by Karen Harper
“I didn’t do it—anything! And don’t start thinking that was a bribe!” Hannah shouted as Sarah took the money in one hand and squeezed her friend’s hand with the other.
“Look, Hannah,” Nate said, stooping to get right in her face, “I just need answers. I’m not accusing you of anything yet.”
Yet, Sarah thought. She could feel Hannah trembling, and it vibrated clear through her. Nate showed Hannah a badge he carried in his wallet and explained he had the right to question her either here or at the police station if she preferred to do it there.
Sarah was soon shaking, too. How had this happened that she was helping a government authority, and worse—one she was afraid she was coming to love?
After nearly an hour of what Sarah considered harsh questioning, the same things asked, over and roundabout, from every direction, Nate finally let Hannah get in her car and leave. Her alibis—Nate’s word—could not be verified with anyone she’d been with. But Hannah had spoken as passionately as ever, Sarah thought, and she was certain she was telling the truth—she just had to be.
They had tried to talk her into spending the night with Sarah at the grossdaadi haus, but she wanted to go home, though Sarah had noted when she said the word home, her voice had wavered.
“You know where your home is, really, don’t you?” Sarah said to her in German as she hugged her hard. “You come back, stay with us for a while in transition. Mamm said so, like the Kauffman place can be your halfway house to really going home. Besides, Seth—”
“Don’t talk about him!” Hannah insisted, also in German. “I just can’t. Please, Sarah, if you don’t have to, don’t tell my people Mr. MacKenzie thinks it might be me, because it isn’t!”
“I know. I’ll work on him.”
“I can see you already have,” she said. She got in her car and pulled away. Sarah watched the red taillights, like two feral eyes, fade into darkness.
In VERA, going back to the Kauffman farm, Nate said, “Sarah, I’m just trying to clear her, honestly. When you two spoke German, did she say anything that would help?”
“Not help you, nor me and her family because we want her to come home. I trust her, Nate.”
“And that goes a long way with me—really. I think your instincts are good.”
But a mess lately, she thought, because she wanted to throw herself in his arms the moment he stopped VERA near the grossdaadi haus. Leaving the motor running, he hurried around to open the passenger’s side door for her this time.
“I heard her say my name in German, but who’s Seth?” he pursued. “You mentioned a Seth.”
“You have good German ears, ausländer. He’s the man she thought she’d marry. He—he married someone else.”
“He or his wife don’t belong to any of the families with the burned barns?”
“No! No. It’s a long, sad story.”
He walked her to the porch steps. She got the key out from under the pot of newly planted geraniums. Maybe it was because she was just remembering how much Hannah and Seth had once loved each other, but this reminded her of what a come-calling friend would do, walk a maidal to her door. And then, there would be a good-night smooch, of course, but she wasn’t expecting that now, only wanting it badly.
“Sarah, would you trust me enough to let me see your sketchbook?”
“Sure. I’d be pleased. It’s just inside, and I can get it back from you tomorrow.”
“I’ll need to spend time at the Miller barn, then I’m going to the Cleveland Clinic, hopefully to interview Noah, but I’ll see you get it back safe and sound. I know the drawings are wonderful.”
While he waited on the porch, she unlocked the door and slipped inside. Deeply touched by what he’d said—it was as if he’d embraced or caressed her with those words—she stood for a moment in the dark, her hands clasped between her breasts. Hannah and Ray-Lynn believed in her work. Now, perhaps Nate would, too.
Her eyes adjusted to the deeper darkness. Martha was asleep, breathing loudly, on the hideaway bed in the living room. Tiptoeing around the bed, Sarah retrieved her sketchbook from the back of the end table drawer where she kept it under her Bible. As she took it out to Nate, she realized she hadn’t looked at it for months, maybe since she’d showed it to Ray-Lynn, then refused to show it to that art dealer friend of hers from Columbus. Yet how much it meant to her, precious memories, a dream deferred, the outpourings not only of her hand but of her head and heart.
