Plainly Murder: A Penguin Special from Obsidian (9 page)

Sitting in the Expedition outside of her home, Anna placed a hand on the door handle. “You know, Angie, I’m starting to believe that everyone was right all along, that Eric’s death was an accident.”

“I don’t know what to think,” I said.

She glanced over the backseat. Oliver was curled up on Evelyn’s quilt. “You still have the quilt. What are you going to do with it?”

“I thought I would try to give it to Lily one more time.”

“She probably won’t take it.”

“I know, but I don’t like the idea of giving it back to my aunt. It will only remind her of the friend she lost and about all the confusion around Eric’s death. She has more important things to contend with than that.”

“Do you want me to go with you?” she asked.

I shook my head. “No, I will drop it off and head to my aunt’s house. Martha’s right. I shouldn’t be driving all over Holmes County trying to solve a murder that may have never happened. I should be spending every minute I’m in Ohio with my aunt. That’s why I came here.”

She climbed out of the car. “Take care, then.”

I promised that I would.

A short time later, Oliver and I walked through the mercantile’s front door. Evelyn’s quilt was heavy in my arms. There wasn’t anyone at the cash register, not even the bored Amish teenager.

“Should we check the back office?” I asked Oliver while holding Evelyn’s quilt to my chest.

He whimpered and backed up. Typically, my dog was right, fear of birds notwithstanding. If he wanted to leave a place, it was for a good reason.

I turned back to the front door, but Ira Eby stepped out a side aisle, blocking my exit. My pulse quickened.

“How are the boots working for you?” Ira asked.

I held up a foot. “They’re great.”

“Can I help you find something? Maybe some more socks? My wife said you really liked those wool ones.”

I licked my lips. “N-no. One pair is enough, at least for now. I might stop by before I head back to Texas for some more.”

He took a step toward me. “Why come back later if you can buy them now?”

I took a step back. “I need to go see my aunt.”

He nodded at the quilt. “What are you doing with that again?”

“I wanted to give it to Lily, but I can see she’s not here. I’ll come back another day, and I’ll buy the socks then, too.”

He scowled at it. “That’s the quilt from Evelyn Schmidt.”

“If you want, I can leave it with you,” I said. I glanced at my feet. Oliver was gone.
Did he wander down an aisle?
I couldn’t leave without him.

“I don’t want that thing anywhere near my family,” he spat.

“Okay, I’ll just take the quilt and leave.” I took a tentative step forward. “Mind if I get by you?”

His face turned red. “
Ya
, I mind,
Englisch
girl. You have no right to come here and ask questions about Eric Schmidt. What happened long ago has nothing to do with you or your aunt.”

“I’ll happily leave,” I stammered.

His dark eyebrows knit together. “You’re not leaving.”

I swallowed. “Why not?”

“Because I know you are running around the county talking to folks about me,” he hissed.

“About you?” I asked, hoping playing dumb would work. “No. I was talking about Eric.”

“If it’s about Eric, it’s about me, too.”

“Because of the Amish bike shop,” I said, immediately regretting it.

His eyes flashed. “Who told you that?”

“The Dudek brothers.”

He muttered under his breath in Pennsylvania Dutch. I didn’t understand the meaning, but it was clear that Ira was no fan of the Dudeks. He switched to English. “I made mistakes when I was young. Who hasn’t? But they were determined to hold that against me. The truth is, I was the one who was stolen from.”

“What do you mean?” I edged toward the door.

Ira picked up a broom from the display and jumped at me. I froze.

He pointed the broom handle at my chest. “It was my idea to open an Amish bike shop, not Eric’s, not Cooper’s, and not the Dudeks’. The Dudek brothers got the idea from me, and instead of asking me to start it, they went to my friends because of one small mistake I made.”

“You mean stealing from them.”

He glared at me, neither denying nor admitting guilt about stealing from the English bike shop. “They should have chosen me!” He poked the end of the broom in my chest. Thankfully, the quilt cushioned the worst part of the blow. Caught off guard, I stumbled backward into a display of spice tins. They fell from the shelf, and I covered my head to protect myself. One of the cans burst, and nutmeg fell all over me. I dropped the quilt. “Ira, you don’t want to hurt me. You won’t get away with it this time.”

“I know that,” he said, resigned, but he gave no indication that he would stop poking me with that blasted broom. I wanted to rip it out of his hands and whack him with it.

