A Marriage for Meghan (25 page)

When the sheriff paused at a stop sign, the bishop looked left and right to gain his bearings. “Where are you taking me? This is beyond the boundaries of my district. I’m not the bishop here.”

“Yes, I realize that, but there’s something you still need to see.”

After another five minutes, the police vehicle turned up a shady lane, flanked on one side by pine trees. Strickland parked in front of a cabin-style building.

“A quilt shop?” asked Gideon. “You brought me to a
quilt shop
when I need to be planting corn?” He didn’t hide his annoyance. His wife had dragged him here in a hired van with other district members a couple of years ago. The ladies had attended a giant needlework show that had drawn shoppers and tourists from hours away. Why Ruth had thought he needed to see such a display still remained a mystery.

“Yes, sir. That’s what this place is. I responded to a call here after first light. I told the folks I’d come back and would be bringing you. And that they shouldn’t touch anything till the detectives had a chance to gather evidence.” He squinted his eyes toward a vehicle parked in the back. “Ah, I see their car is still here.” As he spoke, two young men in fancy suits exited the shop carrying cameras and leather cases. The sheriff joined them and talked for a short while before they nodded and left.

Gideon waited on the path, uncertain of his role in these goings-on. He recalled that two elderly sisters owned the shop, both widows for many years. Located on a seldom-traveled back road, the shop had a reputation for exquisite needlework. Tourists learned about the sisters through local innkeepers and then made the trip with hand-drawn maps to the unadvertised location.

The bishop followed the burly sheriff through the doorway and then stopped in his tracks, paralyzed by the sight before him. In an instant Gideon’s mouth went dry, while his stomach lurched worse than during the hairpin turns along the way. His focus scanned the shop’s whitewashed walls with horror. Someone had spray painted vulgar words across the walls. Foulmouthed epitaphs blazed from each of the painted surfaces.
What kind of evil person even thinks such things, let alone writes them where his fellow man can see?

Gideon pivoted in place, taking in the full measure of vandalism. At least twenty quilts had been slashed to shreds and left in sorrowful heaps on the floor. Paint had been sprayed across the top of the piles. Wooden display tables had been overturned and broken. The debris from smashed cuckoo clocks, birdhouses, and bird feeders littered the store wall-to-wall. With his jaw hanging slack, Gideon found it difficult to articulate his question. “Who would do such a thing?” he rasped. He tried to step back, but he nearly tripped over a hand-carved children’s train set with movable round wooden wheels.

The sheriff gripped his elbow and led him back to the doorway. “I don’t know, but I won’t rest until we find out.” Strickland’s words held conviction and determination. “Whoever did this is just plain sick. This goes beyond mean-spirited.” The two men walked from the shambles back into bright sunshine.

The bishop spotted the two women who owned the shop cowering under a tree. They looked frightened and bewildered, as though the vandals might still lurk nearby. “Oh, goodness,” he muttered to Strickland, realizing the full repercussions. “It’s not just months and months of hard work that’s been destroyed, but other women bring quilts to be sold on consignment here. Most of those quilts would have sold for seven or eight hundred dollars. Families were depending on that income to pay household bills.”

Strickland stared at the widows, his expression filled with pity. “I understand, Bishop Yost.” A muscle twitched in his neck. “I’ve sent word to their bishop and deacon. They should arrive soon.”

“I’ll go wait with them, Sheriff. These women shouldn’t be alone at a time like this.”

Gideon joined the sisters under the tree to offer whatever reassurance he could. Within the hour, Amish folk arrived with packages of sandpaper, cans of paint, and plenty of brushes. Family members soon surrounded and consoled the widows. They were herded into the house until every trace of hatred could be removed from the shop.

“What’s your opinion now, Bishop?” asked Sheriff Strickland. “Have you changed your mind about the Amish community being the target of someone?” He spoke without an ounce of censure in his tone.

They were standing close to his sedan, alone, while more Amish wagons arrived with materials to build new display tables. Gideon looked into the sheriff’s narrowed eyes. “I have,” he stated succinctly. “I wish to fully cooperate with your department in the investigation. My sons will sign those complaints you spoke of. This cannot continue, even if I must go against the wishes of my congregation.”

Strickland opened the passenger door for him. “All right. I’ll drive you home and then take your sons down to the Justice Center to fill out the paperwork. It shouldn’t take long. I’ll bring them home to chores as soon as possible. This will start the wheels turning, but there’s something you ought to know.” He angled his head toward the quilt shop. “This case will soon be out of my hands. The things written on those walls make this officially a hate crime, so it becomes the FBI’s jurisdiction. Agent Mast, whom you have met, will probably come down again and take over.”

The bishop nodded, although he didn’t fully understand what the difference would entail.

“One thing has me confounded,” said Strickland. He turned the car around on the grass.

“What’s that?” asked Gideon, without much interest in the answer.

“The shop doesn’t have a sign down by the road like ‘Ye Olde Quilt Shoppe.’ Seems to me a person had to be seriously interested in what these ladies were selling to even know about the place.” Strickland pulled onto the township road and drove away slowly as Amish buggies continued to arrive.

The bishop stroked his beard, pondering the sheriff’s observation. And the more he thought about it, the less he liked it.

Thomas had been home only a little more than two weeks when the call came in from Wayne County to Cleveland’s FBI office. And it took the bureau chief less than ten minutes to track him down and reassign him to the case.

