A Churn for the Worse

by Laura Bradford

  “That’s because you didn’t grow up on a farm.” Jakob took Claire’s hand and led her back to the center aisle and the Amish couple smiling at her in amusement. “Sometimes it’s something as small as Maggie’s faint paw print that can tell one farmer’s animal from another’s.”

  “Carly has such a spot on her chest, too. It is much harder to see on her, but it is there.” Eli led the way toward the opposite end of the barn and the wide-eyed gray horse looking at them from across a waist-high wall. “She is heeling faster than I had hoped.”

  “What happened to her?” Jakob asked.

  “Weaver did not know. Gingerich and Stutzman thought it was a mistake for me to buy an injured horse.”

  Jakob nodded along with Eli’s words. “Why did you buy her?”

  “Esther and the baby need a good, solid horse to pull the buggy. Carly will be that solid horse when she is well.”

  Looping her hand inside Claire’s upper arm, Esther quickened their collective pace until they were standing directly in front of the half wall and Carly. “Hello, sweet girl. We have brought new friends for you to meet. I would tell you to be nice, but that is all you know.”

  Claire instinctively stepped back as the horse thrust her neck across the half wall and nuzzled her nose against Esther’s forehead. Reaching around the base of the animal’s neck, Esther’s hands slid into the horse’s coal black mane.

  “Wow. They’re really taken with each other, aren’t they?” Claire whispered to Eli.

  “Yah. I have been around horses my whole life and I have never seen such a thing.”

  “It’s like I wasn’t even standing there.” Claire looked from the gray horse to Esther and back again. “All she saw was Esther.”

  “It is that way every time Esther is near.”

  “How long have you had her?” Jakob asked.

  “It is ten days since I purchased her from Weaver.” Eli guided their attention over the wall and toward the bandage wrapped around the mare’s front left leg.

  Jakob looked back at Eli. “May I?”

  Eli’s answer came via a slow nod.

  Reaching around the wall, Jakob flipped open the latch and stepped into the recently cleaned stall. For just a moment, the horse turned to eye Jakob as he dropped into a squat beside her bandaged leg, but once she determined he meant no harm, she was back to nuzzling Esther. “My father’s horse sprained his ankle once. Happened on the way home from church one day when I was about twelve, maybe thirteen. Dat was sure the aging horse would not recover. Martha was determined she would be well again and convinced me to help her make it so.”

  Intrigued, Claire propped her elbows atop the wall and leaned forward. “Did you?”

  “Every day we unwrapped her bandage, iced her ankle, and bandaged her up again. Day after day we did this, for weeks, until, one day, while Martha was reading to her, she walked across her stall with complete ease. Martha was convinced it was her reading that made the horse well.”

  “Ten days ago, when I paid Weaver, I was certain I could help. The ice and the bandage have helped, yah, but that is not all that has helped. Esther’s gentle ways have helped, too.”

  “Like mother, like daughter.” Jakob ran his hand down the horse’s bandaged leg and then stood. “She’s a beauty, Eli. Real sturdy-looking.”

  “I love her fancy tail,” Esther said, parting company with Carly’s neck long enough to guide Claire and Jakob’s attention to the back end of the horse. “I have never seen such a tail on a horse.”

  Sure enough, the straight, course hair Claire had always associated with a horse’s tail was instead silky and sported a tightly wound curl that bordered on ringlet status. “Is—is that natural?”

  Jakob’s laugh filled the stall. “They’re not using a curling iron on it if that’s what you’re asking.”

  She scrunched her face up at Jakob but abandoned it at the sound of Esther giggling. “You ate all of Hannah’s special root beer candies this afternoon, sweet girl. That is why I tell you to slow down—to enjoy one candy before you start looking in Hannah’s hands for more.” Carly lowered her nose to Esther’s hand and then reared back and shook her silky black mane. “I know, sweet girl. They are helping to make you well. I will get you more tomorrow.”

