Secrets of Harmony Grove

by Mindy Starns Clark

  I didn’t know what this was about, but given that they were both some sort of government officials, I had the sudden, sickening feeling that I had just come face-to-face with two of the people who had been investigating me.

  TWENTY-SEVEN

  Almost immediately after spotting me, the two men turned away and strode quickly toward a cluster of cars parked near the house. Wanting to know who they were and what was going on, I thought about going after them and demanding an explanation. But then I hesitated, thinking that the longer this investigation of theirs remained hush-hush and in the background, the longer I was still free to move around and remain privy to all that was going on. Thanks to my lawyer’s inquiries, the AG’s office knew that I knew they were investigating me, and yet nothing official had happened yet, no interrogation or notification or anything. For some reason they had thus far chosen to remain silent. Because of that, I realized confronting them now could very well make matters worse for me, not better.

  Instead, I turned my attention to Rip and Charlie, who were conversing about the case nearby.

  “I’m thinking the blade in the trunk there is gonna test positive for that cock-a-doodle-osis stuff,” Charlie said. “Even better if it has Burl’s fingerprints on it and the vic’s blood as well. ’Cause then it would be case closed, and we’d have Burl Newton not just for possession of cockfighting paraphernalia but also for the murder of Troy Griffin.”

  “Wouldn’t be a sure thing, Charlie. Don’t forget, Griffin died of drowning possibly caused by the poison, not from the cut in his leg,” Rip said, giving me a wink and a smile when he realized I was there and listening in on their conversation. “Whoever cut him and whoever poisoned him could be two different people.”

  “Cut, poison, same difference, sort of,” Charlie replied. “At least some good physical evidence could link Burl to the scene of the crime. Then it would all be downhill from there.”

  We all watched as one of the technicians backed up a van from the gravel driveway and toward us across the grass between the chicken coops.

  I asked both men if Burl had an alibi for yesterday afternoon and evening.

  “Well, yeah, sort of,” Charlie replied, explaining that Burl had walked to a neighbor’s house around 5:00 for a barbecue and had stayed until police showed up last night around 11:00, when they were notifying everyone along the street about a possible wild animal on the loose.

  “Were those times verified by the neighbor?” I asked.

  “From what I understand, there were about six or seven guys there, and they’d already gone through a couple cases of beer by the time our men arrived. Every one of those guys gave a time they had come, verified by the homeowner and each other, but I wouldn’t exactly count their information as a hundred percent reliable. Most of ’em were drunk as skunks.”

  Recalling the timetable Mike had constructed, I knew the cut in Troy’s leg had happened at some point after he hung up on me at 5:30 and before he died, which was 6:10 at the earliest and 6:30 at the latest. If Burl was telling the truth, he couldn’t have been around to inflict the wound, though of course the timing regarding the poison left a lot more leeway than that.

  “Almost there,” Georgia said loudly, directing the van as it inched closer to the heavy trunk.

  I moved out of the way as I thought about Charlie’s comments. Had Burl killed Troy? The two men knew each other, having met during the renovation. But that had made them barely more than acquaintances, certainly not friends—or enemies, for that matter. If Burl had killed Troy, then why? I decided to ask Charlie if he had a theory for a motive to go along with his belief in Burl as the murderer.

  “Look around you. Poverty’s a great motivator—especially if ol’ Troy was out there diamond hunting, like you said. I bet he dug up those diamonds, and Burl saw the whole thing and just snapped. Wanted that ice for himself and killed to get it.”

  “Will you guys be searching Burl’s house to look for diamonds?” I asked, wondering if his theory could possibly be correct.

  “Not right away. Probably not till we get some evidence back from the lab that will justify a warrant.”

  Could Burl have killed from greed? Certainly, he was poor, much poorer than I had realized if his home and property were any indication. Every building, including the house, was sagging and peeling and so ramshackle that it looked as if the next strong wind would take the whole place down. That was odd, considering that Burl was a handyman and had the skills to fix things up. The only explanation for this state of disrepair was that he couldn’t afford the materials he needed to get the job done.

  Then again, maybe Burl was just lazy. Goodness knows, he was an incredibly slow worker, so maybe he just hadn’t gotten around yet to all of the repairs that needed doing. During the renovation of the B and B, Burl had come over to ask us for work several times, but we were already using a top-notch team of Amish carpenters and didn’t need him. Still he persisted, so just to be nice my father had finally hired him to do a single task, one that should have taken a day at most. Four days later, Burl finally finished. All my dad could say to me once Burl was paid and gone was thank goodness we had agreed on a rate that was by the job, not the hour. Now that I saw how very poor the man was, my mind was flipping back and forth between feeling bad for not using him more back then, even if he was slow, and being glad we hadn’t, just in case he was a murderer.

  “Well, whatever you say, my money’s on the Amish farmer next door,” Rip told us, obviously forgetting that the Amish farmer next door was my cousin.

  “Careful, Rip,” I said evenly. “That’s my family you’re talking about.”

  He didn’t seem embarassed but instead held up both hands and said, “Sorry, but one of his emus has been having stomach problems, which according to the tech wouldn’t be unusual if it was infected with that particular parasite.”

