Plain Dead (5 page)

When the newspaper column had been published, Joab had told Annie what he'd done and then gone to the bishop and confessed his sin of lying. What had gone on in that conversation only Joab and Bishop Abner would ever know, but Joab had been forgiven. Forgiveness was one of the cornerstones of the Amish faith. And while the community as a whole was surprised by Joab's deception, there wasn't anyone who didn't understand why he had done it. As he had explained to Annie and his family and friends, he'd lied because he hoped their son would see the error of his ways and return to his faith without having to worry his mother unduly.

Wayne's transgression was more serious than Rachel's. She had left the faith before baptism, whereas Wayne had fled several years after he'd joined the church, leaving his family and community no way to accept his new life. Upon hearing the news from Joab's own mouth, Bishop Abner had been forced to immediately deliver a sentence of shunning.

With Wayne under the
bann,
should he return to Stone Mill, no one in the community, including his parents and brothers and sisters, could allow Wayne into his or her home, eat with him, or speak with him. It was a bitter pill for those who loved him, a last resort, not intended as punishment but as a final attempt to save him. If he repented of his sin, confessed in front of the congregation, and returned to his Amish life, he would be forgiven and could join the family again with no repercussions. If he didn't, he would be cut off from everyone for the rest of his life.

Touched but helpless to do anything about the Herschbergers' grief, Rachel was suddenly overcome with a need to be with Evan. Joab's dishonesty with his wife, family, and friends was almost more devastating to the community than Wayne's abandonment. And now Rachel suddenly felt guilty about her own dishonesty. Even if she wasn't being outright deceitful about her engagement to Evan, she was certainly withholding information. Had he been here tonight, he would have been sorely disappointed in her. Maybe he'd even think she was ashamed that she'd agreed to marry him. It wasn't that at all. She loved him and intended to spend the rest of her life with him.

On impulse, Rachel slipped into the pantry, pulled her phone from her pocket, and texted Evan.

It only took him a few seconds to respond.
Hey yourself.

Still at the troop,
he responded a couple of seconds later.

You need to eat and rest,
she texted.
Want me to bring you a plate?

See you in an hour,
she responded. Then she slipped her phone into her pocket and waved to Mary Aaron to join her in the pantry.

“I think I'm going to go home,” she told her cousin, keeping her voice low. “Evan's just getting off and I'm sure he hasn't eaten all day.”

“You're not going to stay and eat?”

“No, I think I'll go now. It's had to have been an awful day for Evan. I don't want him going home to cold dinner out of a can.”

“Rachel?” Her father's voice made them both turn toward the kitchen. “Rachel, are you woolgathering in there? Bishop Abner has a question for you.”

“Coming!” Rachel hurried out of the pantry and approached the table. She smiled, smoothing her skirt. “
Ya?
Sorry, I didn't realize you were calling me.”

Gazing at her with affection, the bishop stroked his bearded chin with gnarled fingers. “We were just talking about how successful the Winter Frolic is going to be,” he said in perfect English. “I wonder if you might have a count of how many visitors we had yesterday.”

“That's a good question. I'm not sure,” she admitted. “But I'll find out. George will know. That's the kind of thing that he would keep track of.”

“
Ya,
I suppose he would, poor man,” her father said. “There's another who carries a terrible weight on his shoulders.”

“It's not our place to judge,” Uncle Aaron intoned. “A cancerous tumor of the head might cause a good man to do anything.”

“I agree,” Naamah said gently. “George has a good heart.”

Sammy paused in his chewing. “I like George. He gave me a book about kites. I made forty-seven kites and I climbed up on the windmill and I tied forty-seven hundred kites to the blades.”

Abner smiled kindly at his nephew. “Enough talk, Sammy. You didn't tie kites to the windmill.” He glanced at the others gathered around the table. “Sammy's afraid of heights. I can't even get him to stand on a ladder. If I've got a problem with my windmill, I'm the one going up. I can't even get him to go up to the hayloft to throw down bales.”

