He rested the hose of the leaf blower against his right shoulder like a soldier standing at attention with his rifle. I kept the comparison to myself because, as an Amish pacifist, Jonah wouldn’t like it. “You see,” he said, “I’ve given up on the livestock thing to make my way in the world. The geese were a disaster, and I’m learning the turkeys aren’t much better.”
I was happy Oliver was in the car. He might have passed out just from hearing the word “turkey” after his encounter with Jonah’s flock. “When did this new business venture start?”
He grinned. “This morning.”
I rolled my eyes. Of course.
“We’re clearing the library’s lawn of leaves for free. This is so we can talk to folks and build up some business. Lots of people, such as yourself, have stopped us and asked. We already have our first paying job lined up.”
I examined the contraption on his back. “That does not look like an Amish lawn tool,” I teased.
“Sure it is,” he said with a laugh. “It’s gas powered, like my refrigerator, and it doesn’t have any of the newfangled electricity that you Englischers are so fond of. Levi here is on the rake because he’s not allowed to use the leaf blower.” Jonah half covered his mouth. “Which is fine with me; raking by hand takes forever.”
“Levi Leham?” I asked.
He nodded. “Levi and I make a gut team. He rakes while I blow.”
Across the yard, Levi dropped a handful of leaves into the enormous brown paper lawn bag. I studied him. He was built much like his brother. He had a compact muscular frame, but he appeared to be taller than Jeremiah and his hair was a darker shade of brown. There wasn’t any red hue to it that I could see peeking out from under his black stocking cap.
I frowned at Jonah. “You could have told me that you were in business with someone connected to Bartholomew’s murder.”
Jonah scoffed. “He doesn’t have anything to do with the murder.”
“How can you say that? He’s engaged to the bishop’s daughter.”
Jonah groaned. “Is there anything that happens in the county that you don’t know?”
“I make it my business to know.” I folded my arms.
Petunia head-butted me in the hip. Not hard enough to knock me over, but she got my attention.
“And Petunia? Is she part of this business venture too?” I asked.
He grinned. “She is now. Miriam insisted I take her with me. We had a small incident this morning.”
Petunia ducked her head as if ashamed. I didn’t buy it and arched my eyebrows at my childhood friend.
Jonah tugged on his sandy beard. “Petunia broke into Miriam’s root cellar and ate half of my wife’s cabbage harvest before we caught her in the act.”
“How many cabbages did she eat?”
“At least eight.”
“I’m surprised she’s not sick. Should she see a vet after eating that much?”
He shook his head. “I saw her eat barbed wire once.”
I grimaced.
“Miriam will calm down. She always does, and the more I think about it, the more I believe that it was a gut idea to bring Petunia with us. The more leaves she eats, the less we have to bag out, and she attracts attention too. That’s how we got the paying job. The man who spoke with us loves goats.”
“Who doesn’t love goats?” I asked.
“Miriam.”
I refrained from asking what Miriam actually liked, but it was on the tip of my tongue. I eyed Petunia. “Are you sure that rope is secure?” Petunia had a reputation for being an escape artist.
“It’s fine,” he said with more confidence than I felt.
Levi joined us. “Jonah, that bag is full.”
“They are filling up fast.” Jonah pointed at the Amish buggy tethered to the hitching post on the other side of the parking lot. “We have another in the buggy.”
Levi nodded and started toward Jonah’s buggy and his horse, Maggie.
I stopped him. “You’re Jeremiah’s brother. I don’t think we’ve met.”
He gave me a level look. “We haven’t.”
“And Bartholomew Beiler was your bishop?”
Levi made a pained expression. “Ya.”
Jonah shifted from one foot to the other.
“I’m sorry about your bishop.”
He nodded. “It’s terrible what happened. The whole district is a mess over it.”
“How is Faith?” I asked.
His eyes snapped in my direction. “Faith? Do you know her?”
I took a step back. “Well, no, but I heard you were engaged to her. I’m friends with Sarah,” I added, even though Sarah was not my source for this information.
His shoulders relaxed. “I should have known. I forgot that my sister-in-law is a member of your sewing group.”
We were quilters, so we weren’t exactly in a sewing group, but I didn’t bother to correct him. “Sarah is a good friend.”
“And a gossip.” There was a hint of bitterness in his voice.
I didn’t correct him here either. What he said may have been true, but I didn’t care for his tone.
Jonah lowered the hose of his leaf blower from his shoulder. “I figured Levi needed to do something to keep him occupied during this difficult time, so I offered him this job cleaning up leaves with me.”
“I’m grateful to have it,” Levi said. “There is so much gloom and doom in the district right now. It is nice to escape it.” He looked at me. “And Faith is struggling. Anyone in her position would be. She lost her father and her bishop in the same moment.” He stared at the library. “It does seem strange that I would be working outside of the district today, but work is gut for the soul. That’s the lesson Bishop Beiler always taught. He did not abide idle hands.”
“I’ve met a few others from your district recently,” I said.
“Who?” he asked.
