Plain Dead (21 page)

“I'm so sorry,” she said.

“He was a good boy,” Abner agreed.

“Not just about Sammy,” she answered. “Bishop Abner, I've made a terrible mistake. My mother told me—”

He touched her shoulder lightly. “You know about her health.”

“Yes, and how you've been counseling them. I can't thank you enough. You've been so good to them. And I . . .” She sucked in a deep breath and shook her head. “I thought that you . . . I thought that you might have been the one who killed Billingsly,” she blurted. “Because he'd found out about Sandy and Eddie and was going to tell everyone. And, God forgive me, but I even suspected that Sammy's death was no accident. That you—”

His eyes closed for a second, and his lips moved. And then he finished for her. “You thought that I had killed Sammy?”

She nodded. “It all started with your top-hack. Blade thought he saw one in Stone Mill late that night. And you were out when you originally said you were home. But . . .” She shrugged. “He was probably wrong. He's an Englisher. What does Blade know about Amish buggies?”

Abner didn't answer, so she went on.

“And Sammy's lost hat. It was at Billingsly's house the morning they found the body. And because you told me that you were home when really you weren't . . . And then Sandy and Eddie.” She took a breath and went on. “I'm so sorry, Bishop Abner. In my pride, I was so sure I could solve this murder like I did the other ones. I jumped to conclusions. I've been such a fool.”

“I'm not without sin, Rachel. Who of us is? What Sandy and I did, that was wrong. We wouldn't have wanted it known because we've thought that our son is too young to carry such a burden. Someday we will tell him the truth, but we've thought it best to wait until he is a man.” He shrugged. “And who knows if that's the right thing to do? But to kill a man to hide my sin? No, I would not have done that. As for Sammy . . . I loved him. His death was an accident, nothing more. We're human, Rachel. Humans are frail. We are easily hurt. But our Sammy was one of God's own. He is safe. As much as we would want him to remain here with us, it should comfort us to know that he is in a better place.”

“I don't expect you to forgive me or to forget,” she said. “I only want you to know how deeply I regret my suspicions of you.”

“What suspicions?” Naamah asked, coming up behind her.

Rachel turned to her. “Naamah,” she said, “I was just telling Bishop Abner how much I appreciate his kindness to my parents and, of course, how sorry I am about Sammy's passing.”

“What suspicions?” Naamah repeated, looking to Abner.

He took one of his wife's hands in his. “We can talk later. We should go. Folks will be arriving at our house.”

Naamah turned to Rachel. “You're coming back to the house, aren't you?”

“
Ya,
you must,” Bishop Abner said. “You are one of our family.”

Rachel looked him in the eyes. “After everything I've told you? You'd still welcome me into your home?”

Abner smiled sadly. “Of course, child. It would sadden us if you didn't come.”

“You must come and eat something,” Naamah insisted. “All that food. It will go to waste if no one comes.”

Promising that she would stop for a few minutes, Rachel said her good-byes and returned to her Jeep. It was only midday, but it felt as though she'd been up for hours. She had to get through the rest of the festival and then hopefully talk to Evan. Abner had let her off far easier than he had any reason to. He might have forgiven her, but how could she ever forgive herself?

She tried not to think about the question that hovered in the shadowy corners of her mind, but it would not be stilled. If all of their suspects had been proven innocent, who had killed Billingsly? And would he kill again?

Chapter 20

The snow crunched under Rachel's boots as she crossed her yard to the barn Sunday morning. It was early; the sun was barely up, and the roosters hadn't started to crow yet, but she needed a good half hour to care for the animals and still have time to shower and dress for church. She and Evan had talked on the phone the previous night until well after midnight, and if their differences weren't entirely mended, they'd certainly been smoothed over. After she'd told him about her apology to Abner and the guilt she felt at suspecting the bishop of murdering both Billingsly and Sammy, they'd dropped the subject of the investigation by mutual agreement. Instead, she and Evan chatted about ordinary things: the success of the festival, the possibility of more snow, and his daylong excruciating expedition with his mother. His mother was high maintenance, and he was the dutiful only son, which sometimes called for more patience than he possessed.

