Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) (26 page)

S
he was just reaching for the pitcher of orange juice when she heard the gentle tapping at the inn’s back door. Closing the refrigerator, she answered her aunt’s wide brown eyes with her index finger.

“Keep going with the pancakes. I’ll see who that is.” Claire set her glass back down on the counter and headed across the kitchen. “Are you expecting a delivery this morning? Or maybe some new guests who are trying to access the wrong door?”

“No. And there won’t be anyone new checking in until tomorrow.”

“Okay. I’ll take care of it.” She stepped into the tiny foyer, crossed its cozily scarred floor, and pushed aside the simple curtain panel that hung from a thin rod over the top third of the back door. “Jakob?”

Clearly able to read lips, he smiled in return and then held up two large to-go cups imprinted with the Heavenly Brews logo.

She unlocked the door and pulled it open, the chill it ushered in no match for the warmth of the detective’s presence. “Come in, come in before you freeze.”

“It’s not so bad when you get used to it,” he said as he stepped through the door and handed her one of the cups. “I took a chance and got you a caramel hot chocolate. If that’s not good, you can have this one”—he held up the second cup—“which is your basic hot chocolate.”

She couldn’t help but smile—at his presence, his sweetness, or anything else about the man standing less than a foot away. “I thought you were more of a coffee guy.”

“I am. But since I couldn’t be sure on the caramel flavor, I figured I’d go with a regular hot chocolate just in case.”

“You didn’t have to do that,” she protested.

He shrugged and then peeked into the kitchen. “Good morning, Diane. It sure smells good in here.”

“I’m making pancakes. Would you care to stay and have some?”

He smiled at Diane but allowed his gaze to roam its way back to Claire. “Well, I was kind of hoping I could drive your niece to work this morning if you don’t need her here to help you with breakfast.”

Diane waved her hand. “I don’t need her at all.”

“Gee, thanks,” Claire mumbled loudly enough for her aunt to hear.

“Now, dear, I always
need
you . . . but I don’t need you
this morning
. You’ve already done the things I needed help with, anyway.”

She felt her face warm under the weight of Jakob’s wink and did her best to remain focused on the woman flipping pancakes just inside the kitchen. “Are you sure?”

“I’m sure. Now off with the two of you before I get sidetracked from what I’m supposed to be doing and end up having to serve my guests burned pancakes.”

“As if that would ever happen,” she teased back before setting her cup down long enough to wiggle into her coat and gloves and grab her purse from the shelf beside the door. “Okay, I guess I’m all set.”

He held the door open for her and then joined her on the stretch of grass that separated the Victorian home’s back entrance from the small but well-maintained parking area. “I’m sorry I couldn’t commit to meeting you this evening when you texted last night, but I’m kind of expecting today to shake out a lot like yesterday.”

“Which was . . .” she prodded.

“Totally and completely nuts.”

They fell in step with each other as they maneuvered around the last of the almost-melted snow piles and headed toward his car. When they were settled in their seats, he started the engine, turned on the heat, and left the car in park. “I wanted to stop out here last night and bring you up to speed on what began in your shop yesterday morning and continued for nearly eight more hours in my office, but the night got away with me.”

“So what happened?”

“I talked to Leroy, Miriam, Atlee, Sadie’s parents, and the district attorney. When all of that was done, and I released Miriam and Leroy to go back to their respective homes for the night, I had a mountain of reports to write.”

She traced her gloved finger around the lid of her to-go cup and leaned her head against the seat back. “I woke you with that text I sent, didn’t I?”

“I wish.” He swiveled his body to face her as he took a sip of his drink. “No, I was actually still in the office, talking to the chief when your text came in. It was a bright spot, I’ll tell you.”

“Phew,” she sighed. “That’s a relief.”

He stopped midsip and furrowed his brow. “Were you really that worried you woke me? Because if you were, you shouldn’t have been. I actually think it would be nice to wake up to a message from you. Even nicer if I got to hear your voice in my ear.”

