“Problem?” he asked.
“Yes. Look for yourself.”
Emma brought her chair around so Tess was sitting between her and Henry. She was staring at the monitor. A cursor blinked inside a small box in the middle of the screen. Above the box, in red letters, were the words Invalid Password.
“What does that mean?” Emma asked.
“Sophia locked the files with a password, and I can’t access them unless I can guess what that password is.”
“Do you have a limited number of guesses?”
“I don’t think so. If I did, then it would say something like ‘three tries remaining.’”
“All right. So we only need to think of the password. Would it be something obvious like her birthdate or name?”
“I tried those. Even tried her address and the address of our family home. None of those worked. It could be anything.”
“Let’s make a list,” Emma said. “Otherwise you’ll forget what you’ve tried.”
She pulled a receipt and a pen out of her purse, and they began making a list on the back.
That’s what they were doing when the waitress who had brought them coffee returned, only this time she wasn’t there to ask for their order.
“Are you Sophia’s family?” The woman’s name tag said Julie. She was nearly as round as she was tall, with gray hair cut just below her ears. Lines spidered out from her eyes and mouth. Henry couldn’t guess whether they were laugh lines or worry lines. At the moment, though, she definitely looked worried—or if not worried, then concerned.
“I’m Sophia’s sister,” Tess said.
“My name’s Julie. Julie Hobbs. I wanted to say how sorry I am. Sophia was a good worker. I’m the manager here. I’m the person who hired her. She kept to herself, but she never caused any trouble. What happened to her was terrible.”
“Thank you,” Tess said, her voice a mere whisper.
“I’m about to go off shift,” Julie said. “I don’t want to intrude, but if you have a moment, I’d like to talk to you about Sophia.”
“Do you know who might have wished to harm her?” Henry asked.
“No. I don’t. But I knew something was wrong, and then it seemed like people were too interested in her. Do you know what I mean?”
Henry and Emma and Tess all nodded their heads simultaneously.
Julie glanced up and across the room. “I have to take care of my tables, and then I’ll clock out. I think you need to know—you deserve to know—about the people who were following Sophia.”
Fifty-One
Ten minutes later, Emma had moved her chair back to its original place and placed the bag with the drawings on her lap to make room for Julie. The manager quickly and succinctly told them about Sophia’s time at the diner and how, over the last six weeks, she had come to view Sophia as a younger sister. She and the other waitresses had also gone out of their way to protect her.
“You’re sure about this?” Emma glanced around the diner. Officer Anderson had apparently received a call, because he’d left after eating only half his meal. He’d pierced them with one final glare before hurrying out to his squad car. No other officers were currently in the dining room.
“Am I sure about Anderson? Yes, I’m sure. We rarely saw him here until Sophia started working, and then we saw him nearly every day she was scheduled. I don’t know how he knew when she was working. It’s not as if she had a car she parked out back or anything.”
“You don’t think it was a coincidence?” Henry asked.
“Could have been, I guess. Except if he came in and she wasn’t working, he always acted as though he was just stopping by to get a cup of coffee to go. I teased her about it once. Said maybe he had a crush on her or something, but Sophia looked scared at first and then angry.”
“Did she speak to him about it?”
“No. Not that I know of. In fact, we kind of ran interference for her.”
“What does that mean?” Emma asked.
“If Anderson sat in her section, we’d tell her to go on break, or we’d pretend she was very busy and one of the other waitresses would take his order. It wasn’t something we talked about or decided—we just did it. Waitresses…well, we kind of stick together.”
Emma understood that. It was the same in Amish circles. If a man seemed interested in a woman, but that woman didn’t return his feelings, then other women would try to make the situation less awkward. She supposed everyone had been the recipient of unwanted attention at one time or another. It was an embarrassing, uncomfortable feeling.
“All of us knew Sophia didn’t belong here,” Julie said.
“What do you mean?” Tess asked.
“Too smart. Too young. Too pretty.” Julie rubbed her left hand with her right. Emma noticed that the knuckles of her left hand were swollen, probably from arthritis. Waitressing would be difficult at any age, but at Julie’s age it must be particularly hard.
“We think she was investigating something,” Tess admitted.
“Like what?” Julie continued to rub her knuckles. Emma had a jar of lotion at home that might help. She’d have to remember to drop some by.
“Her husband’s death. He wrote for nature magazines, and we think he was killed because of something he stumbled across, maybe something he was going to write an article on.”
“That’s terrible.” Julie thought a minute, and then she shook her head. “She never said anything about that. Sophia kept to herself. She wasn’t rude or anything, but she didn’t have a lot to say. Didn’t talk about boyfriends or a husband. She never mentioned she’d been married.”
Emma remembered the tattoo Henry had drawn. When he’d asked Sophia about it, she’d said it was her husband’s initials and the date they met. But she hadn’t volunteered the information that she was a widow until that conversation. She must have been a very private person.
Julie was staring across the room now, as if she was trying to remember something. Finally she said, “I guess I just thought she was some kind of nature buff.”
