Plain Killing (19 page)

“So what do we do?” Rachel whispered.

“I have an idea.”

 

The following morning, Rachel and Mary Aaron met at Wagler’s Grocery, where they had arranged to meet Lorna, at ten o’clock. When they didn’t see the Verkler buggy, Rachel went inside and bought coffee and doughnuts. Ed and Polly had erected hitching posts for their Amish customers to tie their horses when they came to shop, and nearby, in what had once been a vacant lot between Wagler’s and the newspaper office, there was a maple tree, a well-tended flower bed, and three picnic tables. In good weather, families often lunched on sandwiches and drinks that they purchased in the store. Mary Aaron waited at one of the picnic tables.

Friday was the day that many of the Amish did their shopping, so the store was busy, with buggies coming and going. Lorna and Hannah’s parents didn’t care to do their shopping in town among the Englishers, so the chore often fell to Lorna, making it a good place to meet. “I can meet you there without causing anyone to notice,” Lorna had said when they’d parted after the conversation in the cellar the previous night. They’d asked her to bring Vi with her, and she’d promised to do so.

A buggy was just driving out of the parking lot when Rachel, carrying a bag of doughnuts and a cardboard tray of coffee, joined Mary Aaron. “Any sign of her?” she asked, setting down the coffee so she could wave to Naamah Chupp, driving the buggy.

“No, but she’ll be here. I just hope she was able to get her cousin to come with her,” Mary Aaron said. “If Vi would talk to us directly, it might make all the difference.”

The coffee was inexpensive, hot, and strong. The cups were a generous size, and the doughnuts were excellent. Not homemade, but close to it, and delivered daily. The Waglers might be small-time with only one grocery, but they clearly went out of their way to treat their customers well. Ed had been one of the first business owners in town to support Rachel’s idea of developing Stone Mill for ecotourism, and she appreciated it so much that she purchased as many of her supplies through Wagler’s as she could, even if she could have saved money by shopping with the larger out-of-town chains.

Fifteen minutes passed. Rachel watched the street and tapped her foot nervously against the table support. She was seriously considering eating a second doughnut. “We should have tried to find Vi last night,” she said. She eyed the doughnut bag.

“
Ne.
We did the right thing, sending Lorna to talk to her.” Mary Aaron licked her fingertip and touched some cinnamon sugar on her napkin. She licked her finger again. “We didn’t have any other choice. We can’t force people to talk. You have to know that by now.”

“You’re right. I know you’re right.” Rachel tucked a wisp of hair behind her ear. “But suppose Vi—”

“I think that’s Lorna coming now,” Mary Aaron interrupted. “That’s the Verkler buggy. I recognize the bay with the blaze.”

Rachel glanced toward the driveway. There were definitely two women in the buggy. Rachel tried to contain her rising excitement.

Lorna drove the horse across the parking lot to the water trough. She climbed down off the seat and loosened a strap on the harness so that the bay gelding could lower his head to drink. Someone got down on the far side of the buggy.

“That girl’s too young to be Vi,” Mary Aaron said quietly. “I think it’s a younger sister.”

“You go on inside and start filling the cart,” Lorna said to her companion. “I’ll be there as soon as I water Jack and tie him up.” She handed the girl a small coin purse. “You can get yourself a soda pop and some candy, if you want.” As soon as she was gone, Lorna motioned to Rachel and Mary Aaron, who hurried over, leaving the coffee and doughnuts behind.

“Where’s Vi?” Rachel asked in Deitsch. “I thought you said you could get her to come with you.”

Lorna looked embarrassed. In the daylight, Rachel saw a strong resemblance to Hannah. Lorna was a pretty girl in a wholesome way. And now that she wasn’t weeping, she had an honest and pleasing face.

“You’re not going to believe this. She’s gone,” Lorna said, adjusting her glasses.

“Gone?” Mary Aaron demanded. “You mean she still ran away, even after you told her how dangerous it might be?”

An extended-cab pickup truck pulled in to a parking place, and one of Hulda’s nieces got out and removed a baby from an infant car seat in the back. She waved and called, “Hello.”

