by Marta Perry
He was maneuvering the birdbath into place when Andrea caught the opposite side and helped him.
“This is lovely. Where did you find it?”
“Little place over toward Lancaster.” If he looked at her, he might weaken, so it was better to concentrate on getting the birdbath into exactly the right spot. “I thought it would please Rachel.”
“She’ll be delighted.” Her tone had cooled in response to his.
He hated that. But wasn’t it better for both of them in the long run? Why start something that could only end badly?
Andrea touched a scalloped edge. “About last night…”
He tensed, but before she could say anything else, a buggy came down the drive, the horse driven at a fast trot. “It’s Eli.” He went to meet the buggy, aware of Andrea hurrying beside him.
Eli pulled up. “Have you seen our Levi since this morning?”
“No, not since we were working on the lawn.” He glanced at Andrea, and she shook her head. “Is something wrong?”
“No one has seen him all day.” The lines of his face deepened. “That’s not like him. He never goes far, and he always tells his mother. We are starting a search.”
Cal glanced at his watch. Nearly five. Levi had been missing for something like seven hours.
“What can we do to help?” Andrea said.
“Search all your buildings. And pray.”
“We’ll do both,” he said quickly. “If we spot him, we’ll ring the bell.” He nodded toward the old-fashioned dinner bell that hung next to the kitchen door.
“I must tell the other neighbors.” Eli was already turning the buggy, and he rolled off without another word. The Amish habit of leaving off the niceties of conversation could seem abrupt, but it was certainly understandable now.
Andrea glanced toward the house. “Grams and Rachel are resting, and they wouldn’t be much help in any event.”
He headed for the garage. “They don’t need to know yet. We can start at this end and work our way out toward the barn.”
While he checked the cars and the garage loft, Andrea opened the door to the attached utility shed.
By the time he came back down, she was dusting her hands off. “Nothing in there but a lot of spiderwebs.” She hesitated a moment, as if something was on her mind. “You know, Levi was a little odd this morning.”
“Odd in what way?” He headed for the old brooder coop, which stood next in the line of outbuildings.
“He was upset when he realized I was working next to him.” She seemed to be choosing her words carefully. “I tried to talk to him, but all he’d say was that he was sorry. Then he ran off, almost in tears.”
“You didn’t get a sense of what it was all about?”
She shook her head. “When I mentioned it to Nancy, she said he’d been withdrawn lately, but she didn’t take it seriously.”
“What could he have been sorry for? For what happened last night?”
“I don’t know.” She brushed her hair free of the collar of her shirt with an irritated movement. “Does that seem very likely? He doesn’t know how to drive, does he?”
He flung open the door of the brooder coop. It was packed solidly with furniture. “A mouse couldn’t hide in here.” He closed the door again. “I wouldn’t think Levi could drive, but a surprising number of Amish people can. Learn when they are teens, most of them. What direction did Levi head when he ran off?”
“Toward the barn—yours, not the old one. But wouldn’t you have seen him if he were there?”
“I haven’t been in all day. Too much else to do. Maybe we’d better check there next.”
She nodded, trotting beside him as he quickened his pace. It wasn’t the first time Levi had wandered off, but he didn’t generally go farther than the Unger place. Levi could have decided to take refuge in the barn, he supposed, hiding from some imagined misdeed.
They hurried up the earthen ramp, and he pulled the door open.
“Levi! Levi, are you in here?” The words echoed in the barn’s lofty spaces.
Andrea grabbed his arm. “The trapdoor to the lower level. It’s open.”
He swung around, following the direction of her pointing finger. The hatch, used long ago to throw hay down to the stalls in the lower level, was always kept closed and bolted. Now it yawned open.
He was there in an instant, bending to peer down into the shadowy depths. His heart jolted into overtime.
Levi lay on the floor below, arms outstretched, blood darkening the straw beneath his head. His hands were open, palm up, and next to his right hand, glinting in the shaft of sunlight that pierced the dimness, lay a ring of car keys.