“You were mad at the Dudeks because they stole your idea. Fine. But why did you push Eric off of the barn?” I asked, because now I was certain that he had. My first clue had been Evelyn’s quilt and Ira’s strong reaction to it. He kicked an elderly woman out of his shop to stop her from giving it to his wife. Then, there was the bike shop. That had to be the motive for the murder, which narrowed the number of suspects immensely, leaving only the Dudeks, Cooper, and Ira. Both the Dudek brothers and Cooper lost a business deal after Eric’s death. Ira, who had been cut out of the deal, lost nothing but a friend.

“Do you think I’m happy about what I have done? I’ve lived with it day in and day out for fifteen years. I think about it every day, and now you come here and make my torturous memories worse.”

“You could have avoided that if you hadn’t pushed him,” I said, immediately regretting it.

His eyes flashed. “It was an accident. I was angry, but I never intended to kill him. I thought he would be able to keep his footing. He promised me that he would talk to the Dudeks and convince them to let me be a partner in the shop. That’s what he told me just the day before.” A vein on his neck pulsated. “Then, when we are on the roof, he tells me that Cooper talked him out of it, that Cooper thought it wasn’t a
gut
idea to upset the brothers. He said that I could join later after the shop was open a few years. I didn’t want to wait a few years. I deserved to be there from the beginning. It was my idea!”

I put distance between us. The smell of nutmeg was overwhelming. My eyes flitted to the front door.
Didn’t anyone in this town need supplies? Where were all the Amish shoppers? I could use a few witnesses right about now.
“Ira, if your hurt me, it won’t be an accident like Eric’s death. It will be intentional. Just let me leave.”

He snorted. “So you can tell the police, and I will end up in prison. What will happen to my wife and children then? Who will take care of them?”

“It was a long time ago, maybe the police will be lenient,” I said with no idea whether or not that was true.

“They won’t be.” His voice was bitter. “The
Englisch
police will enjoy throwing an Amish man into prison. They will happily close my store altogether and open an
Englisch
business here and leave my family with nothing.”

The back door slammed open. “
Mamm
, where is
Daed
? I’m cold.” There was a slight whine in Kenneth’s voice.

“I don’t know where your father got to. He must be out front. Knock the snow off of your boots before you track it all over the store,” Lily replied somewhere in the store.

Kenneth said something in reply to his mother.

The broom lowered ever so slightly in Ira’s hands, and I edged away from its reach.

Ira noticed my movements. “Stay there.” He stabbed the end of the broom at me again. This time, he connected with my forearm. It felt like a blunt ice pick.

“
Daed
,” Kenneth said and ran into the room. His rubber-soled boots squeaked on the floor as he saw me pinned against the display case of spices. “
Daed
?”

Lily stepped into the room after her son. “Ira, what are you doing?”

“Go home,” Ira said. “I will talk to both of you later.”

Lily said something to him in Pennsylvania Dutch.

He replied in their language.

While Ira was distracted, Oliver appeared behind him. He was pushing something with his snub nose. It was Kenneth’s large blue marble. Oliver must have found it somewhere in the shop. He pushed it just behind Ira’s right shoe and stepped away. What was that crazy dog up to?

Ira was too distracted by the argument that he was having with his wife to notice my dog’s odd behavior.

Lily began to cry. “You? You killed Eric?” she said in English.

As if his wife slapped his across the face, he stumbled back, stepping onto the marble. For half a second he teetered in place and then his feet went out from under him. He flew back and his head made a deafening thud on the hardwood floor.

Lily knelt by her husband, and Kenneth ran forward and collected his marble. With wide eyes, he slipped it into his pocket. The commotion gave me enough time to escape out of the reach of Ira’s broom. Oliver ran over to me, and I picked him up. “You are the smartest dog ever,” I whispered to him. He licked my cheek.

Ira grasped the back of his head. He was conscious, so there couldn’t be too much damage. “I can’t do this anymore. I can’t keep this secret.” With tears in his eyes, he turned to me. “Call the
Englisch
police.”

Lily grabbed her husband’s arm. “Ira, what have you done?”

He shook his head, unable to speak, and I did what I was asked to do.

Three days later, I stuck my suitcase into the back of the Expedition with my aunt looking on. Despite the cold, she insisted on following me outside to watch me load the car. Oliver took last-minute bites of snow. He was going to miss that. The chickens watched him with their beady eyes from their pen. He wouldn’t miss them, just like I wouldn’t miss thinking about Eric’s Schmidt’s death. Ira Eby sat in county jail, waiting for trial or for someone to bail him out.

I hugged Aunt Eleanor. “I’ll come again,
Aenti
, I promise.”

“I will miss you.” She bent over and scratched Oliver behind the ear. “I’ve grown quite fond of this little guy, too.”

He licked her hand.

I closed the SUV’s hatch. “We are both going to miss you.”

