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  “I’m glad to hear this,” Cal said. “I really had hoped you wouldn’t find anything troublesome.”

  “OK,” the professor stalled, looking first to Caroline and then back to Cal. “Why did we make this inspection? I mean, really, Cal?”

  For his answer, Cal also used a pause, thinking. Then he said, after a few sips of coffee, “Bishop Small Rupp is inclined to believe that either Rose or Amos Linder – or maybe even both of them – are not dealing honestly with the store down in Nokomis. Or with tourists here in Charm, for that matter.”

  “Nokomis?” Caroline asked.

  Cal nodded. “Nokomis is an ocean-front village south of Sarasota. On the Gulf coast. Richard and Rita Barrow have an Amish furniture store there. The Linders have been shipping Coblentz furniture to them, for several years, now. They have a formal partnership. A contract.”

  “So?” Caroline said.

  “There’s a problem, Caroline. Something, I’m not sure what. The bishop is suspicious.”

  “OK, but why?” the professor asked.

  Cal lifted conspiratorial eyebrows. “It’s their driver, Rolland Kent. Small really doesn’t trust Kent, because Kent has a record for an investment scheme ten years ago, where he swindled some Amish folk in a district up in Ashland County. He convinced them to invest in oil leases on property that he didn’t really own. Something like that.”

  “Did he serve time for that?” Branden asked.

  “Yes.”

  “Paid his debt to society, as they say?”

  “Yes.”

  “And Small doesn’t trust him, now?”

  “Not entirely, Mike. More importantly, Small thinks the Linders shouldn’t be using Kent as their long-haul driver. There’s a lot of money in Coblentz furniture these days, but they pay Rollie Kent only a fraction for his troubles. Small doesn’t think it adds up, so to speak. He wants to know why Kent has only this one job.”

  “That’s it, Dad?” Rachel asked. “That’s the bishop’s complaint? That Kent has a record, so he shouldn’t be driving a truck? Seems a bit harsh.”

  “Like I said,” Cal replied evenly. “It’s not just Rollie Kent. Small has his concerns about Amos and Rose Linder, too. About how much money they seem to be making.”

  Chapter 11

  Saturday, June 6

  7:10 AM

  Sheriff Ricky Niell was at his cherry wood desk early Saturday morning. Gone was Ricky’s black, pencil-thin mustache, his trademark during his career as a deputy, a corporal, and then a lieutenant for Sheriff Bruce Robertson. Instead, Ricky had grown a full beard, which his wife Ellie groomed for him each morning. In a suit and tie, the beard made him look more like a successful Manhattan investor than a country sheriff, and Ellie assured this for him each night, by tailoring and pressing his suits meticulously. Consequently, Ricky Niell was the best turned-out yuppie professional in the entire sheriff’s department. It was a cropped, trimmed and shaped black beard. His short black hair was sharply edged with a straight razor each morning. And all of his appearance was inspected by Ellie before she would let him out of the house.

  By contrast, Niell’s desk was old and rough. It had been the most imposing feature in the spacious office for nearly forty years, having taken residence there before retired Sheriff Bruce Robertson had first been elected. By Niell’s reckoning, and by his ninety-year old father’s reckoning, Ricky was the fourth in a line of sheriffs to claim the desk, and bruised and battered as it was, the desk made as much a statement in the room as it’s occupant did. This Ricky knew and respected. Robertson’s shoes would be big ones to fill, as surely the earlier sheriff’s must have been for Robertson, when he had first been elected.

  Soon after the recent elections, Bruce and Missy Robertson had moved to Florida, leaving Ricky to sort his way alone through the position of Homes County Sheriff. Robertson’s dispatcher Del Markely had tried to lure the big retiring sheriff to a surprise lawn party at Courthouse Square, but Robertson had phoned from the road to say, gruffly, “Nice try, Markely. You just take care of young Niell.”

  Del had played the phone message for the people assembled on the monument lawn, and after some chuckling and groaning, the people had shaken their heads, or smiled, or frowned, and had left Sheriff Niell standing outside the jail in his dress uniform, with only his wife Ellie at his side.

  Of course, the old sheriff had called later at Ricky and Ellie’s home to congratulate Niell on his election. When Ricky inquired if Robertson had any parting advice for him, Robertson had said, only, “Niell, you watched me operate for what, twenty years?”

