“I’m guessing you don’t know much about how Amish courtship and marriage work,” Noah said with a small snort. He was worried his dismissive tone would offend her, yet all she did was shake her head.
“Actually, I don’t.”
“Rule number one is that, if you’re planning on being baptized and staying with the faith when you’re older, you have to marry someone who plans to also stay in the faith. No one else.”
“Okay so your dating pool is a little more high stakes,” she guessed. “When you’re turned down by someone, that dating pool shrinks without the hope of adding more to it?”
“That’s the long and short of it. Not to mention it also doesn’t help that everyone knows he was turned down and that now he’ll have to spend years watching their courtship before being a part of the marriage portion that follows it.”
This time Carly looked away from the window and at him, pulling his attention to her raised eyebrow. He noted freckles along her nose and the tops of her cheeks.
It was cute, a contrast to the gun he’d spotted at her hip when her jacket had shifted as she’d gotten into the truck.
“He’ll have to spend years watching their courtship and then participate in their marriage?” she repeated. “Please give me some more depth with that one.”
Noah stifled a laugh at her reaction. It had been a long while since Noah had been with someone who didn’t know all of the Amish beliefs and customs.
“Every couple has the same steps they have to take if they wish to stay in the faith. It isn’t a private thing. Intentions have to be made public and then your courtship stays public. If you want alone time with your sweetheart, then you spend that out on the front porch in plain view together talking. You spend it at singings. If you ride to and from church services, you do so in an open buggy and usually with a chaperone. Basically, everything you do as a couple is a public affair. Then the dance before marriage happens, usually around the age of twenty or so.”
Noah had never experienced what he was about to explain, but he’d seen enough Amish engagements and marriages in his first sixteen years of life to be familiar.
“The first part is the same as it is for most Englishers. The young man asks his lady to marry him but then veers into a different path,” he continued. “They keep their intentions a secret until around July or August, then the woman tells her family about her plans. Then the proper certification is requested after Fall communion. Then all of the couples who plan to get married are ‘published’ at church. The deacon tells everyone the young women’s names who plan to marry. Then the fathers announce the date and time of the wedding and invite all members of the church to attend. After they’re published, the couple only have a few days before the ceremony and are allowed to go to one last singing with their old group of friends. After that the woman helps her mother prepare for the wedding while the groom-to-be extends personal invitations to all church members. Then the day of the actual ceremony, everyone gets involved. There’s no maid of honor or best man roles. It’s a lot of activity and not at all something you can easily ignore or just skip.”
Carly returned her attention to the paper in her hand and Eli’s name.
“Which means Eli wouldn’t be able to avoid the fact that he was rejected by the Yoder girl for the Haas boy. He’d have a front-row seat of the entire thing, along with everyone else. Salt in the proverbial wound.”
“Not an easy pill to swallow, especially for a rejected sixteen-year-old with anger issues.”
Carly gave the house in the distance another long look before she pulled out her cell phone. Noah gave her privacy while she texted someone.
“Let’s continue with the tour and then you can drop me off at the community barn,” she said when she was done.
“Then you and your team will talk to Eli?”
She touched the second name on the list.
“Unless this David Lapp is more interesting.”
Abram Lapp’s eldest son had already popped into Noah’s thoughts before the FBI had even shown up.
“What’s that face?” Carly asked before he could reply.
“What do you mean?”
She touched the spot on her forehead between her eyebrows, then motioned to him.
“You scrunched up right there and looked like you just sucked on a lemon, all at once. I’m assuming that means you know David and he is more interesting than Eli.”
Noah didn’t want to, but he nodded to both assumptions.
“This is where my time outside of the community is going to show,” he warned. “I don’t know the whole story but I do know that David, nineteen now, left six months ago.”
“Nineteen... So he didn’t leave after his Rumspringa?”
He shook his head.
“He left after getting caught breaking church rules. Which is interesting considering he’d already come back from his Rumspringa with every intention of being baptized when he turned twenty.”
Noah put emphasis on the word interesting.
“When you say he left, you really mean he got kicked out.”
Now Carly was the one with a knitted brow.
“Bingo. And, before you ask, everyone went tight-lipped about what exactly he did to warrant being exiled.” Noah snorted but he felt no amusement. “They might have a grudging respect for me around here but when you get down to the nuts and bolts of it, I’m still the other guy who left.”
Carly was facing him again, but her contemplative expression had changed to something else.
Thoughtful? Sympathetic? Regret that her only resource didn’t elicit enough trust from people who believed in honesty?
“Where is Lapp now?” she asked instead.
This time there was a snort of amusement from Noah. He turned the engine back on and checked over his shoulder to see if anyone was driving down the road. He didn’t miss her look of surprise after he answered.
“Wouldn’t you know it, he’s actually my neighbor.”
“Your neighbor?”
Noah nodded and pulled out onto the road since the coast was clear.
