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“I would think they would be happy to know you cared,” he said.
“But only to visit to see a—a dead barn? I don’t think so.”
“Hannah, I need to know where you were last night, when the barn burned.”
“Why?” she countered instantly, and this time her steady gaze did dart away from him, back toward where the barn had been. He heard Sarah suck in a breath, so she no doubt recalled what he’d said about arsonists possibly returning to the scene of the crime. And Sarah’s quick mind would get it that Hannah, just as Jacob, had a motive to hurt the Eshes for rejecting her.
“All right,” she said, cutting off Sarah, who seemed ready to leap to her friend’s defense. Hannah folded her arms over her breasts. “I was in the recording studio, making a demo and mixing my own audio background.”
“You’re a singer?”
“I am, and trying to be a professional one.”
“She has a great voice,” Sarah added.
“So you’re saying you were alone last night,” Nate said, looking only at Hannah. “Who called you to let you know the barn burned?”
“No one you’ve met. Jacob Yoder.”
“But someone I’m going to meet real soon. I need all your contact information, Hannah, including the name and address of the owner of the studio where you work—just in case there are more questions.”
“And I’ll just bet there will be,” she said, her voice slightly shaky now. Ordinarily, he felt he could really read suspects, but with the barrier of her appearance, he couldn’t. It was tough enough to try to read the Amish, but an Amish woman who had rebelled? Maybe he could get more out of Sarah about Hannah later. She was becoming his touchstone here—his translator, as his boss had put it.
“I’d like to be able to drive you ladies back to Sarah’s but I jogged over from where I left my vehicle in the woodlot behind the Kauffman farm. So I’m going to walk you back.”
“Not necessary,” Hannah said. “No one’s out in Amish country in the dark.”
“Someone was out last night,” Nate said, handing her a small pad and a pen to write down her contact information. “Someone, I’ll bet, who had a big beef against either your father or Sarah, or both.”
Sarah loved her job taking Mamm’s and Lizzie’s half-moon pies to Ray-Lynn at the Dutch Farm Table Restaurant six mornings a week. Honoring the Amish tradition of no Sunday sales, the place had been closed yesterday. Sarah had to get up before dawn, but she didn’t mind. Grossmamm was always still asleep and either Martha, if she wasn’t in school, or Mamm if she was, came over to stay.
Some amazing sunrises greeted Sarah as she went out to the barn to hitch Sally to her buggy, but, she had to admit, never one as stunning as the orange, fuchsia and apricot blaze in the sky today. Cirrus clouds and feathery floaters made the heavens look like a kaleidoscope quilt—one with Nate MacKenzie standing near the barn, silhouetted by it all. Ya, if he’d only been wearing an Amish jacket and straw hat, what a painting that would make. As good as his word, he’d walked her to the grossdaadi haus last night and Hannah to her car down the road at the Amish cemetery. He seemed to turn up everywhere.
Somehow she managed to find her voice. “So you’re an early riser as well as a night owl,” she said as she carried her big flat basket with four boxes of half-moon pies into the barn. Daad and Gabe were already out in the fields with some of the work team, and the barn door stood open.
“I do what I must to solve a crime.”
“You’re sure it is?”
“I’ll start going through the debris today, and then—if it is—I’ll be interviewing others. Hannah just more or less knocked on my door before I was ready for her.”
“She’s had a hard time.”
“So have her parents.”
“Did they mention her to you?”
“Not a word, not even when I had a heart-to-heart talk with her father.”
She nodded, put the basket down on a hay bale and pulled her buggy out of the back corner from among the lineup of the big carriage, sleigh and smaller carts. She saw Daad and Gabe had already taken the work wagon out. Trying to stay calm near Nate when she didn’t know what was coming next, she went out to fetch her buggy horse, Sally, in the side field. Although the horses were often out in this mild weather where they could graze, she still took the mare’s feed bag with her so Sally would get her grain and vitamins. She saw three of the family’s work team of big Percherons were still grazing in the field. She whistled and her smart former harness racer came right over to the gate.
Again, she was grateful that the Eshes’ horses had not been in the barn when it caught fire. Could the arsonist, if there was one like Nate evidently thought, be Amish and know how important the horses were? No, not if he’d burn a precious barn.
