Finding Mercy Page 18

  “Good food, ya?” Grossmamm Ruth interrupted his agonizing as she pointed at his roast beef and mashed potatoes. He hadn’t realized he’d stopped eating. They’d already hit the salad bar where he and Ella had eaten heaping plates of everything from coleslaw to pasta. Nerves, he thought. He knew people who quit eating when they were upset but he—and shapely Ella, so easy and natural with her beautiful body—reacted just the other way.

  “It’s all delicious,” he said, digging in again. He had to stop frowning off into the distance, studying people who came into the room they were seated in. The place held six hundred, Grossmamm had said, so he couldn’t check out everyone if he had a year here. Even though it was off-season in late June, the place was doing well with a mix of tourists and locals.

  “Here we thought we’d find a ghost town,” Ella said as she polished off her meat loaf. “I mean, the town is pretty quiet, especially in the evening, but the restaurants keep bringing outsiders in.”

  “Yeah,” Alex said. “Good for Yoder’s, but a concern for us. I’m still tempted to get myself a clown costume to hide out.”

  “Not for you,” Grossmamm said as if he’d meant that. “You got a serious streak in you, I’ll bet even if you didn’t have current problems. You’d make a better Amish man than a clown.”

  “Actually,” Alex said, lowering his voice, though the restaurant buzz would keep anyone from eavesdropping, “I don’t think I’m passing myself off very well as Amish.”

  Ella put in, “It’s just your talk and some of your beliefs, or lack thereof, which come out. After knowing some of us, you don’t think we’re all alike, do you?”

  “No way. Different personalities, different preferences and desires.”

  “Right,” Ella said with a decisive nod. “But built on our faith, so whatever happens, there is nothing to fear.”

  He sighed. “Ultimately, but that’s hard to keep calm about when someone wants you dead and has the means to achieve it. Let’s talk about this later, in private.”

  “Fine,” Ella said. “Then let’s go back to the fact that even though this isn’t totally a ghost town right now, we’re blessed to be here.”

  Man, Ella was tenacious, Alex thought. But she was right. Yet, if someone did find him again, the collateral damage could still be two of the dearest women he’d ever known, one who treated him like her own grandson and the other—damn, he wanted Ella desperately but had to protect her by just loving her from afar, not making love to her. Love! To even think that, was he absolutely, stark raving nuts?

  “It’s a ghost town for me, always,” Grossmamm said with tears in her eyes. “Ever since he died, I picture my dear husband, Gid—Gideon, his name was—here with me. At Yoder’s or in the square when we played shuffleboard, or walking the beaches, even just sitting in our little backyard under our citrus trees. Sure, at home in Ohio too, but there were so many others to care for around us then. It’s here in Florida, which he loved so in the winter, that my memories haunt me, like he’s a ghost here, even in this summer ghost town.”

  She sighed and her usual upright posture seemed to wilt. Ella reached out to take her grandmother’s hand the same moment Alex grasped her other one. That was, Alex thought, the most at one time the old woman had said since the night she more or less ordered them to flee to Florida. Had she hoped to find good memories of her husband here but had found sadness instead? If he could go back to his past life, would it be that way for him, in the crowded streets of New York? He’d been changed forever. Would SoHo no longer seem like home? Would he be haunted by the ghosts of his past there—especially Ella?

  “So, have we saved room for pie?” their petite Mennonite server asked with a smile, jolting them back to the here and now.

  “Oh, sure,” Grossmamm said, making an obvious effort to perk up. “I’ll have strawberry, long as it’s not made with that red gelatin stuff.”

  “No, ma’am, not here at Yoder’s. All berries—with a bit of thickening.”

  “Cornstarch, flour or tapioca thickening?” the old woman asked. Alex saw Ella roll her eyes.

  “I think cornstarch.”

  “Fine then, with whipped cream.”

  “That sounds good to me too,” Ella said only.

  Alex put in, “Make that three.”

