Whiskers of the Lion (18 page)

Friday, August 19

7:15
A.M.

CAROLINE FINISHED dressing while Fannie was still in the shower. She had only the clothes she had been wearing the day before, so when she emerged from the bedroom, she appeared to be a traditional Mennonite woman in a turquoise dress and a white lace head covering. She closed the bedroom door and turned to the two agents seated around the middle room's coffee table. She was about to explain her intentions to go shopping for clothes and toiletries when there was a knock at the door to the suite. One of the two agents rose and went to the door, and when he opened it, there stood Wanda Mast with a male supervisor. Wanda held a stack of folded women's clothing, and she started to enter the suite. As she did so, the second of the two agents rose at the coffee table and came forward asking, “What is that, please?”

“Clean clothes for Fannie Helmuth,” Wanda said, stopping in the doorway. “She requested clean clothes yesterday.”

“I'll need to see them,” the agent said, and he took the clothes from Wanda.

Wanda attempted to enter farther into the suite with her supervisor close behind, but the first of the two agents remained at the door to bar their access. “Please wait there,” he said, and he planted himself in front of the doorway.

Wanda spoke up as the second agent spread the Amish clothes across the surface of the kitchen's dining table. “It's just clothes. Fannie requested clean clothes.”

On the dining table, the agent had spread out a long forest-green Amish dress that was identical in style to the blue one that Wanda was wearing. Beside it, there was a blue dress in the same shade and fabric as Wanda's. There was also a plain white day apron that matched Wanda's. There were undergarments and a pair of black hose. Finally, there was a pair of black cotton socks in a woman's size.

The agent refolded the clothes and carried the stack back to the doorway. He handed them to Wanda and said, “They're just like yours.”

“They are Amish clothes,” Wanda said. “Forest green is a popular color right now, and so is this blue. But our styles are all meant to be the same.”

Caroline came forward to the doorway and took the clothes from Wanda. “Fannie's in the shower,” she said. “I'll lay these out on her bed.”

“I should have some more for her, tomorrow,” Wanda said. “Today I just grabbed what was in my closet.”

Caroline opened the bedroom door, carried the clothes inside, and came back out to find Wanda and her supervisor, who were still standing at the suite's door. “Fannie's in the shower,” Caroline said again, and she gently closed the bedroom door. “I'll walk down with you, Wanda. I was just going out shopping.”

As the two women turned down the hall, the Amish supervisor lingered at the suite's door to ask, “When may we make up the room?”

The agent who had remained at the door said, “Our two partners are down at breakfast, so our second bedroom is empty right now.”

“Now, then,” the supervisor confirmed. “I'll get a team and bring them up.”

“They'll have to be checked,” the agent said. “And we'll have to search their cart.”

“Of course,” the supervisor replied as he turned to follow Wanda and Caroline down the hall. “You may search anything you like.”

Caroline rode down in the service elevator with Wanda Mast and her supervisor. On the way, the elevator made a stop on the second floor, and two maids in forest-green dresses pushed their service cart onto the elevator to ride down. When the elevator reached the lower vestibule, the two maids pushed their cart off and turned for the laundry. Another team of maids was waiting in the vestibule to take the elevator back up. They, too, were in plain forest-green dresses with white aprons, soft black shoes, and white organdy Kapps.

Caroline, Wanda, and the supervisor stepped off the elevator, and the new team of maids rolled their cart onto the elevator. As the elevator doors closed in the vestibule, Caroline eyed Wanda suspiciously and asked, “Is forest green the color of the day, Wanda? Or did everybody just choose that color on their own?”

Wanda fingered the sleeve of her blue dress and said, “Forest green seems to be a popular color today, Mrs. Branden. I just happened to choose blue.”

From the laundry room beside the elevator doors, another pair of maids in forest-green dresses emerged. One of them pushed the elevator button, and they both stood silently in front of the elevator doors to wait.

Caroline studied the dresses in front of her. Not only were they the same in color, they were also the same in style. The dresses were identical in the way they were hemmed and pleated. They were identical in the gathering at the shoulders, and in the length of the sleeves. The aprons were also identical in the front waist panel, the bodice, and the wrap over the shoulders. Caroline thought, remembered, understood, and smiled. The clothes that had been delivered to Fannie would be the same, she realized.

