“Did he put the cast on today?” Eunice had walked into the kitchen as Susan was explaining the situation.
“Nein. Jesse says he has to wait until the swelling goes down. They’ll go back on Monday for the cast.”
“Poor thing. I’ll send one of these pies. I’m sure your mamm hasn’t had time to cook.”
“You don’t have to do that.”
“I want to. Besides, Hannah had planned to take it to Minerva, but now she won’t be able to.”
“I could drive our buggy over,” Hannah protested.
“Your bruder Noah is using it to pick up supplies from the feed store. By the time he gets back, it will be too late.”
“Noah is in town? I was hoping to see him.” When Hannah and Eunice smiled at one another, Susan blushed a deep red. “Not see him exactly. That’s not what I meant. I was wanting to talk to him about the puppies. You know, in case my dat decides we can have one.”
“I can show you the pups,” Hannah offered.
“Maybe another time. I need to get these groceries home.”
Hannah walked through the sitting room and to the front door. When they reached the porch, Susan pulled a rain poncho from her bag and put it on over her dress.
“Nice look.”
“Ya, it’s a crazy color.” Susan stared down at the bright orange plastic. “My boss gave it to me when the rain started this morning. I told him I’d be fine, but he didn’t want me riding the bike home without some sort of covering to keep me dry. Like everyone else, he’s worried about the flu. Said he doesn’t want to lose his barista to a bug.”
“It’s a funny word, isn’t it? Barista. All the magazines use it.”
“I suppose. I’d rather not wear this crazy thing, but since I told him I would, I’ll suffer through.”
“Certainly anyone on the trail will be able to see you. Are you sure you don’t want to wait until the rain has completely stopped? Noah could drive you when he gets back.”
“It’s not far, and the rain is letting up now.” Susan started down the steps, then turned and said, “You’ll tell Noah I stopped by, won’t you?”
“Sure. If you want.”
Susan’s only answer was a smile. She set Eunice’s pie, wrapped in two plastic bags, in the basket fastened to the front of her bike. It barely fit next to the small sack of groceries. Then she climbed on her bike and pedaled off down the lane to the Pumpkinvine Trail.
Hannah watched her, curious about the visit. When she walked back into the house, she went in search of her mother and found her attempting to measure Mattie for a new dress.
“Hold still or I can’t pin this right.” Eunice attempted to stab a pin through the hem as Mattie twirled first left, then right.
“Mattie, let’s play statue.”
Her sister stuck her thumb in her mouth and scrunched her nose.
“Can you be a statue? Like the ones in the park? Can you be perfectly still?”
“Ya.” Mattie nodded as she jumped from foot to foot.
“Statues can’t jump, sweetie. Stand up straight and tall, like this.” When Hannah imitated a statue, Mattie did the same.
“Gut idea. She’s like trying to measure a calf—all legs and energy.”
“Mamm, do you think Susan likes Noah?”
“Ya. Seems she does.”
“But they’re barely sixteen! They’re too young for that.”
“I didn’t say they were marrying, did I? They’re not too young to be curious about such things.”
“I suppose, but—”
“No supposing. It’s as natural as rain falling from the sky.” Eunice finished pinning the green material she was using for Mattie’s dress. “That’s gut, love. You can stop being a statue now.”
Mattie laughed and resumed hopping from foot to foot, little bits of her curly hair escaping from her kapp with each hop.
“I don’t know.” Hannah bent down and kissed the top of Mattie’s head as her sister wound her arms around her legs. “Seems to me the world has gone crazy.”
“Nein. It’s simply that spring is in the air.”
Hannah wondered if spring explained the way her pulse raced every time she was around Jesse. Was that why she sometimes felt like she had the flu? Would it pass after a few days or weeks?
“Too bad I couldn’t see Minerva today.”
“Gotte knows what he’s doing, Hannah. Don’t be questioning the rain or your bruder’s work or even Jesse helping his family.”
“I wasn’t,” she mumbled.
“Minerva will be at our church meeting tomorrow. Perhaps you’ll have a chance to talk with her after the luncheon.”
And indeed it did seem that Gotte knew what he was doing. Barely an hour had passed when a small red car pulled down their lane. Amber and Tate stepped out into the damp afternoon. The rain had stopped, but thunderclouds loomed on the horizon. Hannah guessed they’d have another downpour before long.
She invited them inside, though at that point the sound of her siblings in the house was a small roar of feet on the stairs, folks vying for the bathroom to clean up, and her mother in the kitchen preparing dinner. Noah had even brought in one of the puppies and been caught on the way up to his room. They heard several barks, followed by a discussion between him and his father. They could hear every word outside. It was plain Noah was losing the discussion.
“The porch is fine,” Amber assured her. “Can you spare a moment?”
“Ya.”
“We have something we’d like to show you.” Amber pulled a bundle of letters from her handbag. “They’re from Ethan. He wrote them.”
Amber and Tate sat quietly and rocked while Hannah read through the letters.
“Who gave you these?”
