The Silent Order

by Melanie Dobson

  It would be Monday morning before Malloy even knew two of his detectives were missing.

  He had to find a telephone and call Malloy. The captain would send a whole unit of officers down to Sugarcreek tonight, and they would search the area like they’d searched Dempsey Lake. They’d find the men who murdered Lance—the men who probably killed Puglisi and Nardelli as well.

  A crow cackled overhead, and Rollin glanced up for the briefest moment. His foot caught on a rock, and his wounded shoulder hit the soil. Stunned, he lay paralyzed in a bed of stalks, blood spreading across his jacket.

  Death had never scared him before. Not when he was in the trenches of the Great War nor when he was trailing a gangster in the shadows of Cleveland. He welcomed death, but death never wanted him. It only seemed to want the breath of the good ones. Like Lance and like Liz…

  The crow buzzed the top of the corn, its wings clipping the golden tassels.

  Maybe he wasn’t good enough to die.

  A man shouted nearby, his face hidden in the corn, but instead of running, Rollin closed his eyes. His arm burned with pain, and he was so very tired.

  The crow called to him again, and he squinted up into the sunlight.

  The only reason Lance died was because he was in the wrong place at the wrong time.

  His mind spun as he blinked in the light. Both Lance and Liz deserved justice for what was done to them, but justice seemed to elude the courts these days. He had to persist until he made it right, either inside the courts or out of them. He was the only one who could avenge their deaths.

  The voice faded away in the cornstalks, death passing him by once again.

  No matter how much his body hurt, no matter how tired he was from the loss of blood, he had to force himself to move on. He had to find a telephone and call Malloy. Then he would find a safe place to hide until the captain came to his rescue.

  With his good arm, he pushed himself off the ground and trudged on through the field even though his feet felt like they weighed a hundred pounds each and his tongue chafed against his mouth like sandpaper.

  Ahead of him was a bright red barn, a beacon in the sea of corn. Sliding open a side door, he stepped inside and his eyes slowly adjusted to the light that shimmered through the cracks in the walls. Patches of hay and grass speckled the floor, and a horse neighed and kicked his stall in the basement below him.

  A low wall protected a long granary on the far side of the barn, and he tugged a wool blanket off the top of it. Walking into one of the open doorways along the granary, he threw the blanket on the floor and collapsed on top of it.

  He would rest for a moment and then he would find a telephone.

  *

  Ruth Yoder slid a plate of hot peanut butter cookies onto the small table in her summer kitchen and brushed the flour off the light green apron that matched her dress. Her peppered gray hair was tied in a bun at the nape of her neck, most of it hidden under her prayer kapp, and her neck and arms were as doughy as the pastries she loved to bake.

  Ruth scooted the plate toward Henry, and he swiped a cookie with each hand. Katie didn’t have the energy to scold him. He could have ten cookies if he wanted, as long as he was safe from the wicked English men.

  A breeze drifted through the open windows, mixing with the oven’s heat. The gun blasts had subsided, but the quiet did nothing to stop the racing in Katie’s chest. Who dared to pollute the peaceful solitude of their hills with gunfire? And why?

  “It’s wonderful goot,” Henry mumbled, his mouth full of cookie.

  Ruth patted his shoulder. “Thank you, Henry.”

  He lifted up his free hand to show both women. “May I have another?”

  Ruth giggled and passed him another one. Nothing pleased their friend more than a child or an adult who couldn’t resist her baking.

  Katie looked out the window, at the larger farmhouse beside Ruth’s kitchen. Ruth’s son Daniel lived there with his family and three of his eight children who were not yet married. Even though the man would only use his shotgun on a coyote or a deer, knowing he was there along with his gun would ease her mind.

  “Is Daniel home?” she asked.

  Ruth shook her head. “They drove into Sugarcreek to get supplies for tomorrow.”

  She sighed. So much for easing her mind.

  “Will they be home soon?”

