Stoney Ridge 03 - The Lesson

by Suzanne Woods Fisher

  M.K. thought for a moment. “Dad, was the new hired hand in the kitchen with you when you paid him?”

  Fern stilled a moment as she waited for Amos’s answer.

  Amos looked from M.K. to Fern. “Now, wait just a minute. You shouldn’t be tossing accusations at anyone.”

  Fern frowned. “I have yet to meet this fellow. He’s as skittish as a young colt.”

  Another mystery! M.K. was intrigued. “Who is this fellow, Dad?”

  Amos frowned. “He’s the hardest worker I’ve ever seen.”

  M.K. hopped up on the kitchen counter, then hopped off again when Fern scowled at her. “Dad, what else do you know about him?”

  Amos tossed the dishrag on the counter. “I know that he didn’t take money from Fern’s coffee can. That’s what I know.” He noticed the mail on the table and skimmed through it. Then he took his mail to his desk in the living room.

  M.K. turned to Fern. “Erma Yutzy said she was looking around for some cash that had gone missing.”

  “You were at Erma’s today?” Fern looked pleased.

  “I happened to be walking by her house.”

  “It’s out of the way.”

  “Not today it wasn’t.” The more M.K. thought about it, the more she thought there might be a connection. According to the Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, a person needed motive and opportunity. She walked to the doorjamb of the living room. “Dad, do you happen to know if that hired hand is working anywhere else?”

  “Yes,” Amos said, leaning back in his desk chair. “Erma Yutzy’s. She’s been needing someone to mow her lawn once a week because her great-grandnephew fell out of a tree and broke his arm.”

  M.K. gave Fern a “See? I told you so!” look, but Fern didn’t pay her any mind. She was looking through another cupboard for her coffee can. Clearly, this hired hand had plenty of opportunity. But what would be his motive? “Dad, tell me everything you know about this hired hand.”

  “I know two things. His name is Chris Yoder. And he’s a hard worker.” He put on his glasses to read a letter, a signal that he was done talking.

  M.K. gave up trying to pry information from him and went back to the kitchen. She reached into the fruit bowl for an apple and took a bite, deep in thought. “I met a fellow named Chris Yoder on the road today. Strange man. Rather accusatory.” She chewed and swallowed. “You know what I would do? I would keep a very close eye on that hired hand, that’s what I would do. Sounds like this fellow might have a case of sticky fingers.”

  “You try to make things too simple,” Fern said, her head in a cupboard. “You try to make life too simple.”

  But to M.K., it was all so simple. Chris Yoder had been on these very farms and money had gone missing. The two facts seemed to be inextricably linked.

  7

  M.K. couldn’t sleep. Too much on her mind. Too hot a night. Why did they have school in September, anyway? It still felt like summer. If she were on the school board, she would only require pupils to attend school in January, when nothing much else was going on. However, she was happy to remember that she would not be teaching school in January, and not just because she hadn’t paid any attention to Orin Stoltzfus’s instructions about that coal heater.

  Three more days. Just three more days and she could retire from teaching. Ah, bliss!

  M.K. had the same feeling she got when she came to the last chapter of a book: a little sorry to see it end but already anticipating the start of a new story. Her time as a teacher for Twin Creeks School was nearly over. The ordeal had been grueling at times, but she had done a good deed by substituting for Alice Smucker. No scholar had died under her care, and two of Eugene’s cohorts had started to stay for the entire day. She could leave with a sense of satisfaction. Her teaching career would be over. Done. Finished!

  She wondered if she should give the class a formal farewell on Friday afternoon or simply disappear. In the end, she decided that she would make a formal announcement.

  She got out of bed and crossed to the window. She sat on the sill and looked at the moon hanging low in the black velvet sky. Thin wispy clouds moved slowly in front of it. The sun would be rising in Athens, Greece, about now.

  In her mind, she saw herself climbing up a steep path, walking past white stucco houses with blue shutters, and window boxes filled with red geraniums. She imagined stopping at one point to gaze at the Aegean Sea, far below the Greek village. What words would she use to describe the color of that sea? Turquoise? Azure? Cobalt?

