Stars for Lydia

by P. L. Gaus

  “And a newborn child,” Caroline added. “Mary could have delivered her child by now.”

  Cal pondered the question and asked, “How is this related to the death of your student, Mike?”

  “We don’t know,” Branden answered.

  Shaking her head, Caroline rose from the table, and she whispered a tentative, “No, something’s not right.”

  She got a glass out of the cabinet over the sink, and she ran out water for herself. Sitting back down with it, she said, “It still doesn’t work for me, Michael.”

  “What?” Cal asked, looking first to the professor and then to Caroline. “What doesn’t work for you?”

  “I don’t believe,” Caroline said, “that Mary Yost would leave all of her other children behind. Voluntarily, I mean. I just don’t believe it.”

  Cal asked, “What if she had encouragement?”

  “From the Schells,” the professor said.

  “Yes,” said Cal. “With this Omaha church.”

  “And the Culps,” the professor said.

  “Who?” Cal asked.

  “Paul and Nancy Culp. In Parma. They’re marriage counselors. Psychologists.”

  Cal asked, “Were they working with Mary Yost?”

  “They were waiting for Mary to come up to Parma on the bus,” the professor answered.

  “How are the Schells connected with this?” Cal asked.

  “They’re the ones who put Mary Yost in touch with the Culps in the first place,” Branden said. “They sent Mary up to Parma on a bus.”

  “And?” Cal asked.

  “And she disappeared,” Branden said. “She never made it to the Culps. She never made it to the hotel that the Schells had arranged for her near the bus route.”

  Shaking his head, Cal said, “This is tangled. You’re talking about a network.”

  “Probably,” Branden said. “The Culps, the Schells, the Omaha people. Setting up a disappearing act for Mary.”

  “Alice Shewmon,” Caroline said, “won’t have any trouble believing that Mary wanted out of her church. And out of her marriage. Alice won’t have any trouble believing that at all.”

  “This is extreme,” Cal said again. “Evangelism is one thing, but breaking up families? That’s extreme.”

  “Is it possible?” Branden asked.

  Cal nodded. “If they are zealots.”

  “Who?” Caroline asked.

  “Any of the three,” Cal said. “Or two of the three, working together.”

  “Or all three,” Branden said. “An extended network.”

  “This would be rare,” Cal said. “And if any of it is true, someone has been lying to you. Except . . .” Cal hesitated with a thought.

  “What?” Mike and Caroline asked simultaneously. “What?” Caroline asked again.

  “If they are zealots, they wouldn’t be able to conceal it. They’d be proud of it. They’d admit to it, if you pushed on them hard enough. They’d want to own it.”

  “If they are zealots,” Branden echoed.

  Cal smiled. “That’s a pretty big ‘if,’ Mike.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  Standing outside on the gravel parking lot beside his truck, the professor asked his wife, “So, how do we push hard enough on them? And who do we push on?”

  “If it’s a network,” Caroline said over the roof of the truck, “one would tell the others.”

  “I think Cal’s right,” the professor said. “They’d want to own it.”

  Caroline shrugged her shoulders. “They might tell you what they did, Michael. But they’d probably never tell you where Mary is. They’d go to jail before they would tell you that.”

  Nodding, the professor said, “Yes. If they’re that extreme.”

  Caroline pulled the passenger’s door open, and on his side, the professor slid in behind the wheel. He put the key into the ignition, but he did not start the engine.

  Instead, he sat in the dark, drumming his thumbs on the steering wheel. He shook his head and frowned. He looked over to his wife and asked, “How did we get this far along? Thinking this way, I mean?”

  “If Cal is right,” Caroline said, “you just have to push a little, to get them to admit to something.”

  After a silence, while the professor started his truck, Caroline said, “We wanted to drive with Cal up to Cleveland, Michael.”

  The professor switched off his engine, and Caroline waited in the truck while Branden rang the kitchen’s side bell again. When Cal opened the door, Branden said, “We’re still going with you up to Cleveland, right? On Wednesday?”

  “They called,” Cal said. “They want me up there Tuesday night.”

