Murder, Handcrafted (Amish Quilt Shop Mystery) (3 page)

“W
hat?” I yelped.

Jonah sighed. “It was a long time ago.”

“But you clearly haven’t forgotten.” I leaned on my mother’s granite kitchen counter. Who knew what she would replace it with? My money was on marble.

He met my eyes. “How could I forget? Kamon was my closest friend,” he said in the same hushed tone. “After you stopped visiting your aunt.”

I could have been wrong, but I thought I heard a twinge of hurt in his voice.

When I was a child, after moving to Dallas with my parents, I would come spend at least part of my summer with my aunt Eleanor in Ohio. During those summers, I spent much of the time tromping around the countryside with Jonah. Jonah’s mother, Anna, who now was a member of my quilting circle at Running Stitch, had been my aunt’s closest friend. When I visited I always saw Jonah. Our families were so intertwined. When I would arrive in Holmes County, he and I would fall back into our usual sibling banter.
Since I was an only child, Jonah was the closest thing I had to a brother. We must have looked like an unusual pair: a tall skinny girl with wild blond curls, in shorts and an oversize T-shirt, and a sandy blond boy with a bowl haircut in Amish clothes. Some of my best childhood memories were from those summer days with Jonah and my aunt.

When I reached high school that all changed. I became caught up with friends and life in Dallas. I went to college and met my eventual fiancé, Ryan Dickinson, who swept me into a world of Dallas society, urban life, and a cutthroat career in advertising. I didn’t have time for my friends back in Holmes County or my aunt.

Part of me wanted to apologize to Jonah for, in effect, deserting him all those years ago, but I stopped myself. We had both chosen our own paths. Jonah was married now with a working farm and three children, two of whom were the most mischievous twins on planet Earth. I had had a fast-paced career in Dallas until a succession of events occurred: Ryan dumped me right before our big Texas wedding, my aunt Eleanor died of cancer, and I inherited Running Stitch, which brought me back to Ohio. Somehow, we’d ended up back in the same place. We were different people now because of the time we had spent apart, but we had been able to take up a close friendship again much to the disdain of his wife, Miriam. Some would call it fate, but my Amish friends would call it God’s providence. I didn’t have a word for it myself other than knowing I was happier in Holmes County than I had ever been in Dallas.

Oliver trundled into the kitchen as if he knew I
needed backup for this conversation. No one understood me like my Frenchie, not even my boyfriend, Sheriff James Mitchell.

“What happened? How did your cousin die?”

Jonah groaned and some of the twinkle was back in his eye. “I’m sorry I brought it up. You aren’t going to leave me alone until I tell you the whole story, are you?”

“Nope.” I grinned.

He glanced at Eban. “I can tell you while I search for some more boards. I don’t want your mother to accuse me of slacking off. She’s already mentioned the lamp incident once. I’d rather not hear about it again.” He walked across the kitchen and opened the working side of the French doors, stepping out onto the deck.

I turned back to the house and surveyed the broken door.

The small construction trailer was back near the woods. It was close enough to the house so that my dad had easy access to it, but far enough away not to bother my mother too much.

I followed Jonah to the trailer, admiring my mother’s flowers as I went. I was happy to see so many of the bulbs came up. Zander, Mitchell’s nine-year-old son, and I had planted them in the fall. We planted another set around the house he shared with his dad and my little rented house in Millersburg. By the end of it, I was pretty tired of digging in the dirt. Now that I saw the payoff, I forgot how tedious the task had been.

“I should check out the blueprint before I meet with your mom,” Jonah said, and started to untie his bootlaces.

“Why are you taking your shoes off?”

“You don’t go into a work trailer with muddy boots on,” Jonah said. “It’s just not done.”

He left his boots at the foot of the stairs and went inside. I removed my beloved cowboy boots and did the same. The steps that led into the trailer were metal and hinged and creaked when I stepped on them.

The inside of the trailer was neat. The blueprints for the kitchen sat in the middle of a waist-high island in the middle of the room.

I hadn’t seen many blueprints since I was in college. As part of my graphic design degree, I’d taken mechanical drawing as an elective. Even with my rudimentary understanding of how to read a blueprint, I could see the kitchen was in for a major transformation.

Jonah rubbed his beard as he looked over the plans. “It is
gut
for me to see these before I meet with your mother. Now, I have an idea of what her plans are. It’s a much bigger job than I expected.” He rolled up the blueprint and tucked it under his arm. “I’ll take this inside to meet with her.”

Outside of the trailer, Jonah laced up his boots, and I slipped on mine again. I was about to ask him again about Kamon, when he handed me the rolled-up blueprint.

