by Jane Jensen
Ezra went to talk to Mike Grady and his wife, Sharon, while I said my good-byes. LeeAnn Travis gave me a long hug and I got one from Katie’s little sister Sadie. Katie’s parents, Hannah and Isaac, were polite, and Isaac shook my hand. But there was an undeniable reserve in them that set them apart. That was fine. Ezra and I didn’t belong in their world, and we were just fine in our own.
—
Ezra was quiet that evening. He did his chores out in the barn with our six-month-old golden retriever named Rabbit while I cooked a quick stir-fry. The police department had given those involved with the Grimlace Lane case the afternoon off to go to the memorial, and it was a treat to be home early on a Friday night. The farm we rented was small, just twelve acres, but it had a barn that opened onto a ten-acre fenced pasture and a place for Ezra’s kitchen garden. Martha had decided to return to their parents’ home and remain Amish. Neither of us was really surprised. She didn’t have the burning need Ezra had to break free, and the pull of family and the familiar was just too strong.
Ezra wore different clothes these days, but there was still a grounded simplicity about him, like the wildflowers and weeds that crowd around the white pasture fence. It was a simplicity that spoke of the past and of home to me, like the smell of my grandfather’s shed. Pennsylvania was home to me. Ezra was home.
I thought Ezra’s solemn mood that evening was due to the Amish gathering at the memorial and the way he’d been shut out of it, the way his own family hadn’t acknowledged him. Sometimes I wondered if he ever regretted his choices. But then we had a dinner full of heated looks and low words. He made love to me that night with fire and passion and a heart full of love, and it seemed to me that he didn’t regret a thing.
We had a good life together, a wonderful life. As far as I was concerned, I wasn’t going to take a single minute of it for granted.
Ezra fell asleep and so did Rabbit, hogging the foot of the bed. But I was too wound up from the memorial. I put a coat on over my pajamas and went to sit on the back porch. Horse came to the fence and looked at me and then, seeing I was just fine and, furthermore, was not Ezra, went on his way to roam in the dark with the dozen other mules Ezra was raising.
The copper beech tree in the pasture shook its limbs, its dying leaves shrrring in a light breeze. The clouds parted and the moon broke out, creating light and shadows. An image of Terry came to me from out of the blue. It felt as if he stood there under the copper beech tree, watching me. For the first time, the thought of Terry did not fill me with rage or fear or guilt. In my mind, Terry was smiling.
I smiled back. I still miss you, I thought, but I’m happy.
Maybe there is no such thing as a perfect place in life, or a perfect person. But we are granted perfect moments, I think.
I went back inside to join Ezra and savor this one.
Keep reading for a special preview of Jane Jensen’s next Elizabeth Harris novel . . .
IN THE LAND OF MILK AND HONEY
Coming soon from Berkley Prime Crime!
PROLOGUE
Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, March 2015
“Mama! Mama!”
The strained cry pulled Leah from a fevered dream in which she’d been sewing and sewing. The stitches fell apart, disintegrating as she frantically worked. It was something important and she had to finish it . . . a bridal dress.
No. A shroud.
“Mama!”
Leah sat up in bed. Beside her, Samuel was asleep. She touched his forehead. It was still hot and dry with fever. But it wasn’t Samuel who had called for her. It had been a child’s voice. She left her husband to his fitful rest and went out into the hall in her white cotton nightgown and bare feet.
Coming! she thought. She left the reassurance unspoken because it was the middle of the night, and she didn’t want to wake the rest of her children.
A shining band of lantern light peeked out from under the door of the upstairs bathroom the children all shared.
She knocked lightly. “Hast du mich gerufen?” she asked, low. Did you call me?
“Mama!” Breathless and weak, the cry came from behind the door. Leah opened it.
