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Material Witness (A Shipshewana Amish Mystery)

By Vannetta Chapman

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Chapter 1


Late September
Thursday evening



Deborah unrolled the bolt of fabric: a fall calico print of
small pumpkins intermingled with leaves and cornstalks. It wasn’t
something she would purchase. Amish only quilted with solid
colors, but she could certainly see why it was a hot seller tonight.

“Four yards?” she asked.

The woman from Chicago tapped her manicured nail against
her lips, both painted a dark rose. “I’m not sure. Nancy, what do
you think? Three or four yards?”

Nancy Jarrell wound her way through the crowd gathered in
Callie’s shop. Though Nancy was also from Chicago and definitely
clung to her big-city ways, Deborah felt closer to her since
she and Callie had visited the museum last month. God indeed
worked in surprising ways. She never would have imagined that
quilts sewn by herself, Melinda, and Esther would be exhibited in
the textile rooms of the Chicago Museum of Arts.

At first, the bishop had decided it would be prideful to do so.
Upon hearing that, Callie had asked to meet with him personally
and argued that considering the women’s work too good for others
to see was more akin to pride. The humble thing to do would be
to allow Nancy Jarrell to show the quilts. It was a backwards sort of logic, but it worked. As a result, the quilts had sold at a high price —money that helped Deborah and her freinden. And Deborah had grown closer to the woman standing in front of her. She wouldn’t call it friendship exactly — it wasn’t that strong — but definitely closer than mere acquaintances.

Nancy smiled and nodded toward Deborah. “Tell her what
you’re making. She’ll know how much you need. Deborah’s the
one who sewed the quilt you purchased. She and her friends.”

The woman’s eyes widened and her hand flew to her neck, fingers
resting on the diamond necklace around her throat. “You’re
the one who stitched the diamond-patterned masterpiece that
Nancy showcased a month ago? Oh my. I was hoping I would
have the chance to meet you, but I had no idea you’d be working
in a shop. Your quilt was exquisite. I had a special frame made and hung it on the wall in my family room.”

Deborah smiled politely, though the thought of her quilt —
their quilt — hanging on a wall made her a tad uncomfortable.
Quilts were for warmth. They belonged on beds to give comfort,
not on walls to be gawked at. She thanked the woman and turned
the conversation back to her purchase, even as her eyes caught
sight of Melinda and her oldest boy helping Lydia out at the register. Matt had turned eleven this year, the same age as Deborah’s oldest child, Martha.

The Fall Crafters’ Fair —or Fall Festival as old-timers called
it —had begun a few hours earlier. It was Shipshewana’s largest
festival of the year. Tonight was a warm-up of sorts and the reason Callie had extended her hours. Normally stores in Shipshe closed their doors and tucked in the welcome mat at six p.m. sharp, but for festivals, hours were extended. If the number of people in the shop was any indication of the crowds they would encounter, they were in for a record-setting weekend.

Who would have thought quilting could be such a profitable
business? Yet it had become one for her and her friends. God had
answered their prayers and had provided for their needs. He’d
brought Callie, with her energy and inventive methods for attracting customers, and he’d blessed Deborah, Melinda, and Esther with the gift of piecing quilts in unique ways.

It brought them money they all needed. Deborah’s gaze fell on
Aaron, Melinda’s middle child, who was waiting near the door in
his wheelchair, and she breathed a quick prayer of gratitude. The
money earned from the quilts they’d sold in Chicago had helped
pay for testing Doctor Bernie insisted Aaron needed.

Aaron had been diagnosed with chicken breast disease when
he was very young. It was a muscular disorder among the Amish.
Children with chicken breast disease lacked a structural protein,
and most eventually became too weak to breathe. The great
majority didn’t live past the age of two. Doc Bernie called Aaron
a miracle child.

The woman Deborah was helping thanked her for the fabric
and murmured again about how much she loved the diamond-
patterned quilt she’d purchased.

Who was Deborah to criticize how the quilts were used? So
what if this woman enjoyed displaying them on a wall rather than
huddling under them on a cold winter night? It wasn’t for her to
judge.

Martha rushed to her side, cheeks pink and slightly breathless.
“Mamm? Aaron and Matthew are going to watch the chain-saw
carvers who are giving an early demonstration in the central tent.
May I go with them?”

