Plain Confession

by Emma Miller

  Rachel motioned toward the house. “Please, Alma. Let’s get out of this wind. I don’t know about you, but I could do with a hot cup of tea.”

  As the older woman started for the house, Evan moved close to Rachel and whispered, “Are we okay?”

  Rachel nodded. “We’re good. Better than good. I’ll reschedule that appointment tomorrow. Well, Monday if she’s not open Saturdays.” She shivered in the wind. It was getting colder, but she’d always loved the brisk autumn, the scent of wood smoke and the crunch of fallen leaves underfoot.

  Love you, he mouthed silently.

  “Love you, too.” She hurried after Alma, caught up with her, and led the way up onto the porch. “I’m so glad you came,” she said to the older woman.

  She wondered what was so important that Alma would go to the trouble to hire a driver in the evening. It might be that she simply was uncertain as to what was happening with Moses and wanted her assistance. Or, it could be that Alma knew something about Moses’s reason for confessing to murder. In any case, Rachel wanted to hear what she had to say.

  Inside, they took off their coats, and Rachel showed Alma through a narrow hallway to a tiny parlor in the oldest part of the house. Kindling had been laid in the fireplace, and although the room had electric heat, Rachel used a long wooden match to start the fire. “That will make it cozy in here,” she said, making small talk in Deitsch. “Please, sit down. Make yourself comfortable while I put the teakettle on.”

  The tea would provide a relaxing atmosphere. The Amish had their ways; Alma jumping into her purpose for coming would be considered rude. Rachel would learn nothing from Alma by being hasty.

  Rachel turned on the candles arranged on the mantel and end table. She loved the soft glow of candlelight reflecting off the stone walls. She’d grown up in an old house, using propane, kerosene lamps, and lanterns, but she had a dread of fire. Battery-operated wax candles were one Englisher invention she adored.

  “How is Mary Rose?” she asked Alma.

  “Mourning her husband, of course.”

  “Of course,” Rachel murmured. “This has been a terrible shock for her, I’m sure. And the baby?”

  “Well, thanks to God. Poor, fatherless babe.”

  “We had a good turnout for the funeral. The bishop’s words must have been comforting to the family. I’ll be right back.” Rachel excused herself to heat the water and prepare tea and a dish of cookies. Patience was not her strong point, so it seemed as if it took the kettle forever to heat, but she knew Alma couldn’t be rushed.

  Evan was just coming into the kitchen alone as she picked up the tray to return to the parlor and Alma. “Tom didn’t want coffee?” she asked.

  “He had to pick up something for his wife at the drugstore. He said he’d be back in an hour. Don’t worry about me.” Evan motioned in the direction of the parlor with his chin. “She say anything about Moses?”

  “We didn’t get to that yet,” she explained. “Coffee’s hot in the dining room. Mary Aaron just made it.” There was always a fresh pot and refreshments available for the guests at Stone Mill House six a.m. until nine p.m.

  “Don’t worry about me,” Evan assured her. “I can find it.”

  Balancing the teapot, mugs, cream pitcher, and sugar on the tray, Rachel returned to her visitor. Alma sat in the same spot, hands folded in her lap, features composed. Her mouth was pursed, her eyes wary behind her glasses. Across from her on an antique Windsor chair sat Mary Aaron. She was wearing a plaid skirt, a blue cotton sweater, and gray Ugg boots. Her wheat-colored hair was braided and pinned into a crown on top of her head. And over that, she had tied a blue-and-white kerchief. Rachel was grateful for the head covering. Alma didn’t seem to be disturbed by Mary Aaron’s English dress, either.

  As Rachel entered the parlor, Mary Aaron got gracefully to her feet, her hands clasped together at her waist. “I’ll leave you two to talk alone,” she said softly in Deitsch. “I just wanted to know if Lemuel was all right. And Mary Rose, of course. What happened today, with the Englisher police, it had to have been frightening.”

  “Ya,” Alma agreed. “But you stay, if you want. What I say, you can hear.”

  Mary Aaron glanced at Rachel. “Are you sure?” she asked.

