Secrets Come Home (2 page)

Chapter 3.

A waft of warm, stale air flowed over Elsa-May and Ettie as they pushed open the front door of Agatha’s old house. The place smelled of dust and mold.

“Open some windows, Ettie.”

Ettie made her way around to the windows in the living room. “It’s surprising how musty it can get in such a short time. Agatha’s funeral was a week ago, and the
haus
couldn’t have been closed up for more than a fortnight.” After she opened the windows, Ettie placed her hands on her hips. “Just as she left it.”

“I wouldn’t know; I haven’t been here in a while,” Elsa-May said as she too looked around the living room.

Ettie narrowed her eyes. “I just said it is. I wasn’t asking you anything.”

“No need to snap at me,” Elsa-May said.

“I wasn’t. I was simply saying that the place looks just the same.”

“Well, why wouldn’t it?”

Ettie shook her head and said nothing more. She caught sight of Agatha’s rocking chair and walked over to it. “And here’s her chair.” She ran her fingers over the wood on the top rail of the rocking chair.

“It’s her
haus
– why wouldn’t her chair be in it?”

“It’s my house now.” Ettie gave a little giggle knowing her sister couldn’t argue with that. She pictured her dear friend still alive and sitting in the chair.

“That’s just what I need, a rocking chair.” Elsa-May pushed past Ettie and sat in Agatha’s chair. As she did, something on the floor caught her eye. She leaned forward to pick it up.

“What is it, Elsa-May?”

“I thought it was little bits of dirt, but it appears you might have woodworm or something of the sort.”

Ettie leaned down to have a look. There were small holes in the floorboards. “It looks as though something’s been eating it. It might be white ants.”

“I’ll have Jeremiah come and take a look.”

“Denke,
that would be good, and while he’s here he can see what else needs to be done. The whole place looks rundown.”

“We can go straight to his place now. These things shouldn’t be left too long.”

Ettie nodded and hoped she hadn’t been left a liability. What if the whole house was infested with white ants and was about to fall down? It was convenient that her great nephew, Jeremiah, was a builder and lived so close.

* * *

Elsa-May led her grandson into the house and showed him the holes that concerned them.

“It’s not looking good.” He knocked on the floor. “They’ve been eaten through.” He knocked on the surrounding boards. “It seems to be just these few here, which is odd.”

“Why is that odd?” Elsa-May asked.

“These boards appear to be made of different wood from the rest of the floor. I’d say there would have been some repair at some stage on the house and they’ve used a softer wood.”

“Can you fix it?” Ettie asked.

Jeremiah looked up at Ettie from his crouched position. “I’ve got some boards in my barn that are pretty close to these others.” He nodded toward the good floorboards. “If it’s only those few boards that need replacing, I should be able to do it tomorrow. Oh, tomorrow’s Sunday – I’m glad
Gott
tells us to have a day of rest. I’ll do it first thing Monday.”

“Okay, please do it,” Ettie said.

“If you aren’t in a hurry, I can get my tools out of the wagon and make sure it’s only these few. Then I’ll get under the house with a flashlight and have a look.”

Ettie looked at Elsa-May.

“We’re in no hurry,” Elsa-May said.

Ettie nodded. “That would be excellent, Jeremiah.”

Jeremiah headed out to his wagon and Elsa-May and Ettie sat down.

“This wasn’t what I expected when I came over here,” Ettie said.

“Best you know so you can get it fixed.”

“What if they start eating the rest of the
haus?”

“I’ll ask Jeremiah; there’s surely some way to treat them to ensure that they go and don’t come back.”

“I’ll make us a cup of tea.” Ettie headed to the kitchen, and when she got there she looked out the window. Jeremiah was talking to Ava.
Ah, they’re about the right age for one another.
Ettie giggled as she remembered what it was like to be young and carefree. She took her mind off days gone by and put the pot on the stove. When she sat back down next to Elsa-May, she heard noises underneath their feet, indicating that Jeremiah was under the house.

Ten minutes later, Jeremiah came back inside. “I think we need to call the police.”

“Why, what’s the matter?” Ettie wondered if the house violated some kind of building code, but if so, why did the police need to get involved?