  In the quiet of the night, a horse whinnied and another answered back. She leaned her head against the window and set aside her imagined Grecian journey. She reviewed the sheep farmer’s murder one more time. She was heading down the street, away from the farmer’s pasture. Had she seen anything suspicious as she scooted past the pasture? Nothing came to mind. She didn’t even remember seeing the farmer, but there were trees in the pasture. She did remember noticing some sheep along the fence, trying to eat grass outside the fence. She smiled—even animals thought grass was greener on the other side of the fence. Maybe it wasn’t, maybe it was. But oh, wouldn’t it be wonderful to find out?

  When she had reached the far edge of the pasture, she heard the shot and practically fell off her scooter. An eerie stillness followed. One long minute. Then another. And then came a sound.

  M.K.’s eyes went wide. Horse hooves! She had heard horse hooves! Somewhere, a horse galloped away. Why didn’t she remember it? Was it such a familiar sound to her that she blocked it out? She squeezed her eyes shut—trying, trying, trying to remember. Black. Something black. A flash of black. Way down the road, a flash of black. A horse.

  She gasped. Her eyes flew open.

  It was that which put M.K. on high alert. A Pandora’s box of accusations had cracked open in her mind.

  She had seen Chris Yoder’s black stallion gallop away from the murder scene.

  As Chris woke to the sound of rain on the roof, he stretched and yawned. His mind went through a checklist of tasks at Windmill Farm that he and Amos had discussed yesterday: hay cutting, apple picking, pear picking. Amos had said he would teach Chris how to prune the fruit trees, come winter. “Not a single cut is made without a reason,” he told Chris.

  Chris smiled. He could tell that Amos loved those orchards. He tended them like Old Deborah had tended her herb garden. Amos was a warm, loving man with a keen intellect. He was grateful to God for leading him to work for a man like Amos Lapp. Chris was learning quite a bit from him about how to manage a well-run farm, and he needed to get that experience if he were to have a farm of his own one day.

  It was more than that, though. Chris was always drawn to wise, older men as father figures. He guarded his countenance carefully, but he valued those few men in his life who had taken an interest in him. He watched them carefully, studied them. They had taught him how to be a man.

  He slipped his feet over the edge of his bed and walked to the window to see how hard the rain was coming down. He might try to get over to Windmill Farm today to talk to Amos about selling the apples and pears at the farmer’s market in Stoney Ridge. A few days ago, he had wandered among the vendors. He recognized one person—that fellow who hung around Windmill Farm a lot. Jimmy Fisher, Amos called him. He was selling eggs at a booth to a long line of customers.

  An empty booth sat next to Jimmy Fisher and that was when it occurred to Chris that Amos should consider selling apples and pears at the market. He knew Amos had an arrangement to sell most of the varieties to Carrie and Amos Miller so they could make Five Apple Cider, but this year, after a bumper crop, there would still be more apples to sell. More, even, than could be sold at Fern’s roadside stand.

  Chris sought out the market manager and learned that renting a booth would only cost 10 percent of the day’s take. The market manager told him he could have the empty spot next to the Fishers’. That was an added bonus, the market manager said, because there was a local shortage of farm fresh eggs. Egg tended to draw cust
omers to a produce stand. And those good-looking Fisher boys tended to draw customers, he added. Especially female customers.

  Then Chris told him he wanted to sell Windmill Farm’s apples and pears. The market manager’s face fell. “Oh, we have more apples and pears than we can sell. If I let Amos Lapp’s orchard fruit in here, it would drive down the prices for my other vendors.” He scratched his neck, then his face brightened. “We’re short on lettuces. There’s big market demand. Ever thought of starting a market garden?”

  Chris hadn’t, but he did now. He didn’t have the space he would need for a garden at his grandfather’s house, but Amos had plenty of space. He wondered if he could talk Amos and Fern into letting him work a fallow section of the vegetable garden to sell produce at the market.

