Upon A Winter's Night

She nodded, but he would have sworn she looked as if she was going to cry. Had the sheriff been that hard on her?

“I was going to come over for a little bit, anyway,” she said. “Help the boys with the camel and donkey grooming—do Melly myself.”

“I wasn’t sure they would want you to after last night,” he said, keeping his voice low and glancing around. She would know who “they” were, not the Beiler boys but her parents.

“So nothing’s changed, but everything’s changed,” she told him with a huge sigh, not that he was sure what she meant. She added, “Daad’s working in his lair, and Mamm’s lying down upstairs. I’ll leave them a note and just hitch a ride back with you. I have to get something from upstairs. Just a minute.”

“I’ll make sure you get home— Or, I know, your father might come for you.”

“I’d like to get out, like to talk to you.” She darted away, up the stairs, hardly making a sound.

He went a few steps down the hall and looked in the big parlor. Again, he admired the amazing furniture. Yet despite it being Lydia’s home, there was something stiff about the entire place, like it was part of the showroom at their store with the construction area hidden behind the formal facade.

Lydia came back down the stairs. He swirled the cape around her shoulders, thinking of how they’d hugged when she’d held his coat for him last night. That reminded him he’d been trying to remember a dream he’d had last night, something he wanted to recall but couldn’t...something just out of reach...like Lydia.

She closed and locked the door quietly, and he helped her up into the buggy before he saw, in the large, clear plastic bag she held, an old snow globe and an envelope. As he turned Blaze to head out, he also saw, in a second-story window, Lydia’s mother. He didn’t mention it to her since she seemed so on edge. Mrs. Brand was, he thought, just watching them, but behind the shiny window glass, she looked as if she, too, like the poor dead woman last night, was coated with ice.

4

“You don’t mean the cause of that woman’s death might have been kick-by-camel?” Ray-Lynn asked her husband over their midafternoon Sunday dinner. “And in the heart of Amish country?”

She’d had to hold dinner for him, but she was used to that. She’d known about the life of a sheriff—even a small-town, rural county sheriff—going in. But Jack was worth it.

“Delicious ham and sweet potato casserole, honey,” he said as he took second helpings. “No, I’m not arresting the camel. I only mentioned that since you seem so set on getting one for the church’s living manger scene. Josh Yoder’s camels sound tame enough, but I don’t want you getting near them since you’re going over there to talk to him about the manger scene. And forget anything but having one camel standing off to the side of the manger. No wise men riding them, or we’re the ones could be in for a fall. If something happens to a cast member or observer, the church doesn’t need a lawsuit.”

“I hear you, Sheriff,” she said, smiling at him. “But with a gig just a few miles from his property, I’ll bet Josh himself will come with the camel and maybe Lydia Brand to help out, too. They’ll keep a good eye on things.”

She spread marmalade on a made-from-scratch yeast roll. She loved cooking and baking for just the two of them, even though she oversaw so much food during the week at the restaurant. Honoring Amish tradition and beliefs, she kept the Dutch Farm Table closed on Sundays. If she had not, she would have lost her staff of Amish servers and cooks and been politely boycotted. No Sunday Sales, read many handprinted signs in Eden County. And her Amish friendships meant a lot to her. From the youngest server to her oldest cook, she felt honored to be entrusted with their joys and sorrows.

“I’ve been thinking, Jack...”

“Uh-oh.”

“Don’t tease. This whole thing with Victoria Keller living like a specter in the Stark mansion reminds me of Miss Havisham, the character who was stood up at the altar and turned into a recluse. She went a little crazy, too.”

“I missed that one in Gone with the Wind.”

“It’s not from Gone with the Wind and you know it. It’s from Charles Dickens’s book Great Expectations. Didn’t you ever have to read that in high school?”

“Nope. Nor your GWTW.”

Everyone who knew Ray-Lynn was aware she was a rabid fan of Gone with the Wind and anything to do with it. Their house was a treasure trove of pictures, plates and figurines of scenes from the movie. They’d even worn Civil War costumes for their wedding and reception.

“I’m listening,” he said. “You’ve got good instincts about people, Ray-Lynn, but I don’t want you poking around in the Victoria Keller investigation, so just tell me what you want to say.”

“Well, first of all, Charles Dickens was a genius at naming his characters to give his readers a hint about them and their secrets. Miss Have-a-sham, see? A sham is a trick or hypocrisy. She wasn’t what she seemed to be.”

“What did she seem to be?”

