Death of a Winter Shaker (14 page)

At that moment, Albert glanced up and started when he saw Rose watching him.

“I'm sorry, Albert, but you were so attentive to your work. I didn't wish to distract you. Might I ask you a question or two?”

With clear reluctance, Albert placed his saw on the workbench and slid onto his stool. He nodded.

“I won't keep you, I know you'll want to tidy up the
shop before evening meal, but I'd like to know more about your relationship with Johann Fredericks.”

“Told you. Didn't know him.”

“But I think you must have. Or at least you know more about his death than you are saying.”

Albert's thumb rubbed rhythmically against his finger, while his slight shoulders hunched inside his roomy work shirt. He knew something, she was convinced of that.

“Albert, have you placed an order with the tailor for a new set of work clothes?”

Albert stiffened and narrowed his eyes. “Why?”

“Well, you've lost a set, haven't you? Gretchen noticed when she sorted out your laundry, and she sent you a spare set. That's what you are wearing, isn't it? One can see that it's made for a stockier man.”

Albert slid off his stool and turned to his workbench. His back to Rose, he began to tidy up the tools.

“Suits me fine,” he said. “Comfortable.”

“How did you lose the old set?”

Albert shrugged one shoulder. “Don't know.”

“At the time, none of us thought to tell the sheriff to check inside the clothes that Johann wore when Gennie found him. As they are Shaker clothes, he should find the owner's initials sewn inside. Shall I call him now?”

Albert's hand closed around a hammer on the workbench. He held it a few seconds too long before lifting it to a peg. But when he pivoted to face Rose, his face held fear, not threat.

“Those were your clothes, weren't they, on Johann's body?” she continued more gently. “They were Shaker work clothes, too short for him, and your work clothes are missing. It makes sense.”

Albert studied his sinewy hands. “My clothes were stolen,” he said. “About a week ago. Spilled a bucket of water on them.” He waved a hand in the direction of a large bucket in which strips of maple soaked prior to
being curved into oval boxes. “So I changed into my spare work clothes and hung the wet ones out in back to dry. Forgot about them till next morning. Came out to fetch them first thing, but they were gone.”

“Gone! We've never lost old-style Shaker clothes off a line, even when we hung them outdoors and had visitors all day long. It's hard to believe!”

Albert's face reddened. “Look, I'm telling the truth. I didn't want to say anything because . . . well, because of my past.”

“Albert, no one is accusing you of anything. “Your past has been forgiven. But it would help me to know who might have stolen those clothes.”

“It's clear who stole them, least to me.” Albert turned back to his workbench and straightened the last few tools with slow movements.

“Who, then?”

“Whoever killed Johann, of course,” he said. “Stands to reason.”

W
ITH A BURST OF ENERGY BROUGHT ON BY DELIGHT
that her kitchen duty was almost done, Gennie hooked the last of the clean copper pots on their wall pegs.

“You're trottin' like a horse headin' for the barn,” Elsa said. “'Course, you didn't work as long as we did.”

Not even Elsa's barbs could ruin Gennie's mood. Monday she would be in the Herb House, crumbling those heady fragrances; packing them into round, tin boxes for sale; toting up the day's work and recording the number in the daily journal. Everything she loved most to do in the whole world.

It helped, too, that she'd had a load lifted from her shoulders when Rose got Molly to confess her meeting with Johann. Rose was so clever, Gennie thought, to get Molly to tell. Of course, during their enforced stay in their room that afternoon, Molly had been vague about whether she had told Rose everything, like where she got the nail polish and lipstick and perfume that she kept under her mattress. Even Gennie didn't know that for sure. Well, Rose would figure it out. But just to be sure, Gennie decided she would try to get Molly to confide in her as soon as she got back to their retiring room.

“Charity, may I be excused now?”

Behind her, Elsa scraped a bucket across the floor. “Nay,” Elsa said loudly, “there's no call for y'all to be runnin' off when we still got work to do. Git thyself over here and mop this floor.” She held out her dripping mop.

Gennie hesitated and watched Charity, whose pinched face flushed with anger. “Elsa, just because your own work is not completed does not mean that Eugenie should do it for you. Yea, of course, Eugenie, run along,” Charity said, as Gennie had hoped she would as soon as Elsa challenged her authority as kitchen deaconess.