She gave the book to Nate and leaned back against VERA’s warm hood next to him, so close their arms touched. The motor was still running, so she knew he didn’t mean to stay long. They were not in the headlights, but enough light reflected that they could see.
“I’ll take good care of this,” he promised. “My face and hands are the only clean part of me. Time for a dip in the pond.”
“You be careful, swimming alone at night.”
“Come with me, then.”
“I’d better not,” she said, but she wanted to go really bad. She watched him open the book to the first sketch, then went to the next, then another. Why was he looking at them so fast? Oh, maybe because she’d not only sketched people but had dared to draw their faces, when that was forbidden. But she couldn’t help herself, for that was part of her art. Truly, her love of this place included the faces of those she knew and loved, smiling faces, serious faces, worshipful faces—
“Sarah, I can tell you didn’t do these flames, these fires—did you?” he asked.
“Fires? What fires?”
She leaned closer, squinting to see. With a gasp, she grabbed the book from him and bent into the glare of VERA’s headlights, flipping through faster, faster, clear to the back of it. On every drawing, in what looked like dried blood, someone had scrawled leaping, streaking flames burning buildings, barns and—and her people.
18
SARAH’S KNEES BUCKLED. AS SHE STARTED TO slide down VERA’s hood, Nate grabbed her and held her to him, her shoulder under his arm.
“No. No, I never… Who would do this?” she whispered, still fanning through the pages, then just pressing the sketchbook to her breasts as if to comfort all the people inside it.
“And why?” Nate demanded. “Do you think someone could have broken into the grossdaadi haus, looking for something else, then saw this? When did you see it last?”
“A couple of months ago. It was hidden. It hurts for me to look at these sometimes.”
“Because you want to draw or paint more than that?”
She nodded jerkily.
“It looks like blood.”
“I know. Quite a bit of it. I—now I’d have nothing to show an art dealer, anyway.”
“Did Jacob ever see the sketches?”
“No.”
“Martha or Gabe? Your parents?”
“As far as I know, only Hannah, Ella and Ray-Lynn, but…”
“What?”
“Well, you know my grandmother gets off her bean sometimes over how our people were persecuted and martyred in Europe, burned to death among other torments. It’s the reason the Amish came to America. She fears we’ll be burned out again and she keeps trying to warn us. What if she found this and did this?”
“I take it she’s not working with knives in the kitchen anymore. Does she have any cuts on her?”
“Cuts and bruises. You’ve seen her, Nate. We try to keep sharp things away now, and she doesn’t quilt anymore. But she still dresses herself and we close our bodices with straight pins.”
He looked at her breasts, squinting as if to see the pins. She went on in a rush, “I guess a pinprick could make drops of blood to smear like this, but she must have done it time after time.”
“Or we’re back to someone else who found your art and wanted to warn or punish you because he or she knew it was verboten. The art itself and drawing in the faces—right?”
Sarah nodded. As distraught as she was, it touched her that Nate was not only recognizing German words but using them now. And t
hat he’d come to know her people well enough already to realize images of Amish faces were as frowned upon as prideful drawings.
“So you can’t ask her if she did this?” he asked.
“I could, but these pictures would upset her. Her copy of the Martyrs Mirror has some etchings of Amish being burned, and those haunt her.”
“Who knows about that book?”
“All the Amish. It’s second only to the Bible for us, and we have a hymnal of song lyrics passed down, too, the Ausbund.”
“Your grandmother never goes out and around on her own, does she?”
“You don’t mean does she wander the nearby fields to ignite barn fires!”
“I mean, if she found this book, wherever you had it stashed, what if she showed it to that person in black she thought she saw.”
“I don’t think she imagined that anymore, not since I saw someone through your night goggles in the field when the Schrock barn burned. But show it to a stranger while he defaced it—no.”