Thomas would return to the Amish settlement alone because thinly stretched department resources couldn’t rationalize two agents for an as-of-yet nonviolent crime. He would certainly define beating people up as violence, but considering the heinous nature of crimes they usually investigated, no other agents would be assigned without significant escalation. At least he’d have assistance from the sheriff’s department, plus the extensive database of the federal government just a phone call or mouse click away.

He didn’t mind going back down to Wayne County, which he had come to think of as God’s country. Besides, Victoria had called not less than a dozen times since he’d been home—sometimes coy, sometimes conniving, once or twice indignant, but always manipulative. She insisted the conversation about the airline flight to New York to pick out a wedding dress had been a misunderstanding. “Pressure from her mom” had been one day’s excuse, while “she’d misread signals from him” had been another day’s explanation. She wanted to put the matter behind them and let things return to how they were.

Either way, it didn’t matter because that would never happen. When he tried to gently explain they had no future, her behavior turned hostile
.
She’d left a few blue-tinged messages on his answering machine that he wouldn’t want his mother to hear. Victoria needed time to recover from the shock of not getting her way. And he needed to distance himself from her venom until she found another man to date.

Thomas packed a bag twice as large as the last one he used, watered his two houseplants, and turned down the thermostat. No sense heating a home he wouldn’t be in. After a final check around the apartment, he headed out the door, grabbing his hiking boots as an afterthought. On the phone last night Strickland had brought him up to speed on the case. James and John Yost agreed to press charges and had signed formal complaints. Strickland sent him plenty of photos of the quilt shop destruction attached to an e-mail that Thomas printed for his file. Because the sheriff said Amish neighbors had already cleaned up the damage and painted over the slurs, Thomas saw no point in stopping at the vandalized shop first. None of the sheriff’s arguments had convinced them to wait for the FBI. The two elderly women wished to put the matter behind them as quickly as possible and wouldn’t sign a complaint. Good thing Strickland had been fast and thorough with his digital camera and forensic team, because by now fingerprints or other evidence would be long gone.

Thomas couldn’t imagine the campground punks picking on two ladies who spent their days sewing. Punching out other men, yes, but not this. But as suspects went, the Misty Meadows hooligans were all he had. And that knowledge didn’t bode well for a speedy resolution to this crime spree. The case would now be his. He would run the investigation, turning to the sheriff’s department for backup. Strickland probably relished the role reversal, recognizing a corn maze of dead ends and a woeful lack of evidence when he saw it. Evidence collection followed by quick processing looked easy on television, but reality was usually quite different. Stretched resources of law enforcement agencies across the country made the collection of trace evidence hit or miss. But a break would come in this case if Thomas had to turn over every stick and stone in the county.

As he exited the highway heading south on familiar two-lane roads, he felt the muscles in his back and shoulders begin to relax. The headache he’d woken up with that morning was gone, and even his sour stomach from too much black coffee felt better. He drove straight to the Yost farm. Apparently the bishop had had a change of heart regarding law enforcement and the matter. Maybe he would be willing to share other information, such as which among the Amish had past run-ins with
Englischers
, however minor or seemingly harmless at the time. A man couldn’t live immersed within a community without hearing things and knowing just about everything that went on.

He liked Gideon. The man reminded Thomas of his own grandfather—crusty and blunt, but fair-minded and tenderhearted. He hadn’t seen his grandfather in too many years. A vague sense of shame and guilt trailed him up the Yost walkway to the side porch.

After a sharp knock, the subject of his musings opened the door. “Agent Mast,” greeted the bishop. “Sheriff Strickland mentioned you would probably be back. Come in and have a seat.”

Thomas couldn’t help staring for a moment before following him into the kitchen. The man seemed to have aged ten years since their previous conversation. Dark smudges underscored the thin skin beneath the bishop’s eyes. And those eyes—red-rimmed and watery—looked as though they had seen the face of evil. “Thank you, sir. It’s good to see you again, but unfortunately the circumstances haven’t improved any.” Thomas sat down in the same chair he had occupied before.

Gideon placed two cups of coffee on the table. “My sons signed those papers. I…we will cooperate with you in every way. I saw what someone did in the next district.” His pale face lost whatever color it had still possessed. “You were right, Agent Mast. These people…they are not going away as I’d hoped. Someone must stop this.” His voice was barely a whisper in the silent kitchen.

Thomas sipped the strong coffee without bothering with milk and sugar. “How did your meeting go after church a few weeks back?”

“Not very well,” the bishop said, shaking his head. “Some members agreed with my logic, but not the majority. And not the other district ministers.” He paused for Thomas to absorb the implication. “I am acting today on my own, and I will live with the consequences, whatever they may be. But better to sacrifice my standing than allow more folks to be traumatized the way those quilt makers have been.” His expression revealed a glimmer of fortitude.

“I saw the photos taken at the shop. They were nasty,” murmured Thomas. Unfortunately, he’d seen far worse than spray-painted slurs and ripped-to-shreds bedcoverings. He’d seen bodies, posed in the anguish of death, worse than anything portrayed on TV. But to this gentle man, a farmer and preacher in a peaceful rural community, the effect was undoubtedly the same. “I will have the full resources of the federal government at my disposal. We will find them, sir. Rest assured.”

Gideon leaned back in his chair. “You’ll stay here until the criminals are caught?”

“You have my word on that.” Thomas finished his coffee in one long swallow.

“Where?”

The question took him by surprise. “Excuse me?”