by Karen Harper
“Oh!” was all Hannah could manage at first as she took the note from Ray-Lynn and held it tightly. Weddings! Weddings everywhere, English and Amish. And poor Ray-Lynn looked like she wanted to cry, as well.
“I’d love to be there for her,” Hannah said. “Thanks for this, Ray-Lynn. I’m sorry, I’ve decided not to take the job the sheriff said you offered me. I just don’t want to face so many people right now, be in such a public place, however warm and friendly your restaurant is. I think I’m going to take a part-time housekeeper job at Mrs. Stutzman’s B and B.”
Ray-Lynn sank onto a hay bale and pulled Hannah down beside her. “My motto is, when you’re all shook about the way things are going—with life, with losses, with love—just eat,” she said. She reached for the box she’d just given Hannah, opened it up and pulled out two whoopie pies. She gave one to Hannah. Ray-Lynn took a big bite of hers, then talked with her mouth half-full.
“Do me a big favor, Hannah. Keep an eye on one Lily Freeman at the B and B. See what she’s like, what she really wants around here.”
Hannah swallowed her mouthful of the cookie and wiped frosting off the side of her mouth. “I heard about her. Okay—for Sarah’s other best friend, who believed in her art and helped her follow her heart, I will.”
“And I’ll let you know if I hear anything at the restaurant about the shootings—” she took another big bite “—for you to tell the sheriff, because I’m not speaking to him.”
“Oh. Right. We can be allies in this.”
Ray-Lynn tapped the rest of her whoopie pie to Hannah’s as if they were clinking goblets or shaking hands. “I swear, however different our lives, we women have to stick together,” Ray-Lynn said, blinking back tears. “As for men, you can’t live with them, can’t live without them, whether they’re the Ashley Wilkes or the Rhett Butlers of the world.”
“The who?”
“Have I got a movie to share with you. You drop by sometime, since the B and B’s not far from my house. Listen, Hannah, I don’t mean to dump Seth Lantz and Jack Freeman in the same pot, but ding-dang, I think you and I have a lot in common.”
She pointed at the box of whoopie pies between them. “So, you want to split another one of these?”
7
AFTER RAY-LYNN LEFT, Hannah, feeling on a sugar-and-chocolate high from the whoopie pies, climbed the ladder to the loft, one-handed. She sat on a bale of straw by the haymow window to read the information Ray-Lynn had written down about Sarah’s wedding and reception.
Sarah and Nate were moving to Wooster! It was not far away, though in the next county. Hannah was soon to begin twice-a-week physical therapy on her wrist in Wooster, near the hospital. Yes, she needed that job at Amanda Stutzman’s B and B so she could hire what her people called taxi service, someone who would drive her not only to get physical therapy but the mental therapy of visiting Sarah.
Hannah shifted her position, looked out and realized, from this vantage point, she was almost as high as Seth. He stood now at the top of his extension ladder, evidently surveying his work on the roof. It all looked neatly done to her—and finished. He’d told the family at noon meal he had been hired to reroof John Arrowroot’s house and hoped to be able to talk some sense into him, but Hannah, maybe her daad, too, knew Seth intended more than that. She resisted the temptation to call to him, as if inviting him to join her here. If he still had memories of the way they used to kiss and hug in the old barn loft…
As he climbed down his ladder and went in the back door of their house, she heaved a huge sigh. Marlena’s delighted squeals sounded clear up here before the storm door closed behind him.
Hannah folded the note and stuck it in the top layer of her wrist bandage, then stood and peered out the four-sided, louvered cupola, which kept the barn cool in the summer and chilly right now. Of course, the vistas were much broader than the scenes she’d admired from below yesterday. She could see clear to the pond and beyond to the brow of the graveyard hill. She’d meant to ask Seth why the edge of the sod over Lena’s grave was so unkempt, but she was afraid it was something Linc did and she didn’t want the two men to argue. She couldn’t tell if the police tape had been removed or not because the fence itself looked as tiny as toothpicks from here.
