Read The Names of Our Tears Online
Authors: P. L. Gaus
The Names of Our Tears
A PLUME BOOK
THE NAMES OF OUR TEARS
PAUL LOUIS GAUS
lives with his wife, Madonna, in Wooster, Ohio, just a few miles north of Holmes County, where the world’s largest and most varied settlement of Amish and Mennonite people is found. His knowledge of the culture of the “Plain People” stems from more than thirty years of extensive exploration of the narrow blacktop roads and lesser gravel lanes of this pastoral community, which includes several dozen sects of Anabaptists living closely among the so-called English or Yankee non-Amish people of the county. Paul lectures widely about the Amish people he has met and about the lifestyles, culture, and religion of this remarkable community of Christian pacifists. He can be found online at www.plgaus.com. He also maintains a Web presence with Mystery Writers of America at www.mysterywriters.org, and a blog at http://amish-countryjournal.blogspot.com.
Other Amish-Country Mysteries by P. L. Gaus
Blood of the Prodigal
Broken English
Clouds Without Rain
Cast a Blue Shadow
A Prayer for the Night
Separate from the World
Harmless as Doves
OUR TEARS
AN AMISH-COUNTRY MYSTERY
P. L. GAUS
PLUME
Published by the Penguin Group
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First published by Plume, a member of Penguin Group (USA) Inc., 2013
Copyright © P. L. Gaus, 2013
All rights reserved. No part of this product may be reproduced, scanned, or distributed in any printed or electronic form without permission. Please do not participate in or encourage piracy of copyrighted materials in violation of the author’s rights. Purchase only authorized editions.
REGISTERED TRADEMARK—MARCA REGISTRADA
LIBRARY OF CONGRESS CATALOGING-IN-PUBLICATION DATA
Gaus, Paul L.
The names of our tears : an Amish-country mystery / P.L. Gaus.
pages cm
ISBN: 978-1-101-61288-0
1. Amish—Fiction. 2. Drug traffic—Fiction. 3. Amish Country (Ohio)—Fiction. 4. Mystery fiction. I. Title.
PS3557.A9517N36 2013
813’.54—dc23 2012045399
PUBLISHER’S NOTE
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
For Kathy and Tim. We don’t get to choose our
siblings, but once in a while, when genetic roulette
is combined effectively with such character as
derives from life, someone like me gets lucky.
REFACE AND
A
CKNOWLEDGMENTS
WHEN I started searching for an authentic location for the opening chapter in this story, I used the county engineer’s Highway Map of Holmes County, Ohio, which is still the best map available for people who want to explore the lesser known regions of Amish country here. It can be purchased for one dollar in the engineer’s office across the street from the old red brick county jail, on courthouse square in Millersburg. I used the map because I wanted to set the opening scene in one of the most remote and difficult places to find in all of Holmes County. But with the map unfolded on the passenger’s seat and a GPS locator parked on the dash, it still took me nearly an hour to find the spot I had chosen. It is on the way to nowhere at all, and it proved to be the perfect choice. The glade is just as I described it in the book, with a rocky stream and a clearing where a private rendezvous might reasonably be arranged. In that respect it served my purposes well. Unexpectedly, though, when I first found the clearing, the location further proved itself to me as the perfect spot for a murder, because at the edge of the clearing near the stream, an open grave had been dug. I was surprised to say the least. I have since learned that it was an animal’s grave and not a person’s, but still the impression that the open grave had
on me has remained strong throughout all the months since I first started designing and writing what became the present novel. I hope readers will appreciate the surprise and astonishment that I experienced when I first went to that location with my map in hand, hoping only that it would serve the story well.
I wish especially to thank the editors at Plume and specifically Denise Roy, senior editor, who has believed steadfastly in this series and whose support has been of great encouragement and benefit to me. I am also grateful for the fine work of the publicity manager at Plume, Mary Pomponio. Last but never least, I thank my literary agent, Jenny Bent (the Bent Agency, New York), who has given strong support for this story (and for the other seven novels in the series) while expertly guiding me through the transition to a new publisher.
The righteous cry out,
and the Lord hears them;
He delivers them from all
their troubles.
The Lord is close to the
brokenhearted and saves
those who are crushed in
spirit.
Psalms 34:17–18
1
Monday, April 4
7:45
A.M
.
IT WAS Coblentz chocolate that had Mervin Byler awake so early that morning—fine Coblentz chocolate, and the artful widow Stutzman who made it. This would be his seventh trip this spring up to the heights at Walnut Creek, and he knew the best gossips in the valley would be making sport of him again today.
What could draw old Mervin out so early, they’d be asking each other so delicately. Was it really the Coblentz chocolate? Was he just a retired old farmer out for a drive? Maybe he just liked to show off his high-stepping racehorse. Or could it be the widow Stutzman?
Oh, how they’d sure be buzzing today, Mervin thought.
Why yes
—he smiled—
it looks as if he’s washed his best Sunday rig again
.
Mervin stepped out into the cold air in a new Amish-blue denim suit and stood on the front porch of his white clapboard Daadihaus, set back twenty paces from the wide gravel drive that curled around the back of the big house. A cool breeze tugged at his white chin whiskers, and a gust caught under the wide brim of his black felt hat, nearly lifting it from his head. He settled the warm hat back into place and stood to enjoy the
familiar sounds of the farm—all the family, parents and kids alike, at work since well before dawn.
In the woodshop behind the barn, that was his oldest son Daniel he heard, running lumber through the tabletop saw. Lowing as they nipped at the hay in the feeders, the milking cows were back on the hillside pastures beyond. The youngest kids were bringing baskets of eggs out of the henhouse. And beside the big house, an older grandson was starting a gasoline generator, charging the marine batteries for the several electric appliances the family kept—a phone in a little shed out by the road, a secret radio for severe weather, half a dozen lightbulbs where safety called for something other than kerosene lanterns, and an electric butter churn that Mervin had brought home on a whim from Lehman’s hardware in Kidron.