Deborah placed the bolt of cloth on the pile of items waiting
to be reshelved and turned to help the next customer. “Your dat
doesn’t need you?”

“No. He took the boys home.”

“Why would he take them home before we were ready to
leave?”

“They fell in the mud. All three of them. Mary’s clean, but she
wanted to go with them. She was tired.”

Deborah closed her eyes. She tried not to picture what happened
all too often, but in a flash an image of her seven-year-old
twins and two-and-a-half-year-old son covered in mud came to
mind.

“They were watching the musicians practice for tomorrow,
and the boys — ”

“Don’t tell me anymore.” Deborah held up a hand. “I’d rather
not know the details. He took the large buggy?”

“Ya. I asked to stay and help with Max. Miss Callie said he
needs a walk. We thought we’d take him along with us if you
agreed we could go to where the booths are.”

Deborah glanced toward Callie, who was winding her way
through the crowd in the shop, weaving her way toward Deborah.
She was wearing the new dress they’d sewn together. Made of
harvest-green fabric, a very popular color this season, it accented her dark hair and light complexion. Callie looked beautiful and more than a little harried.

Had the shop ever been this full of people before?

Market days were always busy, and the Labor Day sale had
been very successful, but this was over the top, as her friend liked to say.

Losing three children, a wheelchair, and one rather large dog
would probably help.

“All right, but be back before dark.”

“Yes!” Martha bounced away, but Deborah snagged her arm
before she was out of reach. Leaning down, she whispered in her
ear, “Take special care with Aaron.”

“’Course we will.” Martha’s brown eyes turned solemn for a
moment.

Deborah almost regretted robbing her daughter of that
moment of sheer childhood delight. Then she glanced over at
Aaron, realizing again how fragile the seven-year-old was. Nearly
eight. He was nearly eight, and they would be celebrating that
birthday with prayers of thanksgiving. She released Martha,
knowing she’d done the right thing.

“Where are they headed?” Callie asked as she began sorting
the bolts of fabric Deborah was finished with.

“Out to see the preparations for the festival. It’ll be gut for
them to play a while and give us more room.”

“This crowd is amazing, isn’t it?” Callie’s eyes sparkled. “Wanna
bet old lady Knepp doesn’t have nearly this many customers?”

“Callie —”

“I strolled by Quilts and Needles this morning. Her display
wasn’t as cute as the one Lydia fixed up for us.”

“Mrs. Knepp sticks with the old ways.”

“The old ways must include rudeness. She returned the fall
flowers I sent over.” Callie had gathered six bolts of fabric into her arms by now, and she seemed as if she were about to tumble backward.

“Is she still angry that Max tore up her flower bed?”

“It’s my fault I suppose. I was talking to Trent and let the leash slip out of my hands. Even so, I don’t understand why the woman hates me as much as she does. I thought the Amish were all about forgiveness.”

“We each forgive in our own way.”

“Humph. Admit it. She wishes I’d never moved here from
Texas, never taken over my Aunt Daisy’s shop.” Callie did an
about-face, nearly knocking over a display of magazines, then
trotted down the aisle to return the cloth to its proper section.

Lydia would have done it, but Deborah knew Callie liked to
be out working the floor. She enjoyed being out among the customers, which was why Lydia was on the register. It was one more way she was different from Mrs. Knepp and one more reason her shop did well.

Deborah began helping the next customer, who wanted three
yards of a striped print. Sliding her scissors through the fabric, she glanced up and out the front plateglass window and saw the children were just then passing under the store’s raspberry-colored canopy, which covered the front walk. Already a throng of people filled the sidewalk, though the fair had begun only a few hours before.

The weather was beautiful — cool but not cold. People were
happy to congregate together in their little town of six hundred.
This weekend, their population would swell to well over thirty
thousand. The local police would have their hands full directing
traffic.

Deborah watched the children thread their way through the
crowd. Martha guided the wheelchair, leaning down to say something to Aaron, who laughed, then tugged on his jacket. Matthew walked close beside them, holding onto Max’s leash. The yellow Labrador trotted beside them, his head held high, nose pushed into the air sniffing the festival smells.

A warning alarm sounded in Deborah’s mind, but she pushed
it away. In no time at all, the children would be back safe and
sound.

