Death of a Winter Shaker (22 page)

“That'll be a disappointment for whoever killed her, more'n likely,” Brock said. “He could of thrown gasoline on her, that would've done it.” Brock turned and narrowed his eyes at Rose. “Maybe the killer was someone that didn't know much about killing and getting away with it. Like one of y'all.”

Grady flashed a look at Rose that she interpreted as “Don't say anything right now.” She clasped her hands in front of her and clamped her lips shut. Wilhelm, too, remained unusually silent, so absorbed that he failed to notice that he stood too close to Rose. She moved a
few paces aside. Wilhelm's jaw muscles tightened and flexed and tightened again. Dark smudges under his eyes betrayed his strain.

“Want me to start questioning folks?” Grady asked, taking out his notebook and pencil stub.

“Yeah, you bet. 'Specially him,” Brock said, jerking his head toward Wilhelm, “and that crazy Elsa Pike. Word is she's gone off the deep end with this shaking stuff. Could be she took vengeance on the girl for runnin' around. Wouldn't put it past her.” Brock warmed to his theory. “Maybe she decided that if she couldn't run around no more, nobody else could neither. Like one of those teetotaler temperance ladies.”

“You,” Brock said to Rose, “stay away while Grady takes those statements. Y'all stick together too much. I want you to stay out of this, understand?” Rose saw in his taut face and narrowed eyes that he was ready to end this case, one way or another. She said nothing, promised nothing.

Two men from the fire brigade lifted Molly out of the opened crawl space and over the blackened stumps that once were walls. Her long, dark hair rippled beneath her as they laid her on the singed grass. Her white Sabbathday dress was streaked with dirt and soot. Rose sighed a prayer as she turned away.

R
OSE PACED HER OFFICE UNTIL THE POLICE LEFT
. S
HE
watched their black Buick spin up dust, threw her cloak over her shoulders, and cut through the village to the Ministry House. Without knocking, she burst into Elder Wilhelm's office. Wilhelm knelt on the floor beside his writing desk. His head snapped up.

“How dare thee interrupt me at prayer.”

“There is no other time, Wilhelm. Is this what you wanted? Is this the way you wanted it to turn out? Two people are dead, one just a girl.”

“It was the world,” he said, “this is all the world's—”

“Nay, Wilhelm, not the world. A
person
has done this. Maybe a Believer. I'm sure you told the police nothing useful, but I am not the police, and I insist on the truth. Finally, Wilhelm, tell me the truth, before any more lives are lost.”

Wilhelm remained kneeling. Rose noticed that he had left the shutters drawn over his long office windows as if he couldn't bear the sunlight. A small desk lamp showed the slow flush traveling up Wilhelm's neck and face. With one burly arm on the smooth oak surface of his desk, he pulled himself to his feet. For a moment his eyes flashed, and Rose wondered if he would strike her, but instead he crumpled, as if someone released a valve and all the angry steam hissed out.
He dropped into his chair and leaned on his desk, his forehead in his hands. Rose eased into a ladder-back visitor's chair to give Wilhelm time to compose himself.

“I think I know what has been going on with Elsa,” she said. “You've been molding her into your image of the ideal eldress, haven't you? An eldress who would give us new energy, who'd lead us forward by turning us backward. You taught her about dancing and shaking, speaking in tongues and going into trances. That was what the little girl, Nora, saw in the orchard, wasn't it? A training session!”

“Nay, that isn't true!” Wilhelm's head popped up and a lock of white hair fell across his forehead. “Elsa has the gifts, she does, but she had so little . . . experience. I was merely helping her understand, teaching her.” He held out his hands, palms upward.

“But now the pupil has overwhelmed the teacher,” Rose continued quietly. “Elsa has found a way to surpass even you. By declaring herself the new Mother, Elsa will follow in Mother Ann's footsteps. Mother Ann would never, ever have condoned such behavior. You know that, Wilhelm.”

Wilhelm's face sagged. He looked far older than his sixty years.

“In the end,” Rose added softly, “Elsa would be more honored than you. Did you anticipate that when you made your plans?”

