Hearse and Buggy (18 page)

“So Ruth and Eli are close then?”

“As close as any siblings I’ve ever seen.” And it was true. “Benjamin helps, too, but he is more behind the scenes. Like dropping off fresh milk each morning before even Ruth arrives at the store.”

A wry smile crept across Jakob’s face. “Ahhh, yes. Benjamin Miller. Ever the workhorse.”

She took a deep breath and then let it release, the man’s open sarcasm difficult to ignore. “You don’t like Benjamin, do you?”

His smile turned into a soft laugh. “Is it that obvious?”

“Yes.”

He palmed the lower quadrant of his face with his left hand, then let it slide down his chin to reveal a mouth that was no longer smiling. “Growing up Amish, we were not supposed to idolize anyone.” Perfection belongs to God and
God alone. But, that said, we all had people we respected. Mine was my father.

“My father was one of the hardest-working men I knew … and that’s saying a lot when the only people you knew were Amish.” Jakob slowly leaned his head against the headrest, his eyes wide yet unfocused. “All I wanted for so long was to be big enough to be just like him. To be the kind of man everyone respected. And, most importantly, to be the kind of man
he
could respect.”

She held her breath as he continued.

“But, try as I might, he’d always come home from whatever barn we helped raise or every church service we attended talking about Benjamin Miller.” His voice morphed into one much deeper. “Ezekiel Miller has got a real hard worker in his son Benjamin. Why, you should see what he did today …”

The emotion that played across his face broke her heart. Reaching across the center console, she touched his cheek with her hand, the softness of his skin catching her by surprise. She pulled her hand back as he turned his startled eyes in her direction. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have done that.”

He stopped her hand midway. “Don’t.”

She glanced down at her lap, unsure of what to say.

He released his hold yet kept his focus squarely on her face. “Look, I shouldn’t be unloading this on you. It’s too much. Let’s just leave it at the fact that there’s some bad blood between Benjamin and me, okay?”

She wanted to argue, to urge him to continue, but she didn’t. She’d broken the spell the second she touched him.

“Okay,” she whispered.

An awkward silence settled around them only to be broken by the sound of Jakob clearing his throat. “So, uh, Ruth and Eli are close, you say?”

She worked her lower lip inward and nodded.

“Then why would Ruth keep so much from him? Why wouldn’t she tell him about the paint? And why wouldn’t they tell Benjamin?”

Grateful for the return to solid ground, she did her best to answer with what she knew to be true. “Like everyone else, I guess, Ruth hates to see Eli get so worked up. The way he got so upset over the pie boxes and the note … Well, I guess she wanted to save him the additional angst. Especially in light of the trouble he’d faced at home over his public threats toward Mr. Snow.”

“So she looks out for him, too, then,” he mused. “Okay, but why not tell the almighty big brother? Surely he could make it all stop on his own.”

His tone hung heavy in the air only to be waved away by his right hand. “I’m sorry. That was over the top.”

“I think Eli is trying to find his footing in the world. He wants to take care of things himself rather than always running to Benjamin for help.” She picked at a piece of lint on her pants. “At least that’s what Esther has said.”

“I guess I can understand that. I mean, I know what it was like to be in that guy’s shadow from three farms away. I can’t even imagine what it must be like to live in it twenty-four/seven.”

At a loss for how to respond, she merely nodded. And yawned.

Jakob glanced at his watch. “Hey, I’m sorry. I didn’t realize how late it was. Your aunt is probably worried sick.”

“Actually, she’s probably fast asleep in preparation for a new round of guests slated for check-in tomorrow.”

Slowly, he turned his head left, then right. “I was thinking the lot looked rather empty.”

She pointed to the white sedan in the far corner of the
lot. “That’s Diane’s car. It only moves when she has to pick up bulk supplies for the inn or on the rare occasion I take it for a spin. The rest of the time it pretty much stays put.” Then, shifting her hand right, she gestured toward the tired-looking black pickup nestled under the largest shade tree in the lot. “And that one belongs to Mr. Streen.”

Jakob snorted. “He’s rather irritating, isn’t he?”

