Return to Grace

by Karen Harper

  “You just call me Amanda. Even though Hank and I are Mennonites—my brother Harlan’s nothing of the sort, but he and his wife have good hearts—we are blessed to live among your people.”

  They discussed wages. Of course, the pay also was nothing like Hannah earned in the big city, but she agreed to take the job. “The only thing is, twice a week, I’ll need to be driven to Wooster for physical therapy for my wrist. And a week from Saturday, I won’t be available at all.”

  “I heard about your family’s big wedding this coming Thursday. I know I can trust you to get things done, even if on a flexible schedule. Your friend Ella has been so helpful, delivering her wonderful lavender products for the guests. Why, come to think of it, she was here when my brother and I talked about hiring you and she seconded the motion. I use her lavender soaps and sachet, as I’m sure you do. Oh, speaking of deliveries,” she went on, glancing out a kitchen window, “here comes Harlan with chicken breasts for dinner. Fish or chicken, that’s it for my new guest. You want to let Harlan in for me? That next batch of cookies needs to come out.”

  Hannah went to the back door and held it open for the big man as he carried in two large packages, wrapped with white butcher’s paper.

  “I’m going to work for Mrs.—Amanda now,” she told him. “And I appreciate your suggesting this job for me.”

  “Don’t mention it. Glad to see you’re doing okay. What a tragedy. The law getting anywhere solving it?”

  “They don’t tell me everything,” she said as she closed the door behind him, but not before she’d seen a sleek, shiny red car with a Nevada license parked out in back next to his black refrigerated delivery truck. Around here, both vehicles really stood out.

  “Man, this place smells good!” he exclaimed, and patted his sister’s shoulder. “Heck of a lot better than my butcher shop.” Amanda handed him a cup of coffee, and he plunked himself down at the table.

  “And,” Amanda said, lowering her voice, “my coffee’s better than booze any day.”

  “Never you mind. I hear enough of that from Clair. Oh, meant to tell you,” he said, turning toward Hannah and frowning, as if he couldn’t wait to change the subject, “Seth Lantz is in his buggy out front. Said his sister asked him to come by for you, take you home.”

  Feeling like a silly maidal, Hannah felt herself blush. “Amanda, I was going to start today.”

  “No, you go on now, and I’ll see you midmorn tomorrow. Just come right in, either back door or front, and I’ll have the things you need.”

  “Glad you’re not hurt more’n your wrist, Hannah,” Harlan said, his mouth full of a cookie.

  “Thanks again to both of you,” she said, and went to let herself out the front door. Ordinarily, she’d be upset with Naomi or whoever arranged this switch of buggy drivers, but something had been bothering her. With all the excitement last night, she hadn’t asked Linc how the grass over Lena’s grave had been disturbed. At the risk of getting Seth upset at Linc again, she was going to mention it to him and let him do the asking. She wanted to make the mess at Lena’s grave up to Seth somehow.

  10

  ALTHOUGH HANNAH HAD ridden with Seth for many years, it felt so strange to walk toward him, waiting in his buggy for her. She pictured again his small, two-seat courting buggy, but his bigger family carriage waited. At least his sturdy mare, Blaze, hadn’t changed, as had so much else.

  “I hope you don’t mind the change of plans,” Seth said, and got down to give her a hand up. “Naomi and Ella are into wedding plans at our house,” he explained, “and it took longer than they thought. Then they’re heading to your house to finalize the food.”

  Wedding plans…it took longer than they thought. His words snagged in her head. “No, I—I understand,” she said. “That’s fine. Thanks for filling in.” As Seth giddyupped Blaze away, she told him in a rush that she’d taken the B and B job for a while.

  “Will you ever be content here again?” he asked. “Maybe you could manage the B and B as Mrs. Stutzman ages. Or once your wrist is healed, you could help Ella with the lavender business or your mother with the kapp-making.”

  “I suppose so, but that would not be my calling, though I’m not sure what is yet, either here or—or out there. Seth, I’ve been meaning to mention something to you.”