Rachel returned her greeting, and the young mother and her child went into the grocery.

“
Ne
,” Lorna said with a shake of her head. “Well, she
did
run away, I guess, but not like Hannah. She went
with
Hannah this morning.”

“With Hannah?” Rachel echoed. “I don’t understand. How did she go with Hannah?”

“After I left you, I found my mother and told her I wanted to spend the night with Vi. Since we had so many relatives at our place and Vi lives just next door,
Mam
didn’t mind.”

The horse raised his head, snorted, and shook drops of water over Rachel’s capris. Lorna took hold of the bridle and led the animal to the nearest hitching post. Rachel and Mary Aaron walked with her.

“I did just what you said,” Lorna said quietly. She tied the horse to a large iron ring. “All night I talked to her, told her what you said, told her that something bad happened to our Hannah when she was gone and it might happen to her. I told her that whoever pretended to be her friend out there might be evil. And I asked how she knew that she could trust the man she was supposed to meet.”

Rachel pointed to the picnic table where she and Mary Aaron had been sitting together, and the three of them walked over. Lorna continued to speak. “First, Vi argued with me. She said nothing bad happened to Hannah. That Hannah had just come home because she didn’t like the Englishers and that I was making it all up. But then I think she got scared when she started thinking about it. I think she realized Hannah’s wedding
was
a little quick. And she’d noticed the bishop and elders coming and going a lot. Her living right next door to us.”

Rachel was trying to take in everything Lorna was saying. “So you spent the night with Vi. How did she end up going with Hannah?”

“My mother helped. Vi and I went to her, and I told her that Vi didn’t want to stay here.” Lorna peered at Rachel, who was sitting across from her, through her glasses. “I didn’t come right out and say it, but
Mam
realized that Vi was thinking about leaving. She was the one who came up with the idea that Vi go with Hannah. She told her it would be good for her and good for Hannah. To help her cousin get settled in her new life. And who knows, she might meet a suitable man up there to marry. Then the cousins would be close and Hannah wouldn’t be so lonely.”

“Vi’s parents let her go, just like that?” Mary Aaron leaned close. “So quick a decision?”

“My aunt, she knows how Vi is. I think, for some time, she and my uncle have been afraid Vi would run away. Better she goes with Hannah than be lost to the world.”

Rachel looked away. She was, of course, happy that Vi would be safe, but she knew there would be no talking to the young woman now. She was gone. And so was Rachel’s possible lead. She was beginning to feel like a complete failure. She looked at Lorna and reached across the table to squeeze her hand. “You did a brave thing, Lorna. You might have saved Vi’s life.”

Lorna’s thin mouth quivered. “Now both Hannah and Vi are gone. Hannah is my sister and I care for her, but Vi was my special friend. I kept her from going to the English, but she went away anyway.”

“Did you ask her who she was meeting?” Rachel asked. “Who was going to help her?”

Lorna shook her head sadly. “I did ask her, but she wouldn’t tell me. I’m sorry I wasn’t more help.”

Mary Aaron put her arm around the girl’s shoulders. “You kept Vi safe. That’s what matters most.”

“But what about Beth? We still don’t know what happened to her.”

“The police will figure it out,” Rachel said, trying to sound convincing. She reached for the bag of doughnuts. She was definitely having another.

“I have to go.” Lorna got up from the table. “My sister will be looking for me.” She started to turn away, then looked back at Rachel and Mary Aaron. “One thing I did find out. I don’t know if it will help you or not, but maybe. Vi wouldn’t say who was going to help her leave Stone Mill.” She pressed her thin lips together. “But she said it was going to be this weekend.”

Mary Aaron sat down in Rachel’s recliner. The two had come upstairs to escape the heat of the morning and to be alone to discuss and think through what they’d learned from Lorna. There was no central air on the third floor, but a room air conditioner in one of the windows hummed, blowing icy air into the room. “It might be worth turning English,” Mary Aaron teased, “if I could sleep so cool in the summer.”

Rachel chuckled. “It’s probably the last modern invention I’d be willing to part with, but I don’t know that it’s worth changing your life for.”