  “See!” Grossmamm said, patting his hand as their server hurried away. “Sometimes you think just like us. Oh, ya, I think you would make a good Amish man, really Amish, not just in disguise. Then you could help Ella expand her lavender business, help small carpentry shops, our little bakeries, craft shops do better. Tough money times for the Amish too. Then, you could marry Amish.”

  Ella gasped, whispered, “Grossmamm!” and began a big blush. Alex, despite feeling so depressed and on edge tonight, choked, then bellowed a laugh that would have done Janus proud.

  * * *

  That evening when it was not yet dark and Grossmamm had gone to bed early, Alex and Ella sat out in the bungalow’s small backyard sipping lemonade. Their old canvas and wooden lounge chairs were comfortable, their stomachs were full and the smudge pot to ward off mosquitoes hissed out a sweet, smoky smell.

  “I just want you to know,” Ella said, “I did not put her up to that you-could-marry-Amish comment.”

  “I know.” He could have really teased her about that, would have if he wasn’t still worried—fretting, Ella would say—about his finances and his future.

  “But her point about you having good Amish qualities is true. Andrew, there’s something different tonight. You’re especially worried,” she said, keeping her voice low despite the fact no one could hear them out here. “Are you getting itchy feet?”

  “You mean to move on? This is the safest I’ve felt for months except for my first couple of days with your family. I just keep going over and over in my head who keeps fingering my locations so I can be traced and attacked. Atlanta, Amish country—hopefully, not here.”

  “Can you really trust your lawyers or the government? Over the centuries, my people have learned to trust neither. Not only did they help to condemn us when they were persecuted in Europe years ago but the Bible says, ‘Woe to you, lawyers! For you load men with burdens hard to bear.’”

  “That’s why I’m not contacting them until it’s close to the time for the September trial. As for trusting my government contacts, I don’t suppose you ever saw the movie Witness?”

  “I never saw it, but all the Amish know about it. It was filmed in Pennsylvania, so it looked authentic. But we didn’t like it—the scene where the Amish girl let an outsider see her naked—”

  “Partly naked. She was washing. And maybe he just peeked in on her and she didn’t set it up.”

  “And that movie showed terrible gun violence that came onto the Amish farm at the end, like it might give people ideas about how easy it is to hurt or rob our peaceful people. So see, I know about that movie.”

  “The reason I brought it up,” Alex said, trying to get back on track, “is because the ultimate bad guy who wanted to silence the witness was a higher-up in a detective bureau, like a police officer boss.”

  She gasped. “You aren’t thinking it could be Sheriff Freeman behind all this?”

  “No, not him. But maybe Gerald Branin, my contact to WITSEC, maybe even that former FBI guy Armstrong who was hanging around Hannah and then you. It’s not news to anyone that, even high up, the government and the police can be corrupted. I know you think the Chinese connection is the best guess but—”

  “Don’t you?”

  “Maybe. But the wreck Sam Lee had wasn’t staged.”

  “What if he’d been told who you were? Either sent by his parents or some Chinese officials, he intended to kill you in a hit-and-run, but his car got out of control? A so-called car accident like that would make your death look better than a direct murder, like with a gun.”

  “Yeah, you’re right about that. The feds would be suspicious, but if it didn’t look like a hired hit and they couldn’t find
another witness, they’d probably have to dismiss the charges.”

  “So maybe when Sam failed to hit you with his car and got hurt himself, then Connie Lee starts coming around with the excuse of buying my lavender, then hires another hit man because she’s sent by the Chinese who stole your GPS stuff. And she tells him to kidnap me to get you away from the others, because if any Amish really got hurt, there would be a huge investigation.”

  “Possible,” he said, rubbing his eyes with his index fingers while his palms massaged his face. “This whole thing—my life—is a mess right now.”

  “If it’s not the Chinese, can it be your former boss you used to look up to and trust, who has turned on you? Besides the Chinese, he’s the one who wants to quiet you, stop you, isn’t he?”

  Andrew’s old canvas lounge chair creaked when he shifted his weight, leaned his elbow on one of its wooden arms and looked bleary-eyed at Ella as she stared at him.