  “Hannah’s candies are not making Carly well, Esther,” Eli groused around the smile he was unsuccessful at hiding from Claire and Jakob. “The bandage, the ice, the rest, and you are making Carly well. The candies your sister brings will make her too big and lazy to pull you and the baby in the buggy.”

  Carly dipped her face back down to Esther’s petting level and was quickly rewarded for her efforts by the unmistakable object of her affection. “Candies and cookies do not make Claire big and lazy!” Esther protested.

  Jakob’s laugh was so fast and so loud Carly reared her head back again. “Whoa there, Carly. I’m not laughing at you. I’m—I’m”—his face reddened in conjunction with a peek at Claire—“just, um, laughing, that’s all . . .”

  “At me.” This time when Claire scrunched her face at Jakob, she stuck out her tongue, too. “Cookies and sweets do not guarantee laziness, Detective Fisher. They do, however, guarantee happiness.”

  Reaching into his pocket, Jakob extracted his trusty notepad and pen and made a show of readying both for recording purposes. “Candies and cookies guarantee happiness, you say?”

  “Happiness and, if you’re really lucky, maybe forgiveness, too.”

  Chapter 24

  “Now, tell me I’m forgiven.”

  Claire slid her gaze from the mug of hot chocolate to the frosted chocolate brownie and finally onto the man seated on the opposite side of the two-person table. “Please tell me you know I was kidding about that . . .”

  Clutching his hands to his chest, Jakob drew back in his chair. “You were kidding?”

  “Of course I was kidding,” she half whispered/half shrieked. “You were playing, I was playing—”

  Dropping his hands to the table, he grabbed one of the two forks he’d set beside the plate and dug into the brownie, his dimples on full display. “Of course I know that. But you’ve got to admit, it gave me a ready-made excuse to bring you here instead of taking you straight back to the inn, now didn’t it?”

  She watched the piece of chocolate disappear into his mouth and then shook her head in amusement. “You’re too much, Detective.”

  “As long as I’m enough, we’re good.” He took a second forkful of the treat and held it out for her to try. “Ooohh, you’re going to love this . . .”

  Leaning forward, she opened her mouth and let him place the tip of the fork inside. Slowly, she closed her lips over the brownie, and backed away from the fork. “Oh. Wow. That is good.”

  “I told you.” He studied her for a minute then swapped the fork for his coffee and took a sip. “Tonight was really fun. Thank you.”

  “Could they get in trouble for how they were with you tonight?” The second the question was out, she regretted asking it. They’d had a good night; why take a chance on ruining it? Waving her words away, she leaned forward and smiled. “Actually, you know what? Scratch that question, okay? It doesn’t matter.”

  “No. It’s a fair question.” He took another, slightly longer, sip of his coffee and then set the cup back down on the table. “If Bishop Hershberger had pulled up when we were sitting on the porch, probably not. We were sitting in chairs facing out toward the driveway and you were seated between us. Had he walked into the barn when Eli and I were joking around, yes.”

  “Would they have been shunned at the next church service?”

  His grip tightened ever so slightly around the handle of his mug, but it didn’t last. “If Eli refused to acknowledge his mistake, yes. But I wouldn’t have let it come to that.”

  Staring down into her own cup, she followed the swirls of melting whipped
cream with her eyes and tried not to let his reality sour her mood. But it was hard.

  “Hey . . .” Jakob hooked his finger beneath her chin and gently lifted it until their attention was on nothing but each other. “No frowning, okay? It was a really nice evening.”

  “It was. I just”—she stopped, swallowed, and tried again—“love everything about the Amish except that. It’s wrong.”

  “What I did was wrong, Claire.”

  “You didn’t leave so you could gamble,” she protested. “You didn’t leave so you could bilk people of their money. You didn’t leave so you could mock their beliefs and benefit from doing so. You left to protect and serve the community—their community.”

  “It’s not like their reaction was a surprise, though. I knew, before I ever committed to baptism, that I was making a life choice. I’m the one who broke that, not them.”

