Fall from Pride

by Karen Harper

  Nate’s heart rate jumped. “About what, Mr. Yoder? Do you know something that might help protect your fellow churchmen’s barns?”

  “Only that the boy used to like to burn the trash in the big barrel out back. And lit our cellar door afire with matches once when he didn’t get his way and—” he gave a big sniff and wiped his nose with his sleeve “—carried around with him in his buggy one of those fancy fireplace lighters you just hit a button on and a flame comes out. We been a’praying it’s not him, Mr. MacKenzie.”

  “The red car he drives—do you know its license plate number?”

  “No, but I bet you can find out.”

  “I will and hope to find Jacob, too. Thank you for your honesty, Mr. Yoder. I can tell you love your son.”

  “The prodigal,” he said. “But if he comes home, can’t say I’d kill the fatted calf for him. I also been a’praying I wouldn’t want to kill him instead, putting his mother through all this.”

  What an admission from an Amish man, Nate thought. Finally, he had a solid lead and prime suspect.

  Nate texted an ASAP request to his office in Columbus for Jacob Yoder’s license plate number before he drove into the Kauffman driveway. Despite the graying sky that Sarah had mentioned might mean rain, she had finished chalking the outline for her quilt square and had drawn some diagonal lines through the space.

  As efficient and prompt as ever, she had her horse hitched to the buggy, so he parked VERA behind the barn instead of driving way back in by the pond. He’d been agonizing over how much to ask her about Jacob. Both Peter Clawson and Mr. Yoder had suggested he should, so why had he been hesitating? Was it the fact that she must have once cared deeply for Jacob that bothered him? It was a battle to keep things professional around her.

  “Here,” he said, getting his thinking back on track. He produced a handheld two-way radio that looked more like a cell phone. “Let me show you how to use this, in case you need to call me. But as I said, if I’m on the road with VERA, I’ll have to put the antenna down that receives, so it might not work then—unless there are none of these beautiful hills between us. At least this is a broad valley.”

  Hills between us…a broad valley… There was so much that stood between the two of them. He had to stop thinking of her in personal ways, he lectured himself again as he demonstrated how to use the two-way, then walked back to VERA and took a practice call from her. Needless to say, she caught on right away as she did with almost everything.

  “I’ve got chicken sandwiches and some lemonade,” she told him as he came around the barn to join her again. “They’re in a basket on the backseat, so you can serve while I drive. That’s one thing about a horse and buggy. You can safely eat and drive.”

  She sounded nervous and her cheeks were flushed. Maybe it wasn’t a good idea for him to go out with her like this, but he needed her help—talk time alone—and her father had okayed it. “Sounds great. Which barn first?”

  “I was going to start with the Hostetler barn farther out, but considering the darkening sky, I think we should go to Levi Miller’s first. Besides, that’s closer to where I saw someone in the dark with your night glasses in case we want to look in that meadow. Upteyup,” she said to Sally.

  They pulled away, then slowed as her sister Lizzie ran out with a small sack of fresh-baked half-moon pies for them. She and her mother were still baking as many as possible to sell at the benefit auction the day after tomorrow. Maybe Jacob Yoder would show up for that, he thought. Surely, it would be a mix of the Amish and the English. But if he could get his license plate number, he could ask Sheriff Freeman to keep an eye out for him in this entire area. Nate and the sheriff had plans to join forces but, of necessity, they’d both been checking separate leads on this case so far.

  Nate was really impressed with the interior of Sarah’s buggy, as customized as those he’d seen being made in the Buggy Wheel Shop. Hers had roll-down leather curtains, a polished splashboard where a dashboard would be in a car, a hand brake that would rub against the tires, battery-operated front lights and turn signals and an emerald-green, crushed-velvet front seat.

  “So how do you like the eight-to-ten-miles-per-hour pace of the buggy compared to racing around in VERA?” Sarah asked between bites of her chicken sandwich. Nate sat behind her as her father had instructed, but he was leaning forward and, despite the rising breeze, she could feel his breath and smell that clean, pine scent he always had on him. Would it linger in her buggy after he was gone?