“I can throw forty-seven bales,” Sammy said cheerfully.

“Our Rachel has a good heart, too,” Aunt Hannah said, returning to the conversation they were having before Sammy spoke. “No wonder she's not herself tonight. We should save some of our pity for her. No wonder you are in a daze, child.”

Naamah nodded. “True words. My heart goes out to you, Rachel. To discover poor Beth Glick last summer and then to witness Billingsly's remains this morning. With your own eyes to see such a thing.”

“
Ya,
” Annie said with a sigh. She laid her fork down beside her plate. “To see such a thing, and still she comes here to be with us and help her mother. Such a good girl you are, Rachel, even if you have strayed from the fold.”

“Your daughter does look exhausted.” Her mother glanced at her husband. “I hope this has not made her ill. A sickness of the mind seeps into the body.”

“I'm not sick,
Mam,
” Rachel assured her. “But I am tired.” She untied the apron and hung it up. “Please excuse me if I don't stay any longer. I think I need to go back to Stone Mill House. I have a house brimming with guests, and I think I'll turn in early.”

“Without your supper you must leave us?” Her father rose to his feet and looked at her with a furrowed brow. “Are you sure you are not getting sick?”

“I'm not sick.” She offered him a half-smile. “It's only that—”

“Samuel,” her mother interrupted, “tell your daughter that, sick or not, she can't go away hungry. Amanda, Lettie.” She stood and clapped her hands twice. “Don't just stand there like geese. Pack now some supper for your sister. And for her friend. On a Sabbath he must work to find the killer in our valley, but he should not do so with an empty stomach.”

“You don't have to—” Rachel began.

But her mother waved her hand impatiently and talked right over her. “What are you waiting for? Lettie, dip a quart of that soup. Amanda, fetch that half of a blueberry pie.”

Her mother might not speak directly to her, but that didn't prevent her from looking after her. By the time Rachel drove out of her parents' farmyard, the back of her Jeep contained several plates and Mason jars full of food. Sinner she might be, but she wouldn't go hungry to bed so long as Esther Mast was in charge.

 

It was almost ten when Evan's SUV eased into the driveway of Stone Mill House, and she couldn't help feeling a sense of relief that he was safe. Usually, she managed to push her concerns for him being on the street to the shadowy corners of her mind, but Billingsly's murderer reminded her that there was evil everywhere, even in Stone Mill. She'd have to be a fool not to worry some when Evan was forty-five minutes late. It was something she'd have to get used to, though, if she was going to be a policeman's wife. That was a hard truth with which she was still coming to terms.

Oblivious to the blast of cold air that whooshed into her kitchen when she opened the door to the porch, Rachel greeted him eagerly. “You must be starving,” she said as he stomped the snow off his boots and ducked his head to enter the house.

“Yeah, I guess I am.” Evan pulled off his leather gloves. “Didn't have time for lunch.” He straightened up to his full height, pushed back a lined hood, and shrugged out of his heavy parka. His medium-brown hair, cut in a no-nonsense style, was still damp from the shower, and he was wearing a pair of jeans and the thick tweed fisherman's sweater that she'd given him for Christmas.

She waited as he hung his parka next to her white one on a pegboard on the wall. Then he took off his boots to leave them near the door.

Dark smudges shadowed his intelligent gray eyes, and her pulse quickened as he pulled her against him and brushed her lips with a tender kiss. “Sorry to have kept you waiting. I ran home to jump in the shower and then I got a call from the troop and . . . here I am now.”

She pressed her face against his chest and inhaled deeply. He smelled faintly of Pasha de Cartier and a clean wholesome scent that was his alone. Wrapped in the security of his strong arms, Rachel felt some of the day's tenseness ease out of her body. “You don't need to explain,” she murmured, patting his chest before stepping away. “You're here now, and my mother sent tons of food.”

