Sarah stepped into the living room with her eyebrows raised. “Levi asked to talk to you?”
“Phoebe is like an older sister to me,” Levi said. “I asked to talk to her because of what happened with Faith. She knows what I’m going through.” He stared at the floor and his face turned red.
Phoebe smiled at him and seemed more relaxed now that she was quilting. “Faith is confused like so many in our district after the bishop’s death. I told Levi not to worry. She still loves him. She needs time.”
“I saw Faith today,” I said, sitting on a kitchen chair, which Mattie had quietly brought into the room.
Levi’s head snapped up.
I met his gaze. “I think Phoebe is right.”
“If that is true, Levi, you need to talk to her,” Rachel said.
He shook his head. “She was so certain we shouldn’t marry.”
“She wasn’t as certain when I spoke to her,” I said.
He jumped to his feet. “I’ll go talk to her now.”
“Levi,” Sarah said, setting the coffee tray in the middle of an oak end table. “It’s late, and the Beiler family is in mourning. Wait until tomorrow.”
He sat back down and dropped his head into his hands.
“Bruder,” Sarah said. “Why don’t you sleep here tonight, and then you can go see Faith when you are refreshed in the morning? It will only scare her and upset her family if you go over at this hour.”
“Ya,” Anna agreed. “And in the morning your eyes will have cleared of any trace of drinking.” She gave him her best disapproving look.
He removed his black felt hat and held it lightly. “I suppose you’re right. Earlier, Phoebe told me the same.” He looked at each woman in the room. “I never expected to have this conversation with all of you.”
“Ah,” Anna said. “We are gut shoulders to cry on.”
He laughed lightly. “I will go upstairs and see what the children are doing.” He looked at Phoebe. “Danki.”
I couldn’t help but wonder whether he was thanking her for more than meeting him in the pumpkin patch.
Levi went up the stairs with heavy steps.
Chapter Thirty-seven
After Levi was out of sight, Sarah asked, “Would you like to stay for dinner, Phoebe? We have plenty.”
“Nee, I should be getting home. My family will worry.”
“How are you getting home?” Rachel asked.
“I will walk. It is how I got here.”
I stood up. “Don’t be silly,” I said. “I’ll drive you.”
“I don’t mind walking.” She tied the ribbons of her bonnet. “It is not far.”
“So it will not be far for me to take you.”
“That is a very gut idea, Angie,” Anna said.
Phoebe tried to argue more, but it was the five members of my quilting circle against one. She didn’t stand a chance.
I touched Rachel’s arm. “Before I leave, can I talk to you?”
She frowned but nodded.
I felt the other ladies from the quilting circle watching us as we went into the kitchen. I half expected Sarah to follow us, but no one did.
Rachel stirred the stew on the stovetop. “If you take Phoebe home, you will miss dinner.”
“It’s all right. I’m not hungry,” I said.
She turned and arched an eyebrow at me.
I smiled. “I’m not that hungry.” I paused. “Rachel, I’m sorry about today—about what happened to Nahum.”
She concentrated on the pot. “You should not have left him there with his leg caught like that.”
“I know. I was so taken aback. Willow and I were there only a couple of minutes before you appeared.”
She picked up a dishtowel from the counter and folded it. It was impossible for an Amish woman to stand still in a kitchen. “I asked you not to talk to him about me.”
“I know, and at that time I wasn’t. I was as surprised as you were when Willow led me to him in the woods. I was questioning him about Austina.”
“But you have spoken to him about me before,” she said.
I bit the inside of my cheek. “Yes.”
She placed the dishtowel on the counter and sighed. “I know that you mean well, but I have asked you not to talk to him because I’m not ready to speak to my father myself. When I am, you will know. I’m asking you to be patient.”
“I’m not the most patient person in the world.”
The corner of her mouth turned up into a small smile. “I have noticed.”
I gave a sigh of relief at her smile. “Okay, we have a deal. No more Nahum talk.”
She laughed. “Gut.”
Not long after that, Phoebe, Oliver, and I left the Lehams’ farm. In my car, as Phoebe buckled her seat belt, she said, “I live on Hock Trail.”
“So you live near your school. That is nice.”
She nodded and stared out the window.
“It was nice of you to talk to Levi.” I watched her out the corner of my eye.
She didn’t look at me. “I know how he felt. I lost someone I was going to marry once. I don’t want that to happen to my friend.”
“What happened?” I asked.
“He was from a different district,” she said softly.
“Who was it?” I couldn’t help asking the question.
“It does not matter. It was a long time ago.”
“I was engaged to be married once. Not to the sheriff,” I said quickly. “To someone else back in Texas, so I sort of understand what you’ve gone through.”
She shook her head. “No, you can’t. You can make your own decisions.” She cleared her throat. “It was for the best. Had I married, I would no longer be teaching, and I love my children so much.”
She didn’t say another word after that. I suspected that she was sorry she’d said anything at all to me about him. Even when we drove by her school, she said nothing.
