Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) (19 page)

I
stumbled out of the bowling alley. Rex had to have meant Jonah. What other Amish man would have a goat ride along in his buggy? And Jonah wouldn’t think twice about helping an inebriated man back to town. Then why had he refused to share this alibi with the police or with me? He hadn’t been doing anything wrong. In fact, he was being a Good Samaritan. Why keep that a secret?

Had Jonah had a cell phone, I would have called him that very second and demanded some answers. Sometimes it was a real pain that most of my friends were Amish.

Before I backed out of my space in Eight Lanes’s parking lot, my cell phone rang. My mother’s face appeared on the screen. Usually, I would ignore her calls if it was in the middle of a workday, but that was before someone was murdered in her backyard.

“Angie!” she shouted when I picked up. “You need to come over here and talk some sense into your father.
He says he’s not going back to physical therapy because the therapist tried to kill him!”

I sighed. I didn’t doubt that my father said he wasn’t going back to the physical therapist. I knew it was going to be a battle to convince him to commit to it.

“Are you coming?”

I suppressed a second sigh. “I’ll be there as soon as I can.”

“Good.” She ended the call.

I patted Oliver on the head before putting the car in reverse. “It seems we have another nine-one-one call from Grandma.”

He placed his paws on the dash as if he was ready to go and drive into danger. Then again, he knew Grandma’s house meant beef jerky from my father.

I arrived at my parents’ home exactly twenty minutes later. As I let Oliver out of the car, I surveyed the county road and was happy to see no sign of Willow or any of her Bigfoot compatriots.

My mom threw open the front door. “Don’t just stand there—get in here. Your father is in the living room.” Without waiting for me to reply, she spun around and marched away, leaving the front door wide-open.

“Tread softly,” I whispered to Oliver. “Grandma appears to be a little bit on edge.”

He licked his nose as if in preparation.

I found Mom and Dad in the living room. Dad was in his favorite chair, still wearing the blueberry sweat suit and looking downcast. I went over to him and kissed him on the forehead. “Hey, Dad, how are you?”

“Terrible,” he said. “It was so much more horrible than I imagined it would be. I’m not ever going back.”

My mother hovered in the doorway. “Talk some sense into him. He can’t use a walker for the rest of his life.”

“Mom,” I said as gently as possible, “why don’t you go check on Jonah and Eban and see how the kitchen is progressing? I bet a lot has changed since you and Dad left this morning.”

“Don’t you want me to stay and help you talk to your father?” She frowned at her husband.

I gave her my brightest smile. “We’ll be fine.”

She glanced in the direction of the kitchen. I knew she was itching to see what had been done while she and Dad were out. “All right,” she said, and left the room.

I felt mildly sorry to sic Mom on Jonah, but it would be much easier to talk to my father without her nearby contributing her two cents every two seconds. My mother was one of those people who actually liked exercise. She jogged three miles on her treadmill every morning. I loathed exercise just like my father. He and I could speak on a kindred-spirit level about an issue that she would never understand.

He shivered. “They put me on a table and bent me back like my spine was a fold in the Sunday newspaper.”

“Dad, they’re trying to help you.”

“AngieBear.” He took my hand. “I’m telling you, the woman had glee in her eyes as she watched me be twisted into a pretzel. Do you hear me? Glee!”

“Maybe she’s just a happy person,” I said.

“She’s a masochist,” Dad said with feeling.

I sighed. “How does your back feel now?”

He thought about it for a moment. “Sore, but in a different way. The whole thing is sore like someone used it for a punching bag. That’s the therapist’s doing.”

“That’s because the therapist worked on strengthening the muscles in your back so that the disc will have support. I’ve done a little research on your injury, and it sounds to me that she put you on a flex extension table.”

He grunted.

“Did you like anything about it? There has to be one good part,” I said.

He frowned. “I did like the end when she put this massive damp heating pad on my back.”

“See, it’s not all bad,” I said in my most upbeat voice.

He folded his arms. “It was fine for the last ten minutes. The other fifty she turned me into a contortionist.”

I folded my arms too. “You promised that you would give therapy a chance.”