“It's late, I know.”

“Not that late, and the last of my guests went up only twenty minutes ago.” She waved him toward the table. “I've kept the soup warm on the stove. Wait until you taste it. Delicious, as always. Perfect for such a cold night.” Something brushed against her ankle, and she glanced down to see her cat, Bishop, giving Evan the
Siamese stare
. So far Bishop had resisted all of Evan's attempts at friendship, the cat contenting himself with the occasional
hiss
and impatient swishes of his long tail whenever Evan was present.

“All your guests accounted for?”

She nodded.

“Including Mr. Skinner?” He stood there, dominating the old kitchen, the crown of the massive hand-hewn beams clearing his head by only a handsbreadth.

She turned to the stove to dip out a bowl of the soup. “I think so. I saw a light on under his door when I was taking extra towels to another room. I could hear his TV.”

Evan paused at the sink to wash his hands and dry them on the hand towel. “Smells great, but I'm so hungry I could eat Bishop there.”

“Shhh,” she teased. “Don't let him hear you say that.” A half dozen questions surfaced in her mind as she placed the bowl in front of him and removed a prepared plate of food from the refrigerator.

She wanted to ask Evan if he'd taken her advice and questioned Jake Skinner yet, or if they had a suspect in Billingsly's death. She was curious as to exactly what had killed him and when his death had occurred. She couldn't help wondering if the murderer might have been watching the house or even been inside when she was there. She knew from past experience that an autopsy would have been ordered, but the report certainly hadn't come back yet. It was possible, however, that the coroner had already provided a preliminary report that revealed some details. But as eager as she was to learn what was happening with the case, she knew better than to question Evan when he hadn't eaten since early morning. He had a hearty appetite and, like her Uncle Aaron, he could be a bear when he was hungry. His mood would be much improved when his stomach was full.

Realizing she was hungry, too, she helped herself to some of the soup and took a seat across from him at the small table under the windows. She eyed the man she was going to marry sitting across the table from her, not sure how long she could keep quiet about the case. The trick was to get Evan to share information on an investigation without directly asking questions. Fortunately, she didn't usually have to pry too much because he did some of his best thinking by using her as a sounding board.

“How was supper at your parents' house?” Evan asked, shaking pepper on his potato salad. “Your father buy that draft horse he was looking at?”

For the next half hour they talked about nothing in particular: her father's hesitation to buy the horse he wanted, her brother Danny's desire to continue with his schoolwork after he completed the eighth grade, her frustration with the water heater that kept throwing a breaker in the electrical box. None of the topics were all that important, but it made for a gentler dinner conversation than the discussion of the autopsy report, which was what she really wanted to talk about.

“It's nice, being here like this,” Evan said later as she cleared away the empty pie plate and forks. Scandalously, they hadn't even sliced it and put it on dessert dishes, but had shared the blueberry pie like two kids who'd filched it off a windowsill, washing the pie down with tall glasses of ice-cold buttermilk. “With you, I mean,” Evan clarified. “I keep thinking how happy we'll be when we can spend time alone every day, after we're married.”

“Mmm.” She leaned across the table and wiped a dab of blueberry off his lower lip with a napkin. “It will be nice.” They hadn't set a date yet. She'd gotten as far as knowing that she wanted to marry Evan, but she wasn't ready to commit to when. It was important to be absolutely certain when they took their vows. They both wanted to be parents, someday. And they both wanted a forever marriage. She might not be Amish anymore, but for her, taking a husband meant pledging herself wholly to him so long as they both should live.

“So, how was your day?” she finally asked because she couldn't stand it another moment.

He glanced meaningfully toward the door that led to the dining room.

Chapter 5

Without another word, Rachel got up to close the door. As she rested her hand on the doorknob, she paused to listen. The house was silent, not a creepy quiet like in movies but the peaceful stillness of walls that had protected and nurtured its inhabitants for two centuries. “Not a creature or a houseguest stirring,” she assured Evan as she pulled the door shut and returned to her place across from him at the little table.

