Murder, Simply Stitched: An Amish Quilt Shop Mystery (16 page)

A
s soon as I unlocked the door to my house, my cell phone rang. I checked the readout. My mother. The Amish were certainly on to something about not having cell phones. At that moment, I wished I didn’t have one either. Don’t get me wrong; I loved my mother, both of my parents, but I didn’t want to answer because I already knew what she was going to say.

“Hi Mom.”

“Angela, why do you wait so long to answer your phone? You had me so worried. If I didn’t have another pageant to judge this weekend, I would have half a mind to fly up there and fetch you myself. This living-in-Amish-Country phase needs to come to an end. It’s time for you to return to Dallas and make up with Ryan.”

I wasn’t worried about my mother coming to Holmes County. Since my family moved to Texas, she had been back to her hometown a grand total of three times. “You say ‘make up with Ryan’ like he wants to make up.”

“He does. I’ve talked to him a few times at social events.”

“Mom . . .”

“I can’t help it if the Dickinsons and your father and I move in the same social circles,” she huffed.

“Mom . . .” It was amazing how I could revert to a whiny teenager when speaking to my mother.

“Would you just listen to what he has to say?”

“Fine.” It was easier to hear her out.

“He admitted he made a mistake; he misses you. I’m sure he would have said more if his date hadn’t been standing right there at the time. I could tell he wanted to say more.”

The word “date” was like a knife to the heart. I thought I was over Ryan until my mother said she had seen him at a social event with a
date
. I spent seven years with him. A relationship that long took time to recover from. I knew this was why I hesitated to agree to a date from Sheriff Mitchell despite how much I liked him. Knowing that Ryan had moved on so easily made it that much worse.

She must have sensed my reaction because she said, “Oh, honey, Ryan’s date didn’t mean anything to him. It was a black-tie event. He had to bring a date. It doesn’t mean that he’s dating this girl.”

“Did he say he wasn’t dating her?”

“Not specifically, but I could tell.” She lowered her voice to a whisper. I wasn’t sure who she didn’t want to overhear; typically Mom called from my parents’ house. “Her roots were showing on her hair. I politely mentioned it to her, and she said the look was on purpose.” She clicked her tongue. “She said it was in style. Ombre something. Looked messy to me. She would die for your gorgeous blond curls.”

I blinked away tears but kept my voice as normal as possible. “Mom, I have to go.”

She sighed. “Fine, dear, but do think about coming home. I do wish you would listen to reason.”

I hung up the phone. “Boys,” I said to the dog and kitten sitting in the middle of the sofa. “This day calls for a vat of ice cream. I’ll get the spoons.” Luckily I kept reserves in my freezer for just such an occasion. “Strawberry should do the trick.”

At the kitchen table, Dodger and Oliver circled me like vultures.

“Now, I’m having ice cream,” I opened their treat cupboard. “Oliver, you get a Milk-Bone, and Dodger, how about some Whiskas treats?” I set their treats on the floor. Both animals crouched on their haunches and began eating.

I opened the freezer. There wasn’t any strawberry ice cream, but there was cookie dough. “It was meant to be,” I told the animals.

T
he next morning I woke up with a cookie dough hangover. Those are the worst. Not only did I have a stomachache, but I was riddled with the guilt for blowing my diet in such a spectacular fashion.

Oliver licked the fingers of my hand, which had slipped out of my blanket cocoon, and Dodger mewed in my face. Both had their own special way to tell me that they were hungry and still angry I hadn’t shared my cookie dough with them.

The pewter gray fur on Dodger’s back stood on end as his impatience rose. “Okay, I’m up.” I wriggled out of my bed, and my feet hit the cold floor. I think it was time to buy an area rug.

Actually, I was happy the kitten woke me up. Usually I would not be, but I wanted to arrive at the shop early to make sure every last detail was settled for the quilting class later that morning. The class would begin at ten thirty, so I expected the would-be quilters to begin to show up at ten.

