Whiskers of the Lion Page 14

  The FBI has insisted on protective custody for you, and I cannot oppose them on this point. I have, however, set the terms of your protective custody, and I have arranged the details so that they will be advantageous to you.

  Once Teresa Molina has been captured, she will be prosecuted for the murder last April of Ruth Zook. I want you to know, however, that nobody can force you to testify in that trial. You can decide for yourself whether or not you want to do that.

  But if you don’t agree to testify, the FBI will not be willing to keep you in protective custody any longer. I expect that soon after your surrender to them, they will ask that you sign an agreement to testify. I advise you not to sign any such agreement until you are certain that you want to do it. Hold them off until you have decided.

  But even if you do testify for them, or conversely if Teresa Molina is never captured, please understand that the FBI cannot really keep you safe. Not for certain, and not forever.

  In custody, you will have a few familiar types of people around you—Amish and Mennonite maids, for instance. And you will be in a part of the state that most Amish people know well, at a large tourist hotel on 87, west of Middlefield. I hope this makes a difference for you.

  My guess is that your FBI handlers will not be able to distinguish one Amish sect from another. They probably won’t even know the differences between Amish people and Mennonites.

  I suspect that you are alarmed that we found you. Really, it was a lucky guess on our part, aside from the fact that I have very capable detectives and deputies working for me. My point is that I very much doubt that anyone like Teresa Molina could ever do something similar. You would have been safe among your people, if only there hadn’t been regular news of you in the Budget.

  So now, Fannie, you have to be very cautious about who you trust. You have to be cautious about who you trust with your life. I advise you to assume that everyone and anyone is suspect. I need you to realize that Teresa Molina will search for you relentlessly, and that she will employ any and all resources necessary while hunting for you.

  Have I told you enough? I pray that I have. Do you understand what I am telling you? I pray that you do.

  Sincerely,

  Bruce Robertson

  Holmes County Sheriff

  When she had finished reading, Fannie took the letter to the wood stove in the corner of the room. She laid the folded pages inside, on top of the old ash left over from winter. As she touched a lighted match to the corners of the pages, Fannie answered, “I understand the letter, Reuben. I’m just not sure I have the courage to do it.”

  21

  Thursday, August 18

  5:30 P.M.

  WITH THE stony gaze and austere judgment of cold granite, the soldier atop Millersburg’s Civil War monument kept watch as Sheriff Robertson and Captain Newell crossed Jackson at Clay and then crossed Clay with the light, heading purposefully west under a misting of rain. Once across Clay, Robertson stopped under an awning on the corner, and he turned back to survey Holmes County’s Courthouse Square, dominated by the three stories of ornate brown and tan sandstone that constituted the court building, and on the adjacent corner of the square, the imposing red-brick jail, with its elaborately painted yellow cornices and lintels, the black iron bars over windows on the back half of the structure marking the wing where the sheriff’s cells held their charges. It was all solid, Robertson mused. The rock heart of Holmes County’s law enforcement soul. Stone, granite, brick and mortar. Built to last centuries, and as certain and sure as justice itself. From this central Millersburg edifice of stubborn stone and immovable brick, Robertson had always drawn strength. From this imposing Courthouse Square he had always drawn resolve.

  So as the rain fell harder, Sheriff Robertson stood under the awning at the diagonal corner and surveyed the institutions of justice that these old buildings represented. OK, he thought—resolve, determination, and strength. Unfaltering dedication to duty. Steadfast dedication to the ploy that would avenge the murder of Howie Dent.

  Newell tapped the sheriff on his shoulder. “Bruce, the hotel?”

  Robertson shook himself loose from his ponderings. “Right, Bobby. Hotel St. James.”

  Robertson turned around, started down the sidewalk, and led Newell past several of the businesses in old Millersburg—a music store, a drugstore, antique shops, and a used-clothing store—and then in the middle of the next block, Robertson turned with Newell into the front entrance of the new boutique Hotel St. James, slotted between an attorney’s office to the right and a take-out pizza shop to the left.

