He felt bad that he’d been the cause of it.
Thankfully, the bells at the front door chimed, signaling a new customer. “May I help ya?” he asked, wheeling around to see who entered.
“Yeah! You can get me fifty pounds of flour and bird seed,” Walker Anderson joked as he walked through the doors. Coming closer, he chuckled. “What’s with you, Jacob? Since when do you ask if I need any help with anything?”
“Sorry, I was trying to take my mind off something, I guess.”
Walker’s smile dimmed. “Is everything okay?”
“Yeah, sure. What are you doing here, anyway? I thought you swore off this place on your days off.”
“I did. But then my sister talked to my grandma, who asked if I could bring her a couple of things from the store.”
“Francis and James?”
“Yeah.” Walker shrugged. “I guess my grandpa is feeling under the weather.” His frown deepened. “My dad is driving him to the doctor today.”
“I hope it’s nothing too serious. Walker, you want to grab the flour or the seed?”
“You don’t need to get either. I’ll do it.”
“I can help. I’m not busy. I’m just standing here, watching Deborah work.”
Walker’s head swung to the right. “Deborah? Oh, hey, Deb!”
To Jacob’s surprise, Deborah waved one slim hand. “Hiya, Walker. How goes it?”
“Well enough.” His smile grew. “Hey, you look great over there, scrubbing.”
One of her eyebrows rose. “And why is that?”
“Because that means I’m not doing it,” he teased with an even broader grin.
“Whatever I can do to make your job easier pleases me greatly, Walker Anderson.”
Feeling like the odd man out, Jacob glanced from Walker to Deborah and back again. Had they always been so comfortable around each other? And he called her ‘Deb’? When had that come about?
“Walker, I’ll go get the seed from the back. You get the flour,” Jacob said.
“All right, sure,” he said. “As soon as I go say hi to Deborah.”
Feeling cranky all over again, Jacob walked to the back of the store. Why did he care if Walker and Deborah got along so well?
Was it because he’d been rude to her for days and she hadn’t melted at his awkward apology? Or, was it something else?
Looking her way, for the first time Jacob noticed that her eyes were pretty—not just the same shade as her mother’s and her brother’s. And that she really was a petite woman. Why, the top of her head barely reached his shoulder.
And her brown hair was dark, the color of darkly brewed coffee. Or perhaps it was mahogany? Whatever the color, it made her pink cheeks look pretty. And her hazel eyes shine bright.
With a bit of surprise, he realized that none of these things took him completely by surprise. He’d noticed her beauty before. He shook his head. If Deborah ever found out what he’d done to her brother, she would certainly hate him all her life.
And there was a very good chance that she’d make sure everyone else in Crittenden County hated him, too.
Chapter 5
“Although I never knew Perry, I can’t help but feel sorry for him. It’s never easy to change a person’s perception of you. Sometimes it stays with you forever.”
LUKE REYNOLDS
Sitting at his desk in the back of Mose’s dusty office, Luke Reynolds read over his notes, and then read them over again. Everything on the assorted sheets pointed to one person. And though he didn’t like the direction the facts had taken, they had to be right. If there was one thing he’d learned after a decade in law enforcement, it was that facts didn’t lie.
Leaning forward, he braced his elbows on the imitation wood of the ancient metal desk. Flipping back a few pages in his notebook, he reread the interviews he’d conducted with Lydia Plank and Walker Anderson. With Perry’s parents and sister.
With Frannie and the Millers, and Abby Anderson and her girlfriends. Yep, he had to be on the right track. But what was going to be the best way to prove it?
Mose rapped his knuckles on the desk as he entered the office. “When are you going to start helping me out with the rest of the work around here? Every time I go out on a call, I leave you here hunched over your notebook like an old miser.”
Luke sat up, the muscles in his back sending shock waves of distress as he did so. “An old miser, Mose?”
“You know what I mean. You’re hunched over when I leave, and still in the same position when I get back.”
After slowly getting to his feet, Luke stretched. “I’ll start answering more calls when my boss hires me on for real.”
Looking troubled, Mose scratched his head. “You know these things take time. Got to get the funding approved, ya know.”
“I’m teasing you. I went and talked to the department over in Paducah. I think there might be a spot for me on their force.”
“Is that what you want?”
“It’s close enough to what I want.” What he wanted at the moment was to hang out at Frannie’s inn and relax. But since their wedding was going to be put on hold until Frannie’s father got used to the idea, Luke made do with working as many hours as he could.
Plus, until the right person was tried and convicted for Perry Borntrager’s death, his work wasn’t done. “Paducah is a whole lot smaller than Cincinnati, but they’ve got their share of city problems. Because that’s what I’m used to, I think it will be a good fit. Plus, it’s only thirty miles away.”
“I can see how you might feel more at home in a city environment.”
Now that the subject of his future employment was settled, Luke motioned to Mose’s chair. “Have a seat and look at these notes, would you? I’ve drawn some conclusions, but I need your brain. Tell me what you think, would you?”
