The Revealing (33 page)

Tobe handed baby Sarah to Vera and took the pan of spring peas onto his lap. Rose had to smile. He would rather shell peas than hold a baby, but at least he wasn’t shirking his duties with Sarah like she thought he might.

“Where do you suppose that Paisley went off to?” Vera asked him.

“I have no idea,” he said. “I called the restaurant where she worked and they haven’t seen her in months. They said they fired her because she was helping herself to the cash register.”

“Did you try calling the manager of her apartment?”

“I did. They said she was evicted about that same time.” He rubbed the underside of his nose with his forearm.

Vera looked up. “But then why was she looking for the key to the apartment?”

Tobe’s chin jerked up. “Key? What key?”

“She told me she had lost the key to her apartment and thought you had the only spare. She said it would cost her a fortune to get a locksmith out there, so she really needed to find it.”

Tobe’s face went white. Slowly, he sat up, his spine poker-straight. The spring pea pan crashed to the floor, and peas bounced all over the kitchen. He didn’t even realize what he’d done as he turned to Rose. “Call Allen Turner. Tell him to get out here as fast as he can.”

Tobe and Naomi sat on the porch swing, waiting for Allen Turner. Every fifteen minutes, Mim went out to check the phone shanty to see if any messages were waiting from the lawyer. Bethany thought they should take turns waiting at the phone, but Rose said no, that they had plenty to do and staring at a phone didn’t make it ring. But no one could get much done.

By the time Allen Turner’s car roared up to the house two hours later, Rose breathed a sigh of relief, grateful the boys were still helping Galen feed the horses and weren’t in on this. She watched Tobe warily, but color was back in his face.

Allen Turner walked in and sat at the kitchen table, an expectant look on his face. “So. What’s the emergency, Tobe?”

“Jake Hertzler is nearby,” Tobe said. “I’m sure of it.”

Ten seconds of beating silence before Bethany added, “I’ve had the same thought.” Tobe snapped his head to face her. “At least, I know he was here in the last few months.”

“Me too,” Naomi said.

Mim bit her lip. “Same here.”

Allen Turner’s head turned from Tobe to Bethany to Naomi to Mim, then back again to Tobe. He seemed thoroughly confused and he was not a man prone to confusion.

Tobe pointed to Bethany. “Is this about the horse?”

She nodded and explained how Galen had found Lodestar, abandoned. She looked at Mim. “What makes you think he’s here?”

“There’s been a couple of times when a car has driven by me, slowly at first, then it sped up to pass me. The driver was a man, and even though I never saw his face, something about him seemed like Jake.”

“That’s the same feeling I’ve had,” Naomi said. “I thought I saw someone who looked like him near the post office one day. But it was too dark to tell, for sure.”

So far, Allen Turner wasn’t impressed by hunches and feelings. He glanced impatiently at his watch and turned to Tobe. Soon, all eyes were on Tobe. He took a deep breath and explained to Allen about Paisley’s sudden appearance, about the fact that Paisley had known Jake—quite well, in fact. Much better than he knew her—and then came to the part about the key. “Jake must have sent her here to look for the key.”

Allen leaned back in his chair. “Tell me about the key.”

“It belongs to a safety deposit box in the York County Savings and Loan. The account is under Dad’s and Jake’s and Rose’s name.”

“My name?” Rose said.

Tobe looked at her. “Don’t you remember when Dad had you sign some papers to set it up? It was right when Jake
started working for Schrock Investments. Jake wanted to put the P&L statements in the box each week. Dad felt it would be wise to have three names on it, so two would always have to go together to sign in.”

Rose vaguely remembered when Dean set up the safety deposit box, but she had never used the box. Not once. “Go on,” she urged.

“I know Jake and Dad visited the safety deposit box regularly, weekly, but knowing Dad, he would have signed in, spotted someone he knew in the bank, got talking to him, and let Jake go into the vault alone. I found the key in Jake’s car on the day—” he glanced at Rose and hesitated—“well, I grabbed it. Along with the ledgers.”

“Where is the key?”

“I hid it in a very safe place.”

“Where?”

He cut another glance at Rose’s direction. “I hid it in my mother’s nursing home. In her room.”

“What?” Rose said. The word came out as a tiny squeak. “Your mother’s . . .
what
? She’s . . .
where
?”

Tobe pressed on. “My mother isn’t well. She’s a paranoid schizophrenic. She lives in a home for mentally ill women.”

Vera pinned Tobe with an accusing look. “You’re mistaken. Your mother left years ago. She ran away and abandoned the children.”

Tobe held her gaze for a moment, then flickered aside. “Bethany knows. She visits our mother once a month.”

All eyes turned toward Bethany, but her attention was riveted to a small mark on the tabletop. She was aware that everyone was waiting for an explanation, but she hesitated, taking time to gather her thoughts, before her voice cut into
the silence. “That’s what my mother wanted everyone to think. She knew that Dad would try to have her come home, and that she wasn’t capable of taking care of her children. She checked herself into the facility and had papers drawn up that allowed Dad to divorce her because of abandonment. She planned it all out. She wanted everyone to move on without her.”

Rose had often heard of people saying they were rooted to the ground by a shock, and she just realized how apt a description it was. She was not able to move, not able to say a word.

It was almost too huge to grapple with. For years, Rose had felt as if she was picking up the pieces that Dean’s first wife had left behind. She was astounded to think Mary Schrock had given her family away to protect them. She felt dizzy, as if she might faint, and she tried to steel herself.

