Suspendered Sentence (An Amish Mystery) (27 page)

“Of course.”

“What happens if some of those people who have been conditioned to protect Michael O’Neil are inside your own department? What happens if they give him a heads-up and he runs? What then?”

“The only one who knows anything of consequence is the chief and he’s got no allegiance to Michael’s father.”

“And the district attorney? Or Sadie’s now-retired doctor? Any connections there?”

“All I can do is hope there isn’t.”

He slowed the car as they approached Glick’s Tools ’n More and Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe, and then pulled into a spot directly in front of Heavenly Treasures. “How’s this for rock star parking?”

She looked from the clock, to her shop, and, finally, to Jakob. “I know you’ve got a lot on your plate right now. I really do. But I think you should look at whatever files your department has on Elizabeth’s accident.”

He drew back, eyes wide. “You mean,
Ben’s
Elizabeth?”

She answered by way of a half-nod, half-shrug combination.

“Why?”

She took a moment to muster up the courage she needed to dump her Howard-born theory on Jakob. Sure, she was still afraid he’d think she was a lunatic, but she simply couldn’t keep it to herself any longer. “Because there’s no getting around the fact the timing is suspect.”

“Timing?”

“Think about it, Jakob. She was killed on her way to tell the truth about Sadie. A truth three other people were desperate to keep secret.”

Chapter 26

C
laire was just dragging the spring sale sign through the alley and down to the sidewalk when Annie came walking up, the girl’s smile rivaling the sun that had yet to completely chase away the chill left by her conversation with Jakob.

“Well, look who’s back.” She released her hold on the tent sign long enough to pull the teenager in for a quick hug. “You worked here for just two and a half days, left for a day and a half, and I’m already at a loss around the shop without you.”

A slow smile spread across Annie’s face only to disappear in short order. “I am sorry I could not work yesterday. Eva needed me to help with the children when Leroy came to town and did not come back until very, very late.”

She tried not to react to the mention of Annie’s brother-in-law and, instead, focused on the only part of the girl’s words that mattered at that exact moment. “First, I’m glad you spent time helping your sister—that’s what family does for one another. And second, I didn’t say what I said to make you feel bad. I said it because you’re a hard worker and I’m blessed to have you working here with me.”

Annie cast her eyes downward but not before Claire caught sight of the noticeable reddening of the teenager’s cheeks. “I am happy to work here.”

“So how is the new baby?” she asked as she continued lugging the sign toward its final destination.

“Hungry.”

She laughed, positioned the sign so as to be seen by people approaching the store from either direction, and then motioned Annie to follow her inside. “Since it’s your first Saturday, I should probably warn you that we’ll see more customers than we do during the week. That won’t necessarily be the case as the spring tourism season kicks off, but for now, it is.”

“I understand.”

“As a result, you won’t see any tasks listed on the clipboard that will have either of us needing to be in the back room—unless we’re retrieving a particular item for a customer. Today is really all about being on the floor, answering questions, and ringing up purchases.”

“That is my favorite part,” Annie confessed. “I like to talk to the customers. I like to see what they wear and hear how they speak.”

“And from what I saw on Tuesday and Wednesday, the customers love you, too.” She grabbed a cloth from a bin just inside the back room and wiped the counter thoroughly. When she was done, she tucked the cloth underneath and double-checked the register to make sure they had the proper change to make it through the rest of the day.

“You made an impression on little Mary.”

She closed the register drawer and tilted her head. “Little Mar—wait. You mean your niece, right?”

“Yah. She was pleased to tell me that you like my chicken lunches.”

“Because I do.” She raised up on tiptoes in an effort to see through the room and out onto the sidewalk where their temporary lack in customers was guaranteed for at least a little while longer. “So Leroy got home late last night?”

“Yah. Eva was worried. Leroy is always home for supper.”

“Were you there when he finally returned home?”

“Yah.”

She waffled at the notion of asking more questions but, in the end, she couldn’t resist. “How did he seem?”

“Quiet. Tired.”

“Did he say where he’d gone? Or why he was late?”

“I do not know.” Annie stopped reorganizing the pile of embroidered table napkins and raised a quizzical eyebrow. “Why do you ask such questions?”

She made herself stop and breathe. It was not her place to share Leroy’s secret. It was his. To Annie, she merely shrugged. “I don’t know. Just making conversation, I guess.”

The jingle above the front door propelled her out from behind the counter and saved her from any further inquiries regarding her ill-conceived fishing expedition. “Good morning. Welcome to Heavenly Treasures . . .” The rest of her greeting petered off as the identity of her first customer registered in her head.

“Uh . . . Mike . . . Hi. It’s nice to see you again.”

The tall, lanky candidate hesitated just inside the doorway, his greenish blue eyes dulled by something that looked a lot like worry. The fact that he barely lifted his feet en route to meet Claire in the middle of the room simply backed up her assessment.

He knew.

Of that, she was virtually certain.

But how? Had Jakob reached out to him in the thirty minutes that had passed between dropping her off and that very moment?

No. If he had, Mike wouldn’t be standing here right now . . .

“What can I do for you, Mike?”

“I’m not sure. I’m not even sure why I came in here instead of going straight to the police department the way I intended. But maybe it’s because you’re new here and you’re the first person I’ve met in a long time who didn’t have preconceived notions about me—good or bad.”

She shifted her weight from one foot to the other before turning to address Annie. “Can you hold down the fort out here for just a little while? I think Mr. O’Neil and I could use a little time to talk privately in my office.”

