Jonah nodded and joined me at the car to get Petunia and Oliver out. It took some coaxing, but finally Oliver and Petunia hopped out of the SUV. Oliver wasn’t happy when Jonah said that Petunia wasn’t allowed in the main Graber house, so he decided to stay out in the buggy barn with her, as far away from the turkeys as he could get.
When I walked into the Grabers’ house, Miriam scowled at me. Miriam always scowled at me; I wasn’t her favorite person. She suspected her husband was once sweet on me. Maybe Jonah and I did have a crush on each other when we were ten, but it would have never worked out, even if I hadn’t moved away to Texas at that age. He was Amish. I was “English.” I knew he wouldn’t change his way of life, and although my aunt became Amish to marry my uncle Jacob over fifty years ago, I knew I couldn’t make the same commitment.
Miriam spun around and waltzed back into the kitchen. She wasn’t the chatty sort.
Jonah stepped out of his work boots and left them beside the front door. “I feel like there is more to this story than you finding a dead body. You should be used to that by now.” He walked across the maple floors in his black socks and sat on the hearth. There wasn’t a fire there yet, but I knew there would be soon. Winter wasn’t far away.
I sat on the plain brown sofa, which faced the large picture window looking out on Jonah’s grazing fields. Near the split-rail fence, the family’s two draft horses nibbled on the browning grass. “I kinda sorta promised I would find the killer.”
Jonah clicked his tongue and shook his head, looking much like one of those draft horses after a long day of plowing.
I pointed at Anna. “Your mother put me up to it.”
“Pish,” Anna replied, settling down next to me on the couch. She tucked her quilting basket in between us. “I just gave you a nudge. You know that you would have agreed to it even if I hadn’t been there.”
She was probably right, but I wasn’t going to let her know I thought so.
“I don’t like this.” Jonah propped his elbows on his knees. “I don’t like it one bit. Angie, you were doing such a great job of staying out of trouble, and now this?”
“You’re one to talk. Do I need to remind you about the turkeys outside? Besides, I don’t purposely get into trouble. It sort of finds me.”
He shook his head. “What does the sheriff think about this?”
“He doesn’t know yet.” I wagged my finger at him. “And don’t you go telling him. He has enough on his plate without worrying about me.”
Anna opened her quilting basket and pulled out a nine-block piece of cloth that she was piecing. The intricate quilt topper was pinned, but the individual pieces needed to be sown together. “Since we have that settled, I’m happy you’re here, son. I think you can help us too.”
“Me?” Jonah gasped. “Oh, no—not me.” He shot a worried glance in the direction of the kitchen. He lowered his voice. “I’m already in hot water over the turkeys.”
I knew he was concerned that Miriam might overhear. His wife would not approve of Jonah helping Anna and me with a murder investigation. If Miriam had her way, Jonah wouldn’t speak to me at all. Although I couldn’t blame her for being upset about the turkeys.
Anna positioned her glasses on the end of her nose and threaded her needle. “Then I suppose Angie and I can handle the investigation ourselves.”
Jonah’s shoulders slumped. “What do you want me to do?”
“We will tell you in time, but I’m glad you are on board.”
Jonah sighed.
“Do you know Phoebe Truber?” I asked.
Jonah frowned. “Not very well. She’s a member of Bartholomew’s district and a schoolteacher. Why do you ask?”
“Ever since we left the crime scene, I’ve been thinking of her. I saw her for the first time yesterday outside the bookmobile.” I went on to explain how Phoebe had been watching from the schoolhouse while Bartholomew and Austina argued.
Jonah leaned back against the side of the fireplace. “She was probably just concerned about them fighting in front of the kids.”
I shifted in my seat on the sofa. “Maybe, but she looked really upset. She’s so young. And she looked fragile, really—I think that’s the right word.”
“She’s not that young.”
“She’s not?” I asked.
“She’s about our age—definitely over thirty.”
“Really, and she’s not married?”
Jonah grinned. “You are over thirty and not married.”
I rolled my eyes. “I’m not Amish either.”
Anna moved her needle in and out of the fabric. “Gott does not wish for all his children to marry. Some can serve him better alone. Maybe he wishes her to remain a schoolteacher. She would not be able to do that as a married woman.”
“Excellent point, Anna,” I said, giving her son a beady look.
Jonah grinned in return.
I stood. “I should get back to the shop. Mattie is going to be wondering where I am.”
Anna started to get up, but I waved her back into her seat. “I can find my way out.”
Jonah followed me outside anyway. The screen door slammed behind us. “Angie, I don’t like this at all.”
Oliver and Petunia galloped around the barn. They were the ultimate odd couple, but seeing them together again brought a smile to my face. Depending on how soon Petunia knocked me on my behind with one of her loving head butts would determine how long that smile lasted. “I don’t plan to take your mom on my snooping expeditions, if that’s what you’re worried about.”
“It’s not. Maam can take care of herself. I’m worried about you. I don’t think you should get mixed up in Bartholomew’s district. They are a private bunch.”
