* * *
NADIA RETURNED TO her shop midafternoon to find her one full-time employee, Hannah Yoder, answering questions from two women whose clothing and colorful tote bags labeled them as tourists.
Nadia greeted the women and chatted briefly with them before deciding neither was serious about buying a quilt. Truth was, they were probably enjoying interacting with a real Amish person. She excused herself and went upstairs. She ought to leave her purse and go back down, even let Hannah go home, but what if people came into the store because they were excited about the auction? Or, worse, because they’d heard about the missing money and wanted to judge whether she was guilty or innocent for themselves?
All the more reason to hide up here.
With a sigh, she sank into a chair at her table and massaged her forehead and temples, pressing hard to counteract the pain that had been building all day. Her neck hurt, too, as did her shoulders. Tension made her feel as if she’d been stretched on a medieval rack.
She’d talked to—she had to count—nine people today, the ones she felt obligated to tell in person. Mostly volunteers, several quilters and the head of the relief organization that was to have funneled the money to the homeowners and farmers most in need of help.
The four Amish women had, while shocked and dismayed, also seemed genuinely distressed for Nadia. They had, one and all, plied her with sympathy and food.
Bill Jarvis, from the relief organization, had all but reeled, as if she’d struck him. “But...we had such hopes,” he said, leaving her almost speechless. With the best intentions in the world, she had let so many people down. Bill didn’t seem to blame her, at least, not yet; given a little time, he might circle around to anger.
Of the remaining women Nadia had told, one had been openly sympathetic, one scathing and two on the fence. If those were her odds, she’d be posting an out-of-business sign within a couple of months. Her Amish shoppers might stick with her, but her biggest competition was a nice, Amish-owned fabric store in Hadburg, the next-largest town in the county, and closer to where most members of the faith lived. Many worked in or owned businesses in Byrum, but their ideal was rural living and Nadia knew of only a few who had homes or apartments in town. She wouldn’t even want the Amish to entirely abandon the Hadburg store just to support her.
Of course, going out of business was only one option. Another was the possibility of being arrested.
Now she was just being pathetic. How could Chief Slater arrest her? She didn’t have the money. Full stop.
So now what? she asked herself drearily.
Help him to the best of her ability, even if the man had disturbed her both times they’d met, although for different reasons. And what she could actually do to help was a mystery.
When a knock on the door at the foot of the stairs came, Nadia pushed herself wearily to her feet.
Instead of Hannah, a man stood there patiently waiting. Medium height and thin, he had light brown hair graying at his temples and a face too lined for what she guessed to be his age.
“Ms. Markovic?” he said. “I’m Jim Wilcox.” When she apparently looked blank, he tapped the embroidered insignia on his shirt. “Wilcox Lock and Key?”
“Oh! Oh, yes. Thank you for coming.”
“You said you had a break-in?”
“Actually, what we suspect is that the intruder had a key.”
He frowned. “Well, first thing I’d suggest is that this interior door require a different key than the front and back doors. I put these locks in myself, had to be seven or eight years ago. I suggested the same to Mrs. Jefferson, but she didn’t want to be bothered to have to figure out which key went to which door.”
“I actually meant to get this lock changed when I first moved in,” she admitted, “just because it opens to my private living space. I’ve had so much else to do, though, and really the only other person who has a key is Hannah Yoder—”
“Who is trustworthy.” He nodded. “Even so...”
“Even so,” Nadia agreed.
“You want me to replace all three locks.”
“Yes.”
He backed up a step. “I’ll get started, then.” But he didn’t keep going. Instead, he cleared his throat. “I hope you weren’t home when you had the break-in. I mean, that you weren’t hurt or...frightened.”
“I slept through it,” she said wryly. “But I was scared to death come morning when I realized he’d been right there—” She cut herself off with a shudder.
“I’m real sorry, Ms. Markovic.” He looked truly distressed, but Nadia had found most people in her new community to be kind. Or, she had until today.
She smiled with difficulty. “Thank you, Mr. Wilcox. I appreciate you coming so quickly.”
He bobbed his head awkwardly and retreated, presumably going out to his truck to get the new locks and whatever tools he needed.
Nadia made herself go into the store, where she found a trio of women she knew.
“Is it true?” one of them said right away.
She had to say, “Unfortunately.”
* * *
FRUSTRATED, BEN DECIDED to go by and talk to Nadia again before he called it a day. She might have learned something, or at least that’s what he told himself. The underlying truth was that he wanted to find out how people had reacted to her disclosure. She’d gotten to him this morning, when she had explained why she needed to start over in a new place. He hadn’t been able to help thinking about the parallels with his sister in her lengthy recovery from the assault that shattered her life, and hoped everyone Nadia talked to had at least been decent to her.
Online, he hadn’t had any trouble finding articles about the horrific episode when she’d been shot. Turned out, she’d given him a very condensed version. It sounded like a real nightmare, and one that had gone on for hours. He also learned that she’d spent those hours using her body to protect the little girl, somehow keeping her quiet after she regained consciousness. Nadia had saved young Molly’s life. She was labeled a heroine in news coverage. He’d seen a picture snapped from a distance away of her being brought out of the house on a gurney. The cops and EMTs in the photo all looked grim in a way Ben recognized. The sight of murdered children scarred the most hardened cop. And to know their own father had killed them...
He shook his head in denial, even though he knew better. Fathers, and mothers, too, regularly hurt and killed their own children.
Nadia was closing up when he arrived. She let him in, then turned the sign on the door to Closed. His gaze went to the shiny new dead bolt lock.
“I see Jim has been here.”
“Yes. I don’t think he charged me enough. He seemed to feel bad about what happened.”
“Yeah, he was pretty upset when Mrs. Jefferson died, too.”
“He told me he recommended she replace the lock on the apartment door, but she didn’t want to be bothered with two different keys.”
Ben nodded. “Jim felt guilty that he hadn’t insisted.”
“Wait.” She gaped at him. “Do you actually think someone killed her? That she didn’t just fall down the stairs?”
“I’m sure she was pushed,” he said grimly.
“But...how can you know?”
“Because her head hit the wall a lot higher than it could have if she’d fallen. We found blood and hair in the dent. It took some real force to launch her up instead of down. The ME agrees, too. People who fall bump down the stairs, but her injuries are consistent with the