She scanned a bit farther. The corn maze her male goth friends had been intrigued by that fateful night was partly visible over the next slant of the road. Several years ago, her father, as bishop, and the church elders had asked that its original name, Amish Corn Maze, be changed. It was run by two non-Amish brothers, George and Clint Meyers—rednecks, Ray-Lynn had called them. She’d had the sheriff haul them out of her restaurant when they got into a fight with another patron a couple of years ago.
The Meyerses had refused to call their maze something else at first but had eventually renamed it Amish Country Corn Maze. Most English in the area admired and worked well with their Amish neighbors, but the maze owners still held a grudge over that. What had really annoyed the brothers was that the Amish boycotted the maze when they filled it with Halloween horror tableaus—witches, goblins, vampires, skeletons and fake bloody, dead bodies—so near the cemetery.
Hannah was surprised the maze still stood this late in the fall. Usually, they cut it down after harvest and Halloween, because the stalks were pretty ragged by then, and in colder weather, interest waned and profits dropped. A puzzle of paths, like life, her daad had called it once. Suddenly, she recalled something else that hit her like a fist.
She’d never mentioned to Linc or anyone else that the goths had made a brief maze visit. She’d been so focused on what happened at the cemetery and after.
She began to pace, ducking her head when the roof slanted inward. Could the Meyers brothers have heard the commotion Kevin and Mike made as they tore through the maze long after it closed? The Meyers house was just behind the maze. Could the brothers have been angry and grabbed a rifle and climbed that hill when her friends moved on to the cemetery? She remembered how upset she’d been when Linc had first suggested that someone might have driven a buggy or walked to the site to shoot at them, but it was just down the road from where the brothers lived.
She squinted through the louvers at the distant maze again. She could imagine its angular twists and turns and dead ends. It was a good thing she remembered the cell phone number Linc had told her to call if she ever thought of anything else, because she was going to walk to the phone shanty down the road and call him right away. She would insist he return her cell phone, too. He’d said he wanted to have it checked for any strange or suspicious calls she might have received or even background noise it might have picked up during her 9-1-1 call.
By the time Hannah carefully climbed down the ladder and went outside, her concern about Linc and Seth arguing had come home to roost. At least she wouldn’t have to phone Linc, because here he was, jawing at Seth just outside the back door of the Esh farmhouse.
“You’re withholding evidence with tricks like that!” Linc accused, pointing at Seth.
Hannah stopped on the other side of his car. She didn’t want to get in the middle of this, but they were talking loudly enough that she wasn’t exactly eavesdropping. It didn’t take long for her to figure out what the topic was.
“So what if I got a job reroofing at Arrowroot’s? It’s what I do between big projects. And if I learn something or get something out of him, fine.”
“But why didn’t you—or the bishop or Hannah—tell me about this guy wanting the Amish out of here? The sheriff thought of it and went to see him and guess what—Seth Lantz had already come calling. And now you’re saying that cemetery was sacred to his people? Yeah, you’re obstructing an official murder investigation.”
“It’s not evidence yet, just facts. It’s enough that the sheriff tipped him off he’s being watched. And he’s hardly going to admit anything if you storm over there to interview him.”
“The FBI has assisted western tribes with tracking looted items and ancestors’ bones from
cemeteries in our art theft program, so I could have used that to get him talking, built a bridge. But now that you’ve horned in, you’re just going to have to report to me—and don’t screw it up!”
“You mean like you did when you didn’t closely check the exterior of Hannah’s window? I did and found an eagle feather stuck half under the sill,” Seth told him, not giving ground. Neither man had retreated but stood just a few feet apart. “And I knew that was Arrowroot’s symbol, his talisman.”
“And, once again, didn’t tell me. But if he’s the shooter, why would he want to plant that to draw attention to himself?”
“I don’t know, but I’m going to find out. He hardly made his cause a secret lately. The thing is, you could have looked up there, but you didn’t,” Seth repeated, pointing up toward Hannah’s window. His voice was strong, like Linc’s, getting louder. Although the Amish were soft-spoken, he was more than holding his own.