Andrea sat on the plastic chair in the hospital waiting room. She glanced at her watch. How much longer? Surely the doctors knew something by now. At least they’d been given this secluded room in which to wait, rather than sitting out in the open where others could stare at the quaintly dressed Amish.
Grams sat bolt upright on her chair, as if to show any sign of weakness would be a betrayal. She had her arm around Emma, who wept softly into a handkerchief. Nancy sat on Emma’s other side, having left the children with Rachel, who’d been quick to say she’d be more trouble than she was worth at the hospital.
Men clustered in a group in the far corner, drinking coffee and talking in low voices. Every now and then the door opened and more Amish appeared, quickly segregating themselves by sexes. A carryover from their separation in church or simply a male desire to be as far away as possible from female tears.
The men’s black jackets, the women’s black bonnets seemed almost a sign of mourning. She shook off that thought. Levi would be all right. He’d been breathing on his own when they brought him in. That was a good sign, wasn’t it?
Each time the door opened, all eyes went to it. Each time, Emma sobbed a bit more.
“I don’t understand.” Emma’s wail was loud enough to startle even the men. “Why did Levi go to the barn? How did he fall?”
Grams took the twisting hands in hers. “We’ll know when he’s well enough to tell you,” she said firmly.
Eli came to his wife and patted her awkwardly on the shoulder. “We must accept,” he said. “It is God’s will.”
Was it? The questions that had hovered at the back of Andrea’s mind since she and Cal found Levi forced their way to the front. Her eyes sought out Cal. He was filling his foam cup at the coffee urn, but, as if he felt her gaze on him, he looked up and brought the cup to her.
“Have some. I know it’s awful, but at least it’s hot.”
She took the cup, rising and moving toward the window, where they had the illusion of privacy. “Do you really believe Levi could have driven that truck?” She kept her voice low.
He glanced toward the group around Eli before answering. “It’s starting to look that way. Samuel admits that Levi was fascinated by cars. He thinks some of the local teenagers might have thought it was funny to show him.” He shook his head. “I just can’t figure out how he’d get away from home last night. Emma has been keeping pretty close tabs on him.”
“She has, but she was probably exhausted. I don’t see how he’d have gotten the keys if he didn’t do it. Unless the driver dropped them someplace and he picked them up. And assuming they’re the keys to the truck.”
“Maybe we’re going to find out.”
The door had swung open again. This time it was Chief Burkhalter. He glanced around the room, seeming surprised to find it so crowded.
“Any word yet on the boy’s condition?” He directed the question to Eli.
Eli shook his head. His normally ruddy face was gray with pain. “The doctor will come when they’ve finished, he said.”
“In that case…” His gaze singled out the two of them. “Maybe you’d step outside so we can have a word, since you found him.”
She was grateful for Cal’s hand on her back as they followed Burkhalter out into the hallway, knowing everyone watched them go. In the corri
dor, he gestured them into a room a few doors away.
It was a replica of the other waiting room with its pale green walls and generic landscapes. The chairs looked just as uncomfortable. Burkhalter jerked three of them into a circle. At his commanding look, they sat.
She had nothing to feel guilty about, did she? So why did she feel as if she wanted to look anywhere except into Burkhalter’s face?
“Tell me about finding him.”
Cal nodded. “Eli came over to tell us he was missing and asked us to search the property. Ms. Hampton and I happened to be out in the garden at the time. We started searching the outbuildings.”
“It didn’t occur to you to look in the inn first?”
Andrea blinked. “I suppose I knew it was unlikely Levi would go inside. He’s—well, skittish around strangers.” She thought of the rabbits that looked askance when she came out onto the lawn and hopped quickly away.
“So you started searching. What took you to the barn?”
“I remembered that he had gone that way when he left the group that was repairing the damage from last night.” She closed her mouth, reluctant to say anything that might contribute to his suspicion.
