A Killer Carol

by Laura Bradford

  “You’re welcome, kiddo. See you soon.” And then he was gone, the silence left in his wake leading her gaze across the street once again.

  In just the time span she’d been on the phone—four, maybe five minutes—more buggies had arrived in the field, each one unhitched from its horse and left to wait until it was time for the long procession out to the cemetery. Mourners in black winter coats and head coverings—brimmed hats for the men, kapps for the women and girls—made their way up the driveway, the men splintering off to stand beside the barn, the women heading up to the house.

  A flash of light drew her eyes to the rearview mirror and the morning sun glinting off the side panel of an approaching minivan. Like the others she’d seen turn into the driveway so far, it slowed to a crawl as it passed by, the driver clearly assessing the proper place for car traffic in relation to buggy traffic. Even with the tint on the windows, which made it impossible to see inside the minivan, she knew, when it stopped, that the side door would slide open and Amish would come flooding out, the drive to that particular farm, or the number of people needed to transport, simply too great to use a buggy.

  She watched the minivan pull into the driveway, hesitate behind the line of other Amish taxis unloading their occupants, and then turn, slowly, into the field of buggies before parking, finally, in the far corner. Seconds turned to minutes as the side door remained closed, prompting her to look again at the dashboard clock: 7:45.

  Grabbing her purse and keys, she stepped onto the road, locked the door, and made her way up the driveway, noting the continued arrival of more Amish as the service loomed closer. The men stood off to one corner of the yard, talking among themselves. The women, she knew, were in the Chupp home, where they’d remain for about another five minutes or so. At that time, they’d go into the barn and take their seats. Shortly after that, the men would begin filing in—ministers and older men first, followed by younger married men, and finally unbaptized boys. They, too, would take their seats, opposite the women and girls. In the center, between the gender-divided sections, Mary and Daniel would lie in death’s repose in simple, unadorned open pine caskets.

  She also knew there would be two sermons—a shorter one of about twenty minutes in length, and a longer one lasting about an hour. The Amish around her would sing from a special hymnbook that had no musical notes, just lines of text to which an almost chant-like tune—some lasting for as long as nearly thirty minutes—had been handed down across many generations.

  At the completion of the three-hour service, the minister would recite Mary’s and Daniel’s names and say a prayer while the Amish and their guests walked past the deceased for one last look before the caskets were transported out to the wagons tasked with taking them to the cemetery.

  While the family and others who wished to do so attended the burial, Claire and everyone else would remain behind at the Chupps’ to visit over a meal. She couldn’t say for sure, but she suspected Esther and Eli would stay behind rather than go to the cemetery on account of Sarah’s size and the outdoor temperature. If they did, she would sit with them. If not, she’d find someone else. Either way, she hoped the more relaxed atmosphere surrounding the meal would provide an opportunity or two to learn more about Daniel and Mary’s son and, perhaps, speak with him directly.

  Even without using the notes she’d jotted down in the kitchen last night, Claire knew what she wanted to ask, what she wanted to know. She’d only gone over it a dozen times in her bed while trying to keep her thoughts from straying to the nightly call with Jakob that wasn’t—

  “It’s Claire, right? From the other night?”

  She stopped, mid-step, and turned toward the voice, the dark hair and eyes, coupled with the ill-fitting English suit and cheap dress shoes from the first night of the viewing, sending her limited theatrical ability into full-test mode.

  “Yes, and you’re Abe . . .”

  His long, narrow chin dipped nearly to the collar of his shirt with his slow, labored nod.

  “How are you holding up?” she asked, touching his arm.

  “I’m not sure how to answer that other than I think I’m still in shock a little. I wasn’t ready for this. I wanted Dat to see Trish and I together, as adults, and I wanted them both to meet the baby when he’s born.”

  Turning toward the field he’d just exited, Abe extended his hand to a hesitant yet pretty blonde in a simple black maternity dress heading in their direction. Behind her, by no more than a few feet, was a pair of familiar faces Claire recognized at once.

