The Silent Order

by Melanie Dobson

  “Brown hair,” the man inside the car shouted out at them.

  “Brown hair and an angry sort of face.”

  “Angry?”

  Nico scrunched up his lips and forehead. “He always looks like this.”

  She glanced back up the hill again, and her son and Erma had disappeared. She brushed the strings from her kapp over her shoulder.

  Erma would know to hide Henry until the black vehicles were gone.

  “I’ll watch for Rollin Wells.” She turned, dismissing the man.

  And today she’d search until she found him.

  CHAPTER 21

  Rollin ducked under a branch and crept closer to the Bowmans’ barn. Through the trees, he could see the bright red siding and farm equipment piled up under a bay that stretched half the length of the barn, to the wide doors in the back. His colleagues in Cleveland may not be able to assist him this morning, but he didn’t need them to discover what the Cardano family was planning out here. Only to stop it.

  He wiped the sweat off his forehead, and through the leaves, he watched two burly men in white short-sleeve shirts and black ties stand guard by the back door. Instead of talking, their eyes scanned the forest behind the barn like they were expecting company.

  Taking off his jacket, he padded the bark of a tree, and then sat down on the pine-needled ground. He needed to get inside the barn to find out what the Cardanos had planned. Either the barn was being used as a storage center or speakeasy, or they were getting ready to form some sort of alliance here. An alliance he had to block.

  He glanced around at the dense trees and branches that fortified the barn. Whatever was happening on the other side of those red walls, the Cardano family had picked the perfect location for it. Without a foolproof tip, no one from the Cleveland force would venture down here to investigate, and unless someone complained, the local police would never notice what was happening out here in the hills. And who would complain about the preparations for a wedding, no matter how many black Lincolns attended the union?

  If Antonio’s men hadn’t mentioned Sugarcreek at the cemetery, he wouldn’t be here either.

  He fidgeted against the tree, his stomach rumbling.

  When he left the Lehmans’ house this morning, he should have taken more than a slice of bread to eat. But he’d wanted to get out of the house before anyone woke up with questions, especially Katie. He’d seen the questioning in her eyes last night when he came back with Isaac. He didn’t have answers for her, nor did he want to endanger her or any of the Lehmans by telling them too much.

  This battle was between him and the Cardano family, and it was a battle he planned to win. But right now wasn’t the time to fight. It was time to wait. And it felt like that was all he was doing lately. Waiting for Antonio and the others in the cemetery. Waiting for his arm to heal. Waiting to find out what was happening in the Bowmans’ barn.

  And waiting to find out why Malloy didn’t have the entire force out looking for him.

  He closed his eyes for a moment and saw the kindness and beauty in Katie’s face again. Something had happened between her and Jonas Miller last night, but he didn’t dare ask. It didn’t matter to him if Jonas and Katie were breaking off their courtship or if they’d decided to marry. That was their decision to make.

  After Liz died, he decided he would never marry. If the Cardanos could kill a member of their own family, they would have no problem murdering a detective’s wife or children. It didn’t matter anyway. His entire life was focused on bringing down the stronghold of the Cardano family. He could never risk having his own family.

  In the distance, he heard the airplane again, flying toward him. Yanking his jacket out from behind him, he ducked and held it over his head. The airplane swept low over the trees, and when it had passed, he peeked out from under his jacket and saw the green tail streak over the barn. The engine whirred for a few moments on the other side of the barn, and then it stopped.

  Had the plane landed in the field on the other side? If so, who was flying to the Bowmans’ place?

  The two guards remained stalwart at their posts, so he leaned back against his jacket again.

  Henry Lehman had watched that airplane like it was a shark, and Rollin understood. Even though he’d seen countless planes during the war, he found himself gawking at the flying machines as well. Someday, perhaps, he would actually learn to fly one.

  If he wanted to, Henry certainly would be able to fly one when he grew up. He was smart and determined and didn’t seem to be afraid of anything.

