Whiskers of the Lion

A PLUME BOOK

WHISKERS OF THE LION

PAUL (P. L.) GAUS
lives with his wife, Madonna, in Wooster, Ohio, just a few miles north of Holmes County, where the world's largest and most varied settlement of Amish and Mennonite people is found. His knowledge of the culture of the “Plain People” stems from nearly forty years of extensive exploration of this pastoral community, which includes several dozen sects of Anabaptists living closely among the so-called English or Yankee non-Amish people of the county. Paul lectures widely about the Amish people he has met and about the lifestyles, culture, and religion of this remarkable community of religious separatists. He is the author of the Amish-Country Mystery series.

Other Amish-Country Mysteries by P. L. Gaus

The Names of Our Tears

Harmless as Doves

Separate from the World

A Prayer for the Night

Cast a Blue Shadow

Clouds without Rain

Broken English

Blood of the Prodigal

PLUME

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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) LLC, 2015

Copyright © 2015 by P. L. Gaus

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REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA

LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA

Gaus, Paul L.

Whiskers of the lion : an Amish-country mystery / P. L. Gaus.

pages ; cm.—(An Amish-country mystery)

“A Plume book.”

ISBN 978-0-698-18260-8

1. Amish—Fiction. I. Title.

PS3557.A9517W48 2015

813'.54—dc23

2014027242

Author's Note:

All of the characters in this novel are fictional. They are purely the product of my imagination, and they are not intended to represent any person living or dead. Most of the places in the novel are real, but some have been fictionalized. In particular, the Hotel St. James is fictional, as is the tourist hotel near Middlefield.

For Noah, Grant, and Pierce, who have shown us the magic in life that is possible only with grandchildren.

THE THEME of this novel is taken from the Scriptures, but Sheriff Robertson's story arose from a modern song, “Pacing the Cage,” written several years ago by the Canadian musician Bruce Cockburn. I particularly like the version sung by Jimmy Buffett on his 1999 CD,
Beach House on the Moon
. As I wrote the novel, and as the sheriff's story unfolded for me, I found myself listening to this song often. I greatly admire both the writer and the singer. Cockburn wrote (and Buffett sang) about the inside of the cage. I have written about the outside.

I am especially and continually grateful to my wife, Madonna, for reading my novels with a critical eye, and for her insights on this one in particular. I also thank my two older grandsons, Noah McKee and Grant McKee, for their enjoyable and enthusiastic discussions with me on the content and direction of the story's ending chapters. They are very insightful young men.

Next, I wish to thank the editors at Plume, and especially Denise Roy, senior editor, who has believed steadfastly in this series and whose support has been of great encouragement to me personally and of great benefit to me as a writer. I am also most grateful for the fine work of Mary Pomponio, publicity manager at Plume. Many thanks are due also to my agent, Jenny Bent, for her critical and useful comments on the manuscript.

I finally thank Steve and Dawn Tilson and Kate Clements for an engaging evening of literary discussions, which helped me to discover the title for this novel.

Have I not commanded you? Be strong and courageous. Do not be terrified; do not be discouraged, for the Lord your God will be with you wherever you go.

—
J
OSHUA
1:9

Wednesday, August 17

4:50
A.M.

STAN ARMBRUSTER had been a Holmes County deputy sheriff long enough to know that even the best day could skip sideways on you like a ricochet. With the instincts of all patrol officers, he had ridden his entire career knowing that the positive could flip to the negative with the single bark of a gun. A bark as arresting and irreversible as the clang of a bell.

But Stan Armbruster wasn't going to ride in patrol cruisers any more. He was done with that. Done with the uniforms and done with the heavy-duty belts of gear. Now he'd wear a suit with a simple leather badge case hung from his suit pocket. He'd trade the big 9 mm pistol for the diminutive .38 revolver of a detective.

Armbruster stood in his new suit in front of the closet-door mirror in his trailer home and liked what he was seeing. He liked it so much that he found it easy to dismiss his patrol officer's instincts for the negative. Found it easy to dismiss thoughts of gunshots, ricochets, and clanging bells. Found it easy to be positive, because his first day as a probationary detective would surely prove to be the best day of his life.