  “Oh, I don’t believe so. They didn’t leave until the last hour.”

  “Oh…” Maybe she could borrow one of Daniel’s guns.

  Henry reached for another round of cookies as Ruth chattered about their family’s weeks of preparation for tomorrow’s church service. There was the cooking and the rigorous cleaning and the racks in the cellar that she’d filled with baked goods.

  Katie squirmed in her chair as Ruth continued to talk. Either her poor hearing had muffled the sound of the gunshots or she didn’t know what it was. Should she tell her friend about the guns or pretend she never heard them so Ruth wouldn’t be afraid?

  Ruth picked up the plate and held it out to her. “Have a cookie.”

  She started to shake her head, but she took one in her hand instead, holding it in her lap. “Danki.”

  Ruth leaned closer. “Speak your mind, Katie Lehman.”

  Katie stared down at the crisscross marks on top of the cookie. For the first time in a very long while, she wished she were driving an automobile instead of a road cart. She would put Henry in the back seat, and she would drive him far away from the fast cars and the guns. She would protect him from the evil.

  “What is wrong?” Ruth asked.

  She started to reply, but her son answered instead.

  “We saw some cars,” Henry explained as he chewed yet another cookie. “They sounded like they were banging on a drum.”

  Ruth’s eyebrows arched, looking at Katie instead of Henry. “A drum?”

  Katie nodded. “A very loud drum.”

  Henry hopped off the wooden chair and began circling the room. “They were going zoom, zoom, zoom.”

  In his eyes was delight at their speed. At the noise. But Ruth watched Katie’s eyes instead of Henry’s.

  “Henry?” Ruth turned toward him. “I have a favor to ask of you.”

  Henry stopped his zooming. “What is it?”

  “I’ve been so busy baking today that I haven’t had time to feed my chickens.”

  Henry’s chest puffed out. “I can feed chickens.”

  “I figured you could do that for me.”

  Katie stood up. “I’ll go with him.”

  Ruth opened the door. “I was hoping you could help me sweep the barn floor one more time before the men come with the church wagon to set up the benches.”

  Katie’s arm stretched around Henry’s shoulders as the three of them walked out the door, to the coop beside the barn. Her son would only be a few yards away from her. He would be okay.

  But even as he stepped toward the coop, out from the security of her arm, she reached for him. He nudged her hand away. “I’ll be all right, Mamm.”

  Ruth handed him a metal pail filled with feed. “As soon as you are done, you come into the barn.”

  Henry nodded, and Katie watched him walk toward the coop.

  “I can’t leave him,” Katie whispered to the older woman.

  Ruth lowered her voice but didn’t push for Katie to move. “What happened on the road?”

  Henry unlatched the door to the coop, and she watched him step inside. “There were two black automobiles chasing a blue one around the south end of your cornfield.”

  “Chasing it?”

  She nodded. “And then there were gunshots.”

  Ruth’s face paled. “Gunshots?”

  “Eleven of them.” She’d counted every shot, each one reverberating in her head.

  “Are you certain?” Ruth pressed.

  “Yes.”

  “The men will be here soon with the chairs,” Ruth said. “They will know what to do.”

  If the English men c
hose to shoot at each other, there was nothing the elders or the bishop could do, but at least they would know what was happening. And they could pray together for protection.

  Several of the Amish men could escort her and Henry back to Isaac and Erma’s home. The Lehmans’ house was a safe place. Her aunt and uncle held no ill will against anyone, and no one felt ill towards them either.

  Henry marched out of the coop, his grin broad as he handed the pail back to Ruth. “The chickens weren’t very hungry.”

  “Come help us sweep,” Ruth said, opening the large barn door. “Work will distract us.”

  Katie picked up her skirt and followed Ruth and Henry into the barn. She wasn’t certain that work—or anything else—could distract her today.