  Rachel nodded, and Mary Aaron sat down again. For several moments, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the kindling on the hearth. Mary Aaron rose, used the poker to stir up a flame, and added several larger pieces of wood. Alma commented on the weather. Rachel made the appropriate reply and mentioned the likelihood of a cold winter this year. Alma agreed.

  “The woolly bear caterpillars have been darker than usual this fall,” Mary Aaron remarked.

  Alma agreed and again there was silence.

  Rachel stirred sugar into her tea. The fire crackled soothingly. The logs were apple wood and sweet smelling. “If there’s anything I can do for you . . .” Rachel began.

  “Ya,” Alma said. “There is. I know the two of you helped Hannah Verkler. It was a goot thing you did for that girl, a brave thing.”

  Rachel and Mary Aaron exchanged glances. Hannah was the Amish girl they’d gone together to New Orleans to find some time ago, the girl who’d been held prisoner by wicked human traffickers. To this day, no one in the Amish community talked about that.

  Hannah had returned home and put her life back together. Among the Plain people, any mistake could be corrected, any sin forgiven. Hannah didn’t live in the valley anymore, but Rachel had heard that she and her new husband had a baby, that they were happy. Rachel wondered if Hannah was really happy, if she could ever forget what had happened to her. She hoped Hannah was all right. She deserved a storybook ending, if anyone did.

  “I want you to investigate my son-in-law’s death and prove to the Englisher police that Moses didn’t murder Daniel,” Alma stated in Deitsch. “Show them that he could never do such a thing.”

  “I’m not a detective,” Rachel protested weakly.

  Scoffing, Alma pointed a finger. “You found Hannah. When everyone said she was lost to us, you found her.”

  “Ya, I did. We did, Mary Aaron and I.” The conversation continued in Deitsch. But . . .” Rachel wanted to say that they’d been lucky, that getting back a woman who’d been tricked into the underworld of human evil was a stroke of luck. But luck wasn’t a word that the Amish lived by or even used. They lived by faith. “It was God’s will that she came home to us,” Rachel said. “Mary Aaron and I . . .”

  “We were only His tools,” Mary Aaron supplied. “It was God’s mercy and Hannah’s own prayers that saved her.”

  Alma nodded, folded her arms, and leaned forward, her voice strident. “So, if the goot Lord uses you once, He may do it again. You ask what you can do to help. This is what you can do. My Moses is a goot boy, but he doesn’t always think. Not like us, at least. He would do anything to protect his family.”

  “You mean he might tell an untruth?” Rachel asked. “He might confess to a crime he didn’t commit?”

  Mary Aaron moved to stand beside Rachel. “Why would he do such a thing?”

  Alma raised a finger to silence her. “Hold your tongue, girl. It is Rachel who knows these tricky Englisher police and their laws. You may listen only, you who are putting on hair dye and maybe face paint. If you were my daughter, rumspringa or not, I would give you a piece of my mind. What next? Teeny bikini?”

  Mary Aaron frowned and shook her head. “No makeup. I don’t wear makeup. And I’m covered.”

  “Then there is hope for you,” Alma acknowledged. “I will not tell your father how you dress. I know you will come to your senses soon and be baptized.” She reached for her mug of tea. “I only say this to you because I fear for your soul.”

  Rachel’s thoughts raced as Alma and Mary Aaron exchanged words. Moses had confessed. Who was she to insert herself in this murder case? Evan would be totally against her doing so. She had a business to run, a wedding to get through. She was marrying a Pennsylvania Stat
e Trooper. What if something she did got Evan in trouble? It sounded as if Detective Sharpe was already annoyed with her.

  “Rachel,” Alma said, turning back to her. “Moses is my son. A mother knows what her child will do. He would not kill.”

  Alma’s plea touched her. The woman was truly frightened for her son. She believed him innocent, and Rachel wasn’t so naïve to think that only the guilty were convicted of crimes. Moses Studer had no idea how the outside world worked. “Alma,” she began. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, only that . . . I don’t know what I can do.”

  The older woman’s hands trembled so hard that tea splashed out of the cup. Tears rolled down her weather-aged face. “You must help me,” she urged. “You went out there among them English. If you don’t help my Moses, who will?” She placed the cup on the tray and covered her face with her hands. “Why would Moses want to kill Daniel? It is Daniel who saved us from ruin.”