A mile south of the school, my headlights hit a white mailbox. “That is my driveway. I will get out here.”
I shifted the car into park.
“Danki—thank you for the ride. I am home much quicker than I would have been had I walked.” She got out of the car.
As I backed up, my headlights caught sight of Phoebe’s brother, Phillip, standing in the driveway. He glared at me through the windshield.
I shook off the creeping feeling that Phillip gave me and stopped at the end of Hock Trail to check my phone to see whose call had given away my hiding spot in the pumpkin patch. It was the sheriff.
Taking a deep breath, I called Mitchell back. I was ready for the lecture about keeping information from him and meddling in a police investigation.
“Thank goodness it’s you,” Mitchell said, honestly relieved.
That was a much friendlier greeting than I had expected after our argument outside the diner.
“Angie, I’m in a bit of a bind,” he said.
“What’s wrong?” I sat up straight.
“I’m supposed to have Zander tonight, but I have to work late. I suppose you can guess why.”
Because he arrested Austina. I knew he must be questioning her. I knew from experience that police questioning, especially when it came to murder, could take hours. I bit my lip. “I can.”
“Z is at Hillary’s right now.”
“He can’t stay there?” I asked.
“She has a date.”
“Oh!” I said. “Oh.”
“Yes,” Mitchell agreed. “And I told her I don’t want her to cancel.”
Neither did I. Hillary dating might mean that she was finally over Mitchell, or at least trying to be. I would take whatever I could get in that direction.
“Could you pick him up and stay with him until I can leave the station?” Mitchell asked in a r
ush.
I blew out a breath. Since he asked me to watch Z, I knew he couldn’t be that mad at me. “Sure, I can pick him up. Do you want me to take him to my house or yours?”
“Mine,” he said, sounding relieved. “Would that be all right?”
“No problem.” I had a key he’d given me several weeks earlier. “How late will you be?”
He sighed. “I don’t know.”
“Don’t worry. Zander and I will be fine. I’ll feed him junk food, and we will stay up late.”
He didn’t even react to my joke. “Great. I’ll let Hillary know.” He paused. “And, Angie, we need to talk about today. Not now, but later.”
“I know.” That was not a conversation I was looking forward to.
“See you tonight.”
“Tonight.” All the warm fuzzies I had gotten over being asked to watch Zander dissolved with his promise of a talk.
Hillary Mitchell, Mitchell’s ex-wife and my sort of friend, lived in Millersburg in a large two-story home. I knew from Zander it was the house that Hillary and Mitchell had shared before the divorce. I tried not to think about that as I turned into the driveway. What woman wanted to visit the home her boyfriend had shared with another woman?
I rang the doorbell, and Hillary answered. Her long black hair cascaded over her shoulders, and her makeup was expertly applied. She wore a navy cocktail dress that fit her perfectly. Not for the first time, I was struck by how stunning Mitchell’s ex-wife was. I felt like a frump in comparison, wearing my cowboy boots, jeans, and a cotton-blend sweater, not to mention the traces of dirt on my clothes from my spill in the pumpkin patch.
“Come on in.” She held the door open wide.
I stepped over the threshold. It was the first time I had ever entered Zander’s other home. The decor was a nice blend of modern and traditional, a lot like Hillary herself. I could see her touch everywhere. I wondered whether it had looked the same when Mitchell lived there, but I pushed those thoughts away.
“Thanks for coming on such short notice. I should have known that James would be called into work and had a backup sitter lined up. It’s always the same.”
Automatically, I came to Mitchell’s defense. “There is a murder investigation going on.”
“Zander, hurry up,” Hillary shouted over her shoulder. Then, turning back to me, she said, “If it wasn’t a murder, it would be something else.”
I bit back a smart retort.
There was a muffled response from the next room over the drone of the television. Something might have been exploding. Explosions were Z’s favorite.
“I don’t mind at all. Mitchell said you have a date.” I tried to keep my tone conversational.
She groaned. “I should have canceled it. Dating is such a waste of time.”
“It doesn’t have to be. Dating can be good.” I hoped I gave her an encouraging smile.
“We’ll see.” She picked up a small black-beaded purse from the side table by the door. It was so small I didn’t even know why she bothered with it. “One of my coworkers set me up with her brother. He’s taking me to a winery for a tasting and dinner. It may turn out to be a complete disaster.”
“But there will be wine,” I said, keeping it positive.
“True, so it won’t be a complete loss.”
Zander bounced into the living room with an oversized backpack on his back.
“Did you pack your homework?” his mother asked.
He rolled his eyes. “Mom, it’s Friday. No one does homework on Friday.” He promptly dropped his backpack on the floor as if it weighed a thousand pounds.
Hillary shook her head. “The eye rolling thing is new,” she said to me. “It drives me nuts. I have no idea how I’m going to survive his teenage years, and if he’s anything like his father, he will be a handful.”
“Wait. The sheriff was a handful when he was growing up?” This was news. I had always thought Mitchell had permanently been on the straight and narrow. I’d yet to see the man so much as jaywalk, and he was the sheriff. It wasn’t as if someone was going to arrest him for crossing the street in the wrong place.
