Shunned and Dangerous (An Amish Mystery)

by Bradford, Laura

  “Sure.”

  “When did you see Serenity Falls for the first time?”

  A muffling of voices in the background let her know Kyle was being consulted on the answer before sharing it with Claire. “Our Realtor took us there on the Friday morning we arrived in Heavenly.”

  “And did you share your reasons for not wanting to build there with your Realtor that same day?”

  “You could say that. I tried to be a bit more diplomatic, but Kyle cut straight to the chase and let her know he wasn’t going to spend that kind of money on a lot that smelled like spoiled milk.”

  She heard Kyle saying something but couldn’t make out his words over the car noises on Megan’s end.

  “Did you hear what Kyle just said?”

  “No.”

  “He said the Realtor wasn’t surprised. She told us the only reason she’d even brought us out there at all was because of my interest in living as close to the Amish as possible. She said she quit making it one of her stops when it became apparent the smell was going to prevent her from making a sale.”

  Claire came around the front corner of the house and stopped, the menacing words painted across the home’s foundation making all the sense in the world now.

  One more and you’re dead.

  “Do you happen to know if your Realtor had any contact with Trey Sampson’s company that day? You know, to provide feedback on your visit or anything like that?”

  She waited as Megan relayed the question on to Kyle; his instantaneous yes was all the confirmation she needed to hear.

  It was official; the Reillys had been Harley’s “one more” . . .

  • • •

  She waited in her car until the last family emerged from the sales office, the balloons tied to the children’s wrists and the starry-eyed faces of the adults a near carbon copy of the three previous families who’d emerged from the trailer over the past half hour. Several times she’d picked up the cell phone while she was waiting, the little voice that had kept her safe and sound throughout her life growing persistently louder with each passing minute.

  There was more than enough suspicion and evidence to bring Jakob in to the mix, yet still she hesitated. It wasn’t that she thought she was wrong but, rather, because she needed to be sure.

  That’s why, when the last family finally pulled onto the main road, she stepped from her car and headed across the makeshift parking lot toward the temporary sales office currently housed in a double-wide trailer. She knocked briefly on the glass door, then headed inside, the smiley redhead behind the front desk rising to her feet in short order.

  “Oh, I’m so sorry. I didn’t hear you drive up. Welcome to Serenity Falls—your one and only forever home.” The redhead looked past Claire briefly before turning her smile on full blast. “I take it you’re not here with a Realtor this afternoon?”

  Claire returned the woman’s smile and took the familiar glossy folder from her outstretched hand, barely glancing at it as she did. “No. I’m here alone.”

  “Well then, I’m Vanessa, your on-site sales associate. I’d be happy to show you around the grounds if you’d like. Makes it easier to envision where everything that’s shown in your folder will actually be when the community is complete.”

  Claire nodded politely then got to the reason for her visit. “Is Trey Sampson available by any chance? I’d like to speak with him if I may.”

  Vanessa’s overly tweezed right eyebrow inched upward. “Do you know Trey?”

  “My friend, Megan Reilly, put a down payment on a lot in here yesterday and she—”

  “Oh, Mrs. Reilly . . . our first official resident of Serenity Falls.” Vanessa clapped her hands together softly. “What a lovely, lovely woman. She’s going to be so thrilled to hear we signed her first neighbor not more than two hours ago . . . and they just so happen to have a pair of little boys, too!”

  “That’s wonderful!” Claire let her gaze wander toward the office on the other side of the reception area, the open door and lack of any overhead light virtually eliminating all hope of confronting Trey herself. But Vanessa put her fears to rest with a warm arm squeeze and an invitation to sit and wait.

  “Trey should be along any minute. He had to make a quick stop at the bank to sign some papers and pick up a check, and he said he’d be back before it was time to close. Which”—Vanessa ducked her head behind her desktop computer—“according to my little clock right here will be in about twenty minutes.”

  “Thanks.” Claire took a seat in the black vinyl chair and lazily thumbed through the floor plans and marketing pieces inside the same folder that was sitting on the nightstand in her room at the inn. When she’d taken a second and third look at each item, she stood and wandered over to the glass case that housed the basic model of a completed Serenity Falls right down to the playground and walking trails that had helped win Megan’s heart.

  The phone on Vanessa’s desk rang and was quickly answered in a voice that seemed incapable of speaking in anything less than full volume. “Welcome to Serenity Falls, this is Vanessa speaking.” Instantly, the cheerleader tone of the woman’s greeting took on a frosty edge. “Yes, I know who this is . . . Trey is at the bank now, putting his final signature on the papers . . . I’m quite sure he’s not going to make off with your money, Ms. Duggan . . .”

  This time there was no coughing spell that could cover the gasp that left Claire’s lips and traveled around the room, no easy way to shake off the sudden attention from Vanessa the sound garnered.

  “One minute, I have a customer here.” Pulling the phone’s mouthpiece to the side of her face, Vanessa lifted her brow in Claire’s direction once again. “Is everything okay, Miss—Miss . . . I’m sorry, I didn’t catch your name.”