Armbruster fished in the side pocket of his suit coat and took out his new flip case of business cards. He fanned the short stack of cards, then closed the case and dropped it confidently back into his pocket. Then he finished the knot in his tie, cinched it under his chin, and studied his new image in the mirror. Hair black, growing out long enough to sustain a part. Complexion fair, with a ready smile, offset by a dark blue suit with a sophisticated charcoal pinstripe. White dress shirt with a roomy collar and a red power tie. A new look for a newly minted detective. He was done with crew cuts, uniforms, patrol cruisers, and rental trailers. He smiled at himself and turned for the front door.

There he smiled, too, at the photo on the wall of his partner, Detective Pat Lance. Maybe, he dreamed, this would be the day he would tell her. Maybe this would be the day he'd ask her out. If not today, then soon. Because it just wouldn't do for her to learn, before he had a chance to explain himself, that he kept a picture of her at his door.

Outside, August's moist heat painted Armbruster's cool skin with cloying humidity. Runoff from the overnight rains dripped from wet branches hanging heavy and low. The last cloudburst had just finished with the racket of close thunder. Runoff clattered from the trailer's metal roof into the gutters and downspouts. As he locked up, a vaporous negativity again brushed the margins of his thoughts—Fannie Helmuth, missing since April, probably already dead.

But OK, Stan,
be positive
. They'd find Fannie Helmuth soon enough, safe after all, in some remote Amish colony a thousand miles away.

Then again, maybe not. Maybe she really was dead. Fannie Helmuth. The locus of Sheriff Robertson's summer-long obsession.

Settling in behind the wheel of his red Corolla, Armbruster shook his head. Stop this, he thought. Just
stop
it. The sheriff will never change. Giant Bruce Robertson—impulsive, insistent, and impossible. As big as a Barcalounger, with the personality of a tank commander.

So do your job, Stan. Hit it early and have another report on Robertson's desk before the man makes it down to the jail. Go out to their farm and wake up the Dents if you have to. Ask them again. Not that they'll ever tell you anything. Not that they'll ever admit they know where their Howie has been hiding with Fannie Helmuth.

Armbruster started his car, turned on the air conditioner, and drove down the lane toward the blacktop of County Road 189. At Ohio 83 in Holmesville, he turned south toward Millersburg. At Courthouse Square in Millersburg, he joined truck traffic climbing eastward up US 62. Outside town and down in the next valley, he turned south on Ohio 557. After the long curve at the roadside tourist stands, he angled right to climb a wooded hill on an unmarked gravel lane. When he crested the hill, Armbruster parked on the hill in front of Miller's Bakery and set the brake because of the sloping grade. He got out in the dark and walked past a line of black buggies, the familiar country fragrances of fresh road apples and wet horsehair ushering him up to the door. Aromas like this outside a bakery? Armbruster thought. Only in Amish country.

Inside, Armbruster stopped to let his eyes adjust to the white-hot glow of the Amish gas mantles spaced at intervals across the low ceiling. Morning sales had long been under way, and a mother in a black bonnet and shawl was paying for pastries at the cash register. Her three young daughters, also in black shawls, pulled close to the hem of her long olive dress when they saw Armbruster enter through the screened door.

At the front of the salesroom, a white-bearded grandfather in Amish-blue work denims was stacking loaves of bread into his wicker basket. He gave Armbruster a reserved nod of his head. Two Amish lads in black denim suits stood beside a low table at the rear of the salesroom. They were pouring coffee for themselves from a steel thermos into Styrofoam cups. They ignored Armbruster with the practiced aloofness of religious separatists, mixed with the disdain of all teenagers, making private jokes at the expense of their elders.

From the back, one of the older Miller girls carried a wide aluminum tray of pies out of the kitchen and said to Armbruster, “Sticky bun, again?”

Armbruster smiled, “Maple cinnamon today, Edna.”

The girl set her tray down, brushed flour from her hands, and turned back toward the pastry case. Over her shoulder, she asked, “You're not on patrol?”