Gennie smiled her thanks and hurried through the outside door so that she would not have to pass close to Elsa. She was glad to get away from both women and their perpetual bickering.

At 9:00
P.M.
it had long been dark, and a damp wind penetrated the thin fabric of Gennie's dress. The afternoon had warmed up enough that when Rose came to fetch them, after the sheriff left, she and Molly had hurried back to work without their cloaks. Gennie raced toward the Children's Dwelling House, hoping that Molly had stoked up the stove in their room. Knowing Molly, she wouldn't be asleep yet. She would probably be combing her luxurious hair or fussing with her secret hoard of makeup. Gennie hoped so; it would give her an opening to try once more to find out where the items came from.

To warm her blood, Gennie sprinted up the Dwelling House steps and the inner staircase. She arrived panting at the door of her retiring room and pushed it open after a perfunctory knock. The room was dark. Through the uncovered windows the moonlight outlined the shapes of furniture, including Molly's neatly made bed. The cold stove and open window shades indicated that Molly had not been back since before sunset. Her work in the Laundry would have ended in
time for the evening meal. Her cloak was missing from its peg, so she must have come back just before or after her meal to fetch it. Maybe Elder Wilhelm had given her evening duty harvesting apples. Everyone had to pitch in right now. That must be it.

Gennie lit a lamp, drew the shades, and started a fire in the woodstove. She kept it small, since she would be in bed soon. She pulled her nightdress from a drawer built into the wall, laid it on her bed, and pulled off her shoes. But something kept her from undressing. Gennie was rarely alone in this room. It was deadly quiet. She tucked her feet underneath her on her own bed and stared at Molly's empty one. A slight bulge on the far edge, probably invisible if she hadn't known what was there, betrayed Molly's cache of beauty items.

Without stopping to think, Gennie slipped across the room and slid her hand under Molly's mattress. Her fingers closed around a small, oblong object, probably the Ruby lipstick. She drew it out and pulled off the lid. It was a different shade, more pink than red. Pretty Pink, it said on the bottom. The stick was perfect, unused.

Beyond her door, Gennie heard quick footsteps and a girl's laughter. With shaking hands, she crammed the top back on the lipstick, nicking the pink smoothness. Molly would know that someone had been looking at her things. Well, too late to worry about that now. Gennie slid the lipstick back under the mattress, wishing she had been more careful to remember exactly where she'd found it. She dashed to the stove and stoked it, waiting for her breath to come more evenly.

The footsteps passed her door and went on down the hall. Her heart still thumping, Gennie shoved the poker into the fire and raced to her own bed. Her quick, shallow breathing made her feel light-headed.
This is wrong,
she thought.
I shouldn't be digging through Molly's things.

Gennie forced herself to take deep breaths. Her heartbeats gradually slowed to a more normal pace. She glanced again at Molly's bed. Maybe it wasn't right, but she had to know if there was anything else that Molly hadn't shown her. The pink lipstick was brand-new. Was Molly still receiving gifts? If so, then they were not coming from Johann. Was she seeing another man?

This time she poked her head out the door and listened for footsteps on the stairs. The lamps cast shadows in the deserted corridors. She had never before noticed how silent the building could be at night.

She eased the door shut and raced to Molly's bed before her courage evaporated. Grasping the edges of the thin mattress with both hands, she lifted it from the pad underneath. Along the outer edge, arranged in a crooked row, were five items: red nail polish, the mother-of-pearl-handled nail file, two lipsticks, and a small bottle made of pale blue glass. Balancing the mattress on one elbow, Gennie lifted the glass bottle. Lavender Eau de Toilette, it said on the front. She sniffed the cap. The cloying sweetness smelled nothing like the fresh scent of the lavender buds drying in the Herb House. The Shakers distilled rose petals into rosewater for cooking, but somehow it still smelled like roses when it was done. Why ruin a scent, Gennie wondered, when the original was so perfect?

She carefully replaced the bottle as she had found it, label down, and rearranged the lipstick she had shoved back so hurriedly. She lowered the mattress to the bed and smoothed the bedclothes.

