Dark Crossings (7 page)

“Ben, you know we can’t,” she protested, finally letting go of
his hands.

“We’ve already stepped over the line big-time. I’ll explain
everything to the bishop tomorrow, and you can tell the sheriff—our two main
confessors, right? Just one more night, and we’ll get help tomorrow. I’m sure
the bishop will get someone to come out and stay with you—maybe with me, too,
until we can really be together. And I want that. I want us to have a future
getting to know each other better. This whole thing has been a blessing in
dis—”

“Simply a blessing. I think so, too, but not in disguise. The
one in disguise is the evil person who’s been sneaking around, and I just hope
and pray the sheriff will find out who and stop it.”

“As they say in the big, bad world then, my place or yours
tonight? I promise I’ll control myself better than I did a while ago.”

“Just for now, I hope,” she said, standing and shaking out her
soil-smudged skirts. Her
kapp
was still a bit awry
from when they’d kissed.

“Okay,” he said. “I say we lock up tight here and head across
the bridge. With you and your house being watched, it’s more important to guard
your mushrooms than my boxes. But first, I want you to take a look at something
in the back room—the second bedroom, not where I sleep.”

“Not another surprise, after all you told me.”

“One, I hope—I think—you’ll like.”

* * *

A
BBY
FOLLOWED
B
EN
ACROSS
his workshop/living area and peeked in as he
flicked on an electric light. Lined up around the four walls of the mostly empty
room were what she would call hope chests. Among the Plain People,
maidals
cherished them and filled them with heirloom
quilts, towels and linens. Liddy had kept her big battery-run clock tucked in
amid the sheets in hers, a chest she might have started with Ben in mind, but
which had gone with her when she and Adam moved to Pennsylvania.

“They’re just perfect,” Abby told him, standing in the doorway.
Her mind darted to one of the earlier circle letters she’d received from Sarah
and Lena, in which they’d all talked about their hope chests, as well as their
hopes and dreams for homes and families of their own someday.

“Which one do you like best?” Ben asked, eager as a boy. “Take
a look. Even if you have one already, a second one can never hurt.”

“I do have one that was my
grossmamm’
s. It’s special to me, so I won’t say my favorite here
right now.” She longed to examine each chest, but still didn’t go into the
room.

“You’re right,” he said, coming back toward her. “The rules of
the
bann
—take nothing from the hand of the one
shunned.”

“But someday, I would treasure a second one, if I had a
come-calling friend. I suppose I’d be off my bean enough to want one carved with
mushrooms.”

He smiled at her, something she hadn’t seen much. “Then,” he
said, “I’d better pay more attention to mushrooms, and not only their virgin
spawn inoculator when I’m over there tonight. It will take me just a minute to
get some things together and lock up.” He turned out the light and headed for
the other bedroom, still talking over his shoulder. “For once, let’s go across
the bridge together. I don’t want you out there alone, especially not in the
dark.”

Sounds came from his room: a closet door banged, a drawer
closed.

“Okay,
ja,
” she called to him.
“Only one more night, and we’ll have others to help us….” Her voice trailed off
wistfully. Despite the dangers, there was something wonderful about helping each
other, just the two of them against bad things in the world. But there was the
bright promise of a future, in the broad light of day or in the depths of night.
Surely, nothing evil could hurt them now.

CHAPTER EIGHT

T
HEY
LOCKED
THEMSELVES
inside Abby’s
house. While Ben looked around, checking the windows, she fixed them mushroom
soup and sandwiches, and they ate by lantern light. Although they were both on
edge, Abby nearly nodded off after dinner.

“I haven’t slept well since that first night I heard voices out
there,” she told him as she washed the dishes. “Sorry,” she added with a yawn.
“It’s not the company, really. I finally feel safe, now that you’re here.”