After she had listened to Evan's humorous retelling of his ordeal and made the appropriate sympathetic responses, Rachel confided how relieved she was that the Winter Frolic had wrapped up on a high note. The cook-off that George and most of the town business people had feared would be a flop had produced so many Amish entries that extra prizes had to be awarded. The winner, with a traditional Pennsylvania Dutch apple strudel topped with Granny Smith home-churned ice cream, had been Lucy Mose Troyer, age seventy-nine. Before Evan hung up, he'd promised he'd try to join her at the morning worship service. But if he couldn't, he wouldn't forget that he was expected at Rachel's parents' for supper at six.

After getting off the phone with Evan, Rachel had thought that she was so keyed up from the day that she'd lie awake half the night. She hadn't. She'd fallen into a deep slumber, and if she hadn't thought to set her alarm, she wouldn't have awakened early enough to do her chores before church.

Rachel clapped her gloved hands together to warm them as she approached the refurbished barn. She'd bundled up well against the cold, but the wind sweeping down from Canada was still a shock after the warmth of the house. She shivered inside her North Face parka. “Morning, girls,” she called to her goats as she pushed open the heavy door. The hinges groaned, a sound that made her wince, reminding her that Danny had told her the hinges needed oiling. On a farm, even one as small as hers, there were always more waiting chores than time to do them.

The goats bleated a greeting, and three curious faces peered through the railings of the pen. “Poor babies,” she sympathized. “You hate winter, don't you?” The nanny reared on her hind legs and capered about in agreement while the two younger females jostled for a favored spot closest to the feed bin. Rachel had acquired the three dairy goats, mother and daughters, by accident, but she had become quite fond of them. “Don't worry. Spring will come, and then you can romp in the clover again,” she soothed as she went to the faucet and turned it on.

She waited as the ancient pipes gurgled and huffed, and then, when she'd almost decided that the plumbing had frozen again, a blast of clean, cold water gushed out of the faucet and into the old stone trough. Running water in the barn was a luxury and a constant source of delight to Rachel. Growing up, she'd carried hundreds of buckets of water for the livestock in both freezing weather and the heat of summer. Here, with the magic of electricity and modern plumbing, all it took was a turn of the faucet handle and water flowed out.

The good thing about the old soapstone trough was that it was deep and held a lot of water. The bad thing about it was that it was deep and held a lot of water, and had to be drained often in summer and scrubbed to keep out mold. But the massive trough had stood here as long as the barn had, and Rachel loved it. When she'd cleaned up the barn and rebuilt the stalls for the goats, she'd spent half a day cleaning decades of spiderwebs, trash, and rodent droppings out of the trough. Her labor had been rewarded by knowledge that, with proper care, the trough would continue to provide a clean source of fresh water for the animals for decades to come, and because of the way that the stall dividers had been repositioned, the water could be freely accessed from both sides.

Humming to herself, Rachel climbed up the ladder into the loft, her mind drifting, against her will, to thoughts of the following morning. She'd have to call the attorney's office. A formality, she told herself. The interview with the police would go fine. She didn't do it, and the police would realize that soon enough. But still, the idea of being questioned by police was upsetting.

She rolled a bale of hay to the opening in the floor of the loft where the ladder came through and went back for another.

Of course, if she didn't kill Bill Billingsly, and Abner didn't do it, and Blade didn't do it, and Skinner didn't do it, the obvious question was, who did? As she lifted a bale of hay onto its side, she thought about Sammy's hat in Billingsly's yard. How had it gotten there? And what about the top-hack? She'd been so upset about her mother's diagnosis and her own false conclusion that Abner had killed Billingsly that she hadn't really sorted out the clues . . . which had not changed. Rachel had told Abner, the previous day, that Blade must have been mistaken about the top-hack parked at Wagler's Saturday night. But that didn't make sense. Blade had seemed so certain. And she considered him a reliable witness.

