilt on my lap. Handing me the needle, she said, “Your turn.”

  Carefully, I smoothed the quilt over my lap and found the place where the next stitch should begin.

  Rachel pinned a goosefoot-patterned square together. “You will be a fine hand quilter when Anna is done with you, Angie.”

  I shot her a quick smile and returned my attention to the quilt.

  I held my top lip between my teeth as I adjusted the needle in my hand. “Do I need a thimble?”

  “Thimbles are for sissies.” Anna winked at me.

  I chuckled. “Sissies?”

  “I hear how the Englisch teenagers in Millersburg talk.”

  If “sissy” was the only phrase Anna picked up from the teens in Millersburg, it must be a mild town. I bowed my head again to focus on my stitches. Everything else fell away as I concentrated on moving the needle through the fabric. At the age of ten, I quilted like this the night before my family left for Texas. I had begged my parents to let me visit Aunt Eleanor’s shop one last time. They agreed, and now that I was older, I suspected that they were glad to have a ten-year-old out of their hair as they did their last-minute packing. When my father came to pick me up at the shop later, Aunt Eleanor and I clung to each other with tears running down our faces. I promised I would be back in the summer, and I did return to Holmes County each summer. As an adult my visits became less and less frequent. Anna said that Aunt Eleanor understood why I stopped coming, but guilt gnawed at me. A good niece would have visited at least once a year. I could have given my aenti that.

  My mother had been thrilled over the idea of leaving Ohio. She grew up in Millersburg and married my father, her high school sweetheart, but always felt like she was meant for something bigger. There wasn’t anything much bigger than the Big D. When we settled into the Lone Star State, she fully embraced Dallas society life, got highlights, Botox, and a Texas drawl. Meanwhile, her older sister continued her quiet life married to a New Order Amish man. Sometimes it was hard to believe that the two women were sisters, or that they grew up in the same house in Millersburg. They couldn’t be more different if they tried.

  Chapter Twelve

  I fumbled with the tiny needle, dropping it onto the couch cushion. Luckily, it was tethered to the quilt by the thread. No one would be skewered by my needle, at least not yet.

  “You’re having a bit of trouble, Angie,” Sarah said. “Maybe you’d do better with a bigger needle. Those small ones can be difficult to manage for beginners. You should have seen the needle my mother gave me to start with. It was the size of a fork.”

  “I doubt it was that big,” Anna snorted. “Like anything, this takes time and practice. Quilting teaches patience.”

  After my first few clumsy stitches, the motorized memory of my last visit to Aunt Eleanor when she taught me hand stitching came back to me. I heard the murmur of the ladies around me, but I was preoccupied with my work and the memories of my aunt’s hands moving swiftly across the fabric of a quilt. My own pace was considerably slower.

  “Were you scared, Angie?” Sarah asked.

  I blinked at her. “Scared?”

  She scooted forward in her seat. “When you found Joseph? Were you afraid? I’m sure I would be. In fact, I would have run screaming from the shop. Is that what you did?”

  I had been so consumed by the quilt that I forgot about Joseph. Well, I almost forgot about Joseph. With Sarah’s questions, the memories of his body in the stockroom popped to the forefront of my mind like a burnt piece of toast.

  I bit back the urge to snap at her for interrupting my moment of peace, one in which murder wasn’t an invited guest. “I didn’t do anything that dramatic. I was too shocked to be afraid. According to the police, the murder happened sometime late at night, so by the time Danny and I got there, the murderer was long gone.” At least, I hoped he was, I mentally added.

  “Danny was with you?” Martha’s tone was sharp.

  “Y-yes. He wanted to interview me for the tourism board newsletter. We made plans at the opening yesterday to meet at the shop this morning.”

  Abram emptied the bag of animal crackers on the wide planks of Anna’s floor. He carefully selected which one to eat first. The baby sucked a giraffe’s head.

  Rachel clucked her tongue. “What a mess.”

  The infant’s antics gave Martha time to compose herself, but I didn’t forget her reaction so quickly. “Does it surprise you that Danny was with me?” I asked.

  “No—I mean—yes, it does. You need to be careful around Danny Nicolson. He is a worse gossip than Sarah.”

  “Martha!” Sarah cried. “That was completely uncalled for.”

  Martha shrugged as if unconcerned that she offended the other Amish woman.