  “Trish, I want you to meet someone.” Abe pulled the pregnant woman closer and then released her hand in favor of draping an arm across her shoulder. “This is Claire—Claire Weatherly.”

  Trish’s cat-green eyes widened between long, dark lashes. “Wait, this is the one you were telling me about last night, right? The one involved with the cop who invited you to the station yesterday so he could check on how you were doing?”

  Check on him? Is that what Abe called being questioned in the double murder of his estranged parents?

  If Trish caught the flush that preceded Abe’s nod, she gave no indication. But Claire caught it. Before she could respond with anything intentionally yet subtly probing, though, Trish retraced her steps just far enough to accompany the slower-moving pair the rest of the way. “Mom, Tommy, this is Claire. She’s—”

  “I know Claire, dear.” Nancy Warren sidled into the center of their makeshift circle, her own muted blue-green eyes crackling to life. “She owns that cute little gift shop on Lighted Way, and her aunt owns Sleep Heavenly.”

  “The bed-and-breakfast? Oooh, I have always wanted to know what it’s like inside there. It looks so pretty from the outside,” Trish gushed.

  “It is. The parlor is my favorite room in the house.” Claire glanced to her left, noted the Amish women entering the barn in groups, and hiked her purse farther onto her shoulder. “It looks like they’ll be starting soon. Are you heading in?”

  Stiffening, Abe followed Claire’s gaze to the barn. “Is Jakob here yet?”

  “I . . . I don’t know that he’s coming,” she said, her words sticking in her throat.

  “He said he was. Said he’d sit with me outside the barn.”

  Tommy snorted. “Ah, the two disgraces, sitting side by side, where no one has to look at them . . . How welcoming.”

  “Tom, please,” Abe protested on an exhale. “They’re my family. I need to be here.”

  “We’re your family, dude—Trishy, me, and Maw. Have been since the day the rest of them relegated you to being treated like that.” Tommy pointed at the single bench positioned outside the large barn doors.

  “Tom, please,” he repeated.

  Shooting his hands into the air, Tommy took a temporary step backward. “Okay, okay, I’m done. Your call, your life. But Trish isn’t sitting outside, in her condition, in this cold. It isn’t gonna happen.”

  Abe pulled a face. “I had no intention of letting her sit outside, Tom.” Gritting his teeth, he turned back to Claire, searching. “If it’s not too much trouble, would you mind letting Trish and everyone sit with you? That way they know someone?”

  “Goodness gracious, Abe Esch, I’ve been shuttling Amish around for decades in this town.” Nancy planted her hands on her hips. “Why, I’m betting there isn’t a single person in that barn right now that I haven’t had in my van at some point in all those years. You don’t need to be pushing us off on Claire like some sort of—”

  “You’d be doing me a favor, actually,” Claire said, hooking her thumb in the direction of the barn while slanting an understanding smile in Abe’s direction. “But we really should get inside before the men go in.”

  “She’s right.” Abe pulled his wife in for a quick hug. “I’ll be fine.”

  “You’ll freeze,” Trish protested.

  His broad shoulders rose and fell be
neath his own dark coat. “I’ll be fine. I promise. I’m just grateful Bishop Hershberger is allowing this at all.”

  “You’re grateful he’s making you sit outside on a bench all by yourself?” Tommy spat through clenched teeth. “Like some kind of diseased dog? Are you kidding? Are you even hearing yourself right—”

  “He won’t be alone.”

  Startled, Claire looked up as Jakob, dressed in a dark woolen coat over a navy blazer and khaki-colored dress pants, strode into place beside Abe, his strong, capable hand coming down on the young man’s shoulder in a show of something that looked a lot more like understanding and quiet solidarity than suspicion.

  “Jakob,” Abe said, glancing at his wife. “You made it . . . Like you said yesterday when we talked . . . at the station . . .”

  “I did.” He reached into the front pocket of his dress coat, pulled out two thick pairs of department-issued gloves, and handed one to Abe. “I’m thinking we might want to put these on, don’t you? Might help keep the feeling in our fingers a little longer . . .”

