“What’s my Mission Impossible Angie face?” I asked.
“It’s a face where you look all determined. You squint a little too.” She squinted at me as if imitating my expression. “If you’re not careful, your face will stay that way.”
Great. I had a face that gave away when I was investigating. I tried to force my eyes not to squint. “You sound like my mom.”
“Like I said, she’s a smart woman. I see you’re trying not to squint. You can’t fight the Mission Impossible Angie face,” she said as she picked up her broom and began to sweep away the fallen leaves from the sidewalk in front of her shop.
“So what is the mission?”
I sighed, giving up. “What can you tell me about the building across the street?”
“The apartment building?”
I nodded and studied it. I thought I saw the curtain move again, but that might have been a trick of the sunlight off the windowpane.
“I can’t tell you much of anything. I don’t even know who owns it. It seems to me the tenants are a revolving door of renters. I always seem to see different ones come and go out of there.”
“Do you know anyone by the name of Bunny Gallagher?”
She stopped sweeping. “Bunny? Is that a real name?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She shook her head. “Nope, and I think I would remember a Bunny.” She narrowed her eyes at me. “Why do you ask?”
“Did you hear about Bishop Beiler?”
She frowned. “Is that the bishop who died in the bookmobile?”
I nodded.
“No, wait.” She held up hands in a universal stop sign. “Don’t tell me that you’re snooping into that crime.”
I tried not to squint.
She pointed at me. “You are.”
My shoulder drooped. “I found the body, and Austina, the librarian who is the primary suspect, asked me to look into it.”
“I thought you were getting out of the murder business.”
I placed a hand to my chest in mock horror. “I’m not in the murder business.”
It was her turn to roll her eyes. “I wasn’t saying that you committed the murders, but you like to solve the murders.”
I knew what she meant. “Well, no one has been killed recently.”
She shook her head. “Mitchell is not going to like this. Do you want to ruin the relationship you have with him?”
“No,” I said defensively. “But Mitchell knew me as a snoop before he knew me as a girlfriend, so he should understand.”
She pursed her lips as if she didn’t believe it. “I’m coming with you.”
“Coming with me where?”
“To talk to Bunny.”
“You can’t do that,” I said. “Who will watch your shop?”
She waved away my concern. “It’s the middle of the week and business has been slow. I think your mom is the only walk-in I’ve had in days.”
I bit my lip.
“Don’t worry. My online business is going gangbusters.” She pushed open the door, tucked the broom inside, and turned the sign on the door that read, BE BACK IN TEN MINUTES.
“This might take longer than ten minutes.”
She still held the door open. “Don’t worry.”
Oliver wiggled through the opening.
“Oliver,” I called.
“It’s best to leave him in there. Cherry Cat will want to see him anyway. My other two cats, not so much.”
“You’re right. It is going to be hard enough to convince Bunny to talk to us without Oliver in tow.”
She locked the door and shook the handle a couple of times to make sure it was secure. “Let’s ride.”
At the apartment building, we stepped through a set of glass doors. There was another set of glass doors that were locked.
On the wall, there was an intercom. All we had to do was buzz the right apartment. Unfortunately, none of the apartment numbers had names attached to them.
Jessica slid her finger along the buttons. “Maybe we should hit them all like they do on television until some fool buzzes us in.”
“I guess that might be worth a try.”
She moved her finger toward the buttons, and I caught it just in time. “On second thought, let’s not. What if someone calls the cops? I don’t think Mitchell wants to spring me from Millersburg city police lockup.”
She dropped her hand. “Good point.”
As Jessica and I stood there trying to decide what to do next, a young man in a denim jacket jogged down the steps inside the building. He opened the glass door between us and the rest of the building. The young man held the door for us. “Do you need inside?” He held the door open widely.
“Thanks,” I said as we slipped through.
He gave me a wink.
After he had gone, Jessica clicked her tongue. “Hasn’t anyone ever taught him you shouldn’t let people you don’t know into a locked building? We could be killers.”
“It’s lucky then that we’re not. The problem is, we still don’t know which apartment belongs to Bunny.”
Before the stairwell, there was a mail room to our left. I stepped inside and was happy to see that the mailboxes were labeled not only with the unit numbers but also with the occupants’ last names.
Gallagher 2A. “Bingo,” I said. If my understanding of the building was right, 2A was the apartment number with the moving curtain.
“You’re a regular Sherlock.” Jessica gave me a high-five.
I grinned at her.
There was no elevator, so we took the stairs. “Ready?” I asked.
“Ready,” she answered, taking a fighting stance.
I groaned and knocked on the door. We could hear shuffling inside. When the door finally flew open, we were met with the business end of a shotgun.
Chapter Eighteen
Jessica and I dove to opposite sides of the doorway as if the shotgun had fired.
“Greg!” A woman’s deep voice echoed through the apartment. “Put that thing away before you kill someone.”
Yes, please. Great idea.