“We’re both emotionally wrung out, plus you had that run
through the woods.” For the tenth time, he got up to glance out the windows
toward the bridge. “It would shock me if this turns out to just be pranksters
picking on a lone, isolated woman, but people are nuts these days. It will be
good to turn things over to Bishop Esh and the sheriff in the morning. I’ll put
my sleeping bag on your rag rug, stretched across the doorway between the living
room and kitchen.”

“And,” she said, stacking the dishes in the rack to dry, “I’d
better take a bath and get to bed. I know I’m still a mess after hiding in that
log.”

“You look great to me. A little wild, but as natural and lovely
as all of Eden County.” He turned toward her and she to him, between the table
and the sink. He gently tugged at a curl that had come loose from her
kapp,
and stroked the slant of her cheek with his
thumb. “Abby, thanks to you, I’m finally really happy to be home. Despite
everything we’ve been through here, I’m glad and grateful to have found
you.”

It was going to happen again—a kiss, a caress. But then he
moved to the kitchen door, filling it completely, making the entire house seem
to shrink. She wanted to be kissed good-night. She could tell he wanted that,
too. But if they did, he’d have much more to confess to the bishop than he’d
planned. She had already stepped over the line with a shunned man and could be
put under the
meidung,
too.

“Good night, then,” she said, and edged toward the door. “Turn
out the lantern when you’re ready,
ja?
”

“
Ja,
Abigail Baughman.” He moved
slowly out of the doorway to let her pass. “There’s a worldly saying, ‘Tomorrow
is the first day of the rest of our lives.’ Let’s make that so.”

Later, despite a warm bath, full stomach and utter exhaustion,
Abby had trouble sleeping again. Mostly because Ben was just one closed door and
one room—one shout—away.

* * *

A
FTER
BREAKFAST
, Ben helped Abby harness Fern to the buggy. “I’ll walk
just ahead of you over the bridge, throw my stuff in the house, do a quick
change of clothes, then be ready to go,” he told her.

“I hope you don’t mind driving that truck into town at about
four miles an hour,” she said as she climbed up and took the reins. “I could
start ahead of you.”

“No way. Until I see you walk safely through the sheriff’s
front door, I’m keeping you in sight. Maybe a long time after, too,” he added,
reaching up to squeeze her knee. “Wait for me by my truck.”

She giddyapped to Fern and turned toward the bridge, though she
felt she could have simply soared across the river. A future with Ben. A miracle
that he could learn to love her, too. Wait until she wrote all that had happened
in the next circle letter.

The steel buggy wheels bounced and rattled over the plank
flooring of the bridge, scattering the pigeons roosting in the rafters above.
They fluttered out the windows with their wings flapping.

She glanced at her locked-up house and gardens guarded by the
fringe of forest. Harvesting her mushrooms would be delayed today. As for
dealing with the sheriff, it wasn’t the Plain People’s way to trust law
officers, ever since their Amish ancestors had been pursued and murdered in
Europe years ago. But she and Ben had no choice, and surely Bishop Esh would
understand.

Abby reined Fern in on the other side of the bridge as Ben went
into his house. Again, she turned back to look across the river at her home and
land, then at the old bridge itself—and screamed.

Ben blasted out of the house, banging the door into the
wall.

“What! What?” he cried, when she pointed toward the bridge,
close to this side.

When he leaped up into the buggy, he saw it, too: two bodies
swinging underneath, an Amish woman and an
Englische
man, hanged, with nooses around their necks.

* * *

“W
H
-
WHAT
…
WHO
?”
Ben stammered. “It
looks like…”

“Like us.”

He jumped down and ran the short way to the bridge, with Abby
scrambling after him. Why had they not seen this from the other side? Oh, she
thought, a supporting truss hid the bodies from her windows. So, was this meant
for only Ben to see? Surely, the bodies hadn’t been there yesterday.

Her pulse pounded, matching their thudding steps on the bridge.
The pigeons flapped and flew again. At the second window, Abby and Ben peered
down in horror before they realized they were looking at store mannequins.

