Page 82 of The Hidden One

“Any idea why?” I ask. “Or who?”

He sets his shoulder against the ladder. “No.”

He’s trying to press the ladder against the corrugated tin and screw in the bolt at the same time—a task that requires more than just two hands. I go to the ladder, set my shoulder against the rungs, brace my legs, and push until the ladder is snug against the tin.

“Tight enough?” I ask.

An instant of hesitation and then he fits the mouth of the wrench over the bolt head and begins to tighten. “Ja.” He snugs the head down tight, grunting with the effort. “Need to put a nut inside, too.”

“I’ll hold it.”

He makes eye contact with me an instant before passing behind me and going through a trapdoor and disappearing into the interior of the silo. I hear the tap and scrape of his wrench beneath my shoulder as he screws in the nut on the other side.

He emerges through the trapdoor a minute later. “Got it,” he says.

I release the ladder. “Looks like it’s going to hold.”

“It better. I got corn to harvest and cattle to feed.”

I step back, survey his work. “Is someone upset with you?”

Using a drill, he deburrs the next bolt hole. “Upset with my datt, maybe. He was a firm-minded bishop. A weak man might not like that too much.”

“Someone has a long memory.”

“Finding the bones dredged up some old feelings, I reckon.” He removes the bit, sets down the drill, turns to face me. “What brings you here?”

I pick up the box of nuts and bolts and hand him three of each. “I talked to an old friend of your mamm’s. Mia told her she was from Germany. Bavaria. Her father, your grandfather, owned a bakery there. That’s where she learned to bake.”

He takes them, drops them into his pocket. “My parents were from Minnesota.”

“I talked to the bishop in Harmony. He’s never heard of Mia or Ananias Stoltzfus.”

He blinks, looks away, but his eyes swivel back to mine. “My parents left Minnesota over fifty years ago. Whoever you talked to either doesn’t remember or has forgotten.”

“I also talked to Pastor Zimmerman at the Lutheran church here in Belleville.”

He glowers at me, shakes his head. “Of course you did.”

“He said your mamm had a journal with her the day he found her,” I say. “The sheriff’s department returned it to the family.”

“I don’t know anything about a journal.”

He works in silence for a couple of minutes. He finishes with the second bolt and steps back to assess his workmanship. “You didn’t come here to help me with this silo,” he says.

“But it’s good to get help when you need it.”

He looks at me from beneath his hat, saying nothing.

“Henry,” I say slowly. “I think someone took that muzzleloader from Jonas Bowman’s mudroom, killed your father with it, and left it at the scene so the police would find it and Jonas would be blamed. I think that same person planted evidence in the old water well behind Jonas’s house.” I motion to the graffiti. “Maybe it’s the same person who did that.”

He looks down at the wrench in his hand. Uneasiness quivers between my shoulder blades, but he tosses it into the old toolbox a few feet away. “I don’t know what you want from me.”

“I think what happened to your father has something to do with his past. In Germany. I think he may have done some bad things—”

“Bad things?” He stops working and frowns at me. “My father was an Amish bishop. I’ll not have you stand on my land and speak ill of him.”

“Your parents came here to start a new life. I think someone knows about your father’s past in Germany and they killed him for it.”