by Amy Lillard
“Okay, so the truth is I don’t want to be alone. There. I said it. We can talk about Jimmy. Maybe we can figure out how to get him out of jail.” Those were perhaps the only words that could’ve kept Kappy from leaving. Not that they had any hope of coming up with an idea tonight. Still, they were both worried about her brother and that alone bonded them together as unlikely friends.
“Jah. Okay. I’ll stay. But only for tonight.”
Once the dogs were fed, the two continued with the gerbils, rabbits, the ducks, then finally the horses.
“I didn’t realize Mamm had such a zoo around here.”
Kappy nodded. “Isn’t it something? She has all sorts of records and stuff in her office, though I think the gerbils, ducks, and rabbits are really Jimmy’s.”
Edie smiled affectionately. “He always did love anything with fur.”
“Ducks have feathers.”
“Don’t ruin my reminiscing with semantics.”
Kappy had no idea what she was talking about. Last year she had purchased a word-a-day calendar. It was the kind that had a removable sheet for each day and a word on it to increase her vocabulary. She had learned a lot of words in the past few months, but she still had a ways to go.
Edie walked around the corner toward the door that led out into the pasture. “So this is where it happened?” Her voice turned soft and wispy as if she were standing on sacred ground.
“Jah. That’s where she was when I came in.”
“Where was Jimmy?”
She pointed to the spot where Jimmy had been standing. “He was there.”
Edie walked all around, using the toe of her flip-flop to overturn small piles of hay.
“What are you doing?”
“Looking for clues.”
“The police have already done that,” Kappy said.
Edie didn’t bother to look up. “Maybe they missed something.”
Kappy didn’t know much about police work, but she supposed that was possible. “So what are you looking for?” She joined in the search, using her foot to brush the hay from side to side.
“Clues, I told you.”
Kappy managed to keep the exasperation out of her voice. “What kind of clues?”
“Oh,” Edie said. “I don’t know. Anything. Something someone might have left behind. Like a shoe or a special coin. Or—”
“A button.” Kappy bent down to retrieve this small item from the hay. She held it up to the light, then laid it in her palm and extended her hand toward Edie. “It’s red.”
Edie took a step closer, staring down at the object. It was no bigger than a dime. A shirt button, for sure.
“But Amish men don’t wear red shirts in the valley,” she said.
She didn’t need to add that the women pinned their dresses, so the button had to come from—“An Englischer,” Kappy whispered.
Edie chewed on her bottom lip, her expression thoughtful. “Kappy, didn’t you say you drove your buggy over here that day?”
“Jah. Why?”
“Did you see anyone on the road? Maybe someone in a car?”
Cars passed Amish buggies all the time. How was she supposed to remember one car in a thousand? If she had known then that Ruth Peachey had just been murdered, she might’ve paid better attention. But as it was . . . “I don’t remember.”
Edie gave a little growl of frustration.
“I’m sorry.”
“Never mind,” Edie said. “It doesn’t matter.”
But it did.
“Maybe if the Englischer . . .” Edie didn’t finish. “I mean, if the person who killed my mother lost this button, then we know they’re not Amish.”
Kappy thought about it a minute. The button grew hot in her hand. “What if they’re Lancaster Amish and they came up here to get a puppy?” She shook her head. “It’s not like we will ever find the piece of clothing this came from.”
Edie plucked it from Kappy’s palm and stuck it in the pocket of her purple pants. “It’s still a clue.”
“It’s a button.”
But Edie couldn’t be deterred. “Tomorrow, let’s go around and talk to the neighbors. Maybe someone saw something.”
Or maybe not. “I’m not sure that’s such a good idea. What if we alert the murderer that we’re looking for him?”
“We’ll never find out anything if we don’t start talking to people.”
“All right. You go around and talk to everybody. I’m going to sew some new kapps.” After all, she still had a business to run.
Kappy turned to walk out of the barn with Edie right behind her.
“You have to go with me, Kappy. No church member is going to talk to me. Remember? I’m under the Bann.”
“Why do you think they’ll talk to me?” She had a bad feeling about this. When this was all said and done, Edie would head back to the big city, and Kappy would be left with the fallout.
“At least you’re not excommunicated.”
Kappy kept walking toward the house.
“Come on, Kappy. Please.”
She didn’t answer.
“For Jimmy.”
Kappy stopped. The second victim in this tragedy, Jimmy Peachey. Just the thought of his innocent face made her heart squeeze in her chest. “Okay,” she said. “I’ll go with you, but I’m only doing this for Jimmy.”
Edie grinned. “That’s fine by me.”
* * *
Kappy knocked three times on the door, then took a step back. How had she gotten sucked into this? It wasn’t that she didn’t want to help Jimmy. She did. She just didn’t know how Edie had come to the conclusion that they could find out more than the police.
You did find the button.
But was it really a clue? Or just something else for them to chase?
“Knock again,” Edie nudged.
“Give him a minute to get to the door.” But she really wanted more than a minute. She didn’t want to talk to Jay Glick at all.
Jay lived on the back side of the Peacheys, just a little farther down School Yard Road. Though Jay’s house, unlike Ruth’s, faced the road itself.