I peeked out of the window and saw a light frost on the roof of the house behind mine. Winter was coming. It would be my first winter north of the Mason-Dixon Line since I was a child. I didn’t remember much of what a Northern winter was really like. I blocked out the memory. Last February, I had visited my aunt before she died. That small taste was more than enough winter for me.

I didn’t own a snow shovel or a window scraper for my car. I promised myself when I got to the shop I would Google “Winter survival guide” and find out everything that I needed to have to make it through an Ohio winter.
How much do snowblowers cost anyway?

After their breakfast and quick trip outside for Oliver, the kitten and Frenchie were ready to go to the shop. They stood outside the bathroom door watching me blast my unruly curls with a hair dryer.

“I’m doing this as fast as I can, guys. Curly hair is a full-time job.”

Finally, I tucked Dodger in his carrier and snapped on Oliver’s leash. In Rolling Brook, I walked up the quiet sidewalk that led to Running Stitch from the community parking lot. As I walked, I tried to imagine a factory at the end of the picturesque street with its quaint shops with dark-colored awnings hanging over the sidewalk and gaslit lampposts and black hitching posts lining the way.

I could see the township’s point about why that would ruin the scene and how trucks rumbling up and down Sugartree would disturb the quiet. A young couple in a courting buggy rode by. The young woman had her hands folded in her lap, but she smiled brightly as she watched the young man drive the team. Scenes like that were what brought tourists to Amish Country, not a factory.

Maybe there was a chance for compromise between the trustees and the Millers.

To my surprise, Rachel stood in front of my shop door holding a basket. I knew it held goodies from the bakery. Rachel always brought treats when she came to the shop.

Remembering the cookie dough, I promised myself I would stay away from whatever was inside of the basket. It was water and salad for me all day long. Then maybe I would break even with the cookie dough.

“
Gude Mariye,
Angie.”

“Good morning, Rachel. How are you?”

“I’m fine.” She said, but the wrinkles in her forehead belied the truth.

I unlocked the shop’s door. On Fridays, I typically open the shop, and Mattie came in to relieve me. “Let’s go inside.”

She nodded. “I see everyone came with you today.”

I set Dodger’s carrier on the floor and opened the door. The spunky kitten galloped out. Oliver sniffed him to make sure he wasn’t harmed during the transport.

Rachel set the basket on the cutting table. “I’ve never seen a dog so taken with a cat before. Aren’t dogs and cats supposed to be enemies?”

“Oliver isn’t your average dog. I don’t think dogs are supposed to duck and take cover when they see a sparrow either.”

She laughed. “That’s true.” As quickly as it came, the mirth on her face was gone.

“Rachel, what’s wrong? Did something else happen?” I turned on the shop lights.

“
Nee.
I don’t think so.” She paused. “I brought you some cookies for the quilting class today. It’s going to be wonderful. I’m so proud of you, Angie. I know Eleanor would be too.” She looked around the room. “The shop looks
wunderbar
.” She pointed to the circle of chairs. “I see you are all ready for the class.”

Oliver stopped his investigation into Dodger’s well-being and plopped himself down in front of Rachel’s black work shoes. His stubby tail thumped on the floor.

Rachel laughed. “I guess he would like a treat too. What about you, Angie?” Her eyes twinkled. “I brought some honey bran muffins too. In case the quilters would prefer that to cookies.”

One muffin couldn’t hurt since I had skipped breakfast that morning. They always say skipping breakfast is the worst thing someone on a diet could do. Also it had honey. It’s not bad like sugar.
Yep, keep telling yourself that, Angie.

“I’d love one. Let me put on a pot of coffee.” I hung my jacket on the peg and plugged in the coffeepot. It sat on a small table near the register. I found as the weather became colder shoppers liked a hot drink to warm up to.

Rachel dropped her gaze. “The sheriff came out to our home again yesterday morning.”

“And?” I popped a bite of muffin into my mouth. I don’t know how they did it, but the Millers actually made bran taste good. They should go work for Kellogg’s or something.

“He asked us if we knew if Wanda had any food allergies. I spoke up right away and said I knew she was allergic to peanuts. Every time she would buy something from the bakery we had to make sure there wasn’t a speck of peanut or a drop of peanut butter in there. We were always very careful.”

