Martha hurried to keep up with Eli. It was strange being in the auction barn with all the buyers and tourists gone. Their footsteps echoed across the floor. She could just make out the whistling of George, the cleaning guy. He was in his seventies and insisted that work—even work like sweeping and mopping and taking out the trash—kept him young.
“Do you need to call your aenti?” Eli asked. “I know she worries.”
“Worry is a nice word for Aenti Irene’s nagging.”
Did she imagine it or did Eli smile at that?
Instead of responding to her comment, he said, “The items in question should be here. They’re usually not moved until later in the evening.”
“I barely noticed what they bought. I was so focused on how they bought it.”
“And I should have responded to your crazy attempts to catch my attention.”
“So you did notice?”
“I’m not blind, woman.” Now Eli was laughing, a sound she wasn’t sure she’d heard before. Maybe he was tired, and it was causing him to behave in an unusual manner. Maybe she didn’t know her boss as well as she thought she did.
Once they were standing in front of the three pieces, Eli’s somber disposition had returned.
“I don’t see anything unusual,” he said.
Martha tapped her pencil against her ledger. She wasn’t sure why she’d brought them, but it felt good to hug something to her chest as she contemplated this strange mystery.
“We could start with what they have in common.” She turned to the back of her ledger and wrote Lot Number 28 at the top of the last page.
Eli was looking at her skeptically, but he didn’t argue.
“So, what do they have in common?” she asked.
“I’m not sure.”
“I certainly don’t know. I’m not a furniture expert.”
“They’re all made of northern red oak.”
She wrote Northern red oak in the ledger. “Were there any other pieces sold today made of the same type of wood?”
“Certainly. It’s a common enough wood for furniture making.”
“But Mr. and Mrs. Strange only bought these three pieces.”
Eli smiled, but he didn’t respond to her names for the oddly behaving couple. He rubbed a hand over his jawline, which was beginning to sport a five-o’clock shadow. Did he have to shave every day? Did he wish he’d married when he was younger? Did he iron his own clothes?
Why was she even wondering such things?
She returned her attention to the furniture. “They’re all rather large.”
“True.”
“Lots of large furniture sold today, I suppose.”
“Indeed.”
“What are we missing?”
Eli shrugged. “They’re all made by Jacob Weaver, obviously. It was his lot.”
“Didn’t you sell his shop items several months ago?”
“Nine months ago, I believe. Right before you moved here.”
She was surprised he would remember that she’d been there six months. Some days she wondered if he even knew he had a bookkeeper. Some days he would walk past her desk with barely a word and they wouldn’t speak to each other at all. It was strange that they spent so much time in close proximity but rarely talked. “So you sold his shop pieces earlier in the year, and these pieces—”
“Were from his home.”
Martha wrote Large items and Made by Jacob Weaver in her ledger. They now had three clues. She couldn’t see how they helped. This wasn’t working out the way mysteries did in the books she had borrowed from the local library. Her love of reading was another thing that irritated her aenti Irene, though actually that list would have been quite long if she wrote it in the ledger. That idea bothered her less than it probably should have.
“It’s an odd situation for certain,” Eli said as he removed his hat and ran his hand through his hair. “However, I can’t see that anything wrong or illegal has been done.”
“Ya, but—”
“The items have been paid for.”
“With a cashier’s check,” she reminded him.
“Which is still good money last I checked.”
“I know it is. The point is that it’s unusual—”
“We should pack everything up and ship it. We do have a shipping address. Don’t we? For . . .” He paused for a moment and then with an impish look in his eyes, continued. “For Mr. and Mrs. Strange?”
“That’s another point. They didn’t put a name on the shipping instructions—only an address.”
“Which is really all we need. If we send these three pieces to the address you have, then we’ll have fulfilled our part of the agreement.” Eli slapped his hat on his head, looking quite pleased with himself.
“What about our mystery?” Martha asked.
“Some mysteries aren’t meant to be solved.” Eli gestured toward the outer door, and they both began walking in that direction.
Martha waited until they stepped outside. It was only a few minutes past six, but already the sun was seeking the horizon. The fall evening air was cool and crisp. Martha thought of Ohio and her husband and the life she had left behind. She was pierced momentarily by the sadness and loss of it.
Eli, misunderstanding her sudden melancholy, patted her shoulder in an offhanded, clumsy manner. “Don’t let it bother you. We can’t always know another person’s reasons or intent.”
She shook off her memories. “But mysteries should be solved.”
“I suppose, though some, I’m afraid, are meant to remain a mystery. Don’t look so troubled. Think of it this way—Mr. and Mrs. Strange have given us something to wonder about when we can’t sleep at night.”
Which might have been the most ridiculous line of reasoning Martha had ever heard. She hurried across the parking lot and found her horse and buggy, climbed in, and pulled out onto the two lane. Her aenti’s haus wasn’t far. She almost wished it were a longer ride, as what she had to face back home would be much less peaceful than riding behind a black mare on an Indiana road as day turned to night.