Ettie Smith Amish Mysteries Box Set 6 Page 23

  Chapter 22

  Sunday Afternoon

  Selena was taking the day to herself and reading in the garden area of the bed-and-breakfast. It was Sunday and her newly made Amish friends would be at their church gathering and wouldn’t be able to help her that day. She was tired of all the wedding plans and she didn't want to think about her grandfather, her mother, or Wayne. Just as she was getting into the story, a deep voice came from behind her.

  “Hello.”

  She jumped and looked around. “Hello. I wasn't expecting to see you today.”

  Gabriel took off his hat and smoothed his hair over to one side before he placed it back on his head. “I have received some rather distressing news. And I'm not sure if it's the truth or not.”

  “What is it?”

  “I don’t know if you know this, but my mother was raised Amish. She left and didn’t fully commit to the Amish community until I was two.”

  “What does that matter? She got baptized into the Amish, didn't she?” He nodded and she laughed. “Why’s that distressing?”

  “Because I just learned, from a letter my mother wrote to me before her death, that my father’s first name was Wayne.”

  Facts bombarded her mind. She knew they were the same age and Wayne was known to have been in a relationship with another Amish woman besides her mother. “It's a coincidence.”

  “Don't you see?”

  “Oh! I do—you're saying we could be brother and sister?” Selena stared at him. It had been one thing after another and now this news was too much.

  “Yes, that's the problem.” He crouched down beside her. “Where do we go from here?”

  “I have a friend in New York, Jake, who works in a laboratory testing DNA. I’ll call him and see if we can both be tested to see if we are related.”

  “Will it give definite results?”

  “Usually does, within 99.9%”

  “Excellent, when can we do that?”

  “Stay here. I’ve left my phone in my room. I’ll call him right now.”

  She called her friend and a few minutes later, came back out to the garden. When Gabriel saw her, he jumped up from the chair. “What are you doing tomorrow?” she asked.

  “Nothing that I know of.”

  “He's arranging for us to go to a laboratory. It’s half an hour's drive away. He's got some friends there and he said he said he’ll persuade them to perform the test on us.”

  He smiled. “Good. What does that involve? Not a needle, I hope.”

  “No. It’s just a mouth swab.”

  He shrugged his shoulders. “That's good because I hate needles. And will they be able to tell us on the spot?”

  “No, we’ll find out the next day, or maybe later the same day. He said they’ll rush everything through for us.”

  “You seem to know some pretty influential people.”

  “Not really. Maybe I know some useful people. I went to college with Jake and he went one way in his career and I went another. He’s going to call me first thing in the morning and he’ll give me a time to be there. So, I’ll collect you some time tomorrow.”

  “Great. I’ll be waiting.” He sighed. “I didn’t want to find out who my father was like this.”

  “We’re only testing to see if we share the same father.”

  “You know your father is Wayne Robinson. Because your mother admitted it.”

  “That’s right.”

  “My father could be anyone called Wayne. I always thought … well, I always hoped to meet him one day. I missed having a father. I was the only one who never had a father until a boy in the last year of school lost his father to an illness. The difference was that he knew his father and I never knew mine. He had his father with him and I just had a gaping hole. Mamm was good, but it was never the same, you know?”

  “I can imagine it would’ve been awful. Everyone seems to have perfect families in the Amish community. Your mother was a brave woman to return and never marry. I imagine it would’ve been a lot easier for her to marry someone.”

  “Maybe,” he said.

  “It would be funny if we were siblings because we’ve always grown up as single children, the only child in the family and now we find each other like this.”

  He shook his head. “As nice as it would be to find I have a half sibling, I don’t want it to be you. It would be the worst thing in the world because we couldn’t marry.”

  She smiled at him. He was still thinking they might marry if they weren’t related.

  When he left a few minutes later, she couldn’t go back to relaxing and reading her book. She'd only had ten minutes of relaxation that day and since she’d arrived she’d had one surprise after another. She closed her book in her lap and looked out at the garden. Gabriel was growing on her somehow and she didn’t want him to be related to her, either. If only Eugene could’ve been more like Gabriel. Gabriel didn’t care what anyone thought about him and, in her eyes, that was an attractive trait. She pushed his looks out of her mind, in case he was her half-sibling. That’s something she didn’t need to be thinking about.

  Elsa-May insisted on being the one to call Jeremiah to see if her great grandchild had arrived. She was told they’d been blessed with a boy. A very healthy and large baby boy of nine and a half pounds. She was assured Ava was doing well, too.

  She hung up the receiver of the phone in the shanty and waited until Ettie caught up with her. “It’s a boy.”

  “That’s wunderbaar. When are we going to see him?”

  “In a couple of days, I’d say.”

  “Okay. Ava will need to rest. Good idea. Have you called the taxi yet?”

  “I’m just doing that now.”

  Chapter 23

  When they got to the library, Ettie had a look to see what the Internet said before she headed to the microfiche to look through the newspapers. “It’s here, Elsa-May.”

  “Quiet, Ettie. It’s a library.”

