Upon A Winter's Night Read online

  “Ya, once to see the new kittens, the same reason Sandra was probably up there. Josh said she loves cats and wanted to see them.”

  “Did she? Josh told you that, huh? When were you up in the loft, and were you alone?”

  “No. Josh was showing the kittens to me. Let’s see, today’s Wednesday. It was—I think it was last Thursday.”

  “That would be November 29,” he said, writing even that down. “Did the ladder seem steady to you when you climbed it? Did it shake or tip?”

  “It seemed steady.”

  Her voice was quavering. She was afraid she was going to get sick to her stomach. She told him in a rush, “That Leo Lowe I told Ray-Lynn about was angry with Sandra as well as with me.”

  “I remember that, and that he was lurking in this area. I’ll find him and talk to him. Calm down now. I’ll be having a chat with several folks in town who had run-ins with Ms. Myerson in case this is not an accidental death. Coroner will rule on the cause ASAP.”

  “Will you be talking to Mayor Connor Stark?”

  He glanced up and looked her straight in the eye. “Who told you he had a run-in with her?”

  “Bess mentioned it tonight.”

  “Anyone tell you before tonight?”

  “Actually, it was Ray-Lynn.”

  “That right? Then I must have been the source for that, and I’ll have to have a chat with her about what to say and not to say.” He leveled another stern look at her, then looked back at his notes.

  That was a good thing because Lydia could feel herself beginning a blush. What if he thought she was withholding information? The last thing she wanted to do was get Ray-Lynn in trouble or Connor, either, but should she tell the sheriff about how Connor had threatened the two caretakers who had worked for the Starks? Still, she didn’t want to upset Bess, who had been so kind to help tonight.

  But now that she was thinking clearly again, Lydia realized getting Ray-Lynn and Connor in trouble was the least of her worries. The worst would be if her parents learned why Sandra came to visit in the first place. But she might have to admit that publicly so it didn’t look like Sandra just came to see Josh, maybe to start up their relationship again, which could have panicked or angered him.

  Her mind raced. The sheriff might interview Hank, who could mention how upset Josh was with Sandra lately, how he’d yelled at her over Hank’s phone when they visited Hillside. After all, Josh and Sandra had some sort of emotional past, and he still had a bad habit of losing his temper. But surely, surely, Josh couldn’t have a thing to do with Sandra’s death.

  14

  “You’re late,” Ray-Lynn greeted her husband at the back door of their mudroom. “I thought you said you’d be coming home early, and I was worried.”

  He hugged her hard—no kiss—then pulled away to hang up his utility belt. It didn’t take much to realize he was really upset.

  “Something big came up, and I didn’t have time to call you,” he said. “Sandra Myerson’s dead. She evidently fell off a twelve-foot-high loft or a ladder at the Yoder barn and broke her neck. Least that’s the early guess—and my hope that’s all that happened.”

  “That’s terrible! You—you don’t mean it could be a suspicious death?”

  “Dang it, Ray-Lynn, you’re starting to think like me. If it turns out that way, you’ll probably be the first to know—and not because I told you. That gab ’n’ gossip you got going in the restaurant’s better than using Google online.”

  “You sound angry with me.” She put her hands on her hips, then just crossed them over her breasts. But after he untied his shoes and kicked them off, she rubbed his back lightly. His muscles felt like carved wood.

  “Not exactly, just angry in general,” he muttered, his back still to her. “It’s really gonna hit the fan tomorrow—outside law enforcement, media, and at this time of year. Better get some more food into the Dutch Farm Table ’cause the swarms of meddlers will be there with cameras a hundred times bigger than Sandra Myerson’s and questions that make her annoying Q and A in the restaurant seem like nothing.”

  “You keep coming back to that. Jack, the so-called restaurant gab ’n’ gossip is not only a big part of our livelihood but our outreach to the community. More than once, gab ’n’ gossip I’ve related to you has helped you solve a crime and helped me help others.”