  “Maybe there was an accident,” Mary Aaron suggested. “With a gun. I’m sure Moses didn’t mean to hurt Daniel.”

  “Ne.” Alma shook her head. She took her hands away from her face and stared straight at Rachel. “If he did such a thing, he would tell me. He would tell our bishop. Moses wouldn’t want such a terrible thing weighing on his soul. Ne, my Moses is a devout boy, not a killer. You must tell those Englisher police he didn’t do it.”

  “Alma,” Rachel answered gently. “The police won’t take my word for it that Moses didn’t do it. He told them he did. I . . . We’d have to have proof.”

  The older woman met Rachel’s gaze. “Then find proof he didn’t do it.”

  Mary Aaron gripped Rachel’s arm. “Maybe you could . . . we could, you know, ask some questions. See if anyone saw anything or knows anything about someone who would want to hurt Daniel.”

  “I don’t even ask that you find his killer, only that you show them police my boy didn’t do it,” Alma pleaded.

  Rachel struggled with her conscience. From the beginning of her romance with Evan, her becoming involved in police matters had been a sore point between them. Now, she’d given him reason to think she was trying to delay their wedding again, something that wasn’t true. It wasn’t right to do this to Evan just before they were to be married. But Alma’s tears cut her to the quick. Rachel could only imagine how terrified, how worried, the older woman must be. First the death of a dear son-in-law and now her eldest son a suspect.

  “Rae-Rae?” Mary Aaron squeezed harder.

  “I guess I could go to the jail and see if they’ll let me speak to Moses,” Rachel said hesitantly. “Maybe now that he’s there, now that he sees what jail is, he’ll want to recant.” She looked at Alma. “Tell them it wasn’t true what he told them. Tell them he didn’t really kill Daniel.”

  Alma smiled through her tears. “Thank you,” she whispered.

  * * *

  As Rachel entered her mother’s kitchen the following morning, she could hear the murmur of voices coming from the parlor where the quilting circle had gathered. But she wouldn’t have had to hear her mother’s friends to know the gaggle was here; seven buggies stood in the yard and unfamiliar horses hung their heads over the pound fence. Her father was nowhere to be seen; Sally and Levi were in school, and her older siblings who still lived at home were likewise absent. Fresh loaves of raisin bread stood on the stove, and the delicious smell of bubbling lamb stew filled the air.

  Ada had sent a butterscotch pie, and Rachel placed it on the counter next to her Aunt Hannah’s raisin crumb pie and what looked like a pumpkin pie. A tray of Dutch apple tarts rested on a side table. None of the members of her mam’s quilting circle would go home hungry today, that was for sure. They’d all leave with extra food to take home or drop off for a neighbor.

  Most of the quilters were members of her parents’ church community, but several came from adjacent Amish groups. And her sister-in-law Miriam, married to Rachel’s eldest brother, Paul, would be here. Miriam’s quilts took prizes at the fair. Rachel suspected her sister-in-law of bringing the apple tarts. Miriam had a delicate way with piecrust that few of the older women could best. Rachel thought that she was a perfect match for the family and considered her another sister.

  A tall covered stainless-steel pot of hot chocolate stood on the warming side of the woodstove. Rachel ladled herself a mugful and added square homemade marshmallows. As a child, she’d loved walking home from school on a cold day to find that her mother had made hot chocolate. It warmed the children and made the whole house smell delicious. And there were always leftover biscuits and a jar of honey for healthy appetites. Her mam was never far from her kitchen and it was always spotless. Rachel often wondered how she managed with nine children. Her dat always said you didn’t need plates. You could eat off her mam’s floor.

  As Rachel made her way to the parlor, she overheard snatches of conversation. Apparently, Daniel Fisher and his untimely demise were the primary topics.

  “Where would the family have been without him?” someone remarked in soft Deitsch.

  “Good Lord sent him when they needed him most.”

  “Hard to believe. That Moses, I wouldn’t think he could do violence. He found the Troyers’ calf caught in that barbed-wire fence one night and cut himself up getting it loose. Joe Troyer said he was crying like a kinner when he carried the calf to the house.” That was Aunt Hannah.