  Rollin, on the other hand, grew up afraid of almost everything. It wasn’t until after his father committed suicide that he decided to face his fears and go fight in the war. His mother was angry at him, but he discovered that opposition didn’t frighten him like it once had. He had confronted his own fear, but he was still afraid for the few people he cared for in his life, afraid of a criminal’s revenge.

  Sometimes he wondered what it would be like if he hadn’t signed up to join the police force. If he had married and fathered several children. What if he left the police force and strove for a simpler life? Instead of chasing criminals, he could take his son down to fish in a creek every weekend and dote on a daughter who was as pretty as her mother. As pretty as someone like Katie.

  He heard voices by the barn and inched up to see two new men join the others by the back door. He recognized one of them—Antonio Cardano. Junior. He couldn’t see the other man’s face.

  As Antonio scanned the forest, Rollin eased down again so Antonio wouldn’t spot him.

  “Have you seen anything?” Antonio asked the men.

  “Nothing but squirrels and birds.”

  “Rollin Wells is still around here.”

  He slunk even closer to the tree. They didn’t know how close he was.

  One of the men spoke. “Should we tell the others about him?”

  “No,” Antonio insisted, his voice chilling Rollin’s skin. “We can’t tell a soul.”

  “But so many of the men already know.”

  “Then tell them to keep their mouths shut. We’re close to finding him.”

  “How close?”

  Antonio paused. “We should get rid of him today.”

  Rollin scanned the trees behind him, like there was a battalion with guns pointed his way.

  “This meeting is going to happen,” Antonio said. “No matter what.”

  He clapped one of the men on the back. “Go search the forest and eliminate any unwanted guests.”

  “Yes, sir,” the man said, stepping forward.

  “But don’t go any farther than the trees,” Antonio said. “Rollin Wells will come to us.”

  Rollin didn’t hear if Antonio said anything else. Crouching down, he rushed back through the trees, away from the barn. Antonio’s men wouldn’t be eliminating him today.

  *

  Celeste edged her friend’s Ford to the side of the country road and leaned back against the headrest. Earlier today, she found Isaac and Erma’s former house—the address she used to write to when she mailed letters to her sister.

  A Mennonite couple lived in the house now, and as the woman bounced a baby on each hip, she said that she thought the Lehmans still lived near Sugarcreek, but she didn’t know where they’d gone. The woman recommended she check with the post office in Sugarcreek. Celeste didn’t want to go into town. Not that someone would recognize her after so many years, but she didn’t want Antonio or any of his men spotting her.

  A horse clopped up the road behind her, and she saw the animal’s dappled gray neck in the mirror, the blinders over his eyes. A buggy passed slowly by her car, and she watched the Amish couple laughing together, sharing some joke like her parents used to do when she was young.

  As the buggy passed, Celeste watched the young girl riding in the back, her feet kicking through the dust stirred up from the tires and horse’s hooves.

  Celeste never dangled her feet over the edge of a buggy—her parents were
much too strict for that—but she and Erma spent much of their childhood perched up on the narrow seat in the rear of a buggy, visiting friends, since her parents’ families lived east in Lancaster County. She and her sister made funny hand motions across from each other as they bounced along the country roads. While most of her friends had seven or even nine siblings, it was just she and Erma in their family, plodding through life in the back of a buggy.

  Her sister embraced the Amish culture and heritage. She loved the morning hours as she cooked and cleaned and even sewed before most of the world awakened for the day.

  Celeste, however, hated the morning hours, and she hated to sew and cook. Her mother insisted she learn how to care for a home. She had no choice but to comply or bow to her father’s belt, but during the nights, when her family was asleep, she’d slip down to the cellar and dance to the music playing in her head.

  Celeste caught a train to Cleveland on her eighteenth birthday and never came back. After she married Salvatore, she never breathed a word of her past to her new husband. He thought he’d married a savvy, worldly girl, and she intended to keep her identity a secret for the rest of her life.