  His face lit as he turned to her. Sitting to her right as the men always did in a buggy, he was so close she could see herself reflected in his clear blue eyes. She wondered if he hoped she had something personal to say to him, something about them.

  “It’s about Lena’s grave,” she blurted out.

  He frowned and looked away. “I know you didn’t intend to sit there that night. You didn’t know where she was buried and probably didn’t even see her name on the stone in the dark—”

  “Actually, I did, after the guys parked all our stuff there. And to ask them to move, which I wanted to do, I would have had to explain why and that was no one’s business but—but mine. However, that’s not it. I mean, I am sorry her tombstone got hit, but—”

  “I was thinking maybe it was kind of a trade-off from her, like she reached out from heaven to help you, to say she was sorry for what happened. She betrayed you just like I did, but her being buried there, her stone, might have saved your life.”

  Hannah gripped her hands in her lap and gave a little shudder.

  “Are you cold?” he asked. “I have a lap robe here.”

  “No—no, please just listen for a minute,” she rushed on, not looking at him now. “It’s not about Lena’s tombstone. When Linc had me lie on the ground when we were reenacting what happened that night, I noticed the sod needed to be pressed down or watered or something. I don’t know, maybe in the spring it will just all grow together, grow back.”

  “Hannah, I’ve been there, even sat on the ground. I didn’t see anything with the sod. Of course, when we were there with Armstrong, I wasn’t looking at that. I probably haven’t really noticed the grass itself since the men shoveled the soil back in on the coffin and replaced the sod.”

  She turned to face him. “It looks like it could be peeled up. I don’t want you to argue with Linc again over anything, but I’m thinking when they measured and circled and dug up the blood and bullets, they cut into and around the sod.”

  He was silent for a moment. She realized he’d been nervous with her, too, overly talkative, wanting to give her every benefit of every doubt. But now he was in what she used to call his think-time. She studied his profile. He was frowning. More than interested—upset.

  “Hannah, I’m due in an hour at the lumber mill to pick out roofing shingles for John Arrowroot’s place, but if you have time now, let’s go look at it. The police tape was just taken off yesterday, so we’re legal. I hated seeing that stuff strung all over, as if the graveyard wasn’t really ours!”

  Ours, she thought. That was the Amish way. Help for any brother or sister in need, cooperation not competition. Sharing, support and love…

  “All right,” she said as he sped Blaze up once they passed through town. “Let’s look at it, even if Linc will probably have a fit we didn’t mention it to him first, either.”

  When they reached the graveyard, Seth got out. He was really shaken but trying to stay calm. “Stay put there a minute,” he said, and took out binoculars to scan the area.

  “You never used to carry those in your buggy.”

  “Not until lately, when someone might be watching you or us from afar. You can climb down now. I don’t see anyone but one of the Meyers brothers, plowing under their corn maze.”

  “Just one of them in sight?”

  “Ya, can’t tell which one,” he said as he replaced the binoculars and opened the squeaky gate for them.

  Despite his loyalty to Lena, Seth realized it had seemed so normal to have Hannah beside him in the buggy, dyed-red hair and all, though it was smoothed down now and mostly hidden under her bonnet. But to see her close-up without all that garish eye makeup and those black l
ips—her mouth naturally pink and moist and full…

  He thrust those thoughts aside. He wanted to help her through the shame of the shootings for old times’ sake, that was all. And he knew that Linc Armstrong watched him like a hawk. Seth wanted to find the guilty one so Hannah would be safe, but also to clear his own name of any FBI suspicion.

  They stopped at Lena’s broken tombstone, which he was already saving money to replace. “Here,” Hannah said, bending down, then kneeling beside the grave. “Here. Look.”

  He knelt beside her and saw immediately what she meant. Despite the fact the grass was seldom cut, and even then by a scythe rather than a mower amid all these tombstones, there was a real rift between the sod blanket over the grave and the surrounding grass. “Ya,” he said, lifting a line of sod, “it does kind of peel away. Maybe this spot had clay-type soil and the roots just didn’t grow down after she was buried, but I don’t think so.”