“Why would you think that?” Henry asked.
“Because she moved here. Why move to Monte Vista unless you either have family here, know someone here, or you’re interested in the mountains or the sand dunes or something to do specifically with this area? The times I gave her a ride, it was always out to one of the nature parks.”
“You gave her rides?” Emma leaned forward as she picked up the pen—poised over the receipt where they’d been making their list of possible passwords.
“Yeah, a few times.”
“Do you remember where, exactly?”
“Sure. The Alamosa, Monte Vista, and Baca Refuges, and one time to the Sand Dunes National Park.”
Emma jotted down all of the names.
“Why would she go out there?” Tess asked.
“I don’t know. When I’d ask, she’d shrug and change the subject.”
“Did you tell all of this to Officer Anderson?” Henry asked. “Or Agent Delaney?”
“No. I didn’t.” A stubborn look settled over Julie’s face. “I answered their questions. We all did. But offer information? Uh-uh. It seemed to me they’d already made up their minds who had done it, no offense intended.”
“None taken,” Henry said.
“We knew you couldn’t have done it, Mr. Lapp. You have a good reputation in this town. Maybe you don’t remember, but a couple of years ago a storm came through, and your people—your church people—came over and helped my parents put a roof back on their barn. Truth is, they shouldn’t be on that farm at their age, but they refuse to move. The insurance was stalling and winter was coming, and we didn’t know what to do. Some of your people showed up without anyone asking. And they didn’t help only my parents, either. They provided assistance to quite a few of the families around here.”
“We try to help folks when and where we can.”
“People who help their neighbors that way are not killers. I don’t mean to say you’re
perfect. We see the kids smoking behind the diner or driving jalopies that shouldn’t even be on the road.”
“Rumspringa is a difficult time for our youngies.”
“My point is that most of us are glad you moved to the valley, and we don’t believe you had anything to do with Sophia’s death. If you ask me, find out what she was doing here, and you’ll find out who would have wanted to kill her. And maybe if you could figure out why Anderson was so interested, that would help too.”
“When you first came over, you said people were following Sophia, as in more than one.”
“Anderson wasn’t the only one. That new officer—Lawson—seemed to be watching her closely too. Of course, with Lawson it could have just been the normal interest a man shows a woman. He’s new here and doesn’t know that many people yet. I can’t say why, but he didn’t strike me as nearly as threatening as Anderson. Maybe that’s just my own prejudices showing, though.”
Julie peered out across the diner, which was emptying out. Emma was surprised to glance at the clock and see it was nearly ten. When had she last been out this late? But she wasn’t a bit tired. She felt as if they were getting close to solving the mystery of why Sophia had come to Monte Vista. Finding her murderer wouldn’t be quite so easy, and Emma understood that you couldn’t solve a murder in one night. More often, you stumbled upon the answer—at least, that was how it had been with the Monte Vista arsonist.
She didn’t even know if that was the reason she was here—to solve a murder. It seemed like a lofty goal. But she did care about Sophia and about Tess. She’d like to find the person responsible, to see justice served.
She was involved for another reason too. She was worried about Henry. What she wanted more than anything else was to prove his innocence. She wanted to provide him with an alibi, but short of that, they would just have to find who else could have been responsible. That was her goal, and she didn’t care if it took all night to do it.
Julie leaned in and lowered her voice. “Twice, when I was giving her a ride, I noticed a dark-colored truck following us.”
“What kind of truck?” Tess asked.
“Couldn’t tell exactly. It looked as if it could be state park or national park or something else with a symbol on the side. I never had the right angle where I could make out the insignia or the make or license number.”
“You’re sure the vehicle was following you?”
“Yeah. It stayed back, but I could tell. The second time I took the long route and pretended I needed to pick up some dry cleaning, and that truck followed me into Alamosa and then back out again.”
“And after you dropped her off?”
“Well, that was the strange thing. Both times, once I dropped her off, they turned down a side road and sped away.”
“So they took a risk following you to know where she was going, but once they’d determined that, they didn’t stay around to find out why.”
“Or they already knew the why and didn’t stay because it would have been too obvious.”
“Did you mention it to Sophia?”
“I did…once. She shrugged as if she expected as much.”
They all fell silent for a moment, digesting what they’d learned. Henry stared out the window, and then he turned back to Julie, a smile playing on his face. “A less serious question, but why is this place called Maggie’s Diner?”
Julie laughed, and the lines around her eyes seemed to melt away. “My aunt’s name. The crane festival started in the 1950s. She came with my uncle to see the birds, and a year later they’d sold their home and property in the Texas panhandle and moved here. She opened this place in 1957.”
“Is she still around?” Tess asked.
“Turned ninety-four earlier this year, and she still comes to the diner now and then just to make sure we’re doing things right.”
There wasn’t much to say after that. Tess thanked Julie for talking with them. Emma mentioned the hand lotion and said she’d bring some by the next time she was in town. Once the manager had left the table, they stared down at the paper where Emma had added Alamosa, Monte Vista, Baca, and Sand Dunes to the list of possible passwords.