At a loss for what to say in response, she took a sip of her own hot chocolate and used those extra few seconds to consider her next step. When she finally lowered the cup to her lap, she brought the subject back to something he’d already mentioned. “So Leroy and Miriam got to go home last night?”

“They did.”

“I guess I’m a little surprised by that. I kind of figured that maybe you’d have to arrest them.”

He shifted his body against the door and propped his left elbow and forearm against the top of the steering wheel. “Early on, as things were just getting started, I kind of assumed it would come to that, as well. But after running through the story again with Leroy, listening to Miriam’s take on the same event, and, finally, Zebediah and Waneta’s input on how it all fit in relation to their daughter, it became apparent that jail time wasn’t really applicable in this case. At least not for the two of them, anyway.”

“But Sadie is dead! And they buried her on her parents’ property and said nothing for nineteen years! And, let’s be honest, the only reason they’re speaking now is because the body was found and they knew you were onto them,” she protested. “How could there
not
be jail time?”

She heard the outrage in her voice and stopped herself short. Less than nine hours earlier, she was worrying about Leroy’s children if he went to jail. Now, she was single-handedly leading the charge to lock him up?

Gripping her cup tightly with both hands, she turned her focus to Jakob. “I’m sorry. I have no right to question how you do your job. Will you forgive me?”

He leaned forward, tugged her closest hand from its death grip on her cup, and captured it inside his own. “Forgive you for what? Wanting justice for a dead girl and her parents? There’s nothing to forgive about that, Claire. I was feeling exactly the same way when this all started . . . and still do on many levels.”

“Then what’s changed?”

“In the beginning, I was on a quest for justice. Now I know the way this shakes out within the parameters of the law.”

She looked down at her hand inside his and then back up at him. “Meaning?”

“Leroy and Miriam didn’t commit a crime.”

“They didn’t commit a crime?” she repeated, stunned. “How can you say that?”

He inhaled deeply then let the same breath release slowly through his nose. “After talking to Zebediah, Waneta, and Sadie’s now-retired doctor, it appears as if Sadie had an allergy to peanuts. They never made a big deal out of it because, well, the Amish don’t make a big deal out of anything and they simply refrained from having anything with nuts in their home.”

“Go on.”

“Remember the candy bars Leroy said they ate that last night?”

“Yes.”

“The doctor believes, and I have to agree, the likely cause of death was an allergic reaction to something in the candy. I showed Miriam and Leroy a variety of candy at the station and they each pointed to the same kind as being one of the ones they ate that fateful night.”

“It had peanuts, didn’t it?” she whispered.

He answered by way of a nod. “The way both parties described Sadie in her final moments only served to shore up that theory.”

“Why didn’t they say anything? Why didn’t they go running for help?”

“Because they were kids—fifteen- and sixteen-year-old kids. And they were scared.”

She pulled her hand from his and brought it to her forehead. “Scared of what? They didn’t do anything wrong.”

For the first time since he took her hand, Jakob swung his gaze off her and onto the parts of Heavenly he could see through the front windshield of his car. “They didn’t know that, Claire. They only knew that they were doing things the Amish don’t do—like drinking, telling dirty jokes, and listening to loud music.”

“They were on Rumspringa,” she protested.

“Rumspringa or not, they still knew they were doing things their parents and the bishop wouldn’t condone.” He lifted his hand, raked it through his hair, and then let it drop down onto the steering wheel. “And while they’re sitting there, doing these things, one of their friends falls over and dies. They don’t know what to think. They don’t know if people will think they’ve done something to her. And then, on top of all of that, their ages and their unfamiliarity with the things they’re doing make it so they’re not a hundred percent sure that they haven’t done something wrong.”

She took a moment to process everything she was hearing and to examine it from all angles. When she was done, she reclaimed his hand from the top of the steering wheel. “Okay, so they didn’t harm her . . . and they didn’t say anything at the time because they were afraid. But to stay silent for nineteen years? To allow Sadie’s mother to believe Sadie was alive somewhere and intentionally staying away? Surely it’s a crime to stay silent, isn’t it?”