  For what had to be the umpteenth time since she’d met Jakob, she couldn’t help but marvel at his selflessness. It was, without a doubt, one of his most attractive qualities. “You really are something special. You know that, don’t you?”

  “If you think so, I’m honored. But really, the inability to have a relationship with my family if I left after baptism is something I knew before I walked away. I still walked.” He extricated her hand from the side of her mug and entwined their fingers atop the table. “Do I miss being able to horse around with my sister at the lake? Sure. Do I miss teaching Isaac how to build a chicken coop or how to run the tractor? Sure. Do I miss being able to sit at the kitchen table with Martha and Isaac and my parents? Sure. But even if I’d stayed, those things wouldn’t be happening. I’d be married just like Martha, and we’d be . . . adults.”

  “You’d still be able to sit at a table with them.”

  “I would. But then I wouldn’t be sitting at one with you.” He lifted her hand off the table and brought it to his lips. “Not like this, anyway.”

  “You wouldn’t have known any different,” she reminded him in a voice suddenly choked with emotion.

  “God had a plan, Claire. I truly believe that.”

  She opened her mouth to say something, but closed it when she realized she was too moved to utter a word. Instead, she simply answered with her trembling smile.

  “A year ago, when I came back here, I was prepared to watch my sister and my brother from afar. But now . . . largely because of you . . . I’ve had some special moments with both of them that carry me through the hard days. Because of you, I got to be present and watch my niece marry a really great guy. Because of you, I got to meet their new horse and enjoy a little lightness with my nephew-in-law. Because of you, I’ve finally come to grips with my misguided anger toward someone who was my best friend growing up.”

  “Shhhh . . . That’s enough. You’re making me sound way more important than I am.” She held her index finger to his lips for a brief moment and then returned her hand to her mug, the warmth of the ceramic oddly comforting despite the July night. “Speaking of Benjamin, how is he? Is he still helping Emma Stutzman?”

  He took another bite of brownie and then slid the rest of the dessert closer to Claire. “I don’t know. I wasn’t out there today. I’m really hoping the next time I stop out to see her, I’ll be able to tell her I’ve arrested the man who murdered her husband.”

  “And you will be able to tell her that, Jakob. Soon. I’m sure of it.”

  He smiled at her across the top of his coffee cup. “You really do have a way of making me feel like Superman.”

  She popped another forkful of brownie into her mouth and shrugged. “If the shoe fits . . .”

  A flash of light from just over Claire’s shoulder bathed Jakob in a momentary glow, and he sat up tall, propping his arms on his hips. “Don’t you mean the cape?” he teased.

  Laughing, she peeked over her shoulder in an attempt to explain the fleeting source of light and found Daniel Lapp, a local Amish toy maker, staring at their table with a mixture of uncertainty and restrained agitation.

  Jakob’s chair scraped the empty one behind his as he stood. “Daniel? Is everything alright?”

  Without lifting his eyes to Jakob, Daniel began to speak, his words, his tone flat. “I know I am not to be here, but I cannot forget what Miller has said.”

  “You mean, Benjamin?” Jakob asked.

  “Yah. Benjamin.” Daniel fidgeted with the ends of his beard and then slowly let his hand drift down his left suspender to the waist of his simple black pants. “He believes Wayne’s death was not an accident.”

  “It wasn’t.”

  “He says the man who killed him has been at many of our farms. That he has taken money at some.”

  Jakob crushed his napkin and then dropped it onto the table beside his nearly empty cup. “I can’t say with absolute certainty that the two are related, but I haven’t ruled it out, either.”

  “If it is not the same, I should not be here.”

  “Did something happen?” Claire stood, pulled an empty chair over to their table, and then motioned the hatted man to come closer.

  Daniel’s dark eyes left the center of the table and moved to Claire’s face. “I was just getting into bed when I heard sounds.”

  Jakob stiffened. “What kind of sounds?”

