Roots of Murder

by Janis Harrison

  When Mom was alive, I’d heard from Dad in the form of a yearly check. After Mom died, Dad’s correspondence increased to a card on my birthday and a box of grapefruit at Christmas.

  I dashed a hand across my eyes and let the bandage fall back into place. It bothered me that I was still vulnerable to these memories. That after all these years the wound remained sensitive and couldn’t take a gentle probing.

  I came to the turnoff for Woodgrove, but since I was early, I bypassed the town, taking the scenic route to Evan’s place. A county-maintained road, it wasn’t as smooth as the state highway, but it offered breathtaking vistas.

  Flat cropland gave way to deep ravines and sharp bends in the road. I drove along a ridge that rimmed the valley below. The sun stole a peek over the horizon to make sure its audience was primed and ready. Mists rose from the floor of the hollow like nervous stagehands. They hovered in the air counting the minutes until showtime. Playful shadows had neglected their duties through the night. With the curtain about to go up, they darted here and there among the trees seeing to final details.

  Then, without further ado, the sun materialized in all its glory. Its presence eclipsed the other actors onstage. The wisps of fog vanished. The shadows dissolved, and the countryside was spotlighted with brilliance.

  Farmsteads, nestled among the hills, were a backdrop to the drama that was unfolding. The feathery tips of the buffalo grass, growing along the side of the road, nodded in appreciation. Birds chirped their cheery lines. Insects buzzed with excitement at the prospect of a good review. I crossed a bridge and heard the stream gurgle importantly. It was leaving this production and was moving on to bigger and better things.

  I sat up straight in my seat. I’d chosen this route for another reason than its beauty. The scene of the boys’ car accident was around the next curve. I took my foot off the gas and coasted down the hill.

  On my right, trees grew as thick as hairs on a dog’s back. Suddenly, I saw a break. This was the place. I pulled as far off the road as I could and gazed in dismay.

  The recently sheared-off trees and mangled underbrush were withered. The fatal path was as wide as a car and plunged down an embankment. The car must have flipped over a gully or sailed brazenly across it, landing against a tree on the far side. A permanent gash on the trunk marked the spot.

  Across the road from the accident was Sam Kramer’s land. A rusty snarl of barbed wire signaled this dilapidated fence as his property. After my father had left Mom and me, Sam had farmed our property on shares. For two years, his slipshod methods had been an aggravation. Mom had gently eased us out of that arrangement, and for the next ten years, Cecil Bellows had farmed our land.

  I gave the accident scene one last look, then drove on, taking two more curves before Evan’s house came into view. I’d just left the scene of one tragedy. Now, I faced another. Isaac’s wife, Rosalie, is pregnant with her second child. Regardless of how Isaac had died, these people were in the early stages of grief. I knew full well what Rosalie was experiencing. Carl’s death had produced a range of responses in me. Denial had come first. I couldn’t believe my husband was truly gone. Discord soon followed, as I was forced to move on in a world that seemed apathetic to my pain. And finally, there had been the harsh reality of acceptance. My life was never going to be the same.

  I parked my car under a shade tree, then sat quietly for a few moments. I let the familiar surroundings of my childhood soothe my turbulent emotions. The place looked almost like home. The white clapboard house stood two stories high and had a wraparound porch on three sides. The one jarring note was the lack of my mother’s white lace curtains. The nine-room house boasted fifteen windows, all glaringly bare.

  A host of young faces peeked out at me. I waved, then grinned as they ducked bashfully out of sight. Chuckling, I got out of the car and saw Evan Miller coming toward me from the barn.

  He’s tall and lean, his muscles honed from hard physical labor. Lois would have described Evan as “a fine figure of a man.” Watching him approach, I had to agree. His Amish clothes were neat and clean, the shirt bright white, the dark trousers held in place by suspenders. A wide-brimmed straw hat sat squarely on his head. A wiry black beard covered his jaws, but his upper lip was shaved clean.

  When Cecil farmed our property, he’d acted as if he owned the land. He’d ripped out fences without permission, dug the creekbed deeper, and pastured cows where Mom had distinctly said no livestock. She’d been at her wit’s end when Evan came along.