In the distance, the bell over the Meetinghouse rang the hour. Ten o'clock. Normally they would be drifting off to an exhausted sleep by now, after such a long day. Where could Molly be?

Still dressed, Gennie stretched out on her own bed and pulled her coverlet up to her chin. Maybe Molly had sneaked out for a walk. It was the sort of thing she would do, though never this late before and not on such a chilly night.

Molly loved to visit the quiet Shaker cemetery, now unused, on the edge of North Homage. The graves were old, all but a few with simple, deteriorating markers bearing only the initials of the deceased. None was more recent than the end of the last century, when a new cemetery had been created on the other side of the village. The old cemetery was usually deserted and, because of its location at the edge of a drop-off, it provided a panoramic view of the surrounding land. Gennie had found her roommate there more than once, sitting with her back to a small tombstone, watching the movements on the farms nearby. It gave Gennie the shivers. Molly was actually sitting on the grave of an eldress, but that didn't seem to bother her. It was the best place to watch the world outside their little village. But surely Molly wouldn't go there at such a late hour, would she?

Under the warmth of the coverlet, Gennie's body relaxed, and her eyes closed. Her shoulders ached from the hours of rolling pie crusts. How many pies had they made? Charity would have kept count and recorded the number in her journal. Gennie knew she could ask the next day, if she cared to know, but she didn't. Pies were not nearly so interesting to count as tins of dill and marjoram and thyme. And lavender and rosemary. Gennie drifted to sleep with the comforting names floating across the backs of her eyelids.

She slept in a field of lavender, the intensely fragrant buds just beginning to open. She looked up at a peaceful sky through dense purple stems swaying above her head, but as she reached up to touch one it turned wet and sticky. And then the thick liquid
engulfed her, pinning her to the bottom of a lavender lake. She struggled upward. As she reached toward the light, a vibration rocked her slowly back and forth as if she were trapped in a vat of thickening jelly. A body floated past her, rocking downward. The still body of a girl wrapped in a dark cloak, her long, black hair billowing around her head in thick tendrils. Gennie thrashed her arms and legs, unable to save the girl or herself.

With a strangled cry, she sat up in bed, her eyes open but unseeing. Her breath came in panting whimpers. She had left the lamp lit, and as her eyes focused she saw Molly's still-empty bed and her own coverlet crumpled on the floor, where she had tossed it.

The half hour chimed. How long had she slept? Gennie pushed aside an edge of the window shade and surveyed the darkened community. She saw no lights in the south side of the Trustees' Office. Could it be 11:30 or even later?

Gennie had to look for Molly. Maybe it was just the aftereffects of the lavender-sea dream, but she feared her roommate was in danger. She thought about going to Rose. It would be so much easier and less frightening. But if Molly had met with a man, Gennie would get her into terrible trouble.

To be honest, Gennie was afraid to tell Rose about her dream. Everybody argued these days about dreams, with Elder Wilhelm encouraging visions and Elsa doing spirit drawings from designs she said appeared to her in dreams. Rose agreed with Eldress Agatha that such things were all right a hundred years ago, when the rest of America was holding séances and having their palms read, but not now. Gennie feared Rose would think her under Wilhelm's influence.

Gennie slipped into her heaviest shoes and her long wool cape. She left her bonnet hanging on its peg. Too much trouble. Everyone would be in bed; no one
would know she'd left her hair uncovered. Easing the door closed behind her, she crept down the staircase, keeping close to the wall, where fewer boards creaked.

Outside, the crisp, still air shocked her to alertness. Bright moonlight caressed the silent village, illuminating the neatly trimmed walkways and the spare simplicity of the buildings. Gennie dashed across the central path and through the dew-damp grass toward the cemetery. She drew her hood close to her head to avoid seeing the dark, eerie corners which the moonlight couldn't penetrate.

The old cemetery had been used when North Homage was small and young and gave little thought to whether they had enough burial space. The spot had spiritual meaning. Their first eldress had a vision very near the drop-off marking the western edge, where she had stood to relay messages from long-dead Believers. In a more practical vein, the early Believers were afraid that their cattle would graze too close to the edge of the drop-off and slide down. So the spot became a cemetery.