“Like for Halloween?” I asked, surprised. The Amish forbade the celebration of Halloween.
Sarah sniffed. “Of course not. It’s for harvest time. People buy pumpkins for things more than carving jack-o’-lanterns.”
“Oh, right,” I said quickly. “That’s the Englischer in me talking again.”
That got her to smile, as she wiped crumbs from the counter with a dishtowel. “Angie, you and the sheriff should bring Zander here to pick his pumpkin. It would be a nice little family outing.”
I wrinkled my brow.
Anna shook her finger at me. “Don’t scrunch up your pretty face like that. It might get stuck that way. I know what you’re thinking,” Anna said.
I folded my arms across my chest. “What’s that?”
“That you’re not a family,” she said. “You will be someday. Mark my words—you and the sheriff will get hitched.”
I bit back a chuckle because I knew it would only encourage them, and I needed to bring this line of conversation to a halt. “First of all, I can’t believe you really just said ‘get hitched.’ What 1970s Westerns have you been watching?”
Anna sniffed. “I don’t watch television, but if I happen to be in an Englisch business while it’s on, it’s not my fault if I see it. Bonanza isn’t bad.”
I barked a laugh. “But in reference to your ‘get hitched’ comment, the only hitching I know about in Holmes County involves attaching a buggy horse to a post.”
“Humph!” Anna replied. “I know these things. It might take longer than an Amish courtship, but I can always tell when a couple was meant to be.”
I was about to argue more when Sarah chimed in, “I think Anna is right, Angie.” Sarah carried the stewpot across the kitchen and set it on a cast-iron trivet in the middle of the table. “If you and the sheriff were going to break up, you would have last Christmas when your ex-fiancé was here trying to win you back. The boy tried every trick in the book, but you still chose the sheriff.”
She didn’t need to remind me about that. I blushed to myself thinking how I behaved when Ryan was visiting Holmes County. “Mitchell wasn’t the reason I didn’t marry Ryan.”
They both gave me a disbelieving look.
“Okay, he wasn’t the only reason. My decision had to do more with wanting to be here with all of you.”
Anna smiled. “You are a sweet girl, but you should—”
The back door to the house creaked open and Sarah’s husband, Jeremiah, strode in. His appearance saved me from hearing what Anna thought I should do. Which was a good thing, because chances were high I wouldn’t have liked it.
Chapter Ten
Jeremiah Leham, a short, broad-shouldered man with a brown beard that hung an inch down from his chin, smiled when he found Anna and me sitting at the pine kitchen table. “I thought it was your car parked out front, Angie. Gude mariye, Anna.” He gave Anna a nod.
Anna sipped water from her glass. “Gude mariye, Jeremiah. How are the pumpkins?”
“Gut. Gut. I suspect that Sarah has already told you of our plans for the patch this year.” He smiled lovingly at his wife. “There’s not much she can keep a secret.”
Sarah swatted her husband with a dishtowel. “Hush, you. Wash your hands, and Anna and Angie will join us for afternoon supper.”
“Wunderbar,” Jeremiah said, walking over to the sink. “It will be gut to hear the news from town.”
Anna and I sat on either side of the table, I right below the kitchen window. Sarah sat on the end. As he dried his hands on the dishtowel his wife had swatted him with, Jeremiah settled at the opposite end from his wife. He dropped the dishtowel on his lap and used it as a napkin. Jeremiah bowed his head and said the blessing in Pennsylvania Dutch. I caught only a couple of words: Gott for God, and maahl for meal. Anna had been trying to teach me the Amish language, but it was slow going. Having grown up in Texas, I took Spanish in school. Who knew someday I would live in a part of the United States where a background in German would have been more useful?
When the prayer ended, Jeremiah lifted his head. “I have heard about Bishop Beiler’s passing.” His voice was solemn, but I wouldn’t describe it as sad or upset, as I would have expected, considering he was talking about a member of his former district.
“Angie was there,” Anna said.
“Oh?” Jeremiah asked.
I quickly explained what my mom and I had witnessed in the bookmobile. “Who would want to hurt the bishop from your old district?”
He blew on his soup spoon. “Everyone in my old district disliked the old bishop in some way or another. He was a hard man. To him, life was meant to be about work and suffering. There was no joy in his heart. He believed the more you worked and the more miserable you were, the closer you were to Gott. It was something I could never believe. If Gott loves us so much, how could he want us to suffer?”
I blew on a spoonful of stew. “Even still, it must have been hard to leave.”
He was quiet for a moment. “It was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.” He smiled at his wife. “But I have never regretted my decision. I know this is the path that Gott wanted for me.”
Sarah beamed in return. Her cheeks were a pretty shade of pink.
Jeremiah was different from Rachel’s quiet husband, Aaron, who barely spoke, but I supposed a man would have to be a talker to be Sarah’s spouse. That’s the only way he’d have any hope of having his opinion heard.
I sipped from my water glass. “So if everyone disliked the bishop, why was he still the bishop?”
Everyone looked at me openmouthed.
I held up a hand. “I know how it works—a bishop is bishop until he dies or can’t serve any longer—but if there is no vote of confidence, how can he lead?”