She fastened Sally’s feed bag on, brought her through the gate, past Nate, and backed her up to the double-seat buggy. Most Amish women, unless they were unwed, didn’t have their own vehicle. Despite the fact it marked her as an unwed maidal, she loved her freedom and kept the horse well-tended and the black fiberglass buggy clean and shined. Although Nate was usually full of talk and questions, he came closer and leaned against a stall rail just watching.
“I have to have these half-moon pies at the Dutch Farm Table before they open at seven,” she explained. “It’s a real challenge in the winter, but I like the time alone to observe everything just waking up, any season of the year.”
“I guess the speed of a buggy gives you time for that. I keep learning about things I thought I had answers to.”
She wasn’t sure if he meant about his investigation or the way they lived here, but she just nodded as she put the crupper under Sally’s tail and the breast strap between her forelegs, then took the feed bag off so she could get the bridle on.
“When your father and brother opened up the barn this morning,” Nate said, “I really looked around in here to get an idea of the preburn layout of the Esh barn. Then I searched German bank barns on VERA’s laptop.”
“Searched?”
“Oh, yeah, sorry. On my computer. I studied up—a crash course on barns with three levels like yours and the Eshes’. I couldn’t believe how your barn exteriors are misleading. I mean, there’s so much more space inside than what I expected. It’s like, don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess, like with people, too. Sarah, I don’t want you to get the idea I’m prejudging people, Hannah or Jacob or anyone else.”
Over Sally’s back, their gazes locked and held again, the way they too often did. She always felt a funny fluttering in her lower belly she’d never had with Jacob. This man made her blush, too, but at least her complexion usually hid that.
“I had to ask your friend those questions last night, get her info,” he added in a rush.
“You’re really barking up the wrong tree with her.”
“You said that about Jacob, too.”
“She loves her parents, but they wanted her back in the nest under their roof and rules, and it led to harsh words. She was crushed to see the barn was gone.”
“Sarah, she’s still bitter about all that. She’s chosen to be about as far from Amish as she can get, despite the fact she’s still dressed in black.”
“She would never burn the barn!” she exploded at him, then put her hand up over her mouth as if she’d cursed. This man brought out all kinds of emotions in her she’d never known were there, or at least ones she’d never let out before. Why couldn’t she just be like other Amish women, content with her lot in life? Why did she have to yearn for the forbidden—to paint pictures, that is?
“Okay, thanks for that testimony about Hannah,” Nate said, his voice clipped. “You’re starting to sound like an expert witness, but I guess I asked for that. See you later. I’ve got a long day over at the site of the burn.”
As he strode away, she was upset she’d lost her temper. Patience and humility, not anger and pride, were what she needed. She went back to harnessing Sally but turned her head to watch Nate walk away. The man was too lanky, and she’d like to feed him up good. His head was down while he punched something into a little cell-phone type thing with both thumbs. He headed toward the back lane where he had VERA parked. She might have just kept staring, except Sally snorted and stamped her foot.
Just as she was heading out of the end of the lane onto the road, Sarah heard the purr of the big engine behind her. Nate in VERA, of course. Was this driven man, who needed some speed bumps in his life, as edgy as she? Was he annoyed to be slowed down by the buggy, impatient with their ways? May the Lord forgive her, but sometimes, Sarah had to admit, she was impatient with her people’s ways. But right now she hoped Sally didn’t leave any horse apples for his fancy vehicle to drive through. At least he knew better than to honk like some moderns.
As Sarah headed toward town under real horsepower, she craned her neck to watch VERA as Nate went the other way, toward the Esh farm.
Because a TV reporter with her cameraman and several tourists had been standing out in front, Ray-Lynn Logan had opened the Dutch Farm Table a half hour early. She was already there with a couple of her Amish waitresses, anyway, and her profits had been down lately. So she was glad to see Sarah Kauffman coming in the back door with the day’s supply of half-moon pies, which sold much better than doughnuts. Full-size schnitz and shoofly pies and other Amish desserts like date-nut and carrot cake came in from area bakers.
“Not late, am I?” Sarah asked. She was out of breath and looked as rosy-cheeked as she did in bitter winter.
