Upon A Winter's Night (29 page)

Bess shook her head, straightened up and went into a desk drawer. She produced a purse and took out more face powder, looking now in the tiny mirror attached to the skinny silver powder case.

“I still think you should stay here tonight,” Bess said. “We can talk when I get back, and I won’t stay long. We need to make some decisions about how to handle this, who to tell.”

“I told you I’m willing to keep your secret. It’s just that I had to know or I’d go crazy, and then Sandra Myerson jumped in with both feet and... Bess, now
Mamm
is really ill, and I can’t hurt her or
Daad
more. He’s made me a Christmas quilt that says Forgive Father
 
all over it.”

Bess teared up again. “And it will hurt her more if we declare our relationship.”

“Mom!” Connor called outside the door. “Heather’s going ahead with the kids, and I’ll wait for you. Let’s go. You’re supposed to be the greeter.”

“More later,” Bess said to Lydia with a forced smile. “For the two of us, much more later, my sweet, smart girl. Stay here a bit, then, and when you go out, just be sure the door is locked. And don’t be too hard on your father. If you love Josh Yoder—and I think you do—you understand how loneliness and passion can make you be careless. But one more thing.”

With her purse on her arm, she came over to Lydia and took her face in her hands. “Don’t you ever think Sol or I regretted you for yourself. I mean, as much as we were upset then that people would know we’d made love, and we were upset with ourselves that my pregnancy caused such problems, we have always been proud of our girl. We just didn’t get to share you together.”

Bess kissed her cheek again and wiped a tear away with her thumb. “Take care, my Lydia and Sol’s Liddy. I’ll see you as soon as I can, and we’ll talk more.”

She went out, leaving the door ajar. Lydia could hear Connor starting in on her, “That’s Lydia’s buggy, isn’t it? Here’s your coat. You go with Heather and the kids, and I’ll be sure she gets home, then be right over.”

“Connor, I don’t know.”

“Well, there’s a lot I don’t know, but I’ll just follow her home in the buggy, all right?”

Lydia wanted to run out and protest, but since he was clearing it with Bess and he knew the two of them were friends, he wouldn’t dare do anything out of line. Would he? She grabbed the old Bessie note and her broken snow globe from the desk, stuffed them in her bag and went directly outside while Bess, Heather and the boys were just heading down the driveway in one of their three cars.

Lydia was relieved she didn’t have to say a word to Connor. Thank heavens, he just stormed to his car and got in. Their big garage threw huge blocks of light out so she could see to unwind her reins and get up into the buggy. But she hadn’t even turned Flower around to head down the drive when Connor came running at her and seized Flower’s bridle.

“By the way, I heard what you told her before she closed her office door,” he shouted up at her. “And you know what? I wondered about that all along, what with the weird stuff Aunt Vicky said. I saw my mother once, years ago, just stop the car and watch you play Andy-over in your front yard with your little brother. Sometimes I thought she was stalking you, but never knew why. But it’s gonna have to stay a secret because she’s going places and not with an Amish daughter in her campaign ads!”

“Let my horse go, Connor! If you want to talk about this later, we’ll wait until she can meet with us.”

“Meet—that’s good. That’s what she does, you know. Meetings, events, campaigns. She may have stopped to give a speech to the tree shoppers and workers below. She’s hardly ever here except at election time in her district or holiday time like this. Especially since my dad died, where has she been?”

“But your boys are feeling the same thing about you, so you can change that for them—change yourself.”

“Stay away from us and keep quiet! I don’t get enough of her, and now there’s you! Oh, don’t worry that I’ll give the big secret away, and I’ll see to it you don’t, either. I’ll follow you home, so get going.”

But she was suddenly terrified to get going. Connor in that big black car was going to follow her home? An image leaped into her brain: the newspaper picture of David and Lena Brand’s broken buggy and dead horse on the road. No, she had to get away from Connor. She pictured him with those two pitchforks he used to knock snow off the trees, pictured the pitchfork drawn in the snow and painted on Josh’s barn.

But maybe she could get down the driveway to the Christmas tree workers and just stay there until he had to go. After he left for town, she would not turn in her driveway but head straight for Josh. If Bess had known he’d overheard them, would she have trusted Connor to see her safely home?

“Giddyap!” she shouted to Flower and snapped the reins. But they came loose in her hands—cut off by the traces. She bounced back in her seat, hit her head on it then slid sideways onto the floor. Now she’d have to run from Connor, run through the trees to her house. He was the one! He’d made sure she couldn’t flee!