Nearly an hour later, as Martha guided his chair, Aaron stared
up at the twinkling lights in the trees that lined the sidewalks of Shipshewana’s shopping district. The artificial lights reminded him of the stars, and he wondered why the Englischers had bothered to wrap them around the tree branches.

Perhaps because they lived in town, where Gotte’s lights
weren’t as easy to see.

That’s what his daadi would say anyway.

Today had been very nearly perfect.

He’d received an A on his spelling test in school and a B on
his math quiz. Maybe he could have earned an A, but Jacob and
Joseph had been popping peas at the girls in the next row, and

Aaron had started laughing, which led to wheezing. By the time
he got his breathing under control, time was up, and he hadn’t
been able to finish the last two questions.

It had been worth it to see Annie King squirm back and forth,
trying to pull the peas out from between her dress and her apron.
Aaron liked Annie all right, but she could be a little annoying
at times. He’d told his mamm that once, and she’d explained he
would like girls more when he was older.

That was hard to imagine.

Except for Martha. She was nice, but then again, she was different.
More like his mamm.

“Drat.” His bruder stopped suddenly in the middle of the sidewalk, causing Martha to nearly trip and pull back on his wheelchair. It felt like the time he’d ridden his dat’s horse, in the saddle, and the horse had suddenly reversed. Aaron had fallen, but his dat had caught him before he’d hit the ground —something they still hadn’t told his mamm.

“Forget something?” Martha asked.

“Ya. I think I left my wallet at one of the last places we
stopped.”

“When we bought the candy apples?” Martha peered around
at Aaron’s half-eaten apple.

“Maybe. I took it out and set it on the counter of the booth.”

“Wasn’t your cousin Mary Ellen working there?”

“Ya. I’m sure she would have set it aside for me if I did leave
it after I paid.”

Martha pointed to the sack in his right hand. “After that we
bought your new slingshot.”

“True, but I think I paid for that with money out of my
pocket, from the change Mary Ellen gave me. Now I can’t remember.”
Matthew took off his wool cap and rubbed his hand over his
head, front to back, then back to front — something Aaron knew
he did when he was naerfich.


“Matt, you go and see Mary Ellen.” Aaron pulled in a deep
breath, then continued. “Martha, you go and check the slingshot
booth. I’ll wait here with Max.”

“Are you sure?” Matthew glanced from Martha to Aaron and
back again.

“I’m not ...,” another deep breath, “going back to the quilting
shop without you.” He reached for Max and gave the dog a reassuring pat. “Mamm would have both our hides.”

“All right. She told us to be back by dark, and there’s still a
little light left. If we hurry — ”

“We can be there and back in ten minutes.” Martha moved to
the front of his chair, squatted down so she was eye to eye with
him. “Sure you’ll be fine?”

“Ya. Move me to the side.” He glanced over to where a bench
had been placed next to a large shrub. “There.”

“Okay. We’ll be back before you even know we’re gone.”

“Stop worrying.” Aaron looped Max’s leash around his wrist.
“I’m not a ...”

Matt glanced back over his shoulder, then at Aaron, a smile
trying to win over the worry.

“... little kid,” Aaron finished.

“’Course you’re not,” Martha whispered.

He saw the look that passed between Martha and his bruder,
but decided he’d rather ignore it than deal with their concern.
Today had been very nearly perfect.

“He’s gut,” Matthew said. “Let’s hurry.”

They took off through the crowd, which was already beginning
to thin. In fact, this end of the street was much less busy
than the rest, probably because Daisy’s Quilt Shop wasn’t at the
center of town.

Aaron was always calling it Callie’s Quilt Shop in his head.
He remembered Daisy, the lady who’d been Callie’s aenti. She’d
always kept little pieces of candy behind the counter for them. Callie didn’t know about the candy, but it didn’t matter. He liked her as much as Daisy. She had a funny accent, like something he’d heard in a Western movie he’d watched at his neighbor’s house once.

Justin, the boy who lived at the farmhouse next door, was a
year older than Aaron. He went to the Englisch school and loved
old Westerns. Justin was from New Mexico, and he said John
Wayne was the best cowboy who had ever ridden a horse. Sometimes
Aaron’s mamm paid Justin’s mamm to drive Aaron to the
hospital or Doc Bernie’s office. Justin’s mamm didn’t want to take the money — he’d heard them discuss it time and again — so
sometimes Aaron’s mamm paid in fresh vegetables from their garden. Once she’d tried to give them a quilt, but Justin’s mamm had insisted on paying for that.

