Where Shadows Meet(31)

She wore her gray hair loose on her shoulders. Even at seventy-two, her skin held a pink bloom. Tiny wrinkles crouched at her eyes and around her mouth, but she didn’t look her age. The flowing red caftan gave her frame an elegance that matched the proud tilt to her head.

Matt followed her past stacks of old newspapers and magazines. He’d tried to clear out the clutter for years before finally giving up. Trudy was who she was. There was no changing her. She settled in a worn chenille rocker. He and Blake took the matching sofa. The crocheted doilies on the arms and the back of the sofa were starched and spotless.

“You’ve been neglecting me, Matthew,” she said, fixing her blue gaze on him. “It’s been three weeks and four days since you were here last.”

Sheesh, did she keep a calendar? “I’ve been working a lot of overtime. You know how it is when there’s been a murder. It will calm down soon.” The guilt was a familiar companion. His job demanded so much of him. There were only so many hours in the day.

He took out his pen and notebook. “So you said someone trampled your garden?”

“More than trampled. Destroyed it.” She began to rock. “And there’s white powder on the ground.”

He and Blake exchanged alarmed glances. “Don’t smell it. Moe died from inhaling strychnine. Hang on.” He called headquarters, and his boss promised to send out a car. “We’ll get it checked and cleaned up,” he told his grandmother. “In the meantime, stay away from it.”

The coils of the chair seat screeched with Trudy’s every movement. He could still hear that sound in his dreams. He would never forget the nights she locked him in his room and sat outside his door, rocking and rocking.

He took out his notepad and began to write. “Footprints?”

“Plenty of them. All one man, I think. You can check them for yourself. They lead across the field toward Nora Honegger’s house.”

“Did you see anyone?” Blake put in.

“If I’d recognized someone, don’t you think I would have said that right off? But I saw his truck parked down the way under the old sycamore tree by the river. Just before the covered bridge.”

“Make and model?” Matt asked.

“Tan. That’s all I know.”

Gina had said the man who followed her and Caitlin home drove a tan truck. “Anything else?”

She stopped rocking a minute. “I heard him whistling.” She pursed her lips again and blew out a tune. “Like that.”

Matt recognized the tune. “‘Bad Moon Rising.’”

“If you say so.”

Blake wouldn’t know it, but Reece was a big Creedence Clearwater Revival fan. “Thanks for your help, Trudy. I’ll go take a look at the footprints and the powder.” He stood and started after Blake, who was already heading to the door.

Trudy caught his hand. “You found her yet?”

“No.”

“And you won’t,” his grandmother said. “A woman like that can just disappear. She was never worthy of David. It was good riddance when she disappeared.”

“Not for me.” Wrong thing to say, and he knew it.

“She could wrap men around her finger like yarn. You’re just as stupid as your father.” She waved her hand. “Go ahead, get out of here. You’re dying to escape.”

Matt’s guilt wouldn’t let him just walk away. He brushed a kiss across her hair and inhaled her Suave hair spray. The scent reminded him of a time when he was lost and afraid. He wasn’t that little boy anymore.





TEN


“You see windmills at many Amish homes. They’re used to bring water up. The Windmill Quilt is a quaint reminder that God provides all we need.”

—HANNAH SCHWARTZ,

IN The Amish Faith Through Their Quilts

The bird wall clock in the kitchen chirped the time. Nearly midnight Friday. No wonder the quilting stitches appeared blurred to Hannah’s tired eyes. The cats curled up at her feet added to her sleepiness. She had wandered through Nora’s house, looking at the quilts. Some were so worn and threadbare they made her wince. Quilts should be treated with care. One had been tossed carelessly over a chest, and she folded it up and laid it in a chair. The ones she recognized as her mother’s handiwork, she’d caressed. The memories were almost more than she could bear.

She’d wanted to talk to her aunt about her strange comments, but her aunt was tight-lipped and tearful with the funeral looming tomorrow. Hannah, too, found it hard to concentrate since Moe’s body reposed in the traditional white clothing in the closed dining room. The coroner had released his body yesterday for burial, and they’d been busy with preparations and visitors.

She heard a creak on the steps and glanced up. With a long gray braid over one shoulder and dressed in a pink nightgown, her aunt swayed at the foot of the steps. She came toward Hannah with a book in her hand.

“I’m sorry I was so bad tempered tonight,” she said. “I was so shocked when the detective took away the flowers. They’d been delivered to me while I was visiting my friends down the road. Moe must have smelled them when he put them in water. It should have been me who died.” She shook her head. “But God’s will be done.”

“Can I get you anything? Warm milk, tea?” She offered even though she knew she shouldn’t.