  “So you’d base a murder charge on a case of the runs?” Charlie teased.

  “Not murder,” Rip countered, “more like an accident, at least regarding the cut, if not the poison. This morning some of the boys found an animal print in a muddy spot along the creek in the grove, one that could be a match for the bigger emu. If it is, that would mean the animal had been loose out there last night and could have attacked the victim.”

  “And maybe breathe fire too,” Charlie added, eyes rolling as the three of us watched the trunk get loaded into the van.

  “Could an emu inflict that kind of damage?” I asked Rip, feeling anxious for my cousins. Jonah and Liesl couldn’t be held responsible if Troy had unknowingly unlatched their emu cage and set one of the large birds free and then got hurt by it, could they?

  Worse, officials didn’t actually suspect Jonah of some sort of foul play, did they?

  “Well, that’s what they’ve been talking about over there for so long. According to some expert the game commission brought in, emus are pretty docile, but they will kick if they’re cornered.”

  “And that kick could gouge a grown man’s thigh to the bone?” I asked incredulously.

  Rip shrugged.

  “It isn’t likely, they said. Some bruising, yeah, that’s to be expected. But that cut has got them pretty perplexed.”

  He went on to explain that emus have three toes with the middle one prominent, the nails textured in a way that would be consistent with the marking of the wound. In fact, he said, the medical examiner herself was the strongest proponent for the emu-did-it theory. Listening to the two men now, I decided I wasn’t going to form any opinion at all but instead would wait to see what might develop next. As Mike had said just last night, it would all come down to the medical. Right now, that involved a parasitic infection specific to birds, and as soon as the results were in we would be closer to many of the answers we sought.

  For now, I wanted to get back over to Jonah and Liesl’s to make sure they were okay. Rip and Charlie decided to come too, having grown bored once the van had driven away with the trunk safely inside. Georgia joi
ned us as well, and together the four of us walked toward a different cut-through than she and I had taken before, one at the very opposite end of Burl’s property. That path would allow us to bypass the grove completely and emerge at the back corner of my cousins’ farm.

  Moving along the tree line to the point where the cut-through began, we passed a widely spaced row of small, A-frame-shaped structures behind one of the Newtons’ old chicken coops. Two technicians were working in and around the old rusty metal structures, no doubt collecting samples in their search for the source of the coccidiosis.

  “What’s all this? Dog houses?” Georgia asked.

  “Gamecock houses,” Charlie replied. “See the pegs in the ground in front of each one? The roosters get a leash hooked from their ankle to that peg, with just enough play to let them move around but not quite enough to reach the other roosters.”

  “Otherwise, they might kill each other,” Rip added as we reached the entrance to the narrow path and started down it single file.

  I shuddered, remembering the roosters who used to make so much noise back here. Unlike in movies and television, these roosters crowed at all hours of the day and night, regardless of the sunrise. We always knew they lived in those little “rooster huts,” as we called them, but never in my wildest dreams had I suspected that they were gamecocks. Then again, as a child I doubt I would have even known what gamecocks were for.

  “Do you guys know if Burl’s father ever got in trouble with the law for cockfighting?” I asked, remembering Burl’s denials as he had been led away in handcuffs, saying that the items in that trunk had belonged to his father and not to him.

  “I dunno, but I’m sure Mike has checked that out by now,” Rip said, reaching up to help with a low-hanging limb. “He likes tracking back people’s histories good and thorough.”

  Not wanting to think about that, at least not in relation to myself, I asked Rip more about the emus as we continued onward. Soon we were getting a lesson in what he said the emu expert was calling “the cattle of the future.” Apparently, emu meat was as tasty as steak but much lower in cholesterol, emu oil was used in the health and beauty industries, and emu hide could be turned into fine leather. For someone who wasn’t afraid of hard work, emu farming could be a very profitable venture indeed.

  By the time we got to the cages, I felt much more knowledgeable on the topic. Just one official was still hanging around and talking to Jonah, though from their conversation it didn’t sound as though there had been any new developments beyond what Rip had already told us.

  Spotting Liesl sitting on the ground not too far away, I left the others and headed straight there instead. As I drew closer, I could see the sadness and despair on her face. I didn’t say a word but instead simply sat down next to her, putting an arm around her and pulling her close. She rested her head on my shoulder, and after a moment she began to cry.

  Though I didn’t join her in her tears at that moment, I knew exactly how she felt.

  TWENTY-EIGHT

  Liesl and I sat there together for a while as the sun moved below the horizon and streaks of orange slowly disappeared from the purple sky. As darkness descended and the moist evening air grew cooler, all around us began a twinkle of fireflies. There were just a few at first, then dozens, then what soon seemed like hundreds or even thousands. As far as the eye could see, tiny yellow-white lights sparkled, flickered, and glimmered like twinkle lights on Christmas Eve. Looking out at the tiny points of light that hovered amid the trees of the grove, I couldn’t imagine that any place in the world could be more beautiful than this.

  Liesl didn’t even seem to notice. Instead, she sat up straight, wiped her eyes, and apologized for her tears.

  “Why are you apologizing? This situation is totally cry-worthy.”

