After a brief conversation with Hoover Seitz, I’m feeling marginally better about the lawsuit. He assures me that the legal counsel for the Kester family—a firm out of Columbus known for taking cases like this one pro bono—is on a fishing expedition and using the bereaved parents’ grief to earn a little blood money. Chances are they’ll settle out of court, the cost of which will be covered by the township’s liability insurance. Everyone gets a little money. Happy ending for everyone. Except, of course, Lucy Kester.
I spend an hour poring over every piece of paper and report I’ve amassed so far in my ever-growing John-Doe-aka-Leroy-Nolt file. I still don’t have cause or manner of death, but when I look at all of the information as a whole, I believe it indicates he met with a violent end. The presence of a garbage bag where the bones were found tells me someone moved and/or tried to conceal the body. If Nolt’s death was due to some innocuous farming accident, anyone with the common sense of a toad would have called the police—unless they directly or indirectly caused his death. But who would have a reason to murder a twenty-year-old Mennonite man?
Two possible motives come to mind, the first being drugs. Thirty years ago, methamphetamine was a rising star among dope dealers. Cocaine, marijuana, and an array of bootlegged pharmaceuticals were big business, too, even in rural areas like Painters Mill. If Nolt liked to “live his life on the fast road,” as his parents had asserted, and he was anxious to make money, a drug deal gone bad is a reasonable scenario.
But the drug angle doesn’t sit quite right. When parents tell me their child isn’t “into” drugs, I invariably take that information with a grain of salt, because the parents are always the last to know, usually right after the local police department. In this case, however, I believed Sue and Vern Nolt. And I believed Clarence Underwood—despite his being an ex-con with a history of drug use himself—when he told me Nolt never used or sold drugs.
The second scenario lies with the as-yet unidentified woman Leroy had purportedly been involved with. The Amish woman Rachel Zimmerman saw him with. Was she underage? A minor? Was she married? Is that why they kept their relationship secret? Either scenario fits. Infidelity is a common motive for murder and has driven many a man to violence. Is that what happened in this case? Who was the woman? Does she know what happened to Nolt? And what became of her? Is she still living in the area?
I blow an hour looking through missing person reports for Amish and Mennonite females between the ages of fourteen and twenty-five who disappeared about the same time as Nolt, but I strike out. It isn’t until I’m rereading the notes from my meeting with Leroy Nolt’s parents that I’m finally able to put my finger on the thought that’s been hovering just out of reach. The Amish quilt hanging on the wall at the home of Sue and Vern Nolt. According to Sue Nolt, her son gave it to her for her birthday shortly before he disappeared. Where did he get it? Amish quilts are extremely labor intensive—and they’re not cheap, some costing upward of a thousand dollars. How is it that a twenty-year-old man, who’s working at the local farm store and trying to save money, was able to afford an Amish quilt for his mother?
Energized by the thought of fresh information, I snatch up my phone and call the Nolts. Sue picks up on the third ring. “Oh, hello, Chief Burkholder.”
“I’m sorry to bother you again,” I begin, “but I was going over my notes from our earlier conversation and realized I forgot to ask you about the quilt.”
“Quilt? You mean the one Leroy gave me for my birthday?”
“Do you know where he got it?”
“I don’t know. Always assumed it was from one of the shops in town.”
“Would you mind taking a look at it for me? Sometimes the quilter will stitch her initials somewhere on the quilt.”
“I’ve never looked, but I’m happy to check if you’d like. Hang on a sec.”
I hear her set down the phone. Distant voices on the other end. I wait, tapping my pen against the folder. Two full minutes pass before she comes back on the line.
“Well,” she begins, “I wasn’t tall enough to reach the top two corners, so I had Vern take it down and, sure enough, the quilter embroidered her initials in the corner.”
“What are the initials, Mrs. Nolt?”
“A.K.,” she tells me. “They’re embroidered right into the fabric in brown thread.” She sighs. “Whoever it is, she does fine work.”
I thank her for checking, end the call, and write the initials on a fresh sheet of paper. A.K. I search my memory for the names that have been mentioned in relation to this case, but I come up blank. I page through my notes and reports, looking for a name to match the initials, but there’s nothing there. Is A.K. the girl Leroy Nolt had been seeing at the time of his death? Was she a quilter? Or is A.K. the mother or a relative of the girl? Or am I wrong about all of this and in the weeks leading up to his death, Leroy shelled out a thousand dollars to buy his mother a quilt for her birthday? The itch at the back of my brain tells me no.