“I didn’t even realize it until yesterday when I started asking around,” he followed up. “I’d heard before then that David was still around Potter’s Creek, but between working on my farm and not exactly having many reasons to be present in the community, I don’t often get too much town news. Plus, I’d only ever met David once and that was in passing during his Rumspringa a few years back.” Noah gave her a quick look. “It’s not like I’m running some kind of post-Amish support group in my limited free time.”
At that Carly chuckled. A nice sound that was equal parts pleasant and intriguing.
Settle down there, cowboy, Noah mentally chided himself. You’re here to help and then part ways. Not admire the FBI agent because she laughed at your joke.
It didn’t take long for them to get back to business after that.
The tour continued through the heart of the community and then by all of the businesses, farms and on to a few popular recreational spots for the town, for the Amish and tourists alike. Noah tried his best to give the facts with a few tidbits from the time he’d spent living in Potter’s Creek.
Carly remained mostly quiet during the tour, asking him only to repeat family names and clarify a few details while she wrote notes. It wasn’t until he was done giving his spiel on the abandoned barn at the back of the old Kellogg property that she made an observation of her own.
“You know, for a town this small, I expected every available space to be done up in some kind of Christmas decoration, but the only place I’ve seen anything is at the bed-and-breakfast we’re staying in,” she said, turning toward him in her seat, thoughtful. “Now I realize that that’s probably another Amish-related thing I don’t know and not just a town-wide disdain of all things jolly.”
“The
Amish celebrate the birth of baby Jesus in a strictly religious sense,” Noah explained. “No decorations, no indoor trees, no nonsense.”
He didn’t mean to, but the last word came out sounding like a child mocking his parent.
Carly picked up on the change. Her eyebrow rose and she searched his face before her lips quirked up at the corner.
“And now that you’re former Amish, you can go all out, right? Or do decked out Christmas trees and mistletoe not work with quiet-type farmers?”
Noah stifled a laugh at that. He hadn’t been called a quiet-type farmer before.
“I actually have always loved the look of a decked-out tree—you know, the ones that look like a craft store exploded on it—but I usually keep it simple. A nod to my family, I suppose. Though, I’m sure if you ask my father, he probably assumes the inside of my farmhouse is filled to the brim with all things jolly.”
Just like before, he hadn’t meant his words to sour. Yet, they had.
Noah not only had a sparse Christmas tree, when he had spent most of his life wanting a grand, to-the-nines one, but he also spent the holiday alone looking at it. Something he’d told himself he had come to accept.
Still, there was a lonely bitterness there.
He could feel it like he could the year before.
So he handled it the same way he always had and tried to ignore it.
Noah switched gears and finished their tour. When he pulled up to the community barn where some of the TCD team was waiting, he couldn’t help but feel something else weasel its way to the surface.
A pang of disappointment.
It had been a long while since he’d had someone to share the beauty of town with.
And that wasn’t for nothing.
“Thanks for all of this.” Carly held her notepad up, eyes still tracing her notes. “I know Potter’s Creek is small, but it’s always easier to have a local to help fill in the blanks. Not to mention getting a lay of the land. It’s not like Google Maps can tell us that—” she searched her notes for a piece of information “—no one uses the road behind the Kellogg property because the mud gets so bad buggies have lost wheels to it.”
Noah nodded.
“It was no problem,” he said. “I just hope it helps you all catch whoever is behind this. The people in town may be different from us but that doesn’t mean they aren’t good people.”
Noah pictured two bodies in a field.
A father and son.
His fist tightened around the steering wheel until his knuckles went white.
When Carly spoke her words were surprisingly just as fierce as the anger he was feeling at the Grabers’ murders.
“One way or the other, we’re going to catch the person or people responsible and make them pay,” she promised. “You have my word on that.”
While Noah didn’t know FBI Agent Carly Welsh well at all, in that moment, he found he completely believed her.
Chapter Six
The property’s name had been changed to the Miller farm but the worn, wooden sign that hung out by the main gate by the road still read Tuckett Family.
Noah had owned it for upwards of five years and, in those five years, he hadn’t thought to replace the sign once. The Tuckett family were good, solid people, those who’d passed on and those still here. Noah had spent his time running the place to the best of his abilities as a way to pay tribute to them, while the faded sign was a smaller token of remembrance.
Of respect.
Which was why his gut tightened when the first of his workers, a young man named Mark, took his hat off looking as guilty as sin and approached Noah after he returned from the tour he’d given.
“Hey there, boss,” Mark said in greeting, his words drenched in what sounded awfully close to regret. “I heard about what happened at the Amish farms, terrible business, isn’t it?”
Noah was only one step outside of his truck but he knew where this was going.
“Yeah, it is.”
Mark nodded. His eyes went to the ground, then the pasture behind them, then finally back to Noah. He straightened, as if trying to prepare himself until he took a deep breath and went right to it.