But she jumped down from the buggy just in time to see someone in black Amish garb, carrying a pitchfork, run into the garage and swing the handle hard at Connor. She felt dizzy and her right ankle hurt, but had someone come to her rescue? Connor cried out and sprawled flat on his face on the concrete next to his car, which was still running, puffing out smelly smoke into the cold night air. Then his attacker, Amish hat pulled low, pitchfork in his hand, turned and rushed toward her.

29

S
taring toward the lighted garage, Lydia squinted to see who her rescuer was. Josh? But to have struck Connor so hard, even to help her... Dizzy, she was a little dizzy. Was it— No, not
Daad.

Oh, Gid! Gid rushed up to her. She started to say she’d been wrong about him, but he hauled her up hard by her arm and dragged her nearly off her feet into the garage. Pain shot through her ankle. She must have twisted it when she’d jumped from the buggy.

“You had it all,” he ranted, “and threw it away. You had your chances with me, even after you turned into an icicle.”

Blood! She saw blood under Connor’s head on the concrete floor. But didn’t Gid want to impress Connor, work with Connor?

“Why did you have to hurt Connor?” she cried.

“I regret that, but he’s been asking around about who put that newspaper man, Roy Manning, on to his doctoring the trees. If he came under fire for fraud, I thought he might ask me to help manage this place. It’s amazing what one can learn by lurking around this area. But then I was afraid he’d trace an unsigned note I sent to Manning’s office in Cleveland.”

“You told Manning! Your entire life is a lie.”

He gave her a hard shake. “So,” he explained, “here’s the story people will figure out—with Roy Manning’s articles—about all this. Connor was furious when he found out you sent that note to Manning. Besides, Connor wants your land, so you two got into an argument after his family left. He threatened you, and you hit him with this pitchfork. Somehow he knocked you down with his car engine running and, well, both of you died, such a tragedy. Lydia, except for losing you, this has worked out so well it has to be the true plan for my life—not a lie.”

Gid was crazy! If he’d known what she and Connor were really arguing about, he’d have been able to blackmail or ruin Bess and
Daad.
While she tried to yank free from him, he went on and on. About following her to Amity, about taking the camel saddle, about honey in her bed and ice in her drawer and in her heart. But—was he going to hit her with the pitchfork, too? He’d said she would die with Connor.

“Years of planning, months of courting,” he muttered. “So perfect for both of us to have the store, and then that female friend of Yoder shoves her nose in, tries to discover your real father and mother. That’s all I need, that the store doesn’t come with you. But you didn’t even take the hint. You didn’t stop pushing even when she died, did you? Started playing detective on your own, just like her.”

“You’re embezzling from the store—big accounts. And you killed Sandra!” she cried as he pulled her farther into the garage.

“And Sol was starting to catch on about the money, wasn’t he? I’d guess you’re the one who left the flashlight in my office when I went to remark some price tags. As for Sandra...I have a lot of work to do before we talk about that. But I want to thank you for finally giving me the perfect way to stop you. I’ve been losing sleep for weeks, keeping an eye on you and Yoder late at night, despite the demands at the store, waiting to find a good way to get rid of you or both of you—and your father. I regret Connor has to go, too, but it just happened. It’s necessary.”

She glanced back at Connor, sprawled, unmoving. Her half brother. Was he dead? If she screamed, even here in the depths of this huge garage, would the sound carry clear down to Christmas tree workers or customers below?

As if Gid had read her mind, he hit a button that noisily closed the garage doors, all three of them inside while Connor’s car, still running, spewed out fumes. To her amazement, Gid dragged her to the back of the car. Did he mean to put her in the trunk? Did he plan to actually drive Connor’s car somewhere, stage an accident like the one that had happened to Ray-Lynn when she was pushed off a cliff?

But he shoved her to her knees behind the car’s fender, forced her head low so she looked and breathed directly into the exhaust pipe. Then from a backpack she hadn’t seen he wore, he produced the oxygen mask he sometimes used in the store’s back workroom when the smells of shellac and wood stain were strong. He’d always kept it in his buggy in case cars that passed him smelled bad. One-handed, not letting go of the arm he’d twisted up her back, he lifted the straps of the mask behind his head and turned on the flow of air so the mask began to hiss. A cord connected the mask to a small canister in his pack.