Jonah walked over to a pile of lumber, threw back the edge of the tarp, and pointed to a four-by-four piece of plank wood. “That will do nicely. It’s not too wet from the rain. There’s a tarp under the wood as well, which is a
gut
thing. It’ll save me time from going to the lumberyard. All I need to do is cut them down to
the right size. It will really only need to be there for about a day. I can install the new door tomorrow.”

“Are you going to tell me more about Kamon? You can’t just say Griffin Bright murdered him and leave it at that.”

He started to move the smaller pieces of wood off the plank. “Kamon was the son of my father’s brother. His parents died when he was boy and he lived with his mother’s family most of his life. When he was seventeen, he came to live with us. I was fifteen at the time, just started my
rumspringa
, and Kamon”—he paused as if searching for the right word—“he already knew the ways of the
Englisch
world. I admired him. He was trouble and caused trouble. He planned to leave the Amish. At the time, I thought he was what I wanted to be.” He wouldn’t meet my eyes.

“You wanted to leave the Amish?” I stared at Jonah. Never for a moment had I thought he’d considered leaving the Amish way of life. It was impossible for me to imagine him as anything other than Amish. It was like trying to make Rachel Miller or Jonah’s own mother, Anna, non-Amish. It didn’t make sense.

“I had my reasons.” Jonah started moving pieces of wood again. “My parents took Kamon in because they believed they could keep him on the right path and convince him to stay in our way of life. We’ll never know if they might have succeeded. He died a little over a year after moving in with us.”

This was all news to me. I had thought that my aunt had kept me in the loop about the happenings with my old friends in Holmes County. Perhaps she didn’t
tell me about the Grabers’ struggles with Kamon and his death because she didn’t want to worry me or, more likely, Anna told her not to. The Amish were private people to the core. They wouldn’t air their troubles to someone so removed from the community as I had been. I knew I had been only a kid myself at the time and couldn’t have done anything to help the Grabers, but guilt washed over me because I had not been there for my friends, not just Jonah but his entire family.

Jonah grabbed the edge of the piece of wood. “Kamon’s death put me on the straight and narrow better than anything else could. I gave up my daydreams, was baptized into the Amish church, and started courting Miriam. I chose the life
Gott
wanted for me from the beginning. The life that Kamon told me about was just my imaginings. It was not
Gotte
’s will for my life.”

“Oh, Jo-Jo,” I said, holding the metal handrail that led into the trailer. “I’m so sorry. I never knew about any of this.”

He pulled the piece from the woodpile, and I stepped back out of the way. He laid it in the middle of my mother’s manicured yard. “You didn’t know because you weren’t here.” His voice was tight.

I blinked at him. Was I talking to my jovial best childhood friend? I couldn’t remember a time that Jonah had ever used such a tone with me, even when he was trying to talk me out of investigating a murder, a hobby that I had somehow acquired since moving back to Holmes County.

“Hello?” a deep male voice called from the kitchen. “Jonah Graber, can I speak to you?”

I turned around to see an English man with a broad chest and shoulders and a thick mane of black hair that curled over his ears standing on the deck behind the house. Griffin Bright, I presumed. He was handsome in a gladiator sort of way. Personally not my type, but I bet he had no shortage of admirers.

“Speak of the devil,” Jonah muttered and brushed his hands together to remove the sawdust. “Angie, Griffin and I have to discuss your mother’s project. Why don’t you go back to Running Stitch? Isn’t that what you told your mother you planned to do?”

He walked toward Griffin and stepped through the broken French doors. It wasn’t until he disappeared into the kitchen that I realized he had never told me how Kamon actually died.

I
stood in my parents’ backyard for half a minute, considering all that I had learned about my lifelong friend in the last few minutes.

I wasn’t that easily dismissed. Jonah knew me better than most, and he knew this aspect of my personality too. Besides I had his blueprints.

When I stepped into the half-demolished kitchen, I found Griffin and Jonah glaring at each other. Griffin had his arms across his broad chest genie-style, and Jonah had his fists clenched at his sides. Eban had his red toolbox on the kitchen counter and sorted through the tools, but the way he tarried over the task made me think he was really listening to Griffin and Jonah’s conversation. Out of the corner of my eye, I spotted Oliver peeking through the threshold that led to my parents’ formal dining room.

“Hi!” I said in my best pageant-reject voice, waving the blueprints. “Jonah, you forgot these.”

He took them from my hand, and I walked toward
Griffin with my hand outstretched. “I’m Daphne’s daughter, Angie.”

“It’s nice to meet you.” Griffin took my hand. His handshake was firm and warm and not a second too long or too short. I’d describe it as professional, clinical even. “Call me Griff. Everyone else does.”

“Okay, Griff.” I felt Jonah watching me, and I stepped back when Griffin released my hand. “As you can see, my mother brought on Jonah for this job. My dad hurt his back.”

Griffin nodded. “I heard. Jonah, I must say I’m surprised to see you here. I didn’t know that you were in the contracting business,” Griffin said. “I had heard that you were working with goats.”

Jonah frowned. “I’m surprised you would know what I was up to, Griffin. I haven’t see you in—”

“Gosh, it must be twenty years but, as you know, people in this county talk,” he said as if it held a special meaning he knew Jonah would understand.

By Jonah’s scowl, I supposed that he did. My head whipped back and forth as I watched the two men. It was like a tennis match. Jonah had said that Griffin murdered his cousin, but that was twenty years ago, and the Amish tendency was to forgive. If Jonah’s expression was an indication, he had yet to do that where Griffin was concerned, and I found that the most surprising part of the conversation.

“How is the goat project coming?” Griffin asked.

“It is
gut
,” Jonah said. My friend was always looking for the next big business venture. His most recent
attempt had been goat lawn service. With his Nubian goat Petunia as his lead goat, he took a small herd to fields or land that needed to be cleared. The goats ate the vegetation down in a shockingly short period of time and left room for the property owner to turn the land into a grazing pasture or a crop field. Of all of Jonah’s business ventures—and there had been many—this was the one that actually seemed to be working.

“I’m still doing that.” Jonah’s voice still held an unfamiliar tightness to it. “But Mrs. Braddock needed me to come in and take over this project.”

Griffin glanced at the broken French door. “Did you do that?”

“Nee
.
”

Griffin frowned as if he didn’t believe Jonah. “I have another larger job tomorrow, so I’ll be here early around five to sketch out a rough plan for the kitchen. I have already informed Daphne, and she agreed.” He pointed to the blueprints in Jonah’s hand. “If you could leave those in the trailer, I’d appreciate it.”

Jonah nodded. The two men were silent.

I looked from one frowning man to the other and back again. As much as I wanted to stay and see how this played out, I knew I needed to return to the quilt shop and relieve my assistant, Mattie. It was already twelve thirty, and I promised her I would be back by one.

“I’d better get going,” I said to no one in particular.

Neither man even acknowledged that I’d said anything.

I tried again. “It was nice to meet you, Griffin.”

Slowly Griffin turned his head in my direction and nodded.

“I’ll see you later, Jonah.”

“Good-bye, Angie,” he said to me in such a formal way that it felt like a slight.

“Come on, Oliver,” I said to the Frenchie and slapped my thigh.

Reluctantly, he wriggled out from under the table and toddled over to my side. We stopped in the living room to say good-bye to my parents. My mother was in the middle of giving my father a lecture about his diet. He gave me a Help Me look. I promised to check on him the next day.

A red pickup truck I didn’t recognize was parked in front of my parents’ house. I assumed that it was Griffin’s. A sullen-looking woman sat in the passenger seat fiddling with her phone. I smiled at her, but she never looked up from her phone to see me. I shrugged, and continued to my car.

When I reached Running Stitch, Mattie was waiting for me outside the shop. She was sweeping, but I could tell she was mostly fretting over my being late . . . again. I had a reputation in that regard.

She leaned her broom against the olive green brick building that was my beloved quilt shop. “There you are. I have to go straight to the factory.”

“I know, and I’m sorry I’m late. The thing at my mother’s turned out to be more complicated than I expected it to be.”

“How is your father?”

I frowned. “He’s using a walker.”

“Oh, Angie, I’m so sorry.” She clasped her hands in front of her apron. “Is there anything that I can do?”

I shook my head. “But thank you.”

“Then, I really must go.”

I nodded. “Is everything at the pie factory all right?” I couldn’t keep the worry from my voice.

The factory had been open for less than a year and had gotten off to a rocky start with a murder in the factory’s parking lot. It wasn’t how Aaron or Rachel had wanted to start their new business. Since then, things had been quiet on Sugartree Street, the main road in Rolling Brook and the location where all the local shopkeepers kept their businesses.

“Everything is fine. One of Aaron’s workers went to visit family in Indiana. She should be back today, and Aaron will have a full staff again. Then, I’ll be here full time again.” She smiled at the idea. Before she started working for me Mattie had worked long days at her family’s bakery across the street from Running Stitch. She hadn’t cared for the job, but she did it because it was expected. When I offered her a job, she jumped at the chance.

Her bonnet sat on the bench. It seemed to me that she had planned to run for the factory as soon as I arrived. She picked it up and put it on her head, tying the long wide black ribbon into a perfect bow. “Anna’s inside. She just arrived, and if you hadn’t been back in a few minutes, I was just going to leave the store with her.”

I smiled. “You could have. Anna knows how to manage Running Stitch better than either one of us do.”

She laughed and waved good-bye before heading up the street.

I stepped inside and inhaled the sweet and familiar scent of freshly pressed cotton and linen. The left side of the room was lined with all sorts of fabric, dark and plain options for my Amish customers as well as prints and bright colors for my English ones.

A large cutting table sat in the middle of the room, and several pieces of ribbon sat on top of it in neat piles. I could always count on Mattie to leave everything in perfect order. I typically was the one to walk away in the middle of a project or the one to forget to put supplies away for the night.

Anna Graber sat in my aunt’s old rocking chair in the front window and looked like one of the Amish-themed paintings sold in gift shops across the county. Her wire-rimmed glasses perched on the end of her nose and her steel gray hair was pulled back into an Amish bun and covered with a prayer cap as she rocked and pieced a quilt topper that looked like it would be a nine block. Dodger sat at her feet, watching her work. His close proximity to Anna made me think she had some cat treats in her quilting basket. I didn’t bother asking. Everyone in my quilting circle had been known to slip my pets extra snacks, despite my protests against it.

“Angie, there you are.” Anna pulled her last stitch through the woolen fabric. “Is everything all right at your parents’ house?”

“All right as it can be.” I told her about the kitchen, my father’s injury, and Jonah running to the rescue.

“I’m glad that Jonah can be of some help to your
parents, and maybe this will help him focus his attention on construction and give up the ridiculous goat lawn services idea.” She clicked her tongue in a sound of disapproval.

“You’re not a fan of the goats?” I couldn’t keep the amusement from my voice.

She sniffed. “They are better than the geese.” She gave a mock shiver. “Or the turkeys, but they’re still a handful, and the noise they make. Sometimes I think the cavalry is coming by the sound of them stomping back and forth on the barn floor. I can hear them all the way in my house.”

I chuckled. I was about to ask Anna about her nephew Kamon and electrician Griffin Bright when the shop’s door opened and we were descended upon by an entire tour group of shoppers.

The afternoon at the quilt shop was busy. Since it was May, it was just the beginning of the main tourist season in Holmes County. Bus tours and other tourists, who had stayed away through the harsh and unpredictable winter, came back in force just as soon as the tulips bloomed.

When I had a moment of quiet, I had planned to visit Rachel Miller at her bakery, Miller’s Amish Bakery, which was directly across the street from my shop. I wanted to ask Rachel about Kamon and Griffin since Jonah had neglected to tell me how his cousin died. After my first inclination to ask Anna about it, I dismissed it. I was afraid it might bring up some painful memories for her just as it had for Jonah. I thought it would be better to gather more information before I broached the topic with Anna.

Rachel was the best person to ask. She would keep my confidence and warn me if there was any reason to drop the subject. I was self-aware enough to know I wouldn’t do that on my own. Even though Rachel was almost a decade younger than Jonah and me, I hoped she knew something.

Unfortunately, Rachel had already left the bakery for the day before I had a chance to catch my breath with the many customers who walked through Running Stitch’s door. Not that I was complaining. These boom times during the tourist season were what kept all the businesses on Sugartree Street afloat through the winter. No shopkeeper would turn a potential sale away, not even me.

That night, Mitchell had to work late at the sheriff’s headquarters, so Oliver, Dodger, and I split a hamburger that I picked up from the Double Dime Diner in Millersburg on the way home from the quilt shop. We ate our dinner in front of the TV and watched
Clueless
for the eight hundredth time. Since it was a modern—okay, modern a few decades ago—adaptation of Jane Austen’s
Emma
, I thought it had excellent cultural value for the entire family.

The next morning, I awoke to the incessant ringing of my cell phone. I sat bolt upright and snatched it up, thinking that it had something to do with Mitchell. He had worked the night before, and there was a constant fear that came from being in love with a cop that kept me up until the wee hours many nights. He could be hurt in anything from a confrontation with an angry hunter to a routine traffic stop.

Before I answered, I took a quick glimpse at the cell’s screen and flopped back onto my pillow, half out of breath. The number on my cell phone was my parents’ house. I groaned. Who knew what kind of decorating emergency my mother had run into now? Was it the countertop? Paint color? Then, I remembered my father’s back injury.

“Is Dad all right?” I asked without greeting.

“Angie, I need you to come. Now.” The tense voice on the other end of the line wasn’t my mother’s but Jonah’s.

I blinked at my clock on the nightstand. It was six in the morning. “Jonah, what’s wrong? Why are you calling me from my parents’ phone?”

Dodger, my cat, lay at the bottom of the bed and lifted his head for half a second before he curled into a ball and covered his face with his tail.

“I need you. I need you here at your parents’ home.”

I sat bolt upright in bed again just as I had when I thought something terrible had befallen Mitchell. “Jonah, what’s wrong? Are my parents okay? What’s happened?”

“Your parents are fine. It’s Griffin Bright.” He took in an unsteady breath. “Angie, he’s dead.”