“Preston. Preston Johnstone.” Tate hesitated, then added, “He’s homeless. Maybe you’ve seen him around town. A little taller than I am. Late twenties. He has a beard and wears a green army jacket.”
“The homeless man Ethan was talking to.”
“Yes. It seems Preston is the person your friend mentioned.” Amber went on to explain about the letters and why Preston had them.
“It’s so sad that Ethan was frightened and alone when we were all around him. Maybe there’s something we could have done, something we should have done.”
“Don’t go blaming yourself, Hannah. He could have reached out to us, but for some reason he chose not to.”
“It sounds as if someone had taken his shop key. Maybe that’s how the paint supplies ended up in the back room.”
“I agree, and I had the locks changed today.”
The panic clawing at Hannah’s throat backed down. Certainly, she didn’t want to think of someone having the key to the kaffi shop. They could sneak in and be waiting for her when she arrived at work. The thought sent goose bumps across her arms.
She thumbed back through the letters. “And the night he was arguing with Larry? The night you saw him drive away in a hurry . . . he mentions that too?”
“It seems so. Tate and I have been studying the letters, trying to come up with any angles that might explain what happened, but we wanted your opinion. You knew him as well as anyone.”
“What he says about the tomcat. That’s true. He hunkers down out back and will eat practically anything.” She found the letter and read the line that was bothering her. “ ‘He sniffed it once and walked away.’ ”
Hannah stared again at the letters.
“The rest he could have been imagining, but that seemed odd to us as well.”
“That tom’s appetite is never satisfied. A bag broke on me Thursday as I was taking it to the trash out back. Some kaffi grounds spilled out, and before I could get it cleaned up, he had his whiskers in it. We all try to bring him a few scraps, poor little beast, but he never seems full.”
“I’ve heard that if food is tainted, an animal can tell.” Tate rubbed his thumb across the arm of the chair—oak that had been worn to a shine over the years.
; “Tainted or poisoned?” The words slipped from Hannah before she had a chance to think, but the look on Amber’s face told her she wasn’t alone in her suspicions.
“If it wasn’t a heart attack, and it seems no one here believes it was, then it had to be something else.” She pushed up on her glasses and continued when no one interrupted. She explained her logic, the same reasoning she had shared with Jesse the night before. “If his cause of death was something else and there was no sign of a confrontation, it would seem we could guess what it was, or at least narrow down possible causes.”
“There are many ways to kill folks without a traditional weapon. A blow to the head, strangulation, electrocution, suffocation—” Amber stopped abruptly and crossed her arms. “What? Why are you both looking at me that way?”
“Your list.” Hannah licked her lips. “It’s terrible.”
“I found it online.”
“That can’t look good on your search history.” Tate reached out and patted her hand. “I’ll vouch for you if the government comes knocking on your door.”
“But all of those things require someone to be in the room with the victim.” Hannah closed her eyes and again envisioned a puzzle with a few crucial pieces missing. When she opened them, Tate and Amber were staring at her. “I don’t see it. The one possibility that makes sense to me is poison.”
Twenty-Seven
Tate did not agree with Amber’s plan. “It could be dangerous.”
“How? She’s one woman.”
“One woman with big issues.”
“We drive by. We look. Maybe we stop and go in.”
“Big issues that we don’t understand.”
“If we go in, it’ll be for a minute, no more.”
“Issues that could be volatile.”
“And only if the door is unlocked or maybe a window is open.”
They both stopped talking and peered out through the car’s windshield at the gathering storm. Though it was still more than an hour before sunset, the sky was nearly as dark as night.
“I doubt a window will be open.” Tate adjusted the seat belt so that it choked him a little less. “And Patricia might not even be the person we’re looking for.”
“Or she could be the very person we’re looking for. She could be Ethan’s murderer.”
“Maybe, but it’s difficult to imagine a sister killing a brother.”
“Eighty percent of murder victims are killed by acquaintances or members of their own family.”
“You need to turn off the computer.”
Amber smiled as if he had paid her a compliment. They were nearly at the lake now. He could see the small cluster of houses up ahead. The neighborhood looked ominous with the storm building above it.
“We still don’t know how she could have done it without being in the room.”
“That’s why we need to snoop around.”
“We could be trespassing for nothing.”
“I’ll admit that, but you said you finished all the work at your place this morning. It’s this or play Scrabble back home.”
He liked how she assumed they’d spend the rest of the day, now almost evening, together. “We might find something we don’t know how to deal with.”
“And if we do, we’ll call Avery.”
“Do I have your word on that?”
“Absolutely. I won’t even argue.”
“That would be a pleasant turn of events.” He thought he’d muttered his sarcasm too softly for her to hear, but she slapped his arm and grinned. Yeah, she’d heard. And he was sunk. He was obviously in love with this woman, which explained why he was willing to follow her on a who-done-it mystery tour.
“The truck is gone.” Amber drove by Patricia’s house slowly.
They both craned their necks, looking for evidence as to whether Patricia might be gone as well.
“I think she’s out in the truck.”