  “There abouts,” Ricky had said.

  Robertson’s reply? “Then what more can I teach you? If you need to talk, you’ll have to find me on the beaches of the gulf. Sarasota. Longboat Key. You know the place. You were there once with Ray Lee Orton.”

  Now, Ricky sat behind the big cherry desk and wished he were a larger man. He was too trim, he mused, to occupy Robertson’s giant swivel chair, much less to command the position that Robertson had vacated.

  So, Ricky punched the call button on the old intercom box that communicated by wire with the dispatcher’s desk out front, and he said, after clearing his throat of its hesitation, “Del, can you come in here?”

  Because Del Markely didn’t answer right away, Niell was depressing the talk button a second time, clearing his throat again, when Del pushed in through the office door. Carrying a notepad and a pen, she entered directly, sat in one of the straight-backed chairs facing the sheriff’s desk and said, simply, “Sheriff?”

  Del was a stout woman in her forties, with long and coarse gray hair. In summer months, she came to work on a Harley-Davidson motorcycle, and in winter months, she drove an old Jeep. She had a prominent tattoo on her right forearm – Wanderlust – and her attitude and demeanor were sometimes as coarse as her hair. Generally, she wore jeans and a checkered flannel shirt, even in summer. She had picked up right after Ellie Troyer-Niell had retired to raise a family, and she had handled gruff Sheriff Robertson with the kind of brash and fearless intensity that Ellie had told her the Old Man loved so much.

  But, Del knew that young Sheriff Ricky would need time to find his balance. So, she had decided to handle her charge accordingly. She would hold back. Only when Niell was ready would she break him into her self-assertive style.

  Del sat wordlessly and watched Ricky rub his fingers along the rough edges of his desk. She waited patiently while Niell came forward, only slowly, with his thoughts.

  Eventually, Niell said, “It’s this old desk, Del.”

  “Yes?”

  “I’m not sure it’s suitable.”

  “Really?”

  “It’s old, Del. It’s as old as the county itself. And this was Robertson’s desk.”

  “It’s our sheriff’s desk, Ricky. It always has been. Long as anyone can remember.”

  “It’s probably too big for me.”

  “The question is, Sheriff, are you big enough for it?”

  “I’m not certain, here, Del.”

  “Well, I’m sure you are. What? Bruce was supposed to haul it out of here, so you could put in some modern black metallic nonsense? No. It’s your desk, now, Niell. Ride it. Wear it. Own it.” Then, rising pointedly to her feet, Del asked, “Anything else?”

  Before Niell answered her, a tone sounded out at Markely’s front consoles, and she double-timed it back there to answer the call. With his door left open, Ricky heard the dispatcher’s radio squawking, and he pushed up, walked out and stepped down to Del.

  She was holding her handset. “Say again, Johnson. What is it, and where?”

  “A crushed buggy, Del. Out on County 19. Zero point seven miles west of Becks Mills. We’re going to need an ambulance.”

  “Casualties?” Del asked. “And was it a car? Truck? What, Johnson?”

  “One dead, an Amish woman. One man is injured, but conscious. A witness says he was the passenger in the buggy. We’re gonna need an ambulance for him. Coroner’s wagon, for her.”

  “Tow truck, Johnson?” Del asked.

  “No, there aren’t any other vehicles here, Del. Other than the traffic that’s been stacking up at the scene. Send a couple of units for traffic control.”

  “Done, Johnson. No other vehicle involved?”

  “None that’s still here. The one witness – he owns the farm on this stretch of road – said he saw a black truck racing away.”

  At Del’s side, Ricky said, “Ask if he knows the victims.”

  “Who are they, Johnson? The Amish people, I mean.”

  “The husband says he’s Amos Linder. He says his wife is Rose Linder.”

  “The furniture store in Charm?” Del asked.

  “The same, Del. Rose and Amos Linder. I’ll let the coroner pronounce her officially, but I can assure you that Rose Linder is dead at the scene.”