“Still, we're not alone,” he reminded her. “We can't be too careful. Anything I say to you has to remain between us. I'm not supposed to ever say anything to anyone about what I'm working on.” He took a drink of water from his glass. “But most cops . . . if they're totally honest, will admit they have
someone
to talk to.” He looked up at her. “Someone they know they can trust.”

“You know you can trust me.”

She could tell by the look on his face that he wanted to talk about the investigation. He might have been trying to carry off the pretense that this was just another routine day in the life of a policeman, but Rachel knew better. Evan had wanted to be a Pennsylvania state trooper for years, and he'd worked hard to get where he was. His promotion to detective so early in his career had been a combination of being good at the job and being in the right place at the right time, when his respected mentor, sidelined by ongoing cancer treatments, recommended Evan to fill the position.

“I've pretty much been given the case,” he said. “I'll report to higher-ups, but for all intents and purposes, I'm the lead officer on this one.” His obvious pride in the assignment was shadowed by a hint of doubt. “It's a lot to take on, but they think I'm ready.”

“I know you are.” She placed her hand over his. “This is your town. Who knows the people here better than you do? You have the full support of the community, something an outsider might not.”

“Yeah, that's what I keep telling myself.” He looked down at the table, then back up at her. “Right now, I'm trying to come up with a solid plan for my investigation. This isn't going to be an open-and-shut case. There's almost no evidence; whoever did this was careful not to leave any behind. There are no obvious suspects. And the snowstorm last night makes things more difficult. No one was out and about to see anything suspicious in the area of Billingsly's house. And who knows what kind of evidence could have been covered by the new snow?”

“Was there sign of a break-in?”

“No. In fact, all the doors were closed and locked.”

She frowned. “Locked? You mean someone lured him out onto the front porch and locked him out?”

Evan shrugged. “The front door was dead-bolted.”

“So it was locked from the inside. Or . . . the person had a key,” she mused. “Did Billingsly have a girlfriend? I know he was divorced.”

“My understanding is that he was between girlfriends. I talked to the last woman he dated, a woman from Pittsburgh. Saw a photo on his refrigerator with her name on the back. I got her number from his cell phone. She's at a business conference in Florida.”

“Well, she's got a solid alibi.”

“Yup. Although she told me she would have
liked
to have killed him. Apparently he was a pretty big jerk to her. But she didn't do it. She gave a speech last night in front of two hundred people.” He leaned back in his chair. “The whole thing is strange. We're checking fingerprints in the house, but that's a long shot. The place was neat, everything tidy. No overturned furniture and nothing disturbed anywhere. Shoot, Billingsly was about to cook a steak for himself. It was right on the stove in a frying pan.” Evan began to crack his knuckles. “Got names and numbers of his ex-wives. I'll talk to them tomorrow. My next step will be to start looking at those closest to him. Work my way out. FBI statistics from a couple of years ago say a victim knows his murderer seventy-three percent of the time.”

“Wow. So . . . you'll look at people who worked for him? People he saw regularly?”

He nodded. “He has a daughter in California who doesn't speak to him. I had to notify her today, as next of kin.”

“That must have been a difficult call to make.”

“Not as hard as I thought it would be. She didn't seem to be too upset. She didn't have much information for me. He didn't have any other living relatives, and she didn't know anything about his life in the last five or six years.”

She picked up a crumb of piecrust from the table and popped it in her mouth. “You question Jake Skinner?”

“I did, just briefly. An odd duck. Not hostile, but not particularly helpful either. He said he didn't know Billingsly.” He looked at her from across the table. “Why did you think I should to speak to him?”