  “Wow, yeah, thanks.”

  “My pleasure.” Then, leaning forward, he whispered a kiss across Claire’s forehead, his breath warm against her skin. “In case you’re wondering, he asked me to keep our talk from his wife in light of her condition. So I’m honoring that for the time being. Also, I stopped by the shop on the way just now and Bill said you were already here. If I’d known you were coming, I’d have offered to stop by and pick you up so you didn’t have to borrow Diane’s car.”

  Claire knew she should say something, anything, but in the end, she simply turned and led Abe’s wife and her family across the driveway and into the barn.

  * * *

  * * *

  She found Esther the second she stepped off the cafeteria-style line with her turkey sandwich and piece of chocolate pie. The new mother was seated at a table not far from the Chupps’ back door, gazing down at the bundled mound nestled inside the crook of her arm.

  “Would you like some company?” Claire asked, bypassing her friend’s look of surprise in favor of the sleeping infant she couldn’t ignore if she tried. “Because I’d gladly trade you my sandwich and this pie for a chance to hold that sweet little girl for a while.”

  Esther’s quiet laugh drifted upward, stealing a smile from Claire as it did. “You do not have to give me your food to hold Sarah.”

  “I know. But I’m guessing you didn’t get anything for yourself on account of letting her sleep, yes?”

  “There will be time to eat later,” Esther said, looking back down at her baby. “When she is awake.”

  “When she’s awake, you’ll be too busy engaging her to eat then, either.”

  Esther’s cheeks flushed with the truth. “Yah . . .”

  “So let me have her, and you”—she set her plate down in front of Esther—“have this.”

  “But when will you eat?”

  “When I have to give her back to you because she’s not mine to keep.” Lowering herself onto the bench, Claire worked her fingers between the baby and Esther’s sleeve and slowly, carefully, pulled the baby to her chest. “Oh, Little One,” she whispered. “You make all the bad things just disappear, don’t you?”

  Esther pulled her hand back from the sandwich to peer at Claire, worry donning lines across her otherwise smooth forehead. “What bad things?”

  Claire lifted her gaze just shy of Esther’s before dropping it back down to Sarah. “Nothing in particular. Not really. It’s just stuff like this, here—stuff that shouldn’t be.”

  “He will know soon. Do not worry.”

  “He?” Claire asked, looking up.

  “My uncle.”

  It took every ounce of energy she could muster not to crane her neck around in search of Jakob, but she succeeded. “What will he know?”

  “Who did this awful thing to Mary and Daniel.”

  “You’re not upset that he questioned Ruth?”

  “Eli is not happy. Ruth is his twin sister. But I tell him it will not last. Soon, Jakob will know. Because of you.”

  “Me?” she echoed, necessitating a quick bounce of her arms to keep Sarah contentedly sleeping. “What are you talking about?”

  “Ruth told me of your visit yesterday. The questions you asked. She told me you want to help my uncle find the truth. That is why I say Jakob will know soon. Because you will see that he does.”

  “I’m trying, Esther, I really am, but . . .” She gazed down at the baby. “What happens if Eli and Ben can’t forgive Jakob for talking to Ruth about this in the first place? What you guys have managed to build behind closed doors means the world to him.”

  “Ben does not know—Ruth does not want him to know. And Eli? He will be fine, in time. I will see to it that he is.” Esther stopped, took a bite of her sandwich, and released a tiny moan of pleasure. “Mmm . . . Did you hear my stomach during the service?”

  “No . . .”

  “It sounded like yours would when you would open the window by the alley and the smells from Ruth’s baking would come into the shop. I tried to use Sarah to cover the noise, but I do not think it worked, since Hannah had to hide a smile.” Esther took a second and third bite and then rested the remaining food back on the plate. “I had hoped you would come into the barn sooner so you could sit near me, but you did not.”

  “I’m sorry. I would have liked that, too, but I thought it best to sit with Nancy and her kids. So they’d feel a little less out of place, I guess.”

