Secrets of Harmony Grove (30 page)

My pocket buzzed several times while I was standing there trying to listen, so finally I broke away to see who was trying to get in touch with me. I wanted to dump my half-melted ice pack first, but with no trash can around I ended up pouring its contents onto the ground and tucking the leftover plastic bag in my pocket.

When I looked at the screen I saw that I had two texts, one from Liz and one from my father. I checked his first, relieved to learn that he had lined up a temporary replacement for Nina through the same agency that had cared for Abe when he broke his hip years ago.

Next, I switched over to Liz’s message, which said:
Great tip! I have been able to confirm investigation is almost definitely mob related. Nothing beyond that for right now, but I have some feelers out and will keep you posted
.

I tried not to think about the darker side of the confirmation. On the one hand, any news was better than being completely in the dark. On the other hand, now that I knew “almost definitely” that I had been linked in some way with organized crime, I had entered a whole new playing field. Somehow, a big black beast breathing flashes of fire was a preferable danger to some nameless, faceless monster with a gun and a directive to kill. Whether Troy’s death had been a Mafia hit or not, I wouldn’t sleep soundly until
this investigation was completely over, all truths had come to light, and my name had been cleared. Even then, I could only hope I wouldn’t end up on someone’s bad side. I had seen enough gangster movies to know how that would turn out.

Trying to get those images out of my mind, I texted back a simple thanks to Liz.

“Do your thumbs ever get tired?”

I looked up to see my cousin Liesl coming toward me, grinning.

“Not as tired as my voice would get if I had to do all of this through phone calls instead,” I replied, also smiling, as I pressed “Send.”

Liesl stepped closer, surveying the busy scene.

“So what is going on now? I was just heading home to help with supper, and I saw all the commotion.” She gave a small wave to Jeremy, who was deep in conversation but nodded politely in return.

“A few new developments,” I said, offering to walk her the rest of the way home and bring her up to speed on the way. I didn’t add that I was worried about her. I would feel much more comfortable with my MK40 and escorting her than I would at watching her walk away by herself, unarmed and alone. To my experience, the Amish often weren’t as tuned in to personal safety as others were, though whether that was because of their “God’s will be done” mentality, or the fact that they were such a non-litigious group, or something else entirely, I wasn’t sure.

Breaking away from the crowd in the grove, Liesl and I cut across the path along the edges of the beech trees behind the German Gate, up the rise of land beyond that, and then down into the shallow gully that delineated her property line. As we walked, I explained about the pesticide in the barn and the powder in the hole. I didn’t bring up anything about Emory’s arrest record—no reason to spook her too, especially given how much time she had been spending with his care—but I did bring up the diamond angle, wondering if perhaps their side of the family knew anything about that. She didn’t think so but promised to ask some of the older relatives if they had ever heard of Abe having had some diamonds.

We reached the top of the next rise at the edge of their pasture, and as always the site of the vista in front of me took my breath away: the patchwork
fields, the gleaming white structure of the rambling old farmhouse, the cows grazing beyond the fence. While we continued to walk toward the house, I told Liesl I had a few questions I wondered if she could answer. She nodded, glancing at me curiously.

“It’s about the B and B. First of all, what can you tell me about the amount of traffic that goes in and out of there? I’m sure you don’t watch that closely, but it would be helpful if you could make a guess how often it seems full or empty. Also, have you ever noticed anything special or unusual about the people who stay there?”

“I am sorry, Sienna, but I have never seen anyone stay there other than Floyd,” she replied. “Oh, and Troy. He would come every once in a while. But otherwise, no. No guests at all.”

An entire bed-and-breakfast, tucked away in Lancaster County and making a profit, and only one customer once in a while? If not from guests, then where was all of the money coming from?

“How about the cleaning you do over there?” I pressed. “Can you tell if the rooms have been stayed in or not?”

“I do not do any cleaning there. Or least not much, anyway. Floyd calls me when he needs me, but he has not needed me all that often.”

“When was the last time you cleaned?”

“Two or three months ago, I think. He asked me to come and give the whole place a good once-over. Mostly, that meant dusting and vacuuming and mopping. You know, it wasn’t like the toilets were filthy or the bathtubs needed scrubbing or anything. I cleaned them, of course, but mostly I just dealt with a few cobwebs and some dust, especially upstairs.”

Though I had half expected to hear what she was now telling me, her words still punched me in the solar plexus, leaving me winded and unsteady.

“What about the sales in our gift shop?” I asked weakly, afraid now to hear the answer. “Have you sold a lot of quilts and toys and things through there?”

Now she was the one to look concerned.

“No, not at all. You and Troy placed that one big order in the beginning, of course, but there have been no orders since.”

I ran a hand through my hair, suddenly exhausted and weighed down by the endless series of questions that continued to hammer me, the kinds of questions that had no easy or obvious answers.

“Didn’t all that seem strange to you, Liesl? A bed-and-breakfast with no guests? A gift shop that doesn’t stock gifts?”

She shrugged. “I was disappointed about the gift shop sales, and I did wonder how you could afford to keep the place open without any guests, but I did not think it was any of my business.”