“Phoebe and Phillip Truber. I met them at the school on Hock Trail.”
I felt Jonah watching me.
Thankfully, Levi didn’t ask me why I had been to the school.
“Do you know them?”
He didn’t answer.
“What about Gil Kauffman?” I asked, suspecting I was pushing my luck.
He scowled, proving me right. “We have a small district—everyone knows everyone.” He stepped away and resumed raking. I could take a hint. The conversation was over.
Jonah cleared his throat. “What brings you to the library? Don’t tell me you don’t have enough to read already.”
I lifted my chin as if offended. “A true reader never has enough to read.”
He laughed.
“Actually, I’m here to talk to some of Austina’s coworkers.”
Jonah sighed. “Angie.”
“I promised I would help her.” If I lifted my chin any higher, I would get a crick in my neck.
Levi threw his rake on the ground. “Are you talking about that librarian who killed the bishop?”
“She’s a librarian who’s a suspect for the bishop’s murder.”
He scowled at me again. “How could you help someone who did such a horrible act?”
“I don’t believe she did it.” I held my ground.
“But are you sure?” Levi asked.
I squirmed under his scrutiny. The truth was, I wasn’t sure. Before the murder, Austina had been merely a friendly acquaintance. It wasn’t like the time that my best friend, Rachel Miller, had been accused of murder and I knew with every fiber of my being that she was innocent. But I did not know Austina as well, so I couldn’t be one hundred percent certain. Doubt is a dangerous rope to walk.
Jonah saved me from answering and slapped Levi on the arm. “These leaves aren’t going to rake themselves. Let’s get back to work.” He fired up the leaf blower and
any further conversation was impossible.
I gave him a grateful smile.
Chapter Twenty
I stepped into the library building. There were two workers talking to a patron at the circulation desk. I recognized them but didn’t know them well. The woman must have recognized me too, because she said, “Amber is in picture books.”
Even though it was the main county library, it wasn’t large. It encompassed one big room, and the staff could see every section from children’s to audiobooks from the circulation desk.
I found Amber kneeling in front of one of the three-foot-high picture book shelves. She sorted a stack of colorful books on the carpeted floor in front of her. Seeing those books, I suddenly had a pang that I didn’t have a child to read them to. At thirty-five, I would have thought I would have children by now. My ex-fiancé had wanted to put marriage and children off even though we had been together six years before he proposed to me. It was for the best. I couldn’t imagine dividing a child between Ohio and Texas, where Ryan still lived. I pushed the glum thoughts aside. Thirty-five was just a number, and I had time.
And it wasn’t like I didn’t have a child in my life. Mitchell’s nine-year-old son, Zander, was a hoot. Many times, when Mitchell had an emergency call and Zander’s mother, Hillary, wasn’t available, he would drop Z by my house or the shop to keep an eye on him.
I wouldn’t go as far as to say I was a parent figure to Z. He had two loving parents already, but we had become good buddies over the last few months. If he was no longer a part of my life, it would almost be as difficult to bear as if I’d lost the sheriff.
Amber smiled up at me. “Hi, Angie. I didn’t expect you today. You were here earlier in the week to pick up your holds. Did you finish them already?”
I shook my head. “Not yet.”
Last Christmas, Amber’s best friend was murdered, and I had helped bring the killer to justice. Through the experience we had become friends, and I visited her every time I came into the library to feed my reading habit, which was at least once a week.
Her smile dissolved. “You’re here about Austina.”
I nodded.
She twisted her mouth. “I wondered if you would be involved in it. I heard you and Austina found the body.”
I leaned on the short bookshelf. “What can you tell me about Austina?”
She shot a glance at her coworkers at the desk. “Let’s go outside and talk.” She stood up with her stack of picture books and placed them on top of a metal library cart standing a few feet away. “I’m going to take my break,” she said, loudly enough for the staff at the desk to hear.
The man working at the desk nodded absentmindedly. The woman didn’t even turn from her computer screen.
I followed Amber out the front door. Outside, I expected to find Jonah and Levi still there, but they had left.
“Oliver is hiding in my car. He was afraid of that leaf blower,” I explained. “Is it okay if I take him out to walk around a bit?”
She shook her head. “Oh, sure—go ahead.”
As I went to my car to let Oliver out, she went over to a red picnic table under a huge oak tree. The tree was half bare but still had more leaves to drop. Jonah and Levi would have to come to the library again to finish the job. She wrapped her arms around herself and shivered.
I reached into the back of my car and grabbed the wool blanket that I always kept there. It was the same blanket I had given Austina after I’d found her with the body. The blanket was covered with Oliver’s fur, but I didn’t think Amber would mind.
Oliver tentatively jumped to the pavement and pressed his nose to the blacktop as we walked across the parking lot. I suspected he was looking for evidence to prove the evil leaf blower was really gone. He whimpered and looked at me. He must have caught a whiff of Petunia. He sighed when he realized she was gone. Oliver trotted after me to the picnic table.
Amber smiled at him. “Nice to see you, Oliver.”
