Plain Confession

by Emma Miller

  Rachel sighed and turned away from the window.

  She couldn’t stand not knowing if Lemuel had lied to her, and she couldn’t face the hours of waiting until it was time to dress for the church. She couldn’t just sit here when so much was at stake.

  Without considering the matter any further, Rachel pulled on jeans, a sweater, and a thermal vest, taking care not to muss her hair. She wouldn’t be long. She’d just sneak out the front door, bypassing the kitchen that soon would be a beehive of activity if it wasn’t already. She’d drive out to the Studer farm, speak to Lemuel, and be back before anyone realized she was gone. If the police report was wrong, that might make all the difference to Moses’s defense. And if it wasn’t . . . if it wasn’t, then Lemuel had some explaining to do.

  Chapter 19

  As she drove up the lane to the Studer house, Rachel spotted fresh horse and buggy tracks heading out. So maybe she’d wasted a trip; maybe Lemuel had gone somewhere with his family. She pulled into the yard to find it quiet. The only sign of life was smoke drifting from the kitchen chimney.

  Glancing over at the buggy shed, she saw that one carriage was missing, but she wasn’t sure if it was Alma’s or Mary Rose’s. It was possible some of the family members were gone but others had stayed. It was worth knocking on the door to find out.

  A dog barked when she got out of the Jeep, but she still didn’t see anyone. There was a stiff breeze coming off the mountain, funneling the wind between the barn and house. Fearing damage to her elaborate hairdo, Rachel patted the back of her head, hoping that Debbi had put in enough pins. She paused to inhale deeply again, enjoying the bracing mountain air with its smell of pine, hemlock, and cedar. It was a scent she never tired of, and one she’d missed terribly when she’d lived in the city.

  Now that she was here, Rachel felt a little foolish, sneaking out of her house and driving up here on the morning of her wedding. Maybe Evan was right. Maybe she had become a little obsessed by this investigation. But a few more words with Lemuel and she was certain she could straighten out the mix-up, and then she could put all this behind her and enjoy her special day. She hated leaving dirty dishes in the sink, and she couldn’t abide untidy endings. If the police report was in error, she needed to find out the truth and see that Lemuel’s name was removed. And once it was all straightened out as to who actually found the body, maybe—

  No. One way or the other, her investigation was ending here today. Now. Because today she was getting married and she and Evan were starting a new life together.

  A shovel stood by the back door, and the sidewalk had been freshly scraped clean of snow. More snow was drifting down in big flakes, but Rachel didn’t think it would amount to much. The Weather Channel had said that they’d have less than an additional inch today, with more to come the following afternoon. And she and Evan were leaving early in the morning for the airport in Harrisburg, where they’d make their connecting flight in Philadelphia to the island of Provo in Turks and Caicos.

  Rachel shivered in the icy wind, glad she’d put on her wool socks and flannel-lined jeans. It was hard to believe that in two days she’d be lying on a tropical beach, listening to the sound of ocean waves and seagulls. Lying on a beach, a married woman . . .

  She knocked on the farmhouse door. When there was no answer, she tried again, knocking louder. She was about to turn away and go home, in resolute defeat, when she heard footsteps inside the house. The door opened a crack; Lemuel peered through. When he saw her, he didn’t seem surprised. She wondered if he’d been watching out a window.

  “May I come in?” she asked. “I won’t keep you long.”

  “Is my brother all right?”

  “As far as I know, Moses is well.” There was no sense in telling a fourteen-year-old that his brother was depressed.

  Lemuel frowned. “Did you come to see Mary Rose? She isn’t here.” He stood planted in the doorway, his thin frame blocking the entrance.

  “Ne, actually, Lemuel, I came to see you.” She forced a smile. “It’s about something in the police report concerning the day Daniel died. I think there’s been a mistake.”

  “What kind of mistake?” he asked.

  “Is your mother here?”

  He hesitated, then slowly shook his head.

  She hugged herself for warmth. The goose down vest was warm, but not made for the only outer layer on a day like this. “It’s awfully cold out here, Lemuel. Would you mind if we talked in the kitchen?”