“That is the Englisch view,” Jeremiah said. “We don’t elect our leaders and toss them away after four years for someone new. He remains the leader because Gott chose him.”
My forehead wrinkled. “How did he do that?”
At first I didn’t think Jeremiah was going to answer the question, but finally he said, “Usually, unless a bishop, deacon, or other elder becomes too ill to serve his community, he serves in that position for the remainder of his life. When it is time to choose a new church leader, the men of the church are put forward and given hymnals. One of those hymnals contains a Bible verse on a slip of paper. No one knows which hymnal it is because they are mixed up. The man who opens the hymnal and finds the verse becomes the next church leader. And that was how Bartholomew became bishop.”
“You leave it up to chance?” I asked.
He shook his head. “Members of the church can nominate the men to be given a hymnal. My old district is very small, so for the position of bishop only four or five men will be put up for the position.”
“So that gives someone a one in four chance to be bishop,” I said thoughtfully.
He nodded over his soup spoon.
“Back to my original question. Who might have wanted to hurt the bishop?” I asked.
Jeremiah was quiet. “I don’t know.”
Something about his tone told me he had some ideas, but didn’t want to share them.
“You left the district to marry Sarah?” I asked.
He frowned. “That was not my only reason. That is a very personal question.”
“I’m sorry,” I said quickly.
“It is a personal question, but I will answer it because it might help you understand. I left the district because of the bishop. He was far too strict.” He glanced at his wife. “When I started courting Sarah, he didn’t approve and said that I needed to find a girl from my own district. He was especially upset because Sarah came from a New Order church. I never considered leaving the Amish way of life, but I knew that Bishop Beiler’s way wasn’t how it had to be. Courting Sarah and being around the members of her
district, like the Grabers”—he nodded at Anna—“taught me I could still be Amish and lead a less confining life. My parents were disappointed, I know, but I left the district, and Sarah and I were married not long after I was baptized as a member of her church.”
“Do you think anyone from his district might have hurt him?” I said, rephrasing my original question and hoping for a different result.
“Killed him, you mean?” His brows merged together.
I nodded.
He pushed his bowl away from him. “Nee. The people in the district are gut people. If they didn’t like how the bishop ran the district, they would simply leave or keep their mouths shut. That is the Amish way.”
I frowned. I wanted to believe Jeremiah, but his words were at odds with a dead bishop.
Chapter Eleven
After we left the Lehams’, I drove Anna home to her family farm. Jonah, his wife, Miriam, and their three children lived in the main house on the farm, and Anna lived in the small dadihaus her late husband had built when he’d turned over the farm to his only son to manage.
Gravel crunched under my car’s tires when I pulled into the Grabers’ driveway. Anna sat next to me in the front seat. Oliver was in her lap.
I parked the car and got out. Anna opened her door, and I lifted Oliver to the ground so that she could exit.
Anna beamed. “I forgot. We have a surprise for you.”
I wrinkled my brow. Anna’s cheerfulness at the surprise had me suspicious. “What kind of surprise?”
“You will—”
Before she could finish her statement, a large brown, tan, and white hooved blur galloped toward us. Her ears flew back in the wind and her face split into a goaty smile.
Oliver yipped in joy to see his old friend.
My mouth hung open. “Petunia? What is she doing here?”
“She’s ours now,” Anna beamed. “The Nissley family sold the auction yard and moved to Kentucky. They decided to leave Petunia behind. When Jonah heard about it, he offered to take her. You know how kindhearted my son is.”
Now that she mentioned it, I thought I remembered hearing something about Gideon Nissley selling the auction yard, but I never would have guessed he would leave his beloved Nubian goat behind. Petunia had been a faithful companion to him during some very difficult times.
As if she read my mind, Anna said, “Gideon said he couldn’t take her with him and was so grateful we could give her a home. The family planned to live in town there, and there was no place for a goat. So here she is.”
“Here she is,” I said.
Petunia bumped my hand, requesting an ear scratch. I kindly obliged, charmed that after a year had passed the goat still remembered me. Sure, our relationship had been rocky, and she had knocked me on my behind more times than I would like to count, but she meant well.
Oliver ran in tight circles of canine bliss and the two animals bumped noses. Their joy was short-lived when they were interrupted by a Gobblegobble!
“What’s that?” I cried and scooped up Oliver before he ran away in fright. It sounded like the noise was on top of us.
In my arms, Oliver stared into the tree branches above and whimpered before burying his face in my chest. I tilted my chin up. Above us, there had to be at least fifteen full-sized turkeys in the oak tree. My mouth fell open.
Anna groaned. “The turkeys. How did they get out again?”
“Again? This has happened before?”
“More times than I can count. My son got it into his head that he would farm turkeys.” She shook her head. “We finally sold off all the geese, who gave us nothing but trouble for months, and then these creatures arrive. You would have thought my son would have learned his lesson after the debacle with the geese.”
“You’d think,” I said. Anna and I both knew better. Jonah was always trying to find a get-rich scheme. If it wasn’t geese and turkeys, it would be something else. I hoped for my bird-fearing dog that my childhood friend would stay away from winged creatures for his next livestock choice.
