In Plain View (39 page)

“It’s been quite an afternoon,” Rufus said. “Sophie, if I could prevail on you to take the coffeepot out to the living room, I’d like to talk to Annalise’s parents.”

Rufus invited the Friesens to walk with him away from the house, away from the commotion. They walked across the open yard behind the Beiler home, and he led them on the wide path that meandered from the house and would eventually come out at the big rock. He did not plan to take them that far, though. There was no need to heighten their anxiety by taking them to the place where they all might have lost Annalise.

“I’m grateful to have a few minutes to spend with you,” Rufus said. “I wanted to speak to you about Annalise.”

“Yes?” Myra’s response was guarded, perhaps even suspicious.

“I know her choices have seemed odd to you.” Rufus chuckled. “They seem odd to me, too.”

“I hope you are not pressuring her in any way.” Myra batted at a dangling branch.

“I assure you I am not.”

“She seems fond of you,” Brad observed.

“I hope so. I am fond of her.” Genuinely. Deeply.

“If she changes her whole life for you, and you reject her, how will she ever get over that?” Myra’s tone splintered.

“I don’t want to hurt Annalise.” Rufus stopped on the path and turned to Brad and Myra. “I don’t want her to change for me. I haven’t asked her to do that. Please believe me.”

“So you are going to reject her!”

“No, I—” Rufus began to respond, but Brad interrupted him.

“No, Myra, you’ve got it wrong.” Brad fixed his gaze on Rufus. “This young man loves our daughter enough to stay out of the way of her choice. It’s the only way she can be sure. Have I got that right?”

Rufus nodded.

“So she’s not getting baptized because of you?” Myra asked.

Rufus swallowed hard. “I had not heard that she was getting baptized at all.”

“We just found out ourselves,” Brad said softly. “She’s going to start the classes.”

Annalise was planning for baptism? Rufus’s heart beat faster as he smoothly turned the trio around and headed back toward the house. “The classes will be an opportunity to ask questions. It will be good for Annalise to listen to the answers.”

“I don’t want her to feel pressured,” Myra said.

“Myra,” Brad said, “have you ever known our daughter to do something she did not willingly set her mind to?”

Myra grunted. “No. She has always been headstrong.”

Brad extended a hand, and Rufus shook it. “Rufus, I’m beginning to understand what Annalise sees in you. There is much to admire. If you two decide you have a future, I know you will have her best interest at heart.”

Annie stood outside the chicken coop while Jacob sprinkled feed around and giggled at the hens that pecked the ground in response to his gift.

She blinked twice when she saw her parents and Rufus emerge from the path in the back. Her stomach clenched at the thought of the three of them together without her.

“Will I get to talk to your
mamm
and
daed?”
Jacob threw another handful of feed.

“I hope so. I know they would like you.”

Annie looked again at Rufus and her parents. This time, she saw peace in her father’s face, and the weight of anxiety was gone from her mother’s posture.

“Jacob,” she said. “How would you like to talk to my parents right now?”

Forty-Two

O
nly once had Rufus been to Karl Kramer’s office in the construction trailer that had been at the same location for at least five years. Twice Rufus visited Karl in the hospital. And now, after a quiet observance of the Sabbath the day before, he was on Karl’s personal property for the first time in a rural area outside of Westcliffe. Rufus did not know Karl kept horses. When he saw them on Monday morning, he made Tom stop the truck so he could get out for a closer look. At least a dozen nosed around in the field before him, and he supposed more grazed in the pasture beyond his view.

“I wonder if Karl has ever thought about selling horses to the Amish.” Rufus leaned on the top rail of the fence.

“It’s a hobby, I think.” Tom sat in his truck with the door open.

“I had no idea. It could be a profitable hobby. If Karl weren’t so busy resenting us, he would see the opportunity under his own nose.” Rufus paused. “I’m sorry. That was unkind.”

“You’re certainly doing your part to close the gap. Come on. Let’s get this over with.”

Inside the house a few minutes later, Karl was alone. After admitting them reluctantly, he moved with some care, but Rufus was encouraged to find him mobile and using his hands. They sat in a large central room, and Rufus told the story that had unfolded on Saturday.

“You’re telling me we know exactly who is responsible for this?” Karl’s face reddened under the healing burns. The set of his jaw made Rufus’s stomach sink.

“We are telling you what the boys said,” Rufus said.

Karl jammed a finger in the air toward Tom. “And your boy was in the middle of this?”

Rufus put his elbows on his knees and leaned toward Karl. “Carter did not understand everything that was happening.”