“And here’s what really scares me,” Seth added, finally lowering his voice so she could barely hear him. “Did Arrowroot, or whoever wanted to make it look like he’d been outside Hannah’s window, only want to leave that feather? Or did he really want inside that window to hurt her but couldn’t raise it? And how did he know which was her window?”
“All right, all right, I’m impressed with your thinking it all through,” Linc said, holding up both hands as if he were under arrest. “I’ve considered she might still be a target, too, but see no evidence of that so far, and this is my investigation. Listen. Anything fishy you find out from Arrowroot, you let me know. You got that?”
“He already asked me if I was there to spy.”
For some reason, suddenly, as if he’d sensed that she was spying, Seth glanced over at her and Linc turned his head.
“Evidently, you heard us,” Linc said, walking closer. “Are you in on this?”
“He showed me the feather.”
“Well, confession time all around. I thought you said you’d call me if anything else came up, Hannah.”
“Maybe now you’ll give me my cell phone back. I was just about to call you, but not about John Arrowroot. I thought of something else that probably doesn’t mean anything, just a coincidence, but—”
“There are no coincidences in something like this,” he said, taking her arm and turning her away from Seth. “Get in the car and tell me,” he told her, and opened his front passenger’s side door to practically push her in.
As Linc stalked around the front of the car, got in and slammed the driver’s side door, Hannah was afraid to look at Seth. But he just stalked back into the house and that door closed, too.
Just when Ray-Lynn was starting to think that at least Lillian Freeman had a shred of decency not to come into the restaurant, she found the woman standing in the driveway of her house when she pulled in after closing up that evening. In the dark, she actually could have hit the woman with her van. God forgive her, she was tempted.
“What are you doing here?” Ray-Lynn asked, rolling down her window.
“I’m at a disadvantage, since you evidently recognize me,” Lillian countered. “I just wanted to say a friendly hello. I mean, no bad feelings, okay?”
Although her blond hair was perfectly styled and her makeup intact, including fake eyelashes, the woman looked like she was out jogging—running shoes, sharp-looking gray workout pants and matching jacket with some sweat marks across her chest. Ray-Lynn almost wondered if she’d caught her at something, like a prank or even worse. She killed her headlights and motor, then got out to face her unwanted guest.
“No bad feelings,” Ray-Lynn lied as best she could. “No feelings at all.”
“I—I heard you and Jack had—have something going. I mean, he mentioned you.”
Ray-Lynn bit her lower lip so she wouldn’t say what she was thinking about Jack. Mentioned her? How nice! Or was this woman trying to get her even more angry with Jack, to drive a bigger wedge between them?
“Since it’s a small town and all,” Lillian went on, “I figure we’d cross paths and better get the worst over.”
“If this is the worst, that would be great. Will you be staying long? I’d heard somewhere you were fed up with small-town life—and your ex-husband, for that matter.”
“Live and learn,” she said with a little shrug and her hands on her hips. “And please, call me Lily. I’m back, maybe for good.”
Or for bad, Ray-Lynn thought, gripping her car keys so hard they bit into the palm of her hand. Surely this woman, however much nerve she had, wasn’t going to ask for her old job back at the restaurant. And, as she suddenly turned tail and jogged away with a jerky little wave, Ray-Lynn had the worst feeling she wasn’t going to keep up this polite facade to ask Ray-Lynn to give up Jack, either. Oh, no, she was just going to try to take him.
“You okay about this?” Linc asked Hannah as he stopped his car where Kevin had parked his along the road by the maze the night of the shootings. They’d planned this all out, and he’d explained everything to her parents, but she still felt shaky about it.
It was even a similar night, Hannah thought as she glanced out the windshield, with the moon mostly hidden by clumps of clouds. Just as when she’d been with her friends, she eyed the big maze sign with its rules: No Smoking! Stay on the Paths! Hold Kids by the Hand! Do Not Touch Displays! Enjoy Half Mile of Scary Fun!
