Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) (19 page)

“Oh?”

“I wanted to apologize for the abrupt end to our conversation last night and assure you I am grateful for any assistance you’re willing and able to give to my campaign.”

She stopped herself midnod and, instead, took the direct approach. After all, one of the three people capable of divulging the truth behind Sadie Lehman’s fate was standing in front of her of his own accord. Maybe, if she played her cards right, she could learn something that would be of help to Jakob and his investigation. “I got the distinct impression your father doesn’t share your sentiment.”

He dropped his hand to his side and crossed the storeroom seemingly to examine a hand-painted milk can, but, when he got there, his shoulders sagged along with his voice. “I guess for you to understand my father’s abruptness last night, you have to understand my father.”

“Okay . . .”

“My dad was born in Heavenly just as his dad and his grandfather before him were. Back when my grandfather was growing up here, the town was pretty much the way you see it now—at least on the Amish side, anyway. The Amish lived in their farmhouses, tended their fields, and kept to themselves.”

Intrigued, she leaned against the counter. “And the English side?”

“It pretty much consisted of the house my grandpa grew up in and a few large farms. My great-grandfather was the first official mayor of Heavenly—a job that was probably pretty easy on account of the fact there wasn’t much going on around here. But, over time, that changed. Slowly but surely, the English farmers began to parcel up and sell off their land—some to newly married Amish, and some to people who knew a thing or two about home construction.

“By the time my grandfather was elected into the office, a smaller town just south of here was essentially picked apart by Heavenly and other neighboring towns. With the annex of new land, came more homes and more property tax money. Eventually, my father won the same mayoral seat my grandfather and great-grandfather had once held and he became a huge factor in Heavenly becoming the tourism attraction it is today. It was during his stint that Lighted Way went from being simply a link between the English and Amish to being an almost living, breathing celebration of both.”

“He did an amazing job,” she admitted. “I’m sure his father would be proud.”

“You’d certainly think so, but I often wonder how much of that pride was about what my father accomplished and how much was simply because he’d followed in the footsteps of his elders.”

“And now, here you are, years later, running for the same office,” she mused.

Mike roamed the outer edge of the shop, occasionally stopping to look at a homemade item but mostly just pacing. “You make it sound like I have a choice.”

“You don’t
want
to be mayor?” She instantly regretted the shock she heard in her voice as it seemed to pull the man out of his almost trancelike state.

He turned widened eyes in her direction. “I . . . I didn’t say that.”

She scrambled to regroup and get them back on the original path, a path that held far more promise than the one her big mouth threatened to yield. “I’m sorry. I guess I—”

“All you have to do is walk through town hall and look at the photographs of past mayors to know why I need to do this. It’s a legacy my father has groomed me to continue since the day I was born.”

“Sounds like a lot of pressure to me,” she said honestly.

He half snorted, half laughed. “That’s putting it mildly.”

She tried to think of something to say, something to serve as the probe she needed to go deeper, but she was at a loss.

Fortunately, he continued, unprompted. “The day I started kindergarten, I was told to be nice to my classmates because they might be the voters who put me into office one day. When I started in sports, I was the one who always had the end-of-the-year parties. So my fellow teammates would remember me as generous and kind. And when I was a teenager, I was badgered to toe the line on a daily basis. When I didn’t, my actions were quickly swept under the carpet before any sort of blemish on my record could take hold.”

“The latter must have made you feel invincible.”

This time, his laugh was accompanied by a downward tilt of his head. “Did it ever. I could essentially do whatever I wanted and know that my father would make it magically disappear.

“If I hit a guardrail with my car because I was drinking, a more sympathy-inducing story would be disseminated through my father’s handpicked channels. Suddenly the story became about me swerving to avoid a deer, or my brakes malfunctioning, that sort of thing.”

“Wow.” It was a way of life she could only imagine.

“Before you think it was a cakewalk for me, you have to know that my peers weren’t stupid. They saw what was going on, heard the creative spin that always followed, and began to resent me. Which is why, when I was about sixteen, I went looking for a different group of friends—kids who knew what it was like to grow up with a set of expectations that had nothing to do with them and everything to do with a way of life virtually handpicked for them generations earlier.”

“You’re talking about the Amish now, aren’t you?”

“They didn’t care that I was or wasn’t the mayor’s son. They just thought my car was cool, my clothes were cool, and
I
was cool. And I knew they weren’t going to go home telling stories about me that would eventually make their way back to my father.”

She hung on everything he said and the holes he helped fill. “So that’s how you knew Leroy Beiler, Miriam Hochstetler, Elizabeth Troyer, and Sadie Lehman, right?”

He turned his back to her and stared out the window. “They were in that yearlong thing where they get to be bad, essentially. They can smoke if they want to, even
drink
if they want to. But mostly they just get to be un-Amish for a little while. And they looked to me to help them be un-Amish. Funny thing is, I think I learned as much from them as they ever did from me.”

“Friends have a way of teaching us all sorts of things, don’t they?” she said softly.

For a moment, she wasn’t sure he’d heard her, but just as she was about to repeat herself, he nodded, the anguish her words caused evident in his hushed yet raspy response. “Especially when you realize they’re the only true ones you’ve ever had.”

She gasped. “That was nearly twenty years ago, Mike. Surely you’ve had friends since then.”

“No, not like those four, I haven’t.”

“How do you mean?”

He slumped against the window, shoved his hands into the front pockets of his pants, and stared up at the ceiling as if searching for something. After several long moments, he sighed and allowed his gaze to drift slowly back to her face. “They looked up to me like I was something special. They trusted
me
in a way no one had ever trusted me before.” He stopped, cleared his throat, and then added, “In a way no one has trusted me since.”