  He and Cleome had moved to Woodgrove from Illinois. They’d lived in town, but Evan wanted to farm. He couldn’t afford to buy a place of his own, so he’d approached Mom with the hopes of renting her land. She’d liked him, liked the way he carefully explained what he had in mind and which crops he wanted to plant. They’d come to an agreement, and Mom had told Cecil his services were no longer needed.

  I hadn’t been around for that conversation, and probably it was just as well. By this time I was happily married to Carl and living in River City. I’d bought the flower shop. My life was full. When Mom died, I didn’t hesitate selling the farm to Evan. She would’ve approved of my decision. Evan had moved his family into the farmhouse, and I’d been relieved to know that my homeplace was in caring, loving hands.

  I knew Evan to be forty-two, and that he’d been married to Cleome long enough to have produced seven children. When I first met Evan, he and Cleome had Emily and Jacob. In the intervening years, Matthew, Mark, Katie, Luke, and John had been born. No Sabrina, Aurora, or Britton here.

  I closed the distance between us and shook Evan’s callused hand. “I’m sorry about Isaac,” I said.

  “Bretta?” he asked uncertainly.

  I nodded. Last time I’d seen him, I’d brought practical Christmas gifts to his family. That had been many pounds ago. “Yes. It’s been a while. I wish we weren’t meeting under such sad circumstances.” ,

  “I wouldn’t have known you if you hadn’t been driving the same car.”

  “Still me,” I said. “Just not as much.”

  He peered worriedly at me. “You aren’t … you haven’t been sick?”

  I assured him I was healthier than ever. “How about you? Are you okay?”

  He lifted a shoulder. “I suppose. Thanks for coming.” He grimaced. “To get you here I had to use that phone of Sam’s.”

  I grinned. “It has its uses.”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” he muttered.

  Normally, we’d slip into an easy conversation about the weather or the crops. But what followed instead was that uncomfortable silence that comes when two people have something to say and neither knows how to begin. I wanted to ask about Isaac’s death, but there’s a way to approach Evan, and it isn’t to blurt out questions. I had to ease into it gently. I tried to prod him along.

  “I’m not sure what help I’ll be. About all I can do is arrange Isaac’s flowers into a bouquet that would knock your socks off.” I glanced quickly at his boots. I’d never had reason to see Evan’s feet. Did Amish men wear socks?

  Evan saw where my eyes had traveled and guessed my thoughts. He gave me one of his rare smiles. It showed amusement, but spoiled his looks because he was missing a front tooth. Dentistry isn’t high on an Amish man’s list of necessities. If it don’t hurt, don’t fix it.

  Embarrassed, I labored on. “If you want to talk to me about growing the flowers—”

  “No, no,” he hastened to say. “Not that. No.”

  “Then I don’t—”

  The creak of the back door caused us to turn. Cleome and her daughter, Katie, stepped from the house. “Hi,” I called. When they didn’t respond, I thought they didn’t recognize me. I added, “It’s me, Bretta.”

  Cleome hesitated, then dipped her head in a sharp nod. She spoke to Katie. They stepped off the porch and crossed the yard. The Amish woman’s spine was as stiff and unyielding as a hickory stick. She disappeared around the corner of the house. Katie, right behind her, looked back at
me. Down at her side, her fingers wiggled the tiniest of greetings, then she was gone.

  Puzzled, I turned to Evan. “Chilly around here, isn’t it?”

  He understood what I meant. I’d never seen him disconcerted. His convictions kept him on a path his faith decreed was ordained by God. He shuffled his heavy work boots in the dust, hemmed and hawed, and wouldn’t meet my direct gaze.

  By now I was totally confused. “Cleome’s greeting just missed being a snub,” I said. “Why? You invited me to come here.”

  “I want to show you something.” He led the way around the house, where I saw Cleome and Katie working in the garden. At our approach, Katie looked up, but Cleome hoed the ground harder. She said something in a curt tone, and Katie obediently bent back to her task.

  A few steps ahead of me, Evan walked rapidly past the garden. I glanced over my shoulder and saw Cleome had stopped attacking the dirt. Her hands gripped the hoe handle, and her eyes drilled into me.