“A spinster recluse, sad and broken over having been jilted by her bridegroom at the altar. But in reality she wanted others to suffer, too. She wanted revenge. And she was wealthy enough to get it. She picked especially on one innocent person, but I won’t go into that.”

“Honey, we don’t know whether Victoria Keller had any motive for going out in the storm to help or hurt someone, get revenge—whatever, and we may never know. She had severe Alzheimer’s. I think we can trust Connor and Bess Stark, when Bess gets here from Columbus today, to tell us if there was anything suspicious we should know. And, no offense, but you better stick with Scarlett O’Hara. Now promise me you’ll steer clear of this Keller-Stark real-life minidrama and just worry about ordering some of the Yoder animals for the manger scene.”

She sensed he was about ready to close this case as soon as he talked to Senator Stark, but Victoria Keller fascinated Ray-Lynn. Hoping he didn’t notice she hadn’t sworn on a stack of Bibles to stay out of his investigation, she asked, “Are you ready for some mincemeat pie?”

“That, I’m ready for. Let me help you clear these dishes, and I’ll tell you how big a piece I can handle after all that good cooking—one way to a man’s heart, anyway.”

“And this,” she said as they both stood, “is another,” and she stretched on her tiptoes to give him a long, slanted, openmouthed kiss.

* * *

Strange, Lydia thought, but the only person she could trust to help straighten out her worries over Victoria Keller’s note was Josh. He would understand the background circumstances, her rush and panic that night to help the woman. He wouldn’t go all emotional or feel she was challenging him in any way as her parents might. He’d probably tell her she had to show the note to the sheriff right away, but at least she could get his advice first.

The minute they got into his open corner “office” in the barn, while the Beiler boys were feeding the sheep across the building, she said to him, “I’d like your opinion about something—something strange.”

He turned to her, nodded wide-eyed, then gestured her toward the bales of straw in the corner. Knees almost touching, they perched on two adjacent ones. Bless him, he seemed instantly intent. His warmth radiated, bathing her in friendship, and she saw in his eyes—something more? In her lap she clutched the envelope with the note and the plastic snow globe with its little scene of a child standing and an angel hovering overhead. An undecorated Christmas tree was off to the side. The liquid inside had gone a bit murky, but if she shook it hard, it still snowed.

“Last night,” she began, choosing her words carefully, “when I found Miss Keller, she had a damp, blurry note in her hand. I tried to read it then but couldn’t, so I stuffed it in my mitten and didn’t think to look at it again until I got home last night. Very little of it is readable.”

“And what did it say—the part you could read?”

She reached into the envelope and extended it to him.

“You still have it? The sheriff let you keep it?” he asked as he held it up to the kerosene lantern light and squinted to make out the words.

He glanced at her. She tried hard to blink back tears.

“Did Sheriff Freeman give you a hard time about not handing this over right away? But why—”

“I didn’t,” she said, her voice shaking. “I didn’t give it to him—didn’t tell him. I know I should have—have to, but I think it’s about me, the Brand baby. And if so, it says my mother—my birth mother—is still alive and that Victoria must have known something about her, like maybe where to find her. I don’t— It can’t mean, can it—that she is—was my mother?”

“Victoria Keller? I don’t think she’s ever lived around here before lately.”

“I know I’m clutching at straws, but I’ve been so desperate to know more about my birth parents. I haven’t acted on it because it would hurt my parents so. Daad would take it personally and Mamm would—I don’t know. She puts on a good front, but she’s very fragile.”

He nodded. Did he realize that? Most people who observed or knew Susan Brand thought she had a prickly personality and figured it was because of Sammy’s loss. Some thought she blamed herself for that—even blamed God.

He said, his voice low, “I had a friend when I was in Columbus who researched her roots, as she called them, online. You know, a computer, but that would be tough in this case if you can’t get information directly from your parents. You’d need to hire a researcher privately.”

“Somehow, I have to get answers on my own.”

“Like how? First of all, are you sure Victoria wrote this? If she’s as out-of-it as Connor says, couldn’t she have picked it up, found it somewhere in their house, then out in the snow, it got all wet and smeared.”

“I don’t know! I don’t know where to start. I only know I have to do something. I thought my parents might overhear if I gave it to the sheriff. Then the note would become public property, bring up things I’ve learned not to ask or talk about. Even Bishop Esh told me ‘to learn in whatever state I am to be content.’”

“That’s in the Bible. But I do have one idea. This friend of mine, Sandra Myerson, who was researching her family tree, is also a writer who was doing a doctoral paper on Christmas customs of immigrant people in the Midwest. She’s a real go-getter.”

“She’s a doctor?”