She studied the teen. “Lemuel, did you like Daniel?”
It took him a long time to respond before he looked up. “Does it matter?”
Chapter 7
“He was your sister’s husband,” Rachel said, thinking his response was a little odd. But what teenager didn’t have difficulty speaking to adults. “You lived in the same house. I was just wondering if you got along well with him.”
Lemuel stood there with the canning jars in his arms looking as if he’d never considered the subject. He shrugged. “I’m sorry that he’s dead. It’ll be hard for Mam and Mary Rose without him to do the heavy work . . . unless Moses comes home to help.” He shifted his weight from one foot to the other. “Winter’s coming. I’m worried about them . . . if they can . . . if we can pay the bills and make it through until spring. With the stock. You have to buy feed and we don’t have much money, I don’t think.”
Rachel nodded. “I can see that you’re concerned. But I don’t want you to worry. I’m doing all I can for Moses. As for your family, you know the community will chip in. Your mother and sister and the baby won’t do without.”
“Cows . . . pigs and horses need to have grain and it’s expensive. And I guess a lawyer for Moses will cost a pretty penny, too.”
For a boy who’d appeared so reserved, Lemuel spoke well and seemed intelligent. She offered him a faint smile. “None of you will go hungry,” she promised. “And I’m doing all I can to get Moses home to help you. But you could help me by telling me everything you know about the day Daniel died. Did he leave the house alone?”
Lemuel hesitated, then shook his head.
“Who went with him?”
He glanced away. “Me.”
“I thought you said he hunted alone. That you weren’t with him.”
“Hunters don’t always hunt together,” Lemuel responded, looking at her again.
“Okay. So you left the house together that morning?”
He nodded.
“Was he upset? Did you notice anything unusual about him?”
Lemuel shook his head and his gray eyes shuttered. “Ne.”
The wary teenager was back, and the fragile connection Rachel had felt between them a few seconds ago seemed to dissolve. “Did you two go out alone or was someone with you?”
“Left alone, but . . . there was going to be a drive.”
Rachel nodded. In a drive, hunters organize. Some walk through the woods and fields making noise to frighten the deer and drive them toward other hunters in the group. A drive often resulted in multiple kills, and the meat was shared among all the hunters.
“And who met you for the drive?”
Lemuel seemed to ponder the question. He shifted one foot, digging his heel into the dirt. “Moses and Joe.”
“Joe who?” she asked softly. It was important to know which Joe, when the valley contained as many as it did red roosters.
“Troyer. The man Moses works for. Joe and Moses were going to do the driving. And me and Daniel were going to do the shooting. Daniel was the best shot of any of us.”
She was a little confused because he’d first told her they didn’t hunt together. But maybe he’d misunderstood the question. She was sure now. “How about you? Are you a good shot?” He must be, she thought, if the men had chosen him to bring down the deer.
“I s’pose. Better than Moses. Mam thinks he needs glasses.” He glanced toward the house and shrugged. “I already told the Englisher police all this. When he died.”
“Please,” Rachel pressed. “It’s important that I hear it all firsthand.” She pulled her coat a little closer against the wind. It came down sharp off the mountain here, cold and crisp and smelling of fall leaves. “And did it happen like that?” she asked. Daniel had fallen from a temporary deer stand in the woods. That was where he was found. “Did Joe and Moses do the drive?”
Lemuel shook his head. “Ne. Moses and Daniel got into it about whether to hunt the slopes or the old apple orchard. When Joe put his two cents in, backing Moses, Daniel told Joe that he’d best hunt his own farm.”
“Was there an argument?”
He didn’t answer. The faintest shadow of a mustache was beginning to sprout above Lemuel’s upper lip, but he was still so much of a child. Rachel felt a rush of pity for this boy who had no father to guide him.
“So, then what happened? After Daniel told them they should hunt on their own?”
“We split up.”
“You split up, meaning Moses wasn’t with Daniel?”
“Lemuel!” Alma hollered from the back doorway. “I need those jars today.”
“Coming, Mam.”
Rachel watched the boy stride away toward the house, feeling as if she knew less now than she’d known before she came.
* * *
At her request, Rachel dropped Mary Aaron at her parents’ home. She and Mary Aaron had both worn Amish clothing to speak to Daniel’s family, so in the long dress, even without a prayer kapp, Mary Aaron blended in with her sisters as they drove the milk cows up the lane to the barn for evening milking. Rachel returned home alone, mulling over the conversation she’d had with Lemuel.
At this point, Moses’s case seemed a hopeless one. Moses said he killed Daniel and nothing his brother or his mother had told her would prove otherwise in a court of law. Even if Lemuel testified that Moses hadn’t hunted with Daniel, that wouldn’t be enough to convince the police that Moses’s confession was false. The sensible thing for her to do would be to find him an attorney and then step back from the whole investigation.
Sensible, yes, but could she just walk away? Doubt nagged at Rachel. It wasn’t just Moses who was odd; the entire family was strange. No one had a negative word to say about the deceased, yet his widow and her family didn’t