  In the earlier years of her marriage, she’d written to her sister in secret, even after Erma met a man named Isaac Lehman and moved into her own home. Even after Celeste had birthed her three children, and Erma birthed Laben and Josiah—the nephews she’d longed to meet but couldn’t without exposing her secret.

  Erma and her family lived just hours away from her, and yet they hadn’t seen each other in more than thirty years. She guarded the secret of her past like it was a poison that could infect everything around her. Not even when Erma got married or their parents died did she breathe a word of this secret so she could attend the wedding or the funerals. Her old life passed away when she married Salvatore.

  Now, after all these years, here she was in Sugarcreek, searching for her sister—and her daughter.

  Last night she’d slept in a cramped room, at a forlorn Dover inn. She no longer recognized any of the countryside where she’d grown up, but after discovering Erma and Isaac had moved, she spent most of the afternoon cruising the back roads and reading the mailbox signs. She’d gotten excited when she saw the name Lehman on one mailbox until she saw the much smaller name of Timothy before it.

  Perhaps Timothy was a relative, but she’d been afraid to stop and ask an Amish person for directions to her sister’s. Afraid of calling any more attention to herself than she already did.

  She repositioned the black satin cloche over her hair and crept back onto the road.

  It was strange to see automobiles around Sugarcreek, vying for the roadway with the buggies and horses. Besides the automobiles, not much had changed since she’d grown up. Not like the outside world, where the music was sassier and women’s hemlines seemed to lose an inch or two each year.

  Women in the cities held respectable positions now at offices and department stores. If she had been born a few decades later, she would have joined the working ranks instead of dancing at Ernie’s. And instead of marrying Salvatore.

  When Celeste was young, the restrictions of the Amish lifestyle felt like they would strangle her. She craved freedom from regulations and rules, so marriage to Salvatore seemed like salvation to her—never again would she have to return to the Old Order restrictions on her life. Even when she was too old and too ugly to dance.

  But salvation by marriage was only masked as freedom. There was no bishop to define the world’s rules, so she had to learn by herself which ones to follow. And there were plenty of rules in the Cardano family and in society. She learned quickly who could deliver the greatest penalty if she stepped outside the boundaries. In the normal world, these enforcers were usually the police and judicial system, but in her world, it was the men with guns who didn’t answer to any judge.

  Celeste drove to the next mailbox and inched the car forward as she read the name. Yoder. She pulled back onto the road again.

  She didn’t think Erma would ever move away from Sugarcreek, but maybe she had. Maybe she and Isaac took their boys back to Isaac’s family in Lancaster when Nicola and Henry showed up at their door. It would make sense to protect them all.

  The thought should have brought relief, but it saddened her instead. After she sent Nicola and Henry here, she received one last letter from Erma saying they’d arrived, but she never heard another word from Sugarcreek nor had she written Erma again. Anyone could intercept her correspondence—Salvatore, Heyward, even Rollin Wells. She didn’t dare let anyone know where her daughter had gone or that Celeste had any part in her departure.

  Since the fire, she hadn’t allowed herself to hope that one day she would see her daughter or grandson again. Salvatore didn’t know where Nicola had fled, and in his mind, both his daughters were dead. Celeste assured him they would never see or hear from Nicola again but refused to tell him where she’d sent their daughter and little Henry.

  After the fire, Salvatore paid off the firemen, and the medical examiner identified two bodies in the ashes. No one outside their immediate family knew about Henry, and Salvatore never acknowledged the baby’s existence. Even though the medical examiner was on Salvatore’s dole, he met with a tragic death a few months later.

  On her drive south, Celeste began to hope again. She wanted to see her daughter—tell Nicola how sorry she was for everything that happened. And she wanted to hold her grandson close. She wouldn’t stay long, just enough time to warn them to leave the area until Antonio and all his cousins and cronies were gone.

