Murder Freshly Baked

by Vannetta Chapman

  “Could it be a brother or a dad following you? Someone who wants a little revenge for how you treated these women? Maybe they want to balance the scales a little, or possibly they hope to catch you doing something you shouldn’t be doing.”

  “Maybe, but Letha and Martha are Amish. What you’re suggesting is pretty aggressive. Have you ever seen an Amish guy act that way?”

  Preston’s mind flashed back on Owen Esch’s murder six months earlier. He decided not to mention it. The two situations couldn’t be related, and besides, Owen’s killer was in prison.

  “No, I don’t see it.” Ryan shook his head, then gulped from the coffee mug. “What about Georgia’s family?”

  “One brother. He’s a piece of work himself. Drinks a lot, lives out toward Goshen. I don’t think he’d notice if I robbed her blind.”

  When Preston didn’t respond to that, Ryan took another long drink of the coffee, and then stared out the back window, out into the night.

  “I wouldn’t hurt them on purpose, you know. I might not have understood that what I was doing would . . . well, make them feel used. I honestly didn’t think they’d even know about each other, and if they did find out, I thought they’d understand that it was a game, entertainment of sorts. Life in a small town can be slow. And I thought . . . well, I thought if everybody had a good time there would be no problem. No harm, no foul.”

  “But there was harm.” Preston thought of telling him about Martha sobbing in Hannah’s arms, about Letha’s decision to leave Middlebury, even about Georgia’s refusal to discuss the situation with anyone. In the end, he remained silent. It wasn’t his place to share those things. If the women wanted Ryan Duvall to know their feelings or their future plans, they’d tell him.

  “Yeah, I know that now.”

  “But—”

  “I do have a moral compass. I’m not a terrible person, despite what you might think, what you have every right to think. I know my life is a mess right now, but I do know right from wrong.”

  “So someone is following you, but they’re not related to the women, and you don’t know what they want.”

  “Exactly.”

  “And you’d like me to help you.”

  “Yes, I would.”

  Preston didn’t blink.

  He didn’t move at all.

  He thought about Zoey and how satisfied he was to have the certainty of her love. He remembered the night he had torn apart the bedroom down the hall, and how hopeless their future had seemed. He thought about driving off the road when Amber was with him, and how frightened he had been that he might have hurt her. He had needed help, but he hadn’t known how to ask for it. He couldn’t even imagine what form that help would take.

  Glancing down at Mocha reminded him of how quickly life could turn around, of how God knew his needs—and began providing for them—before he knew what to ask for.

  “If you want my help, you’re going to need to tell me what else you’re into.”

  Ryan’s face reddened slightly, then he cleared his throat and told Preston the rest of his story.

  Thirty-Two

  So you’re betting on racehorses?”

  “Yeah. Don’t look at me like it’s the worst sin you can imagine.”

  “And you were up.”

  “I was.”

  “But now you’re down.”

  “Way down.”

  Neither spoke as the clock ticked past three a.m. Finally Preston stood and refilled their coffee mugs, found the leftover cinnamon rolls Zoey had baked, and brought it all to the table. It wasn’t so much that he needed the sugar to think, but he’d learned long ago to eat when he had the chance. This might be one of those situations where he wouldn’t have another chance for some time—depending on what Ryan chose, depending on whether he was actually willing to turn his life around.

  “So you were down. How much down?” When Ryan only stared at him, Preston named a number. Ryan held out his thumb, pointing down.

  Letting out a whistle, Preston asked, “More? How much more?”

  When Ryan confessed to the amount, Preston knew there was only one answer to his problem.

  “And they came looking for you?”

  “Yeah. At first it was only phone calls. They called my bets, and I didn’t have the money. I told them I’d get it, but we both knew I couldn’t, so they showed up. Here in Middlebury, tonight when I was out taking a walk. I’d left my car near the motel where I’ve been staying since Monday night. I have my wallet, but that’s about it.”

  That’s why Preston hadn’t seen a car in his driveway.

  “And you ran?”

  Ryan’s hand went to the left side of his face. “They had a gun, but I didn’t think they would use it. Not in the middle of town.”

  “But they were chasing you in a car, right? If you’d gotten into it—”

  “Yeah. That would have been bad. Probably someone would have found my body in the lake.”

  More likely in a cornfield where wild animals—coyotes and buzzards—would take care of any evidence, but Preston didn’t suggest that. No need to rattle Ryan more than he already was.

  “I ran through the park, dodged off the path. They didn’t expect that, and they sure didn’t know their way around Middlebury. By the time I hit the Pumpkinvine Trail, no one was behind me.”

  “And that’s how you scratched up your face?”

  “I suppose. I didn’t even feel it when it happened.”

  Preston stood, carried both of their mugs to the sink, and rinsed them out. Then he returned to the table and met Ryan’s stare dead-on.

  “You’re sure you lost these guys in the park?”

  “Yes.”

  “But you think you were still somehow followed here, to the Village?”

  “I don’t think I was followed. I know I was followed.” He pulled his cell phone out of his shirt pocket, swiped through some screens, and then handed it to Preston.

