Chapter Twenty-Two
Stepping into the one-room schoolhouse sent me back sixty years to the time when I was a child in Harvest. I went to school in the very same building for eight years, first through eighth grade, after which my formal education stopped. Kip, Uriah, and Ruth had all been students there at the same time. We grew up together. We learned together. My teacher had been Miss Beachy. I’d heard that she had died while I was taking care of my sister in Michigan.
When I was a child, Miss Beachy seemed so grown up to me, but the truth was she was no more than seven or eight years older than I was. She was a child teaching children. She was the teacher of the school until I finished eighth grade. After my class finished school, she married, and married women could not be teachers in Amish schools. They were too busy caring for their homes and families.
Lois whistled under her breath. “I knew when I came back to Holmes County that a lot wouldn’t have changed. It’s the nature of the place, but I never expected anything to be exactly the same. This looks just like it did when we were kids.”
When we were young, Lois had visited me at the school a few times. Her school and mine had separate holidays. Miss Beachy, who was a kind-hearted woman, always welcomed Lois into the classroom. In fact, I think everyone in the school liked to see her, because Lois, by her very nature, was distracting. When she was around, it was difficult for the teacher and the students to stay focused on their lessons. The only person I could remember who wasn’t thrilled when Lois popped into the school was Ruth. Ruth had been prim and proper even when she was a child.
“Can I help you?” a young man asked as he stepped into the school. He was a thick-set man with curly brown hair that didn’t appear to take well to the Amish bowl haircut. His curls stood up in all directions. In the pocket of his plain, button-down shirt was a pair of round eyeglasses. He removed those from his pocket and perched them high on the bridge of his nose.
“I hope you can,” I said. “We are looking for Isaiah Keim.”
He adjusted his glasses and glanced at Lois, who was clearly out of place in this one-room Amish schoolhouse, and then back to me. “I’m Isaiah. Are you here about one of the children in my school? Are you the grossmaami to one of the children? The children all have gone home for lunch but should be back within the hour for afternoon lessons.”
“Nee,” I said. “I’m Millie Fisher and this is my—”
“Driver,” Lois burst in. “I’m her driver. Been working the Amish taxi service for several months now. It’s the best job I’ve ever had.”
“Oh,” the timid man said. He didn’t ask, but I knew he must have been wondering why my driver had come into the schoolhouse with me. There were many Amish taxi drivers in Holmes County. When we say Amish taxi driver, we don’t mean the traditional yellow cab taxies that someone might see in a big city. Instead, they were Englischers, usually retired men, who were on call to the Amish and who trundled them around the county when buggies, walking, and bicycles were impractical. Most of the drivers stayed with the car when the Amish person was at a doctor’s appointment or shopping. None that I knew actually went into the final destination with the Amish person.
Isaiah turned back to me. “I know who you are. You’re the matchmaker, aren’t you?”
“She sure is,” Lois said. “She’s the best matchmaker in the village, no, in the county, no, in the state!” She pumped her fist in the air as if that helped her make her point.
“Okay, Lois,” I said. “I do appreciate the vote of confidence.”
Isaiah frowned. “I thought you were the driver.”
Lois narrowed her eyes. “Oh, just because I can drive a car, does that mean I don’t have a right to give my opinion on Millie’s matchmaking skills?”
“I—I don’t know,” Isaiah mumbled.
Lois had a way of intimidating people. Apparently, that included being able to intimidate an Amish schoolteacher. Knowing Lois, she took great pride in this.
“What’s the village matchmaker doing in my school? My students are far too young to be looking for a match.” The schoolteacher pulled at his collar.
Some of his students were fourteen. And although they were too young to be thinking about marriage, he must be kidding himself if he thought that no flirting was happening in his schoolyard. Adolescence had changed quite a bit since I was young, but romance remained the same.
“I wanted to talk to you about Ben Baughman.”
The friendly expression dissolved from his face, and I realized my error. Perhaps I should have been less blunt in my approach.
