Chapter 19
Rachel put a clay pot of blue and violet pansies in the center of the wrought-iron table and stood back to admire them. The day had been warm, and since George had insisted on bringing steaks to cook on the grill, she had decided to have supper outside on the porch. Hulda was throwing together her fantastic organic salad with wild greens and tiny tomatoes that she grew in her orangery, and Coyote had promised a cherry torte. Rachel’s contribution was green beans sautéed with olive oil, pecans, and garlic. She didn’t call herself a cook, but she could make decent green beans. And, of course, yesterday Ada had whipped up yeast rolls so light that they practically floated up out of the breadbasket.
Rachel centered a plate at one of the place settings. She was looking forward to an evening with friends, when she could forget about her worries for a few hours. Satisfied with the table, Rachel went back to the house for a pitcher of lemonade. As she came out onto the back porch with it, Hulda appeared, carrying a bowl of salad large enough to feed half of Stone Mill. Rachel greeted her warmly, and the two of them finished setting the table. They chatted about the weather and the price of gas until George arrived in his golf cart with Coyote sitting beside him. George was wearing his usual ball cap and a red apron that proclaimed CHEF in white lettering.
“Where’s the baby?” Mrs. Schenfeld asked. “I was hoping to get to see that sweet baby of yours.”
“Home with Daddy and the rest of them.” Coyote’s infectious smile lit up her pretty face. Her white-blond hair hung loose around her shoulders, and beaded deerskin moccasins peeped out from beneath her long gypsy skirt. Coyote was such a free spirit that it was hard for Rachel to remember she was the mother of four children. “It’s only fair he gets daddy time with all of them.” Coyote put her cherry torte on the table beside Hulda’s salad. “It was so nice of you to invite me, Rachel. I love my kids, but sometimes it’s a treat to get out of the house and the pottery shed and just talk to grown-ups.”
George kissed cheeks all around and then set about getting the steaks on. Hulda and Coyote quickly discovered their mutual love of Florence, Italian art, and growing their own herbs. Although the two hadn’t known each other well before this evening, Rachel was delighted to see how well they got along. She genuinely liked Coyote, and it pleased her to see how easily she and her family had fit into life in Stone Mill.
“I forgot the pepper,” George called over his shoulder. “Rachel, could you—”
“Sure thing. I have to get my green beans anyway.”
Coyote was pouring lemonade in the tall glasses as Rachel dashed back into the house for a pepper mill and her beans, which she had kept warm in the oven. She hurried back to George with them and watched as he seasoned the sizzling T-bones. There were only three. Coyote was an easygoing vegetarian. She didn’t eat meat, but she jokingly said she never minded watching barbarians enjoy it.
“Stand back,” George warned. “I wouldn’t want you to get burned.” He used a long-handled fork to turn the steaks. “Should be ready in the flick of a lamb’s tail.”
Rachel hesitated. She didn’t want to do anything to spoil their relaxed evening, but Buddy’s statement about George unlocking the mobile home for him the day after Willy’s disappearance kept nagging at her. “George,” she said, too quietly for Hulda and Coyote to hear. They were too busy discussing the best way to grow basil. “There’s something I’d like to ask you.”
“Sure, anything.” He smiled at her.
“You know that I’ve been talking to people who saw Willy that last day.”
He nodded.
“Well, I’m a little confused.” Butterflies fluttered in the pit of her stomach. She didn’t want to offend George or suggest that he wasn’t telling the truth when it was probably Buddy who was being less than forthcoming, but . . . “You said that you didn’t know anything about Willy evicting Buddy,” she said quietly. “But Buddy told me that Willy locked him out of his trailer that night, and that he came by your house the following morning with the money he owed Willy. He said Willy wasn’t there, so he paid you what he owed your brother.”
“Really?” George rubbed his chin. “Buddy said that?” His face flushed, either from embarrassment or from the heat of the grill.
Rachel nodded. “Buddy also said that you followed him out to his place and took the padlocks off for him so that he could get in.”
George rubbed his hands on his apron. “Gosh, Rachel. Maybe I did let Buddy in.” George hesitated, obviously trying to recall. “The truth is, I’ve been becoming more forgetful lately. Ell says I’d forget my head if it wasn’t attached.” He grimaced. “I guess I just didn’t remember.”
Rachel didn’t know what to say. She was certainly forgetful at times. Everyone was. But this was a big thing to forget.
“You know,” George mused, “my aunt had memory problems. Of course, she was in her eighties, but it got so bad that Willy and I had to hire someone to stay with her around the clock.” His brow wrinkled. “Do you think I should make an appointment with my doctor?”