  “Claire. Claire Weatherly. And no, I’m fine. I guess I was just enthralled by the detail of this model.” The lie felt like acid on her tongue, but if it got Vanessa back on the phone and yacking away again, it would be worth it in the end.

  “Oh. Okay.” The sales agent repositioned the phone closer to her mouth, lowering her voice half an octave. “Yes, Ms. Duggan . . . yes, I know you’ve been waiting for this first sale to go through, but, as you know, there were mitigating factors beyond our control and . . . yes, yes, we’re happy everything can be finalized now as well. Yes, I’ll let Trey know you called and that you’re at your house waiting for your check in the event your phone call last night and again this morning didn’t make that clear. Yes . . . yes, Ms. Duggan . . . Good-bye, Ms. Duggan.” Vanessa slapped the phone down on its base and groaned loudly. “Ugh!”

  “Tough phone call?” Claire pried.

  Vanessa’s face reddened just before it disappeared into her hands. “I am so sorry. I don’t usually handle calls like that, but that woman tries my patience in ways I can’t even begin to explain.” She lifted her head and glanced at the ceiling as if in prayer. “But that’s over now. She gets her cut of the first land acquisition the way she was promised and Trey is free of her and her former ties to the land once and for all.”

  “Former ties to the land?” she echoed as the room began to spin to the cadence of Patrick’s voice.

  See that window right there? That’s where my father’s bullet came from. The one that killed Harley’s brother. He stood on a rock in my grandfather’s yard and took the shot. Only took one from what the papers said.

  She sucked in her breath a second time as Vanessa confirmed the pivotal piece of information Claire had missed only twenty-four hours earlier. “Part of this property was hers—left to her by her now-deceased parents. Trey could have made this place work without her land, but it would have meant rerouting crucial lines and adding to his costs in the long run.”

  “And this deal was contingent on the first person he signed?”

  “Pretty much, yeah. Unfortunately, as Trey says, when you’re dealing with someone with no real cash flow, they can make your life miserable.”

  Suddenly, everything she’d
thought she knew had been turned on its head. Still, though, she asked the question that was more about buying time to catch her breath than anything else. “Why?”

  Vanessa checked the time on her computer once again and then began stacking the marketing folders in a neat pile on her desk in preparation for the looming five o’clock hour. “Because they don’t have a whole lot of patience the way people with money do.”

  Chapter 29

  There was so much about Rita as Harley’s murderer that made sense in light of everything Claire’d just learned from Vanessa. Like her husband, Carl, Rita Duggan was no fan of the Amish, either, seeing them as the reason she lost the man she married.

  In fact, thinking back to things Patrick had said over the past few days, it was obvious that the hatred he’d been raised with didn’t fall on his father’s shoulders alone. And if that same hatred was a powerful enough motive to propel Carl to murder, it was more than conceivable that same latent hatred, coupled with a desire for revenge and an opportunity to gain in the process, could have pushed the man’s wife to do the same.

  The only problem that remained was whether Patrick had known about his mother’s intentions. If he had and he’d said nothing, he’d have to live with that the rest of his life. If he’d known and somehow aided her in the crime, he’d be charged as an accomplice. Either way, his life was shattered by hatred—a hatred that had been all but willed to him by the same two people who should have wanted better for their son.

  Claire drove through downtown Heavenly, the darkened front window of Heavenly Treasures off to her left a painful reminder of the mess she was trying to avoid by playing detective. Several car lengths later, the sight of the police station on her right reminded her of the phone call she was glad she hadn’t made from the parking lot of Serenity Falls. She’d been wrong once already in suspecting Trey Sampson, there was no guarantee she wouldn’t be adding yet another mistake to her tally sheet with Rita Duggan.

  The motive was powerful and the means every bit as strong for Rita as they’d been for her husband sixteen years earlier. The only piece Claire was having trouble understanding was the location of the body.

  Why kill Harley in the corn maze when all Rita had to do was walk across her own property the way Carl had?

  She followed the road as it wound its way past Sleep Heavenly and into the heart of the English side of town, the lefts and rights she’d taken with Jakob easy enough to remember. Yet this time, when she stepped from the car, she was aware of a growing apprehension in the pit of her stomach. Something about Patrick had spoken to her the previous day in the same way she imagined it had spoken to Harley.

  Accepting the fact that the man had been murdered out of hatred and greed was hard enough. But finding a way to wrap her head around the very real possibility that Patrick may have been involved in some way made the whole thing even more repulsive.

  Harley had sought Patrick out in an effort to connect with another victim of Carl Duggan’s hatred. The last thing she wanted to believe was the notion that in reaching out, Harley had unknowingly sealed his own fate.

  Inhaling every ounce of courage she could muster, Claire made her way up the wide steps that led to Rita’s front door and knocked, the answering footsteps on the other side of the door virtually instant.

  “I was hoping you’d stop by . . .” Rita’s eyes narrowed on Claire. “What do you want?”

  She peered past the gray-haired woman and noted the pair of suitcases lined up neatly just inside the front entryway. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes, you did.” Rita pushed past Claire long enough to survey the road in both directions, offering up an angered groan in the process. “I’m expecting someone any minute and I really don’t have time for unnecessary distractions.”