The hair on the back of Rachel's neck suddenly stood up, and she felt a shiver that ran deeper than any cold winter morning could ever produce.

What if the top-hack
had
been Abner's? What if someone
else
had driven it to town that night?

She'd never asked Abner which buggy he'd taken when he went to her parents' place that night.

Reaching the hole in the floor, Rachel upended the bale of hay and gave it a shove. It tumbled to the barn floor, breaking one string in the fall so that the bale divided and fell into sections. She pushed the second bale through the hole, her thoughts coming faster.

What if Sammy really
had
been at Billingsly's that night?

What if Sammy's accident really
hadn't
been an accident?

She needed to call Evan.
Now
.

As Rachel made her way down the ladder, all three goats ran to the far end of the stall and went on alert, peering between the rails, flicking their tails. Her back to the door, she felt a blast of wind and heard the squeak of the barn door. For a second, she assumed that she'd not closed it properly and it had blown open, but then the nanny bleated loudly, a sure sign that she'd spotted someone who might be a new source of apples or sugar lumps.

“Levi?” Rachel called, coming down the ladder as quickly as possible. The banging door hadn't spooked just the goats.

“Danny? Is that you?” It was a church Sunday. Her brothers shouldn't have been there this morning. They should be at home making ready for the long worship service. A furry gray streak zipped past the goats to vanish in the recesses of the barn as her feet touched the ground. A cat.

But not one of her cats . . .

Rachel turned to see a large cloaked figure in the doorway, outlined in the glare from the snowy barnyard.

The door banged shut, and it grew darker inside the barn again. And suddenly Rachel knew who was standing there. “Naamah?” she murmured, her unease turning to fear.

It was a church morning; a bishop's wife was never anywhere but at his side.

Naamah stepped out of the gloom, a stick or something in one gloved hand. She strode toward Rachel, chin thrust forward, large and imposing in her black go-to-meeting dress, sturdy black lace-up boots, black coat, and black bonnet. She moved quickly for such a big woman, rushing to enfold Rachel in her arms. “This isn't my doing,
kuchen,
” she murmured in Deitsch. “I'm so sorry.”

Rachel caught a whiff of starch and sage mingled with damp wool, then saw a flash of movement. Before she could react, a heavy object struck the side of her head. Stunned, Rachel staggered back and pulled her wool knit hat off. The inside of the hat was stained with blood. “Naamah?” She stared in disbelief, trying to fathom what had just happened. It wasn't a stick in her hand. It was a metal fireplace poker.

And everything fell into place.... The missing fireplace poker from Billingsly's living room. The crime scene left only as a woman would leave a house, neat and orderly.

Another chopping blow followed the first, this time glancing off the left side of her head.
Run!
her survival instinct screamed. Rachel tried to run, but time seemed to slow and her knees buckled. Blackness swirled, and she fought to remain upright.

The hard object swooped toward her, and she raised a hand to fend it off. Somehow she deflected the blow, but pain exploded in her wrist, and the strength drained out of her arm. The sharp pain, then numbness, radiated from her arm up to her shoulder and neck. Nausea rose in her throat and she gagged.

Naamah charged, dropping the poker and seizing Rachel by the hair and knocking her backward with the sheer force of her weight. Rachel stumbled, falling onto her bottom, landing on something hard and solid in the straw.

“It's all your fault,” Naamah said, her voice gradually rising from a rational tone to something far scarier. “I warned you. But you kept nosing around.” Still gripping Rachel's hair in a meaty fist, she loomed over her and shook Rachel like a terrier might shake a rat. “First the hat.
Whose hat? Who lost a hat?
You wouldn't let up. Pestering. Pestering.
Who owns a top-hack? Where was it the night the newspaperman died?
Mind your own beeswax!” She yanked Rachel so hard by her hair that Rachel came to her feet to try to escape the pain. Naamah pulled Rachel's hair, forcing Rachel to bend backward.