She and I walked along in silence until I said, “I made a big mistake here, Liesl. I was busy with my job in Philadelphia and didn’t pay attention to this place. I trusted Floyd—and Troy—and now I’m in a mess.”

“I am sorry, Sienna. I know how hard you worked on the place and how hopeful you were about it as a business,” she said, no doubt assuming that my “mess” was merely financial.

If only I had been that lucky! Even bankruptcy would have been preferable to what I had now: an inn with no guests but plenty of income, ties to organized crime, and the government breathing down my neck. I wanted to defend myself somehow, to say that beyond negligence and general naïveté, I hadn’t done anything wrong. Liesl didn’t seem to have passed any sort of judgment on me, but I wanted her to know that if things took a turn for the worse and I ended up being charged by the attorney general for some nefarious deed, that I wasn’t a criminal. My only crime was one of neglect.

But in the end I didn’t say anything else about it. Instead, I simply asked her to keep me in prayer and then changed the subject, inquiring about the kids. The rest of the way to the house, I learned all about Daniel’s troubles with penmanship—or, as she said, “penning”—in school, Jenny losing her first baby tooth, little Annie’s first words, and more. It always amazed me that though Liesl and I were about the same age, she had married at nineteen, had begun having children soon after, and hadn’t stopped yet. Currently, she and Jonah had five kids ranging in age from one to nine. I couldn’t imagine a more horrifying prospect, but parenthood suited her very well.

“And you and Jonah? The two of you are happy?”

She looked at me strangely before answering that yes, they were fine, and why did I ask?

“I guess because I have enough trouble making a relationship work with just two of us. I can’t fathom trying to do it with half a basketball team.”

Liesl laughed melodically, saying it wasn’t always easy with little ones underfoot, but they managed to do okay.

She and Jonah had always seemed to be happily married, and I wanted to ask her about that now in order to learn what their secret was. But we lived in such different worlds that I had a feeling that, even if she could articulate it, whatever it was could never translate to my relationship with Heath—or with anyone else, for that matter.

“Someday I hope to have a marriage like that. Like yours. Like my parents’,” I said instead.

“
Jah
, I wish that for you too. But it will take the right person, especially because you are so much like me.”

I smiled, knowing exactly what she meant. Our worlds couldn’t be more different, but our personalities were very much the same.

“I see it like this,” she added, eyes twinkling, lowering her voice. “Jonah is the string to my kite.”

“The what?”

“You know me, Sienna. I am the type of person who is full of ideas and plans and enthusiasm, flitting around back and forth, all too often in a frenzy.”

This Amish gal with her steady, peaceful life didn’t know from frenzy, but I held my tongue, supposing it was all relative.

“I may be a kite,” she continued, “but that is okay because my husband is a string. With him, I can still fly. But this way I can fly without completely flying away.”

I was speechless for a moment, amazed that with that simple analogy I understood what she was saying.

We reached the clothesline, and Liesl paused, lifting up her hands to feel along the seams of the first few items hanging there. As with most of the Amish homes in this area, their clothesline was mounted at an upward angle so that she could easily stand at one end to hang the clothes, but as she
fed the line through the pulley, they would be swept much higher off of the ground at the other end, away from the dust and dirt that was kicked up by the animals and farm implements.

“From what I hear, you have been seeing someone. A doctor, I believe?”

I smiled at the thought of the old familiar Amish grapevine.

“Yes. His name is Heath Davis. We met in January and have been dating since.”

“And you met how?”

I explained that Heath had been working in the emergency room one night when my dad had had to bring in my mom. A rash had broken out all over her body, and they were afraid it was a side effect of her chemo drug.

Dad had called me in the city that night and told me I should come too, that it was important. Fearing the worst, I flew straight from the office, where I had been working late, to the hospital in Bryn Mawr. It wasn’t until I arrived there that I learned my mother was absolutely fine, and that the rash had come from a reaction to the generic laundry detergent my father had recently bought and started using. The “important” reason I had been summoned was that they wanted me to meet her nice young doctor, a handsome and intelligent man who just happened to be a Christian
and
single
and
“exactly the guy” for me. Mortified, I was screaming at them on the inside even as I forced a polite smile and shook the good doctor’s hand and accepted his invitation to go upstairs to the cafeteria for some coffee. By the end of that single encounter, I had stopped plotting ways to get even with my parents and had begun hoping Heath would call to ask me out on a real date. Which he did before I even got back home that night. We had been seeing each other exclusively ever since.

Liesl finished her inspection of the drying clothes, saying that they needed another hour or two yet, and we continued on past a lush vegetable garden toward the house.

“I hear that rain may be coming our way. Cooler air too,” I said, hoping to move the subject away from my love life.

“So will you marry this doctor, do you think?” she asked, not to be deterred.

I hesitated, not sure how to reply. Heath had broached the topic of
marriage several times, but each time I told him we hadn’t yet been dating long enough to have that sort of discussion yet. The truth was, I wasn’t sure if the timing had anything to do with my reluctance to discuss it or not. Heath could be the string to my kite, I had no doubt about that, but in our case I didn’t necessarily see that as a blessing.

Sometimes, what I most wanted wasn’t a string at all but another kite, flying wildly alongside mine, the two of us soaring together as high as we both could go.