“There’s a body under the house.” Jeremiah pulled his hat off his head.

“A
dead
body?” Elsa-May asked as she made her way to stand beside Ettie.

Jeremiah nodded. “A dead
person
.”

Elsa-May and Ettie stared at each other. Who would they call, now that their old friend Detective Crowley had retired?

Elsa-May looked back at Jeremiah. “Do you know who it is?”

He shook his head. “A man. Looks as though he’s been dead for some time. He’s wrapped up tight in plastic and covered in a blanket or rug of some sort.”

Elsa-May grimaced. “Are you sure it’s a man?”

Jeremiah scratched his chin.
“Nee.
I just assumed, that’s all.”

“Well, you go and call the police then, Jeremiah. We’ll wait here,” Elsa-May instructed.

Ettie and Elsa-May stared at each other again. If the man was wrapped in plastic, he’d been murdered for certain.

* * *

Half an hour later, an ambulance, police cars with flashing lights, and a detective were outside the house.

“Are you coming outside, Ettie?” Elsa-May asked over her shoulder as she went to have a closer look.

Ettie shook her head.
“Nee.
I’ll wait here.”

When Elsa-May was out of the house, Ettie peeped out the window to see Elsa-May already speaking to a detective. She sat down to the sound of banging and scraping from underneath the house as the crowd’s chatter hummed in the background. Would she feel comfortable moving into this house knowing that a dead body had been under the floor? She wondered how long the body had been there.
Who could the dead person be?

Chapter 4.

Ettie couldn’t bring herself to go out and watch what the police uncovered. A small crowd of neighbors and the press had gathered. When the ambulance took the body away, Elsa-May joined Ettie inside the house.

“Let’s go home, Ettie.”

Ettie looked up at Elsa-May. “What did they find?”

Elsa-May took a deep breath. “It was a man. They don’t know who he is at this stage. From his clothing, it looks like he was Amish. The body’s been taken to the morgue to be examined. They’ll try to identify him. He had no wallet or anything on him – nothing.”

“Why was he here?” Ettie turned to look at the floorboards that had led to the grisly discovery.

Elsa-May followed Ettie’s gaze, and said, “Jeremiah said he was directly under those boards.”

Ettie’s mouth fell open. “That’s right where Agatha sat; he was right underneath her feet.”

“It seems so.” Elsa-May slowly nodded.

“Is Jeremiah ready to go?”

“Jah,
the detective’s finished talking to him.”

“Who’s the detective?” Ettie asked.

“He’s a young man, Detective Kelly. Keith Kelly, I believe he said.”

“Have we met him before?” Ettie asked.

Elsa-May shook her head. “I don’t think so. He’s not been in the area long. He’s Crowley’s replacement.”

“It’d be good if Crowley was still around. He was so helpful.”

“Sometimes he was and sometimes he wasn’t. He wasn’t always eager to help when we needed it,” Elsa-May reminded Ettie.

Ettie stated, “He always came through in the end if I remember correctly.”

“Hmm.” Elsa-May pressed her lips into a thin line, and then said, “I’m certain he wouldn’t mind if we called him and told him about the dead man under the floor of your new
haus.”

Ettie shook her head. “There’s no reason. I’m sure Detective Kelly will be able to wrap things up without Crowley’s help. Let him have his retirement in peace.”

* * *

It was Monday when Elsa-May and Ettie got a visit from Detective Kelly. Elsa-May answered the door. “Ettie, it’s the detective I told you about. The one who took over from Crowley.” She looked back at him. “Come in and have a seat.”

The detective walked a few steps into their living room and sat on one of their rickety wooden chairs. “You two ladies knew Detective Crowley?”

“Yes, we did,” Elsa-May answered before Ettie had a chance.

The detective turned his attention to Ettie. “You knew Agatha King well?”

Ettie’s heart pitter-pattered at a quicker rate. The man wasn’t a bit like Crowley, this man was much younger and seemed not nearly as friendly. “Yes, very well. We both knew her; she’s part of our Amish community.”
If only Crowley were still around.

“She left you her house, I understand, Mrs. Smith?”

