The Amish Clockmaker (5 page)

I nodded, realizing now why the name sounded familiar. I remembered when the hotel people made an offer for our homestead.
Daed
had very clearly turned them down, though we'd been surprised to learn that our next door neighbors had not. Instead, they had chosen to sell and move away. Since then, not only had we missed them as friends and fellow church members, we'd also been suffering from the fact that their land could have separated our homestead from the new resort. By selling out, our former neighbors had left us with no buffer at all—except, of course, for the portion of our own property we were debating about now.

“Anyway,” Kenny continued, “we were able to acquire enough of the neighboring properties to proceed as planned. The only step we lack is the acquisition of lot twenty-three as well. But that is in the works.”

I narrowed my eyes. “You said you're in negotiations to buy it now?”

Kenny cleared his throat, looking hot under the collar all of a sudden. “Yeah. Well, sort of. There have been some… issues.”

“Issues?”

“Yeah. With locating the owner.”

“That's because we
are
the owners. And we've already turned you down.”

“Hold on,” Kenny added as he shuffled through his papers again, looking for something else.
Daed
glanced at me and then piped up.

“Records or not,” he said to Kenny in a calm, even tone, “my father bought this entire place from a woman named Lucille Raber in 1956. She's passed on now, but I'm sure one of her children—”

Kenny looked up. “Raber?”

Daed
nodded. “Lucille Raber.” He pointed to her name at the top of our deed, the one I'd brought down from the house. Kenny looked at it and then up at me.

“That's it. That's the name I was trying to think of, the owner of lot twenty-three. Raber. But not Lucille. It's a man.”

He flipped through a few more pages, pulled one out, and handed it to me. “Here you go, right here. According to county records, lots twenty-four and twenty-five belong to a Zook, but the parcel in question, lot twenty-three, belongs to a Raber.
Clayton
Raber.”

Clayton Raber?

I sucked in my breath. How could that be? I looked over at
Daed,
who seemed just as startled—and worried—as I.

“All right,” I said. “We'll look into it, then.”

Kenny's scowl softened. “And you'll cease and desist with your expansion in the meantime?”

“
Ya
,”
Daed
and I agreed simultaneously. We turned to go.

“We'll be in contact with your lawyer,” I told Kenny over my shoulder as I took Amanda's arm and guided her down the steps of the trailer.

Then we began making our way back across the construction site as fast as we could.

“What's going on?” Amanda asked, trying to keep up. “What's wrong? Who's Clayton Raber?”

Daed
and I exchanged another look, and then I leaned close to her ear.

“He's the Amish man who used to live here, the old clockmaker,” I whispered. “The one people say murdered his wife.”

F
OUR

I
first learned about Clayton Raber's past from twin brothers who used to live up the road. I was about seven or eight. We were playing in my yard one evening after we had all finished our chores, and when I invited them inside for some of my mom's pie, they refused. When I asked why, they looked at one another and then back at me.

“That's where the murderer used to live,” one of them said.

They then proceeded to tell me the story—or as much of it as they had overheard. The rest I gathered on my own after talking to my parents later that night. Legend had it the clockmaker known as Clayton Raber was a bitter man prone to fits of temper. He'd been the victim of a childhood accident that had left him with various injuries, including a badly mangled leg that had healed poorly and made it difficult for him to walk, as well as a disfiguring scar on his face. He also had a troubled marriage, and when his wife died under suspicious conditions, Clayton was charged with killing her. He was only twenty-seven. Everyone knew he'd done it, they said, but for some reason all charges were eventually dropped and he was released from jail. He later left the community—and the Amish church—in disgrace, and no one ever saw him again.

Up to that point I had known only that a family by the name of Raber once lived in my house and that they'd had a clock shop in what was presently my
grandfather's tack and feed store. But even after my friends told me the story, which I'd found startling and more than a little intriguing, I still didn't understand why it scared them so. My house was warm and safe, its wooden floors worn soft by generations of running, skipping, and playing. What did some silly rumor from the past have to do with anything now? Those twin brothers may have thought of Clayton Raber as a murderer, but to me he'd always just been the guy who grew up in the bedroom that had eventually become mine.

And I loved that room, especially when my older brother moved out and I had it all to myself. My favorite part was the window seat, where I used to sit and read for hours as a boy, just as Clayton Raber had probably done years before when it had been his room. A wide strip of molding ran vertically along the wall beside the window seat, and I used to gaze at it often, at the markings that covered the length of it.

The reason it held such fascination for me was because those markings charted Clayton's height as he'd grown. Someone had measured him at various ages and sliced little horizontal lines into the wood. Beside each one—which started at about four feet high and ran all the way up to nearly six feet—was a date and his initials.

Though the dates had all been carved by the same feminine hand, it seemed as if Clayton had added in the initials himself. Down low, the first few
CR
s were childish looking and barely legible, but each one became less so as he worked his way up the wall through time. When he measured in at about the height of an eight or nine year old boy, his letters had become for the most part neat and straight. By the time he'd reached his full height, they were downright elegant, carved by the hand of a teenager who was on his way to becoming a clockmaker and talented woodworker.