  “At first, I thought it was the wind rattling against the front door. But then I remembered there was no wind today.” Daniel took two steps forward only to take one step back, the uncertainty he’d exhibited upon entering the coffee shop ratcheting up a few notches. “So I listened. The sounds changed, but there were still sounds.”

  Jakob, who seemed to have absorbed all of Daniel’s agitation, clenched his teeth in time with his hands. “Go on . . .”

  “At first, I did not know what it was. But then I knew it was footsteps.”

  “On the front porch?”

  Daniel’s focus flitted across the top of Claire’s head and rested somewhere in the vicinity of Jakob. “No. Downstairs. In the front room. At first, I thought one of the boys did not stay in bed. But the footsteps, they were too heavy for young boys to make—especially young boys who do not wear shoes to bed.”

  “Did you go downstairs?” Jakob asked.

  “I looked into the children’s rooms first. All were sleeping.”

  Claire tried again to motion Daniel to sit, but the Amish man didn’t budge. “Were you still hearing the footsteps downstairs?”

  “I heard a quick clap of thunder in the distance and then more footsteps. But when I went downstairs there was no one.”

  “Was the door open?” Claire and Jakob asked in unison.

  “No.”

  “Could it have been a neighbor?” Jakob stepped around the table and stopped next to the empty chair Claire had tugged over for Daniel. “Maybe Stoltzfus stopped by and then realized you were sleeping?”

  Daniel’s head began shaking before Jakob had even finished his question. “Stoltzfus would not take money without asking.”

  Claire gasped, but the sound was quickly drowned out by Jakob’s fist hitting the top of the table. “Money is missing from your home?”

  “Yah.”

  “Are you sure?”

  This time, Daniel’s assent was accompanied by an emphatic nod. “Five hundred dollars.”

  Jakob covered his mouth with his palm, only to let it slip down his face as he started firing off a parade of questions designed to get as much information as possible. “Did you see anyone? Did they leave anything behind—a footprint, a scrap of paper, anything? Did you see a car drive away? Headlights in the distance? Anything?”

  “I did not.”

  “Did you look in the barn?”

  Daniel’s hand returned to his beard. “The barn?”

  “Yes.”

  “I did not. I did not think to look in the barn. The footsteps that I heard were in my house, not i
n my barn. I tried to go to sleep, to forget what I had heard, but Miller’s words did not allow me to sleep.”

  “So you came straight here?”

  “Yah. In case Miller is right. In case the man who took our money is the same man who brought harm to Stutzman. That is why I came. That is why I stopped here when I saw you through the window. I hope I did not make a mistake coming here.”

  “You did exactly what you should have done, Daniel. Thank you for that.” Jakob grabbed their cups and plate and carried them over to the counter and the yawning twenty-something barista clearly counting the minutes until she could close up shop for the night. When he returned, he held his hand out to Claire and helped her to her feet. “I’m sorry, Claire, but I’m going to have to get you back to your aunt’s now. I’ve got to rally a few of my officers and head out to Daniel’s. See if we can find something that will finally help us nab this guy.”

  She stepped into his arms to accept his hug and then grabbed her purse from its resting spot on the floor beside her chair. “Please, no apologies. And as for driving me to Diane’s, it’s not necessary. It’s a nice night. I’ve made this same walk hundreds of times and I can make it again now. Go with Daniel and we can talk in the morning.”

  “You’re not walking home by yourself at ten o’clock at night, Claire. It’ll take me less than five minutes to get you to the inn and me back to the station.” Reaching around Daniel, Jakob yanked open the front door of Heavenly Brews and waited for first Daniel, and then Claire to walk through. “Daniel, head back to your farm. If all goes well, I’ll probably get there at about the same time you do. But if you beat me, don’t touch anything, okay?”

  Chapter 25

  She was less than two steps from her room when she heard the telltale squeak of Diane’s door across the hall.

  “Claire?”

  Glancing back over her shoulder, she couldn’t help but smile at the sight of her aunt with a book in one hand and a mug of something in the other. “Why on earth are you still awake?” she whispered. “It’s a good thirty minutes past your bedtime.”