On the floor by the toilet lay Mary. She was pale as snow. Her thirteen-year-old body had recently begun to develop a woman’s shape, but she looked years younger now. Her long dark hair, loosened for bed, was sheeted around her, damp and oily at her brow. Her eyes were closed. One of her hands twitched weakly, as if it wanted to reach for her mother. The smell of vomit and bile hit Leah in the face, sharp as the January wind on the open fields. The lid of the toilet was open, small amounts of bile the only evidence of Mary’s heaving. Her stomach was empty, poor thing. But the back of her nightdress was stained brown.
“Oh, Mary!” Leah fought her own nausea, exacerbated by the smell, and bent to help her daughter. She managed to get Mary sitting up and stripped off her soiled nightgown and undergarments. She cleaned Mary with a wet rag and bundled all the stained cloth up together. Leah enumerated the tasks in her head. She had to take the bundle down to the laundry room, open up the little window in the bathroom to air it out, then see to it that Mary was put into a clean nightgown and settled back into bed, and, oh yes, given a glass of water to drink while Leah watched. The doctor said water was important, especially with all the vomiting and diarrhea, but it was hard to get the children to drink it. When they did, it often came right back up.
Mary was trembling like a leaf in the breeze, her eyes bleary. But at least she was able to sit up by herself. Leah draped her in a few towels to keep her warm and went to fetch a clean nightgown.
As she passed the boys’ room she heard the muffled sound of crying—miserable, lonely gasps. She hesitated, wondering if she should first get Leah’s nightgown, but the sound was too worrying. She pushed open the door to the boys’ room.
“Aaron!” She hurried to the child’s side. Six-year-old Aaron, who looked so much like his papa, especially with their identical sandy-colored Amish haircuts, was sitting up on the lower bunk. He was crying, quietly but full-out, his mouth gaping wide.
She pulled him into a hug and checked his forehead. His fever seemed to have broken for the moment. His skin was clammy and covered with sweat.
“Was is das?” she tsked quietly. Across the room in the other set of bunk beds, Mark, her twelve-year-old, had his back turned, asleep on the upper bunk. The bottom bunk the boys used for playing—at least until little Henry outgrew his crib.
“Ich hatte einen Albtraum,” Aaron sobbed. A nightmare.
Leah felt a touch of relief. At least Aaron was not as sick as Mary, or as he himself had been earlier that evening. Maybe he was on the mend. Maybe they all would be soon, and her own nightmare would end. “Es war nur ein Traum. Schlafen tu.” It was only a dream. Go back to sleep.
She tucked Aaron in, his eyes already drooping, and straightened up from the lower bunk. Her back ached, deep and low, and she put a hand to it, rubbing. Chills ran through her, shaking her so hard the wooden boards beneath her feet creaked. Dear God, let this terrible flu pass soon. She should fetch her shawl. But first—Mary’s nightgown.
She turned to go, but decided to check on Will first. He was in the bunk above Aaron’s. Her fourteen-year-old had been very ill all day, refusing food and going to bed at six o’clock after dragging himself through the daily chores. The cows had to be milked, no matter that the entire family was sick as dogs.
She stepped closer to the top bunk and went up on her tiptoes, reaching a hand out to touch William’s forehead. He was a barely distinguishable shape in the dark. Her fingers touched wetness, partially dried and sticky. It was around his mouth, which was slack, open, and felt oddly firm. The smell of something foul came from where her fingers had been. Alarmed, she drew back her hand and paused for only a moment before reaching for the Coleman lamp on the bedside table. She turned it on. Keeping the other boys as
leep was no longer the foremost concern on her mind.
“Will?” She blinked as her eyes adjusted to the light. She stepped on the lower bunk and pulled herself up to look at her son.
A moment later her scream echoed through the silent house like a gunshot.
CHAPTER 1
I pulled into the driveway at the Yoders’ farm and turned off my car. I forced myself to sit still for a moment instead of hopping out immediately. I needed to get my head out of my current caseload and go-go mindset before I could appreciate Amish hospitality.