Elsa was a clever woman. Or was she? Rose had seen those firelit eyes. Perhaps she had absorbed Wilhelm's lessons so well that she truly believed herself to be chosen. Perhaps she had gone over the edge.

A distant bell rang, calling Believers to evening meal, but Rose didn't budge. Wilhelm rubbed his puffy eyelids, then slowly opened them.

“Elsa was practicing,” he said in a weary voice. “I thought she learned so very quickly, she must indeed have the gifts. But she practiced on her own at night.
Johann saw her. He understood that her movements weren't real, that she was pretending. After he told me what he had seen, I went out for several nights to watch for myself.”

“Is that why you were out Saturday night when you found Gennie at the old cemetery?”

Wilhelm nodded. “Even after Johann's death, I followed Elsa every night. I saw her dance, heard her speak in tongues. I wanted it to be real. Sometimes it did truly look real, and I was convinced, but then . . .”

“So Johann threatened to tell the Society that Elsa was a fake. He blackmailed you.”

“Nay!” Wilhelm pounded the desk. “He tried, first Elsa, then me. Neither of us gave in to his vile demands for money.”

“Yet he didn't tell anyone about Elsa. Why not?”

“Because he had no chance. He was killed that same night.” Wilhelm sank back in his chair. “But neither I nor Elsa had anything to do with that. I swear by all I believe in.”

“How can you be so sure about Elsa?”

Some of the old power lit his tired eyes. “I know.”

“Just as you knew that she had the gifts?”

Rose missed dinner, but she cornered Gennie as she left the dining room.

“Come with me to the Herb House,” Rose said abruptly. “I need to know what was in that bouquet you saw on Johann's chest.”

“You believe me!”

“I should never have doubted you.”

They hurried through the kitchen garden and backyards to the Herb House. Once in the second-floor drying room, Rose pushed Gennie toward the worktable where she'd found Johann. The table had been scrubbed clean of any dirt from Johann's body. One bunch of lavender lay on the corner, its dried buds deep purple in the sunlight from the window.

“Think now,” Rose urged. “What did you see? Close your eyes and imagine the scene, even if it frightens you. I think this is important.”

Gennie removed the lavender and stared at the empty table. Then she shut her eyes tightly and sucked on her lower lip.

“I don't know, I was so upset, I—”

“You called it a bouquet. A bouquet usually has flowers in it. Think, Gennie, were there flowers in it? Was it all brownish or were there colors?”

Gennie's face scrunched up for several moments, then cleared as her eyes popped open.

“There were colors! I'm sure of it. Lavender, I think. And orange or maybe a dark yellow. Green, too, of course—a strong green.”

She smiled expectantly, but Rose was puzzled.

“Green?” Rose asked. “But I thought you said the bouquet was dried.” She glanced around her at the hanging bunches of oregano and lemon balm and tarragon hanging from the rafters. Some retained a pale green, but most turned brown when they dried.

Gennie frowned and closed her eyes again.

“Take yourself back to that morning,” Rose said. “Let your mind wander through the rows of hanging herbs, past the drying tables covered with smaller herbs, then you come upon Johann's body.” Gennie winced but Rose continued. “Now focus on the bouquet, see the bit of string binding the sprigs together. Look at the bouquet itself, the colors. Can you identify the herbs?”

Gennie began hesitantly. “I think the orangy color was a calendula, or maybe two, an orange and a yellow. They were dried, I'm positive, and the lavender looked shriveled.” Her eyes flew open. “I've got it! I remember! The green was rosemary, lots of rosemary, maybe even four or five sprigs.”

“Rosemary does turn pine green when it's dried,”
Rose said. “Are you certain now that those were the herbs you saw?”

“I'm definitely sure. I can recognize practically any herb, dried or not,” Gennie said. “I can tell catnip from anise hyssop, even without smelling them. Molly tested me once, and I always—”

“What is it?”

“I'm just remembering . . . you said pine green, and it wasn't pine green. It was bright green.”