She studied Evan's face. “He said he didn't know Billingsly? That's interesting because I saw him at the frolic yesterday, in the cafeteria. When Billingsly spotted him, Billingsly had a strange reaction, almost as if he was frightened. And then Billingsly abruptly left through the kitchen.” She got up, went to the cupboard, and returned to the table with a bowl of walnuts and a nutcracker. “Why would he do that unless he was trying to avoid Skinner? And why would he be avoiding him if he didn't know him?”

“Good question.” Evan took a nut, cracked it, and removed the meat. “Mr. Skinner said he would be around all week. I got his information. Running a background check. We questioned all the neighbors on Billingsly's street. No one noticed anything out of the ordinary, other than the nasty weather. Except for Mrs. Abbott.”

Rachel knew a Louise Abbott from church; she lived with her daughter and son-in-law on Billingsly's street. She was a feisty woman in her late eighties and suffering from dementia. She was always getting lost in the church and social hall and being returned to the sanctuary by kindly parishioners.

Evan removed a small notebook from his jeans pocket. “Yes. Mrs. Louise Abbott reported a snowman coming down the street sometime between ten and eleven last night. She knows that it wasn't before ten because she never misses a favorite TV program that ends at that time.”

“A snowman?” Rachel chuckled. “Walking?”

Evan nodded. “Mrs. Abbott says that she goes to bed after her show but has trouble getting to sleep. Sometimes she wanders around the house. Last night, she said, she sat by a window, watching the pretty snowfall. She claims the snowman walked up onto Billingsly's porch, knocked, and went inside.” His serious demeanor cracked as his lips twitched. “Not sure how reliable she is. Apparently, she sent several letters to the troop last summer complaining about Frank Sinatra mowing her front lawn.” He chuckled. “Now mind you, Frank drives a horse and buggy. And he's grown a long beard.”

“Well, Mrs. Abbott is right, sort of.”

Evan lifted his eyebrows. “About Frank Sinatra growing a beard?”

“No, about the buggy. One of Eli Rust's brothers-in-law mows lawns on that street on Saturday afternoons. He might even have done Billingsly's.”

“I thought the Amish didn't use power mowers.”

“They don't
own
them,” she said. “But they don't have a problem operating them. He uses his clients' mowers.”

Evan made a notation on his pad. “His name isn't Frank by any chance, is it?”

She chuckled. “No. But Frank Sinatra may still be a suspect if he's prowling around Mrs. Abbott's house.”

“Especially if he's building snowmen that can walk.”

The mention of someone wandering around in Billingsly's yard gave her a twinge of guilt. Should she just tell Evan she'd been there last night? But to what end? So he'd know for sure that his fiancée was an idiot?

“As you know, Billingsly wasn't all that loved in the town,” Evan went on. “Even before he started running that ridiculous gossip column. The photos he published last year from Beth Glick's funeral still have some people seething, Amish and English. I have a feeling I'm going to be chatting with a lot of people who were holding a grudge against him. Seems like he was in a public argument with someone at least once a week.”

She exhaled. “Well, you can add me to that list. I had a disagreement with him yesterday in the cafeteria just before Skinner showed up.”

“I know. Your argument's old news.” He reached for another walnut. “Several people told me all about it yesterday. What were you arguing about?”

“About the column and the harm it was doing to the Herschberger family. We got pretty loud.”

“I suppose I need to speak with the Herschbergers just to cross them off my list.” He took pains in selecting another walnut. “I was thinking maybe you could go with me, just to make them feel more comfortable.”

“Sure.” Bishop jumped up on her lap. She stroked the cat until he curled up and rested his chin against her hand. She and Bishop sat in silence while a thoughtful Evan cracked and ate two more walnuts.

“It's probably smart to talk to his two ex-wives,” she suggested. “I gathered from things Billingsly said in passing that there was a lot of hostility between them.”

“Three ex-wives,” Evan corrected. “I'm going to talk to them, but I think it's just a formality. It's doubtful his assailant could have been a woman. Billingsly wasn't a small man. He was in his sixties, but in good shape. It's more likely that his murderer or murderers were male.”