“Did you talk to him at all this morning?” The man seemed to have radar for evasions.
“Yes, a little. He seemed upset.” She darted a glance toward Cal, but he couldn’t help her. “He said he was sorry.”
“Sorry about what?” Burkhalter’s response was like the crack of a whip.
“He didn’t say. He ran off.” She shook her head to forestall any questions. “There’s no point in asking me anything else. That’s all I know. I remembered he went toward the barn, so we went there. We saw the trapdoor open.” Her voice shook a little, and Cal’s hand closed hard over hers. “We found him.”
Burkhalter transferred his gaze to Cal. “That trapdoor. You always leave it open?”
“No. I always keep it closed and bolted.”
“What did you do after you spotted him?”
“Called paramedics. Went down to see if we could help him.” Cal had apparently decided he could be as laconic as Burkhalter.
“I ran back to the house to ring the dinner bell,” she said. “We’d agreed that’s what we’d do if we found him.”
Burkhalter nodded, his gaze fixed on her face. “You know, Ms. Hampton, whenever the police get called in, people get choosy about what they say. Mostly it’s innocent enough, but they don’t want to say more than they have to. Wouldn’t you agree, Counselor?”
If Cal was surprised that the chief knew about his past, he didn’t betray it. “Maybe so, if they think it’s unimportant.”
“Cops get so they have a sense when someone’s hiding something.” He turned on Andrea. “How about it, Ms. Hampton? What aren’t you telling me?”
She blinked. He really did have radar. “It’s nothing.”
“Tell me anyway, and let me decide if it’s nothing.”
She brushed the hair back from her face. She had no choice, and surely nothing she said could make matters any worse now.
“There was another incident, after the prowler call. I was locked in the downstairs pantry. I thought it was an accident—maybe I bumped the door myself.”
“And what else?”
“One night when it was storming, I went to close the windows. I saw someone standing out on the lawn, watching the house.” She hesitated. “It appeared to be a man in Amish clothing. I couldn’t identify him any further.”
“She called me,” Cal said. “I came over—didn’t catch him, but I found the place where he’d been standing. Judging by the way the grass was trampled, he’d been there for quite a while.”
Burkhalter made a show of consulting a small notebook. “I understand your housekeeper had an accident with the stove.”
“Yes.” Levi wouldn’t do anything to hurt his own mother. Surely Burkhalter could see that. “The repairman couldn’t say whether someone had tampered with it or not. It could have been an accident.”
“Quite a string of bad luck you folks have been having,” he observed.
She waited for him to probe more deeply, but to her surprise, he rose.
“You can join the others, if you like.”
“Chief.” Cal’s voice stopped him at the doorway. “Those keys—were they the keys to the stolen truck?”
He didn’t move for a moment. Would he answer?
“Yes,” he said. “They were.”
The stack of green ledgers in the middle of the library desk gave Andrea pause. Rachel, searching in the lower kitchen cabinets for a bundt cake pan, had unearthed yet another batch of Grandfather’s records that she’d put away in an unlikely place. Andrea had delivered a lecture on organization, but doubted whether it would do any good.
Andrea pushed the ledgers to one side and switched on the computer, feeling too tired to deal with much of anything this morning. The doctors had come out at last and announced that Levi had a severe concussion and several broken ribs, but would mend. Emma’s tears had turned to rejoicing, and the bishop, a local farmer named Christian Lapp, led a lengthy prayer of thanksgiving.
Finally she’d persuaded Grams to come home. It had been nearly one before the house was quiet, and then she’d lain awake, unable to turn off the questions in her mind.
They’d all come down to one, in the end. Why? Why would Levi do such a thing? Until he told them, no one would know.
Guests were arriving tomorrow. She shoved her hair back and called up the reservations on the computer screen. Were they ready? Aside from a sense that all of them would have difficulty playing the genial host, she thought so.
The front door opened. “Hello?”
“In the library.” She shoved her chair back, but the visitor came in even as she rose.
