Page 48 of Fallen

“She led me to believe it had something do with the book.” She looks down at the tabletop and shakes her head. “I’m not a thief. I was tired of being put off, so I took it and I went fucking shopping.”

Her voice cracks with the last word and she takes a moment to compose herself. “When I calmed down, I felt awful. I spent the rest of the day trying to run her down. But when I couldn’t get her on the cell, I got worried. Rachael always answers her cell. She’s like … addicted to it.” She looks at Tomasetti. “Then I get you on the other end and it freaked me out. I checked motels in Painters Mill. When I got there, I found all those cop cars and I just knew…”

Lowering her face into her hands, she bursts into tears.

Tomasetti looks at me and frowns.

I pass her a fresh paper napkin. “Andy, do you know who she was meeting with?”

“No clue.”

“Did Rachael’s parents know she was coming?” I pose the question even though, according to Rhoda and Dan Schwartz, they had no idea their daughter was in town.

“I don’t know.” She blots at her eyes, careful not to smear her makeup. “Look, I’ve got nothing against the Amish. To each their own, you know? But Rachael’s parents treated her like shit. Rachael tried to stay in touch with them. She missed them, wanted them in her life. All they ever did was judge her. Put her down. They disapproved of everything she did. Rachael was never good enough.”

I nod, thinking about my own family and the dynamics of familial relationships. “Did Rachael stay in touch with anyone else in Painters Mill?”

“She had a friend.” A wrinkle forms between her brows. “Amish.”

“Male or female?” I ask.

She shakes her head. “All I remember is that Rachael had a couple of intense conversations with this so-called friend of hers and they weren’t very Amish-sounding. Conversations that upset her even more than all that judgment shit coming down from her holier-than-thou parents.”

CHAPTER 20

The Amish have a saying about deception. It goes something like: Dich kann gukka an en mann kischt avvah du kann net sayna sei hatz. You can look at a man’s face, but you can’t see his heart.

“What do you think?” I ask.

Tomasetti and I are sitting in the Explorer, parked outside the coffeehouse where we met with Andy Matson.

“I think if she’s a liar, she’s pretty good at it.” He shrugs. “I don’t believe she beat Rachael Schwartz to death. If she was involved, she hired someone. If she did, there will be a money trail.”

I nod in agreement. “We need to look at the blackmail angle.”

He grimaces. “If Rachael Schwartz knew something about someone, I don’t think she’d hesitate to use it to her advantage.”

“Matson may be trying to shift our interest to someone else.” Even as I toss out the theory, it doesn’t ring true.

His cell chirps. He pulls it from his pocket and checks the display, takes a minute to scroll. “Well, I’ll be damned,” he says.

“If it’s not good news, I don’t want to hear it.”

He grins. “I just got the PDF of Schwartz’s credit card activity in the thirty days before she was killed. Get this: The final transaction was at a bar in Wooster the evening before she was murdered. At seven twenty-nine P.M.”

“The Pub?” I say.

He arches a brow.

“The scribbled address on the note,” I remind him. “I drove up there last night. No one remembered seeing her.” I think about that a moment. “How much was the charge?”

“Thirty-nine dollars and change.”

Something in my chest quickens. I see the same rise of interest in Tomasetti’s eyes. “It’s a burger-and-fries kind of bar,” I tell him. “Not the kind of place where dinner costs more than fifteen bucks, even if you have a beer.”

“She wasn’t alone.”

“I’d venture to say she treated someone to dinner.”