  Hannah moved to the foot of the grave. “Same here. And on this other side. Who else was buried around the same time? Maybe there was something done different when they filled the graves or some weird weather condition that kept the sod blanket from mingling with the surrounding grass.”

  “It has to have an explanation. Your former friend Sarah’s grossmamm, Miriam Kauffman, died about the same time. What a long life,” he said, trying not to sound bitter, “especially compared to Lena’s mere twenty-five years.”

  “I am sorry about her death, Seth, for you and Marlena. I meant to say that. It must have been awful.”

  “A huge shock. She’d had the weakness since birth, the coroner said, like a ticking time bomb. At least she wasn’t holding Marlena when she fell. He said that it wouldn’t even have made a difference if I’d been there—nothing to do to help. Still, I felt guilty for it—like about what happened to us.”

  He knew this was the wrong time to spill all that, but he couldn’t help it. His guilt over betraying Hannah and causing her to leave had eaten at him from that time on. Lena had accused him of still pining for Hannah. He’d denied it, denied it to himself, but she’d been right.

  “I’m sorry, too, Seth, but we have to let it go—go on. So Miriam Kauffman is buried up farther?” Hannah asked as they trudged uphill. He saw her stop and glance toward the trees where the shooter had evidently hidden. She was frowning as if angry, not fearful. He should not have brought her back here and out in the open. Linc Armstrong would have a fit, as she’d said.

  “Don’t fret,” he said, reaching out to give her good hand a squeeze. “You can see no one’s there with all the bushes bare and the leaves off the trees.”

  “I know. But that night—I was just remembering. I stopped and stared up into the trees. It’s a miracle I wasn’t shot, standing there like that—and then Kevin went down and… Do you think the shooter might have thought I saw him—could even recognize him—and that’s why he’s stalking me?”

  “Has there been something else besides the feather and slit screen? I’ve got to get you back in the buggy. You’ll have to tell Amanda Stutzman you can’t work there unless someone comes in a car for you and—”

  “No! I won’t be a prisoner in my parents’ house. I told Linc the same. If I can help him look into suspects, I will.”

  “Something else did happen besides the slit screen, didn’t it? Something that gave Armstrong a new lead?”

  “Seth, you used to read my mind years ago, but—” She sucked in a sob. He realized that, if he wasn’t so intent on getting her back into the buggy and home, he would have pulled her into his arms. “But—at least on this—you’re right.”

  “So something happened, and Armstrong asked you not to tell me. See—he still considers me a possibility to have shot at all of you, as if I carried two rifles around after dark just waiting for you to show up, then buried the one I shot at you all with!”

  “He said not to tell you and my father, and he doesn’t suspect my father, so it isn’t that. You’re overreacting.”

  “I always overreact when it comes to you.”

  They stood on the windy brow of the hill among the tombstones of the dead, staring deep into each other’s eyes. She broke their gaze before he did. “Look,” she said, pointing, probably only too glad to change the mood and the topic. “Sarah’s grossmamm’s grave has loose sod, too, just kind of patched into the surrounding turf.”

  Seth picked a corner of it up, knelt down, tipped his head and stared under it. “A crazy idea,” he said, “but what if in these tough times, someone is shaving the sod up and burying money or jewelry under here—then getting at it when necessary?”

  He looked up at Hannah when she gasped. “And thought,” she said quietly, almost to herself, “especially when he or they saw Kevin and Tiffany pretending to dig at Lena’s grave with her parasol in the dark, that we were digging up their treasure!”

  “Hannah, I want to make a deal with our FBI superman. If he won’t tell you to keep things from me—I’m already sticking my neck out with John Arrowroot and reporting to Linc—then we’ll tell him about this possible motive for the shooting.”

  “All right,” she said, hugging herself with one arm while her cape flapped like wings in a sudden gust of wind. Seth thought she looked as if she could fly, his beautiful friend and once beloved Hannah, with whom he’d ruined things forever. But at least she seemed to trust him on this much.