Rachel's spine struck the lip of the stone trough, and a new agony shot up to her neck. A slideshow of black-and-white snapshots, illuminated by the pulsing throb in her head, flashed behind her eyelids. Naamah's accusing face. A cat running, ears pressed flat against its narrow head, tail stretched full length. A gray cat in the Chupp barnyard. Billingsly's cat. Goat eyes leering through the slats. A black hat in the snow. Billingsly's distorted face trapped in a wall of ice.

“You're no different than she was!” Naamah shook Rachel, making her teeth rattle. “Always pestering him. Tempting him! I know what you wanted. You wanted his baby. Just like that English Jezebel.”

“You . . .” Rachel rasped, trying to grasp what was happening. But it couldn't be true. Never in her wildest dreams—“You killed Billingsly? It . . . it was you?”

Naamah paused, panting for breath, breasts heaving. “I had to. He would have told everyone about the boy. Eddie Millman. Printed it in his paper. And they would have laughed. Because I couldn't give Abner a living son. They would have all known it was me who couldn't have a baby. Not Abner. And that woman . . . that
creature
had the nerve to come to Sammy's grave.”

Black spots danced in front of Rachel's eyes, but she knew Naamah meant to kill her. She had to keep her talking. Her hands found the top of her head, anything to relieve the pressure Naamah was putting on her scalp. “You went to Billingsly's that night?”

“We took Abner's top-hack,” Naamah said, eyes bulging with madness. “We went to his house. He would have written lies about my Abner, told everyone that I wasn't worthy to be a bishop's wife. An Englisher harlot had his baby and I couldn't.”

Rachel was trying hard to follow what Naamah was saying. Everyone had always assumed Abner wasn't able to have children because there had been none from his first marriage either. But if he had fathered Eddie . . .

Somehow it was beginning to make sense. “But . . .” Rachel tried to think clearly enough to speak. She must have bitten her tongue because she tasted blood in her mouth. “Sammy was there, wasn't he? In town last Saturday night. He saw what you did.”

Naamah's gaze became sly. “How do you know it was me? Maybe Sammy hit him with the poker.”

“You tied Billingsly up. You threw water on him,” Rachel accused. “You left him to freeze.”

“He wouldn't have stopped saying those awful things about Abner. I threw water to wash out his nasty mouth. To shut him up. Water washes away sin. Shuts up a barking dog.” She made a sudden movement, spinning Rachel around and shoving her head down.

Rachel saw the water coming toward her. She tried to fight back, but Naamah was too big, too strong. As strong as any man.

Rachel gasped at the shock of the icy water in the stone trough, struggled as Naamah forced her face under and held her there. Rachel clawed at Naamah's coat with her good hand, kicked at her in desperation. Rachel's lungs burned. Water ran into her nose and down her throat.
Dear God, help me,
she cried silently.

Suddenly, she was yanked up out of the water by her hair. She choked and gasped, struggling to clear her lungs and suck in mouthfuls of air. Again, Naamah shook her.

“. . . Always losing his hat!” she was saying. “Stupid boy. . . Left it under the bench at church. Left it at the feed mill. Let the wind blow it away at Billingsly's.”

“You . . . you committed murder,” Rachel whispered hoarsely.

“God killed the Englisher. Not me. God sent the snow. God turned him to ice. For his sins.”

“Sammy?” Rachel closed her eyes for a second, afraid she was going to black out. She was dizzy and nauseated. “You pushed Sammy from the loft. So he wouldn't tell.”

“
Ne. Mupsich
. Sammy wouldn't climb into the loft. Not even after the cat. I let him take it home that night. In the buggy. To shut him up. He wanted the cat and I let him have it. I spoiled Sammy. But he couldn't hold his tongue. So I hit him in the barnyard, with the shovel, to teach him a lesson. Stupid boy. It wasn't my fault if he had a soft neck.” She smiled. “But God took Billingsly and he took Sammy. And now he will take you.”