Assaulted Pretzel

by Laura Bradford

  * * *

  She padded around her room on still damp feet and surveyed the outfit she’d laid out on her bed after managing to secure a ninety-minute power snooze and a hot shower. The sleep had come on the heels of the realization that it was time to talk to Jakob. The shower had come when she’d rolled over and looked at the clock and realized she’d slept through breakfast and needed help clearing the fog of exhaustion from her brain.

  Peeling the extra-large towel from her relatively petite frame, Claire stepped into her favorite pair of jeans and topped them off with a white button-down shirt. Not a look she’d dare on a day she was manning the shop, but for one that had Esther working the register while she attended to bookkeeping duties in the back office it worked just fine.

  A quick search through her jewelry box completed the outfit with a silver pendant necklace and a pair of small hoop earrings. The only part of her prework ritual that still remained was what to do with her hair, until the whoosh of air brakes in the parking lot aided the decision in leaving it down.

  She grabbed her purse from her dresser and headed out into the hall, resisting the pull to knock on Melinda’s door as she did.

  Rome wasn’t built in a day. Or so they said. Either way, she had time to mull over her suspect list a little longer before taking her thoughts and suspicions to Jakob. To do so prematurely could prove disastrous to a friendship she both wanted and needed.

  “Good morning, Claire. I am so happy you got a good night’s sleep. I know you needed that.” Diane met her at the bottom of the stairs before doing a double take. “Claire? You look more tired than you did last night. Is everything okay?”

  She rested a reassuring hand on her aunt’s arm and offered an accompanying smile. “I’m fine. Believe it or not, I actually managed to get about ninety minutes although the circles under my eyes point to none.” Without waiting for an answer, she pointed toward the narrow windows that flanked the inn’s front door. “I thought I heard a truck or something outside a few minutes ago. Did we get a delivery?”

  “No, it’s just Keith. He’s here to take the newlyweds and the Grandersons on a behind-the-scenes tour of the Amish countryside.” Motioning for Claire to follow, Diane turned on her sensible shoes and led the way into the dining room, where Keith was sipping on a cup of coffee. “Would you like to join Keith and me in a cup of coffee as we wait for the others to come down?”

  She stopped just inside the sun-dappled room and liberated a leftover croissant from a plate on the nearby serving table. Breaking off a bite with one hand, she paused the flaky pastry a few inches from her lips, much to the chagrin of her growling stomach. “Good morning, Keith.”

  The driver tipped his balding head in return. “What did you think of that meeting yesterday?” Then, keeping his gaze on Claire, he nudged his chin in Diane’s direction. “I was just telling your aunt here how she should have been at Al’s to hear all of Sandra’s ideas for the upcoming holiday season. They really were spectacular, weren’t they?”

  She couldn’t help but agree. Sandra Moffit had a knack for making things magical just as Keith had one for spreading the word about her latest endeavors. “I loved the idea of the carolers, but my favorite idea of all was the one that has costumed Santas from all over the world roaming Lighted Way and giving out candy. It’s just the kind of thing that will appeal to traveling tourists as well as folks who live within an easy drive.”

  Diane clapped her hands softly. “Oh, how wonderful! It sounds so…so magical.”

  “But wait. It gets better.” Keith scooted his chair from the table just enough to afford room to drape his ankle across his opposing knee. “Sandra suggested we put the real Santa Claus in a chair smack-dab in the middle of Daniel’s workshop, citing the backdrop as the perfect accompaniment to the coveted Christmas photograph most parents want with their children.”

  “Now all you have to do, Keith,” Claire mused, “is buy a set of those antlers people stick on their cars each Christmas and transform your bus into something kids will beg to ride in on the way to visit Santa.”

  The idea was barely through her lips before Keith started laughing. “You know, I had that very same idea when I was on the way to pick up my first round of customers after yesterday’s meeting. Tried to tell myself I was grasping at straws, but now, after hearing you say it, maybe it’s not so silly after all.”