  Inside the lobby, the reception counter along the right wall was made of polished black marble. On the left wall, there was a white marble fireplace, with modern seating in front of it—chairs and loungers of brushed steel and royal-blue leather. High overhead, the restored wooden ceiling boards were made of red oak two-by-fours laid on edge. The boards had been given a light oak stain to reveal the rich grain in the wood, a sturdy badge of honor from a bygone era.

  The contrast couldn’t have been greater, Robertson thought. An interior decorator’s nod at the past, with its main design anchored firmly in the present. Oak planks from the old world, mixed with modern steel, polished marble, and soft leather. A curious metaphor for his Fannie Helmuth gambit.

  Past the reception counter, there was a white door on the right marked OFFICE in red block letters. Next along the narrow lobby, there was a new elevator with pastel lights and an insistent bell. Beyond the brass elevator doors, there were vending machines with fruit drinks in boxes and snacks in bags. A stairwell door led to rooms on the upper two floors. At the very back, the rear entrance to the lobby opened through a heavy metal door onto the alley behind the hotel.

  Robertson punched the lighted button to call the elevator. Standing beside him, Newell asked, “Only the two entrances, then?”

  “Right,” Robertson confirmed. “Only two doors into the lobby. But there are fire escapes at each floor, on the front and back of the building. Plus the roofs of these three buildings are all contiguous. You can climb to this roof from the adjacent ones.”

  On the second floor, Robertson stepped out into the hallway, turned around, and showed Newell the stairwell to the left of the elevator and a maid’s closet to the right. Past the maid’s closet, along the length of the narrow hallway, there were three doors to guest rooms.

  “These three rooms are the larger ones,” Robertson said. “They’re all booked through the weekend.” Newell pulled a spiral notebook out of his jacket pocket, and he sketched the second floor layout, with rooms 1, 2, and 3.

  On the third floor, Robertson led Newell down the hall past the maid’s closet to four smaller rooms marked 4, 5, 6, and 7. At the door to 6, Robertson used an electronic key card to open the lock. Inside the room, there was a standard hotel arrangement of dressers, tables, chairs, and a desk, with a closet and the bathroom just inside the door. There was no window in the room. Instead, there was a large LED television mounted on the far wall over a low dresser.

  At the back of the room, Robertson used a traditional metal key to open a door that gave access to the adjoining room number 7. This room was laid out as a mirror image to 6, except that a front window in room 7 gave a view down onto West Jackson Street. “You can make a suite of the two rooms,” Robertson said as he relocked the door. “We have them booked for the next five days.”

  “Pat will be in 6?” Newell asked.

  “Yes, and we’ll set up in 7.”

  In the hallway, Newell sketched the configuration of the third floor. Back on the first floor, Robertson opened the rear entrance and showed Newell the alley. Crossing back through the lobby to the front entrance, Newell said, “We’ll use Baker, Johnson, and two more deputies here in the lobby, one at a time, rotating in shifts. They’ll all have photos of Teresa Molina and Jodie Tapp.”

  Robertson agreed and said, “I wan
t to use Armbruster as much as we can on the third floor, in the hallway outside the elevator and staircase.”

  “You don’t want Armbruster to stay with Pat?”

  “No. He needs to get some sleep at night. But when she’s out in the daytime, it’ll be you or me who goes with her, Bobby. Plus the professor as her escort. That’ll give Armbruster a chance to trail behind us.”

  They exited the main entrance onto the Jackson Street sidewalk, and Robertson turned right. At the adjacent door to a take-out pizza shop, Robertson pushed inside, and Newell followed. A teenage girl in a white chef’s apron came forward from the back ovens with an order pad in her hand.

  Robertson introduced himself as sheriff, and he introduced Captain Newell. Then he said, “We’ll have an Amish guest for a number of days, next door at the St. James. Room number six, on the third floor. She likes pizza, and I want to pay her bills. Whatever she orders, would you please send the bills to me at the jail?”