“I was going out shopping,” Caroline said circumspectly to Wanda. “How long do you think I should take?”

Wanda returned Caroline's smile. “I should think a couple of hours would suffice,” she answered.

The elevator doors opened. The two maids who had called the elevator stepped inside, and one of them held the doors open for Wanda and her supervisor.

Once the four Amish people were inside the elevator, Wanda said to Caroline as the doors closed, “It was nice meeting you, Mrs. Branden. Give our regards to the sheriff.”

 • • • 

With the cart parked in the hall outside Fannie's suite 416, one of three maids in forest-green dresses knocked on the suite's door. She called out, “Room Service,” and stepped back from the door, to stand with her partners.

The eyehole in the door darkened momentarily, and then an agent of the FBI's maintenance team opened the suite's door. He held an electronic wand. He stepped into the hall and closed the door behind him. Holding up his wand, he said, “I need to wand each of you, so please stand a little bit more apart. I will not touch you with the wand, but I do need to pass it over the entire length of you, front, back, and each side.”

The maids stood still while they were wanded, and then the agent said, “Please step back while I check your cart.”

The three women stepped to the side, and the agent sorted through the clean towels and linens. Next he opened several of the small bottles of shampoo and mouth wash to smell each of them. When he had finished his inspection, he said, “One moment,” and he knocked on the suite's door.

Again the eyehole in the door darkened, and a man on the inside asked, “How many are there?”

“Three,” he was answered. “They're cleared.”

The suite's door opened, and the second of the two agents held the door to admit the maids. Two of the three maids carried stacks of clean towels, and as they entered, the agent stepped aside and said, “Please start in the bedroom on the right.”

The two maids with towels turned right and started their work in the bathroom of the bedroom. The third maid went to the kitchen at the back of the suite's center room, and there she began to stack and wash dishes.

From the right bedroom, one maid carried out a bundle of wet towels and washcloths. She went to her cart in the hallway, dumped the wet towels in the cart's basket, and took up a stack of clean sheets and pillowcases. These she carried into the bedroom on the right.

When the maid in the kitchen had finished some of the dishes, she came forward to the bedroom on the right, to take a bundle of dirty sheets from one of the maids there. These she carried out to the basket on the cart. When she came back in, she carried bottles of shampoo and conditioner, plus a box of tissues. She took these into the bedroom on the right, and as she did so, one of the two maids who had started in the bedroom came out to work in the kitchen, to finish washing dishes.

Once this much of the work was finished, the kitchen maid stepped out into the hallway, where she remained. Spaced by an interval of about a minute, the two maids from the bedroom on the right emerged singly from the bedroom. The first of them walked back to the kitchen to dry dishes, and the other went out to the cart. When they reentered the suite, one maid carried towels and washcloths, and the other maid carried a stack of folded sheets and pillowcases. They entered the bedroom on the left.

After a while, a maid in a forest-green dress stepped out of the bedroom on the left carrying a tall bundle of sheets and pillowcases. She took them out to the cart and stepped aside. The maid who remained in the bedroom on the left turned on the television there, switched to a cartoon channel, and turned up the volume on a Tweety Bird cartoon. The sound played out into the suite's middle room.

Next, the maid in the kitchen finished drying the dishes and putting them up in the cabinets. She came forward from the kitchen and entered Fannie's bedroom on the left side of the suite. From there, a maid in a forest-green dress emerged with two small plastic liners from the wastebaskets in the bedroom. She took them out to her cart to toss them into a larger trash bag stretched across the push handles of the cart. There she waited alone for her partners to finish in the bedroom on the left.

When the last two maids came out to the center room, one of them said to the agents, “We have finished.” She said this as she closed the door to Fannie's bedroom.

One of the two agents seated at the coffee table rose and carried a coffee cup into the kitchen. As he did so, a maid asked, “Can I wash that for you?”

The agent shook his head and said, “Thanks, but no.”

The sound of the TV was plainly audible through the closed door of Fannie's bedroom. Tweety Bird was chirping in high form about a puddy tat, and thumping sounds accompanied the bird's antics.

