Shunned and Dangerous (An Amish Mystery)

S
he tucked her hands into the front pockets of her cardigan sweater and smiled at the faint squeals and screams that punctuated the otherwise quiet countryside of Heavenly, Pennsylvania—sounds she knew would only intensify as night descended.

All week long Claire Weatherly had been hearing about Mose Fisher’s corn maze from the man’s granddaughter. In fact, Claire almost wished she’d had the presence of mind to take notes during Esther’s many tellings. She could have supplemented her shop’s rapidly dwindling bottom line by printing a foolproof tip sheet and selling it to the masses expected to flock to the intricate series of trails throughout the weekend.

But she hadn’t.

Instead, she’d covered her ears time and time again as her Amish employee and friend unknowingly threatened to ruin the kind of interactive puzzle Claire had enjoyed since she was old enough to navigate the seasonal challenge issued by unending rows of golden-hued stalks. The fact that this particular labyrinth was designed and run by a member of the Amish community she’d come to love only served to raise her nearly lifelong intrigue to a whole new level.

A
clip-clop
at her back made her step to the side of the road to allow the gray-topped buggy used by the Old Order Amish in Lancaster County to pass. The friendly nod of the driver, coupled with the shy smile of the man’s wife beside him, warmed Claire from the inside out, prompting her to return their quiet acknowledgment with a wave.

In Heavenly just shy of nine months, Claire knew a number of the Amish in her newly adopted hometown as friends—people like Esther and her beau, Eli Miller, as well as Eli’s twin sister, Ruth, and their older brother, Benjamin.

Benjamin.

She forced her thoughts from the gentle blue-eyed man and the promise he’d made that prevented them from ever being more than friends, and she focused, once again, on the orange triangle affixed to the back of the slow-moving buggy and the sandy-haired boy that peeked out at her with a hint of curiosity. She didn’t know the child’s family, didn’t know which farmhouse they inhabited, but thanks to her deepening friendship with Esther and her own fascination with the Amish, Claire was capable of filling in some of the blanks herself. She figured the little boy, who eventually smiled as the buggy flaps slowly drifted closed, to be about six years old. Judging by the length of the driver’s beard, the man had been married a good ten years or so, making the youngster he transported one of probably four or five. The woman who sat so stoically beside her husband handled the children and her daily work with little respite and nary a complaint.

Releasing a quiet sigh, Claire watched the buggy disappear around an upcoming bend in the road, the now common sight enveloping her in a welcomed sense of calm. In any other place, Claire’s assessments would be nothing short of conjecture. But there, in Heavenly, they were a virtual certainty—rare givens in a world of few.

The unmistakable hum of an approaching engine cut through her thoughts, and she turned once again, the buggy of moments earlier replaced with modern technology and a dashboard-mounted dome light. The passenger side window slid open as the sedan slowed to a stop beside Claire, the familiar face behind the wheel bringing a smile to her lips.

“Where are you off to with that spring in your step?” Jakob Fisher leaned across the seat of his police-issued car and raised her smile with his always endearing set of dimples. “Is there a Schnitz and Knepp sampling I’m unaware of?”

“Ha-ha. Very funny.” Stepping forward, she leaned her arms against the open windowsill and assumed the role of interrogator. “So what brings
you
out here?”

The slightest hint of crimson rose in his cheeks before disappearing behind a suspiciously timed rub of his face. “Just doing the detective thing, I guess.”

“Detective thing?” she teased. “What, exactly, is
the
detective thing
?”

“I keep my eyes open, make sure everything is okay. You know, that sort of thing.”

She considered poking holes in his answer with a reminder of the handful of patrolmen tasked with that exact job but opted to let it go. Jakob’s obvious discomfort at her question was a dead giveaway to the real reason he was there—a reason that had nothing whatsoever to do with his professional persona and everything to do with his personal life.

Yes, Jakob was headed toward the Amish side of town for one reason and one reason only—to catch whatever glimpse he could of his childhood family, a family he lost the day he left his Amish upbringing in favor of donning a police uniform. His brief yet welcomed contact with his sister, Martha, only weeks earlier had ceased the day Rob Karble’s murderer had been apprehended.

The step backward clearly hurt Jakob if the renewed dullness in his amber-flecked eyes was any indication. But, still, the chance to interact with Esther’s mother, albeit briefly in the grand scheme of things, had given his perpetual hope a fresh set of legs. The nod of acknowledgment he now received from his sister, Martha, whenever she stopped by Claire’s shop certainly didn’t hurt, either.

“How good are you at puzzles?” she asked.

Jakob’s brows arched. “I can hold my own. Why?”

“Care to put that claim to the test?” She knew she was teasing, maybe even bordering on flirting, but after hiding her heart behind a wall for the past year, it felt right. Fun, even. “Because I’m fairly certain I can find my way from one end of the maze to the other far quicker than you.”

At the mention of the word
maze
, Jakob sat up straight, all lingering signs of his infamous knee-weakening dimples gone. “I can’t do that, Claire, and you know that.”

She drew back, her head hitting the top of the sill as she did. “Ouch!” Rubbing at her part line, she kept her gaze firmly on Jakob’s. “The maze is open to the public. That means you’re every bit as welcome there as I am.”

“I’m quite certain my father would disagree.” The hint of anger in Jakob’s tone did little to cover the hurt Claire knew to be the true reason behind the man’s quip. All the longing the detective exhibited for even the tiniest sighting of his family—his mother, Miriam; his sister, Martha; his brother, Isaac; his niece, Esther; and her many siblings—stopped shy of his father, Mose. And while any attempt at conversation regarding the man was quickly changed, Claire had pieced together enough to know bad feelings between the two ran deep.