  “It sure gives me time to take in the scenery. Beautiful.”

  He no doubt meant outside the buggy, but she felt herself blush, anyway. “So, any luck with finding out who wrote that note?” she asked.

  “Do Amish kids learn to print and write cursive in school?”

  “Ya—yes. Because of the Bible reference, you think it was written by one of my people?”

  “Or former people.”

  “Not Hannah again!”

  “Probably not. Can you tell me anything about Jacob’s personality?”

  “A good worker but ambitious for more and fast. Maybe,” she admitted, “that’s one thing that drew us together at first. But, like I said, he got in with some bad people.”

  “So I heard. I talked to his parents.”

  “Oh. Can you locate him?”

  “Nope, though I’m hoping to trace him through his license plate if I can get it from the Bureau of Motor Vehicles in Columbus.”

  “I have a better idea. You can get it from Gabe.”

  “Gabe?”

  “He has a real talent for remembering numbers, working with numbers. All the youngie liet rumspringa boys were in love with Jacob’s red car—bet you know what I mean. Gabe will know.”

  “I should have known to ask you first, Sarah, my Amish translator.”

  “So you feel like a foreigner here?”

  “Less and less, thanks to you.”

  “Even with our technology gap? My people do use technology when it suits them, when it allows us to keep the family together, which things like TVs would not.”

  “Keep the family together— A worthy goal.”

  “Do you have family, other than your foster mother?”

  “No, so I envy you that, the big, close families. My biological parents died in a fire—an arson—when I was eight.”

  “Oh, Nate! So that’s why—”

  “Yeah, I guess so. The thing is, my own father set it.”

  “No! I’m so sorry,” she cried, turning to face him, so close her bonnet hit his cheek, their noses almost bumped, their lips nearly brushed. “I’m so very sorry,” she repeated.

  “Yeah, me, too, for my loss of them, my mother, at least. My dad was a murderer, actually, though he didn’t intend to be. I’m sure he meant to save us. He died of smoke inhalation. A fireman pulled me out, but my mother was burned too badly and died at the hospital. So, even setting the fire, my father didn’t know what the heck he was doing. He set it up all wrong, trapped himself and us inside, waited too long to get us out—an insurance scam that went wrong. I don’t know, maybe I’m trying to make up for him as much as I’m trying to fight arsons for myself.

  “A childless couple,” he went on, “Jim and Mary Ellen Bosley—I call her M.E.—who lived down the street, took me in. They were very loving, but I was bitter, really a brat at times. They stuck with me, wanted to adopt me but I said no, and now I regret that.”

  His voice broke, but he continued. “Jim Bosley passed away a few years ago, and I still see M.E. often and call her when I can. I should see her more than I do, but she still lives on the street where I grew up, so I get her to come to me or to meet me at a restaurant or somewhere. Once I left I never wanted to go back because I still can’t bear to see the vacant lot where it all happened.

  “Sarah,” he said, almost leaning his chin on her shoulder when she turned away to watch the road again as they neared a stop sign, “I had a doting mother and a distant, thoughtless father I resented—
my real parents, I mean. That’s often how an arsonist is made. Not me, obviously, but do you think that could be the case with Jacob’s parents, him being an only child and all?”

  “Could be,” she whispered. “I’m regretful that was the way it was for you, and I’d say that was true of him.”

  The minute they turned onto curving Orchard Road, the traffic picked up. Despite the road’s picturesque name, it led to the interstate. Though Sarah kept the buggy well over, partly on the berm, Nate got really nervous as cars came close, then roared past, usually with people craning their necks to see who was in the buggy. Most drivers were respectful; however, a few honked. One yelled, “Get a life! And a car!” At least Sarah and Sally seemed to be used to that. The slow pace, which he had begun to savor, now put him on edge. No wonder buggy-car crashes were another cross the Amish had to bear.

  “There it is,” Sarah told him, waiting for several cars to pass so they could turn left. “The Miller house and old barn.”