“I don’t have anything to say about Ben. I’m sorry that he died, of course, but I hardly knew him. I don’t know what you expect to learn about him from me.”
“But you know Tess Lieb well,” I said. I didn’t state it as a question because there was no doubt in my mind that he was interested in courting Tess.
He frowned. “I’ve known her my whole life. We are the same age and in the same district.”
Lois put her hands on her hips. “Did you look at Ben as a rival?”
He blinked at her. “A rival? A rival for what? I told you that I hardly knew him.”
“A rival for Tess,” Lois said.
He shook his head. “Nee. Ben and I were not in competition to court Tess. I will admit that I cared about her, but when it was clear we weren’t a good match, I left it at that. That’s what all respectable men should do.”
“Why weren’t you a good match?” I asked.
“Because her family needed her help. Now was not the time for her to be looking for a match. I told her that. When I did, she ran to Ben. The girl is desperate to get married.” He sniffed. “I don’t find desperation attractive in the least.”
“Her family needed her to move to Wyoming to help her aunt.”
“I see you already know about it.” He frowned. “I respected her father’s wishes. I care about Tess very much, but there was no reason to press my attentions on her when her daed was against it. In fact, that would be going against everything I believe in. I teach the children in my classroom to respect their parents and do as they are told. They need to learn to mind adults, parents, teachers, and all others who are older and wiser than they.”
“I thought the point of education was to help children learn and have critical thinking skills so that they can make their own choices,” Lois said.
His face was pinched. “Maybe in the Englisch world. The Amish world is different.”
“Don’t I know it,” Lois said.
I put my hand on Lois’s arm, hoping that it would warn her not to offend the suspect.
“So Tobias said ‘no’ and that was that.” Lois wrinkled her nose. “Not very romantic if you ask me.”
“I will not lie. I did have some hard feelings. It was right after Tobias told me his decision to send Tess to Wyoming. I was crushed. I really was, but I was respectful. That same night I went to a social.” His face reddened. “And I saw Ben and Tess holding hands when they were sitting next to each other. How could she tell me that she wanted me to court her and that she wanted to marry me, and then find another suitor so soon?”
“Did you do anything about it?”
“Nee, I would never cause a scene. I have to think of my students first. I can’t set a bad example for them. If Tess had so quickly found another man to court with, then that could only mean that she was not my match after all. It only confirmed something I had thought for some time.”
“Why were you already suspicious?” I asked. “Did she say something?”
He frowned. “She was just too eager. If she had her way, we would have been married by now. I wanted to take things slower. I also knew that when I married, I would have to give up being a teacher at the school. I didn’t want to quit in the middle of the school year. That would be disruptive to the children. The earliest I would marry was next June, when school was finished. She didn’t like that idea at all.” He looked down. “I suspect that was when she started to look for another suitor.”
“Mr. Keim!” a little boy shouted as he ran into the school. “Maam sent you some apple cake!”
Another young boy ran into the school, followed by three other young students.
“Now if you will excuse me,” Isaiah said. “The children are back.” He walked away from us, taking the cake from the boy’s hand and thanking him. All of the children crowded around their teacher. It was clear that they loved him.
A little girl walked up to Lois. “How do you get your hair to stand straight up like that?”
“Have you ever heard of Aquanet?” Lois asked.
The girl gave her a confused look.
“Let’s leave Mr. Keim and his pupils,” I said to Lois. “You enjoy your studies,” I told the girl as I pulled Lois toward the door. When we stepped outside, we stumbled into my two grandnephews, Micah and Jacob.
Micah grinned. “Are you here to tell me that I can have the goats?”
Micah had been trying to adopt Peter and Phillip for weeks. Ever since he had begun training them to participate in the goat show at the flea market, his desire to keep the goats for himself had only grown stronger.
“You know that your maam would not want the goats at the greenhouse. They would eat all the plants.”
He folded his arms over his thin chest.