  She turned right at the intersection and followed the road through the trees and up yet another hill.

  She envisioned holding that child close to her breast, kissing the wisps of blond hair, but Henry wouldn’t be a baby anymore. She’d have to give him a quick hug instead, if she could catch him.

  A gaggle of geese swarmed over her, blocking the sun for a moment as she crested the hill. They honked like they were cheering each other on their journey. Like they enjoyed being together.

  Henry would be almost nine now. Would he be like Antonio when he was nine, playing with the frogs and snakes in the trees behind their house?

  Antonio spent a decade playing outside before they moved into their mansion on Murray Hill, back when Salvatore and his brothers were trying out several different business ventures to determine which one would bring them the wealth they’d craved ever since coming to America. The Cardano fruit stands and laundries had been moderately successful, but the nightclubs brought in the most income until Prohibition.

  With Prohibition, their family’s income exploded, but she often wondered if Salvatore’s life was really what he dreamed about growing up in Sicily. She had all the luxuries she’d dreamed about as a child, but it certainly wasn’t the kind of family life she’d wanted.

  Family was everything to her as a girl, and when she married Salvatore, she’d thought it was important to him as well, with all his brothers and their wives and a dozen Cardano children. Then she’d discovered family was a tool for him instead of a tie.

  Celeste was searching for the Lehman house, but it was possible Nicola didn’t even live with Isaac and Erma any longer. Perhaps Nicola had met a nice Amish man and married him. She was old enough to run a household by now and have a home full of children who loved her.

  Maybe Nicola had a baby Celeste could hold or even two.

  Around the curve, a cloud of dust bloomed from a field. She stopped at the next mailbox, checked the name, and continued driving.

  She wanted to see Nicola and Henry, and she wanted to see them today. If they were no longer in Sugarcreek, she would find out where they went. Now that she was on the road, she’d drive to Pennsylvania or Indiana or anywhere else if she had to in order to see them.

  Her car bumped over a bridge, and she glanced at the creek trickling underneath. On the other side of the water, she saw a young boy splashing in the water with his pants’ legs rolled up. She stopped by the
bridge and watched him pick up a rock and throw it into the water.

  The boy turned, catching her eye, and he waved to her.

  She slowly opened the car door and stepped out. She wouldn’t ask an adult about the Lehmans, but it wouldn’t hurt to ask a child. Maybe he could tell her if Isaac and Erma still lived near Sugarcreek.

  As she walked toward the bank, the boy’s sandy brown hair became clearer. And his wide smile.

  Could it be?

  She swallowed hard.

  Henry looked just like his father.

  CHAPTER 22

  With a basket of eggs balanced on the floor of the buggy, Katie directed Prince carefully around the curved roads, toward the Yoders’ home. If Nico stopped her, she would show him the eggs. Tell him she was going to town to sell them. If Nico didn’t believe her, maybe she would throw one at him.

  A smile slid across her lips. They wouldn’t let her laugh long, but she’d enjoy watching the egg yolk slide down Nico’s slicked-back hair and haughty eyes and his expensive suit.

  The sun beat down on her kapp, and the nape of her neck burned. When she lifted her skirt a few inches, her bare toes and ankles welcomed some relief from the heat. She would find Rollin and convince him to come back to the Lehmans’ until they could figure out a way to either get him to Cleveland or get someone down here to help him, preferably in the cool of the evening or the dark cover of night.

  At the Yoders’ house, she unharnessed Prince and opened the pasture gate to let him roam beside the barn. Ruth was inside the house, baking oatmeal cookies, and she visited with the older woman for a few minutes. Before she left, Ruth insisted she take fresh cookies back to Henry, so she tucked the package in the basket beside the eggs.

  She didn’t tell Ruth where she was going, but Ruth still stopped her before she stepped out the front door.

  “God be with you, Katie,” the older woman said.

  She hoped God was with her today. With her and with Rollin.