Suddenly, she couldn’t keep the sobs inside. Holding the ruined sketchbook to her breasts with one hand, she pressed the other over her eyes. As she sucked in air and her shoulders shook, Nate took the book from her and put it on the hood, then pulled her into his arms. She clung tight to him, crying, shaking both of them. Then, suddenly, he picked her up and sat down on the grass with her sprawled across his lap.
It was dark, though the gold streaks of VERA’s headlights still stabbed into the night beyond. She shifted in his lap, turned to him and clung, lifting her face toward his. She meant to tuck her face under his chin, but suddenly his comforting turned crazy, his hands everywhere, his lips on hers, soft at first, then strong, demanding.
Thinking she would explode inside, she met him kiss for kiss, opening her lips to his. Nothing else mattered but his touch, his strength, his need battling with hers. These runaway feelings—ya, she’d never known herself before this.
“Sarah, Sarah,” was all he said, and then they kissed again, longer and deeper as her arms around his neck held him to her. They sprawled on the soft grass, already wet with dew. Everything bad seemed washed away, all her fears. She would not have cared if the entire world was lost right now, flamed into the fires she was feeling. Dizzy, dazed. Nate. She wanted Nate MacKenzie even more than she wanted to paint.
They jolted apart as they heard her daad’s voice, probably from the farmhouse porch, but too close. “Sarah? Nate? Mamm wants to know did Hannah say she’d come back?”
Suddenly bereft of Nate’s touch, Sarah stood, settling her skirts. How she found a steady voice she wasn’t sure as she walked around the front of VERA where he could see her in the headlights and called to him, “She left. I think she’s missing everything here, though.”
“A lot can be learned from your old friends Hannah and Jacob,” Daad called to her, not coming closer. She heard the porch swing. How long had he been sitting there? “They both wanted something away from our people outside the Home Valley and both are unhappy and in real trouble.”
Was that a clever warning to her about Nate? About her painting? Did Daad think Hannah could be guilty of the arsons?
“I’d better get going,” Nate said, keeping his voice low. “Can I take the sketchbook to look at it carefully, maybe run a test on the blood?”
“Ya, it’s no good to me now—ruined.”
“Anyone looking at it carefully could still tell a lot about the artist, the skill, the potential.”
“You don’t think someone would look at it and think the artist is a pure maniac?”
“Pyromaniac?”
“That’s it.”
“I think your raw talent shines through. This book would have to actually be burned before someone wouldn’t see a unique artist at work here.”
He walked around the truck cab and got in. Sarah stepped up on the grossdaadi haus porch, feeling the lack of him—physical, sure, but emotional, too—the moment he drove away. She could not bear to go speak to her father now, so she went into the grossdaadi haus and locked the door behind her.
She tiptoed into the bathroom, hearing her grossmamm’s gentle snoring in the next room. Could she have defaced the drawings? It must have been her. If not, since the sketchbook had been hidden, she’d have to start believing in a demon who left damning notes around, where she was sure to find them.
On the way out of the Home Valley the next morning, Nate saw the buggies of Amish families as they headed to church. Services were held in homes or barns every other Sunday, and the Hostetlers were hosts today. All those people—about thirty local families—would gather in the Hostetler barn with Sarah’s painting on it with an arsonist loose, one he couldn’t catch. He pictured Sarah’s sketch of buggies parked around a barn for a church service and the bloody flames someone had smeared across it all.
He wondered if the arsonist would be at church. If so, it wasn’t Jacob Yoder, though he was back in the mix of suspects again at least for the first two barn burnings. Could the third have been a copycat arson? At dawn this morning, Sheriff Freeman had served the search warrant to go through Jacob’s rented room and car in West Salem, a small town about a half hour away. Nate had just met with the sheriff at his office.
“That third fire makes it look like Jacob’s not guilty, but I’ve got to show you what I found on his bedroom wall,” Jack had said, and pointed to a folder he shoved toward Nate across his desk.
