“Whitney, wake up. Come on, Whitney.”
A friendly voice was addressing me by a name used only by attorneys, preachers, IRS agents, and my mother. That didn’t give me an incentive to reply. Opening my eyes had never been such a chore. Focusing them proved even harder.
“That-a-girl, Whitney! You’re doing fine.”
Something wasn’t quite right. My elbow and shoulder throbbed when I moved my right arm. And the person coaxing me to wake up may have sounded like Chester, but he didn’t pass inspection. First, Chester’s ever-present glasses were gone. Second, his usually spiked hair appeared to be suffering from a bad case of hat head. Third, his school blazer had been replaced by overalls. And finally, Chester never called me Whitney.
“You’re at the Elijah Yoder farm,” he went on cheerfully. “And you’re perfectly safe. Mrs. Yoder put a couple poultices on your arm, so please don’t try to get up.”
Leaning closer, he lowered his voice. “Whatever you do, don’t make me call you Whiskey. It upsets the whole family.”
Groaning, I tried to find a comfortable position. Lying on my back with my arm propped on downy pillows did not exactly feel natural.
“What happened to my arm?” I whispered and realized that my throat was parched.
Chester was ready with a ceramic mug of cool well water. He helped me into a semi-sitting position so that I could drink.
“You were shot, Whitney. Luckily, both bullets just grazed your arm-one right above your elbow and the other at your shoulder.”
I drank eagerly, the water tasting better than anything I had consumed in years. Including Pinot Noir. Glancing up, I spotted a worried-looking woman somewhere between age twenty-five and forty studying me from a wooden chair in the far corner of the room. Dressed in dark clothing and wearing a small white cap, she sat with her arms crossed.
“That’s Mrs. Yoder, Rachel and Jacob’s mother,” Chester said helpfully. “She’s the one who cleaned and dressed the wounds on your arm.”
“Thank you, Mrs. Yoder,” I said. “Sorry to be so much trouble.”
I wondered exactly how much trouble I was getting credit for. Did she know about Nathaniel? And my dog?
“You can call me Sarah,” the woman said but not in a way that made me want to take her up on the offer.
I turned to Chester. “What happened to MacArthur?”
“MacArthur’s fine. He’s downstairs talking to Mr. Yoder and the elders. They’re trying to decide what to do about you.”
“What about Abra?” I whispered. “And the silver pickup?”
“MacArthur says Abra is okay. He saw her dash into the cornfield, and he’s sure she wasn’t shot. As for the driver of the pickup, MacArthur couldn’t get a good look because he-or she-was wearing a hood and dark glasses. They just kept driving.”
“But why shoot me?” I asked.
“Why not? Your luck has been pretty bad lately.”
“I mean, were they trying to shoot me? Or was Abra the target? Or MacArthur? What did they want?”
“I think you should ask MacArthur,” Chester said.
With my left hand, I grabbed the strap of Chester’s overalls, pulling him toward me.
“Where are your glasses, and why are you dressed like that?”
He grinned. “The Yoders let me go Amish! They loaned me Jacob’s clothes and straw hat. I was helping move the goats to a different part of the pasture when that brown and white one who ate your book charged me. He knocked off my glasses, and I accidentally stepped on them.”
“Your mother won’t like that.”
My response was automatic and completely irrelevant. Chester’s mother was Cassina, the perpetually self-involved, stoned celebrity who rarely remembered she had a son, let alone what he did or the fact that he owned two dogs.
Chester said, “It was so worth it! Wait 'til I tell the kids at my academy that I got to be Amish. They’d pay ten thousand dollars for a day like this!”
Here’s what I knew about Chester’s academy: all the kids had chauffeurs, personal assistants, and trust funds for life. Being Amish for a day would strike them as exotic.
“Fortunately, I had my Blackberry,” Chester whispered after verifying that Mrs. Yoder wasn’t listening. He produced his state-of-the-art cell phone from an overall pocket. “As proof that I was here, I made a video of Jacob and Rachel doing their chores, and I asked them to shoot me with the goats. Then I showed them the video of the dog show that I posted on youtube.”
That caught my full attention. “Are you…?“ I kicked the cobwebs from my memory.
“luvssdogss?” Chester asked. “Yup, that’s my youtube handle! You should see all the videos I’ve posted of Abra, Prince Harry, and Velcro!”
I sincerely hoped he hadn’t posted any of me drooling in my sleep with poultices on my arm.
“Chester, who knows about my getting shot?”
“Well, MacArthur called Jeb right away. Jenx, too. She’s on her way.”
I took the plunge. “Is Jeb coming, too?”
“He would if he could,” Chester said gently, “only he has that gig in Chicago tomorrow. He said he was sorry, but he’s sure you understand.”
“I understand, all right. His music-and other women-will always come first.”
“The show must go on,“ Chester reminded me. No doubt his mother used the same excuse. “Don’t feel sad, Whiskey-I mean, Whitney. MacArthur, Jenx, and I will never let you down.”
I squeezed his hand and closed my eyes, willing away the tears.
Across the room, Mrs. Yoder coughed softly. I heard the fabric of her dress rustle as she stood up.
“I’ll go see if the elders have finished,” she said. “You need to rest, Mrs. Mattimoe.”
The next voice I heard was the cleaner’s. Somewhere down the hall, MacArthur thanked Mrs. Yoder for her poultices. A moment later, he was at my side.
“How does if feel to be the luckiest English in Amish Country?” he said.
“You call getting shot twice ‘lucky’?”
“Getting grazed is lucky indeed. Getting killed would have been unfortunate.”
“Why didn’t you take me to a hospital?” I said.
