Shamed (Kate Burkholder #11)(51)
“Do you know if the baby was Amish or English?” I ask.
“I’d always assumed she was Plain.” Her brows furrow. “Why else would an Amish bishop be involved? An Amish midwife?”
“Did you ask Sadie Stutzman about it?”
“I put it out of my mind is what I did.” She shrugs. “Noah said the knowledge would be a heavy burden. That was enough.”
She raises her gaze to mine as if something new has occurred to her. “Chief Burkholder, do you think my husband’s death is somehow related to … what happened with that child? All those years ago?”
“I think it’s a possibility.”
Tears glimmer in her eyes, but she doesn’t let them fall. “Why now? After all this time?”
“I don’t know,” I say honestly.
Another cumbrous silence and then I ask, “Mrs. Schwartz, do you know of any women who were ime familye weg in the weeks before the conversation you overheard?” “In the family way” is the Amish term for “pregnant.” “Anyone you can think of?”
“I wondered, of course. Was she unmarried? Was she too young? Unable to care for a baby?” She gives another shake of her head. “I didn’t dwell.”
I think about everything that’s been said and what it could mean in terms of finding Elsie Helmuth. “Do you know Marlene Byler or Mary Byler?” I ask, using Mary’s maiden name.
“I didn’t know either of them, but I heard about what happened to Marlene. What she did all those years ago. Jumped off that big bridge up near Portsmouth. I don’t know if it’s true, but I heard she took her infant daughter off that bridge with her.”
A rush of interest engulfs me. “A baby?”
“Less than a year old. The police never found the body so no one knows if it’s true.”
“What can you tell me about her?”
“Not much, really.” The woman shrugs. “She was Amish. Had some mental or emotional issues, I think. There were rumors.”
“What kind of rumors?”
“Hush-hush stuff. Boiled down to her not being able to follow the rules. The Amish put up with it for a long time; some tried to help her. But eventually the bishop excommunicated her.”
“Do you know why?”
She shakes her head. “She killed herself shortly afterward and people stopped talking about it.”
“Did your husband keep a journal or write things down while he was bishop? Anything like that?”
“Noah kept everything in his head.” She presses her hand to the left side of her chest. “Or here, more like. In his heart.”
“Who’s the new bishop?” I ask.
“They just nominated Melvin Chupp.”
“Do you know where he lives?” I ask.
“Near Wheelersburg, I think.”
I reach into my pocket and set my card on the table in front of her. “If you think of anything else or if something comes to mind that you forgot to tell me, will you let me know?”
“I will.” Giving me a sad smile, she reaches out and pats my hand. “You’ll do the same, Kate Burkholder?”
“Bet on it.”
* * *
I make the drive to Wheelersburg, but there’s no one home at the Chupp house so I head back to Crooked Creek. I find the one and only motel and pull into the lot. The Sleepy Time Motel is a mid-century modern dive. I suspect even back in 1960 the place was low-budget. The years haven’t been kind. A tangle of chain-link surrounds what was once a swimming pool. An earthquake-size crack splits the concrete where the drain had been. The restaurant in the space next to the office is boarded up with plywood, the single remaining plate-glass window hastily patched with duct tape. I’m desperate for a shower and a bed, so I park and check in.
The room is exactly what I thought it would be. There’s a swayback queen-size bed with a tattered headboard and spread. Bad wall art from the 1970s. The bathroom fixtures are rusty, loose tiles on the floor, the grout stained with a couple of decades’ worth of mold. But the room is clean, and will do just fine for a shower and sleep.
I brave the shower and crawl into a lumpy bed that smells of scorched cotton and a mattress well past its prime. A mix of rain and sleet pounds the window like handfuls of pea gravel tossed against the glass. Outside, the temperature has dropped twenty degrees in the last hour. The room is cold despite the fact that I’ve cranked the heater up as far as it will go. I’ve got my wet jacket draped over the back of the desk chair to dry.
Pulling the spread up to my waist, I fire up my laptop. I run a few searches on Cohen syndrome, but there’s not much out there. The symptoms include a host of problems—developmental delay, intellectual disability, muscle weakness, eye problems. It’s a rare disorder, caused by a gene mutation, and slightly more prevalent among the Amish. Both parents have to have the gene, but usually don’t show signs of the disorder themselves.
If that holds true, it rules out my theory that the mother may have been physically or intellectually unable to care for her child due to Cohen syndrome.
It’s eleven P.M. when I call Tomasetti. I summarize my conversation with Lizzie Schwartz. “She overheard most of it. Bishop Schwartz and the midwife conspired to bring a newborn infant to Painters Mill.”