“I did.” Like a toddler, he wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You didn’t give it enough of a chance.” I perched on an ottoman a few feet from him. “You promised that you’d do this for me.”

His face softened. “You’re right. I did. I suppose one visit isn’t much of a fair shake.” He gave the loudest sigh I’d ever heard. I wouldn’t be surprised if Mattie heard it miles away at the Running Stitch. “I suppose I can give it another shot for you.”

“Good.” I stood up.

His eyes sparkled. “Don’t tell your mother just yet that I agreed to go back. I like it when she’s all riled up.”

I shook my head. “You’re terrible. I’ll let you tell her when you’re ready, but don’t put it off too long. She’s really wound up.”

“Just for another half hour,” he said with a wink.

I kissed him on the top of the head. “I’ll go check on the kitchen and Jonah before I head back out.”

Oliver and I went to the kitchen. I was surprised to see that the new floor was almost complete. Eban, who wore kneepads over his trousers, kneeled at the far edge of the huge kitchen, installing the last few floorboards. Jonah and my mother stood on the opposite side of the room, surveying the work. Other than the new floor, everything was out of the room, even the light fixtures in the ceiling.

The new French doors were opened wide and there was a makeshift workshop of sawhorses and power tools on the back patio.

“Wow, you guys work fast,” I said.

Mom nodded. “I was just telling Eban how impressed I was with their work.”

Eban removed a bandanna from the back pocket of his trousers and wiped his brow. “
Danki.
The cabinetry was delivered while you were gone. It’s in the garage. We’ll paint tomorrow and install the cabinets on Monday.”

“Where’s Jonah?” I asked.

“He had to return to his farm about an hour ago.”

I bit the inside of my lip. “Is everything okay?”

Eban shrugged. “I suppose so.”

This meant I would have to wait to talk to Jonah about the alibi Rex Flagg gave him. I tried to hide my disappointment. “And the doors are fixed,” I said.

Eban nodded. “And they lock too.”

I gave my mother a sideways look. “If that’s the case, I’ll sleep at my own house tonight, Mom.” I didn’t think I would survive another night with the accusatory giraffe.

“Yes, that’s fine,” she said absentmindedly. “Is your father going to return to physical therapy?”

“He’s thinking about it,” I said, keeping my promise to my father to let him tell her.

“Thinking about it?” my mother exclaimed. “You were supposed to talk him into it. I ask you to do one thing . . .” She stomped out of the kitchen.

I watched her go. I had a feeling that I was going to get the blame for my father’s desire to see my mother riled up.

“Angie,” Eban said.

I jumped. I hadn’t realized he stood only a few feet from me.

“May I talk to you for a moment?”

I stepped back. “Sure, Eban. I’m on my way out, if you want to follow me outside to talk.”

He nodded. “I could use a break anyway.”

Eban and Oliver followed me through the house. As we passed the living room, I heard my mother lecturing my father as to why he needed to keep doing physical therapy. I shook my head. I hoped Dad told
her about his decision to go back soon or I would never hear the end of it.

In the front yard, Oliver snuffled one of the tulips that Petunia had decapitated the day before. I supposed I should be happy that Mom was too caught up in Dad’s physical therapy drama to notice the number Petunia had done on her front garden. She would eventually and I would never hear the end of that either.

I turned to Eban. “What did you want to talk about? Is something wrong with the kitchen job?”

“Nee.”
He shook his head. “I’m very grateful to have the work. I am grateful to both Jonah and your mother for it. It pays well, which will allow me to send money back to my mother for her and my younger brothers and sisters.”

“No father?” I asked. Immediately, I regretted it. It was too personal a question to ask someone who I’d just met, especially if that person was Amish.

He shook his head. “My father died when I was younger.”

“I’m so sorry.”

He gave his head a hard shake, causing his glossy bowl haircut to bounce in place. “It was a long time ago. The reason I wanted to talk to you is because of this Bigfoot creature.” He whispered the last part.

“Oh?” That was the last thing I expected Eban to want to talk to me about. “What about it?”

“I saw it with my own eyes in the forest this morning. Jonah was inside taking measurements to cut the flooring, and I was carrying the uncut pieces from the
garage to the back patio. The creature startled me so much that I dropped the stack of wood. When I did that, it must have scared the animal, and it ran off.” Eban was breathing heavily by the end of his tale.