The second agent rose from the sofa at the coffee table and asked the maids, “Is she watching TV?”

One of the maids shrugged. “We had no idea she liked the Tweety so much.”

Then the three maids in forest-green dresses said good-bye, and they wheeled their cart toward the service elevator.

Friday, August 19

9:30
A.M.

AFTER BREAKFAST at the Hotel Millersburg, across the street from the St. James, Professor Branden and Pat Lance walked on Jackson Street with the sheriff, heading east to the bank at the corner. Stan Armbruster and Captain Newell trailed several long yards behind them as a security detail.

As they approached the bank, people on the street took note of them. Most people recognized the big sheriff. Some recognized Bobby Newell. The attention was drawn by the fact that the lawmen were escorting an Amish couple.

An Amish man passed by, and he appeared to try to listen to the conversation between Lance and Robertson. Looking puzzled, he studied the professor's garb, and then he stopped in front of a window display and lingered there.

At the corner bank, Lance entered with Branden and Robertson. She used Fannie Helmuth's library card and one hundred dollars in cash to open a checking account in Fannie's name. Armbruster and Newell waited on the sidewalk in front of the bank, and when Lance and the professor came out, they made a show of passing the new checkbook around to admire it. The Amish man who had listened earlier on the sidewalk drew closer.

Two blocks west of the bank, Lance and Branden entered a pharmacy on Jackson Street with the sheriff, and Lance shopped the aisles for toiletries. These she took to the pharmacist's station at the rear of the store, and as she laid her items out on the sales counter, she presented Fannie Helmuth's checkbook. When asked for an ID, Lance answered that of course she had no photo ID, but she did have a library card. The pharmacist accepted the library credential, but she said to Lance, “There's no name on your checks.”

Lance turned to Robertson behind her, and Robertson stepped forward to say to the pharmacist, “It's a new account. We just opened it at the bank down the street.”

The pharmacist nodded her confirmation, and Lance paid with a check, signing it as Fannie Helmuth.

Outside again on the sidewalk, Lance turned to Robertson. “Are you sure about writing these checks, Sheriff?”

Robertson smiled. “The check is good, Pat. The hundred dollars covers it, so you won't bounce a check.”

“I mean about the forged
signature
,” Lance answered.

Robertson acknowledged the concern, and he turned back into the pharmacy. He needed the signature to pass in front of the pharmacist's eyes, but he did not need a forged check issue tailing him into court, despite the fact that the bank would surely honor the check. So, at the pharmacist's counter, he handed across cash and asked for the check to be returned. The pharmacist drew the check out of the cash drawer and studied the check closely. “Is there a problem?” she asked.

Robertson took the check from her hand and said, “I don't want her to overdraw her account. She hasn't been keeping that checkbook for very long. Amish, right?”

Next, the group rounded the corner at the pharmacy and entered the alley parking lot behind the Hotel St. James. Lance and the professor got into the backseat of the Crown Vic, and Bobby Newell sat behind the wheel. Robertson stood beside the driver's window and said, “Walmart, Bobby. I'll ride with Stan.”

At the Walmart south of town, Robertson pried himself out of the Corolla and came forward to the Crown Vic. There he took Lance's elbow chivalrously, as if to help her navigate the potted blacktop parking lot. Lance accepted the gesture for half of the distance and then pulled her arm loose, saying, “Really, Sheriff. Please.”

As they entered the Walmart, Lance walked beside the professor. Captain Newell led the way inside. Robertson and Armbruster followed them into the cavernous store.

Using a cart, Lance and the professor walked the aisles in their Amish clothes, and they selected various items, shopping for light groceries. The professor picked out snack foods and sodas, and Lance carted some fruit. As they headed for the lines at the cash registers, Lance also took a box of tissues for the hotel room.

At the cash register, while Robertson and Armbruster watched, Lance paid with a check from Fannie's checkbook. As she did this, she frowned a measure of consternation at the sheriff. Robertson noticed, and he came forward with his wallet. The cashier was studying Lance's Fannie Helmuth check when Robertson reached out for it and handed over cash instead. As the cashier took the money, Robertson said, “Ms. Helmuth is a guest of the county,” and the cashier gave a perfunctory nod as she muttered, “Cash or check. Suit yourselves.”

