Material Witness

by Vannetta Chapman

“Mrs. Knepp sticks with the old ways.”

  “The old ways must include rudeness. She returned the fall flowers I sent over.” Callie had gathered six bolts of fabric into her arms by now, and she seemed as if she were about to tumble backward.

  “Is she still angry that Max tore up her flower bed?”

  “It’s my fault I suppose. I was talking to Trent and let the leash slip out of my hands. Even so, I don’t understand why the woman hates me as much as she does. I thought the Amish were all about forgiveness.”

  “We each forgive in our own way.”

  “Humph. Admit it. She wishes I’d never moved here from Texas, never taken over my Aunt Daisy’s shop.” Callie did an about-face, nearly knocking over a display of magazines, then trotted down the aisle to return the cloth to its proper section.

  Lydia would have done it, but Deborah knew Callie liked to be out working the floor. She enjoyed being out among the customers, which was why Lydia was on the register. It was one more way she was different from Mrs. Knepp and one more reason her shop did well.

  Deborah began helping the next customer, who wanted three yards of a striped print. Sliding her scissors through the fabric, she glanced up and out the front plateglass window and saw the children were just then passing under the store’s raspberry-colored canopy, which covered the front walk. Already a throng of people filled the sidewalk, though the fair had begun only a few hours before.

  The weather was beautiful — cool but not cold. People were happy to congregate together in their little town of six hundred. This weekend, their population would swell to well over thirty thousand. The local police would have their hands full directing traffic.

  Deborah watched the children thread their way through the crowd. Martha guided the wheelchair, leaning down to say something to Aaron, who laughed, then tugged on his jacket. Matthew walked close beside them, holding onto Max’s leash. The yellow Labrador trotted beside them, his head held high, nose pushed into the air sniffing the festival smells.

  A warning alarm sounded in Deborah’s mind, but she pushed it away. In no time at all, the children would be back safe and sound.

  Nearly an hour later, as Martha guided his chair, Aaron stared up at the twinkling lights in the trees that lined the sidewalks of Shipshewana’s shopping district. The artificial lights reminded him of the stars, and he wondered why the Englischers had bothered to wrap them around the tree branches.

  Perhaps because they lived in town, where Gotte’s lights weren’t as easy to see.

  That’s what his daadi would say anyway.

  Today had been very nearly perfect.

  He’d received an A on his spelling test in school and a B on his math quiz. Maybe he could have earned an A, but Jacob and Joseph had been popping peas at the girls in the next row, and Aaron had started laughing, which led to wheezing. By the time he got his breathing under control, time was up, and he hadn’t been able to finish the last two questions.

  It had been worth it to see Annie King squirm back and forth, trying to pull the peas out from between her dress and her apron. Aaron liked Annie all right, but she could be a little annoying at times. He’d told his mamm that once, and she’d explained he would like girls more when he was older.

  That was hard to imagine.

  Except for Martha. She was nice, but then again, she was different. More like his mamm.

  “Drat.” His bruder stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk, causing Martha to nearly trip and pull back on his wheelchair. It felt like the time he’d ridden his dat’s horse, in the saddle, and the horse had suddenly reversed. Aaron had fallen, but his dat had caught him before he’d hit the ground — something they still hadn’t told his mamm.

  “Forget something?” Martha asked.

  “Ya. I think I left my wallet at one of the last places we stopped.”

  “When we bought the candy apples?” Martha peered around at Aaron’s half-eaten apple.

  “Maybe. I took it out and set it on the counter of the booth.”

  “Wasn’t your cousin Mary Ellen working there?”

  “Ya. I’m sure she would have set it aside for me if I did leave it after I paid.”

  Martha pointed to the sack in his right hand. “After that we bought your new slingshot.”

  “True, but I think I paid for that with money out of my pocket, from the change Mary Ellen gave me. Now I can’t remember.” Matthew took off his wool cap and rubbed his hand over his head, front to back, then back to front — something Aaron knew he did when he was naerfich.

