“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.

I pull out the list of hog raisers my dispatchers assembled, and I scan it for Amish and Mennonite names beginning with the letter “K.” But none of the Amish last names begin with that letter. Either there are none or, more than likely, the Amish didn’t report in with their information.

Frustrated, I toss the list onto my desktop and sigh. That’s when I realize there’s one more resource I can utilize to find the name of the quilt maker, even an old quilt—and it’s within walking distance of the police station.

*   *   *

En Schtich in Zeit is Pennsylvania Dutch for A Stitch in Time. It’s an Amish quilt and sewing shop on Main Street just two blocks from the police station. I’ve driven past the place hundreds of times in the years I’ve been back. I don’t sew, so I’ve never had reason to venture inside. One of the things I love about it is the display windows. Every holiday, the owner decorates the old-fashioned windows in creative and interesting ways, but especially at Christmastime.