Death of a Winter Shaker Read Free Page B

arrived this morning,” he asked, “did you touch anything in this room?”
    â€œYea, I picked up a bunch of catnip that had slipped from the string holding it together.” She neglected to mention her high-spirited twirling among the hanging bunches.
    â€œDid you notice any signs of a struggle?”
    â€œNay.” Gennie recounted for him as best she could her passage through the room toward Johann, as Grady scribbled in a small notebook. Then it came time to look once more at Johann’s body. Rose heldGennie’s hand as they walked to the table. The others stood aside to let her have a clear view.
    â€œMiss Malone,” said the sheriff, “all Doc did was he just opened the deceased’s shirt and lifted up his hands and put them down again the same way. So think hard. Did you touch him or move him or anything?”
    Gennie forced herself to look at the gray remains of Johann Fredericks. His Shaker work jacket had fallen open. Through the fingers of his right hand, she could see no rip in his shirt, no sign of a stab wound. She’d seen one before on the leg of a hobo who had come to the Trustees’ Office door for help. The man’s pant leg had been drenched with blood, and that was only from a small leg wound. But no blood stained Johann’s white smock and jacket.
    Gennie wondered why she hadn’t noticed before such a clean smock on a filthy Johann. Then the truth struck her. The herb bouquet on Johann’s chest had so riveted her that she hadn’t seen the state of his clothing. She noticed now, though, because the bouquet was gone.
    â€œWell?” Brock prodded. “That how you found him?”
    â€œNay, that isn’t how I found him,” she said, slowly shaking her head. “Someone moved the bouquet.”
    â€œWhat the—what bouquet, what are you talking about?”
    â€œWhen I found him, there was a bouquet of dried herbs and flowers in his hands. It was so strange . . . almost like he’d been dressed for a funeral.” Gennie saw puzzlement and disbelief in the faces of her listeners, all but Brock, whose foxlike features grew thoughtful.
    â€œYou mean one of those bouquets hanging here?” he asked, jerking his head toward a small sheaf of lavender hooked on a nearby drying rack.
    â€œNay, it was more like a real bouquet, with differentflowers, but this one was dried.” Though Shakers never used flowers for adornment, Gennie remembered the enormous clusters of daisies and zinnias her own mother had loved to scatter around the house.
    â€œGennie, this has been a shock for you,” Rose said. “It may have seemed as though you saw a bouquet just because you were surrounded by flowers and—”
    â€œNay, I did see a bouquet,” Gennie cried. She appealed to Grady. “You believe me, don’t you?”
    Grady smiled sympathetically but said nothing. Sheriff Brock, however, grinned in a way that unnerved Gennie.
    â€œIf she did see what she says,” he said, “it’d be mighty interesting, wouldn’t it? Makes me wonder real hard what somebody around here was up to.”
    Wilhelm had commandeered the Trustees’ Office, situated at the entrance to North Homage, from which to fend off the curious and none-too-friendly townspeople who had begun to collect. Rose worried that Wilhelm might incite the crowd, not calm it, but she couldn’t be everywhere at once. She led Brock, Grady, and Gennie from the Herb House, past partially cleared herb fields, across the village’s unpaved, main path, and up the walk to the Meetinghouse.
    The most important building in the village, the Meetinghouse was painted, repaired, and scrubbed with care. A picket fence with two gates surrounded the imposing, white structure. One gate opened to a pathway and the east door, to be entered only by men, and the second led to the west entrance, reserved for women. Most buildings in the village