  Chapter 12

  Saturday, June 6

  8:35 AM

  When Ricky arrived at the scene in the Doughty Valley, two Amish men were already gathering scraps of wood, bent metal and black fabric, stacking it all in a horse-drawn farm wagon for disposal. Traffic on narrow County 19 was being regulated by deputies, and they waved Niell’s Crown Vic forward to the narrow berm in front of the crash site. An ambulance had already left for Millersburg, running lights and siren for Amos Linder. Ricky had passed it coming the other way, at the long U-bend south of the village. Rose Linder was dead, and there was no reason for urgency on the part of the county’s new coroner.

  The coroner’s van was still parked behind the crash. After calling his location to Del, Ricky got out and walked back to the ripped and splintered Amish rig, marveling that either Linder could have survived the impact. But Rose must have been handling the reins on
the left side, while Amos rode beside her on her right. It was the left side of the buggy that had been destroyed from behind. The right side had been spun backwards, and it was severely bent and shattered. Enough of it had survived to suggest to Niell that Amos Linder might stand a chance. A scant chance, but a chance, nevertheless. The buggy horse was a loss. It’s scarred body and broken legs lay lifelessly on the farmer’s adjacent lawn.

  Ricky stepped over scraps of wood, metal bars and fabric tatters, to approach the coroner’s van, which was turned backward on the road to accept Rose Linder’s body. The county’s new coroner, Francis Cabbott – Frank to his friends, Bott to his detractors – was waiting there for Niell.

  Cabbott was a delicate and refined man of middle age. His brown hair, long and wavy, was parted on the right, and his small gray eyes were shielded by round, silver-wired spectacles, as well as by clear polymer safety goggles when he was working.

  Today, with certainty, Frank Cabbott was working. His goggles were in place over his spectacles, and he was wearing a long white laboratory coat, with his name and official position embroidered over the right-hand breast pocket. Because he was short, the lab coat had little difficulty stretching to his ankles. Because he was slight, the top of his lab coat drooped over the rounds of his shoulders.

  As Ricky approached, Cabbott was squinting at him through the murky lenses of his goggles, nodding his head as if bobbing like a bird, and clasping his hands in front as if worried that he might touch something odious. To Ricky, he seemed like an old-world chemist marveling at something he had brewed, while fretting that it might start casting off toxic fumes.

  When Ricky approached his position on the pavement, Cabbott retreated two steps. Ricky stopped short and said, “Trouble here, Coroner Cabbott? Something unusual, there?”

  Cabbott turned back to the open bay doors of his van, and then he snapped back around to Sheriff Niell. “No. No,” he said. “Body of the victim. Care to see?”

  Ricky wasn’t certain, but it seemed momentarily that the coroner was rubbing his clasped fingers together somewhat enthusiastically. And while Niell had seen dead bodies many times before, he couldn’t remember a time when Missy Taggert had been enthusiastic about displaying one. Cabbott, however, seemed pleased with himself. Or maybe he was just dedicated to his work. Ricky wasn’t sure. But Ricky was sure that this little man would bear watching. Very closely, Francis Cabbott would surely bear watching.

  Ricky managed a smile and an affirmative nod, and he moved past Cabbott to approach the rear doors of the van. Frank Cabbott pivoted on the balls of his feet to join the sheriff there.

  “Do you need to look, Sheriff?” the new coroner asked, while he took a preliminary grip on the corner of the white sheet that covered Rose Linder’s body.

  Ricky nodded grimly, and Cabbott peeled away the sheet to reveal the head of the corpse. Ricky groaned and eased back half a step, brushing anxiously at the top hairs of his head.

  If her identity weren’t already known, nobody would be able to discern that this was Rose Linder. Her face was nothing but a flat smear of cruelly scraped tissue and streaked blood. Immediately, Cabbott began his analysis.

  “She hit the road hard, Sheriff. She flew forward on impact, face first onto the pavement. The graveled tar of the road obliterated her face. There’s a bloody trace back there, something like four feet long, up in front of the crash. From what I can tell, she was hurtled forward for something like twenty feet. She landed face first onto the road, and I think she was dead before she hit. There aren’t any apparent scrapes or bruises on her hands or arms, so I think she never had a chance to brace her fall.”

  As Cabbott had spoken, Ricky had noticed his eyes, shifting back and forth, left and right, behind his thick goggles. Ricky hadn’t noticed if Cabbott’s face had worn a smile, but he was certain that his eyes had been smiling. Or sparkling? Twinkling? Something. His speech was dusted with the faintest of a royal affectation, as if he had spent a lifetime in the diplomatic core, where it was necessary to appear both officious and knowledgeable in front of one’s colleagues. At times, he would even end a statement or an opinion with a haughty and Continental ‘don’t you know.’