  Yeah, Nate thought, it was the barn with the quilt square he’d seen when he first drove into town, and he’d been so intrigued by it he hadn’t noticed how run-down the place was.

  “It would make a great moody painting with that cloudy gray sky behind it,” Sarah was saying, “a study in soft, muted grays with only the bright quilt square standing out, but I’d like to put some people and horses in it, too.”

  Moody was putting it kindly, Nate thought. To him, Levi Miller’s farm looked like a scene from an old Alfred Hitchcock movie, almost a replica of the Bates house from Psycho. An old Victorian peeling paint, an antique barn that hadn’t been kept up, though that was highlighted by Sarah’s bright square painted in glowing blue, green and gold. How unkempt the property was, even to an uncut lawn and scraggly bushes. This was the second lesson he’d had today that the Amish were not all prosperous or industrious—in this case, not even good farmers.

  As if Sarah had read his mind—a dangerous precedent—she said, “He doesn’t have much land, and he’s not really suited for farming like some of the men. The square is painted on this barn not only because he’s a church deacon, but because it’s on this road, which is busier than most. Tourist buses come this way from I-77, and it’s the first square they see in Home Valley and on a traditional barn, though it’s seen better days. I’ve heard tell tourists don’t even notice the house or condition of the barn when they see the square.”

  “I can attest to that,” he said. It was the closest he had ever heard her come to praising her own work, though she was just stating a fact. “So what’s the name of this one?” he asked. “It’s a beauty.”

  “Crown of Thorns. You know, like the Lord’s enemies put on His head before they crucified Him.”

  “Let’s hope that’s not a bad omen. I keep thinking how your Tumbling Blocks design was painted on a now tumbled-down barn. Do you think there’s any connection between the patterns painted and what’s happened, though I don’t exactly get Robbing Peter to Pay Paul on the Esh barn.”

  “I’ve thought about that, but I just don’t know. As I said, some of my people think my work is too showy. But burning barns for that reason? It’s too far-fetched.”

  “You’d be surprised what is and isn’t far-fetched when it comes to investigating a sick crime like arson. It looks like no one’s home, and I was hoping to tell Levi Miller that he needs to at least stay home after dark. So far, that is part of the pattern, that the arsonist strikes when the place is deserted, but probably just so he won’t be seen and stopped.”

  Sarah reined the horse in by the barn door, but when Nate gestured her on, she pulled around to the side so they would be hidden from the road. “If the Millers aren’t here,” he said, “let’s look around, anyway, and I’ll leave them a note.”

  They got out and walked around the barn, just as it began to rain. It was as if the gray sky, even the faded gray barn, were crying on them, he thought.

  “Hey, what’s that?” he asked, pointing at three, small, furry bodies on the ground—without heads. Tiny pools of crimson blood indicated the little animals had bled out. They seemed to be arranged in a trail, leading around the next corner of the barn.

  “Dead voles, I think. Barn owls or hawks sometimes behead them,” she said, her voice shaky as she backed up into him, and he put his hands on her shoulders to steady her.

  Together, they peered around the corner at the back of the barn. Suddenly, Nate needed steadying, too. A few more small, headless vole bodies were strewn there. And someone—sure as heck not a barn owl or a hawk—had scrawled in red on the back of the barn the bold, printed words Mack— Keep Away!

  11

  “IS THAT BLOOD?” SARAH ASKED AS THEY STARED at the writing, which was already starting to smear in the rain. Despite getting wetter, they both bent close to study it. “That much blood couldn’t come from those dead little animals,” she added, her voice shaky.

  Nate touched a letter and lifted his fingers to his nose to sniff at it. “It’s not clotting and there’s no copper smell. It’s paint. Fairly fresh.”

  “It’s probably latex, like I use, but I avoid red, the color—” her voice faded as she thought again of Jacob’s red car “—of martyrs’ blood.”