  CHAPTER 9

  The aromas of spicy sausage and tomato sauce permeated the first floor of the Cardano mansion, a good hour before most families in Cleveland ate dinner. The stracciatella—little rag soup—was on the stove, and a loaf of bread, fresh from her niece’s bakery on Mayfield, was warming in the oven.

  Celeste Cardano took a chug of whiskey from a bottle by the porcelain sink and almost spit it out. Her eyes burning, she gulped it down and set the brown bottle back on the counter before stirring the soup again. Salvatore didn’t drink, but before the ban, he used to bring a bottle of chianti home almost every night. Even though she despised the taste of whiskey, she knew she was lucky to have it.

  She hated whiskey and she hated eating supper before five o’clock every night and then watching the men in her life rush out the door seconds after they finished dessert. And she hated the supposed business that kept them away from home every night, all night long.

  She wasn’t stupid—she knew where her men spent their night hours—but they thought she was deaf and blind. As long as they thought she was too simple to understand what was really happening in the Cardano family, she’d live up to their illusion.

  Antonio walked into the kitchen and kissed her on the cheek. “It smells fantastico, Mamma.”

  “Only the best for my family.” She dipped the soup spoon into her pot of sauce and tasted it. Adding another palmful of basil, she kept stirring. Even if Salvatore didn’t like the taste of her food, cooking for her family was one thing that gave her a hint of purpose in life. It made her feel like they needed her. “Where are you going tonight?”

  Antonio shrugged. “To play cards with Emanuele.”

  “You need to get married, Antonio.” She always called him by the name she’d given him at birth instead of Junior. “Settle down with Rosa Gallo or another good woman.”

  “You are the only good woman left.”

  She waved the spoon at him, reprimanding. “Flattery is for fools.”

  He laughed, his eyes teasing her. No matter how much she scolded, he knew that she thrived on the flattery. Flattery and falsities. Her entire life had been built on deception.

  She set the large silver bowl of stracciatella on the dining room table alongside the bowls of olives and roasted peppers. Then she rushed back to the kitchen to take the bread out of the oven.

  She never liked being at the table when her husband came downstairs anyway. He enjoyed making snide comments about the food she’d set out on the table, saying he should send her to train with his kitchen staff at Mangiamo’s. As if they could cook much better than she.

  She pulled the bread out of the oven and slid it onto the cutting board. It wasn’t like Salvatore married her for her cooking anyway. He’d never tasted a bite of food she’d cooked until months after they married. When he finally did, he declared it unfit for a Sicilian man to eat.

  During those early years, when she thought she was in love with the man, she’d tried to learn how to cook for him. She’d visited the other Cardano wives, the ones who had emigrated from Sicily, and followed them around their kitchens, trying to make sense of all the pasta making, herb-chopping, and meat pounding. But even then, Salvatore wasn’t pleased. There were other places he could go for his meals, but he always came home to her at night.

  Those days and nights were long gone. Now he suffered through her cooking three evenings a week, mainly to talk business with his son before he went out for the night. Salvatore could pretend he was a family man, and she could pretend her husband wanted to be with her. And she could pretend she still had a family.

  Steam rose into the air when she sliced through the hard crust with her knife and the heat washed over her hands and face. She scooped up the hot pieces of bread and stacked them into a basket. After she looped the breadbasket over her arm, she walked toward the door that separated her from the dining room. She would deliver the bread first and come back for the pasta.

  On the other side of the door, she could hear her husband and son talking. Arguing. She leaned toward the door to listen.

  Salvatore slammed something on the table and the dishes rattled. “I told you to leave the Puglisis alone.”

  “You wanted Leone dead as much as I did.”

  “I didn’t want you to take him out.”

  Antonio’s voice rose. “It was self-defense.”

  “Don’t mess around with me, Junior. I know you organized it, and now the Puglisis are going to come after you—and after me.”

  Celeste leaned closer to the door. Perhaps that’s what Antonio wanted—the Puglisis to come after his father.

