Shipshewana, Indiana
Eighteen months later
Martha stood with a ledger in one hand and a cup of coffee in the other. “Maybe you should call the police.”
“Because people were seen inspecting our merchandise?” Eli Wittmer ran a hand along his jaw, something he tended to do when he was aggravated.
At six feet and thin as the coatrack he stood next to, Eli never failed to make Martha feel short and dumpy. She was short, and she tended toward chunky. Neither was Eli’s fault, but still she liked him less for it. She realized the feeling was shallow and illogical. When he frowned at her so, she became shallow and illogical. That certainly was his fault.
Martha had no doubt that she had once again tried her boss’s patience, which was an incredibly easy thing to do.
“Something’s not right. I saw them early this morning when I walked through to make sure everything was set up for the opening.”
“Our auction barn is open to buyers at seven a.m.”
“But they’re not supposed to touch the merchandise. They’d pulled out one of the dressers and were inspecting it.”
“Buyers often do, in spite of our signs warning them to only look.”
“And Joey Davis saw them last night, after we had already left. He came by to tell me about it earlier.”
She’d finally caught his attention. Eli pulled off his hat and ran his hand through curls that were still ridiculously chestnut brown with no hint of gray. She’d suspect the man used hair dye if she didn’t know him better. Not only was it not allowed by their Ordnung, but Eli was too tight with money to spend even a dime on something so superfluous.
“Maybe you’re just nervous.”
Martha stamped her foot. “I am not nervous. I’ve worked here long enough to understand—”
“This is the biggest auction we’ll have this year. Lots of Englisch and Amish . . .”
“They’re only people, Eli. More people. I will personally be happy when the Fall Festival is over—”
“Hasn’t started yet,” he muttered.
“I was only drawing your attention to this particular couple because the situation bothered Joey, and it seemed out of the ordinary to me. You keep your eyes peeled. The man, he is tall like you and wears a ball cap pulled low. The woman was wearing black jeans and a black T-shirt.”
“I’ll keep a watch for them. Now are you ready?”
Martha downed what remained of the cup of coffee and hurried after her boss. When she’d moved to Shipshewana, she’d expected her life to be different—to be difficult and full of new things and new people. What she hadn’t expected was for her boss to be a crotchety old bachelor. She didn’t mind the hours spent at the auction house, and she loved doing the books—numbers calmed her and helped her to forget the situation with her aenti. Martha was pragmatic about what she’d gained and what she’d lost. There was no turning back, and she’d determined to make the best of things, as Fannie had cautioned her many times since her move.
Hurrying from their office into the auction barn, she was a bit stunned at the size of the crowd. The barn was an eighty-by-two-hundred-foot facility, and today it seemed that every inch was covered with people. The doors at both ends had been opened to allow in the fall breeze. She caught a glimpse of trees, their leaves beginning to turn red and gold and brown. Beyond that was the outdoor flea market—one hundred acres, which boasted everything from fresh produce to hand-sewn quilts to homemade baskets.
“All nine hundred booths are full in the market,” Eli said. “Even more people than usual are here because of the Fall Festival. We should fetch gut prices for today’s items.”
She hoped so. Perhaps once they had purchased the items they came for, some of these people would leave. It was entirely too crowded for her taste. Shipshewana itself was a small town—only six hundred residents, half of whom were Amish. During market days, that population often swelled to over thirty-five thousand.
The auction was set to begin at nine o’clock. They had lined up all ten of their auctioneers to work until closing at three. Most days Martha worked in the quiet of the office she and Eli shared, tallying up what each lot had gone for, being sure that each buyer paid for all of their merchandise, reconciling the day’s total revenue with the items that had been sold. Once everything balanced, she wrote checks for the folks who had hired Eli to auction their items. The auction house kept between 10 or 15 percent, depending on the contract signed by Eli.
Each auctioneer had a scribe assigned to them—someone who would notate the item, buyer number, and amount of the sale. Today there weren’t enough scribes to go around, which was how Martha found herself crossing the crowded floor of the auction barn in Eli’s wake. She would be his scribe, which meant they’d be spending the day in each other’s company. Her, Eli, and a few thousand visitors.
Though she didn’t like the crowds, she couldn’t help being affected by the atmosphere—a kind of cross between a carnival, fall outing, and shopping spree. Just on the way in from where she’d parked her buggy, she had passed one booth filled with pumpkins, another selling fresh apple pies, and a third with scarecrows on a stick. The scarecrows were more adorable than scary, and she’d thought about purchasing one for their garden. It was easy for Martha to become caught up in the excitement. Though the auctions ran fifty weeks of the year, this was the last weekend of the flea market.
Folks literally filled every square inch of the barn.
The weather was cool and crisp—a fine fall day.
Martha found herself relaxing as she enjoyed the call of the auctioneer, folks’ laughter as they bid, and the occasional whoop of joy when someone purchased an item they’d set their heart on. She had a short break after Eli’s noon auction.
Unable to resist the aroma of hamburgers, French fries, and fresh funnel cakes, she hurried to the snack bar. Best to keep her energy up. They still had two hours to go, followed by more work back in the office. Reason enough to purchase the funnel cake along with her burger. She swigged it all down with ice-cold lemonade and made it back to their auction square as Eli raised his hands and announced the opening bid for the items from Charity and Jacob Weaver’s homestead.
The Weavers were a sweet elderly couple who lived not far from her aenti. Martha had been to their home several times in the last six months. Often she took them food that her aenti declared was unfit to eat because it wasn’t prepared precisely to her liking. She hated that the Weavers would be moving to the old folks’ home in Goshen, but she understood the need. Since Jacob’s stroke, times had been hard for Charity.
Eli opened the auction with bids for an antique dresser, and that was when Martha knew that something was very wrong.