  Farming was starting to interest him in a way he had never thought about—he had never felt more purposeful, more optimistic about the future. It was a good decision to come to Stoney Ridge. Everything, finally, was starting to come together. What he discovered about farming was that a man’s worth was judged not by where he started, but where he ended up.

  Mary Kate Lapp was no detective, but she was able to put two and two together and draw a conclusion in a matter of seconds—a new neighbor with a mysterious past had moved into Stoney Ridge just a month ago, money started to go missing in the sleepy little town, and a farmer had been shot dead in the middle of his sheep pasture. It was an alarming set of coincidences!

  Early in the morning, an hour before school started, M.K. knocked on the sheriff’s window.

  He beckoned her inside and pointed to a chair facing his desk. “Can I get you some coffee?”

  Coffee? Did he think she was here for a friendly chat? She shook her head. “I thought of something! Evidence! Significant evidence. The last piece in the puzzle.”

  The sheriff took a noticeable breath. “What’s the puzzle?”

  What puzzle? “The sheep farmer’s murder! I’ve figured out who did it. I’m absolutely convinced. And I think he’s also the coffee can thief!”

  Clearly, the sheriff did not understand the full import of this discovery. He took a sip of coffee. Maybe he required a lot of caffeine to wake up. “What coffee can thief are you talking about?”

  “The one who is stealing coffee cans in Amish kitchens! Everyone’s talking about it. He’s living at Colonel Mitchell’s house. That would be considered squatting. Or maybe breaking and entering.”

  The sheriff stilled. “Colonel Mitchell’s?”

  She nodded. “That’s what I’ve been trying to tell you! The murderer is right under our noses!”

  “Slow down, M.K. Start at the beginning.” He lowered his voice as he spoke, as if he was trying to talk someone out of jumping off the ledge of a tall building. Did he think she was crazy?

  She glanced at the clock on the wall. She had to get to the school soon. Sometimes, it seemed as if she needed to do everything in this town.

  “Looks like the rain isn’t going to let up,” Chris said. “Which means no hay cutting over at Windmill Farm.” Chris gave Jenny that piece of news as they ate their breakfast of oatmeal and strawberry preserves. It was all she could muster together to eat quickly in the horrible kitchen, and besides, the stove wouldn’t stay lit for more than two minutes. “We can get a lot done on the house today.”

  Jenny didn’t respond. She didn’t like the way Chris said “we” every time he decided something needed to be done. It meant that Jenny’s free reading time after school would disappear. And for what? This old place was a dump. She didn’t know why Chris wanted to come here—she thought they could have moved in with some other family back in Old Deborah’s church—maybe the Troyers. That’s what she loved most about the Amish. It was like having this huge family, with aunts and uncles and a zillion cousins. But Chris was adamant that they needed to go back to Grandfather Mitchell’s house and fix it up. He said it was their legacy. Whenever she objected, he only said to trust him.

  Chris closed up the small Igloo he had bought for Jenny after she complained about carrying a brown bag, and set it on the tile countertop. “Okay, your lunch is packed,” he said. “Don’t be late for school.” He pointed to the umbrella. “Don’t forget that.”

  “You treat me like I can’t remember anything.”

  “You forgot once.”

  “That was a long time ago, Chris. I was twelve.” She grabbed the Igloo and stomped to the door.

  “Jenny!” Chris called. When she spun around, he gently tossed the umbrella at her.

  Maybe, she thought, as she opened the umbrella on the front porch, maybe after Chris fixed up the house, he would change his mind about having Mom come live with them. Then Mom could have a place to call home. They could start over, the three of them. Mom would stay off drugs after this last stint in the rehab center. Maybe they could finally be like everybody else, and Jenny wouldn’t feel as if she was always on the outside looking in.

  She passed by three Amish farms on her way to the schoolhouse. She would look up and see the family working around the yards, moms and daughters hanging laundry on the clothesline, fathers and sons walking to the barn. A deep, inside-out longing always swept through her. The hardest thing of all was when she caught a whiff of dinner cooking at someone’s house. Those savory aromas made her eyes fill up with tears, sadness spilling over. She heard someone say once that you can’t miss what you’ve never had. That was one of the dumbest things she had ever heard. She never had a normal family and she missed it every single day.