Outside in the Walmart parking lot, Robertson drew his crew around him and said, “Next, the convenience store across the street. Lance, I want you to show Fannie's library card and ask if you can rent a DVD.”

At the cars, the groceries were loaded into the trunk of Armbruster's Corolla. Robertson got into the Crown Vic on the passenger's side, and again Bobby Newell drove. Armbruster followed them out of the parking lot, and the rest of the morning passed for him pretty much in this same fashion. Follow the Crown Vic. Trail behind five paces at the stops. Drive behind them to the BMV. Wait outside while Lance inquires about a learner's permit. She wouldn't actually apply for one, Armbruster knew. She'd just inquire and take away literature.

After the BMV, Bobby Newell made a stop at a cell phone company. Armbruster went inside with the others. Acting as Fannie Helmuth, Pat Lance inquired about getting a phone. She did not buy one, but she did leave with several brochures about the various plans.

The morning drifted along slowly for Armbruster. He felt like he was a chauffeur with no passenger, assigned to drive idly from place to place while shadowing a mirage, all of it to establish the identity of the sheriff's new “guest of the county.” By the end of the day, nearly everyone in Holmes County would have concluded that Fannie Helmuth had come home. Also, it would appear to everyone who became aware of her that she intended to stay for more than just a day.

After lunch at the roadside restaurant in Charm, they headed for the more distant town of Baltic on the southern border of the county. Armbruster followed the sheriff's Crown Vic southeast on SR 557 to Ohio 93, and then south on 93 into Baltic. There Robertson had Bobby Newell stop at a real estate office beside the road, in the north end of town. The sheriff went inside with Lance and the professor, and Armbruster and Newell waited beside their parked cars.

When the three emerged from the office, a woman late in her years followed them out and turned back to lock the door. Robertson directed Captain Newell to ride with Armbruster, and he let the real estate agent sit in the passenger's seat of his Crown Vic. Lance and Branden again got into the back of the Crown Vic as an Amish couple.

Robertson opened the driver's door of the Crown Vic and realized that Newell still had the keys. Across the roof of the car, he asked Newell for the keys, and Newell tossed them over to the sheriff. Robertson caught the keys, and they clinked in his hand. Startled, Robertson held the keys in the light and stared incredulously at them. He gave them a shake, and he tipped his head. He glanced over to Captain Newell, and Newell asked, “What, Sheriff?”

Robertson stood beside his sedan and thought about the keys. He turned his thoughts into an interior awareness, and a smile drifted across his face.

 • • • 

It took an hour and a half for Branden and Lance to show the Helmuth property to the real estate agent. As they did so, Robertson sat behind the wheel of his Crown Vic, distracted by his ruminations.

The real estate agent walked through each of the buildings, taking notes and snapping photographs. Standing between the barn and the main house, she marked the identities of the buildings on a Google Earth map of the property, and once she was done, she went back into the kitchen of the main house to spread surveyor's documents on the kitchen counter. She read through the papers and maps, and she appeared to be satisfied with what she had learned. As she left through the front door, however, she reminded Lance that she would need the deed holder, Fannie's brother Jonas in Kentucky, to send an affidavit that he did in fact wish to sell his property. A contract would be sent to him for his signature. When the real estate agent stepped onto the front porch, she asked Robertson to drive her back to Baltic.

Robertson, who was then standing with a troubled smile beside his sedan, replied, “Of course,” and as the real estate agent took the passenger's seat, the sheriff gathered his team at the back of the Crown Vic. There Robertson opened his trunk and took out the red backpack that Armbruster had found beside the yellow VW two days earlier.

“I'll take her back to Baltic,” Robertson said to the four. “It'll take half an hour. Then I want to meet you all at the Dent farm. Mike and Stan know the place, Bobby. While I'm down in Baltic, I want you to ask if this backpack does really belong to Howie Dent. His mother will know.”

Lance spoke up. “She'll also know that I'm not Fannie Helmuth.”

“Right,” Robertson said. “So you just stay in the car. We've finished our travels today, anyway.”

The sheriff closed the lid of his trunk. “Mike, I want you to show Stan and Bobby something at the Dents' house. They weren't there when you and I saw it.”