  “Silly?” Diane echoed. “I think it’s brilliant.”

  “Brilliant, you say?” Claire lifted her hand above her head in preparation for a bow that was quickly curtailed by the sound of footsteps on the stairs.

  Rising to his feet, Keith took one last sip of his coffee then returned the empty cup to its matching saucer. “Diane, I thank you for your hospitality, but it sounds as if your guests are ready for their tour and I don’t want to keep them waiting.”

  “Is Ann going, too?” Claire asked as she glanced at Diane. “A drive like that might do her good.”

  Keith stopped just inside the door. “I thought you said Ann wasn’t here.”

  “She’s not.” Diane set her own coffee cup down beside Keith’s. “She’s at the police station with Jakob trying to get answers.”

  “That’s what I thought.” Then, meeting Claire’s eyes, he hooked his thumb in the direction of the excited voices coming from the inn’s front hall. “Would you like to tag along? I could drop you off at the shop as we make our way through town.”

  “No, I can’t ask you to do that.”

  “Why not?” Diane challenged. “You know Doug and Kayla. You know Virginia and Wayne. And with only an hour and a half of sleep in the past forty-eight, it might be safer to take the ride, dear.”

  She considered declining, citing the need for fresh air and good old-fashioned exercise as her reasons, but a rapid series of yawns that momentarily rendered her speechless convinced her otherwise. “Well, if you’re really sure it’s okay, maybe it would be better to ride into town with all of you rather than risk falling asleep on the side of the road and being mistaken as Heavenly’s latest dead body.”

  Chapter 23

  Any concern Claire had over crashing the countryside tour Diane had arranged was wiped away by the warm greeting that met her initial steps onto the bus. The triumphant I-told-you-so look from the man behind the wheel simply provided the additional puff of air she needed to make her way down the center aisle and claim one of the twelve remaining cushioned seats as her own.

  Virginia Granderson swiveled around in the front-row seat she shared with her husband and reached for Claire’s hand. “Wayne, isn’t this a treat! Claire’s coming with us this morning!”

  Kayla Jones leaned across Doug’s lap and wiggled her fingers across the aisle. “Oooh, you’ll be able to point out some of the things we’ve talked about over dinner these last few days.”

  “Like the Amish farm that’s raising the white-tailed deer for the pharmaceutical company.” Doug gently stroked the side of Kayla’s face as he, too, nodded his pleasure at Claire’s inclusion. “I mean, I’ve gotta admit…that kind of resourcefulness is pretty cool.”

  Keith’s hand adjusted the mirror over his seat to afford a better view of all five passengers and then shifted the sixteen-passenger bus into drive. “They have to be resourceful these days, just like the rest of us do. The difference is that our need to be resourceful comes from things like corporate downsizing and age discrimination. With the Amish—at least in this area—it’s because of the lack of farmland.”

  “Have they lost their land somehow?” Doug asked. “Is that why they’re having trouble doing something they’ve done for years?”

  At the end of the inn’s gravel driveway, Keith turned left and headed toward town at a slow yet steady pace, the microphone affixed to his shirt collar making it easy for everyone to hear him. “They have the same amount of land they’ve always had, son, but they also have far more people living here now than they did twenty years ago.”

  Kayla gave Doug a gentle nudge wit
h her elbow. “That’s right. Diane and Claire told us that, remember? I think they said the Amish population is doubling every twenty years.”

  “With that kind of population explosion there just isn’t enough land to go around,” Keith said by way of agreement. “So they’re forced to turn to other ways of making a living—like carpentry, masonry, shoemaking, deer raising, toy making, et cetera. Basically anything they can do to make a living like the rest of us.”

  “Ran into a fella down at Glick’s Tools ’n More the other day and he said some Amish are raising alpaca sheep for the wool,” Wayne shared.