“Do you have a place to stay tonight?” Henry asked.
“Yes. I have a room at the motel.”
“All right. I think I should go home and wait on Grayson to show back up. He needs to know Anderson might be involved.”
“And tell him about the truck,” Tess said. “Her killer could have been someone working at the refuge. If so, then it might make sense that she was killed there.”
Henry nodded, stood, and pushed in his chair. “Would you like me to give you a ride home, Emma?”
She looked over at Tess, who was now typing each of the possible passwords into the box on her computer. She’d stop after each attempt and scratch off the word on the list.
“I’ll stay here with Tess.”
“Thank you, Emma.” Tess glanced up from the computer. “Thank you both, and I’ll give her a ride home. We only have another hour until they close.”
“All right. Be careful, and let’s all remember to pray that Gotte will guide our steps and make safe our way.”
As Tess resumed her process of trying passwords, Emma watched Henry walk out to his buggy. She couldn’t be certain, but she thought she saw a brown pickup with some sort of emblem on the door pull out of the parking area across the street and follow Henry’s buggy down the road.
Fifty-Two
The hands on the clock crept past ten.
Emma felt as though she wasn’t being helpful at all. So she pushed their coffee mugs away and pulled out Henry’s drawings. There was a clue in one of them. She was sure of it. Why did Henry have this ability if not to help others? Okay, perhaps it was sometimes simply to comfort their hearts, as in the drawing of the Kings’ baby. But it could also be that God had given him this talent to help rid the world of evil.
That sounded a bit preposterous even to Emma.
But he had been drawn to Sophia. He’d felt a real calling to befriend her. Perhaps God had put him in the right place at the right time to make a difference.
“This isn’t working,” Tess said. “None of these are the password. It could be anything.”
“What would you use?” Emma was staring at the drawing of Sophia in the diner, the one where she was helping the old woman.
“Usually some combination of numbers and letters.”
“An important date or name. Something of significance to you.”
“Exactly. Sometimes a combination of lowercase and uppercase, but always something easy for me to remember.”
Emma’s heart rate kicked up a beat. She could be wrong. She didn’t want to get Tess’s hopes up, but what did they have to lose?
She turned the drawing around so it was facing Tess, and she pointed at the tattoo on Sophia’s wrist. “How about something like this?”
Tess reached out and touched the drawing the way she had when she’d first seen it on the kitchen table at Henry’s house.
“It’s amazing that he can draw with such detail. And you’re sure it’s accurate? The articles I read about him were right?”
“Ya.” She got up to sit beside Tess. “But what the articles probably didn’t say, what the writers couldn’t possibly have known, was that Henry struggled with his gift for many years. He felt it was a curse—not that we believe in such things.”
“Why would he think something so amazing was bad?”
Emma considered her words carefully. She’d thought about this many times. She had prayed for Henry’s acceptance of what to her was certainly a blessing. Through those prayers, she’d learned to also appreciate why and how he struggled.
“When Henry draws, he’s not actually aware of what he’s drawing. He’s sort of on…”
“Autopilot?”
“Ya. That sounds right. His mind, his hand, simply reproduces what it has recorded.”
“Every detail.”
�
��And you can see how that might be a problem. He doesn’t pick and choose what should or shouldn’t be drawn. He doesn’t…I guess he can’t stop and consider how it might affect someone who looks at his drawing. Think about it. If you could freeze a scene and catch everyone’s reaction, not what they wanted you to see when they know a picture is being taken, but their inner heart reaction.”
“He reveals their emotions.”
“Both gut and bad.”
“I love this drawing of Sophia. It shows how much she cares about the old woman, and the look the old man and woman are giving her? It’s almost heartbreaking. They’re so grateful for her help, for her kindness.”
“And yet this drawing is the same one that frightened Sophia. Henry thinks it’s because he caught the scar on her neck, something she wasn’t comfortable showing.”
“Like I said before, I don’t even know how she got that scar. It’s recent. Certainly since Cooper died.”
“Maybe she was trying to grow her hair out to cover it. Maybe she didn’t want to have any defining marks someone could identify her by.”
“Like a tattoo.”
“Exactly.” Emma studied the drawing, her mind sliding back to the night she’d met Sophia in the diner. “The few times I saw Sophia, she wore long sleeves, which isn’t that unusual here in the valley in September, but I never would have guessed that she had a tattoo.”
Tess touched the place in the drawing where her sister’s sleeve had pulled up, revealing her wrist and therefore the tattoo. “Henry knew, though, and he drew it.”
“His mind knew, which I guess is the same thing.”
With trembling fingers, Tess entered the letters and numbers from the tattoo into the box on her computer screen—CB021412. The box disappeared, and in its place popped up a list of what Emma assumed were files. Both Emma and Tess stared at the screen, speechless, surprised that they’d finally found a way past the password screen.
When the Bishop Needs an Alibi Page 20