  “Matt, you go and see Mary Ellen.” Aaron pulled in a deep breath, then continued. “Martha, you go and check the slingshot booth. I’ll wait here with Max.”

  “Are you sure?” Matthew glanced from Martha to Aaron and back again.

  “I’m not …,” another deep breath, “going back to the quilting shop without you.” He reached for Max and gave the dog a reassuring pat. “Mamm would have both our hides.”

  “All right. She told us to be back by dark, and there’s still a little light left. If we hurry —”

  “We can be there and back in ten minutes.” Martha moved to the front of his chair, squatted down so she was eye to eye with him. “Sure you’ll be fine?”

  “Ya. Move me to the side.” He glanced over to where a bench had been placed next to a large shrub. “There.”

  “Okay. We’ll be back before you even know we’re gone.”

  “Stop worrying.” Aaron looped Max’s leash around his wrist. “I’m not a …”

  Matt glanced back over his shoulder, then at Aaron, a smile trying to win over the worry.

  “… little kid,” Aaron finished.

  “‘Course you’re not,” Martha whispered.

  He saw the look that passed between Martha and his bruder, but decided he’d rather ignore it than deal with their concern. Today had been very nearly perfect.

  “He’s gut,” Matthew said. “Let’s hurry.”

  They took off through the crowd, which was already beginning to thin. In fact, this end of the street was much less busy than the rest, probably because Daisy’s Quilt Shop wasn’t at the center of town.

  Aaron was always calling it Callie’s Quilt Shop in his head. He remembered Daisy, the lady who’d been Callie’s aenti. She’d always kept little pieces of candy behind the counter for them. Callie didn’t know about the candy, but it didn’t matter. He liked her as much as Daisy. She had a funny accent, like something he’d heard in a Western movie he’d watched at his neighbor’s house once.

  Justin, the boy who lived at the farmhouse next door, was a year older than Aaron. He went to the Englisch school and loved old Westerns. Justin was from New Mexico, and he said John Wayne was the best cowboy who had ever ridden a horse. Sometimes Aaron’s mamm paid Justin’s mamm to drive Aaron to the hospital or Doc Bernie’s office. Justin’s mamm didn’t want to take the money — he’d heard them discuss it time and again — so sometimes Aaron’s mamm paid in fresh vegetables from their garden. Once she’d tried to give them a quilt, but Justin’s mamm had insisted on paying for that.

  Aaron didn’t understand grown-up girls any more than he understood the ones in his classroom. He also didn’t understand why sometimes Doc Bernie came to their house, but other times they had to go to the big city, to Doc’s office in Fort Wayne. Actually he didn’t mind the city. It was interesting.

  So Aaron and Justin hung out together on doctor days, what with all that riding back and forth in the family van — which wasn’t as cool as a buggy, but had its advantages on the large, crowded Englisch roads. The drives were long and when they returned back to Justin’s house, his mamm and Justin’s mamm would sit in the kitchen and drink tea and talk. Occasionally Aaron was allowed to go into Justin’s room to play. Not always, but sometimes.

  A few times they’d managed to sneak into the back bedroom and boot up Justin’s laptop computer. Aaron’s mamm didn’t know he’d watched the old black-and-white movies, and he wasn’
t going to be the one to tell her. She tended to fuss about those sorts of things, like she fussed when he had trouble pulling in a deep breath.

  Doc Bernie said that was normal behavior for mamms.

  She definitely didn’t know about the Western movies, but it wasn’t like they played video games or watched television. Justin’s mamm was pretty strict for an Englischer. Justin’s Internet didn’t work unless he plugged it into the wall in the living room, and he didn’t have a television in his room like he said some kids did.

  But the old Western movies were something his onkel had given him. They’d merely had to slip them into the computer to watch them when they were bored, when Aaron’s mamm had left him there and Justin’s mamm had gone off to run errands.

  And Aaron never mentioned it to his mamm. There were a lot of things his mamm didn’t know.

  The crowd on the sidewalk dwindled to nothing as the minutes ticked by, and Aaron finished the candy apple while he watched the front of Daisy’s Quilt Shop.