  “No one knows we knocked him off,” Antonio said. “I told the men I’d kill them if they leaked the information.”

  “One of your boys isn’t as scared as you think.”

  “He should be.”

  “You find out who talked, and I’ll take care of it. No one will know where they went.”

  Spoons clanked against their bowls, and the basket on Celeste’s arm shook as she pressed her hip against the door. Before she nudged it open, though, Antonio lowered his voice and whispered to his father.

  “Everything is arranged for Sugarcreek.”

  Celeste pressed her ear to the door, straining to hear Salvatore’s response.

  “For Friday night?”

  “The wedding is officially next Saturday,” Antonio replied.

  Their voices lowered, and as hard as she tried, she couldn’t hear their next words.

  She stepped back from the door. A wedding? Now she knew why Rollin asked about Sugarcreek. He was right. Her son was planning something down there this week.

  Her eyes blurred for a moment, and her head felt light. She had to get more information about what they’d planned, but it wasn’t like she could ask either man directly. The only reason she knew so much already was because they didn’t think she could hear. Or see.

  Her husband had grown lazy over the years with the information he passed along inside their house. And Antonio conducted much of his business in their home, among the deadwood he called friends. As long as she continued to feign stupidity, both men would keep talking.

  They saw her as more of a prop around here, like the old furniture that filled their living spaces. They needed her to manage the home for them and cook on occasion and smile like a good Italian wife on Salvatore’s arm at the city’s political events. But even there, she was only a prop. Salvatore didn’t want her to say much to the men he was trying to impress or to their wives even though she could easily impress them with her style and her wit.

  Salvatore knew he could use her for whatever he needed and she never would walk out the door—she had no place else to go.

  “Celeste?” Salvatore yelled, and she hopped forward. She heard him call her an idiot, the same word he called her whenever she didn’t jump fast enough at his bidding.

  Taking a deep breath, she tried to clear her mind as she pushed open the door. “Yes?”

  “I was looking for some decent bread,” he said, eyeing the basket in her hand. “But I guess I won’t be finding any here.”

  Antonio laughed along with Salvatore, his earlier flattery seemingly forgotten in the presence of his father. She should have taken Antonio a
way from Cleveland a long time ago, but it was too late for that. The boy she used to love with all her being was becoming like the man she hated.

  When she set the bread on the table, Antonio reached for the butter and then a slice. Salvatore didn’t touch the bread, but he began to retell their son about the kitchen fire she’d started almost a decade ago, while trying to fry bacon over the stove.

  It was like neither he nor Antonio remembered what happened during the early hours of that morning, like the fire had been an accident.

  She wasn’t the idiot in this family. Salvatore was.

  *

  Katie plucked a broom off its peg and handed it to Henry. Her son propped the broom over his shoulders and pretended to fly to the far end of the room. She sighed as she reached for a second broom. Clearly, she was losing her battle against the machines of the world.

  The bristles on her brush swept across the floor, scattering the chaff and dust. Cleaning a barn was a losing battle as well. No matter how long they worked, they would never be able to remove all the dirt from the floor. Grime stuck to the old wood like a tick on livestock. No matter how hard you swept or scrubbed, there were some things you could never get rid of.

  Henry whipped across the barn floor with the broom on his back, stirring up the dust but making no progress in their fight against it. She and Ruth moved toward opposite ends of the barn, and they worked deliberately, moving the remnants of hay and grass into piles so they could throw them out the door when they finished.

  For some reason, she felt safe in the confines of the barn, safer at least than in Ruth’s kitchen with its open windows and door. No one could see inside the barn, and there were plenty of places to hide.

  She glanced at the various hooks, rakes, and equipment hanging on the walls. There were also plenty of sharp tools and shovels to use if she needed to defend them.

  Defend them?

  She swept the broom hard across the floor. An Amish woman never thought about defending herself or anyone else.

  “The men should be here any moment,” Ruth said as she swept. “They’ll be able to help us.”