“You think maybe it was some random psycho passing through town?”

“Who wanders around small towns tying editors to front porches in a snowstorm?” Evan shook his head. “Just as unlikely. It's too soon to make any assumptions, but off the top of my head, I believe that whoever killed Billingsly went to his house with a specific intent, maybe not to commit murder but not to bring a gift basket either. Someone had a grudge against him. Big time.”

She thought about Billingsly's body on the porch. She'd gotten the same impression when she saw him. She got the feeling that his murder was very personal.

“The assailant probably possessed a great deal of physical strength,” Evan went on. “Blunt force trauma to the back of the head. He was in the living room when he was hit. We found a smear of blood on the floor.”

“So his killer dragged him dead out onto the porch?” she asked. “That doesn't make sense. At least, tying him up doesn't. Are you sure the injury killed him?”

“Don't know what killed him yet. Still waiting on the coroner's report. I agree with you. If he was killed inside, why drag him outside? I hate to say it, but my guess is that the cause of death was exposure. And whoever tied him to the porch post dumped water over him.”

“I can't believe whoever did it left him half naked,” she said.

“We found a flannel robe in the living room. Not sure if Billingsly had removed it or his killer did.”

“Creepy.” She shivered at the thought. Who could do such a thing? Even to a man like Billingsly?

“I should have a cause of death by morning.” Evan glanced down at his cell phone. “It's getting late. I should go. We both have to be up early in the morning. Thanks for dinner.” He got to his feet. “I mean it, Rache. I really appreciate—”

“Evan,” she interrupted, the images of Billingsly on his porch coming back to her. Images from the snowy yard. “This may not be anything, but I can't get it out of my head.”

“Okay.”

“Something I saw at Billingsly's house this morning.” She got out of her chair. “There was something black lying in the snow, almost covered up. I just saw it in passing, and there was a lot of confusion: The rescue squad was arriving, there were people everywhere. And when I thought to look again, it wasn't there.”

“Something black? What do you mean? How big?”

“I don't know. I couldn't really tell. Not big.” She measured with her hands in the air, showing him the length of a loaf of bread.

“I didn't see anything in the snow. I walked around the perimeter of the house when I got there, looking for weapons, footprints, whatever. I didn't see anything.”

“Do you think the killer could have been there this morning? Been there, saw something he dropped last night, and grabbed it?”

“I guess anything is possible, but it's not likely. You probably just saw a dead branch sticking up through the snow. There were a couple of branches lying around from the elm tree in the side yard.”

She followed him to the door. “No, it wasn't a branch.”

He stepped into his boots. “Then a mitten. We found a child's mitten in the snow right on the sidewalk in front of his house after we got everyone cleared off.” He took his coat from the pegboard. “I'll touch base with you sometime tomorrow if I can.” He leaned toward her and brushed her lips with his. “Lock your door behind me. And try and get some sleep.”

“Be careful,” she warned.

He pulled on his coat. “You do the same, and if you have any ideas what you saw . . .”

She sighed. “I'll tell you. I promise.”

“And no playing detective on this case.” He waggled his finger under her nose. “Your job is to take care of your guests. Mine is to catch the bad guys.”

“I hear you.”

“Good.” He kissed the crown of her head and then opened the kitchen door to the porch. “And keep your eyes out for walking snowmen,” he teased. “Sighting one would be great for the Winter Frolic. A guaranteed tourist attraction.”

 

Rachel hadn't finished her first cup of coffee the following morning when Evan reappeared at her back door. He'd come to speak with Jake Skinner, though why so early she didn't know and he wasn't saying. Evan asked if he and Jake could talk privately in her office, but she showed him to the small parlor in the oldest wing of the house instead. He rang Skinner's cell phone to tell him he was waiting downstairs to speak with him. Rachel put them in the parlor because it wasn't a room open to her guests or likely to be invaded by one of the Amish friends and family who worked in the kitchen or cleaned for her.