In Plain View (31 page)

Maria sucked in a breath. “After all this time, why would she want to see me?”

“Because she loves you.”

“I would understand if she never forgave me.”

“If you think that, you have forgotten who she is.”

“I thought I would find Christian here,” Maria said.

“Ah. Forgiveness may not be as forthcoming from him.”

“Where is he?”

“He moved to the Conestoga Valley years ago. Many of the Amish did. Their land here in Berks County was worth a considerable amount after they made real farms of the wilderness. They made enough money to start again in Lancaster County, farther from the frontier.”

“Bar-bar and Anna? And Lisbetli?”

“Barbara and Anna also have gone to Lancaster County with their husbands,” Jacob said. “As far as I know they are well. The names of their grandchildren make a long list. Even a few great-grandchildren have come along.”

Jacob reached for Maria’s hand, and she gave it to him. He breathed several times as he gathered his words. “Lisbetli went on to eternity. She is buried beside your mother. And
Daed.”

“But she was the youngest!” Maria keened, sinking slowly to her knees as her wail let loose.

Jacob weighted her shoulder with both of his hands, feeling the pulse of her sobs.

Finally she looked up. “What happened?”

“She birthed a child and did not recover.”

“And the babe?”

Jacob hated to dishearten Maria’s hope. He shook his head. “She fell ill when she was very young. She lies beside Lisbetli.”

Maria stood up and wiped tears with the back of one hand, wandering a few paces from Jacob. “I’ve missed so much.”

Jacob’s heart swelled in his chest in the midst of this stunning conversation. Maria was the lost piece in the Byler family. He had to ask the obvious question. “Why have you come now?”

Maria met his gaze. Her voice, when it came, was small. “I am exhausted. I wanted to come home.”

“And you have.” Jacob closed the few steps between them and wrapped his arms around Maria again. She had not gotten much taller than he remembered—though he had grown from a little boy. The top of her head against his chest did not even reach his chin.

Footsteps disturbed their embrace. Jacob stepped back and turned his sister around. Elizabeth stood at the base of the hill, breathless with disbelieving eyes.

Thirty-Three

A
re we almost finished?” Annie set her jaw and glared at the officer on Wednesday morning. “I have to work today.”

“Just a few more questions.” The officer consulted his notes. “Did you see the note you say Karl Kramer received?”

“I didn’t say he got a note. He says he got a note. No, I did not see it.”

“And the one Mr. Beiler received? Did you see that one?”

Annie straightened in her chair. “No.”

“But you were aware he received one?”

“He told me last night. I didn’t know on Monday.”

The officer twisted both lips to one side. “Do you have any knowledge of who wrote the notes?”

“No, I do not.” Annie slumped. He was fishing. She was itching to get out of the sheriff ’s office and do some fishing of her own. If she turned up any proof, she would be back.

The officer tapped his pen on his notepad.

Annie opened her arms, palms up. “May I please have my bicycle? I’d like to be on my way.”

“I’m afraid that’s not possible.”

“Why not?”

“We’re not finished with it. That’s why.” He barely looked up from his paperwork.

“What exactly do you need the bike for?”

“We found assorted tire tracks on the scene.”

“The hill was too steep. I left the bike at the bottom. I told you all this.” Frustration brewed in her gut.

“When we’re finished with the bicycle, you’ll be the first to know.”

Annie spied the interlibrary loan volume in between a notepad and a file folder. “May I at least have my library book back? Do you have any idea what the fine is for losing an interlibrary loan? Surely you don’t think an old history book is complicit in the explosion.”

“Sarcasm will get you nowhere, Ms. Friesen.”

She scowled and met his gaze. Without taking his eyes off her, the officer reached to one side and extracted the book from the stack of paperwork.

“We’ll be in touch,” he said.

Annie grabbed the book before he could change his mind. “Find out who hurt Karl Kramer. It wasn’t me.”

She pulled the note to her parents from her back pocket and marched down Main Street to the post office. With a groan she realized she had just missed the daily mail pickup.

Annie shoved the note through the letter opening, scowled, and set her course for the shop.

“You can’t let this go on, Rufus.”

Rufus tapped the cabinet hinge with the rubber mallet. “Mo, I know the explosion rattled everyone. I cannot control the way people feel. Perhaps they just need time.”

“Don’t be silly. People listen to you.”

“I’m a simple Amish cabinetmaker.” He nudged the hinge once more.

“Marv Hatfield said he wants to drop out. If we lose Marv, we lose both his sons.”

Rufus dropped his mallet into his toolbox and wiped his hands on a rag. He was installing cabinets in a newly constructed home. Mo was not even supposed to be on the premises. Rufus glanced around, relieved that the general contractor was nowhere in sight.

“Alicia Paxton is the environmental guru of the whole town,” Mo said, “and she thinks it’s dangerous to proceed.”

“I’m sorry to hear that.”

“So do something before we lose every cent of funding along with all the donated labor.”

“It only happened the day before yesterday,” Rufus said. “We have to wait for things to settle down. The sheriff will find whoever was behind it. Perhaps people will reconsider then.”

“They think it’s because of the Amish, that they set the bomb.”

Rufus raised an eyebrow under the brim of his hat. “It is not our way to make bombs out of fertilizer and a cell phone.”