  She followed him into the kitchen. She’d tried to keep his dinner warm, then had put it in the fridge. Taking it out now, she placed it in the microwave and punched in the time. Of course, he was upset, but she was, too. He knew when he married her that her relationships at the restaurant—the hospitality at the restaurant itself—meant everything to her. And she was helping him, not hurting him, by what she learned there. Couldn’t his job be part of their partnership as much as hers was?

  “Aw, I know the benefits and blessings of the restaurant, honey,” he said as if he’d read her mind. He almost collapsed into his chair at the table, stretching his back with his arms over his head. Despite the cold weather outside, he’d been sweating under his armpits. Nervous? Was he upset he had to, no doubt, grill Josh?

  Lowering his arms and shaking his head, he said, “I’m just ticked off you hear some stuff before I do, that’s all. Between the privacy the Amish cling to and this young woman’s death, which is now gonna be breaking news—and break up this community in this supposed season of joy...”

  “I know. It makes me sick, for Lydia, too. It makes Victoria Keller’s loss seem small next to a young woman’s death. Josh wasn’t with her when she fell, was he?”

  “He says no, that he was outside. Lydia found her, and that’s bad news in more ways than one.”

  “That poor girl! She’d put such trust in Sandra, who turned out to be a Jekyll and Hyde.”

  He braced his elbows on the table and his head in his hands, not even moving when the microwave dinged and she put the hot plate of meat loaf, hash browns and creamed corn in front of him. Then, to her surprise and relief, he hooked one arm around her waist to hold her where she was, next to his chair.

  In a softer voice, he said, “Sandra’s take-no-prisoners approach to interviewing around here gives me a too-long list of persons of interest if there’s any hint it’s a murder and not an accident. I hope the Lord is especially tuned into prayers near Christmastime. I swear, I’m gonna outpray the Amish on this one.”

  “Because, if it was foul play, you’ll have to look at Josh.”

  “And Lydia,” he said, starting to pick at his food.

  “What? No, you can’t—”

  “Shh, sweetheart. Here I go scolding you for knowing too much, and I’m still unloading on you. I gotta get me a new deputy in here so you and I can have more time—time where we’re not talking about crimes. Sorry I blew up about the restaurant, but it just bugs me you know more than I do sometimes, and I know you’ve held things back.”

  “Only if I’ve promised someone.” Without even being asked, she got him a beer and upcapped it. She put it down in front of him. “Glass for that, handsome?”

  “No, I’m fine, and I’ll be fine. Thanks, honey.”

  She sat catty-corner from him, leaning forward. “The thing is, Jack, if some of my sources thought I ran right to you, I’d never hear a thing.”

  “I just don’t want info flowing in the other direction—stuff I tell you.”

  “I don’t. I wouldn’t! I kept my cool when you said the restaurant was a gab ’n’ gossip place, but— I don’t know why I thought I could be a small-town sheriff’s wife!”

  He raised his voice, too. “Lydia admitted to me you told her that Connor threw Sandra out of their little chat and then I got her for speeding.”

  “Lydia and I are becoming friends and, I guess, that just came out. Okay, I don’t tell you everything, but you don’t tell me everything, either. We have to work together to—”

  “To make this marriage work,” he cut in, grabbing her wrist before she could jump up from the table. “I want us to have lot
s of time together, but one more problem. You’ll have to take me off the Living Christmas Pageant committee at church. Folks will understand. Besides, you’ll do things just fine with it, and I’ll still try to provide security from six to nine.”

  “I understand,” she assured him, but she wished things wouldn’t have to be so tense—and at Christmas. “Eat your food while it’s hot.” She squeezed his shoulder and stood up. Blinking back tears, she got herself a drink of water at the sink. The window above it was like a big black mirror, except for the motion light over the garage that popped on. Probably a deer had come into the edge of town, looking for scarce winter food, but she saw no deer. A human form scuttled from the shadows into the darkness.

  A neighbor out this late? The Collisters’ house next door looked dark. Could it have been her imagination? No way did she want to send Jack out there to look around. He might even think she’d made it up just to change the subject or play up the way she always told him she felt he protected her. Besides, someone could have been out for a walk and was just hurrying home. Some crazy joggers around here didn’t care if there was snow or ice underfoot.

  “Ray-Lynn?” he said, rising and coming up behind her to put his hands on her waist. “Let’s not get all uptight, okay? Sorry I brought my work home with me tonight, but it’s been a real hard day. And if Josh Yoder had anything to do with that woman’s death, it’s gonna break a lot of hearts.”

  * * *

  Lying in bed that night, Lydia wet her pillow with tears. Daad had driven his buggy over to wait for her outside the barn until the sheriff was finished interviewing her. He’d caught a chill, since he couldn’t come in. The front barn door as well as the loft and the floor where Sandra fell had been closed off with bright yellow police tape. Then Daad had insisted on taking her over to the Starks’ tree lot to get her buggy back from the workers there. And when he’d gone up to bed, after ordering her to stay away from Josh and the barn after this latest catastrophe, Mamm had started in on her as Lydia had sat at the kitchen table while Mamm had kneaded bread dough.

  “It’s a sign to you from God that you’ve defied us to work over there with that man and his animals.” Mamm’s words still rang in her ears. “You want to work with animals, marry an Amish dairy farmer. You don’t want to let Gid be your come-calling friend, you want to let the store your grandfather and father have worked to build up—with Gid’s help—slip from control of our family while you milk cows or get up at the crack of dawn to shove hens aside to take their eggs, then—”

  “Mamm,” she’d cried, “this isn’t about me. A woman is dead.”

  “Probably Josh’s woman, at least while he left our people,” Mamm went on, thumping her fist into the pile of dough, not even looking at Lydia. “Ach, and who knows why she kept coming back, and you getting more and more sweet on that man! He should go live in the world with his old friends, have electric in his house, drive a car...and get his own cell phone.”

  Lydia couldn’t help but think that she’d rather go through another talk with the sheriff instead of one with Mamm. When he’d asked her to go step-by-step through what she’d done when she arrived on Josh’s land today, she’d told him about Sandra’s car parked behind Josh’s shed. But she hadn’t told him at first that she was afraid they might be upstairs together. She had mentioned that the hood of the car—the engine, as the sheriff had put it—was still warm. To Lydia that meant Sandra and Josh could not have had much time together, even if he knew she had arrived, but Jack Freeman had not wanted to hear her theories—only what had actually happened.

  It made her wonder about his own theories. Hopefully, he believed that Josh had told the truth about not seeing Sandra until he found her dead. She prayed Josh and Sandra hadn’t argued in person like they had on the phone, maybe while they were up in the loft, looking at the kittens. If Sandra was afraid of being around the big animals, would she have gone into the barn without Josh?

  “Are you listening to me?” Mamm had demanded. “I said, you’re always going to the Starks for something or other.”

  “I saw the bread you left there for them. At this season of Christmas, you reached out to them, and that made me happy to see—”

  “Not that I wanted to go there.”

  “And you brought a loaf to Josh when I was over there. Can’t we just all get along and—”

  “Lydia, we are Amish, not Englische, not those who cuddle up to the rich and powerful. Maybe I took that bread over to the Starks—and there was Bess, so I gave it to her—because the Word says if you ‘feed your enemy, thou shalt heap coals of fire on his head. Be not overcome of evil, but overcome evil with good.’”

  “But the Starks aren’t our enemies—only different. I know their ways are not our ways, but they have been kind and—”

  “Enough said. You needed a phone fast, so you ran there. Enough said for one night or one lifetime,” she’d muttered, and turned back to making her friendship bread—yes, even late into the night—without another word.

  Now Lydia kept trying to fall asleep but she’d cried so hard she couldn’t breathe out of her nose. She reached for a tissue on her bedside table. She still couldn’t bear to tell her parents why Sandra had come to town the first time, why Lydia had gone with her to Wooster. And what had Sandra meant when she told both her and Josh that she had something else important to tell Lydia and it would best be told in person? It must have been more information on her birth parents. And shouldn’t she have told the sheriff that so he didn’t think Sandra came back here to settle an argument with Josh?