  She saw a car heading toward her on the narrow road so she walked to the very edge and waited until it passed. She sucked in her breath when she saw it was a police car and didn’t let the breath out until it passed her by. Police cars always reminded her of her mother.

  It wasn’t fair, no. None of it was fair.

  It didn’t bother Chris to have a rainy day today, even if it meant he missed a day’s income. He could use a full day to work on the house. He walked around the downstairs rooms, coffee cup in hand, trying to decide where to start the day’s work. He made a list of the things he had done and things still to do, which was much longer. Jenny would vehemently disagree, but it was in surprisingly good condition for an old, abandoned house. He wished he had a boatload of cash to do right by the house—new double-paned windows, new countertops in the kitchen to replace the cracked tiles. But all in all, his plan was coming along, right on schedule. Fresh paint was a wonderful resource too. He was doing the things he could afford to do and it was making a difference. It was the best he could do. In the silence that wasn’t quite silence—the clock ticking softly, the rain dripping on the roof—his thoughts traveled to his grandfather. He thought the Colonel would be pleased with the repairs to the house.

  • Replace drywall in the kitchen.

  • Sand and patch and paint the front door.

  • Rip out dry rot in bathroom flooring.

  • Replace flooring in bathroom.

  • Repaint interior and exterior.

  • Recaulk windows.

  • Sand wooden floors and stain. Varnish.

  Chris went back downstairs to prepare the caulking gun to recaulk the windows. He had noticed some staining on the drywall under those windows that faced east—the direction most of the storms came from. When he examined where the water was coming from, he could see that the caulking was gone.

  Chris started to caulk the windows facing east and, just to be safe, decided he would later seal all the windows. Outside, the storm was starting to ratchet up. The rain was coming down in sheets. He hoped Jenny had made it to the schoolhouse without getting soaked.

  Someone knocked on the door, interrupting him. Had Jenny forgotten something? Chris opened the door to a police officer on his porch. He felt as though someone had punched him in the stomach. It was never good news when the police came to his house. The last time he had opened the door to a police officer, he found out that his mother had been arrested again.

  “A
re you Chris Yoder?”

  Chris’s heart thumped so violently he could hardly breathe. “I am.”

  “I’m Sheriff Hoffman. I’d like you to come down to the police station with me and answer a few questions.”

  “To the police station? Why? For what purpose?”

  “I need to ask you a few questions.”

  “Am I being arrested?”

  Sheriff Hoffman tilted his head. “Should you be? Have you broken the law, Mr. Yoder?”

  “Of course not. But I have a right to know why you want to take me to the police station.”

  “I just want to talk to you.” The sheriff looked past Chris into the house. “You’re new around here, aren’t you? Mind if I come in?”

  Chris stepped away from the door and the sheriff walked in.

  He took a few steps around and whistled. “Lots of work to do.”

  Chris held up the caulking gun. “That’s what I’m trying to do.”

  “Mind telling me what you’re doing here?”

  “I’m fixing up my grandfather’s house.”

  “Who was your grandfather?”

  “Mitchell. Colonel Mitchell. I called him the Colonel. Everybody did.”

  The sheriff flipped a light switch but nothing came on. Chris had never called the electric company to turn the electricity on. No need.

  The sheriff looked Chris up and down. “Mitchell isn’t a Plain name.”

  “No.”

  “But you’re Plain.”

  “I was raised Plain. I am Plain. I’ve been baptized.”

  The sheriff moved into the kitchen and pushed his booted heel against a worn-out spot in the flooring. “You thinking about ripping up that old linoleum?”

  “Maybe.”

  “Might have hardwoods underneath. My mother’s kitchen had indoor/outdoor carpet on top. After she passed, we ripped it up and voilà! Hardwoods.” He snapped his fingers, as if it was easy.

  Chris knew the sheriff was trying to make him relax. But he had a very bad feeling about this visit.