“What did it look like?”

“Sort of like a cross between a gorilla and a bear. It was much taller than me,” he said. He held his hand about a foot above his own head to demonstrate the creature’s height. “The odd part is I could have sworn the animal was wearing shoes. I know I caught sight of white tennis shoes as it was running away.”

Ahh, I thought, Bigfoot was busted.

I
was still mulling over how I was going to break the news to Willow that her Bigfoot was an impostor when I parked my car outside of Zeff Oak Emporium. I wasn’t sure how this was going to go. It was very likely Mallory would recognize me from my parents’ house the morning before. My hair was hard to miss. If she recognized me, I knew she wouldn’t answer my questions.

“Ollie, we need a disguise,” I said.

He whimpered. Oliver wasn’t much for clothing.

“Okay, I need a disguise.” I unbuckled my seat belt and peeked in the backseat.

A navy blue ball cap peeked out from under the passenger seat. I grabbed it. H
OLMES
C
OUNTY
S
HERI
FF
D
EPARTMENT
was emblazoned across the front. Mitchell must have left it in my car.

“This could work.”

Oliver whimpered again.

Staring in the mirror attached to my window visor, I tucked my blond curls the best I could up under the
hat. Some of my hair sneaked out, but for the most part my hair was covered. “Ollie, this is between you and me, okay?”

He hid his face in his paws.

I knew why he was so anxious. If it got back to Mitchell that I was impersonating an officer, I was dead meat.

I made sure the hat was firmly in place and got out of the car. Oliver reluctantly followed, jumping to the gravel parking lot.

I pushed open the door to Zeff Oak Emporium. As the door swung inward, the scent of vinegar and lemon oil washed over me. It was a familiar scent that I always associated with an Amish home because the Amish used the mixture as an all-purpose cleaner, especially on furniture, which was why the fragrance was so pungent in the emporium. At my feet, Oliver sniffed the ground. Maybe he caught another scent of something other than lemon and vinegar with that pushed-in nose of his. I certainly couldn’t.

Mallory Zeff, with her dark braid coiled on the top of her head, polished a dining room table in the middle of the room. As she worked, the bangles around her wrist clattered together. A spray bottle of vinegar water sat next to her on the impossibly long table that looked as if it could seat fifteen or more. A table of that size was not unusual to find in an Amish home. A large Amish family could easily fill fifteen spots at one Sunday dinner.

She picked up her spray bottle and rag and walked around the table. “I’ll be with you in a minute.”

I nodded and flipped the sales tag over that was attached to a dresser while I waited. I whistled under my breath. Amish-made furniture wasn’t cheap anywhere, but this store’s prices were double what I’d seen at other places throughout the county. The craftsmanship was slightly different too. It wasn’t as simple. The wooden furniture in this store held intricate engraving and embellishments on almost every piece. Clearly this was an attempt to appeal to the English shopper of means.

“Sorry about that.” She forced a smile after stowing her cleaning supplies. She wiped her hands off on her khaki pants. “I thought I would get some dusting in while the store was empty. You wouldn’t believe the amount of dust we collect in here, and that’s just in the front sales room. Out back where the Amish craftsmen work, the sawdust is so much worse . . .” She trailed off when she saw my hat. “You’re from the police?” Her voice is sharp. “Is this about Griff?”

“I would like to talk to you about Griffin Bright,” I said as officially as possible.

Her frown deepened. “And is he a police dog?”

“Umm,” I said. “He’s in training.”

Oliver made a snuffling sound that, if it had been translated from dog to English, would have been “Oh, brother.”

She folded her arms. “I don’t know what more I can tell you. I’ve already spoken to the sheriff and I’ve even been fingerprinted.”

That was interesting.

“Do you know how humiliating that is?” she asked. Tears gathered in her eyes.

Actually I did, but I didn’t tell her that.

“You and Griffin were engaged?”

She glared at me, but then her shoulders drooped. “I might as well dust while I answer your questions.” She collected her spray bottle and rag and walked to the back corner of the store where the bedroom furniture was.