“Not our heroine of the day,” Ray-Lynn told her, taking the basket from her hands and handing it to Leah Schwartz, who took it through the swinging doors into the kitchen. “You should see the special edition Peter put out. Got a real nice ad for the restaurant in it, too, but then he’d better, since he owns part of it. There’s a copy on the counter. Oh, by the way, he’d like a more in-depth interview with you, and I’ll bet the outside media coming in would, too. Two of those critters just left.”
“No. It’s a blessing I just happened to spot the fire first and I don’t want to sound prideful. Someone else made the call.”
“And he’s got a lot to say—Jacob, that is,” Ray-Lynn said, tapping her index finger on the middle paragraphs of the article under the large photo of the flaming barn behind the dark silhouettes of firefighters. “He kind of makes it sound like you were working together to call the fire in.”
“Oh, rats,” Sarah said, and leaned over the paper on the counter. “I did not tell him directly to make the call, but I figured he’d have a phone on him, even if half the other rumspringa kids did, too. I have refused more than once to see him, and we are not in cahoots of any kind.”
In cahoots, that’s a good one, Ray-Lynn thought, pouring Sarah a cup of coffee, then reaching in her quilted apron pocket for money to take back to her mother and sister. The Amish had a fresh way of saying some things. Sarah Kauffman might not want to be in cahoots with Jacob Yoder, but she’d sure like to get Sarah to be in cahoots with her about doing some paintings Ray-Lynn could sell for her. The girl was extremely talented, and Ray-Lynn was willing to risk a lot to bring her Amish art to the world.
“I see there’s a big interview here with Fireman Getz,” Sarah said, obviously trying to shift the subject. “It says he has a broken arm but he doesn’t regret going in first to try to put out the flames.”
“More fool he, and that Levi Miller, too. Levi’s cousin to my waitress Anna, you know, and she says both men got released from the regional hospital. Well, I bet I know why Mike Getz played the hero. He and his gal, Cindee what’s-her-name—”
“Cindee Kramer. She works in the hardware store where I buy my paint.”
“Right. Anyhow, they’re not married but been living together—”
“I know. That takes extra nerve around here.”
“They got into a real tiff in the restaurant last week, something about she didn’t look up to him anymore, but I’ll bet she does now. She had a real conniption at table eight in the back room. I was afraid he was going to start throwing things, but I’ll bet he could run for mayor after those heroics,” she said, pointing to the picture of him, smiling, no doubt, prefire, all decked out in his fireman gear. “What? You’re frowning again.”
“Nothing. I will just give the devil his due.”
Ray-Lynn wasn’t sure what that meant, coming from an Amish girl, but she saw outside what she’d been looking for and muttered to herself, “Speak of the devil…”
The sheriff’s shiny black cruiser with that bold light bar had pulled up to parallel park in front. The restaurant door opened, and Sheriff Jack Freeman came in, hanging his hat on a wooden peg, his sharp gaze scanning the room as if he’d find a robbery or kidnapping in progress in this little burg.
“Morning, Ray-Lynn, Sarah,” he said matter-of-factly. He passed them with a nod and his version of an official smile, then sat in his usual spot at the curve of the counter facing the door with his back to the wall so he could keep a good eye on things. Ray-Lynn used to scurry to pour him coffee and take his order—even when she knew what he’d order already—but she’d decided on another tactic now. No falling at his feet, just take it easy, a bit hard to get.
While Sarah scowled over the newspaper, Ray-Lynn sauntered down behind the counter and nonchalantly poured Jack his coffee during their usual chitchat about the weather. She was up for that much of their old routine, at least. She knew darn well he’d want sausage gravy on buttermilk biscuits and two eggs over easy, but she asked, “What will it be today, Sheriff? I’m sure you’ve got a busy day ahead with the extra folks in town, so I’ll send someone right over to get your order.”
She left him staring wide-eyed at her while she went over to fill other people’s cups at the tables.
