Tanisha inhaled the earthy scent of the cheese shop. “I must buy some for my mom. She loves Amish cheese. It might make up for me coming down here and not spending every waking minute with the fam.” She picked up a basket and fell into line with the other English shoppers taste-testing the cheeses from the room-long, open-air coolers. “Horseradish.” She popped it into her mouth. “Wow, that has a kick.” She scooted closer to me. “Who are we looking for?”
“The girl stocking the mustard display.”
Tee whipped her head around and examined Debbie Stutzman, a tall and thin Amish girl with a slightly slumped posture, the kind often found in girls who wished they were shorter.
I poked her. “Can you be a little more subtle?”
“No need to be subtle. She already knows you’re here. She’s glaring at you. What did you do for her to dislike you so much?”
I sighed. “Got her arrested.”
“What?” Tee yelped.
“Shh, it’s a long story, and I’m not going to tell it to you here,” I hissed.
“Fair enough.” Tee started in Debbie’s direction. “I think Mom would like some Amish mustard too.”
I suppressed a groan and followed her.
Debbie crossed her bony arms. “What do you want?”
I wasn’t surprised by the cold reception, considering that the last time I saw Debbie she was being handcuffed and read her rights by Chief Rose.
When I didn’t answer right away, she said, “I know you’re not here to buy cheese.”
Tanisha shook her head. “We are. I’m making a gift basket for my mother. A belated Christmas gift. I have horseradish in here. What mustard do you recommend to go with that?”
Debbie appraised Tee with her small eyes. “I wouldn’t put any mustard with it. It has enough bite on its own.”
“You’re right about that,” Tanisha agreed.
“I see you have Amish Swiss in your basket. Our natural mustard will go well with that.” Debbie, now more relaxed, removed a four-ounce jar from the shelf.
“That’s not much,” Tee said.
“It will last you a long time. It’s not like mustard from the supermarket where you have to slather it on to taste it.” She opened the taster jar, dipped a tiny white plastic spoon into it, and then handed the spoon to Tanisha. “Try it.”
Tee placed the spoon in her mouth and her eyes watered. “Wow! Now that’s a kick.” Tee put two jars into her basket.
“Debbie, Tanisha is here to shop, but I want to talk to you about Katie Lambright.”
Debbie fixed a hair pin that was falling out of her prayer cap. “Are you wearing a wire today?”
I cringed. “No.”
“Is that police chief with you?”
I shook my head. “We heard that Katie worked here.”
Debbie’s expression was hooded. “She did, but she quit almost six months ago.”
Six month ago. Why hadn’t Jason mentioned that?
“Was she a friend of yours?” Tanisha asked while adding a jar of corn relish to her basket. At this rate her mother, who could not cook to save her life, would have a full Amish pantry.
Debbie glanced at her. She seemed more open to talk to Tee, and that was fine with me. I understood her hesitation around me. “We were friendly, but we weren’t close friends. Katie was always more interested in boys than in girlfriends. There was also a new Amish boy coming around the shop hoping to court her. She was a very pretty girl, so it’s no surprise. When word got around the county she had broken up with Caleb King, it was the worst. There wasn’t a moment of peace in the shop with all the hopeful young men dropping by. It didn’t last long though. She moved on to Nathan Garner within a few weeks.”
“Why did she quit?” Tanisha asked, taking the lead in questioning.
She shrugged. “I don’t know. I told you we didn’t talk much unless it was about work, and there is only so much you can say about cheese. She worked here a long time, nearly five years.” She pushed her cart away from the mustard display and in front of the Colby and cheddar cheeses.
Tanisha sniffed a wedge of white cheddar. “Did she find another job?”
“I don’t know.” She stacked Colby cheese in a pile on a bed of plastic grass. “I always thought she left because of that Englischer who hung around the shop. He seemed to make her nervous.”
Jason.
“What was his name?” I asked.
Debbie shot me a dirty look. “I heard her call him Jason once.”
Tanisha added a small round of Colby to her basket. “Did she ever say anything about him?”
Debbie shook her head. “Nee, but most days when it was near to closing time, he waited for her outside in his car. She was always extra nervous when the Englischer was around. She became clumsy, dropping jars and baskets or tripping over her own two feet when he was outside.”
“Would she have confided in anyone here at the shop about him?”
She shook her head. “Like I said, she didn’t really talk to any of the ladies. She was quiet.”
Debbie straightened the cheddar on the bed of artificial grass. “Mr. Umble, who owns the cheese shop, got tired of the Englischer standing around outside of his shop. One day last summer he went out to confront the boy. He told him that he wasn’t allowed to park in front of the cheese shop anymore. Didn’t make much of a difference. The Englischer just moved his car to a spot by the square where he could continue to watch the store. It was unnerving. I didn’t like to go out there by myself when he was watching. Katie quit a week after that.”
Debbie peered into Tanisha’s basket. “You have some good stuff there, but have you tried the mint-chocolate cheese?”
Tanisha’s eyes glowed. “Mint-chocolate cheese? Tell me more.”
“Follow me.” Debbie led Tee across the room to the specialty sweet cheeses.
I stayed by the mustard. Debbie’s account of Jason wasn’t meshing with the awkward teen that Tanisha and I questioned at the market. Was he a goofy kid head over heels in love with an Amish girl? Or a crazy stalker? Had I been wrong about him? I hurried over to Debbie and Tanisha, my friend’s basket so full of cheese and other Amish foods she could barely lift it. Debbie grinned ear to ear as she rung up the sale.
We loaded all the cheese Tanisha bought into my car. “I kind of feel bad that your visit has turned into a murder investigation.”
Tanisha shrugged. “I don’t mind.”
“Well, I do. Can you stay an hour longer than planned?”
“Maybe,” she said with a grin. “What are we going to do?”
“It’s a surprise. First we need to go back to the house and change into warmer clothes, and then we pick up the Troyer kids.”