Ettie nodded.

“Did you find out who that poor man was, Detective?” Elsa-May asked.

“He was Horace Hostetler.”

Ettie and Elsa-May gasped and looked at each other.

The detective leaned forward. “You knew him?”

Ettie nodded. “He disappeared many years ago. Horace and Agatha nearly married some years back.”

“Many years ago.” Elsa-May put her hand to her head. “I had a dreadful fear that it might be Horace.”

Ettie looked at her sister and frowned. “You never mentioned that to me.”

Elsa-May looked at Ettie and remained silent.

The detective made a sound in his throat, and then pulled a notepad out of his pocket. He looked up at Ettie. “When was the last time you saw him?”

Ettie ignored his question, and asked, “How do you know it was Horace? I heard that there wasn’t much left of the body.”

“His mother reported him as a missing person some years ago. We had his dental records on file from that time. We knew the body was dressed in Amish clothing and we don’t have many reports of missing Amish men, so it didn’t take as long to connect the dots.”

“But he went missing when he was on
rumspringa
. So he wouldn’t have been in Amish clothing,” Ettie said.

“Well, Ettie, he could have just come back to the community, like we’d heard, and been killed then,” Elsa-May said.

The detective raised his hand. “In or out of the community, it doesn’t matter to me. Neither do the clothes he was wearing when he was murdered, except for the fact it enabled us to speed our identification of him.” The detective looked between the two of them. “Now, I shall ask you again, Mrs. Smith – when was the last time you saw Horace Hostetler?”

“It was many years ago, Detective. I’d say that Agatha would’ve been just a girl, nearly a young woman.”

“That’s right, they had both left the community and Agatha returned. They were to marry before they left, and then Horace came back, but he left again suddenly. Is that how it happened, Ettie?”

“From memory, I think that’s correct. I know they both left around the same time. They were going to marry, then they just up and left the community before they did, and only Agatha returned.”

Elsa-May chimed in. “Obviously he’d come back or he wouldn’t have been in those clothes.”

The detective frowned. “They left the Amish together, then? Agatha came back, followed by Horace, and then Horace suddenly left again?”

“I had heard Horace would return and they’d continue with their plans of marriage, but he never did. Now, hearing about the clothing, it appears he did return and then he must have been murdered straight away,” Ettie said.

“Could you both please keep your answers to the point?” The detective raised his eyebrows and scribbled something in his notebook. He looked up at them. “Did they get along well, Agatha and Horace?”

“As well as any couple who were going to get married,” Elsa-May answered.

“Why do you ask, Detective? You don’t suspect that Agatha had anything to do with his death, do you?” Ettie asked as she leaned forward.

He stared at Ettie and blinked a couple times. “Well, the man was murdered. He was found under her floor. When we have a murder, the first person we look at is the spouse – or, as in this case, the significant other. When you put two and two together, Mrs. Smith, you wind up with four.”

“But not always,” Ettie said before she could stop herself. When the man frowned at her she realized what she’d said. “I mean, two and two make four, of course they do. Well, except if you draw a two, and then you draw another two, and then two and two make twenty-two.  Very often the most likely or the obvious answer is not…”

As Ettie struggled to finish her sentence, Elsa-May chimed in. “What Ettie is trying to say is that it’s a ridiculous notion to think that Agatha was capable of hurting anyone. No one in our community would be capable of doing such a thing – that’s my opinion. I suggest, Detective, that you start looking outside the community for your murderer.”

Worried that they were getting on the wrong side of the man, Ettie changed the subject slightly. “How was Horace killed, might I ask?”

“A blow to the back of the head. Looks like it came from a broad, flat object. As there wasn’t any flesh left, the coroner could only gather evidence from the skeletal remains.”

Ettie grimaced at the image his words conjured up.

“Have you spoken to Horace’s family?” Elsa-May asked.

“They’ve been informed, but they haven’t been formally questioned yet.”

Ettie scratched her chin. “I guess that explains why they’ve not heard from him in years.”

“Tell me, Mrs. Smith, did Agatha ever marry?”

“No, she didn’t.”

The detective continued, “Did she have any gentleman friends who might have been jealous of Horace’s attention toward her?”