For some reason, the sight of those measurements and dates and initials on that strip of molding had always pleased me, though I was never sure why. I supposed it made me feel connected somehow to the house, and to the boy who had once lived there. Learning those new facts from the neighborhood children about Clayton's wife and the murder charge and everything had not changed my feelings about my room nor repelled me from my home—quite the opposite, in fact. In bed that night, I didn't lie there thinking about murder or death or jail or any of that stuff. Instead, I trained my eyes on the beautifully carved initials near the top of that growth chart and told myself that if the police let the guy go, then he must have been innocent and that was that.

I hadn't thought about Clayton in years, but now my life was once again
intersecting with his in a new way. Whatever happened from here, I told myself as we neared the group waiting for us on the lawn, I could only pray it wouldn't hinder any more of my carefully laid plans for the expansion.

Everyone's eyes were wide with curiosity as we drew close. Not wanting to broadcast to the whole group what we'd learned, I pulled Virgil aside and told him we had a problem with the paperwork and I would have to see a lawyer before we could keep going with the construction.

“Send the workers home for today,” I added. “I imagine we'll be able to start back first thing tomorrow morning, but I'll get in touch with you as soon as I know for sure.”

“Okay,” Virgil replied with a worried frown. “I'll be waiting to hear from you.”

We returned to the crew, and I thanked them for their work thus far and apologized for the mix-up. Virgil took it from there, addressing the men as Amanda and I went inside, my mind spinning. I was embarrassed to have to send these guys home so soon, and more than a little frustrated. How was I going to get my business up and running again with a delay like this? If the foundation wasn't poured today, then it would be like dominoes tumbling down the line, ruining the project's entire time frame. My window of opportunity with the work crew would be gone and I would lose them to other jobs. Once that happened, who knew how long it would be before we were back on track?

First things first
, I told myself as I took a deep breath and tried to calm down. I waited for the men to leave and then used the phone in the shop to contact Jim Purcell, the lawyer on the business card. When I was finally put through to him, he said he'd been expecting my call.

“I just heard from Kenny McKendrick over at the Ridgeview site, and he told me about the situation.” The man's voice sounded cool yet melodic, his tone the kind one might use to soothe a worried child into going to sleep—or to trick a jittery cow into entering a slaughterhouse. I asked him what all of the confusion was about.

“It's complicated. Any chance you could come into my office and we could talk here? I have some time now—well, I can make time, I mean. This is important.”

I asked where he was located, and when he said Lancaster City, I told him that meant I'd have to hire a car and driver but that I would make my way out there as soon as I could, which would probably be in an hour or two.

“Fine. Just get here as soon as you can, Mr. Zook.”

He hung up without a goodbye. Returning the phone to its base, I looked over to see
Daed
and Amanda standing beside me, waiting to hear the details of what the lawyer said. I relayed our conversation in full, and then Amanda offered to arrange for a car and driver.

We traded places by the phone, and while she called around,
Daed
and I neatened the shop and put things away as best we could. Finally, the three of us locked up and left, agreeing to meet in front of the store in half an hour, when our driver would arrive.

As we walked up the hill together, I knew what
Daed
was thinking, that maybe this holdup was a sign from God that the expansion wasn't supposed to happen. To my relief, however, he never said a word except for a quick, “See you in a bit” as we parted. Now that he and I had made our peace, I guessed the last thing either of us wanted was to start arguing again.

Once Amanda and I were inside our cottage, I pulled off my dusty work shirt and walked into the bathroom to clean up from my morning's activities before returning to the bedroom to change into clean clothes.

“All right,” she said, coming to stand in the doorway. “I can't wait any longer. You have to tell me. Who is Clayton Raber? And what is all this about him killing his wife?”

She sat on a side of the bed, watching me expectantly.

“It's a sad tale,” I said. “One I don't like to think about much.”

“Why? What happened?”

I looked over at my wife. This was her home now too, and she deserved to know what had gone on here all those years ago. So I gave her as much of the story as I knew.

Her expression was somber but curious. She reached toward the hat I had placed on the bed and took it in her hands. She turned it slowly, fingering the tightly woven straw as she processed what I had said.

“But you don't believe he did it, do you? How come?”

Her eyes searched my face. My wife had the uncanny talent of seeing beyond my words and straight into my heart.

Truth was, I had learned in subsequent years that no one really knew why the police had changed their minds about Clayton and let him go, though most assumed it was simply from a lack of evidence. Still, local folks had been convinced that the man had committed the murder just the same. I, on the other hand, had always held the opposite opinion, that the reason there was no evidence was because Clayton hadn't done it.

“It's hard to explain. I've always felt a kind of connection with him even after I heard the story. Somehow, I had trouble believing it was true—then
and
now.”

“Why?”