“We haven't harvested any rosemary for at least three weeks,” Rose said. “What we harvested has already turned dark. Someone went to the trouble of picking fresh rosemary sprigs for Johann Frederick's funeral bouquet. But why?”

Before dawn on Wednesday, Rose absently rocked herself in the small sitting room connected to her retiring room. Time grew short. Already, the town of Languor knew of Molly's murder. They blamed the Shakers. After helping Gennie dredge up her memories about the bouquet, Rose had escorted the girl to her retiring room past a group of rowdy young men, who cursed and threatened them. Rose had sat up all night after that, watching over her village, her mind racing to fit the pieces together.

Someone had picked fresh rosemary, mixed it into a dried herb bouquet, and left it on a murdered man's chest. The fresh rosemary carried a message, it had to, or else why bother? But why would the killer bother to send a message at all? It must have something to do with the Society, maybe something in their past.

She glanced at the small, plain desk in the corner of her sitting room nearest the window. Faint pink light had begun to spread across its clean pine surface. Her personal journals lined up neatly beginning at the left corner with 1920, the year Rose had returned to North Homage and signed the covenant. She retrieved the sixteen-year-old journal and slid into her small,
slat-backed desk chair. Without much hope of finding an answer but desperate for something to trigger her sluggish thinking, she began to turn the yellowing pages. She scanned snatches of her own youthful handwriting whenever she saw mention of rosemary.

She had noted that the rosemary crop was good that year. Tins of Shaker dried rosemary had sold well in the world. During her kitchen rotation, she had experimented with various combinations of herbs in breads. One recipe for rosemary muffins had been so popular that she'd written it out in her journal. The recipe had been used by the kitchen sisters until Elsa had taken over the breadmaking and dropped the use of herbs.

Rosemary's Muffins

Rose squinted at the recipe in the dim light. Rosemary's muffins? She was certain she'd meant to name them “Rose's Rosemary Muffins.” A silly error. That's what comes of writing too fast and not concentrating.

She started to turn the page, but her hand stopped in midair. She saw herself as she had been when she'd written those words. She was nineteen, a new Shaker sister, determined to strive for perfection in her new life and to atone for the mistakes of her past. More
than anything, she had vowed to reject any thoughts that bound her to the world she had left. But some memories wouldn't be killed so easily. Her silly error was, in fact, a reminder. Rosemary for remembrance. She remembered, and a piece of the puzzle fell into place.

Dawn light splashed on the stairs as Rose slipped down to the Trustees' Office and placed a call to the eldress of the Hancock Society in Massachusetts. After a night of thinking and very little sleep, she decided it was time to test one of her ideas about why Johann Fredericks had been murdered. She needed some information, and the eldress might be able to help her.

After a frustrating delay, the operator reached a soft-voiced sister in Massachusetts. The eldress had just arisen, she said, and would take several minutes to come to the phone. Rose closed her eyes and touched cool fingers to the lids to ease the burning.

At a rustling sound, Rose turned to see Josie, the infirmary nurse, framed in the doorway. She smiled.

“Agatha is coming back to us,” she said.

Rose dropped the phone back on its cradle and ran the distance to the Infirmary.

Rose clutched the edge of the cradle bed and searched Agatha's chiseled face for signs of life.

“I'm only sure that she's come out of the coma,” Doc Irwin said. “For the rest, we'll have to see.” He reached out as if to offer Rose a comforting touch. Remembering who she was, he withdrew his hand.

Josie offered what the doctor could not, a hand on Rose's shoulder.

Sister Theresa burst into the room, panting and red-faced. “Oh, Rose, I'm so sorry to interrupt, but something awful is happening. You've got to come quickly. The sheriff's here and he has arrested Elsa! He actually
forced his way into the sisters' side of the Center Family House. Wilhelm is furious, I'm afraid of what might happen . . .” She saw the faint color in Agatha's cheeks and gasped with pleasure.

“I'll be there in a moment,” Rose said quietly.

Theresa looked over Rose's head at Josie, who gave a slight nod and led the way. Theresa and the doctor followed, closing the door behind them.