“As you should.” Her eyes twinkled, and for a moment, she didn’t look nearly as ill and tired as I knew she felt. She was going to beat this, I knew it.

“Oliver and I will be back. After the wedding, I’ll bring Ryan, too.”
Even if I have to drag him to Holmes County,
I mentally added.

“
Gut
. I would like to meet this young man who believes he is
gut
enough to marry my niece. I don’t think anyone is.” She hugged me tight, more tightly than I thought possible in her weakened condition. “You’re the daughter I never had, and I love you dearly. The Good Lord will show you the way as to what is best for you.”

My forehead wrinkled as I wondered what she meant. I already knew the way that was best: Ryan, Dallas, and my advertising job. These are the things I had and I wanted. I could do without the ice sculptures at the wedding, but I wasn’t complaining. My future was set out before me, and it was bright. I hugged her back and then opened the door to the backseat. I helped Oliver onto the seat. My canine hero gave me his best doggy grin. He was ready to go home to warmer climes. As much as I wanted to go home, too, I felt my throat close up. “I love you,
Aenti
.”

“I know.” She kissed my cheek. “Remember I will always love you, wherever I am.”

Wherever she was? She wasn’t going anywhere. My aunt would always be in Holmes County just as I would always be in Dallas.

Read on for a peek at the first book in the Amish Quilt Shop Mystery Series,

MURDER, PLAIN AND SIMPLE

Available in September 2013 from Obsidian

There it was—the empty white bakery box. Just a light dusting of powdered sugar surrounded it on the blond wood kitchen table in my new home in Holmes County, Ohio. A streak of red jelly ran along its side with my fingerprint perfectly preserved in raspberry red. It was a crime scene.

My stomach ached as I remembered the enormous jelly doughnut that had been inside the box. Did I really eat the entire thing? After weeks of starving myself for my big Texas wedding that was not to be, I’d gone on a bender. I shivered when I thought about the two-week juice cleanse. What a waste.

Oliver, my black-and-white French bulldog, whimpered.

I grabbed the box off the table and shoved it into the wastebasket under the sink. “Don’t judge. I was under extreme distress. Moving across the country is stressful, you know. Besides, lugging all the boxes into the house yesterday burned off the calories.”

He butted the back of my knee with his head as if he understood. My überathletic ex-fiancé, Ryan Dickinson, Esq., would not have been so sympathetic. But what Ryan thought shouldn’t matter to me now. Unfortunately, it did—a lot.

I wanted to lie on the couch and take a nap. I could blame it on carb overload, but I knew the true cause of my lethargy was fear. What was I doing in Ohio? I’d quit my well-paying advertising job in Dallas, Texas, to move to Amish Country. Was I crazy? Had I finally hit my quarter-life crisis at thirty-four, almost ten years late, or was I experiencing a midlife crisis a few years early? I couldn’t decide which of those would be worse.

On the heels of my broken engagement, I learned I’d inherited my Amish aunt’s quilt shop, Running Stitch. I saw the inheritance as a divine sign to get out of Texas.

Aunt Eleanor had not grown up Amish. She had left her modern life when she fell in love with an Amish man. She gave up her culture to be baptized into the Amish church. The hopeless romantic in me wished someone would make such a sacrifice for me. Ryan could not. He’d called off the wedding because of “commitment issues.” After six years of dating and one year of being engaged, you’d think he’d have been over those.

As a young child, I’d spent countless hours at my aunt’s quilt shop, watching my aunt’s quilting circle and learning the craft myself. When I was ten years old, my father got a high-powered executive job and we moved to Dallas, Texas. Until I reached high school and became too preoccupied with my own life, I returned to Holmes County every summer to quilt with my aunt and tramp around the Ohio countryside with my childhood friend Jo-Jo. Even after I stopped visiting Ohio, I kept quilting and looked forward to my aunt’s letters, which always included a quilting tip or pattern inside. From hundreds of miles away, she continued to teach me the craft. I saw moving to Ohio as an opportunity to dedicate myself to the craft I loved. I may have thought this was an excellent idea, but my friends back in Dallas thought I was on the brink of a nervous breakdown. Standing in the middle of my Ohio kitchen, I wondered whether they were right.

This called for the big guns—er . . . boots, I meant. I hurried through the small two-bedroom house I rented in Millersburg. I opened box after box until finally I found them, my cowboy boots.

The boots were made of aged leather and the yellow daisy and blue cornflower pattern was stitched along the side of the foot and up the calf. The fine hand stitching reminded me of Aunt Eleanor’s quilts. I think that’s what drew me to the boots in the first place. It certainly wasn’t the price, which had been a month’s worth of my advertising salary. I didn’t wear the boots often, only when I needed a boost of rawhide courage. Starting a brand-new career hundreds of miles away from any family and friends qualified.