“Oh, thank the Lord!” she cried. “Not real—not people. But they
look real, even this close, with hands and feet and faces. Maybe someone wanted
you to see it at night and get spooked, thinking it was ghosts of the lovers who
hanged themselves here years ago. Or you’d take it as a warning and make me
leave—or leave yourself.”

“It could be more than a sick prank—maybe a trap or diversion.”
He leaned way out the window to look toward his house, then hers. “I don’t see
anyone. Keep looking both ways,” he ordered, as he pulled his cell phone out of
his jeans pocket. “Since I’ve decided to return to the church, I’ve been trying
not to use this, but I’m getting the sheriff here, even if I miss the meeting
with the elders.”

“Ben, you can’t miss that!”

“They’ll have to understand when we tell them everything. This
way we’ll protect the evidence and show it to the sheriff and the bishop—maybe
the Cincinnati detective, too. I swear that insurance investigator could be
behind this, trying to panic me into some kind of confession, or get me to move
back to Cincinnati where she can watch me better. She’s been desperate to nail
me, even before I came back here.”

He began to pace while he made the call. Abby kept looking both
ways on the bridge, at her house, then Ben’s, even up and down the river. The
rapids rushing over the rocks below made her dizzy, as if the bridge—the whole
world—were moving.

* * *

B
EN
WAS
UPSET
when the sheriff answered and said he wasn’t back in town yet, but was on the
road from Cleveland, “’bout an hour out.” In a rush, Ben explained things.

“Okay,” Sheriff Freeman said, “I’ll use my siren and light bar
and be there in half the time. Sit tight.”

Abby looked upset when he told her.

“I think we should cut these figures down and take them into
town, not wait here,” she insisted.

“They’re the best evidence we’ve had for all this, especially
since the diamond and note telling you to get out disappeared. Fingerprints or
DNA could be on those plastic bodies. I’ve been fingerprinted and all that, so I
know. Abby, this is my chance to be cleared, to be myself again, be Amish, be
with you.”

“All right. I trust you.”

“I’d even like to drape the mannequins with sheets, preserve
whatever hair and fibers might be on them.”

“Hair and fibers? You mean their wigs and their clothes need to
be protected for fingerprints?”

“No, not like that. I read up on all the evidence the police
got after the jewelry theft, things they said pointed to me. I was advised to
hire a lawyer, but I didn’t—still Amish to the core.”

“In the online photos of you carving your boxes, you never let
them show your face.”

He nodded. “Now here’s my plan. I’m going to run over to my
house and grab two clean sheets. You’ll be able to see me go in and out. Be
right back!”

He was so excited about clearing his name, she thought, but she
understood. To have something that terrible hanging over one’s head…

As the pigeons fluttered back into the rafters above, she
looked up. What was that stuck in one of the old swallow nests up there? It
looked like a short string of pearls, maybe a bracelet.

Abby glanced at Ben again, saw him unlock his front door and
rush inside. She took two steps back and squinted up into the dim rafters to see
better. What if some other piece of jewelry had been dropped here and some bird
or squirrel had found it?

Wait until she told Ben! If she just had a ladder to get up
there to check that nest…

She could see he hadn’t come back outside yet. She ran for her
buggy, got in and made her way back onto the bridge, directly under the nest.
Yes, for sure this was the spot where she’d found the diamond. “Whoa,” she told
Fern. From this higher vantage point, she could see the nest better.
Ja,
a pearl bracelet, like the one she’d seen spilling
from Ben’s boxes on the jewelry store website. But where was Ben? Wait until she
told him and the sheriff this latest twist.

Trusting Fern to stand stock-still, she balanced a foot on the
splashboard and the other on the seat. Steadying herself with one hand on the
buggy’s roof, she stretched, reaching for the dangling pearls. But she noticed
something else. Wedged into the angled space where the bridge roof met the side
beams was a polished wooden box—no, two of them, maybe with two more jammed
behind. Ben’s boxes?