Ettie stared into the distance and rubbed her top lip with her index finger while she thought. “If she did, I didn’t know about them.”

“Well,” Elsa-May added. “That means ‘no’ because Ettie is the one person who always knows what’s going on in our community. She talks to everyone – she’s friends with everyone and she’s always talking.”

“You’re making me sound like a gossiper, Elsa-May, and I’m not.”

“You do talk with everyone.”

Ettie frowned. “Not everyone, I don’t.”

The detective stood up. “Well, thank you, ladies. I might have some more questions for you at another time.”

Elsa-May and Ettie stood as well. “Anytime, Detective,” Elsa-May said as she showed him to the door.

Ettie walked up beside her sister and they watched him get into his car. When the sisters were alone again, they sat down.

“He thinks Agatha had something to do with Horace’s death.” Ettie exhaled loudly.

“It certainly sounds that way.”

“I wonder how he got under the floor like that. Who do you think did it, Elsa-May?”

“I don’t know anyone that would have a reason to kill him, but we don’t know what happened when he was on his
rumspringa.
Many a young man has gotten himself into trouble when he ran around with the
Englischers.”

Ettie sighed. “She came back to the community without him.”

“And that was after her
mudder
died and left her the
haus?”

Ettie nodded. “Her
mudder
died when Agatha was sixteen, I remember that. It was always just the two of them with Agatha’s
vadder
dying years before.”

“How old was Agatha when Horace left?”

“She would’ve been eighteen and Horace would’ve been around the same age.”

“And living in that place by herself?”

“Jah.
What are you thinking?” Ettie asked her sister.

“It seems odd that a stranger would kill him and then put him under her
haus.
Wouldn’t it have been easier to dump a body somewhere else rather than wrap the body and bury it under the
haus?”

“Seems it was a good place to hide it. No one found it for forty years, and if it weren’t for you spotting those holes in the floorboards, he might never have been found.”

“Possibly.” Elsa-May scratched her neck.

“You’re not thinking Agatha did it, are you?”

“Don’t you think it odd that her rocking chair was directly over the body? It’s an odd place for a chair, to be placed in the middle of the room like that.”

Ettie breathed out heavily and cast her mind back to her many visits with Agatha. She’d always considered it most strange for the rocking chair to be where it was, but then again Agatha did live alone. It wasn’t as though she had to be mindful of others and keep the centre of the room clear. “That’s what we have to do then, Elsa-May.”

Elsa-May lowered her eyebrows and looked at Ettie over the top of her glasses. “What?”

“We have to find out from Jeremiah how the body would’ve got there.”

“How would he know? He wasn’t even alive back then,” Elsa-May said before she realized what Ettie meant. “Oh, I see. Did the floorboards have to be taken up for the body to be placed where it was, or was the body simply dragged under the house? That would explain why those boards were different, perhaps.”

“Exactly.” Ettie nodded.

“It seems obvious to me that the boards were taken up, but then the person would have had to have access to the
haus.
Well, we shall do that. First thing tomorrow we’ll go and see Jeremiah.”

That evening, as Ettie watered her vegetables, she cast her mind back to dredge up what she could remember about Horace and Agatha. Agatha and she weren’t close back in those days. Agatha was a young single girl, and Ettie was busy with her own large family. She knew that Agatha had returned to the community, and had heard talk of Horace returning and that was all. Perhaps she should make her own enquiries with Horace’s family. They’d know if Horace had spoken of having crossed or accidently wronged someone, and they might know if he’d had any enemies.

A smile crossed Ettie’s face as she bent down to look at her tomato plants. The first tomato had formed. It was the size of a large cherry, and it was still green. “It’s a wonder I didn’t see that before,” she murmured to herself. When she finished the watering, she placed the watering can by the back door. Elsa-May could be heard rattling around in the kitchen making dinner.

Ettie decided that when Elsa-May went to her Wednesday knitting circle, the day after tomorrow, she would visit Horace’s family alone. If God willed it, they would find out more from Jeremiah tomorrow about how the body was placed. With that knowledge she could go to Horace’s family with a little more information up her sleeve.