  “Even better,” Branden said. “We’ll all go up, Tuesday after dinner. Caroline will stay there with Rachel. I have classes on Wednesdays.”

  Cal nodded. “I don’t know a time for the surgery. All they’ll tell me is that I’m scheduled for Wednesday morning. So, they want me available, in case they take me first thing. It could be five AM.”

  “I’ll come back up to see you Wednesday after dinner.”

  “I’ll be there,” Cal said. “Don’t know what condition I’ll be in, but I will definitely be there.”

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  While they were driving back home, the professor’s phone chirped with the sheriff’s coded tone. Branden handed his phone to Caroline, and Caroline answered it. She verified that it was Robertson, and she immediately switched him to speaker phone, saying, “Michael is driving, Bruce. You’re on speaker phone.”

  “Mike,” Robertson started, “John Yost has been croaking out gibberish with Evie Carson. In the hospital. Well, some of it is gibberish, anyway. But he’s talking about graves on his farm. He’s crying and grumbling about graves. We’re going to search the place tomorrow.”

  “OK, wow,” Branden said. “That’s a surprise. You don’t want to do something yet tonight?”

  “Tomorrow, Mike. I told the bishop tomorrow. We have his permission to search the farm. I think he’s as worried about John Yost as we are, now. But tonight, let me meet you at your house. It’s on the way. I’ve got an idea.”

  “What?” Caroline asked.

  “I need you to go out to the Schwartzentrubers’ with me.”

  Caroline said, “It’s rather late to be knocking on doors, Sheriff.”

  “I’ve got an idea,” Robertson said. “This can’t wait.”

  “They might not answer the door at this hour,” the professor said.

  “What’s your idea?” Caroline asked. “Maybe if I go out there with you?”

  “That might help,” Robertson said. “I don’t know for sure. But I’ve got that recording I made of the woman who called my phone from Fort Wayne. I’m talking about the woman who said she was Mary Yost. I’m going to play it for Junior and see what he says about it. I’ve just got a hunch.”

  Branden said, “I thought you were letting this drop, Bruce.”

  “Yeah, well now John Yost is muttering to Evie Carson about graves, Professor, and I’ve got this one little something that’s been bugging me.”

  “Who told you about John, Bruce? Evie?”

  “No, it was the bishop, actually. He was just here. I told him we wanted to talk to John Junior, and to Mose and Ida Schwartzentruber, too, and he was agreeable.”

  “We can go out there,” the professor said.

  “Then I’m going, too,” Caroline said. “It’s late. You need to let me be the one who knocks on their door.”

  Chapter 30

  Saturday, September 2

  9:50 PM

  At first there was only the slightest movement in the long purple curtains of the porch window at Mose and Ida Schwartzentruber’s farmhouse. On the porch, standing to the left of the window, for the third time, Caroline knocked on the front door. Branden and the sheriff had remained in Robertson’s Crown Vic, which was idling at the side of the porch with its lights off.

  While watching the win
dow, Caroline knocked again on the wood door, and there was a flicker of flame at the narrow split between the window curtains. Then there was a faint orange glow. The glow increased and moved away from the split. After another knock, Ida Schwartzentruber pulled the front door open and held her kerosene lantern up above her eyes, to peer out at Caroline from behind the crack in the door. The flickering orange light of the lantern bathed old Ida’s lined and craggy face with the irregular shadows of a Halloween eeriness. Nowhere in her expression or posture was there any hint of a welcome for Caroline. To emphasize this point, she reached to the latch on the screened door, and with a soft click, she locked the screened door in place.

  Through the screened door, Caroline spoke self-consciously. “I’m sorry, Mrs. Schwartzentruber. I am really very sorry about this. I know it’s late. But this is important, and I think you will want to help us.”

  “Help you with what?” Ida asked with a throaty, sleep-infused whisper. “Why are you here?”

  “We have a phone call from Mary Yost. She said she was over in Fort Wayne. But I don’t think she would have gone there, and the sheriff,” – Caroline gestured toward the Crown Vic, and Ida unlocked the screened door and stuck her head out of the door to look over at Branden and Robertson – “thinks you can help us. We think that you or John Junior could listen to the phone message.”

