Florence and Ettie made their way to John’s house and knocked on his door. To Ettie’s disappointment, Connie opened the door.
“Might we have a word with John?” Florence asked.
Connie looked them up and down. At last, she stepped aside and said, “Come in.” She showed them through to the living room and when they had sat down, she called out to John. “He won’t be long,” she told the ladies.
“Thanks, Connie,” Ettie said.
“If you don’t mind, I’ve got things to do at the other end of the house.”
“Of course, don’t mind us,” Florence said.
They only had to wait a few minutes before John walked into the room and looked surprised to see them. “Hello.” He sat down on the armchair opposite the couch where they were seated.
“We just visited Eric,” Ettie said.
“You did?”
“That’s right. He still wants to buy the land—the orchard.”
John tugged on his collar and scratched his neck. “The will’s being read tomorrow at the lawyer’s office. I can’t do anything more until I know whether my father’s left me anything. I assumed he would, but with him, it’d be hard to tell. As you undoubtedly know, he was a difficult man to get along with. I’m his only child and when I left the community we didn’t speak for years. Then gradually we started talking. In the end, we’d check in with one another by phone every few months.”
“Yes, we know,” Florence said.
“For all I know, he might have left everything to you, Florence,” John said.
Florence laughed. “Nee. We weren’t that close. I just stopped by every now and again to see if he needed anything.”
Ettie said, “One thing we wanted to talk to you about, John, is the missing money. You said your father complained about money missing. Do you think he might’ve been talking about the eighty thousand dollars?”
John’s cheeks turned beet red. “Surely not! Wow. I never even thought about that.”
“It might pay to check into that nurse.”
“I got my friend to check her background and she had a criminal history.”
Ettie said, “You said your policeman friend found she was charged for something and then those charges were dropped.”
“That’s right. I should go to the police if we could be talking about that amount.”
“It might be a good idea,” Florence said.
Connie walked into the room. “What business is this of yours?” She glared at Florence and then turned a little and glared at Ettie.
John stared up at his wife from the armchair. “Connie, they’re only trying to help.”
She now glared at her husband. “Why?”
“You’re right,” Ettie said. “It’s absolutely none of our business.” She pushed herself to her feet, and then said to Florence, “Are you ready to go?”
“Yes.”
John stood. “I thank the both of you for helping. I’ll go to the police station now and give them the name of that nurse and they can look into the whole thing.”
“Very well.”
The elderly ladies said goodbye to John and Connie and then left the house.
“She was very rude, Ettie,” Florence said when they were a distance from the house.
“I know. I don’t know why she had to be so hostile.”
“She’s probably sick of the sight of us.”
They got back into Florence’s buggy and then Florence took Ettie home.
“Are you coming inside?” Ettie asked Florence.
“I would, but I remembered I put washing on this morning and I need to hang it out to dry.”
When Ettie got back inside her house, Elsa-May was waiting for her with news.
“Sit down, Ettie. I have something to tell you.”
Ettie sat down on her usual couch. “What is it?”
“While you were out, I had a visitor, Jennifer Byler. She was concerned about me not being at the funeral and thought I was unwell. Which I was, but I’m better now.”
“Go on.”
“It turns out that Jennifer knows someone who knows Connie, Lousy Levi’s daughter-in-law.”
Ettie leaned forward. “And?”
“Connie isn’t happy with John because he’s a gambler, and he’s frittered away their life savings.” Elsa-May looked pleased with herself.
“Is that all?”
Elsa-May’s lower jaw jutted out. “Don’t you see, Ettie? What do gamblers need?”
“Money?”
“How much money?”
“A lot?”
“Exactly.” Elsa-May raised a finger in the air. “The last time Lousy Levi was talking to John, wouldn’t he have mentioned the money that Eric gave him? Wouldn’t he have discussed it with him whether to put it in a bank or leave it there in the haus somewhere?”
“Ah, I see where you’re going with this. You think John stole the money?”
“He could’ve taken the money thinking he’d put it back before Levi noticed it missing. He might never have intended to actually steal it in that sense. He would’ve seen it as borrowing the money hoping to win more, but then maybe he gambled it away and had no way of repaying it.”
Ettie nodded. “And he’d have been doing this without Lousy Levi knowing.”
“Of course. Lousy Levi would’ve had no idea,” Elsa-May said.
Ettie sighed. “And what if John discovered he could never repay it and then he decided to kill two birds with one stone? If he killed his father and made out someone else stole the money, or perhaps made people think it never existed, John could get even more money by selling the orchard.”
“Exactly, but the only thing is, John doesn’t seem like a killer.”
“No one ever does,” Ettie said. “Killers can be just like regular people.”
“I guess he never got along with his vadder, but that doesn’t mean he’d kill him.”
Ettie shook her head. “Nee, it doesn’t seem like it would be true.”
“Okay. It was just a thought.” Elsa-May shrugged her shoulders. “What did you do today?”
“We visited Eric and then John. Eric showed us a copy of the receipt for the eighty thousand dollars and then we went to John’s house, and his wife nearly kicked us out.”
Elsa-May’s eyebrows rose. “She probably knows he killed his father.”
Ettie ignored Elsa-May’s suggestion. “We did mention the possibility that the nurse might have taken the money. It had never occurred to him.”
“If he’s guilty, you’ve just given him someone else to blame.” Elsa-May shook her head. “That poor nurse.”
Ettie said, “We don’t know anything for sure yet. Connie might be the guilty one.”
“I know for sure that I’m hungry.”
“I’ll make you some soup.”
“Denke, Ettie. I’m still not feeling the best.”
Ettie put a ham bone in a large pot to boil, then spread out vegetables on the table, and sat down to scrape the skins and cut them into small pieces. As she cut the vegetables, she thought about Lousy Levi and the conditions surrounding his death.
Later, when the soup was simmering, she walked down the road to the shanty where the phone was housed and called Morrie to deliver a message to Florence to come to their place for dinner. If the three sisters put their heads together, they might be able to work some things out.