  “I’m sure Trey will be along anytime now.”

  Rita tilted her head to the side yet gave no indication she recognized the builder’s name. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather shut this door and keep that swarm of little gnats right there from comin’ into my house.”

  The warning bells in Claire’s head started to go off, but she turned a deaf ear in favor of finding justice for Harley. She accepted the invitation but kept her body positioned just inside the closed door. “So? Is Patrick here?”

  “No.”

  “Do you expect him back soon?”

  Rita’s gaze dropped to her suitcases and the single airline ticket that sat on a small end table to their left. “I expect him back sometime after I’m gone.”

  Something about the woman’s voice and the glint in her steel gray eyes sent a chill down Claire’s spine. “You’re skipping out on him, aren’t you?”

  “He can fend for himself just fine. I got what I needed out of him.”

  “What you needed?” she echoed.

  “It’s the only reason I didn’t prevent my son from working with that man.” Rita’s top lip curled with the kind of ugliness that went far beyond the exterior. “I’ve been working my tail off these past sixteen years. My parents’ land was my ticket out of that life. I needed information in order to make that happen. Patrick provided that. And in doing so I was able to take out two of them weirdos at the same time.”

  “Weirdos?” She heard a faint click somewhere behind Rita, but if the woman noticed, there was no indication.

  “You know who I’m talking about. Everyone knows who I’m talking about.”

  “You mean the Amish?” Claire heard the anger rising in her voice, even knew on some level that it was probably best saved for when jail bars stood between them, but still, she spoke. “Frankly, you’re about the only person I’ve ever met who has a problem with the Amish. They don’t cause trouble for anyone.”

  “Oh?” Rita took a menacing step forward. “You don’t think having my parents going on and on about how polite and respectful those little Amish brats were caused trouble when I was growing up? You think being compared to them morning, noon, and night was easy for a kid?”

  Claire thought of Jakob and the issues with his father that pre-dated his decision to leave the Amish, the cop’s courage and strength guiding her words. “So you regroup. You make yourself proud.”

  “What are you? A talk show host?” Rita spat, her face contorting in rage. “I bet you think raising that little brat by myself for the past sixteen years should have been easy, too, right?”

  “You were raising him yourself because of trouble your husband caused. He killed an innocent man in cold blood. How can you not see that?”

  “My husband wouldn’t be sitting in a jail if those Amish folks weren’t livin’ around here!” Rita took a second, bigger step toward Claire, essentially cornering her against the door with no room to run. “Those people made my childhood hell and then, when I was finally with someone who hated them as much as I did, they went and took him from me.

  “But wait . . . it gets better. I finally have an opportunity to live a better life and even that almost gets ruined because of those people. Why? Because they won’t use a refrigerator like normal folk! So now I’m the one taking.”

  “By killing the same innocent man who reached out to your son and made a difference in his life this past month or so?” Claire stopped long enough to breathe, to realize that the location of the body was all part of the plan. “And by trying to frame a second innocent man for a crime you committed?”

  “They made it easy the way they follow each other around,” Rita spat. “Wanna know something? I hate do-gooder, know-it-alls like yourself. You throw your convictions around like they’re the gospel truth and they ain’t.”

  “They’re a lot closer to it than yours!” She lurched forward just enough to try and secure a grip on the doorknob at her back, but it was too late. Rita’s closed hand came across Claire’s face and knocked her to the floor.

  She struggled up on her elbow in an effort to retrieve her cell phone from her jacket pocket, but that, too, was smacked across the room. “You ain’
t callin’ anyone. I’m not goin’ down for that man’s killin’. That other fella is.”

  “You mean Mose?” she whispered.

  “If that’s the name of the fella who was causin’ all that trouble at that farm, then that’s who I mean. But it don’t matter much, that just gave me someone to put it on. What does matter is knowin’ that sixteen years ago one of them Amish folks changed my life and I wasn’t about to sit by while that man’s brother screwed it up even more.”

  “Harley didn’t screw up your life, Mom! You did that all on your own!”

  She did her best to get out of Rita’s way as the woman spun around to face her son, but Claire’s reaction time was impacted by the blow to her head. Still, it didn’t matter, as Rita’s full attention was now trained on the back of the house and the broad-shouldered son who’d found a way out of the hatred.

  “Don’t you talk to me like that, boy!”

  “I’ve never been more ashamed to be your boy than I am at this moment. But that stops here and it stops now. With me.”

  She saw Patrick step to the side as another, far more familiar shape burst into the room, gun drawn. “Rita Duggan, you are under arrest for the murder of Harley Zook.”

  Chapter 30

  Claire was just plugging the final number into the calculator when she heard Jakob at the door, his faint knock, coupled with the sound of his voice as he called her name through the screen, bringing a momentary lift to an evening with very few bright spots.

  Pushing back from her desk, she stood and made her way toward the back door of her shop, the tender smile that broke across his face as she approached warming her all the way to her toes. “Isn’t this a nice surprise,” she offered as she lifted the locking pin from its holder and welcomed him inside. “I thought I was the only one working this late on a Monday night.”