“He can be, most of the time. But every once in a while, he surprises us by being really interesting.” She searched her memory for some of the fun facts she’d learned over the past few weeks. “He’s kept a list of every book he’s read since he was ten years old. And in those fourteen years, he’s read something like two thousand books. And the lion’s share of those books were nonfiction.”

“A bookworm, huh?”

“I guess,” she said. “But this guy loves to learn, and he loves to share what he’s learned, too. In fact it’s from talking to him that I have to wonder whether the troubles Ruth has been facing could be some sort of a hate crime against the Amish.”

“If Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe was the only Amish-run shop on Lighted Way, I’d be inclined to agree. But it’s not.”

She hadn’t thought of that. But now that Jakob had pointed it out, she couldn’t help but feel a bit stupid. “See? That’s why I’d make a lousy detective.”

It was his turn to reach across the seat, the warmth of his hand on her arm making her swallow. Hard. “Hey, I’m not saying the notion of a hate crime isn’t a possibility. Especially in light of the fact that both the paint and the fire happened after Walter Snow’s murder. I’m just saying that Ruth’s shop isn’t the only Amish store around here, yet it’s the only one being targeted.”

“Maybe it’s not Ruth who is being targeted,” she said, the notion surprising her as much as it did Jakob.

A shrill whistle escaped the detective’s lips. “Wow. That’s certainly something that—”

“Hey, I’m sorry. I have no idea where that just came from.” She brought her hands to her face and rubbed at her eyes, the absurdity of her amateur sleuthing making her laugh. “Sleep deprivation, perhaps?”

“No. That actually has some potential …” And just like that, Jakob Fisher slipped into a world of his own only to emerge with a question. “If it’s not Ruth they’re after, then whom? Eli? Benjamin?”

She could only shrug.

Slowly, he traced his right index finger around the steering wheel. “The obvious would be Eli. I’m quite certain a kid like that has made his fair share of enemies—not the least of which are the kids he got in that bar brawl with a few months back.”

“But this stuff has only been happening for a few weeks,” she countered.

“True.” He pulled his hand through his hair and threw out another idea. “And what about Benjamin? Any chance he’s made an enemy?”

“I can’t imagine he has.”

She felt the weight of his gaze on the side of her face for several long moments before he responded. “You think pretty highly of Benjamin, don’t you?”

“I think he’s very genuine.”

“Genuine,” he echoed quietly.

She resisted the urge to nod. She didn’t need to push Benjamin’s many attributes in Jakob’s face. He’d had enough of that in his life already. Instead, she searched for a way to explain the man Benjamin Miller was today. “He’s a quiet kind of soul, the way most Amish are, I guess. But there
always seems to be a lot going on behind his eyes. I guess it’s all the hurt he’s been through.”

“Hurt? What hurt?”

“His wife died not long after they married, and—”

The sound of Jakob’s gasp brought her up short. “
Elizabeth is dead?
”

She met his eyes, the pain she found there so strong it dulled all hint of a sparkle from their depths. “You knew his wife?”

The only sound that followed her question came from the crickets outside the car and the thump-thump inside her chest. But just as she began to feel as if it was best to leave him alone, he spoke, the agony in his eyes enveloping every word he spoke. “Like my father, Elizabeth preferred Benjamin to me as well.”

“Y
ou’re up early.” Diane Weatherly looked up from the assortment of measuring spoons and ingredients spread out across the counter and smiled. “What time did you get in last night?”

“After midnight.” She wandered over to the breakfast nook and climbed onto the nearest stool. “Making your welcome cookies?”

“I am. Two couples are checking in this afternoon. One is from Nashville, Tennessee, and the other is from a small town in upstate New York. And both are retired.”

It was impossible to miss the excitement in her aunt’s voice. Even after twenty years of running the inn, the woman still got a kick out of what she did. And now that Claire was living in Heavenly, she understood it completely.

“You don’t know, do you?”

Diane held a bottle of vanilla above her mixing bowl and
poured a teaspoon of the pleasant-smelling liquid with a practiced hand. “Know what, dear?”

“There was a fire at Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe yesterday evening.”

A poof of flour rose into the air as Diane dropped the spoon into the bowl. “Is Ruth okay?”

“She wasn’t there. No one was.”

“Oh thank heavens.” Reaching into the bowl, Diane extracted the spoon and set it on the counter, her cookie-making mission on hold. “So what happened? Did they leave the stove on?”