“People are saying it was a bad idea to join forces, that it’s better if the Amish and the
English
live separately.”

“That is the Amish way, after all,” Rufus said.

“How can you say that? You’ve been behind this joint project all along.”

“I still am. But it is true that it has been our way to live separately for hundreds of years.”

“Are you dropping out, too?” Mo widened her stance, a hand on her hip.

“I promise to talk to them.” Rufus set aside the thought of Ike Stutzman’s vehement opposition. “But I am not going to move forward without Karl.”

Mo groaned. “Oh, Rufus, why can’t you let that go? If we hadn’t involved Karl, maybe the explosion would not have happened in the first place.”

“The man has burns all over his arms and neck.”

“I know. And I feel bad for him, as rotten as he is. But we can’t risk the project for him.”

“We have time,” Rufus said. “While Karl is healing, we’ll keep talking.”

Mo sucked in her lips. “You don’t think Tom Reynolds will back out, do you?”

Rufus adjusted the tilt of his hat. “I couldn’t say.”

By Wednesday afternoon Annie’s cell phone had been missing for two days. She picked up the telephone in the shop and dialed Tom’s number. No, he had not seen her phone in his truck.

She hung up and pulled a phone book from beneath the counter, found the number, and dialed the hospital in Cañon City. Following a system of automated prompts, she finally reached a nurse in the emergency room who left her on hold so long Annie was about to hang up and start over again. In the end, though, the lost and found box did not yield Annie’s phone, either.

The shop door jangled, and Annie switched to customer alert mode. But rather than customers, Mark and Luke Stutzman entered.

“Our
mamm
asked us to see what you’ve decided to keep in the shop,” Mark said.

Annie gestured to the shelf Mrs. Weichert had arranged. “The blackberry jam does well, and the embroidered pillowcases.”

“I’ll tell Beth. She is the one who makes the pillowcases.”

Of course she was. Miss Perfect Stitches. Annie forced a smile. “Well, if she has more, I’m sure Mrs. Weichert would like to have them. They’ve been popular.”

“We can take anything that is in your way,” Mark said.

“Mrs. Weichert is not here, but I’ll look in the back room.”

Annie crossed the store, vaguely aware that the boys were following at their own pace. In the storeroom, she riffled through Edna Stutzman’s crates.

Well, Edna’s work and Beth’s. Maybe the other girls had contributed something, but Annie suspected the superior stitchery that customers had been admiring was Beth’s. A full-sized quilt had lasted barely two days on display, despite a price even Annie thought was outrageous.

Some pot holders and small wooden toys had not sold, and Mrs. Weichert had returned them to the back room. Annie placed them in a crate and applied her own discretion to finish filling it. The sound of shuffling just beyond the door told her the boys had finally come to the back of the shop, where she knew they would wait politely. She picked up the crate, pausing to gain a firm grip.

The boys were speaking rapid Pennsylvania Dutch to each other. Annie strained to understand something. She had been hearing this language in the Beiler home and around tables after church services for eight months, and if pressed, she was capable of bits of polite conversation with speakers who indulged her with a reduced speed. But the words spewed too swiftly from the boys. Annie understood only fragments that did not seem to connect logically.

But one word was unmistakable, and she heard it four times.

Joel
.

And another.
Phone
.

Behind Annie, the building’s back door opened to a rush of spring air.

“I saw the buggy,” Mrs. Weichert said. “I figured the boys were here.”

“I was just gathering some things that aren’t selling.”

Mrs. Weichert ran a hand over the contents of the crate. “You’ve chosen well. I’ll talk to them.” She took the crate from Annie’s arms.

At the back of the shop, the boys switched to polite English.

The shop’s phone rang, and Annie moved to the counter to answer it.

“Come get your bike,” the caller said. “We’re finished with it.”

Thirty-Four

A
nnie lowered her bicycle to the ground in the same spot where she had left it two days ago. She took the hill faster this time, curious to see what the spot looked like now that the crime scene tape was gone. Finding her lost phone among the singed brush seemed unlikely, but she had nothing to lose by looking.

She stood on the hill, staring at the rock, and wondering what the boys could have thought they were accomplishing by trying to blast out a chunk of the hillside with a homemade bomb.

Unless they accomplished exactly what they intended.

She hated to think any of them were capable of hurting Karl—and certainly not Joel. It just did not make sense.

Annie kicked around in the dirt. Rain the previous evening had wiped out footprints and washed blackened brush into stripes down the incline. She set her feet squarely in the place where Karl Kramer had lain, and memory sparked. Her hand had still clenched the phone when she boarded the ambulance. She had it when she answered questions in the emergency room. After that, she was unsure.

Wandering back toward her bike, Annie wondered if the sheriff ’s officers had found anything useful among the footprints and tire tracks that had crowded the ground. Sophie’s revelation that Annie was under suspicion for the explosion simmered in her mind. When Annie reached her bike, she yanked it up with fresh determination. If Joel had something to do with this, she was going to find out. And for Carter’s sake, Annie hoped that what she suspected was not true.

Securing her helmet, Annie put the bike in motion and let gravity pull her down the slope and back on the main road. Hours of daylight remained at this time of year, plenty of time to pedal to the storage site and look for anything that might be have changed since the last time she was there. Grateful to be on pavement again rather than in the uneven brush of the hillside, Annie pedaled harder.