  The girl wrote on her pad and said, “I can do that.”

  “OK now, who are your delivery people?” Robertson asked. “I want to screen them for security ahead of time.”

  “Weeknights, it’s usually a couple of high school seniors. Ones who have their own cars.” She wrote several names on the back of an order page and handed that to the sheriff.

  Robertson handed the page to Newell. “And on the weekends?”

  “Then it’s almost always old Ernie.”

  “Short fellow?” Robertson asked. “About a hundred years old, with a wrinkled face?”

  The girl in the apron laughed. “Old Ernie.”

  “He works for the bus company, in Sugarcreek,” Robertson said.

  “The buses don’t run so often in summer,” the girl explained. “He fills in for us on weekends, to make extra money.”

  “Is it just him?” Newell asked. “Just one guy?”

  “No, he has a crew. From the bus company.”

  Robertson laughed. “They must not pay very much at the bus company.”

  “We don’t pay them very much either, Sheriff. I think he just likes making deliveries. It keeps him out and meeting people. You know, moving around. He doesn’t seem to mind the pay.”

  “OK, it’s Ernie and his bus crew on the weekends,” Robertson confirmed. He took several bills from his wallet and handed them to the girl. “I’ll pay ahead some, if you don’t mind. She should be arriving this evening.”

  “She?”

  “Our guest.”

  “Have a name?”

  “No. She’s just our department’s guest.”

  Out on the sidewalk, Newell said, “That wasn’t very subtle, Sheriff.”

  Robertson stopped in front of the Hotel St. James. The rain had abated for the moment. “I’m not trying for anything subtle, Bobby. This is just the start of our showing her around. Pizza is just the first thing.”

  “You know this Ernie?”

  “I interviewed him once, when Fannie first disappeared. Armbruster talked with him, too. He handles the northern terminus for the bus company in Sugarcreek. Mostly I think he just cleans the buses when they come back from Florida.”

  “OK, where else are you going to send her?” Newell asked as they walked back toward the square.

  “I’ve made a list for tomorrow,” Robertson said. “It’s in your e-mail. Tonight, all I want her to do is have dinner in Hotel Millersburg. They don’t have a restaurant at the St. James. And she can walk the block for some air after dinner. The professor and I will go with her.”

  “You want her to be seen, Bruce?”

  “By as many people as possible.”

  • • •

  Jodie Tapp was crying when Fannie answered her call. “Oh Fannie! They’ve got my new phone number!”

  Fannie was alone in the Masts’ Daadihaus. “Who, Jodie?”

  “Teresa Molina. She’s gotten my new phone number from my mother. And unless I give them five thousand dollars by Saturday at noon, they’re going to tell Sheriff Robertson that I was part of their drug gang.”

  “Jodie, they’ve killed Howie.”

  “What?”

  “He was murdered yesterday. At my brother’s farmhouse near Charm.”

  “How do you know, Fannie? How can you possibly know that?”

  “The sheriff’s people are here, now, Jodie. They told me.”

  “It’s not possible! I just drove through Millersburg. I had lunch there. The way people talk, I would have heard something.”

  Fannie began to weep. “It’s true, Jodie. I have a letter from the sheriff.”

  Jodie gasped. “Does he know where you are?”

  “His detectives are here. I’m sure they have told him.”

  “Fannie, what about your brother? If Teresa Molina found my mother, she could find him, too. You’ve got to warn him.”

  Fannie was still crying. “I’ve already called him. To tell him about Howie.”

  “Fannie, I need five thousand dollars by noon on Saturday. I have to give it to them at a rest stop north of Akron.”

  “What are you going to do?”

  “I don’t have that kind of money, Fannie. I’ve been living out of my car. I need to see you. I need a loan.”

  “You shouldn’t come here, Jodie. These detectives are here. But don’t you remember? We always said that we could never see each other.”

  “There has to be a way.”

  “I could mail the money to you. They can’t stop me from mailing a letter.”