“You’d think so, wouldn’t you?” He flipped his wrist so they could be palm to palm, and then used his thumb to gently massage the back of her hand as he filled in the rest of the gaps. “Concealing the death of a child is a first-degree misdemeanor in the state of Pennsylvania. But it only applies to the parents of the dead child.”

“Who didn’t know their child was dead,” she interjected.

“Exactly. If the kids had been questioned by officials as to Sadie’s whereabouts and they lied to them, they could be charged with unsworn falsification—a
second-
degree misdemeanor. But, since Zebediah and Waneta didn’t involve the police in their concerns about their daughter’s whereabouts, we never opened an investigation.”

“So you’re saying they didn’t do anything wrong?” She heard the shrillness in her voice and tried to call it back, but it was no use.

“
I’m
not saying they didn’t do anything wrong.
They’re
not even saying they didn’t do anything wrong. But the wrongness of their actions is a moral issue, not a legal one.” He squeezed her hands, bringing her focus back on him. “There is no doubt in my mind that Leroy and Miriam have led a very tortured existence these past nineteen years. They will never forgive themselves for what happened that night or the unbearable pain their actions heaped on a family who had the right to know.”

“But to give these people
hope
 . . . when they knew there was none? I . . . I just can’t fathom that. And I can’t fathom the notion that, in the eyes of the law, none of them did anything illegal in all of this.”

“One of them did.”

“One of them did?” She shot up tall in her seat. “What are you talking about?”

“Sadie’s body. It was buried on the grounds of her own home. Without a casket. Without a service.”

“Okay . . .”

“It is a crime to abuse a corpse.”

Again, she jerked her hand away. “They abused her body?”

“No. No. Not in the way you’re thinking.” Jakob reached into his backseat and retrieved a fairly new, yet beat-up file folder and opened it on his lap. After shuffling through a few papers, he began to read. “‘Except as authorized by law, a person who treats a corpse in a way that he knows would outrage ordinary family sensibilities commits a misdemeanor of the second degree.’”

After asking him to read the statute again, she did her best to apply it to Sadie. “So, because she was buried in a way her family would not have wanted, it could be considered abuse of a corpse?”

“That’s right.”

She let everything soak in and then moved on to the next most obvious issue. “Does it matter that it happened nineteen years ago?”

“Maybe, maybe not.” He shuffled a few more papers. “The statute of limitations—42 PA CS 5552—is for two years. But there’s a
chance
the prosecuting attorney could make a case for the clock starting at the moment the crime was known, which didn’t start until the body was discovered last week.”

“So who buried her?” she asked

“Michael O’Neil.”

She closed her eyes. “How did they get her back to her property?”

“Michael’s car.”

“Did the rest of them help?”

When she opened her eyes again, he was watching her closely. “According to Leroy and Miriam, no. They were too scared. But I’ll know more once I sit down with Michael and hear his account of things.”

“And when will that be?”

“Once I get everything ready to go.”

“I don’t understand. Can’t you just go out to his house and pick him up?”

“If he was the average joe, sure. But there’s an awful lot of people in this town who have been conditioned to protect this guy. And if I don’t have everything I need when I call him in for questioning, he, too, could wiggle out from under this abomination.”

It was the part of small-town politics she knew nothing about. To pretend otherwise would only make her look foolish.

She pointed at the dashboard clock and then reached around her right shoulder for her seat belt. “I’ve got to get to the shop. I’m supposed to open in ten minutes.”

He, too, took in the time and then turned to buckle his own restraint. “I promise we’ll have a real date soon, okay?”

“The other night? At your house?” she said by way of reminder. “
I
was the one who threw the monkey wrench in that one. And today? I wanted to hear what was going on every bit as much as you wanted to share it.”

He steered the car out of the lot and toward the main road. “We did okay with the snow date, though, didn’t we?”

“We did awesome with that one.” She allowed the momentary memory of their special day to relax her body as they drove the short distance to Lighted Way, the sight of the picturesque shopping district chasing the last of the morning chill from her body. But as they officially left pavement in favor of cobblestone, she couldn’t help but swing her attention to the police station on the left-hand side of the street. “Jakob? Can I ask you a question?”