Rachel had set up a place to read with good light, a coffee table, and a bookcase. She had a desk to do paperwork and a white dry-erase board mounted on the wall for planning. When finances permitted, she hoped to finish the small kitchen area, making her suite an efficiency apartment. For now, a microwave and a stainless steel electric teakettle on an old table and a dorm-sized mini fridge served her needs. As much as she loved welcoming guests to Stone Mill House, it was always nice to have a private retreat.

“Hot or cold tea?” Rachel asked her cousin, switching to English. They usually spoke English at Stone Mill House. She wasn’t sure why. It had just become an unwritten rule. She used Deitsch at Mary Aaron’s, and they used English in her own territory. “I think I have a Mason jar of sweet tea I brought up yesterday.” She lifted one shoulder and let it fall. “It’s not fresh from this morning, but it’s probably not bad.”

“Hot tea, I think. I know, in weather like this, I’m not supposed to want hot tea, but I feel like I need a cup. Always helps me think.”

“Me, too.” Rachel carried the kettle to her bathroom, filled it up with water from the faucet in the claw-foot tub, and returned it to the table. She flipped it on and retrieved two clean mugs from atop the microwave. She dug into a little willow basket her sister had made her and held up a couple of tea bags. “I’ve got Assam, Irish breakfast, and . . . herbal mint.”

“Irish breakfast.” Mary Aaron picked up a restoration magazine off the table beside the chair and began to flip through the pages. “I can’t believe Vi took off like that.”

“I can’t believe her parents saw the wisdom of letting her go.”

“Thank God,” Mary Aaron murmured, looking over the top of the magazine. “I know it doesn’t help us to track down whoever killed Beth, but at least Vi is safe.”

Rachel stood there, a tea bag in each hand. “So Vi’s safe. She won’t be getting into someone’s van this weekend, but what if there was another girl last night at the wedding supper planning the very same thing?”

Mary Aaron nibbled her lower lip and studied a hangnail. “Usually, only one girl a year leaves, sometimes no one. After what happened to Beth, I can’t imagine anyone will dare go any time soon. They’ve got to be scared.”

“Not scared enough, apparently. If Lorna hadn’t been brave enough to speak up to her cousin, Vi would have gone.” The teakettle began to rattle as it heated to boiling. “Do you think Vi told the person who was supposed to pick her up that she wasn’t coming?”

Mary Aaron shook her head slowly, returning the magazine to the end table. “I don’t see how. Lorna spent last night with Vi. Lorna said she didn’t convince Vi not to leave until after they were back at the Verklers’. And then Vi left with Hannah and Thomas before daylight.”

“Right.” Rachel nodded. Her thoughts were flying all over the place, from here to there, not settling on one single thing. She had to think about this logically. There had to be a way to catch the man who was supposed to give Vi a ride out of town. And that man, she had a feeling, was the same man who had helped Beth leave Stone Mill. She knew she couldn’t immediately jump to the conclusion that he was the one who had killed Beth when she tried to come home, but it was certainly a possibility. A possibility that she felt was becoming more likely every day. She knew she didn’t have any proof, but she’d always had good intuition, and from the beginning, her intuition had led her down this path. Yet that didn’t make sense, not if the contact was Amish. She’d never heard of any Old Order Amish who’d committed murder.

Rachel opened a tea bag packet and dropped the bag into a white mug that said
The George
. On the other side was a picture of a book and below it,
Read Fast, Life Is Short
. “So . . . as far as we know,” she said, thinking out loud, “this man who was helping Vi still thinks he’s picking her up.”

“I suppose. Unless someone who knows that Vi’s left told him she was gone.”

“There’s that possibility,” Rachel said slowly. “But I doubt Vi’s parents will be broadcasting the fact that they had to send their daughter to Wisconsin to keep her from running away to be English. It’ll take a few days for word to get around, especially to the men in the community. Every woman in Stone Mill will know before any man except Vi’s father.” The kettle whistled, and the automatic switch clicked to turn it off.

“Okay, so let’s say this man is expecting to pick up Vi.” Mary Aaron kicked off her blue sneakers and tucked her feet up under her. Wrinkles creased her forehead as she considered the puzzle. “You know, none of this fits. You said somebody said that an Amish man was making arrangements for these kids to get away. Hannah talked about a van. No Amish man owns a van.”

“Wasn’t that the woman who took them to the phony Mennonites who had the van? Or did Hannah mention two vans? I should have written that down. I’m not sure.” Rachel dropped her Assam tea bag into a green Wagler’s Grocery mug. “Maybe the Amish man borrowed one?”

“Maybe.” But Mary Aaron sounded unconvinced.

Rachel poured water into one mug and then the other and then set the teakettle back on the table. She walked over to the wall, erased a to-do list on the white dry-erase board, and picked up a blue marker. “Okay, what do we know?”

“We know a man helped Hannah leave, and a man was going to help Vi.”

“Right.” Rachel drew a big stick figure of a man.

“And your source—and I still can’t believe you won’t tell me who it is—said it was an Amish man.”

Rachel added a long, pointy beard and a stovepipe-type hat. She had zero artistic ability, but it was good enough for both of them to know what it was. “We know, from Lorna,” she said, speaking slowly as she thought her way through the facts, “that Vi was leaving this weekend.”

“Which means tonight, tomorrow night, or Sunday night?” Mary Aaron said. “And we know Hannah said he drove a van,” she added quickly.

Rachel wrote
Friday? Saturday? Sunday?
across the top of the board. Then she drew a rectangle with wheels next to the stick figure of the man. “We know kids leave at night, after their parents have gone to bed,” she said.
She
had left at night. She could still remember, after all these years, lying in bed, fully awake, fully dressed, waiting for the sounds of the household to quiet.

“So . . . after dark,” Mary Aaron said. “After the parents have gone to bed. Ten?”

After ten,
Rachel wrote. Then she stood back and stared at the whiteboard, the marker in her hand.

Mary Aaron stared. “It’s not enough,” she declared, lifting her hands and letting them fall to her lap. “We don’t know where they were supposed to pick her up. It’s a big valley. If we don’t know where, we can’t find him.”

Rachel put down the marker, went to the mugs, and pulled out one tea bag and then the other, tossing them in the trash can under her desk. She added sugar cubes from a cup on top of the microwave, then a splash of milk from a pint Mason jar in the refrigerator.

Mary Aaron rose from her chair to come over and stand barefoot in front of the whiteboard. Her blue scarf had slipped down so that it barely covered the bun at the back of her head. Rachel could tell by the look on her face that she was thinking. Thinking hard.

Neither had actually come out and said that they were going to try and meet the van that was to take Vi from Stone Mill, but both of them knew that was their intention. If they could just figure out where to go . . .

Rachel looked around for a spoon. Unable to find one, she grabbed the dry-erase marker, holding it from the cap end, and stirred her tea. She handed Mary Aaron her tea and the marker.

Mary Aaron slowly stirred her tea. “Where would they meet?” she asked out loud. “Somewhere easy for kids to get to.”

“So, somewhere within walking distance,” Rachel said, going over to stand beside her cousin.

“Somewhere that if someone saw them, it wouldn’t seem out of place, even after dark.” She handed the marker back to Rachel.

Rachel wiped it on the pant leg of her jeans. “So, probably not in town.”

“But on a road where a van wouldn’t look out of place, either.”

“So, not in town but
close
to town.”

Mary Aaron nodded, cupping her mug in both hands. “On a paved road, not a dirt one. Englishers stick to paved roads after dark. They don’t wander out our way often.”

“My source says it’s an Amish man.”

Mary Aaron cut her eyes at Rachel. “An Amish man with a van.” She grimaced. “Still sounds
narrisch
to me.”

Crazy.
Maybe this whole idea that they could solve a case the police couldn’t was crazy. Rachel sighed and sipped her tea. Mary Aaron was right. There was no Amish man in Stone Mill who owned a motor vehicle. She had heard of an Amish community where the members all drove black cars, but such newfangled ideas certainly hadn’t come to the older orders. Did that mean that George’s source was wrong? That was certainly possible, but it made sense that it would be someone Amish, rather than someone English, helping kids. Young people, girls particularly, didn’t have much contact with Englisher males. It just wasn’t done.

“Where would he pick her up?” Mary Aaron said, obviously thinking out loud. “Where was Vi going?”

Rachel stared at the Amish stick figure she’d drawn. “So, Vi and Hannah’s families live right next door to each other,” she said thinking out loud. “How about Beth? How far are the Glicks from the Verklers?”

“I don’t know. Kind of far. Two, two and a half miles maybe.”

“Show me.” Rachel held up the marker.

Mary Aaron drew a long line. “This is Buttermilk,” she said, indicating a road that led into town. Then she drew two shorter lines. “Hannah’s and Vi’s families are here on Acorn.” She made an
X
on the west side of Buttermilk. “And Beth’s family is farther out of town, here on Oak.” She made an
X
on the east side of Buttermilk.

“That’s not so far,” Rachel said.

“It is when you’re a girl walking at night.”

Rachel set her tea on the table, still staring at the board. “No one would think it was odd to see a van at night on Buttermilk.”

“No. There’s that new Englisher development, the one built on the old Tragler farm.” She made an
X
farther south on Buttermilk.

“So where would kids go on Buttermilk to wait for a ride out of town?” Rachel closed her eyes, thinking. She took the same road out of town when going to her parents’ house or Hannah’s.

“I don’t know,” Mary Aaron said. She took another sip of tea. “This is a waste of time. It could be anywhere.”

“It could be,” Rachel said slowly, trying, in her mind, to imagine driving that piece of road after dark. The last time she’d gone that way at night, it had been with Hannah on the way home from New Orleans. After they’d dropped Mary Aaron off.

It came to her in a split second. “The schoolhouse.”

“What?”

Rachel turned to look at Mary Aaron, remembering that night how Hannah had asked her to stop. “The night we got home from New Orleans,” she said quickly, with excitement, “after we dropped you off, Hannah asked me to pull over. I thought she was carsick. But we were near the schoolhouse. She got out and went and sat on the swing. The one in the tree near the driveway.”

“She wanted to swing?” Mary Aaron asked. “At night?”

“I thought she wanted to stop because . . . I don’t know, she had good memories from her school days or something. She was crying. I thought maybe she was crying for that lost innocence. But now—” Rachel stared at the board, but she looked right through it. She was seeing Hannah’s tears. “She was crying because that’s where everything went wrong. When she went
there
that night two years ago and left with that man in the van.”

Mary Aaron stared at her. “You think?”

The more Rachel thought about it, the more she was sure. “Yes,” she said firmly, walking over to the table to set down her mug. “Where’s my cell phone? Where did I put it?” she asked, looking around.

“On the bed.” Mary Aaron pointed.

Rachel made a beeline for her unmade bed.

“Who are you calling?” Mary Aaron asked.

“Can you get me a dress and a
kapp?
And a man’s pants, shirt, and straw hat? We need them tonight.”

Mary Aaron set down her mug. “I . . . I guess.”

Rachel hit
1
on her speed dial. “Evan,” she said when he picked up. She turned around to meet Mary Aaron’s gaze. “Can you be here at seven thirty tonight?”

“Why?” he asked.

Rachel met Mary Aaron’s gaze. “We’re going on a stakeout.”

 

“I feel ridiculous.” Evan slouched farther down in the buggy seat and pulled his straw hat lower.

“You look fine,” Rachel said, trying to hide her amusement.

Evan looked Plain. They all looked Plain. Since the purpose of staking out the schoolhouse was to discover the identity of the local who was helping kids leave the valley, she and Mary Aaron had agreed that the three of them would have to appear Amish. With Timothy’s help, they’d supplied Evan with a man’s everyday pants, shirt, and hat, and convinced him to wear them. She’d borrowed a dress and scarf from Mary Aaron.

They’d wanted to be at the location and well hidden before dark so that if the suspect arrived, they could see him before he saw them. So, Rachel and Evan had met Mary Aaron at the old covered bridge and dressed in the Plain clothes in the woods. The three of them were now wedged into the only seat of the Hostetlers’ pony-drawn, open courting buggy. It was a tight fit, but a sight that no local would look at twice.