And then, though she knew almost nothing about cars, she remembered reading how a local
Englische
family—it had been parents and a young brother and sister—had died from carbon monoxide poisoning because their bedrooms were over the garage and their car was left on. And how a space heater of some sort had taken the lives of an elderly couple because it wasn’t vented right.

“No, Gid!” she cried, again trying to yank her arm from his bruising grasp. With her free hand, she clawed backward at him, but his grip didn’t loosen one bit. She screamed, “Let me go!”

“Your old theme song, right? Let me go, I want Josh, not you. You think he can keep the store going when your father’s gone? I’m an ambitious man, who can do a lot of good with my money. Soon your father won’t be the richest Amish person in these parts.”

She gasped and started choking, but more of the pieces fell together. Gid must have switched
Daad
’s pills at work...because he knew
Daad
suspected him of embezzling, or maybe Gid wanted control of the store sooner. Gid followed her here tonight, saw her buggy and his chance to blame Connor for her death...or would it be the other way around?

“You— Did you hurt Victoria Keller?”

“That old woman? No. Why would I? I didn’t even know about her.”

At least he hadn’t killed her, too, but he might have wanted to if he’d known how the old woman’s—her aunt’s—note had set all this in motion. But now...so dizzy from hitting her head, she felt out of it, like Victoria. And this poison smoke. That poor widow she had visited to find out about Victoria, the woman’s house was filled with the bitter smell of smoke... And
Daad
always built a fire in the fireplace at Christmas, like the old days,
Mamm
always said. But Lydia loved Bess, too, wanted time with Bess...

“Sorry, Lydia,” Gid said, the oxygen mask distorting his voice and making him look like the monster he was. “
Ya,
I confronted Sandra, but it was her fault. I was watching Yoder’s barn. In she went, so I thought I’d settle things with her, tell her to lay off, shut up about you maybe being the child of some dead tree trimmer, like she claimed, and not Sol Brand. In the loft, I only pushed her. She stumbled, she killed herself.”

Lydia tried to concentrate on his words so she could argue, but her thoughts were so very floaty, so smoky.

“Don’t fight me now,” he said. “I read this kind of death is like going to sleep. It just sneaks up on you. You know, Bess Stark may want to invest in the store when I volunteer to oversee the tree farm now that her son will be gone. I can handle the store and that, too. You never knew, did you, how clever I can be? I have the perfect alibi because I’m going to that Stark party where Bess and the sheriff will see me tonight...”

Her thoughts were shutting down, her life drifting away. Maybe if she pretended to be limp...unconscious, he would let her go, walk away, away...

His words rolled past her, around her like the fumes. Bess was her mother and had loved her father... She pictured the three of them together in a different life, playing Andy-over where the ball bounced on the roof and went clear up to Heaven. Aunt Victoria was flying like an angel, and there were her nephews, Connor’s twins, playing in the snow, and Connor didn’t hate her anymore, and
Mamm
forgave
Daad
and gave Lydia a lovely Christmas quilt with the words
Forgive Mother
all around the edge of the heavens with white clouds like smoke.

“And if you think I’m letting Yoder off the hook for seducing you away from me—no way. He and that animal barn are going up in smoke!”

Above all, that infuriated her. The barn, Josh, those animals—her animals. A surge of strength rolled through her, but she knew she had to seem to faint, even to die.

She slumped against the car’s fender, deadweight. He lowered her to the ground right where she was.

Thank the Lord, Gid dragged her away from the back of the car, put her over by Connor. She kept her eyes closed, though he left her facedown.

Lydia fought hard to stay awake but to stay limp. “Leave!” she wanted to scream at him. “Get away from me!”

An eternity passed. She had a terrible headache. He dared to pat her on the back, and then she heard him get to his feet. He moved away, but left the car engine on, the exhaust pouring out.

Finally, she slitted one eye open and watched his feet move away, much as she had seen him at the warehouse earlier tonight. He hit some button that lifted one garage door. She longed to run out after him, suck in fresh, cold air, but she stayed put until he closed it again. Then she crawled the short distance toward Connor.

Was he dead? He’d hated her, but he was her brother, and more important, Bess’s beloved son. She felt at the side of his neck. Yes, alive. She stumbled to her feet and opened the car door, driver’s side. If she turned the key, would the car engine stop? Oh,
ya,
it did, but she had to get Connor out of here and call for help. And, get the volunteer firemen to Josh’s barn in case Gid meant he would burn it down right now.