  As usual, his straight hair stuck out at all angles. He was not a particularly handsome adolescent, at best. Like many boys, his nose had grown first, leaving the rest of his face to catch up, and he was suffering from multiple skin outbreaks. On top of that, this morning he seemed to have awakened with a cold because his eyes were red, his nose drippy, and the corners of his mouth were chapped. “I told you everything I know,” he squeaked. “I’ve got chores to do.”

  “This will only take a minute, Lemuel,” she pressed.

  He exhaled as he opened the door farther and reluctantly stepped aside to let her in.

  A half glass of milk and a slice of raisin bread with one bite taken out of it sat on the table beside a jar of peanut butter. Apparently, Lemuel had been having a snack. Behind him, on the stove, a large pot simmered. Rachel smelled ham and cabbage cooking.

  Rachel felt more uncomfortable than she had when she’d come to the house before. She wondered where Mary Rose and her mother had gone and wished they were here. Lemuel didn’t ask her to sit down, so she stood near the door and did her best to put him at ease. “As I said, this won’t take a minute,” she repeated, her voice sounding patronizing in her ears. “I just need to know . . . Remind me, who was it who found Daniel’s body?”

  He looked at the floor and shrugged, his face the typical teenage mask of indifference. “Not sure.” He shrugged again and a bead of sweat formed on his upper lip. “Maybe it was Rosh.”

  Now Rachel’s uneasiness multiplied. When she’d talked to Lemuel before, he’d never impressed her as . . . sneaky. That’s what he seemed like today, as if he was hiding something. “Then you have to tell the police detective that, because they think you discovered the body. It’s written in their report, Lemuel. I saw it.”

  “Me?” His face blanched and then flushed. He scratched at an inflamed pimple on his neck and his fingernail drew blood.

  Unconsciously, Rachel took a step back.

  “It wasn’t me,” Lemuel protested. “Who told them that?” He glared at her. “That’s not true. Did you tell them that? That I found him?”

  She backed up slowly toward the door. She wanted to question him further, but while she wasn’t frightened of this overgrown child, she was suddenly feeling very uneasy. The thought that Lemuel had lied—because he clearly had, she could see it on his face—made her stomach uneasy. Seeing his expression, she realized he may very well have been the one who killed his sister’s husband.

  The realization that she might be standing alone in a kitchen on an isolated farm with a possible killer hit her hard. This was why Evan had asked her to stay out of the matter. Ultimately, he’d feared for her safety.

  “Did you tell them that?” Lemuel repeated, his voice squeaky with anger. His eyes were suddenly no longer those of a child but of a man who’d seen too much.

  “No, I didn’t tell them you found him. You told me you didn’t find him,” she hedged. “The police report is wrong, that’s all,” she backpedaled, knowing it really was time to let the police do their job. “Probably a clerical error.” She turned for the door.

  “Wait.”

  “Ne, I have to go,” she insisted. “I have to be somewhere. You tell the police what you told me, and I’m sure—”

  “You shouldn’t say that.” Lemuel’s voice cracked.

  Hairs on the back of her neck prickled as she sensed Lemuel’s desperation. Abruptly, she grabbed the doorknob and yanked the door open. She rushed through the doorway, babbling something about her cous
in waiting for her. Her heart was pounding as she heard Lemuel’s loud footsteps behind her.

  “Ne!” he cried.

  Rachel had not taken three steps when she felt a blow to the back of her head. Oh, no, my hairdo, she thought, as the ground seemed to shift in front of her and rose. It will be ruined. I’ll have to have it done again before the wedding this afternoon.

  She staggered and fell to her knees. She raised her hand to her head and touched something wet and sticky. She smelled the blood. The stone walkway swayed. I’m going to be sick, she thought.

  And then the snowy ground came up to hit her.

  * * *

  Someone was crying.

  Rachel blinked, trying to fight a wave of nausea.