In the corner of the display area, an ornately carved nightstand caught my eye. It consisted of three drawers and each drawer had a different quilt pattern carved into the front of it. I spotted a Rolling Block, a Goosefoot, and a Wedding Ring. I gravitated toward it and ran my hand over the smooth top. “This is a beautiful piece.”

Mallory smiled. “You have a good eye. That must make you a good cop.”

“Observation is important in police work,” I said, praying Mitchell never found out about this conversation.

She sprayed the top of the nightstand and began to polish it. “That one has always been my favorite. I think that’s why I have it hidden back in the corner here because I don’t want anyone to buy it.”

I stepped out of the way of the spray bottle. “The craftsmanship is amazing.”

“The man who made it said he was inspired by his wife’s quilts.”

“I can see that. It’s beautiful. I would love to see the quilts that inspired it. They must be breathtaking. I own a—” I stopped myself just in time. I almost told her about Running Stitch.

She looked up at me as she moved to the next nightstand with her spray bottle. “You own a what?”

“Oh, I was just going to say that I own a few Amish quilts, is all.”

“Most people in this county do.” She opened the drawer of the second nightstand and wiped the inside. Her bracelets made a terrible racket as they knocked against the sides of the drawer.

“Tell me about Griffin,” I said.

Mallory sniffed and tears gathered into her eyes as she straightened up. “I hate that man.”

My eyes went wide. “Why’s that?”

She removed a tissue from her pocket and dabbed at her eyes. “Because he died and left me. Now, I don’t know what to do . . .” Her breath caught.

“Weren’t you broken up?”

“Yes,” she snapped. “But that doesn’t mean we wouldn’t reconcile. That didn’t mean that he wouldn’t finally come around and we would get married.”

“I am sorry for your loss,” I said sincerely.

“I still don’t think I’ve accepted he’s gone. I keep feeling irritated he hasn’t called or texted me today, and then I remember he’s gone. Isn’t that awful I feel angry at him like that?”

“I’d think it was perfectly normal when you lost someone,” I said.

She put the tissue back in her pocket. “I shouldn’t have come to work today. My brother, who is also my boss, tried to send me home earlier, but what good would that do? Griff isn’t there and being at home will only remind me of his absence.”

“How long were you engaged?”

She flashed me her left hand. “I don’t have a ring.
He never asked me to marry him even though he promised that he would. Someday. We were together for ten years, and I never got a proposal. Now that he’s dead, I have nothing to show for that relationship, just a wasted decade of my life.” She sat on the double bed next to the quilt-carved nightstand as if her legs no longer had the strength to hold her up.

“You have your memories,” I said. It didn’t sound like much of a consolation even to my own ears.

“Whatever good those will do me. I wish I had never given him that ultimatum. Then, at least, he wouldn’t be angry with me when he died. That’s something I will have to live with,” she said bitterly.

“What ultimatum was that?”

She sighed. “It was my fortieth birthday, and I was staring middle age right in the face. I wanted to be married and have children. I wanted a real life that mattered. I didn’t want to keep limping along, waiting for Griff to make up his mind about our future. What right does he have to make all the decisions?” She sighed. “So at my birthday dinner, I gave him an ultimatum. I said he had to either marry me in the next year or we were over. Well, since we broke up, I suppose you can guess what option he chose.”

“Did he ever say why he didn’t want to get married?”

She frowned.

Maybe I pushed too hard. “I’m only asking because I was in a similar situation. I was with the same man for seven years. He ultimately didn’t want to get married because he was afraid of commitment.”

“Men!” She removed the tissue from her pocket a
second time and pressed it to her face. “You would have thought seven years with one person would qualify as commitment. Or in my case, ten years.”

“You’d think,” I agreed.

She nodded. “Then you’ve been through it too. Griff said that he didn’t have any use for marriage the day we broke up. Honestly, I knew that when we started dating over a decade ago. At the time, I never thought it would bother me. Years later, it did more than I ever expected it to.”

“On the day Griffin died, you told the police that you hadn’t seen Griffin for a couple of days.”

“What’s your point?” she asked.

“We have an eyewitness that saw you in his truck the day before he died outside the Braddocks’ home.”