I gave him a look and unlocked my car with the key fob. Above us the remaining turkeys in the tree gobbled and chattered. To me it sounded like they were planning a counterattack to rescue their tom turkey.
Jonah ignored them and said, “They are more private than the Amish people you are used to. They wouldn’t like an Englischer snooping around. I don’t want you to get hurt.”
I smiled and patted his arm. “Thanks for your concern, Jo-Jo, but I won’t do anything stupid.”
He snorted. “At least ask me or someone else to come with you if that changes.”
“I will,” I promised.
Miriam stepped into the doorway, her hands wringing the tea towel with so much force I imagined she thought it was my neck.
“Look out!” one of the twins screamed.
I dropped my hand from Jonah’s arm and saw Petunia and Oliver run at us at full tilt. The tom turkey that the twins had supposedly returned to his turkey pen was chasing after the goat and dog. His broad wings were fully extended, making him look like an enraged harpy. The twins raced after the turkey with their net.
I whipped open the driver’s-side door and Oliver catapulted his squat body into it. I dove in the car after him.
Petunia spun around ready to defend her canine friend.
I was halfway down the driveway when I dared look in the rearview mirror. The tom turkey stood in the middle of the driveway flapping his wings. Petunia glared at him, and Jonah and the boys were bent over at the waist laughing themselves silly.
Oliver whimpered from the passenger seat.
I gripped the steering wheel. “Oliver, I don’t think we will be visiting Petunia again until Jonah gets those turkeys under control.”
He lay on the seat and placed his chin on his paws and sighed. He missed his hoofed bestie already.
Chapter Twelve
A mile down the road from the Grabers’ farm, my cell phone rang. The readout told me it was Mitchell.
“Howdy,” I said into the speakerphone.
“I love it when you talk Southern to me.” There was laughter in his voice, but he sounded tired too.
“Any leads on the bishop’s murder?” I asked.
He groaned. “You’re as bad as the district attorney. It’s only been a few hours.”
“You know, I’ve been thinking.” I tapped the steering wheel. “Maybe it wasn’t a murder. Maybe the bishop tripped and landed on his head.”
“Then how did the bishop get inside the bookmobile without a key?” Mitchell asked. “There was no forced entry.”
“I haven’t gotten that far yet.”
“It doesn’t matter anyway. I would have agreed it could have been an accident, if there weren’t two wounds.”
“Two?” I straightened up in my seat. “I only saw the one.”
“There was the gash on his forehead, and that may have knocked him out and incapacitated him. But there was also a much larger wound on the back of his head. It was bashed in.”
I grimaced. Seeing one wound was bad enough. It was a good thing I missed the second one. “Couldn’t it still be an accident?”
“The medical examiner will know for sure, but I doubt it. He would have had to knock his head on something and then reel back and smash the back of his head on something else. That’s way too coincidental for me.”
“Did you find the murder weapon?”
“No. The culprit must have taken it with him.” He paused. “And then there is the gasoline.”
“Gasoline? What are you talking about?”
I could almost hear Mitchell’s thoughts on the other side of the phone. He sighed. “We found a canister of it behind the bishop’s body. Our theory is that whoever killed him planned to cover it up by torching the bookmobile. With all that paper, the vehicle would have gone up in flames pretty fast.”
I gasped. “If that’s true, why didn’t the killer do it?”
“Don’t know. Maybe someone came, maybe he heard something and got spooked.”
“This just confirms that Austina couldn’t have done this. She would never burn her beloved bookmobile, not to mention all those precious books. No way, no how.”
“Angie,” Mitchell said.
I recognized the frustration in his voice. I stopped at a stop sign and decided to change the subject. “So, what’s up—you know, besides murder and attempted arson?”
“You are going to have to stop by the station to sign your statement this morning. I called your mom and told her the same thing. She wasn’t too pleased.”
“I bet.” Bartholomew’s wasn’t my first dead body—I knew the drill—but this would be all new for my mother. She was probably considering what to wear to the sheriff’s station. “Anything else?”
“I just want to make sure you don’t have any crazy ideas about meddling in this investigation.”
“What do you mean?” I asked.
When all else fails, play dumb.
“You know exactly what I mean.” He made an exasperated sound. “Angie, this is going to be a tricky case, and I told you about the arson to prove to you how dangerous the person behind the bishop’s death must be. Not to mention, Bartholomew was from a particularly closed-off Amish district. His community is much more wary of outsiders than the other districts you’ve dealt with. They don’t look kindly on the police asking too many questions.”
“Even if those questions lead to who killed their leader?”
“Even then.”
“All the more reason for me to help out. I might be able to get closer to them than you can.”
“No, you won’t.” His tone left no room for argument.
I ignored that. “Sure I will. I have before.”
“That’s what I’m telling you. This time it’s different. They won’t want to talk to any English person about their community, especially a woman.”
I didn’t say anything.
“You aren’t going to pay any attention to this conversation, are you?”
“I always pay attention to what you have to say, Mitchell. I don’t always follow your advice, but I always hear it.”
