Wanda hadn’t blackmailed the Nissleys after all. She tried to make them do the right thing. I should have known better. If she was willing to turn in her nephew for graffiti, wouldn’t she make Tabitha and Linus account for their crimes? My stomach hurt for assuming the worst about her. Then again, the gun pointed at my chest could have caused the bellyache. It was hard to tell.
“You needed the money for Josiah,” I whispered.
Her voice became very quiet. “He is in the hospital in Columbus getting chemo. He lives there now with an Englisch family who agreed to watch over him. It’s too far for us to cart him back and forth even with an Amish truck driver, and we can’t leave the auction for that long. We need every cent we can get out of this business.”
“Won’t the community help? That is what the Amish do,” I whispered.
“They do, but it will never be enough.” Tears gathered in her eyes. “If my son doesn’t get his treatment, he will die. You have no idea how much it costs.”
I did know, but I didn’t dare correct a woman holding a shotgun. My aunt died of cancer. I had seen the stack of bills on her kitchen table when I visited her that last time in February. The Amish didn’t purchase health insurance. Without it, the bills were even more frightening.
“And my husband would have lost everything. We have sold everything we can in order for him to go to the hospital every week. The cost is more than the district could bear. Our bishop told my husband he would do what he could, but there were so many needs for the community. I didn’t think it would be enough and had no choice. I had to do what was right for my son.”
Tabitha’s voice turned icy-cold. “Wanda tried to ruin it. She needed to be removed. I couldn’t let that woman ruin our family or our community’s reputation. The Englisch should not meddle in our lives and make up rules for us to follow.”
I much preferred sad Tabitha to angry Tabitha. Angry Tabitha looked as if she might pull the trigger on me any second.
“I don’t believe the rule that says you shouldn’t cheat people out of their money is an arbitrary English rule. It’s a human rule.”
She glared at me. “You, with no children, could never possibly understand what I have gone through.”
“I understand the Amish teachings at least enough to know that you believe God will provide. I don’t think he included a shotgun in his plan to do that though. That’s just a guess. It certainly wasn’t in the part of the Bible we covered in Sunday school.”
“Won’t you stop talking? Even faced with the barrel of a gun, you keep talking. I need to think.”
I snapped my mouth closed. Best not to poke the lady packing heat.
Beads of sweat appeared on Tabitha’s forehead and upper lip. Giving a person a fry pie with peanuts was one thing; shooting them dead was entirely different. At least I hoped so.
I raised my hands. “How about this? We will both leave this shed. Alive. Then we can talk to Sheriff Mitchell about what has happened. He has a son and will understand why you felt you needed to do what you did. He will not understand if you shoot me here, defenseless, in this canning shed.”
Whoever thought I might die surrounded by canned peppers and pickles? Not that I planned my death, but this had never been in the realm of possibilities. Even standing there with a shotgun pointed at my chest, it didn’t seem like it should be in the realm of possibilities.
I slowly moved toward the door.
“Don’t move!” she screeched. “I’m not afraid to shoot you.”
I held up my hands again. “When you do that, what will happen to Josiah? You will go to prison, and he will be on his own.”
“He will have a better life without you poking your nose in Amish business. Who is going to believe an Amish woman like me shot you?”
Involuntarily, I shivered. What if she was right? I had a better chance of surviving if I asked her more questions. Maybe then someone would arrive at the shed before I was shot. “Why did you go into this scheme with Linus?”
She swallowed. “You Englisch. You are just like Wanda. You meddle in Amish business and mix up my words. You are tricky like all the Englisch, and this is all your fault.”
“I meddled because I was protecting my friends the Millers just like you protected your family.”
“What we did with those animals was not wrong.”
“It’s deceitful. It’s cheating.”
“A man who buys animals and does not check the livestock before he hands over his money makes his mistake. The Amish, we have dealt with. It is only the Englisch who believe this is wrong.”
“What about Rachel? Can you justify framing her and Aaron for Wanda’s death?”
“If the police assumed the wrong thing, it is not my fault. Everyone knew about Aaron’s disagreement with the trustees about his factory. It made sense for the police to suspect him. I knew he would never be arrested for the crime.” The shotgun drooped a millimeter.
My arms were beginning to tire from holding them up, but I didn’t dare lower them. “And if he wasn’t arrested, someone else would be. Sheriff Mitchell won’t rest until someone is brought to justice.”
A shadow filled the door of the canning shed. “Tabitha, what are you doing?” Gideon stood in the doorway. His mouth hung open in shock.
Her hair began to fall out from under her prayer cap as she gaped at her husband.
She was a desperate mother pushed too far. My heart softened a little for her. I’d give her a hug if she didn’t have a shotgun pointed at my chest. That would make a comfortable embrace troublesome.
Tabitha wiped sweat from her brow, and by doing so it set her prayer cap slightly askew on her head. The shotgun wavered in her hands. “I am fixing things.” She tightened her grip on it.
“Tabby, no.” He stepped backward onto the grass as realization and horror grew on the Amish man’s face. “Wait. Did you—?”
