What I could see of Indiana Amish country was a letdown. It looked like farmland anywhere. I’d had the same reaction years earlier when traveling in France with Leo. The cornfields surrounding Paris were identical to the ones at home.
Back when I toured with Jeb as designated wife-slash-groupie repellent, I’d visited Amish country. Jeb didn’t play Nappanee, but he did have gigs in Middlebury and Shipshewana. That was during his ill-fated folk music phase when he sang earnest songs about working hard for a living that nobody wanted to hear.
On that tour, I saw lots of white houses, white fences, and very few power lines. Today I was sticking to the main roads, which probably explained why the scenery looked like textbook Middle America: farm fields alternating with gas stations, churches, and fast food restaurants. The Amish didn’t live along U.S. Route 20.
Although I was disappointed by the lack of bonnets and buggies, conditions were perfect for leaf-peeping. I hated to admit it, but the trees here were as richly hued as in Magnet Springs. Sure, we offered quaint shops, superb restaurants, and a scenic shoreline. But if you couldn’t afford a tank of gas and you lived in northern Indiana, you had plenty o’ pretty to gaze upon.
My destination was the ominously named Barnyard Inn, a motel attached to an exhibit hall on the east edge of Nappanee. Susan had assured me that the inn was “canine-friendly.” I hoped dogs were the only livestock.
The moment the motel came into view I understood why dogs were welcome. It was a dump-starting with the sagging roadside sign, which appeared to have been maimed in a collision with an eighteen-wheeler. Plastic letters held together with duct tape perched crookedly atop a cracked cement stand. The second R in Barnyard must have replaced in a hurry; it was backwards. Under the motel’s name was somebody’s idea of an enticement to stay there: FREE TV.
I pulled into the large, mostly empty gravel lot and parked in front of the glass door marked OFFICE. Since Abra, like me, needed all the beauty sleep she could get, I left the CD player running while I went inside to register.
No one was at the front desk. Nor was there one of those bells you can ring to request service. But I wasn’t yet sure I wanted any. I surveyed the dimly lit lobby, or what passed for a lobby at the Barnyard Inn: humming yellow overhead lights, cheap dark paneling, and orange shag carpet. The air was a gagging mix of rug cleaner, bleach, and floral air freshener. Even in the low lighting, I could see stains on the carpet, no doubt from those welcome canine guests.
“Hello?” I inquired. There was a door behind the desk. It was mostly closed, but from the other side came the sounds of a TV game show conducted in a language that wasn’t taught at my high school.
I called out again, louder. Still no response. I was thinking about getting back in my car and pretending I’d never been here when the glass door to the parking lot opened, and in walked a distinguished man about Leo’s age. Or about the age Leo was when he checked out of life early: late 40s. A few inches shorter than me, as many men are, this one had thick glossy hair, ramrod-straight posture, and a rather blank but not unpleasant face. He wore a linen sports jacket over a pale cotton shirt. His coffee-brown pants were crisply pressed, and his shoes were Italian. Frankly, he looked as out of place in this dive as I was. But for completely different reasons.
“Nobody’s working today?” he asked me.
“So it seems,” I replied.
Wasting no time, he leaned over the front desk and bellowed, “We need some service out here!”
Almost instantly a petite dark-skinned woman in jeans and a Purdue University sweatshirt stained with baby spit-up appeared from the room behind the desk.
“May I help you?” she said to neither of us in particular.
The gentleman deferred to me.
“I think you have a reservation for Whiskey, I mean, Whitney Mattimoe,” I said, hoping she didn’t. It wasn’t yet too late to go home.
Impassively scanning her computer screen, she said, “I don’t see it. When did you phone it in?”
“Oh, that’s all right-“ I began and turned toward the front door.
The man spoke up. “Mattimoe? I know that name. You’re here as a guest of the Breeder Education Committee.”
Busted.
He told the clerk, “Her reservation should be under the Midwest Afghan Hound Club.”
She nodded. A few seconds later, I was holding a metal key attached to a red plastic tag labeled 17.
“Uh-I have a question.”
The desk clerk gazed at me with narrow, expressionless eyes.