She teed her hands in the air. “I have to stop you on that last one. Because, based on what I saw in your campaign headquarters last night, there’s a whole bunch of people trusting you at the moment.”

He thumped the back of his head against the glass pane behind him and squeezed his eyes shut temporarily. “I’m aware.”

“And that’s a bad thing?” At his emphatic nod, she dug a bit deeper. “For whom?
You?
”

“No. For them.”

She stepped forward, then backward, unsure of how to react to the man’s self-deprecation. Did she pat his back and tell him he was too hard on himself? Did she bombard him with questions designed to unearth the reason for his obvious self-loathing? Or did she try to get the conversation back where she needed it to be?

Before she could settle on a plan of action, Michael spoke again. “It seems as if I have a real gift for betraying those who trust me.”

“I—”

Michael pulled his left hand from his pocket, held his index finger in the air between them, and then pulled his right hand out to reveal a vibrating phone. Looking down at the caller ID screen, he released a muted groan. “I don’t know how he does it, I really don’t.”

“How who does what?”

“How my father seems to know when I’m about to—” He stopped, shook his head, and then brought the phone to the side of his face. “Hey, Dad. What’s up?”

She watched as the man’s jaw ran the gamut from tight to slack and everything in between before he was finally given an opportunity to speak. “Yes, Dad, I know how important this kind of media coverage is to you . . . Yes, you’re right . . . How important this kind of media coverage is to
me
 . . . I guess I just don’t understand why I have to do the interview outside Grandfather’s old house . . . Yes, Dad . . . Yes, I know . . . Okay, okay, I’m on my way.”

Slowly, he dropped the phone to his side, his head hung low. “I’ve gotta go.” Then, lifting his head, he established eye contact just long enough to apologize. “I didn’t come here intending to bend your ear, I really didn’t. But I felt bad about the way my father cut our conversation short yesterday, and even worse about the fact I just let it happen. Again. But, as you probably saw just now on the phone, I don’t really have a spine where my father is concerned. Never have.”

She resisted the urge to nod and, instead, offered what she hoped was thoughtful if not insightful commiseration. “I don’t have children myself, but I guess maybe it’s hard for some parents to ever fully see their offspring as independent adults capable of living their own life. All you can do, I guess, is talk to him, tell him how you feel.”

He sidestepped Claire and headed for the door, his footfalls heavy with an invisible weight. “I wish it were that simple.”

“Why can’t it be?”

When he reached the door, he turned, his blue-green eyes shrouded in pain. “Because if I’d taken the reins of my own life the way she wanted me to years ago, I’d have destroyed my father and his legacy.”

Claire stared at Mike.
“She?”

If he heard her request for clarification, he gave no indication, his words, his focus somewhere else entirely. “Lately, though, I have to wonder if it was my
father
I was truly worried about . . . or
myself
.”

Chapter 19

L
ooking back, Claire knew Peter’s premarital apartment should have been a clue as to his priorities in life, but as a young twenty-something, she hadn’t made the connection. At the time, she’d seen the sparse personal touches as an indicator he needed a woman in his life—someone who could help him create a real home. Sadly, as their marriage fizzled to an end, she’d come to realize the sterile feel of her then husband’s surroundings wasn’t a cry for help but, rather, a crystal clear snapshot of the man himself.

Emotionless . . .

One-dimensional . . .

Money oriented . . .

And utterly clueless as to what makes a life worth living.

She shook off the memory and willed herself to focus on Jakob and everything his surroundings were poised to say about him.

“Now remember, I’ve only been renting this place for seven months so it’s still lacking in some respects.” Jakob jiggled his key in the lock and turned it, his hand sweeping her inward as he did. “But it’ll do for now.”

She preceded him into the tiny foyer and stopped, her audible intake of air making him laugh.

“Or . . . maybe it won’t,” he quipped.

Pulling her gaze from the bits and pieces of the living room she could make out, she tried to focus on her host, his quiet laughter making it apparent she’d missed a joke. “Is something wrong?”

“I didn’t think so, but after that gasp of yours just now, it’s rather obvious I’ve been deluding myself.” He helped her out of her coat then hung it in the hall closet beside his own. “Maybe you could make some decorating suggestions? I’m a pretty quick study with most things.”

“Are you kidding me?” she asked as she inched closer to the living room for a better view. On the far side of the room was a stone fireplace, an evening’s worth of wood stacked neatly beside it in a brass holder while a handful of picture frames lined its mantel from left to right. Across from the hearth, yet angled to enjoy its cozy warmth and charm, was an oversized couch with a homemade Amish quilt draped over the back. A stack of books—mostly thriller novels—was within easy reach while the remotes for the television were tucked neatly beside the DVD player on the tastefully simple entertainment cabinet. “I’d say you’re doing just fine all on your own.”

Anxious to get a closer look at the pictures, she wiggled out of her boots and tiptoed across the old-fashioned wood-planked floor, Jakob’s laugh soliciting a smile of her own. “What?” she asked without stopping. “What’s so funny?”

“Nothing. I’m just happy, I guess. Happy that you’re here, happy I suggested we watch a movie here, and happy you actually said yes.”

“How could I not?” It was an honest reply and one she hoped felt as good to hear as it did to say. She slowed as she approached the mantel, the familiar frame, dead center, prompting her to look in disbelief over her shoulder at the detective. “You still have this?”

He answered her shock with his own. “Why wouldn’t I? It’s one of the prettiest pictures I’ve ever seen of Lighted Way in the snow.”