“You wanted to talk to me about Leeza?” I asked.
Mary looked over her shoulder again. “I know your grandmother, Clara. She has always spoken so highly of you. As have others in the Amish community. They say you have been able to help them solve many problems. They say you have found killers in the past.”
I nodded. This was all true. For good or for ill, I had been able to help other Amish people who had become embroiled in murder investigations. Partly this was due to my innate curiosity. Partly it was because the Amish began coming to me to help after I solved a couple of murders.
“I wonder if you could do that now for Leeza.” She paused. “For our family. I don’t think RJ will find peace until the death of his sister is solved. He is a stoic man, but he is broken up over her death. I beg you to find out what happened to Elizabeth. I think it would give my husband great peace of mind to know. I know that he spoke poorly of her, but that stemmed from hurt. He was hurt that she couldn’t stop drinking. He was hurt that she was finally forced to leave the Amish faith because she refused to change her ways. I think he always hoped she would come back to the faith before . . .” She swallowed. “Well, before it was too late.” She dropped her eyes. “Now, it’s too late.”
Far too late.
“She was trying to change because she wanted to be reconciled with your family.”
She gasped. “Everyone was right. You do know everything that it is happening in the community.”
“Not everything,” I said. “If I knew everything, I would know who killed Leeza.”
She swallowed.
“Tell me about Leeza’s visit to your farm.”
“How do you know of this?” She twisted the end of her apron in her hands and blinked at me from behind her thick lenses.
“Aubrey,” I said.
She looked down. “Yes, you mean the Englisch girl from the winery. She came to my husband and told him that Elizabeth was working at the winery. He was furious. He has no tolerance for the use of alcohol. He saw what it did to his sister and how it tore his family apart.”
“What happened when Leeza—I mean Elizabeth—came to speak to him?”
She twisted her apron again. “She came the day after her friend. It was too soon to come after RJ learned about the winery. If she had waited a few more days or even a week, he would have cooled down. He wouldn’t have been happy with where she worked, but he might have been more open to hearing her story.” She looked at her hands, which were tangled up in the cloth of her apron. “But she did not wait. She told RJ that she was no longer drinking, and he said that didn’t matter as long as she sold alcohol. He said, too, that he had seen her with the men who were known to sell moonshine in the community. He told her that was unforgivable, that people like her ruined gut men. He told her never to come back, never to speak to him again or try to speak to anyone in the family.”
My heart hurt for Leeza. No matter what she may have done to help Gabe, her moonshiner boyfriend, RJ’s rejection had been terribly harsh. It was no wonder that she began drinking again. It would have been a miracle if she had been able to resist it.
“She left then, and I never got a chance to speak to her. I wanted to so much, but I was afraid. My husband was so angry, and I had to keep the children quiet so they would not make him angrier.”
I stiffened. “Are you afraid of RJ?”
“He would not hurt me or the children, if that’s what you are asking, but he does have a temper, and his temper was boiling over what he saw as another betrayal by his sister.”
I frowned. I wanted to believe Mary, but I wasn’t sure I did. RJ appeared to be a stern man from the outside. I could only guess what he was like at home with his wife and children.
“Now that Elizabeth is dead, RJ is feeling guilt.”
I wasn’t surprised to hear it. It wouldn’t have taken much imagination on his part to realize that his reaction and banishment of her was what had led her back to alcohol.
“Finding the killer will bring him some peace.”
“How can I help?” I asked. “The police are already looking for the person who killed her. It may even be one of the two men they arrested yesterday.”
“Ya, I saw they found the still. My husband was speaking about it with some elders from our district early this afternoon. That’s why we were late coming to the festival.” She took my hand in hers. “I don’t believe those men were responsible for Elizabeth’s death.”
“The men running the still?” I asked.
She nodded.
“Why do you say that?”
“They have done a great many things wrong, but they weren’t the ones who killed Leeza.”
“Who did, then?”
She dropped my hand and bit her lip. It was as if she were trying to decide whether or not she should say anything more. “It was an Amish person,” she whispered, and then looked around to see if anyone might have heard her.
The sky grew darker by the second, and then there was a high-pitched, whistling sound, followed by a bang, like a gunshot, as a firecracker exploded in the sky. The people on the square cheered.
I removed my phone from my pocket. It was ten to nine. The fireworks would begin promptly at nine. I guessed this was a test firecracker we’d just seen.
Mary shivered. “That reminds me of the night of the storm.”
My brow went up. “You mean Saturday night? The night Leeza was killed?”
She nodded.
“Do you know something about that night?”
She didn’t say anything.
“If you don’t want those moonshiners to be falsely accused, you will have to tell me what you know.”
She seemed to realize she was wrinkling her apron. She dropped her hands to her sides and stretched out her fingers. She winced as she moved her hands.
“I went out to the strawberry patch in the storm. I normally wouldn’t have done that, but RJ wasn’t home. He had been working at a farmers market in Wayne County, and he got caught in the storm. He stayed with friends who lived near there. It was just my three children at home the night of the storm.