It was late March. The weather had warmed early this year, and the signs of spring were everywhere. The dark brown wooden fence along the Yoders’ pasture contrasted with the brilliant green of new grass and the white and purple of early blooming crocus. The late-afternoon light was just turning golden and soft. Several fawn-colored Jersey cows were eagerly tugging up mouthfuls of the new growth, completely engrossed. And the little decorative windmill in the center of the kitchen garden on the other side of the gravel drive spun in a light breeze. The garden was still in its winter hibernation, dormant but cleared. I imagined it held its breath in expectation.
This was why I’d moved back to Lancaster County. Every once in a while I had to remind myself of that before I got bogged down with head-in-the-sand-itis. Feeling better, I grabbed Sadie’s present and headed for the house.
Sadie Yoder had turned seven a week ago. This was the first chance I’d had to come by, sneaking out early from an afternoon of tedious paperwork. I’d debated what to get her. Ezra said dolls were acceptable for the Amish, as long as they were modestly attired. No Glam-Rock Barbie for Sadie then. But I didn’t want to reinforce the “grow up and have lots of babies” message, for no reason other than my core streak of feminism and innate rebellion. So I settled on a game of Chutes and Ladders.
I’d struck up a tentative friendship with the Yoders, specifically Hannah and two of her daughters, Sadie and Ruth. We were odd bedfellows—a female police detective and Amish womenfolk. But we’d shared a tragedy. Or, rather, the Yoders tragically lost their daughter Katie, and I’d found her killer. I’d nearly died in the process.
There was guilt and gratitude on their side, and I couldn’t even begin to untangle the mare’s nest of motivations on mine. I felt protective of Katie’s younger sisters, bonded to the family through the sympathy and pain of Katie’s murder case—and I was curious. I wanted to learn about Hannah’s way of life. Of course, I lived with Ezra, who was ex-Amish. But he couldn’t tell me what it was like to be an Amish wife and mother, and he didn’t like to talk about his life before anyway.
Also, if I were perfectly honest, I simply liked coming here. It made me happy. I went up the porch stairs and knocked on the door.
“Hallo, Elizabeth!” Hannah opened the door and welcomed me inside with a smile. She always looked so young for a mother of eleven, slightly built, her dark hair pulled back tight under a white cap and her face without a trace of makeup. Her plain, royal blue dress was covered with a large black apron that had traces of flour on it.
“Hi, Hannah.” I smiled. I wanted to give Hannah a quick hug, but refrained. Instead, I held up the gift. “I brought Sadie a birthday present.”
“Ocht! You spoil her!” Despite her words, Hannah seemed pleased. “We’re making strudel. Would you like to cook with?”
“Sure.” Being in the Yoders’ kitchen was soothing. And it would be fun to surprise Ezra by learning how to make something from his childhood.
The kitchen was crowded with girls and young women. The pine center table had been cleared and covered with wax paper, rolling pins, and large bowls of dough and chopped apples. Sadie’s face lit up when she saw me. She ran over to give me a hug around the hips. The others all said hello. Sadie’s older sisters, Ruth and Waneta, who still lived at home, were there, as well as Miriam, who was grown now and had children of her own. There were two young women I didn’t know. Before I could introduce myself, my dark pantsuit was covered by an apron and I was clutching a rolling pin. En garde. I bit my lip and refrained from saying it. They wouldn’t find it funny.
The sheer volume of strudel they were preparing came as no surprise by now. I’d seen Hannah cook before. Not only did the Yoders have a large family, but they always made extra, either to freeze or to share with the community at some get-together or another. And the two young women I hadn’t met before had probably come over to make batches for their own households. Cooking in a group made things a lot more fun.
We rolled out the dough, cut it into large square sheets, sprinkled on a sugar-cinnamon mixture, added raisins and nuts to some and not to others, and layered on small slices of apple before rolling them up and brushing the tops with melted butter and powdered sugar. The bushels of last fall’s apples were from cold storage, according to Hannah. Those that hadn’t been eaten over the winter had to be used up before they went bad. They were a tough-skinned green variety, and they were pared and chopped in an endless assembly line. And while trays of rolled strudels sat and rose in the warm kitchen, more and more and more were made.