  A strange, difficult woman, Cleome had always been cordial in the past. However, our conversations were often stilted. I didn’t have children. She had seven. I wasn’t much of a cook. Her meals were executed with precision. I couldn’t sew a seam if my life depended on it. She made all her family’s clothes. We had nothing in common. Isaac had been like Cleome—a private person, keeping his thoughts to himself. I hadn’t been able to talk to him as I could Evan. Evan and I have been known to jabber for hours. Livestock. Market prices. Tilling the south field. Rotating crops. But today Evan was unusually silent on all subjects.

  He didn’t slow as we approached Isaac’s house. We breezed by it, another vegetable garden, a clothesline full of towels and sheets, a compost pile, and a shed filled with horse-drawn farm machinery.

  None of these buildings had existed when I owned the property. The changes had been made after Isaac and Rosalie moved here from Pennsylvania. But I clearly hadn’t been brought out here for a tour, so I tried again. “Look, Evan, I—”

  He stopped abruptly, and I nearly rammed my nose into his broad back. My feet skidded on the gravel as I did some fancy dance steps to keep my balance. If Evan noticed my ungainly performance, he made no sign. His eyes were’on something else, his lips pressed into a grim line.

  I followed his gaze and saw Isaac’s field of flowers. Two acres in full-blown color, grown by a man who had been truly dedicated to his work.

  Drawn to the exquisite display, I walked closer. I barely noticed Isaac’s greenhouse and the holding shed where he’d kept the cut flowers until they were trucked into River City. My attention was on the field.

  Clouds of white baby’s breath billowed in the breeze, an airy, ethereal background to the other blossoms. Bright carmine asters. Celosia with orange, scarlet, and golden yellow plumes. Burnished cosmos. Zinnias. Statice. A mass of vibrant blue cornflowers struck a brilliant contrast and rivaled the sky with their color.

  My fingers itched to touch these beauties, to stroke the velvet petals and smell the mixed aromas, but a movement farther up the hill killed my artistic desires. A sheriffs deputy leaned against a tree.

  “What’s he doing?” I asked.

  Evan’s mouth turned down. “You’d have to ask the sheriff.”

  “How long has he been there?”

  “The men change, but someone has been up there since Thursday night. After Isaac died.”

  A guard? In Isaac’s flower field? Gently, I said, “The newspaper didn’t give any details about Isaac’s death. What happened?”

  Evan jerked his head toward the colorful array. “My brother died up there among his flowers.”

  “What was he doing?”

  “Cutting flowers for market.”

  I tried to think of what might have happened. “Was he using a wagon? Did the horse bolt?”

  Evan grinned weakly. “Old Jake doesn’t have the energy to run.” He sobered and his fingers skittered over his wiry beard. “I don’t always understand your English laws, Bretta. Why an autopsy? What are they looking for?”

  Was this possibly murder? But what if I was misreading the sketchy information? Playing it safe, I hedged, “A detail about Isaac’s death must not have set well with the coroner. What was said to you?”

  He snorted his frustration. “All I get is questions without answers.”

  “What kind of questions?”

  Evan flapped his hands impatiently. “Did Isaac have any enemies? No. Did my brother take a nip or two on the side? No. Did my brother and I quarrel?” His voice rose in outrage. “Absolutely not.”

  With an effort, he calmed down. “I called you, Bretta, because I trust you. I want you to find out what’s going on. I want to know when we can have Isaac’s body back. Our people are nearly finished with the coffin. The grave is being dug. He’s already in God’s hands. It’s up to us, his family, to finish our earthly duty.”

  “Evan, I’m a florist. I can’t do anything about Isaac’s body. When the coroner is finished with his examination, the body will be released to the funeral home. I’m sure Margaret will bring Isaac home as soon as she can.”

  Margaret Jenkins owns Woodgrove’s only funeral home. I knew the Amish counted this older woman as a friend. She’d made herself indispensable to the Amish colony around Woodgrove by taking them in her car to doctor appointments or other errands too far away to be reached with a horse and buggy. I offered her name to Evan, hoping he’d take comfort in it. I held out my hands helplessly. “Until then, there’s nothing anyone can do but wait.”

  Evan sighed. “I just don’t understand.”