The large woman ripped the shotgun from the man’s hand. “Your program is on the television, and I made you a grilled cheese. It’s on the TV tray with a glass of milk.”
He blinked at her as if he wasn’t completely sure who she was. “Is there tomato on the grilled cheese?”
Her stern face softened just a fraction. It was a small crack in the tough exterior. “Yes. I made it just how you like it.”
He beamed at her and clapped his hands as he turned and disappeared into the apartment.
“It’s not loaded,” she said to us after the man disappeared.
Good to know. Tell that to my heart stuck in my throat.
“It makes him feel more secure to have the gun,” she went on. He’s never had any bullets, though. I’m not dumb enough to let him have ammo.” She examined us. “Whatever you’re selling, I don’t want it. Whatever charity you’re raising money for, I don’t care.”
I was still trying to recover my voice after thinking I was about to have my head blown off. Thankfully, Jessica was more together. “Are you Bunny Gallagher?”
“What’s it to you?”
I took that as a yes.
Jessica folded her arms. “We’re friends of Austina Shaker and wanted to talk to you about her.”
“Then you’re no friend of mine.” She started to shut the door.
I recovered enough to stick my boot in between the doorjamb and the closing door. I thought maybe she was going to slam the door on my foot, but was relieved when she stopped just short of crushing my toes. “Please. We want to talk to you about Bishop Beiler too.”
“Are you from the police?” she asked. Thankfully, she didn’t seem to recognize me from t
he scene outside the bookmobile two days earlier.
I opened my mouth, but Jessica was faster. “We’re aiding the police with their investigation, yes.”
I groaned. If it got back to Mitchell that Jessica and I were impersonating an officer, he would flip his lid.
Bunny sniffed and seemed to take this at face value. “I wasn’t there when the bishop got killed. I was already fired by then.”
“But you knew him,” I said, trying not to look at the shotgun in her hand. Even though she held it by the barrel, it still made me nervous.
She squinted at me. After a beat, she said, “Yes, I knew him. He stopped by the bookmobile to tell us to leave his district dozens of times. I would have been happy to leave his district be. It was Austina who insisted that we stay. She felt she was in the right, and no one was going to make her think otherwise, especially not some crazy Amish bishop. People like Austina can only see right or wrong. There’s a lot of gray in this world, and we all have to make our way in it.” She shot a glance over her shoulder.
Behind her, the television began to roar. Greg yelled something, presumably at the screen.
“I took that money because Greg needed it. He needs a lot of care, and my pathetic paycheck cannot cover it. You don’t work at a library for the money,” she said bitterly.
I decided not to mention that there were plenty of options other than stealing.
“I think now that they see that Austina has killed someone, they will give me my old job back.” She gritted her teeth. “This time, I will demand a raise.”
“You still stole from the library,” I said.
“Stealing isn’t as bad as killing someone,” she said matter-of-factly.
I supposed that was technically true, but I wouldn’t hold my breath that the library would reinstate her. “Did you have any contact with the bishop since being fired by the library?”
“No.” She scowled. “Why would I? What do I care what any of the Amish do. Bunch of bonnet-wearing freaks, if you ask me.”
I balled my fists at my sides. No hitting, Angie, I reminded myself.
She gripped the barrel of the shotgun so tightly her knuckles turned white.
There was gunfire on the television, and Greg hollered again.
Bunny looked over her shoulder and back at us. “I’ll be there in a second, you crazy old man!”
Jessica and I shared a wince.
“Where were you the night the bishop was murdered?” I asked, doing my best to sound like Mitchell.
She glared at me. “Not that it’s any of your business, but I was right here with my husband. He will vouch for me.”
Her husband was clearly senile. I didn’t think he was much in the way of an alibi.
Bunny moved to close the door, but I didn’t remove my foot from the threshold into her apartment. “Bunny, do you really think that Austina killed the bishop?”
She screwed up her mouth and then relaxed it. “I sure do. That woman is capable of anything. She fired me, and she knows the condition Greg is in. I hope she goes straight to jail—even if she didn’t do it.”
I clenched my teeth.
She shrugged. “The Amish I knew from the bookmobile didn’t care a whit about Bishop Bartholomew Beiler. Can’t say I blame them. He was a mean s—”
“We get the picture,” Jessica said. “I think we should let you get back to your husband.”
“Don’t come back,” Bunny said, and closed the door. This time she meant business, and I removed my foot just in the nick of time.
“You almost lost a toe there,” Jessica said.
“As bad as that might be, I think I’d be more upset if she’d scuffed my boot.” I inspected my prized cowboy boot for any sign of trauma. It was okay.
I followed Jessica down the stairs and across the street back to her shop. She unlocked the door and let us inside.
I closed the door behind us and saluted Sir Richard, the suit of armor that stood by the door. At one time, my father had wanted to buy it from Jessica. Thankfully, my mother and good sense prevailed and he’d given up that idea.
“That woman is a piece of work,” Jessica said.
I shivered.
“Where are you off to now?”
“The library,” I said. “I hope to find out more about Bunny and Austina there.”