  Preston hadn’t owned a cell phone until he’d taken the position of assistant manager of maintenance. Amber had insisted he carry one at that point. It was less expensive for the Village to pay for a cell phone than it would have been to install telephone service at the Dawdy Haus. Plus she needed to be able to reach him anywhere.

  So he’d accepted the phone and become familiar with how much the technology had changed. Things that had been difficult to do with a desktop computer when he’d left for Afghanistan were now routinely done by anyone with a cell phone. He’d caught up to speed as far as the advances in telecommunications, but he was still surprised each time he picked one up and realized that basically he was holding a very small computer.

  Ryan had swiped to a screen that was filled with text messages. All the ones he was looking at were from the same number, with no name attached to the tag—only the word anonymous. The last one had been at two twenty in the morning, apparently at the time Ryan had arrived at his house. It read—

  “Hiding at the Village is a bad idea.”

  Scanning up, he read the previous messages in reverse order.

  “On the trail at this hour?”

  “Sleeping in a barn? Isn’t that below you?”

  Preston glanced up at Ryan, his finger on the word barn.

  Ryan nodded. “I was in the Amish Village barn tonight—for a few hours—until I realized I couldn’t stay there forever. That was when I decided to come here.”

  The messages continued up for several pages, though they were apparently coming in with increasing frequency. They weren’t specific, but there was a prevailing tone of warning, of ill feelings. Finally he set the phone down on the table and pushed it back toward Ryan.

  “I don’t know who is following you, or why. My suggestion would be to get a new phone and a different, unlisted number.”

  Ryan nodded.

  “But whoever is sending those texts isn’t your most immediate problem.”

  “Why do you say that?”

  “Because there is no inherent thr
eat in them. Last I heard the collectors for the on-line betting network . . . let’s just say they aren’t known for their tact. They would have promised to break your legs or shoot out your kneecaps or maybe just beat you up badly enough that you’d need to spend a few weeks in the hospital.”

  “How did you know it was on-line betting?”

  “There isn’t a casino within a hundred miles of here. You had to work through a bookie or on-line betting, and a bookie wouldn’t have let you get down that much. Plus these days the majority of the money from betting is coming through on-line.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “I had a buddy, a few years back. He got in deep. It took four of us emptying our savings to pull him out.”

  “You did that for him?”

  Preston shrugged. “He was in our unit. He would have done it for us. Last I heard, he’s stayed out of trouble and is living somewhere in Montana.”

  Ryan brushed his hand—back and forth, back and forth—across the table. “So I dodged a bullet this time. But I’m not in a unit. I don’t have any friends who would bail me out. I have never had any friends like that. And those three women—the only women I’ve been seeing these last weeks? They wouldn’t have even called nine-one-one if they’d seen those thugs trying to pull me into their Cadillac.”

  “There’s a reason they didn’t bother to continue chasing you.”

  When Ryan only stared at him, Preston continued. “They don’t have to chase you. Sooner or later you’ll come back. Sooner or later you’ll use a credit card to get some money, or your Social Security number to get a job. It’s difficult to stay completely off the grid, and you aren’t exactly the survivalist type. So they’ll wait, and they’ll show up again. But next time they’ll have more guys. Next time they’ll be sure you can’t run.”

  “You’re telling me I’m out of options.” Ryan’s voice had taken on a grim resignation that Preston recognized all too well.

  He’d talked to himself in the same tone for years, every time he thought his was a hopeless case. Every time he was ready to give up and needed only one more excuse to do so.

  “You’re not out of options, Ryan. The question is whether you’re willing to do what you have to do.”

  “What—”

  “You go home to your father. I’ll drive you.”

  “No.” Ryan stood and began pacing. “No. I can’t—”

  “You go home. You apologize. You let him bail you out of this mess, and then you work at earning back his respect.”

  Tears clouded Ryan’s eyes as he sank back into the chair. He moved to rub his hand across his face. Then he remembered about the scratches and allowed his hand to fall. “I can’t.”

  “Too proud? Better to live as a servant in your father’s house than to eat with the pigs in a foreign land.”

  “Huh?”

  “New Testament—parable of the prodigal son.”

  Preston thought about his years on the streets, his father living in the house alone, probably wondering if he was still alive, staring out the front window every night and wondering if that would be the night he would come home. Gerald had never reprimanded him. Even after his father had told him about the Alzheimer’s diagnosis, he’d never once lashed out at him for being selfish or for abandoning his only family. The day Preston walked back into his life, he’d accepted him as if he’d never been gone. Preston had never imagined that degree of love or of grace. As much as Zoey or Mocha, his father had changed his life.

  He thought of his dad, sleeping on the other side of the Village. He thought of the expression on his father’s face every time Preston walked through the door of Grace Homes—happy, smiling, but not surprised. As if he had known his son would come, that his son would be there for him. His father had never stopped watching for him, never stopped believing in him.

  “The story of the prodigal son isn’t only about the son, Ryan. It’s also about the father.” And with that he stood, walked to his bedroom, and put on his shoes. By the time he was back in the living room, picking up his keys to the old Volkswagen, Ryan was standing looking out the front door.

  “And the phone? The texts?”