Inside were at least ten newspaper articles about the first two fires—pieces of tape still attached—roughly ripped from the Cleveland Plain Dealer and the Home Valley News. One of them had printing in small block letters up the left margin: “Serves them right for treating me wrong” and another had “God’s Justice!”
“I guess he’s back on the list of possible perps for the first two arsons,” Nate admitted. “First tier.”
“You got a second tier?”
“Just people of interest. Not counting Hannah Esh, two other females on the fringe of things. Women involved in something like this are rare. But Cindee Kramer for one. I talked to her about an hour ago, got her out of bed while, luckily, her charming friend Getz was still asleep. She claims she was confused about where she told Sarah that Getz was standing when he saw the second fire. She has easy access to artificial fireplace logs. Maybe she’s working with Getz or just covering for him. And I found out only recently that Ray-Lynn Logan was at the Esh place just before the first fire ignited, even opened the barn doors.”
The big man jerked back in his chair as if he’d been slugged. “Ray-Lynn there then! You gotta be kidding me!”
“One of the Amish kids told me so I talked to her. She said she saw nothing and didn’t want to get involved. She was there to ask Bishop Esh if Sarah could paint a quilt square for the restaurant. Let’s just say she’s been encouraging Sarah to branch out with her painting.”
“Ray-Lynn should have told me that and told me you talked to her.”
Nate thought Jack looked as if he’d chew his desk apart. His ruddy complexion had gone bright red.
“Jack, you okay?”
“Yeah, sure. Just surprised about Ray-Lynn, though it proves nothing except she needs a good shaking up for withholding evidence. Anyhow,” he went on, though Nate could tell he was still steaming, “about Jacob. I found nothing but those articles in his possessions to implicate him. Thing is, his parents want to get him out on bail. Don’t know where they’d get the money, though. I can stall them until tomorrow, but, after that, I think he’s sprung unless we got more than these articles. Anger at the Amish does not an arsonist make.”
“The printing doesn’t look like a real match for the two threatening notes, either.”
“I gave Clawson a bad time for not bringing that note he got at the newspaper office straight to me, but then you’re the one he really wants info from. Let’s just pray there are no more fires and that you get information out of poor Noah Miller. He might have seen something before that barn blaze.”
As he’d left the sheriff’s office, despite being hungry, Nate avoided Ray-Lynn’s crowded restaurant. Jack had said she usually kept it closed on Sundays in deference to Amish beliefs about no Sunday sales. But he’d also admitted he knew that she’d been ticked off at the Amish lately for forbidding Sarah’s artistic talent to blossom and that Ray-Lynn needed the money. Nate wondered if she could also want money from helping Sarah sell her art. And if Sarah’s barn paintings were destroyed…or got her more publicity…
Sarah was at the center of things again. Nate agonized as he passed more buggies. Sarah, his helper, his distraction, his passion. He sighed, and tried to force his mind back to business. She’d said that after the long church service of preaching and singing, the Amish shared a simple meal. He’d been invited to both and would have liked to attend, but he’d called the Cleveland Clinic and—since he was an official on the arson case—was told he would be allowed a few minutes to speak with Noah Miller. His condition had stabilized but was still serious.
Driving past the burned Miller barn, which he would examine more closely when the ruins cooled, Nate left Eden County and turned north on busy I-77. The pace picked up. Lately, he’d gotten used to slower driving, and he had to force himself to keep up to the speed limit. He needed to push this investigation. Funny how the Home Valley area seemed so sheltered by gentle hills, yet a serpent had gotten into paradise.
Partway to Cleveland, he got a call from his boss. He put him on speakerphone so he could drive with both hands.
“I got your message, Nate. Have you talked to the burn victim yet?”
“On my way right now. They stabilized him, some second-degree burns, some third.”
“He dies, and we get the FBI in on this.”
“The Feds will come in strong and that won’t work in Amish country. I’ve been learning the hard way there are special dos and don’ts around here. At times I still walk on thin ice, even though the Amish have embraced me.”