  Keith nodded then pointed out the front window to Lighted Way’s shopping district. “I’ll be taking these cobblestones slowly but you’re still going to feel some bumps.” Then, with a pointed look at Claire via his mirror, he addressed her directly. “You want me to drop you off in front of the shop? Or do you want to come along with us and I can drop you off when the tour is wrapping up?”

  Virginia’s smile widened exponentially. “Oh, Claire, stay. Your aunt said the reason you were able to sleep in a little today was because Esther is working. So stay. We’d all love to have you along”—the woman glanced at Kayla and Doug for confirmation—“wouldn’t we?”

  Kayla was the first to agree. “You probably know everything there is to know about the Amish already but we’d love to have you stay if you have the time.”

  Claire held up her hands and laughed. “Oh, trust me, I’m still learning about the Amish every day.” She met Keith’s gaze in the mirror and, at his wink, opted to stay. Besides, the seat felt mighty comfortable after a second night of little to no sleep. “But I’m just going to sit here and listen to all of you. I can ask Diane or Keith questions any old time.”

  The bus moved slowly along the cobblestoned street, pausing a time or two as an Amish buggy pulled out from one of the narrow alleyways that ran along the side of many of the shops and cafés.

  “The Amish won’t drive in cars, right?” Doug asked.

  Instinctively, Claire opened her mouth to answer only to shut it just as quickly. This was Keith’s tour, not hers, and his answer lacked nothing. “No. They’ll ride in cars, they just won’t drive them. That’s why, when the Amish are going to travel farther than they want to go by horse and buggy, they’ll hire a driver to take them. They can also take trains and busses. The only transportation they avoid is airplanes.”

  Doug gestured toward a buggy parked in front of Gussman’s General Store. “How come the buggies around Heavenly are gray instead of black?”

  “Gray buggies mean the old Amish order. They’re stricter than some of the other orders you might come across elsewhere.” Keith steered the bus around a line of parked cars and headed out the other side of Lighted Way, the wide-open fields and scattered farmhouses in the distance beckoning in their peacefulness. “Women can drive the buggies. No license and no inspection is needed. But a while back, the state of Pennsylvania mandated lights be installed on the buggies for the safety of both the Amish and the English.”

  The bus followed the gentle curves of the road, slowing to a crawl from time to time to afford a better view of whatever Keith was talking about at any given moment. Mile by mile he shared details about the Amish on everything from their homes and beliefs to weddings and funerals. Much of the information he shared was things Claire had learned over the past eight months. But some of it was new to her and, as a result, fascinating.

  “I want you all to take a look right here.” Keith pointed to a small white building on the driver’s side of the bus. “Anyone want to take a guess what this is?”

  Claire straightened up tall in her seat and looked across Kayla and Doug’s heads to the one-room building beyond—the smattering of bikelike scooters around its exterior soliciting smiles from the women on the bus.

  “A school?” Virginia guessed.

  “That’s right. It’s a school.” Keith pulled the bus to the side of the road and stopped long enough to add a few interesting facts. “The Amish own private schools. They’re all within walking distance of the families they serve. That school right there? It serves roughly twenty-five children in grades one through eight. And since most Amish families have an average of seven children, it takes less than six families to fill a school.

  “The families in each district pay the teacher and provide the supplies. The teacher is in her late teens or early twenties and is unmarried. Once she marries, she no longer teaches.”

  “Do the kids learn the same things our kids learn?” Wayne peered around his wife to get a closer look out the window. “Or are they more sheltered?”

  “They learn the cores—math, reading, writing, spelling, history, and geography. But they don’t really get into science. They stop going to school after they’ve completed eighth grade because the Amish believe that the things taught in high school threaten their culture.”

  “Do they speak Pennsylvania Dutch or English in the classroom?” Kayla asked.

  “In school, Amish children are taught to read classic German and English as a second language. English, though, is what they learn to speak in school. Pennsylvania Dutch is spoken in the home to preserve the Amish culture.”