He groaned. “That doesn’t make me feel any better.”
There was murmuring on the other side of the line.
“I’m on my way,” Mitchell said, muffled. “Listen, I have to go. We can discuss it tonight after dinner.”
“After dinner?” I asked, confused.
“Dinner at your parents. Did you forget?” Some of the humor was back in his voice.
“No, but I told Mom that you probably wouldn’t make it because of the murder.”
His voice softened. “Thanks for giving me an out, but I want to see you. The case has hit a dead end at the moment, and I will have to eat.”
“Dead end?” I asked, trying not to sound too eager.
I must have failed. Mitchell gave an all-suffering sigh.
“Mom will be so happy you’re coming.” I chewed on my lip, wondering whether this was the time to mention my mother’s matrimonial designs on us. Probably not. He was under enough stress. “All right. I’ll see you there, but we can’t talk about this in front of my parents. My mom is already freaked out about the murder as it is.”
“If only you were as easily freaked out, then I wouldn’t have to worry about you being chased down by a crazed killer.”
“That won’t happen.”
“Oh, yeah?”
“Okay, that won’t happen this time.”
He groaned. “Love you. Bye.” Then he disconnected.
Wait, what?
Did he just say, “Love you?” What did that mean?
“Love you” was not “I love you.” “Love you” was what you signed an email to a friend. Did he say, “I love you,” and swallow the “I”? Or was it “Luv you,” which was even worse?
Back in Dallas, I would have called one of my girlfriends to dissect the conversation over and over again, but since I had moved to Ohio, I had lost touch with most of those friends. They had been friends with Ryan and me as a couple, not with me as an individual. And my Amish friends certainly wouldn’t understand this debacle. If Mitchell and I had been Amish, we would have been married by now with two sets of twins. Mitchell’s “love you” was the last thing I needed to have on my mind.
Pushing those thoughts aside, I gave Mattie a quick call and asked her how things were at the shop.
“Everything is fine,” Mattie insisted. “I just about have everything together for tomorrow’s quilting class.”
“Great, and in that case, I have another errand to run. I think I will be gone another hour—two at the most.”
“You are snooping, are you?” she asked.
“Umm.” She knew me so well.
She sighed. “How did the visit at Austina’s go?”
I gave her the quick version, ending with my agreement to find Bartholomew’s killer.
Mattie sighed, sounding a lot like Mitchell had a few minutes before. “I’m not even going to bother to tell you what a dumb idea this is.”
“Great,” I said. “What can you tell me about Phoebe Truber?”
There was silence on the line. “There’s not much to tell. She older than me. She’s a shy girl. Honestly, I was really surprised when I heard she was chosen to be the teacher at Hock Trail School. She didn’t seem to have it in her to control a roomful of kids.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s too timid. I can’t imagine her telling anyone what to do.” She paused. “Maybe she is different with children than she is with adults. I saw her at a couple of socials when I was in rumspringa. I can’t remember if I ever saw her speaking to anyone.”
“Did you ever speak to her at one of those socials?’
“Nee. She was so much older than me, and her nose was always in a book.”
My eyebrows shot up. “What kind of books?”
“Novels, I guess. I never asked her about it. I didn’t kn
ow why she came to anything if all she wanted to do was read.”
Maybe because she could read when she was outside of Bartholomew Beiler’s district.
Phoebe had to be one of the young women that Bartholomew didn’t want visiting the bookmobile. But why wouldn’t Austina tell me? I knew there had to be more to it than protecting her patrons’ privacy. Had Phoebe committed murder in order to be able to keep reading? That seemed a little extreme, but this new knowledge made me more certain that I needed to pay the schoolteacher a visit. It was almost two now, but by the time I reached the schoolhouse, far out on the outskirts of Rolling Brook, classes would be out.
“You’re going to talk to her, aren’t you? About her bishop?” Mattie asked in my ear.
“Yep. You must be a psychic,” I said.
“A what?” my assistant asked.
“Never mind,” I said. Aaron would never forgive me if I put thoughts about the paranormal world in his younger sister’s head.
“I don’t think she will say anything to you. Like I said, she’s really shy.”
“It’s worth a shot, and people like to talk to me.”
Mattie snorted and hung up.
Since Mattie had the shop well taken care of, I made a U-turn in the middle of the country road and headed away from downtown Rolling Brook in the direction of Hock Trail School. The only way I was going to satisfy my suspicion that Phoebe Truber was involved was to talk to her myself.
The schoolyard was quiet. I shouldn’t have been surprised. I knew the district’s parents must have kept their children at home today, after the news of Bishop Beiler’s death spread through their community. Maybe Phoebe wasn’t even at the school, but as I told Mattie, it was worth a shot.
I shifted my car into park.
Oliver lifted his chin from his paws and sighed.
“We might as well double-check,” I told him and got out of the car.
There was something eerie about being at the last place I had seen Bartholomew alive, even if the bookmobile wasn’t there. In my head, I could hear him and Austina arguing. He had been angry—really angry—and so insistent. Yet Austina had been equally firm.
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