“New job,” Armbruster said and stepped up to the front of the case. “The biggest one, there at the corner,” he pointed. “It's a celebration.”

The girl teased the corner bun away from the rest, dropped the bun into a white pastry box, closed the lid, and handed the box across the top of the case to Armbruster. “I can take your money.”

Armbruster handed her five dollars. “Keep the change.”

Back in his Corolla, Armbruster put the pastry box on the passenger's seat and drove down off the hill to turn right again on Ohio 557. In the quiet little burg of Charm, he parked beside the Roadside Amish Restaurant and went inside as the first dim hint of sunrise was giving vague outline to the congestion of old rooftops in town. He took a seat in a booth by the front windows and ordered the farmer's special—eggs over easy, bacon, sausage, hash browns, orange juice, toast with butter, and coffee. When he had finished his celebration breakfast, the sun was coming up stronger on a day that Stan Armbruster planned never to forget. Outside, the heat of an August morning was already starting to build.

 • • • 

From Ohio 557, Armbruster made the sharp turn onto County Road 70, to climb the blacktopped lane up toward Troyer's Ridge. Overnight rains had left the pavement wet and puddled, and the Corolla's tires hissed and splashed as Armbruster leveled out to turn north through a stand of timber on narrow Township 369.

This would be Armbruster's second visit to the Dent farm this week. The sheriff had ordered the visits at least three times a week. Drive the narrow blacktop and gravel lanes north of Charm, out into the middle of pastureland nowhere, and ask the Dents again. Ask a thousand times if you have to, Robertson had insisted. Find Howie Dent. Whatever it takes. Because that's where we'll find Fannie Helmuth.

Armbruster crested the rise south of the one-room Troyer's Ridge schoolhouse, and he turned his Corolla right onto Township 371 toward the Dent farm, which would be at the second lane after the turn. But first, Armbruster came to the long drive leading back to the deserted Jonas Helmuth farm, and as he passed the drive, the corner of his eye caught a patch of yellow off to his left. He stopped twenty yards beyond the gravel, backed up, and looked toward the main house some seventy yards down the drive. There sat the yellow VW bug.

In that single glimpse of yellow, Stan Armbruster's celebration came to a halt. He flashed the thought of a bullet striking a bell—a ricochet. His grand breakfast was a distant memory. The maple cinnamon bun lay forgotten on the passenger's seat beside him.

This was going to be Howie Dent's yellow VW. Armbruster considered the radio, but as he pulled to a stop behind the VW, he saw that the doors were standing ajar. An odd assortment of items had been tossed out onto the gravel on either side of the car.

Armbruster shoved his gear shifter into park and shouted out the window, “Howie Dent?” He got nothing but lifeless silence in response. He shut his engine off, climbed out, walked a circuit around the VW, and made a mental catalog of the puzzling items scattered on the wet ground beside the car.

There was an old red backpack, soaked from the overnight rains, zippers pulled open, apparently empty. Armbruster picked it up and felt inside the pockets. Nothing there.

In addition to the red backpack, there was a small travel pack of tissues floating in a muddy puddle outside the passenger's door. There were also the contents of a typical glove compartment strewn across the gravel nearby—a tire gauge, a metal penlight, a bottle of aspirin, and napkins and straws from fast-food restaurants.

As he mounted the wooden steps leading up to the front porch, Armbruster again called, “Howie Dent?” He tried the door and found it unlocked. Heading inside, he called, “Howie?” and stepped farther into the front hallway. Deserted since April, the empty house sounded cavernous. “Where are you, Dent?”

In the parlor, the long Amish-purple drapes hung like sentinels, in straight pleats of plain cloth guarding either side of the glass. Morning light sparkled the dust that stirred into the stale air as he paced around the empty room. As he walked down the long hallway to the kitchen, Armbruster's footfalls on the hardwood floor punctuated his steps and gave him grade school memories of tapping a hollow wood block for music. It reminded him of the simple tunes of his childhood. The trouble was, it wasn't the pleasant tune of a grade school melody that was playing right then in his mind. It was something more frenetic. Something more akin to distress. Maybe Led Zeppelin in manic high pitch, Armbruster thought, or a wrenching guitar solo by Carlos Santana.