She got down inside the vehicle and pulled out the buggy whip
she never used. If she could just slide one of those boxes out of its niche,
maybe she could catch it and—

Fern snorted. The buggy shifted. Abby bounced back in the seat
as the box she’d loosened tipped and fell, showering jewelry over her, until it
thudded onto the bridge floor in a final spray of shining gems.

Knocked back hard into the seat, she saw what had startled
Fern. Her hemp-masked pursuer stood ten feet away, without gloves this time.
Beautifully manicured hands with painted crimson nails and big, gold rings
pointed a gun at Abby. Just beyond, someone was dragging an unconscious—or
dead—Ben toward her on the bridge.

Abby gasped and let out a little scream.

“I see,” the woman said as she came closer, “you found the
jewels Benjamin stole from our store. Pity he’s so full of remorse that he’s
going to hang himself here. And you, madly in love with him, will join him in a
suicide pact, just like those sad lovers years ago. Hurry up, Cesar,” she
shouted over her shoulder. “Let’s haul up the mannequins and get this over with!
If all we’ve done hasn’t made Miss Amish here leave so we only have to deal with
Ben, nothing will. And we don’t need that insurance harpy showing up before
we’re through! We can just reuse these nooses, so let’s get going!”

“I had to hit him really hard to knock him out,” Cesar Tornelli
said. He was struggling, huffing and puffing as he dragged Ben.

“Ben would not have stolen this,” Abby said, her voice shaking
as she swept necklaces and bracelets off her lap. “You put Ben’s boxes with your
store’s jewels here, didn’t you? I’ll bet you kept some back and hoped they
wouldn’t be found, so you could have the insurance money
and
the jewels. You thought if you hid some of them here, Ben would
be blamed!”

Abby kept telling herself that in less than a half hour the
sheriff would arrive.

“You’re crazy,” Triana—this woman had to be Mrs. Tornelli—said.
“We suspected Ben, traced him here when he left town, and how nice you’ve found
our stolen property for us.”

“Quit wasting time,” Cesar ordered. “Keep an eye on her, and
I’ll haul up the bodies. And, yes, Amish Abby,” he said as he leaned out the
window to tug up a mannequin, “we did have to steal our own jewels because we
were facing bankruptcy. We had no other choice, just as we have no other choice
now.”

For sure, Abby thought, they intended to kill her and Ben.
They’d clearly identified themselves, admitted their sins and made certain Ben
was in no shape to fight them. At least she could tell he was still
breathing.

“Now you shut up, Cesar,” Triana said. “She probably doesn’t
even know what bankruptcy means.”

“I know what bankruptcy of character, of morals, means,” Abby
told them. She felt terrified and panicked, but also defiant. Her dander was up,
as
Grossmamm
used to say—and that wouldn’t do her
any good at all. But she’d do anything to keep them talking until Ben woke up or
the sheriff arrived.

“I’m going to get out of my buggy and tend to Ben’s head,” she
told Triana, making a move to get down. Surely they didn’t want her found with a
bullet from their gun in her.

“Just stay put!” the woman ordered, both hands on the gun.
“Enjoy those jewels, because… Look, I—we’re really sorry you got tangled up in
this. But we figured you saw us hiding the boxes when you shone your light in,
and could ID us. When we came back, I saw you find an earring that could be
linked to me. This whole mess has just gotten out of hand.”

Cesar drew in the first mannequin—the Amish-dressed woman—and
Abby’s insides cartwheeled. The figure was clad in one of her dresses and
aprons, which she hadn’t missed at all.
Think!
she
told herself.
Find a way to stall!

She tore her gaze away from the mannequin sprawled amid the
scattering of jewels. “So, Triana,” she said, “did you tell Cesar that you came
on to Ben, tried to seduce him to have a worldly affair? I assume that’s another
reason you want to get rid of Ben, besides pinning your theft on him. You
wouldn’t want him to tell your husband you’re sick and tired of him.”