  Rachel hesitated in the hallway, keeping out of sight. She wasn’t exactly eavesdropping on her mother’s friends, which would be rude, but she was listening for information that might help her help Moses. Or at least help Alma and Mary Rose find acceptance in what had happened. That made it all right, didn’t it?

  “I never heard why Moses left home to go work for Joe Troyer. Why didn’t he stay home and help Daniel work the farm after Daniel married his sister?” That sounded like Sadie Peachy to Rachel. She was a jolly neighbor who was famous in the valley for her blackberry jam.

  “He and Daniel never got along, so I heard,” Aunt Hannah explained. “As my Aaron says, there can only be one man in the house, one head of the family.”

  “Well, all I can say, is”—that was the older woman’s voice Rachel couldn’t identify—“he never appreciated Daniel. That farm was going to wrack and ruin when he started courting Mary Rose. If Moses was going to cause trouble under his mother’s roof, better he went elsewhere to sow his wild oats.”

  “Always a strange one, that Moses.”

  “Never a smile.”

  “I don’t think Moses got along with Daniel all that well,” Miriam said. “At least Paul didn’t think so. Daniel was young, and it was probably hard for him, too. He and Mary Rose were still practically newlyweds.”

  “You know what they say about two young stallions in a field,” Rachel’s mother added.

  Rachel had too many questions to remain where she was for long. She entered the parlor and greeted her mother and the guests. To her surprise, her sister Amanda was there, sitting at the end of the quilting table, needle flying, not saying a word.

  “Pull up a chair,” their mother insisted. “We can always use another pair of hands.”

  “Ya,” Aunt Hannah agreed. “Sit here by me.” Plump and good-natured, Mary Aaron’s mother was a favorite relative of Rachel’s. Aunt Hannah had always made her welcome in her hectic household, and her explosive humor and big heart had made up for Uncle Aaron’s stern manner.

  “Ne,” Rachel protested. “You don’t want my help in this. It’s too beautiful for me to touch it. You know how awful my stitching is.”

  The quilt was a Bethlehem, done in dark, rich blues and deep, vibrant reds. Unlike with most modern quilts, the needlewomen were working every stitch by hand. When finished, it would be exquisite. They’d found a buyer for the quilt even before it was finished. And the proceeds would go to assist in the hospital bills for an Amish family with premature twins in a neonatal unit in a Harrisburg hospital.

  “I’ll be glad to stop a minute and visit with you,
though, if you don’t mind,” Rachel added.

  “We’re happy to have you,” Aunt Hannah pronounced. “But I warn you, we’re going to pester you for news about the Studer boy. Such a pity. Is it true he confessed to killing his brother-in-law? I just can’t believe it myself.”

  “Me, either,” Rachel’s mother agreed. “Alma and her late husband are good people. They taught their children right from wrong. I don’t believe Moses could spill his brother’s blood.”

  “Brother-in-law,” Anna Lapp reminded them. She was small and thin with bright blue eyes and a tiny cupid mouth. “And he and Lemuel and Mary Rose aren’t full brothers and sister. Moses was from Alma’s first marriage. He was a Studer, too. As I mind, he was killed in a lumbering accident. A tree kicked back and did him in. They couldn’t have been married six months when he died, but long enough for poor Alma to be left in the family way. She was young, too, real young.”

  “So much sadness to bear.” Dora Eby tied off a thread and snipped it with a pair of tiny, worn scissors that Rachel thought might have come from the old country.

  Dora was a square, practical woman who could always be counted on to lend a hand in time of trouble. The mother of eleven children, she’d readily taken in five more nephews, including a toddler with cerebral palsy, after tragedy struck a cousin’s family. So kind and loving had she been to the new nestlings that few in the community could now remember which had been born to the Ebys and which had come on a rainy August night.

  “Alma will be assured a place in heaven,” Dora went on. “One husband lost to an accident, another to a long, crippling illness, three babies stillborn, and now, a son-in-law killed, maybe by violence, and one of only two living sons accused of killing him. Pray for her, is all I can say. Pray for Alma, for Mary Rose and her baby, and for Moses.”

  “Every word is the truth,” Aunt Hannah agreed. “Daniel is safe with the Lord, and it’s the living who need our help now.”