  “They’ll inspect your mail, Fannie. And I need the money by Saturday morning.”

  “Can’t you get the money some other way?”

  “You’re the only person I know with that kind of cash money, Fannie. You said that Reuben has money.”

  “They’ll never let me see you, Jodie.”

  “There has to be a way. You must be close by. You said Michigan, right? And you said that it’s been raining there. That has to be northern Ohio.”

  “What?”

  “That’s the only place the weather radar shows any rain around here, Fannie. I checked with an app on my phone. So I must be close to you. You have to be somewhere close to Akron, and I need to see you.”

  “We can’t risk it, Jodie. Howie always said that we can’t risk seeing each other.”

  “Then I’m lost, Fannie. I have nowhere to turn.”

  “You should go to Sheriff Robertson. You should go to him and tell him your side of the story, before Teresa Molina does.”

  “He’ll never believe me.”

  “I trust him, Jodie.”

  “Well, you shouldn’t!”

  “Reuben thinks I should trust him.”

  “And the FBI? Does Reuben think you should trust them?”

  “Well, not as much.”

  “Fannie, you have to help me. You have to think of some way to help me. If you can’t, I’ll have to be a thousand miles away from here by Saturday noon.”

  22

  Thursday, August 18

  5:30 P.M.

  ON THE second floor of the Masts’ main house, the bedroom had plain plaster walls painted stark white and accented with dark, rich-grained walnut trim along the baseboards, around the crown molding, and around the framing of the doors. Covering tall wooden windows on two walls in the corner room, there were long and plain purple curtains reaching full-length to the floorboards, which were painted a nondescript flat gray. The furniture, consisting of a headboard, dressers, and nightstands, was of a classic Shaker style, with clean lines and simple round knobs. Everywhere in the room, it seemed, a determined effort had been made at simple, unadorned functionality. Everywhere, that is, except the bedspread.

  On the king bed, the Masts had displayed an ornate quilt that had been elaborately hand-stitched to make an intricate, repeating six-poin
t star pattern in green, rose, and periwinkle fabrics. To Pat Lance it seemed curious that the room was purposefully plain and simple, as all Amish no doubt would have it, whereas the quilt, from conception and design to construction, was an artful expression of unrestrained creativity. She laid her suitcase on the quilt and thought it a shame to cover so beautiful an object. In contrast to the rich colors of the quilt, outside the bedroom windows a drab and misty rain continued to spill from a dull and leaden sky.

  Irma shook her head and stepped to the windows to close each of the long drapes. “No point letting all of the gloom inside,” she remarked. Then for a gaslight in the ceiling, Irma opened the valve in the wall pipe. She lit the lamp with a wooden match and carefully adjusted the flame on the silk mantle to a white-hot glow. This she repeated at a lamp stand in the corner of the bedroom. When she turned to Lance, she asked, “Your dress?”

  Lance opened her suitcase on the bed and took out a pale green Mennonite dress. “It reaches to the floor,” she said, holding the plain dress to her neck. “I also have a white apron.” She pulled the second garment from her suitcase. “It has some lace, but I thought it might do.”

  Beside the dress and apron, Lance also set out a white organdy prayer Kapp with string ties. “I got this at the dry goods store in Mt. Hope,” she said, and she looked to the Amish women for their opinions.

  Fannie shook her head and pressed her fingertips to her lips to mask a frown. In solemn Dietsch dialect, she spoke at considerable length to Irma.

  Once Fannie had finished, Irma said to Lance, “Maybe only in the bedroom, Detective. We think it’s much too fancy for public attire.”

  Distracted while fumbling with her cell phone, Fannie asked Lance, “You bought the dress in a store?”

  Lance nodded earnestly. “At Walmart, in Millersburg. I bought the plainest, simplest dress I could find. I saw other women in Walmart wearing the same thing.”

  Fannie slipped her phone into a side pocket of her dress. “This would do for a Mennonite woman,” she said, “but never for Amish.”