“Do you still consider Austina a suspect?”
I chewed my lip. “I don’t know. I don’t want to, but . . .” I trailed off.
Jessica folded her arms. “If you don’t believe Austina, at least not completely, then why are you involved in this case?”
“Because I want to believe her, and Sarah’s family is tangled up in this mess too. Her brother-in-law is going to marry the bishop’s daughter.”
She frowned.
“I need to get going. I promised to meet with Mom and Willow at the hair salon later. They’re there plotting the library book sale.” I shuddered.
This made Jessica smile, as I knew it would.
I whistled for Oliver, but he didn’t appear. I knew where to find him. I wove through the tangle of furniture and odds and ends. It was a wonder Jessica could find anything in the store. It didn’t have any organization as far as I could tell.
Oliver was exactly where I expected him to be: behind the counter on the other side of the curtain that separated the main floor of the shop from Jessica’s even more disorganized office and stockroom. He and Cherry Cat were curled up together in her cat bed. Oliver was a little too big for the small bed, so his back end spilled over the side. Cherry Cat was washing the top of his head as if he were one of her kittens.
Cherry Cat was Dodger’s biological mother, so she and Oliver had had a close friendship ever since we adopted the little gray-and-white furball. Unfortunately, Dodger didn’t inherit his mother’s prim and proper ways. I finally gave up on curtains and resorted to miniblinds in my house after Dodger had shredded three sets. He could destroy them much faster than I could make new ones.
“Oliver, it’s time to go. We’re going on an errand but then we are going to see Grandma,” I said in a singsong voice.
He lifted his head, knocking Cherry Cat under the chin. The solid gray feline hissed slightly, and Oliver whimpered an apology.
Jessica shook a finger at the cat. “Cherry Cat, don’t you be mean to poor old Oliver.”
Oliver squished up his flat face. There was that “old” word again.
“Oliver,” I said, “let’s go.”
He gave a great sigh and then wiggled out of the bed. Cherry Cat fell to the side at the loss of her canine pillow. She didn’t hiss, but gave me a withering look. I had seen the same expression on Dodger’s face hundreds of times. Like mother, like son.
“Do you really think there will still be a book sale?” Jessica asked.
“Looks that way.”
She frowned. “It doesn’t seem right with everything that has happened.”
I shrugged and silently agreed.
Chapter Nineteen
The main county library was on the outskirts of Millersburg on an access road. Beyond the library was woodland where Rachel’s father, a rogue Amish man named Nahum Shetler, called home. Unease settled over me as it always did when I thought of Rachel and her father. I wanted Rachel to make peace with the man who’d abandoned her when she was a baby, but she wasn’t ready to do that. I couldn’t force her, even though I thought it would be good for her to do it. Months earlier, she had made me promise not to bring Nahum up in conversation. She said she would tell me when she was ready to talk to him. I was starting to think that time would never come.
The library’s parking lot was covered with fallen leaves. An Amish man with a gas-powered leaf blower on his back blew them into a pile on the side yard, where another Amish man raked them into the bag. It wasn’t until I was out of my car
that I noticed that the man with the leaf blower was Jonah.
Beside me, Oliver cowered at the noise the leaf blower made. He slid to the car’s floorboards and buried his head under the front passenger’s seat. Poor guy. Leaf blowers weren’t as scary as birds, but they came in a close second.
I unbuckled my seat belt and leaned over to pat his rump. “You’d better stay in here, Ollie.”
He shivered in reply.
I grabbed my hobo bag from the backseat, cracked a window for Oliver, and got out of my car. He’d be fine in the car for a few minutes. The sun was out and the temperature held steady in the midfifties.
“Jo-Jo!” I called.
He didn’t respond but continued to blow leaves.
“Jonah!”
Nothing.
I sighed and spotted a goat eating leaves under one of the trees. Petunia was tied to the tree with a long length of rope. An oak leaf hung from her bottom lip, and when she saw me she strained against the rope. I walked over to her. Nubian goats were not little pygmies. Her head was level with my waist. I scratched her between the ears. She accepted the caress, and then strained against the rope again in the direction of my car.
I patted her head. “Oliver is in there, but he’s afraid of the leaf blower.”
The goat blew air out of her mouth in a sigh, and the leaf still on her lips fluttered onto the grass.
Jonah remained oblivious, but his companion pointed to me with his rake. Jonah turned around and found me standing there with Petunia.
After what seemed like forever, he shut off the leaf blower.
“Thank you!” I shouted at the top of my voice as if the leaf blower was still going at full throttle.
Jonah joined Petunia and me under the tree. I wasn’t too surprised to see Jonah on library lawn service. My lifelong friend would do any small job to make a dollar or two. He was always looking for ways to make money quickly. The leaf blower was new, though.
“What are you doing here?” I asked.
“Mamm didn’t tell you about my new business venture?” Jonah asked.
“Umm, no, she didn’t.”
Murder, Plainly Read Page 12