Jack Freeman was a few years older than Ray-Lynn but he was holding up better than most men his age. No paunch, very few gray hairs, just enough to make his auburn hair looked frosted at the temples. Unlike the bearded Amish men, he was clean-cut, something he’d never changed from his former marine days. He always looked slightly tanned, which set off his clear, brown eyes and white teeth. His black uniform was military clean and crisp-looking, pretty surprising since he’d been divorced for years and Homestead’s one dry cleaner had gone out of business. It annoyed Ray-Lynn that she got kind of shivery around him. The man exuded authority and control, both of which she was itching to dismantle, at least in private, with her Southern gal feminine wiles. But he seemed to put up a big wall when she came on soft and sweet, so her new strategy was worth a try.
She ignored him but made a big fuss over seating four tourists from Columbus, chatting away to them, while Anna Miller took the sheriff’s order. Good—she could tell he didn’t like the lack of personal attention. It was another risk, but she’d decided some things were worth it.
She walked back to Sarah while Jack took out his own copy of the special edition of the Home Valley News. It was only about eight pages this time—a lot of ads, about half of them for businesses Peter had his finger in, even the Buggy Wheel Shop, which had only Amish customers who would go there to buy new buggies whether there was an ad or not.
“The rest of that fire article’s not so bad, is it?” Ray-Lynn asked Sarah. “As I’ve told you a hundred times before, you’re a fabulous artist and should be aiming higher than just quilt squares on barns. I know you’re yearning to do more than copy patterns even if you do choose the colors.”
“I wish he hadn’t put my age in here,” Sarah whispered, looking as if he’d written that she was a serial killer. “It sounds weird that a twenty-four-year-old woman still has her maiden name. ‘Sarah Kauffman, age twenty-four, from the Kauffman farm next door.’ Why do papers think they have to tell stuff like that, and who told him my age?”
“Listen to your friend Ray-Lynn, my girl. At twenty-four, you are still what the big, bad world would consider a young chick, believe me. Now, I know Amish women your age are usually wed by now, but it’ll happen. Besides, not to sound like a broken record, but you’ve got other talents, and I’m real sorry to see that first pretty quilt square you did got burned up with the barn. You’ve got to branch out, so my offer is still open for you to paint an Amish scene on that long wall right there instead of that old-fashioned wallpaper. I’ll never forget those beautiful drawings you showed me from your sketchbook.”
“Thanks, Ray-Lynn. I haven’t shown anyone but Hannah, Ella and you those drawings, so I guess we’re keeping each other’s secrets, right?”
“And secrets they will remain for now,” Ray-Lynn said. The thing was, Sarah had eyes like a hawk. Maybe all artists did. Though Ray-Lynn had tried to hide it, her Amish friend had picked up on the fact that she was smitten with Jack Freeman. “You just keep that offer about the mural in mind now,” she urged Sarah. “I’d pay you well for your time if we can just get permission from your powers-that-be around here.”
“Can I take this copy of the paper to show the arson investigator?”
“Why, sure. But if you don’t want to be interviewed, better steer clear of the Esh place. I think a camera crew and a few others went out there to talk to him—oops, more customers to be seated.”
“I’m supposed to take some things to the Eshes, a chicken dinner when Mamm and Lizzie get it ready.”
Though Ray-Lynn knew the Amish rarely showed affection in public, she gave Sarah’s shoulders a quick squeeze. As she passed Jack, heading to seat more folks who’d come in the front door, she said, “I’ll have Anna refresh that coffee while you’re waiting for whatever you ordered, Sheriff.”
5
IT WAS ARSON. BY NOON, NATE KNEW FOR SURE. He’d been interrupted more than once by curious Amish or others. Bishop Esh had said he trusted Nate’s judgment so, with two of his sons, he was planting a cornfield to the south.
Nate had stonewalled the Cleveland reporter and her cameraman, though they still hung around by their van which read News Live at Five. He’d phoned the state fire marshal from the privacy of VERA. It was going to be an interesting case file. He hoped he wouldn’t be recalled until the area supervisor returned from his daughter’s wedding in Hawaii. He’d told Mark he had some leads already, though he hadn’t told him he was convinced that there’d be another arson. He had nothing to back that up but his instincts, and Mark was a just-the-facts guy.