  When Seth took Hannah home, she saw that, not only Ella’s and Naomi’s buggies were here, but Linc’s car. “Making a deal with him may be easier than we thought,” she told Seth as he dashed around to help her down. This time, she noted, it wasn’t her daad who stood in the door staring out, but Linc.

  He opened the door for them. “Just the man we wanted to see,” Seth said.

  “Really? Naomi said she and Ella asked you to bring Hannah back. But I got a wedding dinner invitation out of all of this,” he said with a sweep of his hand to indicate Mamm, Naomi, Anna—Ella and Seth’s mother—and Ella bent over lists on the table.

  “Oh, good, Hannah, you’re back!” Naomi cried. “We’re planning who fixes what for the dinner after. Will you help oversee the cooks in the wedding wagon? And I was hoping you would be a reception singer, too.”

  “The wedding wagon?” Linc asked before Hannah could answer.

  “Fixing food for about four hundred is more than our kitchen can bear,” Hannah explained. “So we rent a trailer that’s hauled in with lots of ovens and stove tops. Sure, Naomi, anything I can do with one good hand, I will.”

  Linc and Seth hustled her off into the living room and Linc produced her cell phone, which she was glad to have back. “Sorry that took a while,” he said. “We needed to check your phone records—who called you, who you called—in case it led to anything, which it didn’t.”

  “Small potatoes,” Seth said.

  “What’s small potatoes?” Linc asked, his voice instantly on edge. “Evidently not some special dish for the wedding?”

  Hannah didn’t like his tone with Seth, but Seth liked to bait him, too.

  “We—both Seth and I,” she said, “are trying to help with your investigation.”

  “If you call withholding need-to-know intel help,” Linc countered with a glance at Seth.

  “But you’ve asked me to do the same, and I think,” she said, hoping she could talk fast enough to keep them from arguing, “since Seth’s gone out on a limb to check on John Arrowroot, no one will be withholding more information. But sniping or one-upmanship won’t help, either.”

  Linc’s eyes widened. “You told Seth about last night,” he said, a statement and not a question.

  “What about last night?” Seth asked.

  “No, I did not,” Hannah told Linc. “But we need to tell him and then we can go on to something Seth and I discovered.”

  “So this is your investigation now?” Linc demanded, his voice rising.

  “It might be my life on the line!”

  “All right,” Linc said, lifting both pa
lms toward her as if to hold her off. “So what have you two learned?”

  “First, we need to tell Seth about last night.”

  “I said, what about last night?” Seth demanded.

  “You drive a hard bargain, Hannah Esh,” Linc said, managing to ignore Seth’s outburst. “Okay. Maybe he can go reroof the Meyers brothers’ house to learn more than I got out of them last night. They—and their momma—swear they never left the house last night or the night of the shooting, though they did hear the shots and didn’t know where they were from. So let’s fill Seth in, then I want to hear that momentous news.”

  Linc agreed their find in the cemetery was momentous. “Pretty weird, too,” he’d added, but Hannah could tell he was impressed enough to make a real concession. He’d immediately phoned and summoned Sheriff Freeman. Not only that, but he’d asked Daad if he could spare some Amish clothing, including hats for him and the sheriff, to borrow. And he wanted Seth to drive him and Jack Freeman to see the sod over the two graves. Seth agreed, though he was still fuming over Linc taking Hannah into the corn maze. To Hannah’s amazement and admiration, he had not—yet—exploded at her or Linc for that.

  “But the loose sod was my discovery, so I’m going, as well,” Hannah insisted, and so, though Linc made her wear a bulletproof vest under her cape, she did.

  Once they reached the graveyard, the three men took turns studying the sod or scanning the area. It reminded Hannah of when geese fed, staring at the ground, one always watched for danger.

  Linc kept shaking his head. Lena’s grave, Miriam Kauffman’s grave farther up the hill, then two more graves of church members buried during the past year, had their sod shaved up, then replaced. The men could almost lift each away as if it were a blanket, though the weight was great and it started to tear and crumble on the edges. By simply peering beneath, they could not see soil disturbed in a pattern to indicate that anything small like a box or chest had been buried.