  Keith lifted his finger to the window. “See that cupboard there? It’s filled with drinking cups for the children. And right there, next to it, you can see the hand pump they use to fill their cups. Can everyone see that?”

  Heads bobbed around the bus, including Claire’s. Then, as they continued to watch, a pair of little girls dressed in black coats came running out the front door and across the patch of yard between the side of the school and the fence. “And that building those little ones are running off to? That’s the school’s outhouse.”

  Five minutes later, they were back on the road, the passing farms and running commentary helping to chase away the last of Claire’s sleepy fog. She had to admit, Keith Watson gave a good tour. The fact that a stop at Lapp’s Toy Shop was part of the experience only made it better.

  Claire took in the rapt interest on the faces around her as Keith continued sharing fact after fact about Heavenly’s Amish. “Only one in ten kids decides not to be baptized in their late teens. And if they don’t, they’re still welcome to have ties with their family for life. But if they are baptized and then leave, they will be excommunicated.”

  A soft tsking sound emerged from the row in front of Claire but was quickly lost against the sudden roar in her ears. Jakob had been baptized before heeding the call to police work. That single decision—which would have been considered commendable in the English world—had cost him his family.

  She pressed her forehead against the cool glass and closed her eyes. Aunt Diane was right. She needed to talk to Jakob. The friendship they’d forged over the past two months meant too much to her to simply accept his recent snub without question. Maybe she’d read it wrong. Or maybe he was distracted by something completely different, like Martha.

  “See that cemetery right there?” Keith asked as he again slowed the bus to direct the attention of his customers to the windows on the opposite side of the aisle. “About an acre is set aside in each church district as burial ground for the people of that district. The tombstones, as you can see, are quite humble with only the person’s name and length of life noted.”

  “I saw a picture of an Amish funeral procession once,” Doug volunteered. “The line of buggies went on forever.”

  “They do that. Why, some processions can have hundreds of buggies in them. And that’s why the young boys are tasked with using chalk to mark each buggy’s proper position in line. The closer the kinship, the smaller the number.”

  Keith pulled back onto the road and continued driving, his words keeping the current subject close. “Widows wear black for the rest of their life.”

  “Can the Amish remarry after a death?”

  She held her breath as she waited for Keith to answer Kayla’s inquiry.

  “Yes, they can. Though you see that
more if the death occurred early on.” Keith continued speaking, but Claire didn’t hear the rest of what he said. Instead, she found her thoughts veering off in a direction she knew they shouldn’t go, starring a man that had no business being in her thoughts, let alone her heart.

  “Just up ahead, you’ll see the farm where we’ll be stopping. It’s owned by Daniel Lapp. Daniel recently sold half of his farm to another Amish man so he could, instead, concentrate on his growing toy business.”

  At the mention of Daniel, Claire shook all thoughts of Benjamin from her head and focused on Keith and the questions coming from her aunt’s guests.

  Doug’s head rose up above the seat. “Daniel Lapp? Isn’t that the man Karble Toys was about to do business with?”

  “You mean the man Karble Toys was about to rip off,” Keith corrected. “Yeah, that’s him. Daniel is a master toy maker, which you’re about to see when we stop. He makes rocking ponies, Noah’s Ark toys, jigsaw puzzles, sewing boards, pull toys, doll cribs, kitchen sets…you name it. And he makes ’em all by hand.”

  A hush of anticipation filled the air around them as Keith pulled the bus into a narrow turnoff to the side of Daniel’s barn and cut the engine. “You should head into the shop first and look around. Then, when you’re done browsing, Daniel will take you inside the barn right here so you can watch him working on whatever toy he’s making at the moment. It’s quite fascinating to see.”

  Claire lingered behind as first Doug and Kayla and then the Grandersons descended the steps to the gravel drive below. When they’d cleared the bus, she made her way down the aisle to where Keith was checking his watch and making a few notations in a small notebook. “Keith? I have to tell you, that was a fantastic tour. I can see why your business has grown so much in the past few months. You really give a great window into the Amish world.”