Mose settled into his own chair, and after taking time to clean his reading glasses with a bandanna he retrieved from his pocket, he slipped them on and picked up the report. As he flipped back and forth through the notes, his posture changed.
“Jacob Schrock, huh? I know we agreed on this, but it still breaks my heart. I wish everything didn’t point to him.”
“It’s got to be him. Right?”
“I’ve known Jacob a long time, Luke. He’s seemed to be a caring, likable sort. I wouldn’t have thought that young man was capable of killing another person.”
“I think we are all capable, given the right circumstances.”
“And you think he was motivated enough? Your reasons don’t seem quite strong enough for Jacob to commit murder.”
Luke sighed. He’d been thinking the same thing. He knew Jacob had been angry with Perry for lying to his father, and for stealing from the family business. He also knew that Jacob had been very upset that Perry had still been hanging around the store after he’d been fired.
Jacob seemed to distrust Perry enough to publicly shun him. But there was a big difference between not liking someone and wanting them dead.
“That’s why I need to go talk with him some more.” Leaning forward, he showed Mose the notes he’d made while conducting his interviews. “I want to go visit with Deborah Borntrager, too.”
“I agree with you there. Both of them left soon after Perry’s body was discovered. Their trips seemed a little too coincidental to me.”
Luke sighed in relief. Talking over the case was restoring his confidence. “I’m going to go talk with her tonight.”
“Sounds good. Listen, when you go visiting to the Schrocks, I think I should go with you. Aaron Schrock is a good man, but he has a tendency to guard Jacob like a mother bear.”
“I was hoping you’d offer to come with me. I have no problem interrogating suspects, but everything’s changed now . . .”
“Because of your relationship with Frannie,” Mose said
.
“Yeah.” Feeling a little sheepish, he said, “Mose, I can’t believe I was so full of myself when I first got here. I really thought you needed my help because you were inexperienced.”
“It is true we don’t get a lot of murders around here—”
“But that wasn’t it, was it? It’s because these people here, they grow on you, don’t they? You don’t want to expect the worst of them.”
Mose shrugged. “I needed you here and you came, Luke. That’s all that matters to me. When do you want to visit tomorrow?”
“In the morning?” he suggested. “We might have a better chance of talking to him for a while in private before the store gets too busy.”
“He’s an adult, Luke. We can bring him here without his parents’ permission.”
Mose was right. But Luke also had a lot of experience with scared kids in interrogation rooms. Sometimes the change in environment rattled them so much, getting a confession was near impossible. “I hear what you’re saying, but I don’t want to push hard. Not yet, anyway.”
Mose scanned the report again, then for a moment seemed to scan Luke with the same intensity. “I’ll trust your judgment,” he said. “So, before you go find Deborah, want to go get something to eat?”
“Maybe. Where are thinking?”
Mose smiled slyly. “Mary King’s?”
“Done,” he said, getting to his feet. Now that he was settling into the rhythm of the county, he was realizing two things. First, never to push hard when pushing gently would achieve the same results.
And two? Never pass up a chance to eat at Mary’s.
I’m really glad you came with me, Lydia,” Walker said as he pulled into the parking lot of the community college he’d been attending. “I wanted you to see the campus.”
Lydia looked at the gray office building with a wave of apprehension. She’d thought they were only stopping by the campus so he could get some forms from a secretary.
But did he have another reason for taking her here?
“It looks like a nice place,” she said as they crossed the parking lot. “It’s big.”
He laughed. “It’s not that big. You should see some of the other college campuses in the state. UK out in Lexington is huge.”
“UK?”
“The University of Kentucky.” Flushing, he said, “All my life I wanted to go there. I even used to want to play ball for them. But it wasn’t meant to be.”
“Why wasn’t it meant to be?” she asked as he held the door open for her and they walked into the air-conditioned building. “I thought you liked this school.”
“Oh, I do. But that didn’t stop me from wishing I had gotten a scholarship to a big school like that.” With a shrug he said, “None of it matters, anyway. I wasn’t a good enough baseball player to get a scholarship and my parents couldn’t afford to help me get there any other way.”
Lydia sensed there was more he wasn’t sharing, but she had no idea how to encourage him to tell her more. And, of course, hearing about all his ties to the outside world made her feel insignificant and awkward.
She liked their life in Crittenden County. She liked how they were friends with most everyone, Amish or English. She felt more of an equal there. Here, she felt conspicuous in her dress and kapp.
And the crowds of people her age sitting in tables around them, listening to music on their headphones, chatting on cell phones, and working on their laptop computers felt overwhelming as well. Silently, she followed him down the hall and then up a flight of stairs.
When they came to an office door, Walker steeled himself before turning the knob and walking in. Lydia followed.
A lady who didn’t look to be much older than them looked up from what she was working on at her desk. “Yes?”
“My name’s Walker Anderson. I have some paperwork to pick up?”
She paused and smiled at Walker. “I remember you,” she said lightly. “You came in, looking for information about some correspondence courses.”