“Where are all the Amish?”
No response.
I tried again. “The horse and buggy people? I thought this was their country. I mean, I thought this was where you find them.”
Without a word or the slightest change in her bored expression, the woman plucked a brochure from a display rack at one end of the counter and held it at my eye level.
AMISH COUNTRY TOURS
SEE HOW GENUINE AMISH PEOPLE LIVE AND WORK
I took it, thanking her excessively for… what? Rudely handing me a brochure? Sometimes I was way too Midwest-humble.
“There are better tours than that one,” the man told me. “If you can wait a minute, I’ll point you in the right direction.”
Why not befriend the attractive Afghan hound man? It would be nice to know someone at the show besides Susan and Ramona. And our bodyguard.
“Next.” I smiled and made room for him at the counter.
The man returned my smile, his teeth so movie-star perfect they had to be porcelain veneers.
To the clerk he said, “You have a reservation for Mitchell Slater.”
So help me, I dropped my key. This was the possible shooter? The bitter breeder who had failed to refund Susan’s stud fee after her bitch killed his dog with sex? The man with the freezer full of dog sperm?
I scooped key number 17 from the raggedy rug. It came up smelling like chemicals and… something else. I made a mental note to rub it with hand sanitizer.
As the clerk printed out his receipt, Mitchell Slater watched me blandly. I slipped the key in my pocket and parked my trembling hand there with it. If Mitchell Slater was the shooter, I was chatting up a man who, according to MacArthur, “sent a message” with gunfire. Had he shot at Ramona this very afternoon?
“You brought the Education Dog, didn’t you?” he said.
“Pardon?”
“You’re here because Susan Davies and her committee invited you.”
“Oh. Yes. How nice of you to call Abra the Education Dog. I’ve been thinking of her as the Bad Example.”
“There are no bad dogs,” he began.
“I know,” I said. “Only bad owners. I guess that makes me the Bad Example.”
“I was going to say, there are no bad dogs, only dogs that need training.”
I liked his version much better than Susan’s. In fact, I liked him better than Susan. He was way too charming to wield a high-powered rifle.
We stepped from the cramped lobby into the late afternoon sunlight. The mild air held a hint of crispness. I smelled freshly turned earth.
“You can recommend a better tour?” I asked, brandishing my brochure.
“Much better.” He plucked the pamphlet from my fingers and proceeded to tear it into shreds.
“You don’t care for that tour, do you?” I said.
He shook his head and continued ripping, his eyes on me. Specifically, his eyes were on a part of my anatomy below my chin and above my waist. I wasn’t sure if this was flattering or just plain rude.
“So which tour do you recommend?” I said.
He tossed the tiny bits of glossy paper into the air like confetti.
“My tour,” he said.
“Excuse me?”
“I recommend that you let me show you Indiana Amish Country. I grew up in Elkhart. Trust me, I know all the back roads.”
I was willing to bet that he did. Suddenly I understood why Mitchell Slater’s face seemed strangely blank: Botox. The man had surely had injections. His neck, his hairline, and his hands confirmed that he was closing in on the big Five-Oh. Yet his face had almost no lines at all. Skin as smooth as a teen-ager’s and an attitude to match.
“Well, that’s very nice of you,” I babbled, “but I’m sure you’ll be busy with the show.”
“Not very. Most of my committee work is done, and I hire handlers to show my dogs. So all that’s left is the socializing. And collecting my ribbons, of course.”
“Of course. But I’m afraid I will be busy. I’m… the Bad Example, remember?”
“Let me talk to Susan about that. There’s no reason she should monopolize your time.”
Mitchell talk to Susan? According to Ramona, he shunned her at every event.
“So… you and Susan are… friends?” I ventured.
He barked a short laugh. I couldn’t read the emotion.
“You might say that. I left my wife for her.”
Before I could concoct a response to that bombshell, a firecracker exploded nearby. I jumped at the sound.
Then I shrieked like a terrified toddler. But not because of the bang.
I screamed when Mitchell Slater staggered and fell against me. I saw no blood, but I knew by the way his muscles let go that life had left his body.