“Earlier in the day, the children and I had been working in the strawberry patch, and we had left tools there. I knew if I left them in the rain all night, they would be ruined. The children were in bed and seemed to be sleeping through the thunder. I thought that I would have to go out and gather up the tools. I wanted to pick them up, dry them, and put them away so that my husband wouldn’t know how careless I had been with them.
“The storm was fierce, and when I first went out the door, I questioned myself. I wondered if I should wait and move the tools after the storm had passed, but then I knew that RJ would come home and be very upset to see his equipment treated so carelessly if he found any damage.”
I nodded. “So you went out into the storm anyway.”
She smoothed down her apron. “Ya. I went out. The rain was coming down sideways and the thunder and lightning were so close.” She swallowed.
“Were you more afraid of your husband than the storm?” I asked.
“RJ is a gut man.”
I realized that she hadn’t exactly answered my question by saying that, and again I worried about Mary and her children.
“I went out into the storm, and I made it to the field where we had left the tools. They were just where I expected them to be. It was just a small rake and a mallet for staking some of the plants. I picked both up and was about to go back to the house when I heard a buggy on the road. I froze. Because I thought it was my husband. I knew how furious he would be, catching me out in that terrible weather, and with his tools, too.
“But soon, I knew it wasn’t our buggy. It was going too fast. The buggy went by just as there was a great flash of lightning. I was able to see the driver. There was just the edge of a bonnet.”
“A bonnet? It was a woman in the buggy?”
“Men do not wear bonnets,” she said, as if that were answer enough.
; My brain was whirling. Could a woman have blown up that still and killed Leeza? Could an Amish woman have done it?
She paused. “Ten minutes later, as I walked back to the house, I heard the still explode.”
“You believe whoever was in that buggy blew up the still?”
“I do. I didn’t see anyone else go down the road. When I overheard the district elders tell my husband how someone with a gun blew up the still by shooting the propane tank, that was my thought right away.”
“Why didn’t you go to the police then?” I asked. “You need to tell them, not me.”
“I’m afraid. We Amish are taught not to depend on the Englisch authorities. We are meant to be separate.” She shivered and picked up the edge of her apron again, as if it was the only security she had to hold on to.
There were so many things I could say to that, but I wisely held my tongue. Insulting her strongly held belief system was not the way to convince her to trust me.
“By telling you,” she said, “I hope the murderer will be caught, and my husband will never know that I was involved. Please don’t tell him.”
I frowned. She sounded so much like Leeza’s friend, Becca Stout, when she said that. Mary might not want her husband to know, but there was nothing I could do if he found out. For one, I had to tell Aiden. If Mary was questioned by the sheriff’s department, I don’t know how she could keep her husband from finding out.
“Leeza’s friend, Becca, asked me to do the same thing.”
She stared at me. “Becca who?”
“Becca Stout. She asked me to help find Leeza’s killer and not tell the sheriff’s department about her.”
She stared at me. “Becca is no friend of Elizabeth’s. She’s never been a friend of Elizabeth’s.”
I shook my head. “Becca claimed to be her best friend. She was the one who told me that Leeza had stopped drinking for a while. I thought the two were still in contact even after Leeza left the district.”
“Who told you that?” she asked.
“Becca.”
“She lied to you. She hated Elizabeth for leading her brother astray.”
“How did Leeza do that?” I asked.
She licked her lips. “When my sister-in-law was still a member of the district, Becca’s brother courted her. She introduced Bryan to alcohol during that time. He never drank as much as she did, and he was better able to control his behavior. Everyone in the district knew he had a drinking problem just as bad as Leeza’s, but because he didn’t disrupt the district by acting out like Leeza did, the church elders ignored it. Leeza was shunned. Bryan never recovered. He never married and continued to drink in secret, though we all knew.”
She pressed her hands together. “And then a little over a month ago, he got into a drunk driving accident with his buggy. He ran off the road into a tree. The horse wasn’t seriously hurt, but he was killed. Becca blamed Elizabeth for this.”
“You think Becca blew up the still because of her brother’s death?”
She nodded.
I shivered. If Becca hated Leeza for leading her brother astray, it was no wonder she’d told the bishop Leeza would never change her ways. “What is the name of Becca’s brother?” I asked, even though I was sure I knew. It was the name Aiden had told me just a little while ago.
“Bryan Hershberger,” she said in a quiet voice. “Before she married, Becca’s name was Becca Hershberger.”
The enormity of what I had done in not telling Aiden about Becca earlier hit me. I had kept what I knew about her to myself because I thought I was protecting her and respecting her beliefs as an Amish woman who did not want to disobey her husband. I had been fooled. I would not be fooled like that again. “I will have to tell Deputy Aiden Brody about this, and when I do, he will want to talk to you.”
She shook her head. “I can’t talk to the police.”
“Aiden is kind,” I said. “He wouldn’t make you do anything that you don’t want to do, but he also has an obligation to find out the truth and solve this crime. It’s not just for Leeza, but to protect others in the community. If Becca killed someone, she’s unstable and might hurt herself or someone else.”