  “How is that possible?”

  “The sheriff made a recording of the phone call. We can play it for you. You can listen to what she said. It won’t take very long, Mrs. Schwartzentruber. You’ll have helped us very much. You’ll have helped us find your daughter.”

  Pensively, Ida considered Caroline for a very long and silent time. She put her head out again, looking to the side of her front porch, and she studied Branden and Robertson sitting in the Crown Vic. She said, “Wait,” and she carried her lantern back into the house. The light disappeared with her, and Caroline was left on the porch with nothing but the moon to illuminate her position. She stood awkwardly and self-consciously in place, and she waited in the dark.

  Then at the door, Mose Schwartzentruber appeared with the lantern. He was barefooted and dressed all in black. He held silence for a moment, as if the circumstance required careful thought. Eventually he said, “A phone call?”

  “Yes, a phone call that the sheriff recorded. We want you to listen to it.”

  Behind Mose, Ida appeared again. Mose was holding the lantern at shoulder height, and Ida stood back, so that the glow of the flame partly obscured her to Caroline. From there she said, “We don’t know why this can’t wait until tomorrow.”

  Caroline considered that and nodded. “I know,” she said. “It’s late. But we are worried about Mary and Esther, and if you take just five minutes to listen to the phone call, it’ll help us very much. We want to find Mary and Esther. You can help us with that. You can help us a lot, just by listening to a few sentences that she spoke when she called the sheriff.”

  Mose asked, “Can you play it for us here? Or does it need the electric? We don’t have the electric.”

  “We can play it here, Mr. Schwartzentruber. You’ll hear Mary’s voice. It will help us. It will help her. Please.”

  Mose nodded solemnly. He held rigidly to his place behind the screened door. Caroline turned and descended the porch steps. She walked down them carefully in the darkness, and she walked over to the Crown Vic. She took Robertson’s phone from him, and she carried it back to the front door. “I’ll tap the icons,” she said, “and it will light up. Then I can make it play a recording of Mary’s voice.”

  Mose nodded, but he didn’t otherwise reply. He waited while Caroline prepared the phone. He watched impassively as she called up the file and chose the playback feature.

  Mary Yost’s words issued out of the phone, and Mose did not seem startled. The words played out just as Mary and the sheriff had spoken them:

  We’re fine, Sheriff.

  Where are you, Mary?

  That doesn’t matter. We’re both fine. I’m having some labor now, so I can’t talk.

  But, we’re fine.

  You need help? Let us help you.

  I have a woman with me.

  A midwife, Mary?

  A nurse. I’m fine. I can’t talk. What? OK. I need to hang up, now.

  Caroline switched the recording off. Mose stared out at her with mild puzzlement showing in his expression. His eyes narrowed, and he seemed bewildered to Caroline. He pulled Ida farther back into the room with him, and with the lantern between them, they spoke to each other in Dietsche dialect. Leaving Mose standing back a few paces away from the door, Ida came forward with the lantern to face Caroline through the screened door, and she asked, “Can you play that again?”

  Caroline did, and Ida turned around to Mose, shaking her head wordlessly. Mose disappeared with the lantern. Ida stood at the door and watched placidly out at Caroline. After a couple of minutes, Mose reappeared with John Yost Junior, who was dressed in his full black denim attire, with even his vest buttoned in place. He was barefooted, and his face showed deep imprints from his pillow.

  Mose nodded to Caroline, and Caroline asked, “Again?”

  Mose nodded a silent yes, and Caroline played the recording again, this time with Junior standing there to listen. Junior listened to it all. He turned to his grandfather Mose and pulled him back into the shadows of the front hallway to confer with him.

  When Junior came back to the door, he spoke out through the screen to Caroline, saying only, “That is not die Maemme’s voice. That is not my mother.”