  “Drop the phone in the pond on your dad’s place. You don’t need it anymore.”

  Side by side, they walked forward into the darkness.

  As the two of them stepped out onto the porch, Mocha close at their heels, Preston felt somewhat bad that his attention wasn’t totally on Ryan and his problems. The evening had rattled something loose in Preston’s heart. Hearing Ryan’s problems and the details of his various relationships had been a rude awakening for Preston.

  He was incredibly blessed to have a simple and peaceful life, to have help with his disability, and to have a beautiful woman he was certain would be willing to share his future with him. What had he been afraid of? Why had he wasted so much time? And now that he could see clearly how precious each day was, what was he going to do about it?

  Thirty-Three

  Everyone stared at Amber in disbelief as she shared the details of Leo’s poisoning and their trip to the vet’s the night before. She was sitting with Hannah, Pam, and Preston in a booth at the back of the Village restaurant. She finished up with the doctor’s morning prognosis, and then took a sip from her coffee, though the bitter taste turned her stomach a bit queasy.

  “You’re sure Leo is going to be fine?” Hannah nervously ran her fingers up and down her kapp strings.

  “Yes, but it may be a while before we let him wander outside again. At least not as long as this maniac is leaving notes and pies.”

  “There was another note?”

  “No. Not with the pie that poisoned Leo, but Gordon still thinks this must be the same person. He says no note could be a sign that he or she is getting sloppy, not more dangerous.”

  They were all silent for a moment. Amber was sure they were thinking the same thing she’d said to Tate last night—that one of their friends could be next, no matter what Gordon thought.

  Maybe she should tell them about this morning’s e-mail, but she wasn’t sure. Possibly it would only frighten them more than they needed to be.

  Preston frowned down at his food, and then he proceeded to tell them about his meeting with Ryan Duvall. Mocha rested on the floor under the table, brushing up against their feet. They made for a tight fit, but somehow Amber felt the coziness was helping to calm her nerves—that and the information Preston had just shared. Perhaps that problem had finally been resolved.

  “So his dad took him back? Just like that?” Amber asked.

  Preston nodded as he forked a piece of chicken pot pie into his mouth.

  The look on his face was close to bliss, and it was a sight that eased Amber’s heart. It would seem that Preston was well on his way to a normal life. She expected an engagement announcement any day, and wouldn’t that be appropriate? They might have three spring weddings—Hannah and Jesse, Mary and Andrew, Preston and Zoey. She vowed to double her crocheting efforts—there were afghans to be made, a much more personal wedding gift than something she might have ordered on-line. She was learning, probably from Hannah’s example, that homemade gifts often were the most treasured.

  “Do you think he’s changed? Is Ryan cured from being a . . . playboy?” Hannah took a sip from her glass of water.

  She’d opted for a bowl of fruit rather than pie. Amber suspected she was watching her weight in light of the upcoming wedding. Folks thought Amish women didn’t worry about such things. In Amber’s experience, every woman did—though perhaps Amish women didn’t allow it to become something they dwelled on.

  “Who can say?” Preston took a sip of his coffee. “He certainly seemed repentant. Even one night with nowhere to go can change a man’s perspective, and I honestly believe he didn’t realize the effect his behavior was having on the women involved. Now that he doesn’t have to worry about the gambling folks hunting him down—”

  “Do you think it was the mob?” Pam glanced ar
ound, as if a member of the Chicago mob might be in the Amish Village restaurant, lurking behind a piece of pie and a cup of coffee. “I watched a movie about the mob the other night. Those people are ruthless. They’ll kidnap your granny if it will get them the money . . .”

  Preston shrugged. “No way to know. I’m just glad the men who were looking for Ryan won’t be hanging around Middlebury any longer.”

  “Have you two alerted Gordon to this?” Amber asked.

  “No.” Preston glanced away and then back at her. “Ryan called me from Indianapolis just before I came here. I suggested he call Gordon, but he said his father had just paid the balance of what he owed down there, and he’s taken a vow to never gamble again. He said he doesn’t want to embarrass his family more by bringing it to the attention of the police.”

  “Huh. Sounds like he’s thinking of someone besides himself. That’s a good start.” Pam pressed a hand across her scarf, which was covered with different types and colors of butterflies. “Too bad this didn’t happen before he hurt Georgia, Letha, and Martha.”

  No one had an answer to that. Letha had informed them that she was leaving for Pinecraft today. It still seemed like a drastic move to Amber, but she’d learned nothing ever stayed the same. Perhaps the change would be healthy for Letha. Perhaps she could regain her self-respect and rediscover the things that made her happy, with or without a man.

  Georgia apparently had returned to her bakery after the horse show incident no worse for the wear. She just wouldn’t talk about it.

  “I spoke with Martha yesterday. It’s good to see her back at work, but she still seems”—Hannah searched for the word—“somber.”

  “A pretty girl like that, she won’t have any trouble attracting attention from a young Amish man. The woods are thick with them around here.” Pam looked surprised when they all laughed at her. “What did I say?”

  “What about the text messages Ryan was receiving?” Amber motioned for one of the waitresses to come and pick up their dishes. “Did they stop?”