Chapter 36
Clumsily, I tucked the note into the inside pocket of my jacket. The door began to move. I didn’t have much time. I dialed 911 on my phone. The operator came on as a crack of light appeared around the door.
The operator asked me what my emergency was. Before I could answer, the door opened. Leaving the phone on, I tucked it in the back waistband of my pants, praying that the operator could hear what we were saying.
“Jeremiah Beiler,” I said loudly. “What are you doing here at the church cemetery with a knife?”
If he noticed that I was talking abnormally loud, he didn’t show it. He glared at me. “Why couldn’t you leave this alone?” In his right hand, he held a knife as long as my arm. The sharp metal weapon caught the moonlight coming in through the open door. I supposed my chances were better with a knife than a gun. Maybe I had a shot at getting away from him and the knife. I would have no chance of escaping if he had a gun. No chance at all. But I was basically trapped in a windowless stone room the size of a walk-in closet. I was a sitting duck.
“Leave what alone? Looking for Jethro?” I asked. “Juliet is my friend. Of course, I had to keep searching for her pig.”
“Did you find him?” Jeremiah asked.
“No,” I lied. “I’m afraid he might be gone for good. Juliet will be heartbroken.”
“We all have our reasons to be heartbroken,” Jeremiah said.
“Maybe,” I said, trying to sound as conversational as possible. “Maybe it would be easier if we discussed this outside the building. It’s too dark in here, don’t you think?”
Jethro hid behind me, and I hoped he was doing his best to keep out of sight. I didn’t think that Jeremiah would take it well if he knew that I’d lied to him.
“We can talk about it right here,” Jeremiah said.
I supposed it was just wishful thinking to expect him to let me go so easily. I wracked my brain for any way to get around him, but nothing came to mind. Jeremiah was a large man, and he almost filled the doorway. The few spare inches on either side of him weren’t nearly big enough for me to squeeze by. I had to think of another way out. I removed the note from my pocket.
“What’s that?” Jeremiah demanded.
“Maybe you can tell me since you wrote it.”
“Give it to me,” he said.
“Did she want to talk to you about Hiram?”
He froze in the midst of trying to rip the paper from my hand. “What did you ask?”
“Hiram. This all comes back to Hiram, doesn’t it? You worked in the buggy shop for the Weaver family. I remember seeing you there when I was a child. I thought at first it was Hiram that I remembered, but then I knew I was wrong. It was you.”
“So what if it was?” he asked.
“Sol said he wasn’t there the day that Hiram died, but one of the young men who worked for him was.”
“And if it was me, what does that mean?”
I swallowed and glanced down at the knife in his hand. “I think you know how Hiram really died, and maybe so did Josephine.”
“It was an accident.”
“If it was an accident, why is it still haunting you?”
“It was an accident,” he bellowed, and his voice reverberated off the walls of the mausoleum. “A complete accident. I ran into the wheel stop holding the buggy at the top of the hill. I was tired. I had been moving mulch all day. I was careless. I hit the stop with my wheelbarrow just right and sent the buggy flying down the hill directly at Hiram. The buggy was too fast. There was no way I could stop it. I yelled for Hiram to get out of the way, but he must not have heard me. He never moved, and when the buggy hit him, he never moved again.” His breath became shallow.
“Do you think Sol knew?” I asked.
“He might have, but since he was the new owner of the buggy shop, he never questioned me. He believed me when I said I didn’t know how the buggy broke loose.”
I was certain Sol did know what had really happened, but there was no way I could prove that.
“After Hiram’s funeral, I was destroyed by what I had done. I couldn’t eat or sleep, so I went to Josephine and confessed everything. She said she understood and that I’d suffered enough. She said she wouldn’t tell the church leaders or the police. I was so grateful. She kept her word all these years.”
“Until now?” I asked.
“Until now. She wanted to win the ACC so badly, and I was her way to do it. You don’t know how important this competition was to Josephine. If she won the ACC, it would validate her business and everything she’d done after her husband’s death. Everyone expected her to remarry after Hiram died, but instead she opened Berlin Candies and put her heart and soul into that shop.”
“She was blackmailing you?” I asked.
“She wanted a guaranteed win. She wanted to win the ACC, and she was blackmailing me to make sure that it would happen. I couldn’t let her do that. If she got her way this time, I knew it wouldn’t be the last time she asked. I wanted to talk to her in person to reason with her. But there was no reasoning with that woman. I never thought she would do it. For a time after her husband’s death, we were close.”
I weighed the implication of the last word he’d said. “You were lovers then.”
He bristled. “Just for a short time when we were both hurting over Hiram’s death. We knew it was wrong. It didn’t last long, but we loved each other for a time.”
Something that Ruby had said came back to me, “Love and hate are two sides of the same coin.” In her confused, wandering way, she had been trying to steer me toward the realization that Jeremiah was the killer.
I shook my head. “This doesn’t make any sense. There were no signs of struggle on her body. How did you make her drink the extract?”
“She drank it on her own.”
“Why?” I asked, confused.
“If an Amish woman doesn’t have her reputation, what does she have?” he asked.
My mouth fell open. “You blackmailed her right back and threatened to tell about your affair with her, and she killed herself to avoid being shamed by the community, a particularly strict Amish district.”
Aiden had been right. Josephine’s death had been at a woman’s hand.
“But that would tarnish your reputation too,” I said.
“It’s different for a man.” His tone was matter-of-fact.
I felt sick, knowing that this was true, especially in the Amish community. I had seen how Emily’s own family had treated her after her affair that led to an unplanned pregnancy.
“The irony of it all,” Jeremiah said, “is that Josephine’s shop did win the competition. It was all for naught. All of it.”
“You put her body in the organ,” I said. “Why?”
His index finger twitched on the handle of the knife. “I had to do something so that people wouldn’t connect her death to me, and it seemed fitting.”
“How?” I asked.
“Everyone knew she was upset with Charlotte about the organ. Charlotte would have a reason to want her dead.”
Jethro, who had been trapped in the mausoleum all this time, wanted to get out. With a squeak, he charged Jeremiah, who wasn’t ready for someone to hit him at shin level. He stumbled onto the step outside the mausoleum, but with the knife in his hand, he wasn’t able to right himself. He fell back with a scream.
I scooped up the pig and ran out of the building, jumping over the groaning Jeremiah as I went.
“Bailey!” A flashlight bobbed over the gravestones. “Bailey.”
It was Aiden.
“Over here,” I called and waved, holding Jethro to my side in the other arm.
He caught his breath and pulled up short, taking in the scene. “What is going on here?”
“Jeremiah just tried to kill me, and he’s responsible for the death of Hiram Weaver fifteen years ago.”
“Hiram Weaver? I’m looking for the murderer of Josephine Weaver.”
I glanced back at the groaning deacon. “He’s responsible for that too. Trust me.” I handed him the note.
He took it from my hand. “I can’t believe all this happened, and I was just inside the church.”
I hugged Jethro to my chest and glanced down at Jeremiah, who was moaning and clutching his obviously broken leg. “Don’t worry. Jethro and I handled it.”
Aiden shook his head as he ripped his radio from his belt and called the incident in.