“Yeah.”
“We set aside some information in a packet. Hold on and I’ll go get it.”
When she got up, Lydia looked at Walker suspiciously. He was standing tall right next to her, but he seemed distant. Removed. “What is she talking about, Walker?”
“Huh? Oh, I’ll tell you in a minute.”
Lydia held on to her patience as the woman gave Walker the packet. They talked about credit hours and prerequisites, and then Walker wrote down the woman’s phone number and email address.
But the moment they were back in the hall, she turned to him. “Walker, what is going on?”
He guided her to an empty portion of the hall. “I’ve been thinking about taking some classes online next semester. On the computer.”
“Okay . . .”
He took a deep breath. “And I thought you might want to do that, too.”
She almost laughed. “Walker, I can’t go to college. You know I never even went to high school.”
“That’s what’s so great about what Alison found. You can get your GED online, Lydia. You can take classes with me back at home.”
“I can’t be taking classes, Walker. I’m working almost every day at the nursery.”
“Yeah, but you don’t want to do that forever, do you? I mean, now that we’re together, we need to plan ahead, right?”
Lydia felt like smacking her palm on the side of her head. My, but it had certainly taken her long enough to figure out what Walker had been getting at. The whole time she’d been waiting and hoping for Walker to turn away from all he knew and become Amish, he’d been doing some planning of his own.
“We do need to plan,” she agreed slowly. “But I’m afraid it’s not going to be as easy as I’d hoped. Or you hoped either, Walker.”
She could almost see the spark fade from his eyes. “You don’t want to go to school, Lydia? Not at all?”
“I’m sorry, Walker. But I don’t.”
He held his silence as they walked down the stairs, down the hall, and back out of the building. Only when they were getting into his truck did he speak again.
“Lydia, I love you, I do. But I don’t know how we’re going to manage to mesh our lives together. When we start talking about our wishes for the future, and start talking about plans for the rest of our lives . . . nothing seems to go together.”
“I understand.” She said nothing more because there was nothing left to say. Though their futures were at cross-purposes, they were in agreement on this: If one of them didn’t change, they didn’t have a future.
No, that wasn’t true. They’d have a future.
It just wouldn’t be together.
Chapter 6
“Perry discovered that if you stood in the middle of the trail, and crouched down just a little bit . . . he could see right into our windows. I never asked him how he found out. I suppose I didn’t want to know.”
JACOB SCHROCK
After supper, Jacob knew he couldn’t sit for another minute in his father’s company. Lately, his father had been hovering over him so protectively that Jacob was beginning to feel like a firefly in a jar.
He needed a break from the constant vigilance, and he needed it soon, or he was afraid he would say something he would regret. He’d been taught to always respect his parents and never argue with their directives. However, he was on the verge of breaking his silence.
Entering the living room, where his father was contentedly whittling in front of the fireplace, he announced, “I’m going out for a while, Daed.”
With a start, his father got to his feet. “Going out? Where are you going? It’s late, you know.”
“It’s eight o’clock, Daed. Not so late.”
“But it’s dark out—”
It had finally happened. His patience had snapped. “Father, of course it
is dark. And furthermore—”
With a wary look his way, his mother jumped into the conversation. “Aaron, enough! My goodness, what’s gotten into you lately? Jacob is twenty years old, not eight.”
To Jacob’s relief, his father looked more than a little shamefaced. “I know that.”
“Then why are you watching his every move? I tell ya, Aaron, sometimes I truly worry about you.” Waving her hand, she motioned to Jacob. “We’ll see you later, son.”
But his father stood up. “Hold on, Jacob. Are you taking the buggy? Because if you are, you should remember to get a lantern and be careful.”
Reminding himself that his dad was only spooked by Perry’s death, Jacob struggled to hold on to the very last bit of his patience. “I’m not taking the buggy. I’m only going for a walk. I’ll be back in a while.”
“Walking? Where to?”
“Daed, stop.” He ground his teeth, working to control the bark in his voice.
“It’s a father’s job to look out for his child.”
“I agree. Except I am not a child.” Looking over his father’s head, he met his mother’s gaze and sent her a silent, plaintive plea for more help.
She shook her head in dismay. “Aaron, stop this. You are borrowing trouble, and we both know it.”
“But—”
With a shooing motion, she waved Jacob out. “Go on, son. You worked hard today, and you did a fine job with the chores here, too. Go enjoy yourself for a few hours.”
“Danke, Mamm.”
The lines around her eyes softened. “Yes, of course. Now off you go.”
He grabbed his coat and hat before his father could come up with another reason for him to stay under his watch.
Once outside, he walked down the gravel driveway, enjoying the way the rocks crunched under his feet. The lantern shining in the family room window guided him to the side of the house. He continued to walk until the darkness enveloped him.
Thick clouds had formed overhead, effectively creating a shield over the earth. It was so dark he could barely see his hands, never mind any trees and shrubs surrounding him.
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