“Aenti Millie,” Jacob said. “What are you doing at our school? Is everything all right? We were just at the greenhouse and had lunch with Maam.”
I patted Jacob’s shoulder. He was the oldest of Edith’s three children. His father had died four years ago when the children were small. When he was seven years old, Jacob had to take the place of the man of the house. He was a worrier as a result, and moved through the world with responsibility heavy on his slight shoulders. His brother Micah was only a year younger than he but felt none of that strain. At least none that he outwardly exhibited. It was a pity that we couldn’t erase that worry from my eldest grandnephew, but his sense of responsibility would serve him well as he grew older. The boy was smart and very attentive.
“Everything is fine, Jacob. Lois and I were just having a chat with your teacher about a friend.”
“What friend is that?” he asked with concern.
“I bet it’s aenti’s friend who died in the flea market fire. A lady was talking to Maam about it at the greenhouse,” Micah said.
Jacob scowled at his brother. “Maam said not to mention that to aenti because it might make her sad.”
I patted the shoulders of both boys. “It’s all right. Ben was my friend, and I am sad that he died. Whether or not you speak of it doesn’t change anything.”
More children came up the path and went into the schoolhouse.
“You had better run. It looks like class is starting.”
“Can you stay, Aenti?” Micah asked. “It would be so much fun if you stayed with us at school today.”
“Nee, I would only distract you from your studies,” I said. “You need to pay attention to your lessons.”
Isaiah stepped out of the school and rang his large school bell over his head, signaling the start of afternoon classes. Jacob grabbed his younger brother’s wrist and pulled him toward the school.
“Bye, Aenti Millie,” Micah called as he went into the school. “Sorry your friend died!”
Isaiah watched the two boys go into the building, glared at Lois and me, and then slammed the school door closed as if to make a point. I believed his point was “keep out!”
Lois frowned at the closed school door. “What’s your takeaway from that?”
I glanced at her. “That Isaiah Keim is a gut teacher and cares about his students.”
She nodded. “I’m thinking the same.”
“And I can’t see that kind young man having anything to do with Ben’s death. Isaiah didn’t see him as a threat.”
“Maybe,” Lois said. “Or he is a great actor. I hate to admit that I liked him. I would be sorely disappointed if he turned out to be a killer. I hate when that happens to nice men.”
As we walked back to the car, I couldn’t get out of my head what Isaiah had said about Tess just wanting to get married—and that it didn’t matter who she married.
“What do you think of him for Charlotte Weaver?” Lois suggested and she unlocked the car.
I blinked at her. I hadn’t been thinking about Charlotte at all, so it took a moment for me to adjust my thoughts.
“Charlotte Weaver and Isaiah Keim?” I asked.
Isaiah was a conservative and thoughtful young man. He took his job of teaching seriously, and I knew he would take everything else in his life just as seriously. That might not be a fit for Charlotte. Charlotte was a free spirit and for the last few years had straddled the fence as to whether or not she would be baptized into the Amish faith. Months ago, she’d asked me if I would help her find a match, but I think that had more to do with the fact that she was actually matched very well with Deputy Little, an Englischer and sheriff’s deputy to boot, than her wanting to marry an Amish man. Charlotte was afraid of her match because of what it would mean for her future. Deputy Little wasn’t the ideal match for Charlotte, because marrying him would force her to leave the Amish.
“I don’t think that would be very fair to Isaiah,” I responded. “And we didn’t come here to match Charlotte Weaver,” I said.
“No,” Lois conceded. “But sleuthing is all about multitasking. That’s what I learned from our last case.”
I wanted to ask her what she meant by that, but then I thought better of it. Sometimes it was best to ruminate on Lois’s ideas before I said anything. Many times, she turned out to be in the right.
“Where to next?” Lois asked. “I promised Darcy I would be back at the café for the dinner rush.”
“Let’s make one more stop and then quit for the day. I think we are both tired and have a lot to think about.”
“You can say that again,” Lois said. “Where are we headed?”
“The lumberyard,” I replied.