It was a repetitive task that soothed me after a long week of work. This past week I’d investigated a man who’d killed his wife accidently during a heated argument, a Jane Doe found near the highway, and a baby whom I suspected had been abused rather than suffering crib death. It all melted away under the steady motions and the pleasant singing in complicated-sounding German words.
I couldn’t contribute much to the singing or the conversation. With the older Amish, most of my life was topic non grata. I was living in sin with Ezra Beiler who was, in any case, an Amish man who’d taken the church vows and then left the Amish, and was therefore shunned. And my work as a homicide detective wasn’t something Hannah cared to have her girls learn much about, even if she did respect it. But Sadie, as usual, had a million nonsensical questions for me like Do you like grass? and Do you have red birds at your house?
The last strudels were rolled. A few of the dough logs were stuffed into the warm oven, but most were wrapped in cling film for later baking. Hannah’s guests left with cheerful good-byes and boxes bursting with strudel. Sadie opened her birthday present, thanked me for the “most wonderfullest gift” and ran off with Ruth and Waneta to play the game before supper.
I washed the dough off my hands at the sink. The window above the basin overlooked the fields outside. The sun was sinking and I saw Hannah’s husband, Isaac, and two of her boys heading home on a plow pulled by two horses. It was getting late—time to let Hannah get to their evening meal. Besides, the sight made me long sharply for Ezra, who would be ending his own day about now.
“Thank you for allowing me to stay,” I told Hannah. “This was just what I needed to relax.”
Hannah was placing two wrapped, unbaked strudels into a bag for me to take home. She paused, an odd look on her face, like she wanted to say something but wasn’t sure if she should.
“What is it?” I asked.
Hannah looked troubled. “I meant to speak to you. . . . It is about a bad business.”
“Of course.” I stepped closer to Hannah and leaned against a counter, making it clear I was happy to listen.
Hannah sighed. “There ist some trouble lately, among the people in our church. Now a boy has died.”
“Trouble? What kind of trouble?”
“My friend Leah Hershberger, her whole family is sick. They called in a doctor, and he said it was the flu. But . . . there has never been such a flu. So sick they were, and her son William, only fourteen and strong before now—he died from it.”
“I’m sorry, Hannah.” It was disturbing. There’d been word in the news that the flu season was particularly virulent this year. Everyone at the station had been given a flu shot last November. But this was the first I’d heard about a local child’s death. Of course, if he’d died from a virus it wouldn’t have come to the homicide
team.
“Another family, the Knepps, got ill such like too. I hoped maybe, you could look into this?” Hannah asked, her face uncertain.
I didn’t understand. “How do you think I could help? It sounds like a case for a doctor, not the police.”
Hannah tugged at her cap self-consciously, her eyes downcast. “Some believe it is not a normal sickness but hexerei, a curse.”
I blinked rapidly as my mind tried to catch up. A curse?
Hannah looked up, her face hopeful. “There is a man, a brauche man. He holds a grudge against our church. Maybe if you could just look things over, say what you think. I don’t know what to believe myself, but if it is a curse . . . I don’t ask for myself, Elizabeth, but for Leah and her children, and for my own children too.”
I felt out of my depths, like the floor had gone wonky beneath my feet. A curse? What could I say?
“I . . . would be happy to take a look into the boy’s death.”
Hannah’s face lit up with a grateful smile. “I knew you were a gut friend to us. Thank you.”
—
Lancaster General Hospital was a big and open space, surprisingly modern and new. I was used to the old hospitals in Manhattan, with their cramped corridors and smell of centuries past. Like all things in Pennsylvania, this hospital’s corridors were extra wide and its ceilings extra high, as if its citizens could be counted on to be oversized, families overblown, as if posterity could only get bigger. There was something endearingly optimistic about that.