  “Maybe if you told me what happened,” I prompted.

  Reluctantly, without emotion, Evan related the events of his brother’s death. He recited the facts in a monotone, as if he’d repeated this story a dozen times.

  “Isaac and I’d been at a farm sale Thursday afternoon. We got home late, and Isaac still had flowers to cut for pickup the next day. I offered to help, but he said he needed to think. Since I had my own chores to do, I left him hitching up Old Jake to the wagon so he could collect the flowers.”

  “What did he need to think about? Was there something specific on his mind?”

  “Not that I know. He was always reading books, going to the library.”

  “So you were at the barn, and Isaac was alone in the field?”

  He gave me a quick look. “Isaac wasn’t alone all the time. But that’s getting ahead of the story.”

  Isaac in the field. Isaac not alone. Isaac dead. The nasty picture was coming into focus, but I pressed my lips together and let him talk.

  “I had finished the chores and was washing up for supper when Amelia, Isaac’s daughter, came to the house for help. Her mother had found Jake still hitched to the wagon outside the holding shed, but Isaac wasn’t inside. The cans of water had been overturned, the flowers ruined.”

  Evan’s stoical composure cracked. He mopped his damp face with a handkerchief. “Rosalie didn’t wait for me. She went to the field and found Isaac. He was dead.”

  Evan fingered the fastener of his suspenders. “I will apologize for Cleome. She’s upset because I called you. She thinks I’m stirring up trouble. The way I see it, the stirring has already been done. Cleome says, let it rest, bury our dead and continue with God’s plan.”

  “The sheriff might have something to say to that.”

  “The sheriff is a grt rs sprecha.”

  The Amish speak a combination of High German and Pennsylvania Dutch. I didn’t understand the phrase Evan used, but I knew Sid Hancock, sheriff of Spencer County. Sid is abrupt and relentless, maybe a good combination for a lawman, but lousy if you’re on the other end of his interrogations.

  Sid and I’d gotten off on the wrong foot not long after he’d been elected sheriff. Carl had come home one evening thoroughly frustrated with a case he was working on. The county was being plagued by a rash of petty robberies. No leads. No witnesses. The pilfering covered all four corners of the county. Nothing major was taken: small appl
iances, feather pillows, silk flower arrangements, Tupperware, baskets, stuffed toys, and other odds and ends.

  I’d laughed and said maybe the deputies needed to attend some local garage sales. Carl had passed on my suggestion to Sid. They’d acted on it and the robbers, a woman and her three daughters, had been apprehended.

  Carl had been interviewed by a reporter from the River City Daily. Like the kind and loving husband he’d been, he proudly included me in the success of the bust. The paper gobbled up this tidbit and spit out a front-page tale that made me sound like I was the next Nancy Drew of River City. Sid had been furious. He’d wanted the limelight kept on his office, not transferred to the wife of one of his officers.

  Since that fiasco, I tread lightly around Sid. I didn’t want to think about him and what his reaction would be when he heard that Evan had summoned me to the farm. A glance at the deputy left me with little doubt that Sid would hear. On the other hand, my friendship with the Amish, especially Evan, is no secret.

  “Did you tell the sheriff about someone being in the field with Isaac?” I asked.

  “No” was Evan’s terse reply. “I don’t want that man questioning my Katie.”

  “Katie?” This news hit me broadside. The thought of Katie having seen something sinister made my skin crawl with bumps of apprehension. My favorite among Evan’s children, nine-year-old Katie is as fresh and innocent as a shasta daisy. “What’s she got to do with this?”

  “Nothing,” snapped Evan, “and that’s the way I want it. I saw no one. No car pulled into the drive. Rosalie didn’t see anyone. No one came to either house.”

  His wide shoulders slumped as if he’d taken on the weight of the world. With a dazed expression, he continued quietly, “Katie says that she saw someone in the field. My brother is dead, but no one has admitted to being with him before he died.” Evan’s voice dropped to a hoarse whisper. “Why not admit to being with Isaac that evening? Why keep it a secret?”

  His eyes caught mine in a pain-filled gaze. He answered his own question. “Unless something wicked happened. Something so terrible that the person has to hide it.”