Betty. For a moment it seemed odd, seeing the woman anywhere but behind her desk at Unger and Bendick.
“Betty.” She gave what she hoped was a welcoming smile. “What brings you to see us?”
There was no returning smile. Betty marched to the desk and set down a stack of file folders and several computer disks. “Mr. Bendick asked me to bring these to you.”
Andrea stared at them blankly. “I’m sorry?”
Betty’s lips pressed together in an offended line. “Mrs. Unger informed him that you would be handling all her finances in the future.”
With everything else that had been happening, she’d forgotten that vote of confidence from Grams. “I see. I didn’t intend for you to bring those over. I’d have come in to talk with Uncle Nick.”
“He thought this would be best.” Even Betty’s hair, piled in some sort of complicated knot on her head, seemed to quiver with indignation.
It looked as if she’d have to mend some fences. “My grandmother didn’t intend any lack of confidence in Uncle Nick. She appreciates everything he’s done, but she thought she’d have me do it rather than to take advantage of him, as busy as he is.”
Betty leaned over to flip open the top folder. “There are forms here that Mrs. Unger must sign. Please have her do so.”
Obviously Betty was offended on Nick’s behalf. She found it hard to believe that Nick cared all that much. Surely managing Grams’s affairs was an extra burden he didn’t need.
“I’ll have her sign them when she gets back from the hospital.”
Betty paused, and Andrea could see her need to hold on to the grudge battling her curiosity. The curiosity won.
“Is she visiting that Zook boy who caused all the trouble?” Incredulity filled her voice.
“My grandmother is good friends with the Zook family.” Andrea stood. “Thank you for dropping these off. I’ll take care of them.”
Betty glared at her for a moment. Then she turned and stalked out. The front door slammed.
“She isn’t too happy with you.” Cal walked in from the kitchen as she sat down.
She felt the little jolt to her heart that seemed to come with his presence. “Did you bring
my grandmother back from the hospital?”
“She wanted to stay a while longer, so Emma arranged for someone to pick them both up. I told Katherine I’d stop by and update you.”
“How is Levi?”
He came and perched on the corner of the desk. “The doctors seem satisfied. He should come home in a few days, if all continues to go well.”
That was good news, but where did they go from there? “Has he said anything? Explained?”
He shook his head. “He’s conscious, but he doesn’t seem to remember much about his injury. Burkhalter tried to question him, but Levi got so upset he gave up.” He shrugged, clearly not happy with the situation. “Levi had the vehicle keys, so there doesn’t seem to be much doubt that he did it.”
“Why?” She shoved the desk chair back. “That’s what kept me up half the night. What could Levi possibly have against us?”
“Emma was afraid she had the answer to that. It seems the Zooks got worried that if the inn was successful, your grandmother might decide she wanted to use the property they lease from her. She thinks Levi heard them talking and misunderstood. Got some foolish idea he was helping them. And Emma finally said that he does get out at night sometimes.”
Her throat tightened. “Poor Emma. It would be hard for her to admit that.”
“Well, your grandmother assured her the land is theirs to use as long as they want it, and when I left they were holding each other and crying, so I think they’re going to be all right.”
He shifted position, not looking at her. “You know, I have an offer to go out to the Zimmerman farm and work on a cabinetry job. I kept putting it off because of everything that’s been going on here, but now that it’s resolved, I should go.”
“I see.” She sensed he was saying more than the words indicated. “When will you leave?”
“This afternoon. It’ll take a few days, so I suppose you’ll be gone by the time I get back.”
For a moment she couldn’t speak. This was it, then. Cal was letting her know, in the nicest possible way, that he didn’t want a relationship with her.
Well, that was for the best, wasn’t it? They were committed to completely different values. This wasn’t about the distance between Churchville and Philadelphia. It was a question of what they wanted from life. Since that couldn’t be reconciled, it was better to make a clear break before anyone got hurt.