“Maybe. Or maybe she sold it, and this very moment she is sitting at home in the dark waiting for someone to break into her house.”
Amber made a U-turn at the end of the road, smiling as she checked the rearview mirror. “I like that you contradict me on every point. That way I’m assured we’ve thought this through.”
He started to answer, then clamped his mouth shut.
Whatever he said, she would turn into support.
She passed the house and parked two doors down. Pulling out her phone, she scrolled through her contacts until she’d found his number. Then she pushed Talk.
“Why are you calling me?”
“Now you call me. This way, we just have to push Talk and it will immediately ring one another. In case we get separated.”
“We are not getting separated.” But he called her number all the same. A last-resort plan never hurt.
“You take the front. I’ll take the back.”
“Uh-uh. We go together.”
“Are you kidding me? We have maybe three minutes before the bottom of this storm falls out.”
“Fine. I’ll take the back.” He strode off toward the gardens behind Patricia’s duplex before Amber could argue.
Their initial plan had been that Amber would keep Patricia talking at the front door while he snooped around the gardens. He didn’t know what he was looking for, but Amber had decided pictures might be all they’d need. So he moved through her plants, carefully walking along the path that was covered with gravel so as not to leave footprints, and he snapped photos of anything over an inch tall.
He jumped in spite of himself when Amber touched his arm. “No answer from the front, and all the lights are off.”
“Good. I’m nearly done. We can get out of here.” He was speaking to thin air. She’d already moved to the back porch and was jiggling the door.
“It’s locked!”
“Really? How could she lock her door? You’d think she wanted to keep strangers out of her home.”
“We’re hardly strangers.”
“We aren’t friends.”
“Can you break in?”
“What?”
“With a credit card or something. I want to see what is in that room that looked like a lab.” She was now moving from window to window in search of one that wasn’t locked.
“You’re acting like a starving dog with a bone,” he muttered.
“I heard that.”
“Leave those windows alone.”
“I need to get inside.”
“That’s breaking and entering!”
“Not if we don’t break anything.”
Knowing he was going to regret it, he pulled a credit card from his wallet and jimmied the lock.
“Where’d you learn to do that?”
“Don’t ask.”
“The army?”
“Hardly.”
She moved to pass him, but he reached out and snagged her arm. “Better take your shoes off or you’re going to leave a trail.”
Amber hesitated, but in the end her curiosity won.
She removed her shoes, leaving them on the back porch. Tate did the same. It now felt as if he was moving through a bad dream. Being near Amber, the smell of rain in her hair, her hand on his arm—it was all heavenly. But lurking over that was an impression of danger and regret and foolishness. Like in a nightmare, he was powerless to stop her as she crept toward what she had begun to call “the lab” since they’d left Hannah’s. Had the young Amish girl brought up the idea of poison only a few minutes ago? It felt as if they’d been discussing it for months.
He stood at the front window in the dining room, where he’d stood with Patricia a few days earlier, and watched the street. The smell of books permeated the room. He glanced at the table and saw a big fat volume, a blue hardback with gold lettering titled A Field Guide to Venomous Animals and Poisonous Plants.
Which seemed to him like an odd reading choice. If she had killed Ethan, and he wasn’t ready to admit that, she wouldn’t need to keep studying poisonous plants.
Unless
she was planning another murder.
Thunder rumbled across the sky as fat drops of rain began to hit the pavement.
“We should go. It’s starting to—”
Amber’s screech caused his heart to slam against his chest. He sprinted down the hall. In his stocking feet he nearly slid into her, but he was beside her in less time than it took to ask what was wrong.
“There’s something on the other side of this door.”
“I thought you were going to the lab.”
“But this is the door that’s locked. I rattled it, and something hit up against it from the other side.”
“Maybe you imagined that.”
“Try it yourself.”
Tate could hear the rain hammering against the roof, falling in sheets now. Wiping his palms on his jeans, he reached forward, grasped the door handle with both hands, and gave it a good hard shake.
Nothing happened.
He shrugged and turned back toward the front of the house.
And that was when, from the other side, something bumped against the bottom of the door.
“What was that?” Amber’s eyes were opened so wide they were comical—or would have been if it weren’t for the thing that had thudded against the door. His mind flipped through a dozen possibilities of what could make that sound, but he came up with nothing that seemed remotely feasible.
“Do you think it’s a person?” Amber had stepped back from the door.
“No. A person would call out.”
“What then?”
“I don’t know, but Patricia could be back anytime. Take some photos of the other room and let’s go.”
He returned to his lookout spot at the front of the house. The rain was falling so hard he could barely make out Amber’s car parked two doors down. The sky had darkened to a deep night, and a few lights had come on in neighboring houses.
Amber joined him at the window, thumbing through the images on her phone. “I think we can go.” Her voice sounded at once triumphant and filled with sorrow. Apparently she’d found what she was looking for, and it wasn’t a cause of celebration.
He turned to speak to her, took his eyes off the street for less than a second, and they were bathed in the headlights of a truck pulling into the driveway.
Murder Simply Brewed Page 22