“It probably wouldn’t hurt,” Rachel said. “This has been a stressful time. I’m sure it’s just that, but best to get checked out.”
“I’ll do it,” he agreed. “I’ll call tomorrow morning.”
“How long does it take you to grill three steaks?” Hulda called. “We’re starving over here.”
“They’re done!” George slid the T-bones onto a serving plate, tented them with foil, and carried them to the table.
“I didn’t think to put steak knives out,” Rachel said.
“No problem.” George grinned. “I brought my own.” He walked back to where his cart stood at the edge of the lawn. “I stuck them in the picnic basket with the . . . pepper!” he called, holding up a silver pepper mill. “I did remember it.” He chuckled. “I’ve got steak sauce, too. But, apparently, I forgot the steak knives.”
“I’ll get some out of the house,” Rachel offered. “Be right back.”
George followed her across the lawn and into the kitchen. “Just a quick visit to the boys’ room,” he said.
She waited, and when he returned, she touched his arm lightly. “There’s something else,” Rachel said.
“Yes?”
Rachel took a deep breath. “I learned that . . .” She swallowed. This was personal, and definitely not her business. “George, did you know that your brother was paying Teresa a regular sum of money every month—deposits that went on for years and years?”
The lines around George’s mouth tightened. “How did you find that out?” he asked quietly.
“Does it matter?”
His features hardened. “I suspect someone at the bank has a loose tongue. Not very professional.”
“No,” she agreed. “But considering that those deposits stopped a month before Willy’s disappearance and death, it might be something that the police should know about.”
“No, they shouldn’t.” George shook his head. “I’m stunned. I never thought . . .” His Adam’s apple bobbed, and he looked away.
“You knew?” Rachel asked with genuine surprise.
“I knew. Willy and I were always very close. There wasn’t much about him I didn’t know. I didn’t always approve of how he did things, but we never kept secrets.”
Rachel’s grip tightened on George’s arm. “Was Willy loaning Teresa money?” She wanted to ask if he thought his brother was being blackmailed, but that sounded too dramatic.
“No.” George sighed. “It was a private matter.” He removed his glasses and wiped his eyes with the back of his hand. “This isn’t the time or the place. If you just give me some time . . . to think.” He replaced his glasses; his eyes were teary. “I can assure you that there’s no need for the authorities to become involved. It had nothing to do with Willy’s death. I can promise you.”
Rachel felt her cheeks grow warm. “I didn’t mean to cause you more upset. It’s just that—”
“I understand.” He forced a wan smile. “And it will be all right.” His smile grew warmer. “Now, enough of all this fuss. Let’s get to that dinner before the steaks get cold.”
Monday morning, Rachel chatted with Fred Wright for a few minutes, exchanging pleasantries. He’d brought three men with him and promised to have the half acre fenced in maybe by the end of the day, the following day at the latest. He gave her his business card, and she headed out. She was riding out to Alvin Herschberger’s farm. This time, she went alone. He might answer her questions or he might not, but she had an idea that if she took Mary Aaron with her, they’d learn no more than they had the first time.
As she was pulling onto Alvin’s road, her cell rang. She reached for it, saw that it was George, and braked the Jeep to a stop. There was no one else in sight, not even an Amish buggy, and there were potholes in the blacktop deep enough to swallow her vehicle. Better to take the time to see what George had to say and not risk popping a tire or breaking an axle as she had last winter, taking a logging road over Stone Mountain.
“George. Hi!”
“Hi . . . dinner was lovely last night. I really enjoyed myself. Hulda is a card, and that young lady, Coyote, is certainly a wonderful addition to our town.”
“She is, isn’t she? I had a good time, too. It’s always wonderful to spend time together.”
George rattled on about the food and the conversation, then said, “Where are you?”
“On my way out to Alvin Herschberger’s farm.”
“Buying more goats?” George chuckled at his own joke.
“Hardly.” The goats had bleated and baaed all through Sunday evening’s supper. Coyote had insisted on seeing them and thought they were adorable. Rachel, not so much. She hoped she wasn’t making a mistake, having thought she could keep them.
“Listen, I’m holding you up, running on as I always do. But I did want to talk to you . . . about Willy and Teresa.”
“Okay.”
“Not on the phone, though. Could you stop by my house on your way back through town?”
“Of course,” she said.
“I need to come clean with you,” he said. “I need to do that, I realized. No more secrets between us.”
“I imagine I can be there in an hour. Would that be okay?”
“That would be fine, I just . . . I’d ask that you not mention this to anyone. Coming to talk to me about . . . you know, a delicate subject.”