Vera!
She glanced over to see how her mother-in-law was taking this revelation. Vera remained as colorless as skim milk. Her lips moved silently, but not a sound came out. One hand was touching her heart.

Allen turned to Tobe. “What do you think is in the safety deposit box?”

He lifted a shoulder in a careless shrug. “Money. What else? Enough to get him out of town and set him up somewhere. I think he was siphoning money off the top, right from the start.”

Allen Turner released an exhausted sigh. “Why didn’t you tell me about the safety deposit box when you were getting interrogated? You could’ve saved us a lot of trouble.”

Tobe looked away. “I wanted to deal with Jake myself. I couldn’t figure out how, but that was my intention. My plan.” He looked straight at Naomi. “I know better now.”

“So you think Jake sent Paisley here to find the key?” Allen Turner said.

“He might’ve, but it wasn’t here,” Tobe said. “I hid it at my mother’s.”

“Wait.” Bethany’s eyes were round as silver dollars. “Wait a minute. Tobe, what kind of a key? Mammi Vera said Paisley was looking for a key to her apartment.”

“She was lying,” he said. “It was a small key for a safety deposit box.”

Bethany gasped. “I know that key. But it isn’t there. During Christmas, I was visiting Mom and she gave me the key. She told me not to lose it. She said it belonged to a little boy and he needed it. I didn’t know what she was talking about, Tobe. She doesn’t make sense most of the time. I just thought it was a key she had found.”

Allen Turner looked like he was about to jump out of his skin. “So
where
is the key?”

“It’s up in my room,” Bethany said, already at the stairs. “I’ll go get it.”

“Oh no,” Mammi Vera said, touching her chest again. “Oh no.”

Rose blew out a puff of air. “Paisley . . . she stayed in Bethany’s room.”

Bethany came back down the stairs, her face white. “It’s gone.”

Allen Turner didn’t seem at all surprised.

Tobe was practically out of his chair. “What if he’s already gotten to the safety deposit box? What if he’s emptied it?”

“It’s possible. I’ll get someone to check on that. But if he hasn’t connected with Paisley to get the key, then there’s time to set a trap.”

“Why wouldn’t he have connected with her already? They were working together.”

“Calm down, Tobe. My guess is that Paisley is smart enough and shrewd enough to make him have to find her. She’s got something he wants, and she knows it. If my hunch is right, then we need to flush him out.” Allen Turner bit on his lip, thinking, tapping a pencil on a paper. Then a light came into his eyes. “I’m going to put a notice in the local papers that the York County Savings & Loan Bank is going to drill into all inactive safety deposit boxes and seize the contents.”

“Do they do that?” Tobe asked.

“Banks do it frequently,” Allen Turner said. “The contents get auctioned off and the money goes to the state.”

“Can you do that?” Tobe said.

“Oh yeah.” Allen Turner smiled, a first. “If I can force Jake Hertzler to make his move, I’ll be waiting for him.” Then his smile faded. “But this part is my job. Not yours. Your job is to wait.” He looked right at Tobe as he said it. “To wait.”

19

M
im kept bouncing the baby up and down to stop her from crying, but the decibel level was getting higher. The noise was starting to grate on her. She didn’t like babies and they didn’t like her.

She had agreed to go with Tobe to the doctor for baby Sarah’s one-month checkup, but she didn’t realize that meant Sarah would be getting a shot. Mim nearly passed out when the nurse brought in that long needle, but she held the baby snugly in her lap and squeezed her eyes shut and wished she had earplugs.

She also didn’t realize that Tobe was getting a paternity test. “It’s just a swab of the cheek that gets sent off to the laboratory,” he told Mim. “No big deal.”

“And if it turns out that you are Sarah’s father?” Mim had asked. “That seems like a very big deal.” Even though she didn’t like babies, she did think Sarah was a nice baby, as babies went. Mostly, she had an uncommonly good smell about her. And sometimes the tip of her tongue peeked through her little pink lips. Mim was amazed at the smallness of it, just as she was at her tiny starfish-like hands.

“I’m not.”

“But what if you are, Tobe? What then?”

He frowned at her. “I have to know for sure, Mim.”

Afterward, as Tobe was paying the receptionist for the paternity test—cash borrowed from Mim with a promise of a high-interest return—and asking how long the results would take, she tried to calm the baby down. She jiggled her, she paced the room, she sang to her, she hummed to her, she bounced her. Nothing worked. Sarah flailed and began to cry loud, unstoppable sobs. Little tears rolled down her cheeks, making Mim feel even more terrible, if that was possible. She wanted to cry herself. Tobe kept glancing back at both, a worried look on his face. Finally, he came over and got the bottle of formula out of the baby’s diaper bag and sat down to feed Sarah.

As Tobe fed the baby, almost magically, the crying stopped, the baby calmed down, and peace was restored.

“It’s like she knows, Tobe.”

“Knows what?” The baby looked up at him solemnly, as though committing his face to memory.

Mim bent down to kiss the baby’s forehead. “Sarah knows you are the one she can count on. She trusts you.”

“Babies are too little to know about trust.”

“I’m not so sure about that. Trust is a big part of life. If Sarah already trusts you, you’re halfway there.”

As usual, just like Sammy and Luke, Tobe wasn’t listening to Mim. His eyes were fixed on a distant wall, lost in his private thoughts, as if something was weighing heavily on his mind.