  “Sad but true,” Alex admitted. “That’s the best—and worst—theory, because it hurts so to believe, to accept that. Marv was my mentor, but he was also like a father to me when I first joined the company. He taught me, promoted me—trusted me. Even though he knows I turned on him, it’s hard to believe he wants me dead.”

  “But maybe he was so kind earlier to rope you in,” she whispered. “So, when and if you figured out what was going on, he gambled on the fact you wouldn’t tell on him. But it was wrong, he was wrong and so—you did. You had to, so you could live with yourself and look others in the face and keep this country safe.”

  She sounded like a patriotic ad, he thought, although it was said of the Amish they lived on the U.S., not in it. She was so passionate to help him, and that really hit him in the gut—and the heart. As dusk descended, he stared deep into her eyes. This young Amish woman might be naive but she was bright. And she had read him, his thoughts and fears. She was like his conscience in a way, and that could be so bad when he wanted to grab her and crush her to him.

  Finally, amidst cricket sounds, the whine of a mosquito and their own breathing in the silence of the night, she whispered, “I talk too much.”

  “But you talk true. It’s just so hard to accept betrayal from him—but no doubt, that’s what he thinks I’ve done to him. But I can see him hiring someone to do his dirty work for him. People at his beck and call—that’s him.”

  “He’s desperate enough to order the kidnapping of Amish girls or to hurt anyone else to get to you. My captor had such a strange whisper and hardly talked at all when he could have…”

  “Don’t get me thinking about that tonight, or I won’t sleep. I stay awake too long at night as is, worrying, hearing every creak of the bungalow or shift of wind.”

  “Me too, worrying about you, just one room away,” she whispered.

  They stared deep into each other’s eyes again, silently, for much too long. Finally he said, “I was going to say our worlds are worlds apart, but that sounded dumb. In the future, could you ever see yourself having a big lavender farm somewhere else, maybe not living as Amish but—”

  “The big farm, oh, ya. The other, as much as it would give me some things I might want, nein. Nein, danki.”

  “I knew that. You can take Ella out of Amish country but you can’t take the Amish country out of Ella.” He sniffed once hard and knew he had to change the subject. “Listen, Ella, advisor and friend, I’m going to have to get some cash somewhere, since robbing banks in a clown costume is not a good option. You know, I think there was a movie about that too, a comedy, no less.”

  “I can just see you and Janus in cahoots on that. But, Andrew, I brought cash with me I kept hidden under my bed, and Grossmamm has some too—”

  “I cannot live off you two.”

  “But I know you would pay it back when you could. If you help me expand Lavender Plain Products someday, that could be part of your salary.”

  “I was thinking about asking Janus if I could sweep out the circus practice area, or do any sort of bookkeeping for him. I just wish I knew whether to risk that and some other things I’m longing to do....”

  The darkness had deepened. He wanted to kiss and caress her, but if he did, he wasn’t sure he could stop. And he had the strangest feeling that, unlike other women in his life he’d desired, even if he completely possessed Ella’s body and heart, it would not slake his hunger for her, only deepen it. And, even on top of everything else, that scared him to death.

  They both jumped at the voice from between the two houses. “Hey, there you are! Can’t a clown get any help around here?”

  Andrew swung his feet to the ground and turned to face Janus in full paint, costume and shock wig. “What kind of help do you need?” Andrew asked. “Looks like you’re going full bore to me.”

  He didn’t come closer. He seemed to be in a hurry.

  “Some evenings I walk uptown just to practice my act on people who might need cheering up. You know, around the town park. I was hoping you could pull yourself away from the lady for a bit and come along.”

  The guy was still into voices. He was using another low-pitched one tonight.

  “Why don’t you go ahead?” Ella whispered. “We’ll be fine. It would give you a chance to ask him about a job, if you’re sure you want to do that, but the offer of a loan still holds.”

  “The missus says okay with her,” Andrew said and stood up, then helped Ella rise. “Is Trixie staying here?”

  “Yeah. A headache. See you later,” he said to Ella.