But what if Gid was still outside? He was stronger than her even when she wasn’t weak and dizzy, nauseous, too.

She got out of the car and stumbled to the door that went into the house. It was four steps up since the house was built on the hill, so could she carry Connor into the house?

She tried that door but it was locked. She had to open the garage door, get rid of the fumes, scream for help.

But as she shuffled toward the door to find the button Gid had used, it opened, and there she stood, sucking in fresh air, preparing to face Gid again.

* * *

Josh wished the sheriff would get back from the party at the restaurant. It felt as though he’d been gone longer than an hour, but then no one could cross Ray-Lynn. Josh hoped Lydia and her parents were getting along tonight, and that her mother would receive some mental counseling. The Amish didn’t put their trust in such worldly doings, but he’d been convinced she needed something she wasn’t getting among the Plain People. No, Susan Brand needed worldly help.

And that’s what Jack Freeman was to him, worldly help. Josh didn’t doubt the man’s sincerity. He even liked him, despite it all. He and Ray-Lynn had been supportive of many Amish Josh knew, including his Lydia. He could only hope, by Christmas, eleven days away, he could see his way clear to ask Lydia to marry him. Even if they had to buck her parents, even if Gid Reich turned hostile, even if—

Was he crazy, or did he smell smoke?

He got up from his cot, checked the two kerosene lanterns he had inside then made a jogging circuit inside the barn. Nothing, but the smell was strongest in the old wing of the barn where they used to milk the cows. There must be a fire outside, and the smoke was drifting in here, but a fire in all that snow?

He grabbed a pitchfork, went out the camel door. The Beiler boys had boarded up the door in the milking wing where the intruder had broken in. As he ran along the back of the barn, he skimmed the walls for a newly painted threat. Was this yet another ruse to get him outside? Still, smoke meant he couldn’t stay put inside but had to check.

Josh turned the corner into the slap of cold wind. He ran toward the spot where his young neighbor Amos had claimed he’d seen someone that panicked the mule he was trying to ride. Josh’s thoughts raced as fast as his feet. If there was a fire nearby, his watering hoses were coiled in the barn. And other than an iced-over drinking trough and the pond way out back, there was no usable water or firemen for miles and long minutes away.

As he turned the next corner, he gasped. Light and heat blasted him from a burning pile of hay, shoveled and shoved up against the door. Although the fire hadn’t spread far sideways, the door and the eaves above it were already aflame.

* * *

Car headlights blinded Lydia. Bess! It was Bess!

“Lydia, what happened? I came back because I shouldn’t have left you like that, shouldn’t have left you ever. I don’t care what they think of me at our party or anywhere else, we need to talk more. And I know Connor’s got a temper, so—”

Lydia lunged into her arms, then pulled her into the garage toward Connor. “Gid Reich hit him—left Connor’s car on—door down to kill both of us. We have to get him out.”

Together they pulled him outside. Bess got on her phone, called 9-1-1. Connor wasn’t breathing. And, though Lydia had never done what they called CPR, she gave Connor three quick breaths, then tried to push on his chest the way Josh had saved her mother.

“Tell them to get the volunteer firemen to Josh’s barn!” Lydia called to Bess. She was so dizzy she was going to keel over on top of Connor, but she had to keep going. It was hard to keep her arms stiff since she was shaking so hard. “Gid said he planned to burn his barn. I have to run over there.”

After Bess called the fire department, she kneeled next to Lydia and took over pressing Connor’s chest. Lydia knew she couldn’t use her buggy, so she’d have to run to the tree customers below to get some help. She’d ridden horses as a girl, just not Flower. But it would take time to completely unharness her. Despite her twisted ankle, she had to run to Josh, warn him, even if she had to face Gid again.

“Help me put Connor in my car,” Bess said. “This is taking too long. I’m driving him to the hospital, and I’ll drop you off. Try to lift his legs.”

They got him in Bess’s car. Maybe their attempts at CPR or maybe moving him worked, but he began to choke and haul in huge breaths where he lay on the backseat. “What in the—” he hacked out. “Gid Reich, got to stop him.”

“Just lie there,” Bess said as Lydia got in the front passenger seat. “On our way to the hospital, Lydia and I are going to warn Josh that Gid means to start a fire over there.”