  “Because God is in control. His hand is over all of this, Sienna. If I really believe that, there is no need to cry, not even if my husband is accused of wrongdoing.”

  “Has Jonah been formally accused of anything?”

  “Not yet, but I am afraid…” Her voice trailed off as she shook her head, biting her lip to keep back more tears.

  “Did he have anything to do with Troy’s death?”

  “No,” she whispered.

  “Then we have to trust that the truth will out. If it doesn’t—”

  “Whether it does or doesn’t, I must wish for God’s will to be done, not mine. Not my husband’s. God’s. At all times, in all things. It is that simple.”

  Her words reverberated there between us. Sitting side by side in the encroaching darkness, thinking about the choices she had made and the life she lived, I began to wonder if Liesl’s faith ever wavered at all. Despite everything, deep in the night, had she ever woken up and found herself questioning the life she had chosen?

  Whenever I compared Liesl’s world to mine, I knew I could never live out my faith in the ways that she did, or at least not to such extremes. For her, being Christlike was an ever-present effort, one that began when she woke up in the morning and continued all day long. From clothing to transportation to technology and more, she lived a life of surrender, simplicity, and selflessness.

  I, too, strove to be Christlike as much as possible, but I knew I missed the mark more often than not. Part of me was deeply remorseful about that, deeply repentant. Another part of me, however, rebelled against the very thought of it, against all of the rules that had been drummed into my brain since childhood.

  Don’t drink, don’t smoke, don’t have premarital sex, don’t gamble, don’t curse, don’t, don’t, don’t.

  Good little girl that I was, I had fallen in line with every one of those “don’ts”—but in the end my good behavior had earned me nothing. The nondrinking, nonsmoking, nonpartying virgin had very nearly been gangraped. After that, it seemed to me that all bets were off. Given what I’d been through, why shouldn’t I now be able to live my life the way I wanted to? What was so bad about wanting more—more money, more success, more safety? Didn’t I deserve that? Didn’t God want that for me?

  Or were those the very things God was now calling me to surrender?

  Glancing at my cousin, my heart aching with the need for answers that wouldn’t come, I knew that this wasn’t a path I needed to go down now. Instead, I reached into my pocket and pulled out my phone and clicked on my favorite Bible app. If I couldn’t find answers for myself, I could certainly locate some biblical encouragement for my cousin. I typed in a few search phrases—birds, God’s will, justice—finally landing on Psalm 106:3, which seemed to fit the moment.

  “Here you go, from the Psalms,” I said, holding up the screen to read the verse out loud. “‘Blessed are they who maintain justice, who constantly do what is right.’ That’s you and Jonah, constantly doing what is right. God has your back, cousin.”

  Tentatively, Liesl reached out and took the phone from my hand.

  “You have a Bible in this thing? That is not King James, is it?”

  I grinned, reaching out to tap a button.

  “Now it is.”

  “Look at that!”

  Reaching out again, I tapped another button, this time changing the version from King James to the Luther Bible, which was in German.

  “Ach!” she cried, nearly dropping the phone from surprise. Gripping it more tightly, she read the words of the verse aloud. “‘Wohl denen, die das Gebot halten und tun immerdar recht!’ Sienna, this is astonishing! Unbelievable!” She handed it back to me, shaking her head in wonder, saying she had no idea that a cell phone could do that. “Perhaps those things are not all bad.”

  Not wanting to get into a technology debate, I tucked the phone away and changed the subject.

  “So what’s the story with the emus, Liesl? I didn’t even know about any of this. You said you have had them since spring?”

  “Jah, once Jonah had to stop training racehorses. He needed something else to supplement our income, so he did some research and decided that emu farming would be a wise choice
.” She went on to say that it had been a great adventure for the whole family—at least until now.

  As Jonah was primarily a farmer, I had forgotten that he trained racehorses on the side. It had always seemed an odd choice to me for a Christian to make, but then again I thought the same thing about all of the Amish tobacco farms in the area, not to mention the Amish vineyards that grew grapes for local wineries.

  “What happened with the racehorses?” I asked, wondering if he had been convicted about the matter somehow and had decided to give it up.

  “Ach, a big mess. It is not important now. Troy got Jonah in trouble with a horse’s owner and with the men who had arranged for the training. They all decided to take their business elsewhere.”

  I looked at Liesl, my eyes wide. Troy had something to do with it? Since when were Troy and Jonah involved in any way, connected by anything other than me and my relationships with each of them?

  “What do you mean?” I hissed, desperately hoping she hadn’t mentioned this particular fact to the police. In matters of the law, the Amish could be very naive. With a few honest words, my cousin could have incriminated himself in some way, ending up with major problems that a little less honesty and a simple chat with a lawyer could have prevented.

  Liesl looked at me, obviously startled by the tone of my voice.

  “What is wrong?”

  “You said Troy got Jonah in trouble. How? What happened?”

  She shrugged.

  “Troy got information from Jonah that he used in a sneaky way, to make money.”

  “Can you elaborate?” I asked, my stomach beginning to tighten into a knot. “But quietly, please,” I added, looking up to see that Rip and Charlie had left but that Georgia and the official remained, both of them talking to Jonah.