“Of course I had to get rid of Wanda. It was for Josiah. We needed the money that Linus brought in through those animal sales.”
“Gott will provide for Josiah. It is our way.”
“I can’t accept that.” Her body shook with the effort of holding back her emotions.
“It is the Amish way.”
Tears ran down her face. “He is my son, my only child. I had to do what was right for him.”
“Are you even listening to yourself? What is right?” He held his hands aloft. “This is not what is right. If Gott chooses to take our son from us, that is His choice to make, not ours.”
“Linus will be blamed. They won’t find him. We can go back to our lives.”
Hello? What about me? Shooting me would make that difficult.
“The police arrested Linus this very afternoon. He told them everything about the auction and about your involvement. We are already ruined.”
The barrel of Tabitha’s shotgun fell two inches, which didn’t make me feel a whole lot better since now she’d get me in the stomach.
“I did not believe the sheriff until now—” Gideon choked on his words as his body lunged forward crashing into Tabitha.
On impact, she dropped the gun as if it was a red-hot poker. As it hit the ground there was a loud crack as the trigger went off. Tabitha’s round body flew backward and crashed into rows of preserve shelves. Gideon and Tabitha crumbled to the floor, and something splattered against my cheek. Blood! Am I hit? I felt my cheek and came away with fingers covered in blackberry jam.
The bullet sliced through a row of jelly jars, and jelly was everywhere. It was like an earthquake at the Smucker’s factory.
Petunia stood in the doorway with the heat of battle in her eyes. That was quite a head butt she’d given her master.
Gideon scrambled to kneel by his wife, but I wasn’t concerned with either of them. “Oliver! Oliver!”
The faintest whimper came from the tiny space under the pantry. There was barely enough of an opening for Oliver to wiggle out.
He poked his head out from under the opening.
Strawberry jam covered the top of his head in a sticky mess. Quickly, I ran my hand over his head and body, searching for shards of glass. I didn’t feel any, but I wouldn’t be one hundred percent certain until I gave him a bath.
I scooped up the jam-covered Frenchie and ran out of the shed. My hero goat, Petunia, was close at my heels.
Glancing back at the Nubian to make sure she was still there, I wasn’t paying attention to where I was going and ran directly into Sheriff Mitchell and two deputies. Mitchell froze when he saw Oliver and me both covered head to toe in jam. Gideon, equally splattered, stumbled out of the canning shed. “Please someone, help my wife. She is cut and bleeding.”
The two deputies sprinted the rest of the way into the canning shed.
I licked my lips. There may have been a bit of marmalade in the mix too. It was quite good. Tabitha excelled at canning, but murder, not so much. “You wouldn’t happen to have any peanut butter would you?”
The sheriff’s mouth fell open.
Epilogue
Three weeks later, a Rolling Block quilt was stretched across the middle of the quilting circle’s frame. The white, yellow, and pink quilt had been paid for by a local pastor for his wife as an anniversary present. The woman had pieced the quilt topper herself but hired Running Stitch to quilt it by hand. It was the second quilt we had done this way, and I saw the potential for this to be a great addition to the shop’s business. For most novice seamstresses, the quilting was the longest and more tedious task, and one they didn’t have the patience or time for.
Anna clicked her tongue. “I know that you think this project is gut for the shop, Angie, but do you really want workmanship like this associated with Running Stitch?” She pointed at her corner of quilt. “Some of these stitches are uneven,” Anna tsked. She dug into her sewing basket and pulled out a seam ripper.
Oliver and Dodger lay at her feet in the Frenchie’s dog bed. After his ordeal in the canning shed, the dog was even more protective of the kitten, if that was possible. He would not let Dodger out of his sight. I guess Oliver knew all too well there are many dangers in the world, and they came in all shapes and sizes, even as pleasant Amish women.
“What is that for?” I asked.
Anna touched the sharp edge of the seam ripper to the fabric. “I can’t quilt over top of these horrible stitches. I need to fix them.”
“Anna, the charm of the quilt to the pastor’s wife is that she was the one who pieced it. Your fixing that will ruin it for her,” I said.
“I think she’d much rather have a quilt done right than have done it herself.” Anna’s glasses slid down her nose.
The seam ripper tore through the thread holding the two pieces of fabric together. I sighed. There was no use fighting with Anna when she made up her mind about what was right and what was wrong.
“I can’t fix it completely but I can stop it from being a lost cause,” Anna muttered.
Rachel and Mattie shook their heads as they bent over their work.
Sarah leaned across the quilt. “I heard at the mercantile today that Linus Raber agreed to a deal to testify against Tabitha about Wanda’s murder. Now she probably doesn’t have a chance at getting off.”
“That’s for sure,” I said as I straightened the notions on the cutting table.
“It’s so awful,” Rachel said. “And Fannie is broken up over what her brother Linus has done. You know, she was the one who told the police where he was hiding under the covered bridge on River Road. By the time the police found him he was covered with an inch of mud and smelled like dead fish.”
I grimaced. “I didn’t know Fannie did that, but it was the right thing for her to do.”