  Esther scrunched her nose up tight. “Everyone here knows Nancy and her children. When we do not want to take our buggies to the doctor or a store, Nancy is one who takes us. Even when I was little, Mamm and Dat would pay Nancy to take us places we had to go. It is that way for many here today.”

  Dividing her attention between mother and baby, Claire soaked up her friend’s words, the journey they’d taken her on bringing her up short. “Wait. You’re twenty-three now, right?”

  “Twenty-four.”

  “Twenty-four,” she repeated, casually taking in the tables to their left and right while her thoughts wandered in a different direction altogether. “So does that mean you grew up with Mary and Daniel’s children?”

  “Mary and Daniel had many that are much older than I am. But Greta and Abe, they were only a few years older.”

  Bingo.

  “Are you friends with them?” she asked, only to realize her mistake in conjunction with Abe’s banning. “I mean, with Greta, anyway?”

  Poking at a piece of turkey overhanging the edge of her sandwich, Esther lowered her chin to the top of her coat and her voice to a volume Claire had to strain to hear. “She was a few years older than I was in school, so she was always with the older girls. But Abe was my friend. He was kind and he was gentle, and we would share cookies from our lunch pails at recess sometimes.”

  Kind . . .

  Gentle . . .

  “Were you surprised when he left the church after being baptized?” Claire asked.

  “I was surprised it got to that.”

  “Meaning?”

  “The old bishop . . . He did not see.” Then, as if fearing she’d crossed some sort of invisible line, Esther sat up tall and reached for her sandwich, her voice still hushed. “It was nice to see Abe today, even if I could only see a little bit of his face and his hair through the crack of the barn door.”

  “I would imagine such treatment might anger Abe.”

  Esther shrugged. “Abe was not one to anger. It was not his way.”

  “Perhaps his way is different now that he is English.”

  Glancing down at her sandwich, Esther seemed to consider Claire’s words. “Perhaps you are right.”

  “But you don’t think so?” she prodded.

  “I do not believe Abe’s heart would change simply because he is no longer
Amish.”

  The baby stirred in Claire’s arms but did not wake. “So you don’t think less of him? For leaving?”

  “I think it is sad. He worked hard, tried hard.” Esther looked beyond Claire toward the barn. “But still, I am glad he was here.”

  “Bishop Hershberger allowed him to come. He sat with Jakob on a bench outside the barn.”

  “I am sorry Jakob could not be inside with you. But it was for the best today.”

  “Today?” she asked, following Esther’s gaze to a plump Amish woman exiting the house with a plate of sandwiches in one hand and a basket of fruit in the other.

  Esther lowered her sandwich back to the plate. “The Chupps do not think well of my uncle. If it was not for the bishop, he would not have been allowed on the property.”

  “Jakob has been to Amish funerals before. The Amish just turn their backs.”

  “That is not enough for Lloyd and Greta,” Esther said, her voice barely more than a whisper. “They are very strict to the Ordnung.”

  Claire glanced back at their host and took a moment to really soak her in—the black coat, the matching winter covering atop her kapp, the sullen lines around her mouth and eyes so unlike that of either of her parents. “Then it must kill her that her brother left after baptism.”

  “It was Mary who was sad, not Greta.” Esther’s eyes led her on a brief tour of their surroundings before settling on a tall, lanky man in a black hat and black coat, standing, arms crossed, in a circle of Amish men, his eyes darting around the grounds while clearly hanging on every word his brethren were speaking. “For Greta and Lloyd Chupp, it is not enough to just turn backs to those under the ban. For them, it is as if those like Abe and Jakob are dead.”

  “But they’re not dead,” Claire protested. “They’re right here. In the same town.”

  Shrugging, Esther retrieved her sandwich. “That is why I am glad my uncle did not sit inside the barn today, even if it meant he could not sit with you as he would want to.”

  The words, their meaning, the naiveté behind them, were like a punch to the stomach. “It was . . . fine. It was better this way.”