Karl thrust his finger toward Rufus now. “If you’re telling the truth, it’s the Amish boys who knew what they were doing.”

“Although they failed in their goal, yes, they seemed to have the best understanding of the science and math necessary.” Rufus paused. “We’re here today to ask your forgiveness.”

“Forgiveness!”

Rufus nodded and glanced at Tom. “I’m sure the parents will want the boys to make their own apologies as well.”

“Forgive this?” Karl held his arms out in front of him, burns still healing under dressings. “You can’t be serious.”

Annie twisted her lips to one side in thought. On a sheet of notebook paper on her dining room table, she wrote down all the facts that had emerged from two days before. Then she numbered them and rewrote the list in a way that accounted for events in the order in which they must have occurred. Next to each event, she jotted the initials of the boys involved at each stage.

In all the commotion, Luke Stutzman had raised a curious question. Why did Karl Kramer store construction and landscaping supplies so far from his office or the areas where he was actively building? Annie’s experience with construction was limited, but it seemed to her that the collection was more systematic than left over.

Annie chewed on the top of her pen now. On another sheet of paper, she began to sketch what she remembered from her surreptitious visits. Neat rows of fence posts, cement bricks, carpet rolls, unopened five-gallon paint cans, tubs of grout, a stainless steel double kitchen sink, pallets of bricks, bags of cement, landscape edging.

Black market?
she wrote. But that made no sense, given what was there.

Skimmed?
Quite possibly.

Stolen?
Annie circled this word. It would be just like Karl Kramer to steal from other contractors if he thought they were cutting in on his business. After all, last summer Karl arranged for someone to knock Rufus unconscious and then mutilated brand- new cabinetry Rufus was about to install.

“He’s still up to his old tricks,” she said aloud as she threw down her pen.

The sympathy she had been feeling for Karl Kramer over the last week dissipated in an instant. Maybe he got What he deserved after all. But what would happen to all the stolen goods now? Karl Kramer could still get away with his shenanigans.

Annie went upstairs and put on running shoes. What would she do for exercise, she wondered, when she adopted Amish dress all the time and could no longer wear running shorts and tennis shoes?

Rufus doubted it could be good for Karl to be this worked up. Perhaps they should have made sure a visiting nurse would be in the house when they brought this news to Karl. Rufus had heard that someone came every other day to check on Karl, and that his ex-wife even stopped by to help change dressings.

Karl winced in pain as he spread his fingers in haste. “I want the names of all those boys. Don’t even think about trying to protect any of them.”

“We don’t seek protection,” Rufus said. “The boys know what they did was wrong.”

“Even Carter understands he got mixed up in something he shouldn’t have,” Tom added.

“Write down their names, and the names of their parents. This will be a matter for the sheriff ’s office. I intend to pursue the case to the fullest extent of the law.”

“Of course that is your prerogative,” Tom said. “We have not hidden this from the sheriff. Rufus and I spoke to him Saturday night and again this morning.”

“Then why hasn’t he arrested the whole lot?” Karl demanded.

“The boys say they never meant to hurt anyone. That part was accidental, and frightened them into silence. The real point is that the sheriff has very little physical evidence.”

“He has their confessions!”

“He is making a point to talk to all the boys today to take their statements,” Tom said. “But he told us this morning that his officers did not get any useful footprints or tire tracks from the scene. Of course there are no fingerprints.”

“Get to the point, Tom,” Karl barked.

Tom raised a shoulder and squeezed it against his neck. “He’s not sure he could make a case.”

“That’s up to the district attorney’s office.”

“Of course it is. But the court will appoint a separate attorney for each boy,” Tom said. “The lawyers will jump on the lack of physical evidence and the contradictory statements from the boys about who was doing what. the confessions likely will be thrown out as coerced.”

“Since when did you take up the practice of law?”

“I’m just telling you what the sheriff said.”

“The sheriff is not the district attorney.” Karl glowered across the room. “Why are you really here?”

Rufus glanced at Tom. “For just what we said—forgiveness.”

Annie’s run took her to the edge of a field where a tent of plastic sheeting sheltered assorted contractor supplies. From the cover of trees, Annie watched a pickup truck back up to the shelter. The driver got out, released the tailgate, and began unloading.

Annie crept closer while he had his back turned, ducking behind a set of boulders. The man wore a hard hat, and Annie recognized his bulk. He was the same man she encountered the day she discovered this stash. She had gotten past him that day, and she would get past him again.