As he left VERA, Nate saw Sarah driving her buggy into the lane. His insides flip-flopped—probably, he told himself, because the reporter had asked him if he knew where Sarah was and he’d said no. He hadn’t exactly lied. She could have been anywhere on the three miles of road between here and the restaurant in Homestead.
“How’s it going?” she asked as she reined in.
“Arson for sure,” he told her. “I’m going to point out the evidence to the bishop when he comes back for lunch.”
“We call it dinner,” she said, “and I’ve got it right here all packed up in my buggy. A lot more food than you moderns are used to, I bet, but we’ve all been up early working hard—you, too.”
“If I ate like your people, I’d gain more than evidence about an arson around here.”
“You could afford to gain some weight,” she said, then blushed. “I mean, someone who jogs and walks all over like you do, even though you drive your truck, too.”
“VERA’s a gas hog, but I still call her my home away from home. But I’m now as much of an expert on banked, three-story barns as I am on VERA.”
Twice he’d spent late hours online and learned that banked barns were also called German barns—no surprise there. What was banked was the slanted, hard-packed earth leading up to the broad double doors. The only other entry was in the stone-constructed lower level. Originally, that was where the barn animals had stalls, though he’d observed that the local Amish kept their horses in stalls and their buggies stored on the second level called the threshing floor. A haymow or loft was on the third level under a peaked roof with a cupola on top to aerate the barn. Windows were small and minimal but threw enough light inside, especially if the double doors were open.
The most important thing he’d learned was that the window or windows were all on the third level. So the arsonist had to have been up in the loft or on a ladder to get lit trailers to go through a window. Sarah’s wooden ladders and scaffolding had been burned from outside the barn—but had they been used by the arsonist first?
“So how is VERA as a home?” she was asking.
“Cozy, maybe too cozy. I’ll show you around, and then you’ll see what I mean.”
He didn’t say so but he found the confines of the VERA’s high-tech combination of lab/office/storage/bathroom/bedroom a little claustrophobic, especially out here in the wide-open Home Valley surrounded by rolling hills. If the weather stayed mild and dry, he planned to keep sleeping out under the stars. It brought back the best memory he had of his dad when they used to camp out in Southern Ohio down by Old Man’s Cave, before his whole childhood went up in flames.
“By the way,” he said when their mutual staring in silence stretched out a bit too long, “you’d better stay in the house if you don’t want to be interviewed. As you can see by their vehicle, the TV folks are still here.” His BlackBerry tone sounded, and he looked down to see if it was his boss again. “I’ve got to take this,” he told her. “It’s my foster mother, and I always take her calls.”
“Foster mother?”
“I’ll explain sometime.”
“I’ll head straight in with the food and come out with the Eshes when you announce the arson,” she said with a snap of her reins. “Unless someone tells the TV people who I am, they won’t notice me separate from the others at all.”
But even as he took the call, he couldn’t help thinking that Sarah somehow stood out. Even among the Plain People, she didn’t seem plain at all.
Everyone ate before hearing Nate’s verdict, maybe, Sarah thought, to fortify themselves for what was to come. Then, too, though no one said so, it was possible the bishop was hoping the media outside would leave them alone to hear about the autopsy of the barn fire in private. That’s what it felt like, Bishop Esh had said, an autopsy of his dead barn, with the burial and then, hopefully, the resurrection yet to come.
At the Esh table the number of guests swelled, but then Mamm and Lizzie had sent over enough fried chicken, biscuits, gravy, applesauce, chowchow, dandelion salad, schnitz pie and rhubarb crunch to feed an entire work crew. Churchwomen were taking turns sending a noon meal to the bishop’s family for a while. The Eshes had insisted that Sarah, Nate and Mike Getz, who showed up and had just done an interview with the Cleveland TV station, join them. Also, two church elders, Reuben Schrock and Eli Hostetler, who both had Sarah’s squares painted on their barns, dropped by in time for dessert and coffee.
Sarah saw that Nate ate like a field hand, after they’d just had that talk about his gaining weight. And she also noted that Nate watched Mike Getz like a hawk.
“I know now it was a bad move,” Mike, a big guy with a shaved head and goatee, admitted. “I shouldn’t have rushed inside to try to pull some of the buggies out, but the barn looked like a goner and I wanted to save something.”