Claire reached across the counter and commandeered a chocolate chip from the plated pile to the left of the mixing bowl. “No. It was gasoline.”

“In the
Kitchen
?”

She popped the tiny morsel into her mouth. “The fire wasn’t an accident.”

Diane’s mouth dropped open. “Oh no.”

Oh no was right.

“I guess the broken milk bottles, stolen pie boxes, nasty note, and painted window weren’t enough to get across whatever point someone is trying to make to the Millers.”

The kitchen door swung open behind them, signaling the arrival of the only remaining guest. “Did you see this?”

Claire reached for the newspaper in Arnie’s hand and set it on the counter, the front headline proof positive that a special edition of the
Heavenly Times
had been printed overnight while residents of the close-knit town slept soundly. She skimmed the first few paragraphs of the story, while Arnie and Diane leaned over her shoulder.

“Who’s that with you?”

She followed Arnie’s finger to the small photograph
below the fold line. Despite the side angle, the worry she’d felt the night before was on display for all to see. “That’s Howard Glick. He owns Glick’s Tools ‘n’ More. He’s the reason the fire was detected and put out so quickly.”

“I never heard any sirens,” Diane mused.

Arnie pointed at the second paragraph and the time of the fire. “I’m guessing that’s because you were vacuuming every inch of this place at about that same time.”

“You didn’t hear it, either?”

“How could I?” Arnie reached forward and grabbed a handful of chocolate chips from the plate. “I was using headphones to block out your vacuuming.”

Diane made her way back around the counter and secured the plate of chips from Arnie’s overeager reach. “I have some fresh blueberry muffins in the basket by the stove, Mr. Streen.”

Arnie made a beeline for the basket, helping himself to three. “So what happened? That article doesn’t say a whole lot.”

She repeated what she’d told Diane thus far, adding the fact that she was worried for Ruth’s safety in light of the increasing severity of the crimes.

“That’s assuming it’s aimed at her with intention to do harm rather than deflect attention.” Arnie grabbed a knife from the utensil basket and cut off a sizable chunk of butter. He slathered it across all sides of each muffin before biting into the first one.

Claire stared at the man. “I’m not sure what you mean by deflecting attention.”

“Well, throughout history, the most successful criminals have gotten away with their crimes by sending up smoke signals in other places.” Arnie popped the second muffin
into his mouth. “Keeps the heat off them while they cover their tracks from the bigger crime.”

Pushing the paper to the side, she considered Arnie’s words. “Okay, I get that. But what would the stuff at Ruth’s bake shop be deflecting?”

Arnie ate the last of his three muffins and returned to the basket for two more. “That’s easy.”

“Oh?”

“It could be deflecting murder.”

She heard Diane’s gasp and knew it echoed her own. “Murder?”

Arnie shrugged. “Think about it. Some guy shows up dead in the alley behind your stores. And, lo and behold, it’s the same guy who just happens to have ripped off a number of people, including Ruth’s own family. But wait … One of her brothers got in trouble for making public threats of bodily harm to this very same dead guy. Hmmm …” Arnie scrunched up his chin and gave it a dramatic scratch. “It sure seems as if the stuff happening to this particular bake shop might be intended to make one poor Eli Miller look like a victim, too.”

She stared at him, his freckled face giving way to a parade of images that lined up, one behind the other …

Stolen pie boxes …

Broken milk bottles …

A carelessly written, nasty note …

Splattered paint …

When she got to the fire—a fire that had done remarkably little damage in light of its potential—she felt her stomach twist into a knot. Each and every incident thus far was relatively easy for someone like Eli to pull off. All he’d have to do is show up early—or late, as in the case of the fire—before
anyone else was around. And if he were seen, no one would think it odd. After all, why would they? Eli’s devotion to his sister was admired by all of the shopkeepers on Lighted Way.

She drew in a second and longer breath. Was Arnie right? Was Eli staging everything to deflect focus for the murder?

“You can’t be right, Mr. Streen.” Diane’s voice, steady and firm, rose up amid all of Claire’s worry, wiping it away with her usual no-nonsense approach. “Two of those incidents happened before Mr. Snow’s murder. That alone proves it has nothing to do with deflection.”