  She wiped tears away and blew her nose. Then on a whim, from under her bed she pulled out the pillow in its plastic sack, the one she’d bought the day she went to Amity to interview Mr. Raber, who had known her real father.

  Her real father... She should not think of it that way. Who could have been a more real, loving father to his Liddy than Sol Brand had been? And now, because he had waited for her in the cold and insisted she get her buggy back from Silas Kline over at the Starks’, he had evidently caught a cold. She could hear him coughing from down the hall, so Mamm would blame her for that, too.

  In the dark, Lydia let her fingers run over the stitching on the pillow she’d bought for Mamm, then decided to hold it for Christmas. Mothers Are Forever, it said, and to Lydia, in secret, it would always mean both of her mothers. She knelt again by the bed and pulled out the snow globe Daad had said belonged to her birth mother—but he’d vowed he would say no more on that. When he felt better, when things calmed down around here and the coroner declared Sandra’s death an accident, dare she ask him more about the globe? He’d said someone had dropped it off at the store, but who?

  As she shook it—though she could not see it in the dark—its smooth plastic slipped from her hand. She heard it hit the wood floor and felt the gush of its glittery liquid on her bare feet.

  “Oh, no! Oh, no! Please, Lord, no!” she whispered as she knelt and felt for it.

  Its gooey insides were in a small puddle on the floor. Feeling along, she found first the plastic dome, then its base with the hovering angel, Christmas tree and the little girl. She got back in bed, sat cross-legged and cradled the pieces on her lap. She’d fix them somehow, put water inside, glue the dome back on, even if the lost glitter never made it snow again. But could she fix the mess she’d made of things, still obsessed with learning more about her biological parents, still wanting to meet her birth mother’s Hostetler kin?

  And Josh—loving Josh, wanting Josh, believing in Josh, when so much as being near him might be even harder now.

  * * *

  Midmorning the next day, Josh saw Hank approach the back door of the barn in his truck. Right now that was the only way into the barn, but at least, because of the animals, the sheriff had not barred that door. Hank must have figured out either from the neon-colored police tape across the front of the barn or by having to honk his way through the crowd of TV trucks out front that this was the best way in.
r />   “The sheriff came by and told the reporters they’d have to stay off the property, but they’re like a swarm of wasps out there,” Hank said. “They’re staying on the road but shouting questions at me like I was the president—or at least Congresswoman Stark.” He grasped Josh by his shoulders hard—a kind of hug, he figured.

  “You know what happened?” Josh asked.

  “It’s not in the papers or on the TV yet, but it will be,” Hank told him. “Yeah, I know. Sheriff came to the house to interview me at the crack of dawn and filled me in. I told him that you told Sandra to keep away in no uncertain terms, so she shouldn’t even have been back here.”

  Josh just nodded. He hadn’t slept and he felt dizzy and weak-kneed. If Hank thought revealing that was doing him a favor, he didn’t realize it could work against him, too.

  Hank said, “One more thing you ought to know, because the sheriff does. I was saving this to tell you today.” He took out his cell phone. “He made a recording of this, but at least he didn’t confiscate my cell, ’cause we’ve got events to work on and set up today. You—you are still wanting to work, aren’t you?”

  “Sure. Why wouldn’t I be, except it’s been a long, sad night. I’m grieving not only for Sandra, but for her mother and for the friends we had in common in Columbus.”

  “Yeah, well, I’ll bet they’ll talk if those wasps out there can find them. So—so how tight were you and Sandra?”

  “She dazzled me at first. That’s the word for it. She was so different—assertive. And I’m sure I was some kind of novelty for her, too. How about that’s all I say in case the sheriff comes back for a second chat with you? But why would he want to take your cell phone?”

  “Oh, yeah, got off the track there for a sec. Because Sandra left a voice message on it for you, came in yesterday afternoon, I guess. She said— Well, here, I still got it, though, like I said, the sheriff made a copy of it.”

  Hank touched the screen to get voice mail and held it up for him. Josh shivered to hear her voice again.