Solemnly, Oliver watched me wrestle the boots onto my feet. He knew to respect the boots.

With the proper footwear intact, I felt ready to face the appointment that morning at my aunt’s shop—my shop. Running Stitch was in Rolling Brook, a small, mostly Amish town two miles south on Ohio’s Route 83, five minutes from my new home.

In front of Running Stitch, I climbed out of my little SUV to find my aunt’s lawyer, Harvey Lemontop, waiting for me on the sidewalk. Martha Yoder, who had managed the shop during my aunt’s illness, was with him. Harvey was a short man and resembled a pillow with arms because of the way his belly hung out over his belt. His dress shirt was open at the throat and his diamond-printed necktie hung crookedly from his neck.

Where Harvey was disheveled, Martha was as neat as could be in a plain navy dress, crisp black apron, and white prayer cap. I parked diagonally in the spot directly in front of the quilt shop and climbed out of the SUV.

Oliver hopped onto the pavement with a solid thump. He cocked his head at me, showing off his large batlike ears to their best advantage. They resembled antennae, one black and the other white, searching for a signal as they flicked back and forth.

The shop was on the center block of Sugartree Street, the main road going through Rolling Brook. Unlike Millersburg, which was dissected by Ohio 83 going north to south and Ohio 39 going east to west, Rolling Brook was off the state routes, so the traffic consisted of the Amish living nearby and English tourists. Running Stitch was a brick-faced shop that had been painted olive green. A darker green awning covered the entry. Several Amish-style quilts hung from quilt racks in the large picture window.

On the left side of Running Stitch was a bare redbrick woodworking shop. A fiftyish Amish man with a long gray beard was standing outside the shop, a black felt hat atop his head. His pose mimicked the life-sized black cutout lawn ornaments of Amish men I’d seen propped against trees and fences on my drive across Ohio’s countryside. I smiled at him, but he didn’t smile back.

“Ms. Braddock, I’m glad you made it here safely. How was your trip?” Harvey shook my hand. His was damp, and it reminded me of holding raw chicken.

“It was long but fine. Please, call me Angie.”

He nodded. “You remember Martha Yoder.”

“Yes, of course,” I said.

Martha examined my feet. “Those are some boots you got there. I haven’t seen anything like that before.”

“Don’t the farmers wear boots?” I asked.

“Work boots, sure, but nothing like those. Clearly, those boots are not for working.”

Was that a dig? I shook it off.

“Thank you so much for taking care of the shop while
Aenti
was ill.” I used the Pennsylvania Dutch word for “aunt.” “And for agreeing to stay on. I know I will need your help as I get started.”

Martha smoothed her hands over her apron. “It was my pleasure. I wished she had been well enough to visit the shop more often these last few months.”

Oliver barked a greeting. Ignoring Martha, he waddle-walked over to Harvey for a head scratch. The lawyer obliged, and Oliver shook his stubby tail in doggy glee.

Harvey motioned to the door. “Shall we go in?”

Martha unlocked the shop’s door. Inside, she flicked on the overhead lights, illuminating the store.

My eye was drawn to half a dozen quilts, each one in the geometric color-blocked Amish style, hung on the plain whitewashed walls. Four of the six quilts I recognized as my aunt’s work. I walked over to the one closest to the front door and felt tiny stitches of the goosefoot-patterned quilt. Aunt Eleanor could fit as many as twenty stitches within an inch. Her stitches were far too tiny to count, but I knew they were there. A pang of sadness hit me, and I blinked rapidly.

“She did beautiful work,” Martha said.

I nodded and forced myself to look at the rest of the shop. There was one large room with a short hallway in the back that led to the office, the restroom, and a small stockroom. Beside the stockroom, a door opened into the fenced backyard. I stepped across the wide-planked oak floors to a short wooden counter that sat at the front of the shop with a cash register. I ran my hand along its smooth surface and came back with fingers covered in a thin film of dust. Oliver’s toenails clicked across the floor. I thought of Aunt Eleanor’s welcoming smile and sure fingers as her needle worked its way in and out of a quilt. She never dropped a stitch and never scolded me when I did.