  Too bad he didn’t have a watch.

  Max lay down next to his chair, his head on his paws, his ears relaxed and touching the ground. When Aaron thought about the future, he thought about working with animals like Max. Animals seemed more comfortable around him than people did.

  Why was that?

  The sun had set, though it still wasn’t full dark.

  He could make out the front of the shop and the garden on the far side of it. The street lamps came on, casting a funny glow. Staring down the sidewalk, down toward the garden where Max liked to play, something shiny caught the light so it winked back at him.

  The bushes bordering the garden on the far side of the parking lot moved slightly.

  Holding out his hand, Aaron tested the air.

  No breeze.

  None.

  The bushes moved again.

  Aaron leaned over in his chair to see better.

  There was someone standing in the bushes. All he could see was the bottom half of the person — the top half was hidden by the shrubs. Had to be a lady. Aaron could see the color of her dress. He didn’t know any man who would wear a pair of pants that color of green.

  Why was some lady hiding in Miss Callie’s bushes?

  She was staring in the direction of the shop, kind of angled toward Aaron, but more toward the windows of the shop.

  Probably she couldn’t see Aaron from where she was.

  He rolled his chair forward one, then two rounds of the wheels. Max moved forward with him, then resettled next to his wheel. Aaron scooted to the front of his chair, careful not to tip it over.

  Max raised his head and looked at him quizzically.

  Aaron put one finger to his lips, then stared back toward the woman in the bushes. At first he thought she was gone, but then he spotted her dark green dress again. She’d be hard to see, except every few seconds she shuffled her feet, and he could make out her black shoes.

  Aaron was so focused on watching her feet and not losing sight of her he didn’t see the man walk up behind her.

  Everything that happened next, happened very quickly.

  The woman pitched forward, out of the bushes and onto the pavement, landing facedown with her arms beside her as if she’d meant to give someone a hug before falling. Her body seemed to twitch once, then again, then her arms and her body lay perfectly still, like one of his sister’s dolls thrown in the dirt. No blood spread out around her, but somehow Aaron knew she was dead.

  He knew, because he’d seen that in the Western too.

  The man stepped forward. With one hand he stuck something into his back pocket. Then he lunged over the woman, grabbed her purse, and reached forward to pick up an item off the ground. Then his head jerked up and he was staring straight at Aaron and Max, who had begun barking madly.

  Finally, he turned and he fled into the darkening night.

  Chapter 2

  CALLIE HAD LEFT FOR A QUICK ERRAND. They had used up all of the cash-register tape — a silly thing to run out of on the biggest weekend sale of the year. She’d dashed out to buy some from the General Store, needing to feel the coolness of the fall evening on her face. Though the shop had been crowded when she left, Melinda, Deborah, and Lydia were there to help with customers. Callie had been gone fifteen minutes tops and was less than a block away when she heard Max barking. Clutching her small shopping bag and purse, she began sprinting toward her shop.

  Why was Max barking as if someone’s life depended on it?

  Her garden came into sight, followed by the lights of her shop.

  She slowed and breathed a sigh of relief.

  No fire. No police lights. Perhaps Max had merely treed a squirrel again.

  Then she realized his barking wasn’t coming from the yard. He was past the yard, near the bench on the far side of the shop, near Aaron, who had rolled out to the middle of the sidewalk and was sitting there alone, gesturing to the dog.

  Max was running back and forth, first toward her, then back to Aaron, barking the whole time as if he were sounding an alarm.

  She started to run again — toward Aaron this time. Perhaps he was having trouble breathing. It was hard to tell in the fading light. But then she was close enough to see that he was waving her back, waving her in the direction of her garden.

  So she spun around, slowing down to search for what she’d missed during her sprint toward the shop.

  A cry caught in her throat when she saw the woman lying half in, half out of her shrubs, lying with her arms spread out as if she’d literally taken a flying leap onto the pavement, lying perfectly still and facedown.