  Ettie lowered her voice. “It says the robbers cut a hole through the bank's roof, cut the wires to the surveillance video and then they lowered themselves into the vault. When the bank employees came in the next morning, there were empty boxes scattered everywhere.”

  “What date?”

  “The same year Wayne was run over. He was killed in August, the robbery happened in Florida, in April.”

  “It could be a coincidence and Florida is a distance away.”

  Ettie shook her head. “You know I don’t believe in coincidences and Florida isn’t too far to go to steal millions.”

  “See what else, Ettie.”

  She typed in Abner Troyer’s name. His name stared at her from the screen in relation to him being held in jail for contempt of court for refusing to take an affirmation in place of the usual oath. Ettie relayed that information to Elsa-May. “Oh, there’s more. They mention Abner in connection to the robbery. It says here, he was held on suspicion of running down Wayne Robinson, and it gives the year he was run down, then it says, ‘who was rumoured to be involved in the Florida bank heist where reportedly millions of dollars worth of goods were taken from safe-deposit boxes.”

  “It says Abner was involved?”

  “Nee, Wayne, of course.”

  “I see. The way you read it, I thought you meant they thought Abner was involved. Shall we check the microfiche now?”

  “Nee, I think that’s all we need.”

  “Should we tell Kelly we know this?”

  Ettie rubbed her chin. The police station wasn’t far from the library. “Not just yet. Not until we piece a few more things together. We’ll go home, and see what happens over the next couple of days. Kelly said he’d look into things and he might need our help sooner or later. Let him come to us.”

  When Selena and Gabriel arrived at the laboratory the next day, Selena and Gabriel met a man called Mike, who was a friend of Jake’s. Mike said he might even have the results ready that afternoon. After they had their swabs taken, they headed back home with S
elena sincerely hoping they’d have the results that day or she’d have another sleepless night. She knew Gabriel was equally anxious.

  They stayed the remainder of the day talking in the garden of the bed-and-breakfast. When the results hadn’t come by five o’clock, they guessed they weren’t going to know that day.

  “If they call me, I’ll drive over and tell you immediately,” Selena said.

  “I should go home, or ... we could go out for dinner again ...?”

  She shook her head. “I’ll see you tomorrow. As soon as I know anything. Or, you could come back and join me for breakfast? If you want, I’ll let Mrs. Williams know I have a guest coming for breakfast. I’m sure that’ll be okay.”

  “Sure, I’d like that.”

  “Come at eight. It’ll be better than you trying to cook for yourself. I’ve seen how that turns out.”

  He smiled at her, a little less animated than usual. “True. I’ll look forward to it.”

  It was after Selena and Gabriel had eaten breakfast together the next morning that Selena realized she’d left her cell phone in the room. She headed back there with Gabriel to see if she’d missed calls that might have been from her friend, Jake, or from the laboratory. Just as she unlocked the door, she heard her phone and made a lunge for it before it stopped ringing.

  “Hi, Selena.”

  She recognized the voice as Jake’s. “Hi. Heard anything yet?” She flipped the phone onto speaker, so Gabriel could hear. “Gabriel is here, too, so I'm putting you on speaker.”

  “Yes. The results are negative, so you are not closely related to your friend. You have similar DNA but that’s not uncommon in groups like the Amish who have originated from a small group of people. Having said that, you don’t share the same father. You aren’t brother and sister and neither are you first cousins.”

  “Thanks so much, Jake, and tell Mike a big thank you for doing it so quickly.”

  “It was a pleasure. Anytime. I’ll see you when you get home.”

  She ended the call and looked over at Gabriel. “You heard that?”

  “I did. That’s excellent news and now there’s nothing stopping us from getting married.”

  She laughed it off. Before she was done laughing, a figure loomed in the doorway of her room. It was Eugene, her fiancé. Selena was immediately worried he might jump to conclusions with Gabriel having been in her room. She was thankful they’d left the door open.

  Eugene looked Gabriel up and down and then looked at Selena. “Now I know why you didn’t call.”

  She ran over to him and hugged him. “What are you doing here?”

  “I had the chance to come here to interview a possible witness. Then I decided to come to them and see you on the way.”

  “I can't believe it. I missed you.” He looked so good in his perfectly tailored dark blue suit, crisp white shirt and blue tie. His short-cropped hair was always the same and suited him.

  He put his arm around her staring at Gabriel all the while, then said to her, “I missed you too.”

  Gabriel cleared his throat.

  Selena said, “Oh, this is Gabriel.”

  Gabriel reached forward and shook his hand.

  “Nice to meet you, Gabriel,” Eugene said.

  “Gabriel is the caretaker of my grandfather's house and we're just going over a few details.”

  “Ah, yes. I thought the name of the caretaker was John Yoder, isn't it?”

  “That's right. I go by my middle name, Gabriel.”

  Eugene raised his eyebrows. “I just drove past the house and was surprised to see people living in it.”

  Selena nodded. “I was too, but then Gabriel explained about the upkeep and the costs. My grandfather didn’t leave anything for that. I haven't had time to talk to you about it yet, but Gabriel has leased the place to pay for taxes and repairs, and things like that. I met the family and they are very nice.”