“Of course,” Annie said. “I will take good care of the customers.”

“I know you will. Thanks, kiddo.” She motioned for Mike to follow her toward the back of the room and the small hallway that led to her office. “If you need me, Annie, just give me a shout.”

Any hesitation Mike may have shown at the thought of sitting down to talk disappeared the second they entered her office and she unfolded a chair for his use. When he was seated, she leaned against the edge of her desk and gave him her full attention.

“I don’t know what you’ve heard, if anything, but I’m well aware of how fast news can travel in this town. Heck, even when I was a teenager and my father thought he was squashing things, they still made their way around this place like wildfire.”

Something inside her told her to play dumb and she took its advice. “I’m not sure what you’re talking about.”

“You will,” he mumbled. “My father thinks he can wipe this one away, too, but even if he could, I don’t want him to. What I did was wrong. I didn’t do it to be malicious, mind you . . . but it was still wrong.”

Easing to the side, she slowly lowered herself to her actual desk chair and hoped its ear-piercing screech didn’t break whatever spell had the man unburdening his soul to a practical stranger. “
What
was wrong?”

“Burying that poor girl the way I did.” Without looking up, he continued, his eyes, his mouth, his words angled to the floor. “Sadie Lehman. That Amish girl whose body just turned up last week. I could have told you it was there because I’m the one who put it there nineteen years ago.”

“But why? Why didn’t you say something back then?”

“Because even though I wasn’t sure what happened to her that night, I knew it was something bigger than even my dad could cover up. And as much as I griped and groaned about having to follow my father’s legacy back then, I guess there was a part of me that didn’t want to be the one who messed it up, either.”

Once he started talking, he seemed incapable of closing the floodgates on the nineteen-year-old secret that flowed from his mouth. “I also didn’t want to see the rest of them get in trouble on account of me.”

“The rest of them?”

“For starters, the Amish kids. The ones who actually seemed to like me for who
I
was, instead of liking or not liking me because of who
my father
was.”

She was vaguely aware of the tickle his words unleashed on her subconscious but opted to keep things moving rather than try to figure out why. That was something she could do later, when Michael was gone. “Why were you so worried about them?”

“Because they were my friends.”

“Sadie, too?”

He flung his head back and stared up at the ceiling. “I actually liked her best. She was sweet and kind and laughed at my jokes even when I knew she didn’t have a clue what half of them meant.” His Adam’s apple bobbed a few times before he slowly lowered his chin enough to afford Claire an uninhibited view of his eyes—the worry she’d seen there previously now replaced with raw pain. “Sometimes, when she’d talk about her family, I’d think what it would be like to be part of it—to work all day and then sit together after dinner and talk.”

“Yours wasn’t like that?” she asked.

“Sometimes it was. On holidays, I guess.”

She weighed the possibility of continuing to play dumb against her desire to know more and opted for the latter. If Mike noticed the shift, though, he gave no indication. “So how did you find out the police know about your involvement in what happened to Sadie nineteen years ago?”

“One of my father’s moles inside the county called the house last night. I was there, working on my campaign, and answered. I don’t think the guy on the other end knew it was me because he started in right away. He said two different Amish people had come clean about the events leading up to Sadie’s body being buried where it was.” He studied his hands as if they were foreign objects, his thoughts clearly somewhere far away from Claire’s office. “And I knew right away it was Leroy and Miriam. It couldn’t have been anyone else. Elizabeth has been dead for more than ten years.”

She searched his face, his mannerisms, his breathing pattern for any tells when he mentioned Elizabeth’s name, but there were none.

“I imagine you were scared, yes?”

He looked up. “When I was sixteen and sitting next to a dead body, wondering what the heck happened? Yeah, I was scared.”

“I was talking more about last night,” she clarified, “when you took that call.”

Silence filled the space between them as he leaned back in his chair and brought his right ankle across his left knee. “I think I was shocked at first. Maybe a little scared, too, I guess. But not for the reason you probably suspect.”

“Oh?”

“I knew I had to tell my father that the news was out. That what my Amish friends and I did that night wasn’t a secret anymore.”

She started to ask another question but stopped as his explanation took root. “Wait a minute. You knew you had to tell your father that
the news was out
?”

He nodded, once, twice.

“But you say that like he’s known what you did all along.”

“Because I thought he did.”

“And now you don’t?” she asked, her curiosity at an all-time high.

“No. I saw his face when I sat him down and told him the cops knew. He stared at me like I had six heads. So then I got more specific. You know, about Sadie dying and me burying her body. When he heard that, I swear I thought he was going to have a heart attack right there in front of me.” He slumped back against the edge of the wall that cleared his chair, and let out a half-laugh, half-cry combination. “And that’s when all the fear I’ve been carrying around the past fourteen years or so finally faded into relief.”

“Relief?”

“Yeah, because now I know he holds no part in destroying my great-grandfather’s legacy in this town the way I thought he had. Knowing that makes all of this a whole lot easier to bear.”

She tried to make sense of what he was saying but wasn’t entirely sure she was succeeding. “You were afraid he’d be held accountable for looking the other way?”

“No. I was afraid he would be held accountable for something much, much worse.”

His ominous words kicked off a shiver that started at the top of her spine and traveled all the way to the bottom, taking her breath with it as it went. “I . . . I don’t understand.”

“For nineteen years, I’ve carried around the secret of what I did that night. For nearly fourteen of those years, I’ve also lived with the absolute certainty that my actions resulted in the death of someone who was only trying to do the right thing.