“That’s the rich lady’s house where he died, right?”

Internally wincing, I nodded.

She glared at me. “So what if I was there? I was trying to talk some sense into him. He was overloaded with work. The only time I could talk to him was when he drove from job to job. A lot of good that did.”

“Why didn’t you tell the police that when you arrived at the crime scene?”

“I don’t know. I just found out that he was murdered. Haven’t you ever fibbed to the cops?”

I didn’t answer that.

“I guess being a cop, you wouldn’t have done that,” she said as if she found it disappointing.

If she only knew . . .

She rubbed the wad of tissues across her nose. “I’m sorry. It’s just so hard to believe he’s dead. I still love
him, you know. I left him because we didn’t want the same things, but I did love him. I had since the day that I met him.”

“How did the two of you meet?” I asked.

Her face softened as she recalled the memory. “At the county fair. I was there with my girlfriends, determined to win a teddy bear for myself from one of those silly games where you throw a softball at a stack of milk bottles. I had three balls and missed my first two throws. Griff came up behind me and took the third ball from my hand just when I was about to throw it. He tossed it at the milk bottles and won me the bear.”

I hid a frown. If a man I didn’t know came up to me like that and won me a teddy bear, I would tell him to keep the bear.

“It was love at first sight for me.” Her face crumbled, and she set her rag and spray bottle next to her on the edge of the bed. “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have gone home when my brother told me to. My sister keeps texting me, trying to convince me to take the rest of the week off.”

“Maybe you should go see your sister. Being around family might help,” I said.

She shook her head. “She lives in Michigan.”

“Maybe you should take a few days off and go and visit her,” I suggested even though I knew Mitchell would be annoyed with my suggesting that a murder suspect leave the county.

“She wants me to. She wanted me to drive to Michigan today, but I can’t go yet. I have to know what will happen to Griff. If there is a funeral or any kind of
service, I want to be there.” Her mouth turned down. “I hope I will be told.”

“Have you spoken to his family about the funeral arrangements?” I asked.

She laughed. “He only had a brother, Blane, and no, I haven’t. Blane and I don’t get along.”

“Maybe you should talk to Linda from Double Dime then,” I suggested.

Her blue eyes narrowed as if seeing me for the first time. “How do you know Griff’s connection with Linda?”

I recovered quickly. “The police know about Linda being Griffin and Blane’s foster mother.”

“Oh, right.” She eyed me suspiciously. “But why are you suggesting that I go see my sister in Michigan? The sheriff told me that I couldn’t leave town.”

Her rag slid off the edge of the bed and floated to the carpet. Automatically, I bent over and picked up the rag. As I did so, my hat fell to the floor and my curls tumbled into my face. I snatched up the rag and hat, but it was too late.

“Hey!” Mallory yelled, jumping up from the bed. “I’ve seen you before. You’re not a cop.”

“I never said that I was.” That was
technically
true.

“I saw you at the house where Griff was killed!”

“I’m Angie Braddock and own Running Stitch in Rolling Bro—”

“Braddock!” she gasped. “Didn’t Griff die in your home?”

I shook my head. “It isn’t my home. It’s my mother’s,” I said, as if that would make a difference to her. I knew it wouldn’t.

“So you are here about Griff’s death? You’re pumping me for information, and you’re not even a cop.” She glared at me. “I think it’s time for you to leave.”

“Please, let me explain.” I held up my hands as if in surrender.

“Why should I?”

I bit the inside of my lip. “I’m a friend of Linda’s. She asked me to look into her son’s death.”

“Her son?” Mallory scoffed. “She wasn’t Griff’s mother.”

“She was his foster mother,” I said, going on the defensive myself.

“That’s not the same thing.” Her face was almost purple.

I took a big step back from her. “It is to Linda. She’s heartbroken over his death.”

“She can’t be as heartbroken as I am,” she snapped. “She has no right to be.”

Before I could ask her what she meant by that last comment, the store’s front door opened, and a tall, lanky man strode in wearing a polo shirt with the store’s logo embroidered over the pocket. He marched toward us. I was trapped between the two of them, clutching Mitchell’s hat in my hands.