  Eugene nodded. “If you’re okay with that then I am too.”

  “Well, I’ll leave you two to talk.” Gabriel nodded to both of them and then walked out the door.

  Eugene closed the door behind him and then reached out with both arms and pulled Selena to himself. “I really have missed you, you know. And I'm sorry I’ve been uptight all the time.”

  “I understand the stresses of your work and everything.”

  “I know, but it's no excuse to be short with you.”

  After he stopped hugging her, she asked, “How long can you stay?”

  “Only about an hour or so. Then I need to get to my appointment.”

  “Is that all? Just an hour?”

  He glanced at his watch. “After I do my interview, I have to head back. The man lives half an hour from here on the way back.”

  “I wish you could stay a day or two. We haven’t spent much time together for ages.”

  “I can’t at the moment. As it is, I shouldn’t have taken this time off to come here.”

  “How long did it take you to get here?”

  “Nearly three hours with traffic. Are you looking after my car?”

  “I am, only there's no way to keep it out of the weather here. It’s just in the open parking lot.”

  “I saw that. I'm sure it'll survive the next couple of days. When are you coming back?”

  “When I get the estimate from the realtor.”

  His mouth fell open. “Haven't you done that yet?”

  She bit her lip. “No, I haven't.”

  Slowly he shook his head and gave her a disapproving glare. “What have you been doing here for the last few days?”

  “I’ve been meeting with people my grandfather knew.”

  His gaze fell to the DNA paperwork on the small desk. “DNA?” He stared at her.

  “Yes, I was just curious about my heritage.”

  He narrowed his eyes at her. “You know your heritage. Your mother and father were Amish, weren’t they?”

  “No. I've told you this before. My mother was raised Amish and left when she was eighteen and married my father who wasn't Amish.” She could say that in all honesty because neither the man who raised her or her real father were Amish.

  “Is something going on that you are not telling me about?” he asked.

  “What do you mean?”

  “You’re acting kind of funny and so was your caretaker. Is he the reason you want to stay for a few extra days?”

  She laughed. “Are you jealous?”

  “No. You're right. It’s silly of me to even think about being jealous of an Amish man like that. Well, would you care to come to lunch with us?”

  “You said you only have half an hour.”

  “I can stretch that a little,” he said.

  “Um, I’ve only just had breakfast.”

  “We’ll call it brunch, then.”

  She frowned. “Did you say ‘us’?”

  “Yes. Elga came with me. She's in the car.”

  “Oh, that's strange to bring her with you.”

  “She's my number-one secretary and besides, I needed her to share the driving on the way back so I can doze off.”

  “Oh, good idea. Sure, I’ll come to brunch, but I can’t say I’ll eat anything.” She pushed the DNA paperwork into her bag. “I’ll just freshen up.” She took her bag with the paperwork into the bathroom with her. It had her name on it and Gabriel's name, so she couldn’t risk Eugene seeing it. She’d had a close call with that one.

  When she came back out, he looked her up and down as he leaned on the small TV table. “Is that what you’re wearing?”

  She stared down at her casual clothes. There was no reason to wear anything else other than jeans, blouse and black pumps. She wasn't going for a job interview. “Yes, why?”

  “Because this will be the first time Elga is meeting you.”

  “Does that matter? She's your secretary and we’re not going to a Michelin-rated restaurant, are we? There are none around here anyway.”

  “No, but you know how appearance is impo
rtant to me. She's got a picture in her mind of how beautiful you are because I tell her about you all the time. You fall short of my description in that. I'm sorry, but I've always said I'd be honest with you, didn't I?”

  She licked her lips, wondering what to say. “I'm tired of your superficial world and you being so wound up in material possessions and ego-driven nonsense.”

  His mouth fell open. “Babe, where’s this coming from?”

  “And I hate it when you call me “Babe.” I'm a grown woman with my own mind and I’ll decide what I wear.”

  “You said you like it when I make all the decisions.”

  “I used to.”

  “Where’s this coming from? Has that caretaker been putting ideas into your head?”

  She stared at him and couldn’t speak.

  Through gritted teeth, he said, “Do you know how much time I’ve wasted coming out of my way to see you?”

  “No, but I’m sure I’ll hear about it more than once.” She was grateful he’d taken the time to visit, but she also knew he would’ve been doing work in the back seat of the car while the secretary drove. She wondered if she was being a little unreasonable. “I’m sorry. It’s just that everything's taking a toll on me.”

  Eugene breathed out heavily. “Is the wedding too much for you?”

  “A little.” She was just about to ask him if he could help with some of the decisions.

  “I’ve got a good solution.”

  “What?”

  “We forget about it. Or, we postpone it.”

  Her mouth fell open and she felt like all the air had been knocked from her. “Is that what you want to do?”

  “You aren’t you anymore, and I know it's got something to do with that DNA report and the man who was just here.” He grabbed her bag, trying to open it, and she snatched it back.

  “What are you doing?” she asked.

  “Where are those papers?”

  “They’re none of your business.”

  “We’re getting married, so I want to see who I’m marrying. What’s going on? I want the truth. What have you found out?”