Aaron didn’t understand grown-up girls any more than he
understood the ones in his classroom. He also didn’t understand
why sometimes Doc Bernie came to their house, but other times
they had to go to the big city, to Doc’s office in Fort Wayne. Actually he didn’t mind the city. It was interesting.

So Aaron and Justin hung out together on doctor days, what
with all that riding back and forth in the family van —which wasn’t as cool as a buggy, but had its advantages on the large, crowded Englisch roads. The drives were long and when they returned back to Justin’s house, his mamm and Justin’s mamm would sit in the kitchen and drink tea and talk. Occasionally Aaron was allowed to go into Justin’s room to play. Not always, but sometimes.

A few times they’d managed to sneak into the back bedroom
and boot up Justin’s laptop computer. Aaron’s mamm didn’t know
he’d watched the old black-and-white movies, and he wasn’t going
to be the one to tell her. She tended to fuss about those sorts of things, like she fussed when he had trouble pulling in a deep
breath.

Doc Bernie said that was normal behavior for mamms.

She definitely didn’t know about the Western movies, but it
wasn’t like they played video games or watched television. Justin’s mamm was pretty strict for an Englischer. Justin’s Internet didn’t work unless he plugged it into the wall in the living room, and he didn’t have a television in his room like he said some kids did.

But the old Western movies were something his onkel had
given him. They’d merely had to slip them into the computer to
watch them when they were bored, when Aaron’s mamm had left
him there and Justin’s mamm had gone off to run errands.

And Aaron never mentioned it to his mamm. There were a lot
of things his mamm didn’t know.

The crowd on the sidewalk dwindled to nothing as the minutes
ticked by, and Aaron finished the candy apple while he
watched the front of Daisy’s Quilt Shop.

Too bad he didn’t have a watch.

Max lay down next to his chair, his head on his paws, his ears
relaxed and touching the ground. When Aaron thought about
the future, he thought about working with animals like Max.
Animals seemed more comfortable around him than people did.

Why was that?

The sun had set, though it still wasn’t full dark.

He could make out the front of the shop and the garden on the
far side of it. The street lamps came on, casting a funny glow. Staring
down the sidewalk, down toward the garden where Max liked
to play, something shiny caught the light so it winked back at him.

The bushes bordering the garden on the far side of the parking
lot moved slightly.

Holding out his hand, Aaron tested the air.

No breeze.

None.

The bushes moved again.

Aaron leaned over in his chair to see better.

There was someone standing in the bushes. All he could see
was the bottom half of the person —the top half was hidden by
the shrubs. Had to be a lady. Aaron could see the color of her
dress. He didn’t know any man who would wear a pair of pants
that color of green.

Why was some lady hiding in Miss Callie’s bushes?

She was staring in the direction of the shop, kind of angled
toward Aaron, but more toward the windows of the shop.

Probably she couldn’t see Aaron from where she was.

He rolled his chair forward one, then two rounds of the
wheels. Max moved forward with him, then resettled next to his
wheel. Aaron scooted to the front of his chair, careful not to tip it over.

Max raised his head and looked at him quizzically.

Aaron put one finger to his lips, then stared back toward the
woman in the bushes. At first he thought she was gone, but then
he spotted her dark green dress again. She’d be hard to see, except
every few seconds she shuffled her feet, and he could make out
her black shoes.

Aaron was so focused on watching her feet and not losing sight
of her he didn’t see the man walk up behind her.

Everything that happened next, happened very quickly.

The woman pitched forward, out of the bushes and onto the
pavement, landing facedown with her arms beside her as if she’d
meant to give someone a hug before falling. Her body seemed to
twitch once, then again, then her arms and her body lay perfectly
still, like one of his sister’s dolls thrown in the dirt. No blood spread out around her, but somehow Aaron knew she was dead.

He knew, because he’d seen that in the Western too.

The man stepped forward. With one hand he stuck something
into his back pocket. Then he lunged over the woman, grabbed
her purse, and reached forward to pick up an item off the ground.
Then his head jerked up and he was staring straight at Aaron and
Max, who had begun barking madly.

Finally, he turned and he fled into the darkening night.

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