She dropped her gaze. “I know this. It is why I have come to speak to you. You tell the police, but I will not speak to them.”
The sun had completely set by this point.
Mary looked over her shoulder as the crowd got ready for the fireworks to officially begin. “I am putting this into your hands. I don’t know what else to do. You can’t know how hard it has been for RJ since we learned that Elizabeth was killed. He hoped that shunning would eventually bring her back to our faith. That’s why members are shunned, why shunning is placed on a church member in the first place.” She swallowed. “It’s to remind them of what they are missing in community life. When they no longer have access to the church or their family, they come back.”
“But she wasn’t baptized. I thought Amish were only shunned if they left the church after baptism.”
She shook her head. “Like all things in our faith, it is up to the bishop how he will handle the sinners in the church.” She looked at her hands. “We are all sinners, of course, but what I mean is the unrepentant. Elizabeth was like that. She needed her drink so badly that she couldn’t see how it hurt her family or herself. Even—even if she didn’t ever come back into our community, I wished that before she died she would realize her mistake and try to make it right. That she would give up her drinking. I am grateful to hear that she tried to do that.”
I took a breath. “I don’t know if it will be helpful to you or not to know this, and it’s up to you if you want to tell RJ, but Leeza—Elizabeth—was seeking help for her addiction to alcohol. She began going to a community center to get free addiction counseling.”
Mary clasped her hands in front of her. “I’m glad. Hearing that does bring me comfort, and I know that it will bring RJ comfort, too, when he’s ready to receive it. At the moment any word about his sister is not welcome.”
I nodded. RJ had to accept his sister’s fate before he could forgive her.
“We can’t know the ways of the Lord,” she said in a whisper. “We cannot know if she found peace in heaven or paid for her sinful ways.” She took a breath. “It might not be the lesson of my bishop, but I like to think that Gott knows Elizabeth’s heart. He knows what she would have done with her life if she had not died. He knew the direction in which her life was going before it was cut short. I–I don’t think he would punish her because her life was cut off by someone else and she ran out of time.”
“I don’t think that either.” My voice was as soft as hers.
“I have always believed—I have always hoped that in the end, Gott would be compassionate. Some men of the church think Gott wants to punish us for our misdeeds. That’s not been what I have observed in my life.”
“It’s not what I have seen since I moved to Ohio,” I said. “I don’t know much about faith.” I paused, wondering if I was sharing too much with her. “I didn’t grow up in the church. My father fell away from faith after he left the Amish. But from what I have seen since I moved to Amish country, the God of my grandmother, your God, is compassionate.”
There were tears in her eyes. “Danki. We can only know for sure when we accept our heavenly reward ourselves someday.”
I hoped that day was a long way away for both of us. I wasn’t ready for the end of my story yet.
“Now, I must go back to my husband.” Without another word, she walked away from me just as the fireworks display began in full.
CHAPTER THIRTY-EIGHT
In the sky, the fireworks popped and exploded into a beautiful array of bright red, blue, yellow, and green. The crowd in the square cheered at every blast. There was a bombardment of light and sound above our heads as the fireworks whizzed and boomed. The display was grand. As expected when Margot was in charge of anything, the fireworks were bigger and better than anyone could have thought possible in such a l
ittle village.
I couldn’t appreciate it, though; I had to find Aiden to tell him what I had learned from Mary. I couldn’t believe that I had been so blind when it came to Becca. I’d thought that she really had been Leeza’s friend. It would be even more heartbreaking if Leeza had wrongly thought the same.
I spotted Aiden across the square, but as I got closer, I realized he wasn’t alone. Kayla stood next to him. She looked up at him. Her lovely face was illuminated by the light of the colorful sky. Aiden looked down at her, but I couldn’t read his expression. I froze and took two steps backward, knocking into someone. It was a large man, who glared at me. “Watch where you’re going.”
“I–I’m so sorry.” I stumbled away from him in the direction of the candy booth.
Why was Kayla there? She’d told Aiden she wasn’t going to give him another chance. Had she lied?
Cass, Charlotte, and my grandmother sat on folding chairs in front of the booth, so that they could watch the display, too. There was an empty chair for me.
“Bailey,” Maami said. “Where have you been all this time?”
“Greeting her adoring fans now that she has a big, fancy plaque,” Cass teased.
I stared down at the plaque in my hands; I hadn’t realized I was still carrying it. “Does anyone know where Deputy Little went?” I asked. I took care not to make eye contact with Cass. If she saw my expression, she would know something was wrong.
“I saw him on the corner of Apple and Main Street,” Charlotte said.
“Great! I have to tell him something about the case.”
Cass jumped out of her chair. “Why don’t you just tell Aiden?”
“Um, I didn’t see him,” I lied. “It will be quicker to tell Little because we know where he is. Let me run over there now. I’ll go do that and be right back.” I hurried away from them before anyone could get a close look at my expression.
“Bai! Bailey!” Cass called behind me.
I just kept walking, as if I couldn’t hear her call my name between the noise of the crowd and the fireworks going off.
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