Rachel frowned at her stitches. “Even though it was the right thing to do, I know she regrets it.”
“Poor Josiah,” Mattie said. “Do you think anyone has told him about what Tabitha has done?”
We quilted silently for a few seconds as we thought about that and what it might mean for the sick boy.
“The community will take care of Josiah,” Anna spoke up. “Tabitha should have trusted that from the beginning. If she did, Wanda would still be alive.”
I prayed Josiah would be all right. I wondered who would have to deliver the news to him about what she did, seemingly for him.
“Gideon will have to decide how much to tell his son,” Rachel said.
My new cell phone rang. The old one, which I tossed in the bucket of water in the canning shed, was a goner just like I had feared it would be.
Anna clicked her tongue. “I don’t know how you can stand your pants ringing all the time.”
I fished the phone out of my jeans pocket and laughed as I looked at the screen. It was my mother. She was probably calling to complain again that I wasn’t going home for Thanksgiving next week. I couldn’t leave Running Stitch. It would be my first Black Friday since opening the shop. It was an important day for any retailer. As a compromise, I invited them to come to Ohio for an old-fashioned Midwestern Christmas. To my shock, my mother agreed.
“Everything is set,” my mother said in my ear. “We’ll be there in Rolling Brook a few days before Christmas.” She sniffed. “I wanted to come earlier, but you know what a workaholic your father can be, and he’s supposed to be retired.”
“You will love the shop.”
“I remember it well. I hope you modernized it.”
“We have Wi-Fi.” I paused. “I’m happy you are both coming. A little surprised, but happy.”
“Surprised? Why are you surprised? Why wouldn’t I want to see my one and only child on Christmas?”
Guilt washed over me. “You never seemed to want to come back to Ohio even when I visited Aunt Eleanor.”
“I loved my sister, but visiting her was impossible. Where would your father sleep? She only had that loft bedroom for guests, and how would I get ready in the morning? Don’t even get me started on the outhouse.”
“Mom, Aunt Eleanor’s house had indoor plumbing, and you could have stayed at any one of the nice and electrified inns in the county. There are no shortages of places to stay here.”
She sniffed. “Well, there’s a lot about Holmes County I’ve forgotten. I can’t believe I was ever such a small-town girl. I was destined for greater things.”
I rolled my eyes, grateful my quilting circle couldn’t hear my mother’s words. I changed the subject. “The classes I’m hosting at the shop have finally picked up. Everything appears to be going well.”
“The shop. The shop. That’s all you ever talk about.”
“It’s why I am here.”
“What about friends?”
“I’ve told you about my friends in the quilting circle. They are here right now in fact, working on a quilt.”
“I mean male friends. Have you met anyone?”
Was this from the woman who begged me on a weekly basis to move back to Dallas and marry Ryan?
Mitchell’s piercing aquamarine eyes came to mind. She didn’t need to know about him. I thought of our one excellent date, which had been a simple and calm lunch at the Double Dime Diner. I had loved it, and Linda the waitress had let both Tux and Oliver hang out in the diner while we ate.
“It’s way too early for me to think about a boyfriend,” I said.
“I agree.” There was a smile in her voice I found unnerving. My mother rarely agreed with me.
Suspicions rose. “Why are you agreeing? Are you up to something?”
She sniffed. “You don’t trust the woman who gave you life?”
“No, I don’t.”
“Well, I wish that you would come home for Thanksgiving.” She sniffled.
I decided to let my suspicions drop. “I wish I could too, but the shop is so new. I need to be here. The township is throwing special Black Friday sales. It could be a real boost to business before the dead of winter when tourism drops off.”
“I think you love that store more than you love your own mother.”
“You know that
’s not true. I’m sure I will be able to get away for a week in the winter to visit. It will be nice to be back home where it will be warm when it’s freezing here.”
“So you will visit your father and me only when it’s convenient.”
Ugh. “I didn’t say that. Maybe I will be able to come for next Thanksgiving. The shop is too new to me yet.” Not to mention, I was worried I wouldn’t be able to afford the plane ticket home. I had invested most of the money I had accrued from my advertising job into Running Stitch. If my mother heard I was low on funds she would swoop in with my father’s checkbook in hand. I didn’t want that. I wanted the shop to make it by hard work, not by a gift from my parents.
She sighed. “I suppose I will have to be satisfied with Christmas in Ohio.”
“You will love it. An old-fashioned white Christmas like you had as a child.”
“I need to go, dear. I have a luncheon meeting with the Stars of Christmas pageant director. She will be disappointed to hear that I will have to miss the day of the pageant, but we all have to make sacrifices to see family.”
Was she trying to make me feel guilty? Because it wasn’t working. I knew all of her tricks.
“I won’t keep you then. Can you e-mail me your flight information, so I know when to pick you up from the airport?”
“You won’t need to pick us up. Your father has already arranged a rental.”
“All right. That’s a good idea. You two can sightsee while I am at work.”
“Great! Your father, Ryan, and I will see you soon.”
Did she say Ryan? Did I hear that right? “Ryan?”
Murder, Simply Stitched: An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery Page 26