  They straightened, both glancing behind and around, but the rain had closed them in like a curtain. When they retraced their steps toward the front of the barn, Sarah couldn’t see the Miller house or the woodlot nearby, where someone could easily hide. They both jumped when a bolt of lightning flashed and thunder cracked too close.

  They hurried toward where they’d left the buggy. Sally neighed and tugged at the traces. The whites of her eyes showed as she tossed her head. Sarah felt that frenzied, too. Despite the cover of the rain, she had the feeling they were being watched, but she didn’t want Nate to think she was a coward or didn’t have faith in the Lord’s protection. “Sally doesn’t like lightning,” was all she said.

  “Neither do firefighters. First that Bible warning to you and your people. Now this one looks aimed at me. Mack must mean MacKenzie. The writer must know darn well I’m not going to keep away. But keep away from what? Let’s get the buggy inside the barn.”

  “Right. The Millers won’t mind. If the arsonist left that message, he—”

  “Or she…”

  “—seems to know your schedule. He must have figured you would check the two other barns that have paintings. I wonder if there’s a similar message on the Hostetler barn in case you went there.” A rolling rumble of thunder shuddered through her as she led Sally inside.

  “Or did he or she follow us, pass us on the road and paint it just as we drove up? We couldn’t see the back of the barn from the road. The bastard—pardon my French—”

  “That’s English. Strong English.”

  “I was going to say it looks like the arsonist has been watching me—or you.”

  Nate’s voice was clipped, and he looked tense and angry. That made her feel even more afraid. He was supposed to be the strong one with the answers, to be in charge here.

  Nate glanced around the dim barn and rubbed his palms on the front of his jeans. “Being stalked gives me the creeps,” he admitted, “about as much as knowing he or she is out there waiting to ignite another barn. We wouldn’t be inside this one if it wasn’t pouring hard enough that it would be difficult to start a fire right now. But if the arsonist is following us, we may be able to set a trap later.” He kept staring at her as if waiting for something.

  Sarah was suddenly aware of how she looked. Though she’d shaken her skirts, they clung to her legs just the way his shirt did to him. The only thing that was dry was her hair and face under her kapp and bonnet. Sally stamped and snorted even as the rumbling thunder grew more muted, but the skies kept pouring rain. It drummed so hard on the barn roof that it sounded like hoofbeats on a wooden covered bridge. She had to say something to break the screaming silence between the two of them. Her pulse pounded harder than the rattle of the rain.

  �
�Do you think my grandmother may have actually seen someone lurking outside our grossdaadi haus?” she asked as she brushed drops off her sleeves. “Not a monster with glowing eyes like she said, of course, but I’ve been thinking we’d better believe her about seeing someone since that Bible note appeared. Still, she does imagine things at times. Nate, the reason she acts afraid of you is that she’s haunted by the persecution our ancestors faced in Europe, especially burnings for our faith. It—it kind of haunts me, too, sometimes, all of us. She thinks you’re the government official coming to take us away, to burn us out, burn us. I thought I’d better tell you that.”

  “You’ve been tremendous through all this, helpful and honest.”

  “Good,” was all she could manage, when she wanted to say something better and wiser. “Good.”

  He came close and put his hands on her wet shoulders. She put her hands around his wrists, not only to touch him but to prop herself up. She wanted him to hold her; she felt he knew that. Her lips tingled.

  They had not closed the barn doors, so the wind whipped in, chilling their wet clothes. He let go of her and went over to slide the barn doors closed. At the grating sound—or at the idea of being sealed in here with Nate—she went all shivery with goose bumps.

  Just before he slid the door shut, a whoosh and a swoop of air slapped them as a big-winged body swept past and out into the rain.

  Sarah let out a shriek, and Nate ducked. “Oh,” she said, “it’s just a great horned owl flying out. She’s probably the one that killed the voles, though she hardly lined them up that way. I’ll bet she’s feeding nestlings inside here.”

  “I’ll leave the doors cracked for her, then. Speaking of which, my crackberry is vibrating.”

  “Your phone?” she asked, rubbing her hands up and down her arms. It was good to talk of something rational, something normal.