Armbruster continued to search inside. Like the rest of the house, the kitchen hadn't been used in months. Drawers and cabinets stood open and vacant, just as the Helmuths had left them when they had packed up last April and cleared out abruptly for Kentucky.

At the back porch, Armbruster climbed down the short run of block steps to the outside and hurried across the muddy yard to the tall barn at the back of the property. With each step, he felt his polished shoes sinking into the ruination of the muddy drive, but he dismissed this in his urgency to find Dent. A lightning strike broke suddenly into a clap of thunder over the pastures to the east, and a hard wall of rain fell instantly down, soaking his hair and the shoulders of his blue suit coat just before he managed to duck into the cover of the barn.

Ten paces in, Armbruster could smell dried manure and pungent, moldering hay. The barn was obviously deserted, but he called out for Dent again. A flight of purple martins shot loose in the rafters.

Armbruster stood inside the wide doors of the barn and watched a gloomy wall of gray rain hammer the gravel of the drive as if it were an anvil, eradicating his footprints in the span of only minutes. Erasing tracks that might have been made there. Then, as suddenly as it had started, the rain stopped.

Distrusting the break in rain, Armbruster hurried out onto the drive again and turned right toward the little Daadihaus. There, too, he searched inside for Dent. But he found only the gloom of an abandoned home.

Outside, a light rain had started to fall again. Not bothering to run, Armbruster crossed the drive to go back inside the main house. There he searched briefly upstairs. Most of the bedroom furniture had been taken away when the Helmuths, the extended family of Fannie's brother Jonas, had caravanned to their new land in Kentucky. In the second-floor bathroom, he tried the faucet in the sink, but it was dry.

So the well water tanks in the attic were empty, Armbruster muttered. Of course. They would have disconnected the windmill when they left. Again he felt the abandonment. Even the water had deserted the pipes.

Down on the first floor, on the screened back porch, Armbruster took an old rag from a Shaker peg and sat on a wicker chair to wipe the mud from his new Florsheims. Standing again, he turned in place to remember his last time in the house. He and Ricky Niell had guarded the Jonas Helmuth family while Robertson hunted the county roads for Teresa Molina's gray Buick, which had been described by Fannie Helmuth and identified among others registered in northern Ohio by after-market tire prints that Armbruster had molded from the muddy edge of the Helmuths' driveway.

Armbruster remembered that day. He had guarded the rear of the house from this very porch. Down the interior stairs, the family had taken shelter in the basement.

Armbruster crossed back through the kitchen to the top of the basement steps. Using the handrail, he eased down the steps in the dark until his feet found the dirt floor of the basement. He could see only the dim shape of an eight-by-eight upright post, and he reached out for it, caught his suit on a protruding nail, pulled back, and heard the expensive fabric of his sleeve take a short rip. He groaned in self-reproach, fingered the tear, and climbed back up the steps, angry with himself for the vanity of his new attire. In better light, he inspected the tear in the sleeve, rolled his eyes, and muttered a scolding invective at himself. Then he pulled off his ruined suit coat and tossed it in a heap onto the kitchen counter.

A battered red kerosene lantern was hanging beside the back porch door. Armbruster found matches in a kitchen drawer, lifted the globe to light the wick of the lantern, set the globe back into place, and turned again for the basement steps. Lantern in one hand, railing in the other, he descended.

The lantern's flame threw a troubled glow of yellow light onto the basement's dirt floor and gave dim outline to the posts and walls. On the far wall ahead of him, there were wood shelves for canning jars. The shelves were empty. Against the wall to his left there was a stack of empty wooden crates and pallets, held in store perhaps for firewood. To his right, clotheslines hung lifelessly from hooks in the braces. His eyes adjusted more to the lantern's anemic glow, and Armbruster saw worn leather tack and harnesses, pegged to the wall beyond the weary clotheslines. And it was only then that he noticed the faint odor of urine, mixed strangely with something sweet. Maybe alcohol.