  I tucked the needle into the quilt for safekeeping. “What can you tell me about Danny? He seems determined to be a success.”

  “He’s a pest.” Martha gripped her needle in her left hand. “If anything happens in the Amish community, he’s right there wanting to know about it.”

  I plucked the needle from the quilt and rolled it back and forth between my fingers. “His cousin Jessica told me that he would like to write for a large paper.”

  “I’ve heard that too,” Sarah said, giving Martha a triumphant smile.

  “When did you talk to Jessica?” Rachel asked her in a quiet way. She set her quilt aside and knelt on the floor next to Abram. She began picking up the animal crackers and placing them back in the bag.

  “She stopped by the shop during the grand opening and bought a few things. She said that she has an antiques shop in Millersburg called Out of Time.” I smoothed wrinkles out of the quilt top on my lap. “She seemed perfectly nice, much different from Danny, but . . .”

  Sarah leaned forward. “But what?”

  I twisted my mouth, wondering whether I should say anything, especially considering Sarah was in the room ready to pounce on any piece of tidbit I let slip. However at the same time, I was new to Holmes County. I didn’t know Jessica. Maybe one or all of these women did and could give me insight into her. I let out a breath. “When she saw Joseph Walker come into Running Stitch, she seemed upset.”

  Martha leaned forward. “What do you mean?”

  “The two physically ran into each other as Jessica was leaving the shop and Joseph was coming in.”

  Rachel picked crumbs off the quilt as Abram threw two more cookies on the floor. “If she ran into him, she was probably embarrassed. I know I would be.”

  Martha snipped the end of her thread with a pair of tiny scissors. “She probably knew how he felt about Englischers. Joseph made no secret about disapproving of anyone who wasn’t Amish.”

  “He disapproved of anyone who wasn’t Old Order Amish.” Anna shook her head. “He thought that New Orders like us break the Ordnung.”

  I didn’t argue with them, but I thought there was something more to Jessica’s reaction. It seemed personal. I decided to change the subject away from the Nicolsons as it was clear the Amish women knew next to nothing about them. “Do you know of anyone who may have wanted to hurt Joseph or didn’t like him?”

  Sarah rubbed her hands together. “Gut. We need to discuss this.”

  Rachel cringed at the other woman’s comment.

  Anna merely shook her head. “Didn’t like him? Half of the county didn’t like him. He wasn’t a likable man. Everyone was shocked when sweet Ab
igail Knepp agreed to marry him. They were such an odd pairing.”

  Abram threw more crackers on the floor, and Rachel sighed.

  “What about Benjamin Hershberger?” Sarah asked. “He can’t be sad Joseph is out of the way.”

  My head snapped up. “Who is Benjamin Hershberger?”

  Anna shot Sarah an annoyed glance. “He’s another woodworker in Rolling Brook. Joseph was his biggest competition. He’s a kind old man. He wouldn’t hurt anyone.”

  “It wasn’t much of a competition,” Sarah said, unfazed by Anna’s glares. “Joseph’s work was far superior to Ben’s.”

  “Ben’s work is gut too,” Rachel said. “He is a friend of my husband’s and a gut man.”

  Sarah seemed unconvinced.

  Trying not to sound overly curious, I asked, “Where is his shop?”

  “Just a block away from Joseph’s,” Martha said.

  That meant it was just a block away from the quilt shop too. Ben could have easily gone to the quilt shop, killed Joseph, and returned to his own store before anyone would know. Not that this explained how either man entered my store. What was Joseph doing in there so late at night? The Amish were early-to-bed, early-to-rise people. They weren’t traipsing around town after midnight.

  “Aren’t there a lot of woodworkers in Holmes County?” I ran my index finger along my stitches. “Why is there bad blood between these two?”

  Rachel knelt on the floor again to collect the animal crackers Abram dumped. Sarah watched her for a second before answering. “Joseph was Ben’s apprentice. Now he is—was—better than his teacher. Ben’s business has been cut by two-thirds since Joseph opened his doors.”

  “Sarah Leham.” Anna’s tone was stern. “How could you possibly know that?”

  She held a superior gaze. “You should pay closer attention to what people say, Anna Graber.”

  Anna opened her mouth to say something and thought better of it.

  Trying to bring the ladies back on track, I said, “Then, Ben has a clear motive for murder.”