I held the next bite of muffin an inch from my mouth.

A tear rolled down Rachel’s clear cheek. “He said that she died from her peanut allergy. It is my fault because I gave her that fry pie.”

The bran muffin felt like a rock in the middle of my gut. “Oh, Rachel.”

She closed her eyes for a moment. “The doctor came to our farm this morning.”

“The coroner, you mean.”

She blushed. “
Ya.
The coroner finished his test and he found traces of peanut in the fry pie that I gave her.” She fiddled with the corner of her apron. “It is my fault she is dead.”

“No, it’s not.” I coaxed her into a chair and set a mug of coffee on the table next to it. “Someone probably tampered with it.”

“Why? And why would anyone do that? The sheriff said it was the only one with peanuts in it.” She closed her eyes for a moment. “How did the person who did this know I would give her that pie? I didn’t plan to give it to her. I just did.”

“I don’t know.”

“I will have to live with this guilt. How will my children get along without me?” She wiped a tear from her eye. “At least Mattie will be there to help Aaron with the children.”

“Without you? What do you mean?”

“Aren’t I going to go to jail because she died?”

Coffee sloshed out of my mug and burned my wrist. “No. No! That’s not going to happen. We don’t even know if this is your fault.”

“I gave it to her.”

“You didn’t bake those fry pies. Doesn’t Aaron do most of the baking?”

Tears rolled down her face. “How is my husband being responsible for this make it any better?”

I hung my head. “It doesn’t.”

“Do you think he made that fry pie for her?”

“I don’t.”

“Aaron was angry at me for speaking out of turn.” She gripped the sides of her navy skirt. “I should have let my husband speak. He would have known what to say to the police.”

“You were being honest. There is nothing wrong with that.”

“What if my honesty sends me to prison?” She broke off the corner of her untouched muffin and dropped it onto the floor for Oliver. The Frenchie gobbled it up and waited for seconds.

“Did anything else you had for sale yesterday have peanuts in it?”

“
Nee.
I knew that Wanda would be at the auction, so I was extra careful to leave all of our peanut butter cookies and pies at the bakery.”

“How did you know she would be there? She’s not Amish and she doesn’t run a business. I don’t understand why she would be at the auction.”

“She is always there. I think she is close with the Nissleys. At least I always see them talking. I know them, but I do not know them well. They are from another Amish district.”

That was interesting. It appeared that another stop at the auction was in order. In Holmes County it wasn’t unusual for Amish and English people to be friends, but an English female trustee and an Amish auction yard owner seemed like a strange match. Not that I doubted Rachel’s observation. Hadn’t Reed said his aunt helped him get the job at the auction yard? How had she managed that?

Rachel stood. “I should return to the bakery. Aaron would wonder what became of me, and he would not want me to be talking about my troubles with anyone.”

“I’m your friend.”

“You are. You are my
gut
friend, but Aaron still would not want me to burden another with our troubles. Mattie will be over within the hour to help you with the quilting class.”

It was too late. The burden of Wanda’s death was squarely on my shoulders.

A
t ten sharp, the cowbell on the door rang as three laughing women strolled inside. “We are here for the quilting class. Are we in the right place?”

I smiled brightly at them. “You are in the right place.”

“We weren’t sure because there was a quilting store next door. It has a sign about classes too,” a second woman said. “I had always thought there was only one quilt shop in Rolling Brook.”

Some of the brightness in my smile dimmed. “There are two shops now. That one opened a few weeks ago.”

“We must go there after class and see what they have,” the third woman in the trio said. “Two quilt shops right next to each other in Rolling Brook. That makes the shopping easy for us.”

Four more women entered the shop, which saved me from saying anything I would regret about Martha’s shop. “Ladies, please grab some refreshments from the table and find a seat. The quilting packet on your chair is the project for today. You will be able to take your packet home at the end of the class.”

Anna waved to the women. “Welcome everyone. I’m Anna Graber, and I will be teaching the class over the next several weeks. Angie Braddock, who greeted you at the door, is the shop’s owner, and Mattie Miller, who you see behind the cash register, will be here too to assist us.”