Branden hesitated. “OK, Bruce, but what?”

“The nail,” Robertson said as he stepped around to the driver's door. “The nail behind that hutch on their back porch. The nail where they kept their spare keys to the yellow VW.”

 • • • 

At the Dent farm, it was Susan Dent who answered the door. She recognized Professor Branden. She appeared weary with grief, but she managed with effort to hold the screen door open for him, saying, “I didn't know you were Amish, Professor.”

“Just today, Mrs. Dent,” Branden said. He stepped inside. “You know Detective Stan Armbruster, and this is Captain Bobby Newell.”

“Please come in,” Susan said forlornly. “Is it about my Howie?”

“It is, Mrs. Dent,” Bobby Newell said. “And I'm sorry for your loss.”

“Please, just Susan,” Mrs. Dent said.

Branden asked, “Susan, is your husband home?”

Susan Dent appeared not to have understood the meaning of Branden's simple question. Her leaden feet stumbled along a path into the living room, where she turned and said, “Of course you're right to blame him, Professor. I begged him to let me call the sheriff.”

Branden followed her into the living room. “Maybe we should talk with Richard,” he said. “Really, Susan, maybe you should have something to drink.”

“Didn't I tell you, Professor? I'm not talking to him today.”

“OK,” Branden said, “but can you tell us where he is?”

“Chopping wood,” came Susan's vacant reply. “He's just been chopping wood all day.”

Newell followed Branden into the living room and said, “I'm sure it's hard, Mrs. Dent. And again, I'm sorry.”

Susan Dent brushed a tattered hankie across the surface of a dusty end table. She turned in place and selected her husband's brown recliner. She sat on the edge of its seat. While staring at the carpet, she said to the room, “Oh no. He wouldn't listen to me.”

Branden mouthed “water” to Stan Armbruster, and Armbruster followed the hallway back into the kitchen. He returned with a glass of tap water, and he set it on the end table that Susan Dent had just dusted with her hankie. She looked at the glass of water and barked a strangled laugh. “I saw my Howie in the letters. Richard wouldn't listen.”

Tears began to course her cheeks. “I begged him to call. That morning when we saw that the VW was gone? And I tried for weeks to tell him about the newspaper's letters.”

With her wrinkled and tattered hankie, Susan dried her eyes. Branden pulled his handkerchief from the side pocket of his denim pants, and he held it out for her. “This one is clean, Susan. Please take it.”

Susan dropped the soiled hankie from her fingers and left it lying at her feet. She took the professor's handkerchief and glared an accusation at him. “I don't see how he can blame me!” she shrieked. “I wish he'd chop that ax right through his foot!”

Again Susan wept, this time with the professor's handkerchief to her eyes. Branden knelt beside her and held her shoulders to draw her close. She leaned toward him as if starved for human touch, and Branden held her while she sobbed.

Bobby Newell and Stan Armbruster stood nearby and waited for her anguish to pass. Eventually she stopped crying. She dried her eyes and blew her nose. She slipped the professor's handkerchief into the pocket of her dress. When she eased herself away from Branden, she appeared to have gained enough clarity to be both relieved and embarrassed. She stood and asked Captain Newell, “Why have you come? Do you know who killed my Howie?”

“No, Mrs. Dent,” Newell said. “We don't know yet. But the sheriff wants us to look at something. Is that all right with you?”

Susan seemed to slip back into puzzlement. Her eyes seemed to drift along an invisible plane of nonreality. “Howie hasn't been home for weeks. I don't know where he is.”

“It's the back porch,” Branden said. “Where you kept the keys behind the hutch.”

“OK,” Susan said. “It's just beyond the kitchen. We keep spare keys there for Howie.”

“I remember,” Branden said. “May we?”

“What?” Susan asked. “May you what?”

Branden said, “We would like to have a look behind your hutch, Susan.”

“Of course,” Susan chimed. “Can I get you boys something to drink?”

Branden lifted the glass of water that Armbruster had brought out of the kitchen. “Here, Susan,” he said. “We've already had some water.”

Susan took the glass and sank back into the recliner. A question appeared in her eyes. She looked up at Branden and asked, “Do you have news of my Howie?”