“Yes. I said I wanted to help and I do,” she told Linc. “I admit it wouldn’t be the same in broad daylight. Sorry I didn’t think to tell you sooner, but our quick stop here that night—it just slipped my mind at first.”
“I understand. I cleared it with the Meyers brothers this afternoon, played up that you didn’t approve of Kevin and Mike running through here and that you said they’d have to pay. George and Clint said they’d stay in the house so we could replicate the trespassing. They seemed pretty calm about it, said it’s happened before that people ran through without paying and tampered with the displays or the maze itself. The only thing they said I could slightly construe to be self-implicating was that they don’t want people to make their own paths because it ‘riles’ them. ‘We laid it out and no crashing through our corn barriers!’”
She had to smile at Linc’s mimicking of the brothers. “They’re not the usual type of kind English neighbors around here,” she explained. “But if they’re guilty of the shootings, anything they say isn’t to be trusted—such as they’ll stay put in their house tonight.”
“In my book they’re a step down from rednecks, like you said Ray-Lynn called them. But that type doesn’t want the FBI breathing down those red necks, believe me. They’ll stay put tonight. Besides, they’re entertaining a lady.”
“I find that hard to believe.”
“Yeah, well, the lady’s their momma from the other side of town. It’s her birthday. They got a cake and all. Listen, Hannah,” he added, his voice suddenly much more serious. He turned even more toward her and reached across her to firmly grasp her right upper arm. “I know you’re not big on this reenactment tactic, but it may help. You may remember even more.”
“But I barely went into the maze that night, just a little ways to yell at them to come out. I went in the entrance and took one turn and it seemed so dark. By the time I started walking back toward the car, they came bursting out through the maze wall.”
“Anything else you recall, just let me know, honey.”
Honey? It was no doubt a slip of the tongue. He’d probably meant to say Hannah. But he still held her arm, stroking it with his thumb as if to calm her, but it didn’t. It had the opposite effect.
“All right, let’s go,” she said, and pulled away to fumble with her door handle, which was still locked until he clicked something so she could open it. The big print sign with the maze rules—Stay on the Paths!—was knocking against something in the wind. It scared her when Linc drew his gun, though he just held it down at his side. In his other hand he held a sturdy flashlight with a bright beam. That made her feel a bit bette
r, as had their earlier heart-to-heart talk today.
Trying to figure him out as a person, not just as an investigator, she’d asked him if he had a family.
“Sure—two brothers who live out near Denver, one of them a police chief. I have nieces and nephews galore. But married with kids? No. Came close, but it wouldn’t have worked out, anyway. Sometimes I work 24/7, seven days a week, then can leave on a moment’s notice and be gone for days, like this assignment. Since Quantico—that’s our training site in Virginia—I’ve been busy climbing the Bureau’s ladder. That’s another name for the FBI. My college degree was in finance, but white-collar crimes bored me stiff.”
“So now you’re in a group that looks into murders?”
“Right, violent crimes. Amish country is the last place I thought that would ever take me. If I make it to retirement age at fifty, I don’t know if I could take a place this peaceful.”
“Age fifty? But that’s so young to retire.”
“Only twelve years away, but I’ll find something else to do. Maybe help build barns,” he’d said with a chuckle, though she couldn’t see what was funny about that. And she thought someone that busy could still be lonely, but she didn’t say so yet. Right now, as they approached the maze, that gun was making her feel more jumpy than safe.
“You sure you need the gun?” she asked as her courage wavered again.
“Just a precaution, since I can’t see around the next corner. So how scary are the displays in here?”
“I came through once with Seth in our rumspringa years, though we weren’t supposed to because the bishop—my father—didn’t approve of this place with its witches and fake dead bodies. It’s not like things jump at you, at least not back then. They’re mostly stuffed, but some look real, even though most folks come through in the daylight, unless you make special arrangements with the Meyerses for a group after dark and then they watch you like a hawk.”