“You know, I wouldn’t normally do this, but the wife—well, you know she’s pregnant with the twins and that in itself is already pretty risky and if there’s even remotely a chance I could get them sick or infected, or worse... Well, I hate to do this, boss, but I think I need to give Potter’s Creek a wide berth until everything gets sorted out.”
There it was.
The first ripple effect of the attacks to touch the Miller farm, despite it not being targeted. Noah had guessed it would happen, but it still didn’t feel good.
It also didn’t help his anger.
Not at Mark, though. While Noah shouldered a lot of work on his own around the farm, there was a group of four to five workers who helped him. Mark was young, but had been at the farm for three years now and was as good and solid a worker as the Tucketts before him.
Now that good man was afraid that his wife and unborn children could be hurt.
And Noah couldn’t fault him for that fear. He’d pick up work elsewhere pretty fast, given his good reputation.
“I don’t think any of us will rest easy until whoever behind this is caught,” Noah said. He clapped Mark on the back. “You go take care of your family. I’ll be good here.”
Mark apologized again, but didn’t stay long past that. His truck wasn’t even on the main road when another worker called in for her and her husband.
“I’m really sorry, Noah,” Marjorie said through the phone. “We aren’t saying this is forever, just until those suits can get a few days of detecting under their belts. Until then maybe you should think about taking a trip? You’re welcome to come stay in our guest room if you need a place.”
Noah accepted their decision but declined their offer. He didn’t say it, but there was no way in hell he was leaving his farm behind. It was his home.
It was his place.
And there wasn’t a soul on Earth who could move him from it.
He knew that his dedication, though, was his own and when another worker, Killian, called and recounted what he’d heard on the news and then asked if he could not come in, Noah decided it wasn’t fair to expect or ask his last long-time worker to make the trip.
Regina Tuckett, however, wasn’t like the rest.
She didn’t answer her phone because she was already at the back of the property, wearing her snow boots despite the fact the ground was now wet, not frozen, and a look that was neither guilty nor apologetic when he walked up to her.
“This fence needs mending,” she said, nodding toward the rotting wood that made up a small section between the posts. “I know it’s still standing but it won’t be for long. I’d rather we did it when the weather is cooperating, too. You know how I hate mending in the snow.”
Noah laughed. He did know how much Gina hated mending in the snow because he’d heard her complain about it from when he was sixteen all the way up until the last winter at the age of thirty.
The main difference between him being sixteen and thirty was that Noah owned the farm now, not her father, and he never made her mend it alone.
“We can see about it next week,” he said around a small laugh. “Until then, I think it’s best you go home.”
Gina turned on her heel so quick that her long silver braid slapped across her shoulder. Gina might have been in her early sixties but she hadn’t moved slow a day in her life, at least not since Noah had known her. It was mostly due to good genes—all the Tucketts lived into their upper-nineties—but Noah wasn’t about to discount Gina’s sheer stubbornness playing a role in her ability to stay so spry.
She would dedicate her life to trying to nail jelly to a tree if someone told her she couldn’t.
; “Why on earth would I go home when there’s work to be done here?” she asked, voice pitching higher than normal. “Did you suddenly hire someone else to help with maintenance and overseeing? Because, if you did, I’d like to meet them and see how they don’t know a damned thing about—”
“—I didn’t hire anyone new or replace you, Gee,” Noah interrupted, holding up his hand to stop her from continuing her tirade. “Everyone else isn’t coming in today because of what happened at the Yoder, Haas and Graber farms. And I think it’s a good idea. We don’t know who decided to attack them and if they’re targeting other farms. I’d rather none of you take that chance if something happens here.”
Gina’s eyebrow rose. Then she scoffed, surprising him.
“If you think I’m like everyone else then you don’t know me, boy. There’s work to be done here and there’s no way I’m not going to do it because someone got their sick jollies off by preying on the defenseless.” Gina motioned to her side. A shotgun Noah hadn’t seen yet, but recognized as her father’s, was propped up against her. “I’m not leaving this place until the work is finished and I dare anyone to tell me otherwise.”
Noah took a moment to try to think of a persuasive argument but accepted defeat.
“I know from experience that reasoning with you is a loser’s game,” he said instead. “Just make sure you keep your eyes open and that gun down. Last thing we need is you shooting someone who just stopped by to snoop. Or, worse. Shoot an FBI agent.”
No sooner than he said it did Noah think of Carly.
Gina’s grumpy expression smoothed out and then dipped into curiosity.
“Is that why you came in late this morning?” she asked. “Were you helping them?”
Noah nodded.
“They needed a tour guide who didn’t mind talking.”
“Did you introduce them to your father?” Her words were genuinely curious. Gina had only met his father twice. In that time, it was apparent she wasn’t too fond of him.
Then again, Gina was a Tuckett and they had never been known for being friendly, open books.
“No, it was just a point-and-give-a-brief-statement kind of tour. We didn’t talk to anyone outside of the bishop when we ran into him next to the market.”
Toxin Alert Page 5