  They both owed a lot to Janus and Trixie, Andrew thought as he pecked a kiss on her mouth—well, it wasn’t a peck. Even in front of Janus, it lingered. The McCorkles had kept their spirits up, taken them here and there, been real good neighbors. Andrew handed her his empty glass and followed Janus—that is, Corky the Clown—out of the backyard.

  Once again, their favorite clown made him chuckle as he almost went off balance and bounced a shoulder off the fence. Both he and Ella laughed at the way Janus stumbled over his own big feet, when he was usually so smooth handling those bulbous orange shoes.

  * * *

  Ella went inside and washed their glasses. To her surprise, Grossmamm was up, sitting in the living room, slumped in a chair and crying.

  “What is it?” Ella cried, rushing to her. “Are you ill?”

  Grossmamm spoke in their Deutsche dialect, although they’d been using English among the three of them here. “Sick at heart. Got a phone call from your daad. Never did get good news by a phone. It hasn’t rung once since we been here, now this.”

  “Now what? Something happened at home?”

  “Your aunt Martha. She’s going to have surgery, going to lose a breast. This time, she says to tell me please come.”

  “See, she wants you there. She just didn’t want you to make a trip for nothing earlier—not until she knew what was going on. You’ll be a big help to her, get her through this, help take care of her children.”

  “Your daad also says she wonders what am I doing in Florida in the hot months and you during lavender time. He told her I just had to come back where your grandfather and I had happy days.”

  “First thing in the morning, we can ask Janus or Trixie to take you to the Greyhound station, get you on a bus to Pennsylvania.”

  “But I can’t leave you and Andrew alone together. Where is he?”

  “He walked uptown with Corky the Clown. I think he’s going to ask Janus for a job to tide him over here. Grossmamm, I can’t leave him.”

  “But if you ever have a chance to make him Amish, playing his wife here is not the way.”

  “A chance to make him Amish? You meant that tonight? You think a modern man, one who’s had money and cars and a big, worldly job, would ever turn Amish?”

  “With God, all things are possible. Could Trixie drive you uptown to look for Andrew, so we can decide what to do?”

  “I don’t think they’ll be out late. Besides, Trixie has a headache.”

  “Then I got just the
thing for her,” she said, popping up from her chair. “Wish I knew something to fight breast cancer, but lemon juice squeezed into hot water will help a headache, a good home remedy, ya, it is. Here, I got a lemon,” she said, and bustled to the refrigerator. “But back to Andrew,” she said, suddenly switching to English, “I tell you, my girl, even though he cares for you and desires you, he will say you should go with me too. Just a minute now. I’ll mix this in a glass and you run it over to Trixie. I hope she does not have one of those very bad migrant headaches.”

  Ella didn’t know whether to laugh or cry. Maybe she’d get a migraine—or migrant headache too—over all this migrating from place to place. Just when she was certain things could not get worse, they did. Too many people dear to her were in danger. And she just felt she could not leave Andrew, even if he turned back into Alex!

  She took the glass of hot lemon water from Grossmamm and headed over to give it to Trixie and to tell her Grossmamm might have to leave. She sure hoped the McCorkles could take her to the bus station tomorrow. As she went into their backyard, she noted that for once the extra clown suit was not drying on the clothesline.

  Some people still didn’t lock their doors around here, especially during the day, but, of course, they always locked Grossmamm’s bungalow. Trixie’s back door was shut because their air conditioner was running—this close, it was so loud—so she knocked.

  No answer, no movement, no sound. Had Trixie felt better and gone uptown too? If so, the door would probably be locked. She tried it—open.

  She stuck her head in and called, “Trixie? It’s Ella. I hear you have a headache, but Grandma’s sent something over for you that may help.”

  No response. Ella felt bad. Trixie must be sleeping, and she had no right to wake her. She’d just leave the lemon juice here with a note, if she could find some paper. She clicked on the kitchenette light, stepped inside and put the glass down on the counter. It was really cold in here, so maybe they turned their air conditioner way up to sleep. Ella saw a notepad, so she scribbled: