Hearse and Buggy (16 page)

“There are other Amish towns, where you wouldn’t be treated like a pariah …”

She followed his gaze as it moved from the handsaw to the milk can and back again, his thoughts as much of a guess as the expression on his face. “But this is where I want to be.”

“What happens if you run up against a case that forces you to lock up a member of the Amish community?”

“You mean like Eli if it turns out he murdered Walter Snow?”

“My brother did not murder!”

Claire jumped from her chair, nearly knocking Jakob to his feet. “Benjamin, I didn’t hear you.”

Benjamin pointed Ruth’s spare key at Jakob. “I heard him. And he is wrong!”

“He didn’t say Eli murdered anyone.” Claire made her way around various display tables and freestanding pieces of furniture to stand in front of Benjamin. “He was just responding to a hypothetical situation I posed. I’m sorry.”

“He should not use my brother!” Benjamin thundered.

Jakob closed the gap Claire had created between them with several long strides. But his change in proximity only intensified the tense atmosphere that suddenly gripped Heavenly Treasures with an ironclad fist. “You have to realize your brother is a suspect, Benjamin. That’s a simple fact that would exist whether I was on the force here or not.”

Benjamin’s jaw tightened.

“I realize the Miller boys can do no wrong in the eyes of people like my father, but I am trained to see the facts in front of me.” Jakob’s hand tensed into a fist at his side only to release just as quickly along with a burst of air from his
lips. “Actually, you know what? Forget it. Forget all of this. I don’t have to defend myself to you. Think what you want, Benjamin. You always have anyway.”

Turning on the heels of his simple black work boots, Benjamin placed his sister’s key on the counter and nodded his head in Claire’s direction. “I must go.”

And, just like that, he was gone, his suspender-clad form disappearing down the back hallway once again.

“I’m sorry you had to witness that.”

She toed the floor in search of something to say. Twice in the same day, Jakob Fisher had opened up about his past, with no expectations. And twice he’d been shot down in her presence. “I’m sorry I walked you into that. I … I didn’t mean any harm.”

An unbelievable warmth spread down her arm as his hand touched her skin, the sensation so unlike anything she’d ever felt that it nearly took her breath away. “Claire, what happened here was not your fault. This was set in place over sixteen years ago. Old wounds and all, you know? The only issue that truly matters anymore is Eli Miller’s possible involvement in a very real murder. That can’t be swept under the carpet by anyone … even me.”

F
or the second night in a row, Claire found herself following Lighted Way as it made its way past the popular yet quaint shopping district and branched out toward the Amish side of town. Only this time, she was accompanied by someone who knew life from the perspective of both the Amish and the English.

“I traveled this road on bare feet more times than I can count.” Jakob reached into his pocket and extracted a pack of gum, holding it out to her first. “It was certainly a different upbringing from the one my friends in New York gave their kids.”

“What was it like?” she asked, her curiosity in overdrive.

“By the time I was two, I was helping around the farm—gathering eggs, weeding in the garden, helping with the wash—you name it.”

“Wow. That’s young.”

“We didn’t know any better.” They meandered down the
road, stopping from time to time to admire the picturesque setting created by the Amish farms and their neatly planted crops. “That’s not to say, though, that it wasn’t fun. Because it was. We got to visit with friends and relatives on Church Sundays, and we got to play with homemade scooters and wagons.”

“And you got to swim when you were a little older,” she reminded, despite the nagging internal voice warning her to steer clear of the potentially hurtful topic. “That watering hole on the milk can Martha painted looked like a mighty special place.”

If the subject bothered Jakob, he didn’t let it show. “Did you happen to notice the tree along the outer edge of the pond that overhung the water near the center?”

She closed her eyes briefly as she tried to recall the painted setting, the tree in question revealing itself fairly quickly. “I did. Why? Did you jump off it or something?”

Dimples appeared in his cheeks just before he laughed. “You better believe we did.” With a gentle hand to the small of her back, Jakob guided Claire off the road and down a narrow gravel path. “We’d run down this very path, spread our arms wide, and jump right in … See?”

They rounded a grove of trees and there, on the other side, was the watering hole Martha had so expertly depicted with a paintbrush and a palette of paint. “Oh, Jakob,” she whispered. “This is lovely.”

“It is, isn’t it?” He jogged over to the tree on the edge of the pond and pointed upward. “And this is the tree … the one we jumped off.”

She stared up at the tree and tried to imagine a young Martha and a young Jakob swimming and playing there. The Martha part wasn’t hard. All she had to do was think of Esther. But Jakob? He was a little harder to picture.

“You don’t have any childhood photographs do you?”

“Nah. No pictures. Just memories. But they’re plenty clear.”

“For you, maybe,” she said, making a face. “But it’s a little tough for someone like me to picture you as a kid.”

“I was cute. Real cute.”

It felt good to laugh, the sound echoing in the still evening air and wrapping her in a much-needed bear hug. “I bet you were a little pistol with those dimples.”

“And you’d bet right.” Wrapping his hands around the branch overhead, he let his body hang for a few seconds before dropping to the ground once again. “Can I ask you something?”

She tried her best to hide her surprise at the sudden tone shift, but she wasn’t all too successful. “Uhhh, okay, sure.”

“Unlike so many others in this town, you didn’t grow up in Heavenly. Therefore, it stands to reason that you’ve made assessments of folks based on the here and now rather than who they might have been a decade ago.”

“I suppose.” She leaned against the tree trunk and did her best to answer as truthfully as possible. “Though, in all fairness, I had a slight window as to who everyone was and how they fit based on things my aunt told me.”

“What kinds of things?” Jakob bent over and rummaged around on the bank of the pond until he found a flat rock. Clasping it between his thumb and index finger, he straightened and looked across the water, the last of the sun’s rays making the amber flecks of his eyes dance.

She watched as he pulled his arm back and then, with a flick of his wrist, released the rock, skipping it once, twice, three times before it disappeared into the water. “Basic things, like who owned the bakery and who owned the toy
shop. Who was Amish and who was English. Who was chatty and who kept to themselves. That sort of thing.”

He stared out at the water before turning his back on it to look at her. “What’s your read on Eli Miller?”

Pushing off the trunk of the tree, she wandered over to the shoreline and scanned the ground for a suitable rock of her own. When she found what she thought would work, she gave it a toss and watched it sink at the site of its first hit.

His answering laugh was warm. “Looks like someone needs a course in rock skipping.”

“Are you offering to teach it?” she asked, the playful words escaping her lips before her mind had even fully registered what she was saying.

He bent over once again and retrieved a rock from beside his feet. “Now hold it in your hand, just like this.” The warmth from his earlier touch duplicated itself tenfold as he moved in behind her, grabbed hold of her hand, and bent it around the rock. “Feel that?”

“What?” she whispered.

A momentary hesitation let her know he felt it, too. It was an unexpected confirmation that kicked off a flurry of nerves she struggled to tamp down.

“Pull your arm back, like this.” He guided her arm into the desired position and then held it firm. “Now flick—hard—with your wrist.”

Grateful for the opportunity to think of something other than the feel of his hand, she did as she was told, the rock sailing across the water before hitting the surface once, twice. She squealed in pleasure. “I did it!”

“Yes, you did.”

She glanced back, surprised by the sudden rasp in his voice. “You okay?”

“Yeah. Just dealing with a few mixed emotions.”

When he didn’t elaborate, she turned the conversation back to his question. “I don’t know Eli all that well. But what I do know is that despite his work in the fields, he still shows up in the alley periodically throughout the day to check on his sister. Sometimes he stays and helps, particularly when she has even more customers than normal because of a tour-bus stop. He even helped me one day when the hinges on the shop’s back door came loose.”

He nodded but said nothing.

“We always know when Eli arrives because his horse releases a very distinct snort when Eli parks the buggy. Esther knows the sound, too.”

Jakob’s eyebrow rose. “Esther?”

“Esther is crazy about Eli.”

Understanding lit his eyes, softening his stance in the process. “Ahhh. So that’s why she is so protective of him.”

“That’s certainly some of it.” She led the way over to a nearby stump and sat down. “But I think some of it is also the simple fact that she thinks he’s a good person.”

“Tell me about his temper.”

She took a deep breath, then let it slowly release, her heart acutely aware of the harm her words could bring to someone she cared about very much. “I’ve heard stories from others but I’ve not seen it with my own two eyes all that often.”

He squatted in front of her. “But you
have
seen it then?”

Oh how she wanted to say no. To tell him that the only version of Eli she knew was the kindhearted one who looked after his twin sister with obvious love.

But she couldn’t.

She glanced down as his hand covered hers, the warmth of his contact making it difficult to speak. “Once … maybe twice.”

“Tell me,” he urged.

Tell him. It sounded so simple. But it wasn’t. Especially when she knew why he was asking and what it could mean for Eli and Esther.

“Please, Claire.”

“The first time came the day I signed the lease. Mr. Gussman, the landlord, had just handed me the key when Eli rode up in his buggy.” She closed her eyes as her words provided the accompaniment to the scene playing out in her thoughts. “I waved and said hello. Told him who I was and why I was there.”

“Go on.”

She opened her eyes to find Jakob grimacing ever so slightly. Scooting a bit to the right, she patted the empty portion of stump to her left and continued. “It was like watching a thunderstorm roll in across these fields until the sky is completely black and you have no doubt what’s coming.”

When Jakob said nothing, she offered a translation. “He got real angry and asked if I was going to rip off the Amish like my shop’s former tenant did.”

“Walter Snow,” Jakob muttered.

“Eli said that Mr. Snow was a crook and that he’d fooled a lot of people … including him and his family.”

Jakob cupped his hand over his mouth and then let it slide down his chin. “The guy
was
a crook.”

She stared out over the water, the peaceful scene giving way to the memory of what came next, a memory she was hesitant to share.

“Claire?”

“He—he said that it took them a while to catch on to what Mr. Snow was doing but that they did. And he would pay … dearly.”

Jakob sat up straight, his gaze fixed on her face. “But Snow was gone when you took over the shop, wasn’t he?”

Looking down, she swallowed. Hard. “Eli pointed that out. But …”

Hooking a finger beneath her chin, he guided it upward just enough to bring her focus back on him. “Tell me, Claire.”

“He said he suspected Mr. Snow would come back one day. And that when he did … Eli would be waiting to”—her voice dipped to a barely audible whisper—“settle things once and for all.”

A deafening silence enveloped them, broken only by the occasional chirp of a cricket and the on-again, off-again roar of guilt in her ears. “I just hurt her, didn’t I?” she finally asked.

“Hurt who?”

“Esther.”

“You answered a question with the truth. If Eli is not responsible for Snow’s murder, Esther will be fine.”

“And if he is?”

“Then she’s better off knowing before she wastes the rest of her life on a man who isn’t suitable for her.”

It made so much sense when he said it like that, but still …

“So tell me about the other time.”

“Other time?” she echoed.

“You said there were two times you saw Eli’s temper.” Jakob dropped his hand to his side but kept his focus firmly planted on Claire. “Tell me about the other one.”

“It happened the day before I came to the station to meet you. I’d gone into the shop early because I was finishing up in the stockroom. Mr. Snow had left a ton of merchandise
behind, and I’d finally whittled it down to a manageable level that I could get it cleared out once and for all.”

“Okay …”

“Anyway, I heard some noise outside in the alley, and I went out to see what it was.”

“Eli?”

She nodded. “He was furious over a shipment of pie boxes that went missing.”

“Pie boxes? Why didn’t I hear about this?” Jakob threw his head back and stared up at the sky. “Wait. Don’t answer that. I know why I didn’t hear about it.”

She resisted the urge to touch him and, instead, stayed on task. “When I asked Eli what happened, he punched the bake shop’s back door so hard I cringed. When I went to help him, he said it was all Mr. Snow’s fault. He was convinced Walter was back … seeking revenge on Eli’s family for outing him as the crook he is.”

“And little more than thirty-six hours later, Walter Snow turned up dead in that very same alley.” Jakob released a sigh big enough for the both of them. “Wow.”

Wow was right.