The ladies waved at Mattie, and I suppressed a smile. Anna would have made an excellent cruise director if she wasn’t Amish.

The ladies gossiped and clustered around the refreshment table of coffee, hot apple cider, and cookies and muffins from the Millers’ bakery. While they gathered their snacks, I asked each of them to write her name on a sticker name tag, which would make it easier for Anna to remember who was who while she gave instructions.

“I’ve been wanting to learn how to quilt since I was a small girl,” a woman in green plastic-framed glasses told her friend as she wrote the name L
OIS
on one of the name tags. “My great-grandmother was a master quilter, but my grandmother and my mother didn’t have much use for it. I wished I had asked my granny to teach me when I could.”

“You can make up for it now,” her friend said as she broke a piece off of the blueberry muffin in her hand and popped it into her mouth. Her name tag read S
UE
. Sue turned to me. “Thank you so much for organizing this class. We have been looking forward to it for weeks.”

“You’re welcome,” I said. “We are happy you could make it. We’ve been looking forward to these classes for a long time too.”

“Since everyone is here,” Anna said, “we might as well begin the class. We never want to stand idle for long. That is not the Amish way, and I will be teaching you the Amish way to hand quilt over these coming weeks.”

The ladies set their food on the tray tables I’d set beside each seat and gushed over their quilting materials tied up with a silver bow. Each starter kit included everything they needed to make a Rolling Block–patterned wall quilt from the fabric and the thread, to even the scissors and needles.

Anna stood in the middle of the circle of women. She took to the position of teacher so well, I wondered if perhaps she had run the schoolhouse before she married Jonah’s father. “Today, we will focus on piecing. In your bundles you will find material, which is already cut to size. Cutting pieces just right can be one of the most challenging parts about quilting, so we will do that the next lesson when you are more comfortable with the tools of quilting.”

“I’d hoped that we could pick our own patterns,” one woman said.

“Since this is the first class, we thought it would be best if we do some practice. That way when you start your real quilting project, you will have all the kinks out.”

“That makes sense,” Sue said. “Practice makes perfect.”

Mattie, standing next to me, squirmed. The Amish didn’t believe human perfection was possible. Anna was unfazed by the comment. She had been around English people enough not to be thrown off by what they might say.

“That’s fair,” the first woman said. “I don’t want any problems in the queen-sized quilt I am making for my daughter for her wedding.”

I internally winced. A queen-sized quilt was an ambitious project for a master quilter. “When’s the wedding?” I asked as I noted her name tag said S
HIRLEY
.

“Christmas Day. It’s a Christmas wedding. When October rolled around, I knew I had better get started on it.”

Mattie’s mouth fell open. “You haven’t started it yet and it’s for
this
Christmas?”

Shirley’s nose wrinkled. “I haven’t had time. My daughter’s wedding is like a full-time job. Besides, I have two months to do it. It shouldn’t take that long.”

“If all you do for two months is quilt,” Mattie whispered out of the side of her mouth at me.

Anna placed two triangle-shaped quilting pieces back-to-back. “You want to make a quilt in two months, and you’ve never quilted before?”

The woman blinked. “That’s why I’m starting now.”

Anna adjusted her glasses. “Maybe you will be able to finish it in time for her tenth anniversary.”

Shirley frowned. “You don’t think I will be ready to make my daughter a quilt by the end of this class? The class is seven weeks long. That should be plenty of time.”

Seven weeks to make a queen-sized quilt would be more than enough time for my aunt Eleanor to do, for Anna to do, and even for me to do if I had help from the quilting circle ladies. It would not be enough for Shirley to do it.

“All Anna’s saying is that it might be a tad”—I paused—“ambitious.”

“I’m a fast learner,” Shirley insisted.

“In that case, let’s get started.” I gave Anna a look.

“Back to piecing,” Anna said.

I couldn’t help but smile as I watched the women work and consult Mattie and Anna about a difficult stitch. This was going to work.