“He might be ignoring us.”
It was possible. Jay Glick wasn’t known for his friendly nature.
The door jerked open and there stood a glowering Jay Glick. He only opened the wooden door, leaving the storm door closed, but even the screen didn’t soften his menacing expression. “Why are you bothering me, girl?” He glared at Kappy first, then turned his attention to Edie. It took him only a minute to see past her too-tight Englisch clothes and dyed hair. His scowl deepened.
“We were hoping to talk to you about Ruth.”
His expression didn’t change. The scowl remained firmly in place. “What about her?”
“Did you know the police think she was murdered?” She was making a mess of this. Perhaps they should have written out some sort of plan before they started knocking on doors.
“Why would I know that?”
Edie took a step forward. “We were hoping that you might have seen something the day she was killed.”
“Do you hear something?” He cupped one hand around his ear. “Nope. Pretty sure. I didn’t hear a thing.”
Kappy closed her eyes as she counted to five. “We, that is, I was hoping that you might have seen something the day she was killed.”
Jay made a flicking motion with one hand. “The corn was just as high then as it is now. Much too tall for a man to see over.”
True the corn was tall, but that didn’t mean he couldn’t have seen something. “Maybe around three o’clock?” Kappy pressed.
“I told you I didn’t see nothing.” He took a step back to shut the door.
“But you were home about that time?” Perhaps with a little time he would remember.
“Jah. I was here. But I didn’t see nothing.”
“Maybe we could talk to one of your sons. Maybe they saw something,” Kappy called through the shrinking gap as the door closed.
“Nobody here’s seen nothing,” Jay said, then he was gone.
Kappy stared at the door for what seemed like a solid minute. Then she turned toward Edie. “That didn’t go according to plan.”
“You think?”
Kappy made her way down the steps. “You can’t blame me. He hasn’t changed one bit in twenty years. You knew as well as I did that he wouldn’t be cooperative.”
“Who’s next?”
Kappy tapped her chin thoughtfully. “We could go over to Martha’s and see if she saw anything.” Martha lived on the other side of Ruth, though her house sat a little closer to the road. And since her land was planted with soybeans, she might have seen something.
“Kappy King.” The words were spoken so softly she wasn’t sure she had even heard them. “Kappy King.”
Kappy looked to Edie. “Did you hear that?”
Edie nodded to a point behind Kappy. Anna Mae Glick poked her head around the corner of the house. “Come here,” she whispered, motioning her over.
“What is it?” Kappy wasn’t sure why they were whispering, but since Anna Mae had started it she felt obliged to continue.
“Jay’s wrong. We did see something. I saw something.”
“Jah? What?”
“A man in a blue shirt.”
Excitement coursed through her. Another clue!
“You saw a man in a blue shirt?” Edie asked.
Anna Mae gazed expectantly at Kappy. As if she wanted something from her.
“You saw a man in a blue shirt?” Kappy repeated.
“I did. Running away from the barn. We all saw him.”
“For Pete’s sake! If you all saw him, why is Jay—”
Kappy elbowed Edie in the ribs to stop her words. “Which way was he going?” she asked.
She shook her head. “I wasn’t paying close attention. How was I to know that he was a murderer?”
“Was he an Amish man?”
“I think so, jah.”
As far as clues went, it wasn’t the best, but it was better than nothing. And better than any others they had uncovered. “Thanks, Anna Mae.”
The tiny woman smiled. “Just trying to help.” She flitted away, ducking onto the side porch and disappearing around front.
“Well?” Kappy asked.
Edie shrugged. “There’s something strange about this.”
“You’re just saying that because she ignored you.”
“Maybe.” Edie propped her hands on her hips. “But it still seems weird.”
“And it’s still the best clue we have,” Kappy pointed out. “Better than the button, don’t you think?”
“If you say so,” Edie grumbled.
“I say we go to Martha’s. If the man was running toward her house, maybe she saw something, too.”
“Maybe.”
“Or would you rather ask Nathaniel and Ephraim if they saw anything?”
Nathaniel Ebersol and Ephraim Jess lived on either side of Kappy. Both men were old as the hills and had been feuding even longer. The bishop had long since given up on trying to get the two men to resolve their differences. Instead, Samuel made sure that the two were sitting on opposite ends at church and that they didn’t go to the grocery store on the same day.
Edie seemed to think about it. “Like what?”
“The button is probably Englisch, right? So if it was lost that day—and I’m not saying it was—then perhaps they saw an Englisch car on the road.”
“That’s a long shot.” Edie sighed.
Kappy knew what she was thinking. And she wanted the same thing, Jimmy out of jail as soon as possible. “But if they did see something . . . We have to follow up on every clue.”
“Right.” Edie gave a quick nod. “Let’s talk to Martha first, then we’ll see if those two know anything.”
Martha’s property sat behind Ruth’s and faced the main road. It was a little closer to the street, and the quickest way there was to take Edie’s car. Kappy wasn’t an expert or even remotely knowledgeable about Englisch automobiles, but this one was a mess. One look at the backseat and Kappy wondered if there were any clothes left in Edie’s closet at her apartment. Or maybe she just didn’t own a suitcase. Whatever it was, the clothes were only outnumbered by the to-go cups and fast-food wrappers.