He sniffed the toes of her riding boots in return.
I handed Amber the blanket. “Thanks. I guess I should have stopped and grabbed my coat before coming out here.” She smiled. “But this will work just fine.”
I sat on the top of the picnic table next to her. The wooden surface felt like sitting on an ice cube. I shifted in my seat and put my feet on the bench.
“So what can you tell me about Austina?”
Amber snuggled under the blanket. “There’s not much to tell. I worked with her, probably more than a lot of the others in the library. I’ve been filling in at the bookmobile a lot lately.”
“Since she fired Bunny,” I said.
She gripped the blanket closer to her shoulders. “You know about that?”
“Austina told me, and I just spoke with Bunny a little while ago. There was a shotgun involved.”
Amber’s mouth fell open as she listened to my tale.
“I knew Bunny was cuckoo for Cocoa Puffs, but geez . . .”
“I came to that determination too,” I said. “Is there anything else you can tell me about her?”
She shook her head. “Not really. Like Austina, she worked exclusively on the bookmobile. I might see her every once in a while at an all-staff meeting, but it was pretty rare.”
“You didn’t work on the bookmobile before?”
She lifted her legs and folded them underneath her, cross-legged. “Not until after Bunny was fired, and I started my new position.”
“New position?”
She grinned. “I’m not a shelver anymore. I’m a library assistant. I can do all sorts of new stuff like catalog books and run circulation reports.” Her eyes glittered at the thought of circulation reports. Clearly Amber had a different relationship with statistics than I did. “I’m thinking of going to library school after college.”
“That’s great, Amber. You’ll make the perfect librarian.”
“Thanks!” She beamed. “I think my dad is happy I finally settled on something. He can’t stand indecision. I changed my major at least five times. The last time I changed it I thought he was going to pop a blood vessel.”
I knew her father’s impatience firsthand from our work as township trustees together. We spent many hours in meetings, usually on opposite sides of an argument.
“But back to Bunny. Like I said, I don’t know her, but she’s kind of oafish. Big-boned, my grandmother would say, because it’s somehow nicer than heavy. In my mind, someone named Bunny would be more a cheerleader type. You know, bouncy and perky. Bunny reminds me more of an ox.”
I grimaced.
“She was fired a couple of weeks ago. I don’t know why. That stuff is confidential.”
Oliver jumped after a leaf blown across the grass by the cool breeze.
“She stole fine money from the bookmobile,” I said.
“That would do it. It’s an unforgivable sin in the library world.” She shook her head as if she couldn’t imagine anyone doing such a thing. “I don’t know how she and Austina worked together, trapped in the bookmobile for all those years. Even though I didn’t see them often, it was clear they didn’t like each other.”
“What makes you think that?” I shoved my hands into my coat pockets.
“The looks they shot each other behind the other’s back, or the way they grumbled about each other under their breaths. Our director even tried to separate them by looking for another staff member to work on the bookmobile, but no one volunteered. No one wanted to work with Austina or Bunny.”
“Okay, so Bunny definitely had a problem with Austina. What about anyone else on staff?” I asked.
She shook her head. “I can’t think of anyone else at the library who had a problem with her. No one was around her enough. Other than Bunny, I had the most contact with Austina, and that was just lately.”
“Was Austina difficult to work with
?”
Amber picked a fallen leaf off the table and twirled it between her fingers. “She’s all right. She treats the bookmobile like her private domain. I’m still learning the ropes there, so I don’t argue with her.”
“But you weren’t on the bookmobile the day before Bartholomew died.”
She shook her head. “I would only go out with Austina if she was visiting the large district. The Beiler district is so small that Austina could handle it herself. I stayed back and worked here. We’re short-staffed all over the library system because of budget cuts, so the director wants me to fill in where I’m needed the most.”
Oliver rolled in the grass at our feet, and Amber smiled at his antics.
“That makes sense. Did you ever see the bishop?”
“Once. Here at the main library.”
“He came here?”
She nodded. “He wanted to speak to the library director. I suppose it was to complain about Austina and the bookmobile. I can’t think of any other reason he would walk into the library. You should have seen the sneer he had on his face when he was here and saw all the books. He hated them.” She shivered. “How can anyone hate books?”
“I don’t think it is so much the books that Bartholomew hated, but the ideas they hold.”
She twirled her leaf. “That makes it somehow worse.”
“Did he talk to the director?”
“No.” She let the leaf fall to the grass. “It was a Saturday, and the library director never works on the weekend. We told him he was welcome to come back and talk to her another day, but he never did.”
“When was that?”
“About a week ago. I hadn’t thought about it much until now.” She hopped off the picnic table. “I’d better get back to work. I only get a fifteen-minute break.”
“One more question.”
She turned to look at me with her eyebrows raised.
“Do you know where the keys to the bookmobile are in the library workroom? Austina said there were two there.”
She nodded.
“Have they gone missing?”
“Not that I’ve noticed. I saw them there today.”
“Did you see them the day the bishop was killed?”
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