She agreed, and they disconnected. As she drove, she wondered what the big secret was. It was just like George to drag out the suspense and make her wait for what might be a simple explanation. He and Hulda both. She pushed George and his secret to the back of her mind. For now, she had to concentrate on the best way to approach Alvin; she didn’t know exactly why she thought she needed to see him. It was just a feeling she had. The police thought the “Bearded A” of Willy’s journal meant Bearded Aaron. But what if it meant Bearded Alvin? If that was what it meant, would Alvin be willing to admit it?
Her dealings with the Amish were a delicate dance, and sometimes she didn’t remember all the steps. Or, maybe, she decided, she’d never known the steps in the first place.
To her pleasant surprise, Alvin was repairing a fence near the end of his driveway. His wife and children were nowhere in sight. She parked the Jeep, got out, and approached him. “Good morning,” she called cheerfully.
“Morning.”
He used English, not Deitsch, and she wondered if it was because she was wearing a flowered skirt, not her usual plain denim one. But her arms weren’t bare and she did have on her head covering. Gallantly, she charged ahead.
“How is Verna? And the children?” She wanted to get right to business, but she knew better. Good manners meant a lot among the Amish, and they hated to be rushed.
“Gut. All gut.” He concentrated on hammering an oversized staple into a fence post, securing a section of stock fencing. “Thomasina and the kids getting on all right?”
“They are. They’re in a stall in my barn right now, but I’ve got fencing going in today.”
“You need a good fence for goats.” He continued to hammer. “Otherwise, they go under or over.”
“That’s what Fred said. Fred Wright. He’s putting a fence in for me today: stockade and wire.”
“Fred builds a sound fence.” Alvin took another staple from his pocket and began to bang it in.
Rachel hesitated. “I need to talk to you, Alvin.”
“Ya? ” He turned to look at her, and she saw an uneasiness in his eyes. “What about?”
She folded her arms, taking care to stand a proper distance from him. Amish women were not nearly as dominated by men as the English liked to believe, but there were standards to uphold. “It’s about Willy,” she said. “Did you know that the police found a journal on his body?”
“Ya, I heard something like that.”
His expression was clearly that of distress. He looked as though he’d turn and run at any second. Rachel didn’t bother wondering how the Amish knew about Willy’s book. Sooner or later, they knew everything, and news could fly up and down the valley in a flash.
“Willy kept a list of all the people he meant to meet with that last day he was alive.”
Alvin’s mouth quivered.
“I think your name was in that book,” she said. She didn’t tell him it just said “Bearded A.” She was taking a chance . . . following her gut feeling. “Can you think of any reason why Willy would—”
The hammer slipped through his fingers and fell onto the ground, nearly hitting the toe of his black leatherwork shoe. “I told you I paid him the rent that day. He came and I gave him the money and he left.”
“This wasn’t about rent, Alvin. Plenty of people paid their rent that day, and their names didn’t end up in that notebook.” She watched him pick up the hammer. “Do you know why he would have written down your name?”
“Ya,” he admitted. “I do.”
“You do?”
“Money,” he said from between clenched teeth. He gripped the hammer in his hand. “I borrowed money from Willy. For the doctor bills. They threatened to take me to court if I didn’t pay, so I went to Willy. He gave me the money. Verna didn’t know. She would be ashamed. She already feels bad about us owing so much to people.”
“You really did meet him that Friday night about the borrowed money?” She couldn’t hide her surprise. It had just been a hunch.
Alvin nodded. “But I paid him the last of it. That night. He gave me a receipt.” He set the hammer on the fence post, fumbled a wallet out of his back pocket with a stack of neatly folded little pieces of paper. From the pile he extracted one. It was on a piece of lined notebook paper identical to the paper in Willy’s notebook.
He handed it to Rachel. “See. ‘Paid,’ it says. ‘Paid in full, with interest.’ ” A muscle twitched in his cheek. “Twenty-four percent. High, but just a handshake I give him. And . . .” He trailed off. “I wish you would say nothing of this to my wife . . . or my neighbors.”
“I won’t,” Rachel promised.
Finally, he lifted his gaze to meet hers. “It proves that I had no part in his death, doesn’t it?” he said quietly.
“Ya,” Rachel agreed, switching to their common dialect. “It proves that you are an honest man who thinks only of his family.”
Back in her Jeep, headed into town, Rachel thought about Willy’s journal. After speaking with Alvin, she was convinced that the reference to “Bearded A” meant Willy intended to collect the money Alvin had borrowed from him. Her first impulse was to go right to Evan and tell him what she’d learned from Alvin. But that would mean violating Alvin’s trust. If he didn’t want his wife to know he owed Willy money, he certainly didn’t want Evan or the police or anyone else to know. So even though she was convinced this was proof that Aaron wasn’t the man the police were looking for, she couldn’t provide the evidence to the police. She still had to figure out who had killed Willy.
The smartest thing for her to do was to track down the other entries in Willy’s journal. Maybe one of them would lead her to the killer. “Fencing Fred” was the next entry to check on; she was almost sure it referred to Fred Wright. There was an easy way to find out.
She pulled over and fished his business card out of her bag. He answered on the third ring.
“Hi, it’s Rachel Mast.”
“Hey, Rachel. Hope you didn’t change your mind because this baby’s going up fast. Got a new auger that digs a heck of a deep hole fast.”
“No, no, it’s fine, Fred.” A horse and buggy approached her from the opposite direction. “I was calling because I have a crazy question to ask you.”
“Okay. Shoot.”
“Did you see Willy O’Day that Friday that he disappeared? It would have been October first.”
“Nope.”
A sense of disappointment and frustration washed over her. “You didn’t?” She frowned. Waved to the family that passed her in the buggy. “You’re sure?”
“Positive.”
She groaned inwardly. So much for her clever guess. “Well, thanks for—”
“I’m positive,” he interrupted, “because we were supposed to meet. Out on his property next to Aaron Hostetler’s. His real estate guy suggested he’d have a better chance selling the place if he fenced in the pond.”
“Okay . . .” she said drawing out the word. “But you didn’t meet with him?”
“Nope. My mom fell and broke her hip. Got the call in the middle of the night. Flew out of Harrisburg at six. My wife called and cancelled the appointment. Willy rescheduled for the following Wednesday.” He paused. “But of course, by then, he’d gone missing.”
“Thank you,” Rachel said excitedly. “Thanks so much. You’ve been a huge help.”
“I have?”
“You have.”
Disconnecting, she dropped the phone into her lap, feeling very satisfied. She started the Jeep and pulled back onto the road. There were two entries left: “stamp collecting” and “Sophia Loren.” Neither made any sense. A hobby and a silver screen star . . . Willy had been no stamp collector. She knew that for a fact because they’d once had a conversation about hobbies, and he’d made a point of telling her how ridiculous hobbies were.
Stamp collecting . . .
Stamps . . .
For a few minutes she drove along, enjoying the sunshine and warm air. It came to her out of nowhere.
Stamp collecting . . . postage stamps . . . post office? she mused.
She was almost back to town. She wondered if she should stop at the post office. But George was expecting her. Instead, she ignored the law and used her phone while driving. She activated the voice commands on her iPhone and called directory assistance. She was quickly connected with the Stone Mill post office. The postmistress, who had been postmistress since Rachel was a little girl, answered the phone.
Rachel moved quickly through the pleasantries and then said, “Cora, do you happen to remember if Willy O’Day came into the post office the day he disappeared?”
“Sure do,” she answered pleasantly.
Rachel hesitated. “So . . . he did or he didn’t?”
“Came in that morning.”
“He came to the post office that morning?” she echoed. She couldn’t believe her luck. Or believe that she’d been clever enough to figure it out.
“Sure did. Bought two books of American flag stamps. I remember because it was the last time I ever saw Willy. He complained about tripping on the doormat as he came in. Bought his stamps and left.”
Stamp collecting . . . he was collecting his stamps.
“Thanks so much, Cora!”
Rachel was still smiling to herself when she parked on George’s cobblestone drive a few minutes later. Getting out of her Jeep, she walked past the stairs that led up to Ell’s apartment and rang the bell at the back door. Inside, Sophie began to bark. George and Willy’s gray stone house was of the same era as her own, a tribute to early settlers of wealth and vision. And next to Stone Mill House, it was her favorite structure in the valley.
“Rachel, come in,” George called.
She opened the screen door and stepped into the cool, shadowy kitchen. “Good morning.”
Sophie bounced into the kitchen, barking so loudly that George had to repeat himself for Rachel to hear him.
“In here.” George’s voice echoed over the flagstone floor and the heavy oak beams. “In the great room.”
She passed through the dining room, with its massive, antique German furniture and worn but still lush Kerman carpet. Sophie followed, keeping up her steady barking. “George?”
George stepped through the archway and took her hands. Sophie danced between them, then around them, bark, bark, barking.
“Thank you for coming. I’m sorry I was so . . . last night. I should have . . .”
He held her hands between his and looked into her eyes. “I can’t stand it anymore, Rachel.” He let go of her hands and looked away. “I have to confess.”