  You weird little man, Ricky thought. “Are you certain of this, Coroner Cabbott?” he asked aloud.

  Cabbott bobbed his head with professional confidence. “Quite certain, indeed, Sheriff,” he said. “I’ll recover what I can of her from the surface of the road. I noticed spectacles and bits of tissue. A lot of blood, don’t you know. I won’t be able to reconstruct the face, but I will be able to confirm to your satisfaction that I have recovered all of it. And rest assured. I’ll be careful to get it all. I will most certainly be diligent to recover all of her. But they will surely want a closed casket.”

  “I’m sure,” Ricky said and backed away. When he turned, Deputy Ryan Baker approached him and said, “The bishop was here, earlier, Sheriff. So was his brother James. The bishop rode with Mr. Linder in the ambulance, and James took his buggy home.”

  “Was the bishop able to recognize her, Ryan?” Ricky asked, rubbing nervously at his collar. “Clothing, features, anything like that?”

  “As scraped away as she is,” Baker said, “you can hardly tell. But Amos, her husband, said it was her, before they loaded him into the ambulance.”

  “OK,” Ricky said, “that will be enough for now. Do you have pictures, measurements, statements from witnesses?”

  “Working on it, now, Sheriff.”

  “A black truck?” Ricky asked.

  “Yes. We have a farmer, here, who saw it happen. Talk to him?”

  “Now, please,” Ricky said, and he followed Baker to the lawn at the farm adjacent to the crash.

  - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

  The witness, an elderly man in Amish garb, was sitting on a bench swing, up on the front porch of his small white-frame farm cottage. Ricky climbed the steps to the porch and asked, “May I sit with you? I’m the new sheriff.”

  The man agreed, and as Ricky took a position next to him on the wooden slat swing, the man introduced himself to the sheriff. “I’m Mony Hartzler, Sheriff. Lift your feet, and we can swing a little. I like the breeze.”

  Ricky did that, and Mony put a gentle back-and-forth motion to the swing. “I was sitting right here,” he said. “Saw it happen, right there in front of me.”

  “Then you’re the man I need,” Ricky said. “You saw a truck?”

  Hartzler appeared to ignore the question. Putting a droll tone to his words, he said instead, “Our former sheriff didn’t wear fancy suits like that.”

  Ricky blushed, feeling some heat at the sides of his neck. “No, Mr. Hartzler. I don’t suppose he did.”

  “You’ll relax with it soon enough, Sheriff. A pair of jeans is all you need out here.”

  Ricky heard a playful friendliness in the man’s words. A man of plain talk, Ricky thought. Aloud, Ricky said, “Maybe just a sport coat and a tie?”

  “You won’t need a tie, Sheriff. You can get nice jackets at the Goodwill. I’ve seen them there. Not that I’d ever be allowed to wear one.”

  “Would you want to, Mr. Hartzler? Wear a sport coat, I mean.”

  Mony laughed. “Yes. And I’d like to drive a truck, once, too. But our bishop is taking us the other way, now. Fewer modern conveniences. I don’t see a truck in my future.”

  “That’s Henry Rupp?”

  “Small Henry Rupp, Sheriff.”

  “From the cousins Small and Big?”

  “You know them?”

  “I’ve heard of them,” Ricky said. “Never had any dealings with them.”

  “Well, Small is our bishop. Big Henry moved to New York several years ago. He died last winter.”

  “They tell me that Small rode in the ambulance with Mr. Linder.”

  Hartzler nodded and held silence. Ricky turned a bit on the bench swing to have a better look at his witness.

  Mony Hartzler was old and wrinkled. His white hair and chin whiskers were long, shaggy and quintessentially Amish. His dusty gray denim clothes were evidently either great favorites of his, or they were his only outfit, because they looked like they’d not been washed or mended in years. For many years, Ricky imagined, Mony Hartzler had been sitting right here, on this front porch of his little Daadihaus beside the road. Ricky had the impression, from Hartzler’s appearance and his clothes, that his wife had died years ago.