The turkeys watched us with their black eyes. From up in the tree, they had a closer resemblance to birds of prey than poultry.
“How did they get up there?”
“They flew, of course,” Anna said.
“Flew?”
Anna took her quilting basket from my car and shut the door. “They are birds. They have wings, don’t they?”
“So do penguins,” I said.
Gobble. Gobble. Gobble. Squawk.
Apparently, the turkeys didn’t like being compared to penguins.
Oliver shivered in my arms, and Petunia stepped between us and the posse of turkeys. There was a flutter of feathers, and the largest of the birds, a tom, jumped to the ground. He fluffed his wings.
“Dear Lord!” I screeched as the giant bird sized us up. Fallen leaves crunched under his talons.
Jonah came running from the barn and held a finger to his lips. He held what looked like a fishing net in his hands. My eyes went wide. This wasn’t going to end well. Oliver shook in my arms.
Jonah’s twin nine-year-old sons, Ethan and Ezra, ran quickly behind him. The boys were grinning. They loved every moment of their father’s crazy schemes. I saw the silhouette of Jonah’s wife, Miriam, in their front screen door. She folded her arms across her chest. Not everyone in the family approved of Jo-Jo’s antics.
I started to back away. Oliver would be safer if I hid him in the back of the car.
“Stay there,” Jonah mouthed at me.
“Are you kidding?” I mouthed back. The turkey was bigger than the inflated balloon that bobbed through downtown Manhattan during Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade. His beady black eyes bore into me as if he knew I’d had a turkey sandwich for lunch the day before. For all I knew, it might have been his mother.
Jonah threw the net over the bird, and the tom went crazy. Feathers flew everywhere. I ran around the side of my car with Oliver clutched to my chest. My dog was shaking so hard. I opened the car door and put him inside. Petunia jumped in after him. Great. There was a goat in my backseat. I shut the door with a shrug. Petunia would comfort Oliver. I would worry about the hoof marks on the upholstery later.
Jonah pulled on a rope that ran through the net, and the turkey flipped on his back as the net closed around him. His brethren in the tree gobbled in protest. If Jonah wasn’t careful, he’d have a Butterball mutiny on his hands.
The twins whooped and hollered as they watched their father wrestle with the bird. Above, the giant tom’s family gobbled and squawked with a vengeance. Jonah yelled at his sons to bring the wheelbarrow over. With the help of his boys, he rolled the bird into the wheelbarrow. They took care not to hurt the thrashing bird.
I winced. “Is the turkey okay?”
Jonah wiped his brow. “He will be fine. We will cut him out as soon as we get him to his pen.”
The once giant bird appeared pathetic all tangled in the netting. Poor turkey. I almost decided to become a vegetarian—you know, after the holidays.
“There are more in the tree,” I said.
Jonah sighed, looking up. “Yeah, I know. The Englisch farmer we bought the turkeys from said their wings had been clipped. I guess he was wrong.”
I stared up at the looming turkeys. “What are you going to do about them?”
“They will come down eventually. They have to eat. I have the twins watching the tree.”
I didn’t say it, but Jonah could not have picked two less reliable bird-watchers. I wouldn’t be surprised if the twins kept scaring the turkeys back into the tree whenever they made a move for the ground.
Jonah peered in the window of my car. “Did you know Petunia and Oliver are in there taking a nap?”
“Yep,” I said, as if it was the most natural thing in the world to have a French bulldog and Nubian goat asleep in
the backseat of my SUV.
“Okay, then.” Jonah hooked his thumbs around his suspenders and turned to Anna. “I told you I would give you a ride home from the shop, Mamm, when I came into town this afternoon,” he said to Anna. “You didn’t have to make Angie drive all the way out here.”
“We were in the neighborhood,” Anna said, picking up a small scrap of cloth that had flown out of her quilting basket amid the turkey chaos. “Angie and I were visiting Sarah and Jeremiah Leham.”
The corners of Jonah’s mouth twitched, as if he was holding back a smirk. “Is that right? Was it a social call?”
“Ya, it was,” his mother replied. “Sarah is a member of the quilting circle, and we hadn’t seen her in a few days because they are so busy with the final vegetable harvest of the year.”
“Oh,” Jonah said with a full-blown smirk. “I thought that just maybe you were there to pump Jeremiah for information about his former bishop, who happened to turn up dead this morning.”
“Well, all right.” Anna grinned, and for the first time I saw from whom Jonah got his mischievous streak. “That too. It doesn’t hurt to ask a question or two. You know, Sarah is always eager to talk.”
“Especially since I had the misfortune of finding the body,” I said.
“What?” Jonah yelped, no longer joking around.
“I guess I didn’t technically find it. Austina Shaker was already there when Mom and I arrived on the scene. I called the cops, though.” I said this like it was no big deal.
Jonah gaped at me. “Your mom was with you. That’s hard for me to picture.”
The turkeys muttered among themselves above. I didn’t have a great feeling about that many birds looming over us like vultures. “Can we go inside and talk about this? The turkeys are freaking me out.”
Murder, Plainly Read Page 7