“If I’d done that, I would have had to report the shootings,” MacArthur said. “I fired my gun, too, you know…”
I remembered hearing his weapon fire twice. “What did you hit-besides the windshield?”
“Nothing. The glass shattered, but I’m sure the driver was fine. He-or she-never lost control of the truck.”
Gingerly I touched the cloth compresses on my arm. Minor wounds. My heartache over Jeb hurt more.
MacArthur went on, “I carried you to the house and asked Mrs. Yoder to make you a poultice. When I told her it would be the fastest way to get rid of you, she agreed. The elders want you out of here ASAP. We’re just waiting for Jenx.”
“Why is she coming?”
“First, she’s been tracking this case since shots were fired at Susan’s car. Second, she’s your friend. Strange as it seems, she really cares about you.”
Maybe it was a delayed reaction to everything that had happened. Or maybe I was simply exhausted. At any rate, I burst into tears. For the second time that day. Chester handed me a big old white cotton handkerchief.
“The Amish use these instead of tissues.” The way he said it, you would have thought that cotton was a new invention. “They’re economical and very absorbent. I’ve got another one in my pocket in case you need it.”
“Clear the room, folks. It’s my turn to talk to her!”
We hadn’t heard Jenx coming. The compactly built Magnet Springs police chief leaned against the door frame. Although she wore her blue uniform, she’d removed her service revolver, presumably out of courtesy for our hosts.
“This is a first,” she said. “A visiting Realtor gets shot down in Amish Country. Can’t wait to hear your side.”
She shooed MacArthur and Chester from the room and closed the solid oak door. I resumed sobbing.
“You puke and you faint, but you never cry,” Jenx said.
“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” I bawled into Chester’s borrowed handkerchief. “I just feel so sad!”
Jenx said. “Good thing Jeb’s not here to see you like this.”
That activated a new chain of sobs.
“What’s going on with you two, anyhow?” the chief said.
Jenx had drawn up the wooden chair Mrs. Yoder used and was now leaning back in it, arms crossed, head cocked.
“Why don’t you ask Jeb?” I said. “He was supposed to help me find Abra, but he took off with Susan Davies. I think they’re having an affair! She does that, you know, with lots of people!”
“Jeb’s just being Jeb,” Jenx said calmly. “And you’re just being you.”
“Being a volunteer deputy for you!”
“That’s not a license to get stupid,” she said.
“Can I help it if my dog’s gone, my boyfriend’s gone, and I got shot?”
“Your dog runs away every chance she gets. And your luck sucks, especially with men. Face it, Whiskey, you attract trouble like Odette attracts clients.”
“You should investigate that bitch Susan,” I told the chief. “I’ll bet she killed Mitchell and Matt!”
“You think Susan shot at Ramona, her co-breeder, twice?” Jenx asked. “And then shot at you, just for fun?”
“She hates me,” I said.
“Well, sure, but I don’t see Susan driving that pickup. And she couldn’t have shot at her own car when she was in it.”
“She hired somebody! You don’t know Susan. She has a way of getting people to do her bidding. I came to the damn dog show, didn’t I?”
“Yeah, but you did that for mercenary reasons.”
Jenx removed a notebook from her pocket and flipped through it.
“Here’s what we got so far, based on MacArthur’s info and my background checks.”
The chief recapped events in order, starting with Susan’s report that she and Ramona were fired at as they drove to Vestige on Thursday night. Then someone shot at either Ramona, who was outside with Jeb, or at Susan’s car, which was parked in my driveway. When Officer Brady Swancott asked Susan to produce a list of enemies, Ramona brought up a certain breeder.
“Susan didn’t want to talk about Slater,” I recalled. “According to Ramona, his dog had a stroke while having sex with Susan’s dog, so Susan never got her stud fee refunded, and Slater never forgave her for killing his dog. But that’s not right.
Jenx checked her notes. “How so?”
“Perry said that Susan was the only woman who ever dumped Mitchell. And Susan did get her stud fee back, FYI-plus a puppy: Silverado. She also got Mitchell’s hottie son, Matt.”
Jenx raised a finger to stop me.
“You’re saying Susan used Mitchell to get the stud fee, the stud dog, and the human stud? Then why would she kill him?”
“Beats the hell out of me,” I said. “But since Mitchell’s dead, is there any reason Peg can’t keep Yoda?”
“Perry says Mitchell wanted him to take care of Yoda,” Jenx said. “So Perry is being responsible. He’s paying Peg a thousand bucks. You know she needs the cash.”
“She needs Yoda, too! He was all the family she had.”
“Not anymore. Deely and Dr. David got a lead on another gray cat looking for a good home. Fleggers like Peg. They think she’s enlightened. Brady can alter her tattoo.”
Referring to her notebook, Jenx ticked through a long list of observations, most of them relayed by either me or MacArthur. They included the power outage at the exhibit hall, Matt’s death and Silverado’s disappearance, the cat fight between Brenda Spenser and Sandy Slater, and Kori’s sudden absence. I told her my theory that Kori had used the distraction of the first helicopter’s departure to cover her exit in the pickup. Or the Lincoln. Jenx didn’t seem impressed.
“I ran the plates on the silver pickup,” the chief said. “It’s not registered to Kori or her uncle. It’s not even registered in Illinois.”
After a long silence, I realized that Jenx was staring at me.
“What?” I said.
“What the hell kind of volunteer deputy are you? Don’t you want to know who the silver pickup belongs to?”
I propped myself up as best I could. “Sure. Is it somebody I’ve heard of?”
“It’s somebody in Magnet Springs,” Jenx said.