“Here,” Edie said. “Let me get that.” She brushed a stack of junk mail, two hamburger boxes, and a stray french fry onto the floorboard so Kappy could ease into the passenger seat.
She cast a dubious look around as Edie started the car. “You do have an apartment in the city, don’t you?”
Edie put the car in reverse and backed out without once meeting Kappy’s gaze. “Yeah, sort of.”
“How does a person sort of have a place to live?”
“Well, I had a place to live, but I got evicted.”
That would explain the box of shoes behind the driver’s seat.
“Oh.” Kappy hoped she had adopted a suitably understanding expression.
“It doesn’t matter, though. The guy I was living with turned out to be a jerk.”
Kappy’s mouth fell open as she stared at Edie. “You were living with a man?”
Edie eased her car onto the side road and gave a small shrug. Still, she refused to look Kappy in the face. “We weren’t supposed to be living together living together, but then he started to get other ideas. I was going to move out anyway.”
“I see,” Kappy murmured. But it was a lie. She barely knew anything about Amish men. How was she supposed to know about Englisch ones?
“Englisch guys are different,” Edie groused. “They’re not like Amish guys at all.”
“I guess not,” Kappy replied.
“So you and Hiram Lapp.” Edie changed the subject so quickly it was nearly jarring.
“No. Not really.”
“Then why did Jimmy paint your front door?” Edie asked as she turned into Martha’s driveway.
“He’s misguided,” Kappy returned.
“Uh-huh.”
Kappy didn’t wait for Edie to turn off the car before she opened the door and got out. She didn’t want to talk about Hiram. Not with anyone, but especially not with Edie Peachey, who had been living with a man up until she came to her mother’s funeral. The thought was staggering.
She made her way up the porch steps and knocked on the door. “Martha?” she called.
The elderly woman opened the door almost immediately, as if she had been standing there waiting for someone to knock.
Martha Peachey was no relation to Ruth and Jimmy or if she was it was so far removed that everyone had forgotten. As it was, half the Amish in the valley held the last name Peachey. Some claimed kinship, others didn’t. Either way it was no business of Kappy’s.
“Why, Kathryn King! What brings you out today?”
Martha was the only person in the district, probably in the entire valley, who called her by her given name. She had been Kathy until her younger brother was born. When he couldn’t manage that, she had been dubbed Kappy by everyone around. Some wondered if it was perhaps an omen of things to come since she was the only kapp maker in the area. Kappy didn’t think much of the theory, only that she felt a keen sense of loss when anybody called her by her real name.
It had been nearly sixteen years since her parents and her two brothers were killed in a car-buggy crash, and still she missed them every day. She often wondered how different her life might have been had her mother been there through her run-around years. But there was no going back, only forward.
“Hi, Martha. I was wondering if I could talk to you for a bit.”
Martha smiled, showing her perfect dentures. No one knew exactly how old Martha was, but if Kappy had to guess on wrinkles alone, she would say one hundred and twelve. Martha talked about times long past as if she remembered it all, though there was no one to dispute her tales. Most everyone close to that age had long since passed while Nathaniel and Ephraim wouldn’t agree if their lives depended on it. But if Kappy to
ok into account the fact that Martha was an old farm girl, she could be only eighty or so, and just badly wrinkled by all the years in the sun. She was stooped and thin and walked with a cane . . . most days. “You know you’re welcome here anytime. Come on in.”
Kappy made a quick, flicking gesture toward the car. “I can’t stay long. I was just wondering if you happened to see anything the other day. The day Ruth Peachey was found.”
Martha’s rheumy eyes narrowed. “What are you doing, Kathryn?”
“I’m checking to see if perhaps you saw anything odd the day Ruth Peachey was killed.”
“Why are you riding around in that car? You thinking about jumping the fence?”
“No, Martha. Of course n—”
“Who would make our kapps if’n you do?”
“But I’m not.”
She squinted at her. “You sure?”
“Jah. Positive.”
“I hope so, because that would be terrible for everyone.”
Kappy shifted in place. “Martha, I came to ask you about Ruth Peachey.”
Martha shook her head sadly. “Tragic. Just tragic. But you know the Lord works in mysterious ways. One day we’ll know His will.”
“Jah, but until then we’re trying to find out who killed her.”
Martha drew back. “Killed her? You mean—”
Kappy nodded. “Jah. Ruth was murdered. And Jimmy is in jail.”
“Oh, no, no, no.” Martha shook her head. “That boy doesn’t belong in jail.”
“I know. That’s why I’m trying to find out if anyone saw anything strange the day Ruth was murdered.”
Martha tsked, clicking her dentures. “Well, let’s see, that would’ve been Thursday.”
“Tuesday. Ruth was killed on Tuesday.”
“That’s right. My memory’s not always what it used to be.”
Kappy nodded politely.
“Tuesday,” Martha mused. “Oh, yes. On Tuesday, that’s when I saw the woman in red.”
Chapter 5
Fifteen minutes later, Kappy waved good-bye to Martha and climbed back into the car with Edie.
“What’d she say?”