  Callie glanced around, hoping to see someone who might be close at hand to help, but the crowds had moved toward the center of town. No one else seemed to have noticed the tragedy occurring at the corner of her shop’s parking lot.

  She crept closer, peering at the woman.

  Callie knew that face. She’d scrutinized it often enough through the front windows of Quilts and Needles. How was this possible? She was staring at the lifeless form of her nemesis, her archrival, the person she’d spent the past year trying to win over to her side. As a final act of retribution, Mrs. Knepp had died in her parking lot.

  Callie knelt down and put her fingers gently on Mrs. Knepp’s neck to feel for a pulse. The woman’s skin was fragile and thin beneath Callie’s fingers. It reminded her of the archived papers she sometimes stopped by to read at the Shipshewana Visitor’s Center. For over a year now, she’d sparred with this woman, but she’d never actually touched her — the realization hit Callie like a blow.

  Mrs. Knepp was still warm to the touch. She couldn’t have been dead long, and Callie couldn’t feel a pulse.

  Had she been standing near the shrubs and stopped breathing — perhaps choked on something or suffered a heart attack? But her hands weren’t clutching her neck or her heart. They were flung out to her side.

  Mrs. Knepp had never struck Callie as particularly fragile. The old lady was tough as a drill sergeant. Why would she drop dead on such a pleasant September night?

  Or had she?

  Perhaps something more sinister had happened?

  If so, Callie knew from past experience she needed to be careful not to mess up Shane’s crime scene.

  With the first tendrils of fear sneaking down her spine, she backed away slowly. With Max’s barks still ringing loud and insistent in her ears, she turned and ran toward Aaron. As she darted past the front window of her shop, she glanced in and was amazed to see customers still milling around, folks still talking and laughing.

  Didn’t they know?

  Hadn’t they heard Max’s cries for help?

  Couldn’t they tell that death, possibly murder, had once more invaded the town limits of Shipshewana?

  She reached Aaron at the same time Matthew and Martha did.

  “What’s wrong? Why’s Max barking?” Matt squatted down on the right-hand side of his brother, his face red from having run and the questions coming in a r
ush as he tried to catch his breath.

  Martha tugged on the strings of her prayer kapp. “Are you all right, Miss Callie? You’re shaking and —”

  “Listen to me, Martha. I want you to go inside. Don’t go anywhere but inside. Keep your eyes on the store as you walk in. Do you understand me?”

  “Ya.”

  “Once inside, I want you to have your mamm call 9-1-1. She needs to tell the dispatcher to send help quickly. She needs to notify them someone’s died.”

  Martha’s eyes widened, but she didn’t ask any further questions, only turned and hurried into the shop.

  Max had stopped barking when Callie arrived. Now he sat between her and Aaron, the hair on the back of his neck raised and a low growl emanating from his throat.

  Aaron reached forward and touched between his ears. “It’s okay, boy. You did gut.”

  Max turned and licked Aaron’s hand once, then refocused on the scene in front of him — eyes and ears still on alert.

  “We weren’t even gone for ten minutes. Are you sure you’re okay?” Matt removed his wool cap and rubbed his hand over his hair. “What happened, Aaron?”

  “I’m not …” Aaron pulled in a deep breath, and Callie wondered how much the shock of Mrs. Knepp’s death had affected him. “I’m not sure.”

  Melinda tumbled out of the shop, her shoes slapping against the pavement as she ran to her son’s side. “What is it? Aaron, are you okay?”

  She’d always been so calm, so completely composed about Aaron and his condition. The stark fear in her eyes was something Callie had to glance away from. Instead she focused on Max and on calming him down. He continued to whine deep in his throat, his gaze focused on the lifeless form at the far end of the parking lot.

  “I can’t breathe —”

  “Are you having an attack? Do we need to call the doctor?”

  “No. It’s that you’re clutching me so …” Aaron pulled back, his face flushed. “Tight!”

  Melinda stood and straightened her apron over her dress, but she didn’t step away from her son’s chair. She did peer up at Callie. “You wanted Deborah to call the police? She said there’s been a death. Are you sure?”