For Mose, she knew it was anger over his eldest son’s decision to leave his Amish roots post baptism, a sin punishable by excommunication. But for Jakob, the anger ran far deeper, to mumbled encounters that depicted a childhood of low self-esteem groomed at the hands of Mose himself.

“But you have a right to be there,” she protested around the lump that rose in her throat. “Just like anyone else.”

“It’s a right I don’t choose to exercise,” Jakob countered before softening his tone and finding a smile she knew was difficult to muster at the moment. “But I’d like to hear about it when you’re done if that’s—”

A long, slow moo from just over Claire’s left shoulder cut the detective’s sentence short. She turned around to find a slightly larger than average Holstein staring at her with deeply troubled eyes. “Whoa there . . .”

“It’s okay, it’s okay—she won’t hurt you.” Jakob stepped out of his car and came around the hood for a closer look. When he reached Claire’s side, he greeted the wide-eyed dairy cow with a soothing hand. “Hey there, sweetie. You missed your late-afternoon milking, didn’t you?”

Claire looked from Jakob to the cow and back again. “How do you know she missed her milking?”

Jakob stepped closer to the animal and offered what she imagined was a word of comfort spoken in Pennsylvania Dutch before providing an answer Claire could understand. “You can see it in her eyes and her udders. She’s engorged.”

Glancing past the cow, she raised a hand in the direction of the Amish men working in a distant field, but to no avail. “If you wait with her, I’ll head over there and let them know their cow got loose.”

Jakob took in the tab on the cow’s ear and shook his head before dropping into a squat and manually relieving some of the cow’s discomfort. “This isn’t Hochstetler’s cow.”

“How do you know?”

“Because of this”—he pointed at the
Z
etched into the plastic tag—“which lets me know it’s Zook’s.
Harley
Zook’s.” He stopped milking the cow long enough to meet the animal’s soulful eyes and inquire as to its name. “So are you Jennie? Or Maggie? Or perhaps Julia?” Then, to Claire, he said, “If Harley still does things the way he always did when his brother was alive, her name starts with a
J
or an
M
. Not sure why, but that’s how he always named them.”

She squatted down beside Jakob and ran a hand along the side of the cow. “Is this Harley Zook a friend of yours?”

Jakob turned his attention back to the udder between his fingers, his focus no longer on the cow or Claire. “Ally would be a better word.”

“Ally?” she echoed in confusion.

“He was the only person who didn’t shun me for leaving the Amish to be a cop.”

“So this Zook fellow isn’t Amish?”

He gave a half shrug, half head shake. “Nah, he’s Amish.”

She tried to make sense of what she was hearing, to rationalize the man’s words with what she knew of the Amish, but she came up empty. “Then why would he support you leaving after baptism?”

Jakob seemed to weigh her question against an invisible pull, his words, when he finally spoke, catching her by surprise. “Because it was Harley’s brother’s murder that prompted me to leave. It was John’s death I wanted to help solve.”

She cast about for something to say but was saved from the futile task when Jakob filled in the blanks, unprompted. “Course you now know, by the time I made my choice and walked away from my upbringing, the murder was solved—chalked up to a crime of ignorance-inspired hate by an English guy named Carl Duggan.”

At her nod, he continued. “Anyway, it would have been too late to go back even if I’d wanted to, but that didn’t stop Harley Zook from standing nose to nose with my father and telling him I was an admirable man, someone to be respected and admired, not treated as the outcast I’d become.”

Pulling her hand from the side of the cow, she rested it, instead, on Jakob’s upper back, the tension she felt there heartbreaking. “I agree with Harley.”

“My father didn’t. He stood by his disgust in me and added a healthy dose of disgust for Harley, as well. In fact, from what I was able to glean from my sister earlier this month, my father actually holds Harley responsible for my decision to leave . . . as if it was
Harley
who cost him the son that was never good enough rather than that son’s own beliefs and convictions.”

Oh, what she wouldn’t give to be able to wave a magic wand and make things right for Jakob. If she had one, not only would she allow him to have real relationships with his family again, she’d also erase all the pain in his heart where Mose Fisher was concerned.

In the absence of any magical powers—wand or otherwise—Claire simply swallowed and changed the subject. “If you tell me where Harley Zook lives, I’ll walk out there and tell him about his cow.”

Jakob rose to his feet then assisted Claire up to her own. “I got this. Really. You head on over to the maze and have a good time. Call me when you’re done and I’ll give you a ride home.”

She felt her cheeks warm at the notion of Jakob picking her up and escorting her back to Sleep Heavenly, her aunt’s bed-and-breakfast that doubled—at least for the moment—as Claire’s home. “I can’t ask you to do that. It’s Friday night. Surely you have plans.”

Slowly, he looked from the cow to Claire and back again, the hint of a smile twitching at the corners of his mouth. “Aside from getting this beauty back to Harley’s, I’ve got no plans. Except, hopefully, to sit outside on your aunt’s porch with you, enjoying what may very well be one of the last relatively pleasant evenings we’ll have before winter rears its head.”

She tried to think of something to say that would remove Jakob from the hook he was voluntarily putting himself on but came up empty-handed. The truth was, she liked the notion of Jakob coming out to get her, liked the image of sharing Diane’s porch swing with the handsome detective. If nothing else, his presence would keep her from poring over her gift shop’s books, searching for the financial life jacket she needed to keep Heavenly Treasures open.