“The stories I could tell . . . ,” Hillary said ominously.
I would have asked for more details if Zander hadn’t been standing there.
“We should do coffee sometime, Angie. Just you and me, and I can tell you all about James’s wild past.”
I smiled. I knew Mitchell wouldn’t like that. He was leery that Hillary and I were even on speaking terms. Maybe it was because she could clue me into his misspent youth.
She opened and closed her clutch. “If anything happens, you have my cell number. You just call me. I might want an excuse to escape my date anyway.”
I smiled. “Don’t worry. We’ll be fine.”
She gave Zander a hug. “Be good.”
He rolled his eyes again. I could see why this might become a problem. I hoped he hadn’t picked up the eye rolling from me, but I was afraid he might have.
Hillary and I said good-bye, and I tousled Zander’s hair on the way to the car. “What kind of junk food do you want for dinner, kid?”
“Pizza.”
“Toppings?”
“Extra cheese and pepperoni.”
“Ahh, a boy after my own heart.”
Fifteen minutes later, Zander and I were waiting at the pizza place to pick up our order, which also included a side of buffalo wings, garlic bread, and a salad. I consoled myself that I had included a salad. Sure, the salad was half mozzarella cheese, but it still counted. Amish Country wasn’t known for its pizza, but there was a pretty good mom-and-pop place in Millersburg.
Zander fed Oliver pieces of mozzarella from the salad while we waited for the pizza.
My cell phone rang. I was beginning to wonder when I had become so popular. I knew it couldn’t be Mitchell. I had texted him right after picking Zander up, and he said he thought he would be home at eleven if he was lucky and that he couldn’t talk.
“We need an emergency meeting for the book sale tonight,” Willow said in my ear.
When had a library book sale equated to a state of emergency?
“We need you to come back to town.” Willow sounded winded, as if she had just sprinted down Sugartree Street.
I glanced over at Zander, who had stuffed his cheek full of cheese until he looked like a chipmunk. “I’m with Zander. Mitchell had to work late.”
“Drop him off with his mother,” Willow said dismissively.
“She had a date.”
“Oh,” Willow said. That derailed her for just a moment. “Then bring him with you.”
Mitchell would love that.
“Angie, we need you.” She paused. “The bookmobile is back.”
That grabbed my attention, as she knew it would. “What? Why?”
“See you in ten minutes at my shop, and we will explain.” She ended the call.
I hung up and sighed. “Can I have another cheese pizza to go?” I asked the teen at the counter.
Chapter Thirty-eight
I’d been hoping Willow was pulling some sort of cruel joke, but, alas, the giant silver-and-green behemoth was indeed parked in the middle of Sugartree Street, right in front of the Dutchman’s Tea Shop. I parked behind the bookmobile and unloaded two dogs and a child.
After collecting the pizzas, Zander had insisted we stop at Mitchell’s house to pick up Tux. He said it wasn’t fair that Tux had been home alone all day. So I went into the tea shop with two dogs and a nine-year-old. Yeah, this wasn’t a recipe for disaster.
Willow threw open the door to the tea shop.
Holding the pizzas, I said, “I thought you were joking about the bookmobile.”
“Why would I joke about that? Come in, come in. Your parents are already inside.”
Terrific.
&nbs
p; Willow ushered Oliver, Tux, Zander, and me inside.
“Be careful,” I said to Zander, including the dogs in my statement. “Try not to break anything.”
There were only two customers in the tea shop sitting at separate tables working on laptop computers. The Dutchman’s Tea Shop did most of its business with the breakfast and lunch crowd. Most people left Sugartree Street when the other shops on the road closed at four. Willow stayed opened until seven because she lived above the tea shop in a small apartment on the second floor, and since she had such a short commute, it made sense to stay open and make a little more money.
My mother and father sat at a table by the front window. There was a pot of tea in between them. I set the pizzas on a neighboring table.
“Kara, can you get some plates and napkins?” Willow asked her server.
The girl nodded and headed back to the kitchen, then reappeared within seconds with paper plates and napkins. She probably took one look at Zander and realized Willow’s fine china wasn’t going to work.
Zander settled into his seat. I knew from experience that we had about ten minutes before he got bored with eating and started exploring the shop. There were far too many things in Willow’s shop for him to break, so I couldn’t allow that to happen.
“Angela,” Mom said, “why do you have dirt on your clothes?”
I handed Zander a paper napkin. “Pumpkins.”
“Pumpkins can be dangerous,” Dad said.
“So what’s the emergency?” I asked. “I mean, other than the bookmobile being back. And why is it here?” I put two pieces of pepperoni pizza on a plate for Zander before taking two for myself. I suspected I was going to need a third.
My mother raised her eyebrow at my dinner.
Dad stood and moved over to Zander’s table. “Since you have official book sale business, the guys will sit over here with the pizza. Right, Z-man?”
Zander high-fived my dad. “Right.”
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