In the far corner, a quilt frame, which looked like a huge picture frame on its side balanced several feet above the floor by two sturdy table legs, held a four-patch quilt. Metal clamps held the four corners of the quilt tightly to the frame so the fabric wouldn’t bunch up and the stitches would be flat and precise. The frame was pulled only four feet out from the middle of the quilt pattern. As the quilters moved out from the center, the frame could be adjusted to grow wider and wider, to the full size of the quilt. At the moment, the quilt was only half-finished. A light layer of dust coated the exposed fabric. On the wall opposite the cash register, shelving ran the entire length of the room. The shelves held bolts of dark fabric. On the opposite wall was the fabric to appeal to English shoppers. There were pastels, flower patterns, stripes, and bright colors.

Beyond the stockroom, I opened the door to the tiny backyard. Oliver made a beeline for an azalea bush. The yard was at a slant, as Rolling Brook was on a hillside. My aunt had planted a small garden there. It would need some weeding, but the gladiolas, hollyhocks, and other late-summer flowers flourished. I had a clear view of the green rolling hills and an Amish farm about a mile away. A tiny farmer hitched his horses to a buggy. Although I’d lived in Millersburg as a child, standing in my aunt’s garden was the first time I realized how beautiful this part of the country was. As a kid, I’d taken its beauty for granted. This was the first time I really saw it with my adult eyes.

I tried to picture Ryan Dickinson, my former fiancé, standing next to me. In my mind’s eye, I put him—with his fancy suits and expensive European leather shoes—into life in Rolling Brook. It didn’t work. Ryan, an up-and-coming attorney, was a Dallas boy born and bred. He loved the traffic, fast pace, and intensity of the city. Nothing about Rolling Brook was intense. I smiled to myself. The only way I could be there at that moment was alone, and I realized being alone wasn’t such a bad thing. Maybe the un-Ryan-ness of Rolling Brook was its true appeal. Then again, it might have been the boots working their magic.

Harvey stepped into the garden and stood beside me. He wiped his brow with a blue handkerchief.

“It’s beautiful,” I said, motioning to the view.

He smiled and a dimple appeared on his left cheek. “It is.”

A cardinal landed on the wooden fence surrounding the garden. Oliver yipped and dashed under the closest bush, which was a little too small for him, leaving his hindquarters exposed. He held his black stubby tail completely still, as if he thought the cardinal wouldn’t see him if he didn’t move. I didn’t bother to tell him it was a bird, not a tyrannosaurus. My Frenchie suffered from ornithophobia. We’d sought treatment from acupuncture to hypnotism. Nothing had worked.

“Is your dog okay?” Harvey asked.

“He’s fine,” I assured him.

He cleared his throat. “Are you sure you want to take the shop on, Ms. Braddock? It’s a big job. I can still help you sell it if you’ve changed your mind.”

I smiled at him. “I thought I told you to call me Angie.”

The small lawyer blushed. “Yes, you did. I’m sorry, Ms.—I mean—Angie.”

“There’s nothing to be sorry for. As for your question, my answer is yes. I do want to run the shop. I haven’t been so sure of something in a long time.”

“What’s wrong with your dog?” Martha joined us and handed me a set of keys.

“He’s afraid of birds,” I said casually, as if this were a normal canine problem.

She laughed. “
Ach
, he’s going to see a lot more of those in Holmes County.”

That was my fear. The cardinal hopped along the fence as if he knew. Poor Oliver. His transition to country life was going to be much more difficult than mine.

“Can the cowgirl run the quilt shop?” Martha sounded dubious.

I shook the keys in my hand. “She’s willing to try. The shop is perfect.”

“Only the
gut
Lord is perfect.” She winked at me. “But we’ll get as close as we can. Now, you’d better saddle up. There’s a lot of work to be done.”

I cocked an eyebrow at her. “How do you know all these cowboy expressions?”

She grinned. “I may have watched a Western or two during my
rumspringa
.”

The boots bolstered my courage. “Can I ask you a question?”

“Yes, of course.”

“The man standing outside the woodworking shop, who is he?”

Harvey’s dimple disappeared. “You must mean Joseph Walker. He owns that shop and makes the best wooden furniture in the county. I have a few of his pieces in my home.”

“He seemed”—I searched for the right word—“cold.”

Harvey laughed nervously. “Oh, I’d hoped that we could talk about Joseph later.”

Martha folded her arms. “You may as well tell her. She needs to be prepared.”

“Prepared?” I looked from one to the other. “Prepared for what?”

Harvey pulled at his tie. “He claims he owns Running Stitch.”

I waved my hands in the air. “Wait, roll back, what?”

“He has a fifty-year-old deed for the property with his father’s name on it. It clearly states the Walkers are the owners.”

“Then my aunt and uncle must have bought the shop from Joseph’s father at some point. Where is my aunt’s deed to prove Joseph wrong?”

Harvey swallowed. “That’s the problem. We can’t find it anywhere.”