Flo, a woman in her late sixties, asked me to help her correct a stitch. “I’m no good at this,” she complained.

“You’re doing fine,” I said as I worked her needle backward through the fabric. “You are just learning. That’s why this first project is a practice quilt. I’ve been quilting since I was a small child, and I still drop stitches.” I winked at her and handed the fabric back.

She gave me a wide smile. “My husband laughed when I told him about the class. He says this will lead me to finally using the sewing room that we turned my daughter’s bedroom into when she went to college.”

“When was that?”

“Fifteen years ago.” She chuckled.

As the women worked, I helped when I could and smiled to myself when I saw people walking by peering into the shop to watch the class. Word would spread quickly through the township about the great classes Running Stitch had to offer.

I circled the ladies, carrying a carafe of coffee in one hand and second carafe of apple cider in the other.

Lois held up her cup, requesting a refill. “More cider please.”

I poured cider into her cup.

“I thought Candy was going to take the class with us. I know she was thinking about it,” Lois said.

Sue shook her head. “Candy is at Zander’s school today. It’s grandparents’ visit day there.”

I froze when I heard the name “Zander.” How many Zanders could there be in Holmes County?

“How nice,” Lois said. “I’m sure she’s enjoying that.”

Sue lowered her voice just a little. “Just between you and me, she’s been worried sick about her daughter Hillary. Hillary is having a terrible time with her ex-husband.”

Lois sniffed. “It’s no wonder she left him. With as many callouts as he receives day and night, she was practically a single mother as it was.”

I squirmed, knowing that I shouldn’t be hanging on every word of this conversation about Mitchell and his ex-wife Hillary, but I couldn’t help myself. I ate up every word.

With her tongue between her teeth, Sue tried to pick up a dropped stitch. “Candy believes Hillary still loves him though. She hasn’t dated anyone else since the split. It’s been three years.”

The mug of cider I was refilling began to overflow.

“Angie,” Anna barked.

“Oh! I’m so sorry,” I yelped.

Mattie ran to my side with some paper towels. Again, Mattie’s eyes were the size of duck eggs. I would have to teach the girl how to put together a convincing poker face, not that a good Amish girl would ever play poker.

Oliver licked apple cider off the hardwood floor.

“How clumsy of me.” I looked at the woman. “Did I get any on you?”

“No, dear, I’m fine.”

I took a handful of paper towels from Mattie and cleaned up the floor. I gathered up the dirty towels and tossed them into the wastebasket behind the sales counter.

Mattie tossed her paper towel into the basket too. “Angie, what happened? It was like you were in another place.”

I tried to laugh it off. “I guess I’m distracted. That’s all.”

She looked like she wanted to ask more, but it wasn’t the Amish way to pry, for which I was grateful.

“Don’t worry, dear. No need to cry over spilt cider.” Lois patted my hand.

Shirley used the seam ripper on the two triangles she had pieced. The edges of the triangles were way off.

“Isn’t it a shame about what happened to poor Wanda Hunt?” a woman name June said. It was the first time she’d spoken up since the class began. June was very intent on her stitches. It seemed her attention was well spent. She had the best quilt block in the class. Her pieces fit together perfectly.

“It’s a terrible shame.” Shirley frowned. “But June, why would you bring that up when we are having a nice morning? It’s too depressing.”

June pursed her lips. “When you all were talking about Hillary it reminded me of Wanda. The two were close friends despite their age difference. Hillary must be overwrought by Wanda’s death.”

“I didn’t want to say it”—Sue leaned toward the middle of the circle—“but the case Hillary was upset with her husband over was Wanda’s case. Even if they are divorced this will put another strain on their relationship, which is not good for poor little Zander.”

The women nodded sagely and muttered under their breaths at this dire prediction.

“Ladies,” Anna said in a mock scolding manner. “Less gossip and more stitches.”

The women bowed their heads over their work. Even though they were close to Anna’s age, she definitely was the teacher in the room.

If Hillary and Wanda were best friends, it seemed a talk with Mitchell’s ex-wife was in order. That would be fun.