  Chapter 31

  Sunday, September 3

  2:00 AM

  It was well into the early morning hours before Sheriff Robertson and Professor Branden had made their plans and placed their phone calls. When they got to the Schells’ boarding house, Robertson parked his Crown Vic on the driveway, behind the Schells’ battered white Amish-Hauler van, and the men stepped up onto the side porch in the dark, to knock on the door. Caroline had earlier argued that this was not a door where she was needed. They had her best advice, and she had helped them make their plans, but this wasn’t the door of a skittish Old Order family out in the country. There wouldn’t be any need to soft-peddle the interview.

  Everything had been discussed. Two deputies had orders to interview the Culps first thing Monday morning, and they had already left for a hotel in Parma. Deputies Ryan Baker and Dave Johnson were to go Monday morning to Omaha, to interview the pastors at the Church of True Believers. “Now,” the sheriff had declared, “we’ve really got something, Mike. We finally have something to investigate.”

  Branden knocked a few times on the Schells’ side door, and then Robertson took to pounding the door with the heel of his hand. A light switch was finally thrown in a downstairs room, and there was a rustling behind the closed door. Softly, they heard a woman pleading, “Please don’t wake the children.”

  Branden spoke through the door. “Mrs. Schell? This is Mike Branden. We need to speak with you.”

  There was a soft click behind the door, with the opening slap of a dead bolt, and through the closed door, Donna asked, “This can’t wait until tomorrow?”

  “We need to speak with you,” the professor repeated.

  “We?” A second click sounded from behind the door. There was a bit of a rustle at the lock on the doorknob.

  “I’m here with Sheriff Bruce Robertson,” Branden answered.

  A man behind the door asked, “Is this about Lydia Schwartz?”

  “Ed?” Branden said. “It’s only partly about Lydia. We’re really here to ask about Mary and Esther Yost.”

  Faintly, Branden heard a back-and-forth whispering from behind the door. Then he heard clearly when Ed said to Donna, “Are you sure?”

  Donna spoke as she turned the knob. “It’s late, Professor. Do you have any idea?” The door opened a slight amount, and Donna asked, still shielded behind the door, “Why can’t this wait until morning?”

  Now Rober
tson came forward. “It’s Sheriff Robertson, Mrs. Schell. Just give us a minute.”

  “Do you have a warrant?” Ed Schell asked from inside. “Do we need a lawyer?”

  “You aren’t suspects in any investigation,” the sheriff said, surprised by the legal maneuver. “We just want to ask you about Mary Yost. You sent her up to see the psychologists in Parma.”

  “Are they OK?” Ed asked as Donna opened the door completely.

  Together the Schells stood in their bathrobes, on the other side of the threshold. Ed threw a switch on the wall to his right, and a yellow porch light came on above the heads of the men on the porch.

  “The Culps are fine,” Branden said in the yellow light. “It’s not so much about them, other than the fact that Mary was supposed to talk to them.”

  “And she didn’t,” Ed said, nodding. He stepped back from the doorway, waved the men inside, and said, “Please be quiet. You know. The children.”

  Inside in the hallway, Robertson said, “We’re trying to find Mary Yost, folks. Have you seen her? Have you heard from her?”

  With quizzical expressions, the Schells looked to each other. Then Ed turned to face Robertson, saying simply, “No.”

  “Do you know people in Fort Wayne?” Robertson asked.

  “No,” Donna said.

  “Really?” Branden asked.

  “Well, maybe a few people,” Ed said.

  Robertson asked, “Would you be surprised to learn that Mary Yost had gone over to Fort Wayne?”

  “In her buggy?” Donna asked. “That’s a fairly long trip in a buggy.”

  “Or maybe she got a ride?” the professor asked.

  “We don’t know about that,” Ed said. “Why are you asking about Fort Wayne?”

  “Do you own property over there?” Branden asked.

  “No,” said Ed, and Branden looked to Robertson for the next question.

  “Someone,” the sheriff said, “called us from Fort Wayne.”

  “Really?” Donna Schell asked.

  “Yes,” Robertson said, nodding solemnly. “But she said she was Mary Yost, and John Junior has just told us that the voice on that call is not his mother’s. Do you know anything about that? Because clearly it is not Mary Yost who called us.”