  She swallowed, opened her mouth to gasp for air. What was she lying on? Something scratchy . . . something . . . She smelled hay and dirt. Dirt was in her mouth . . . it tasted like dirt. The sound came again. A baby wailing? Ne, not a baby, a kalb bawling for its mother.

  What was the word in English? she wondered.

  She tried to open her eyes, but they felt so heavy; the task seemed impossible.

  The back of her head felt as though it were on fire. It was hard to think. She turned her face to the side, feeling the cool earth through the scattered hay beneath her. At least the floor was still and not moving.

  The kalb bellowed again. Calf, that’s what it was. The word was calf. What was a calf doing at her wedding? She was supposed to be at the church. Evan would be at the church . . . so why was she lying facedown on a barn floor? Her white gown would be ruined and her hair . . .

  She tried to push herself up on her hands and knees, but she couldn’t get her hands . . .

  Panic swept over Rachel as she realized that her hands and ankles were bound with lengths of baling twine. Why was she tied up?

  She tried to wade through the fog in her mind. Tried to open her eyes. How had she gotten here? And where was here? Was she really in a barn? Was she dreaming?

  No, the pain of being bound was real.

  She inhaled deeply and sneezed. Definitely a barn. She could smell molasses and hay. She listened, gradually picking out the sounds of horses rubbing against the stall boards and a cow chewing its cud.

  Should she call out for help? Where were Evan and the wedding guests? Shouldn’t someone notice that the bride was lying on the floor with her hands and ankles tied? How could she and Evan exchange their vows in a barn?

  She forced her eyes open and the pain in her head threatened to make her vomit. Her eyelids were so heavy that they closed again under their own weight, but in that brief second, she’d seen the shadowy light coming in the barn window and reasoned that it was still daytime.

  “Evan?” she called weakly. “Evan, where are you? I . . . I need . . . you to . . .”

  And then the thick snow came down around her, and she fell forward and drifted off into the darkness.

  * * *

  The next time Rachel became conscious, she heard voices and recognized them as Alma’s and Lemuel’s. She gasped as memories came rushing back. She’d come to the farm to question Lemuel about the police report and he’d turned violent. He’d hit her. He’d knocked her down. The boy had tied her up and left her in the Studer barn.

  Lemuel was the killer.

  Her head throbbed with pain, a headache like the worst migraine. She wanted to just lie down. Sleep it off, or even sleep into oblivion. Because it was reasonable to think if Lemuel could do this to her . . . if he could kill Daniel, he could kill her, too. But she refused to give up without a fight. She wouldn’t be his second victim. She had to find a way out of this before he murdered her to keep her quiet.

  The hinges on the barn door squeaked. Then came the sound of footsteps.

  After a moment, something nudged the sole of her boot. “Why did you hit her with the shovel?” Alma asked.

  “I had to, Mam,” Lemuel whined. “She asked too many questions and she figured it out. I had to stop her from going to the police.”

  Someone shoved her foot again. Alma?

  “You hit her too hard,” Alma complained. “And now what do we do with her?”

  “I’m sorry. I thought—”

  “It was wrong. You should have waited and talked to me. I didn’t want you in this at all.”

  “But you said she was asking Mary Rose questions the other day in the attic. Questions that could get us all in trouble.”

  “I don’t care what I said. . . .”

  “Alma. Help me,” Rachel said, speaking in Deitsch. “I need medical attention. I’m hurt. Don’t let Lemuel be responsible for two deaths.”

  “See?” the boy said. “I didn’t kill her. She’s got a hard head.”

  Fighting the blinding headache, Rachel tried to open her eyes. “Alma, please. Make him see that this is wrong. He’s only fourteen; he won’t be held fully responsible. Whatever he’s done, we can make this right.”

  Alma knelt beside her and stroked Rachel’s face with a rough palm. “Ne. There’s no going back now. It’s done. You should have let this go.”

  “But you asked me to—Alma, you asked me to help Moses.”

  “I thought you were going to make them, make the police let him go. Because he didn’t kill Daniel.”

  Rachel sucked in a breath, trying to ignore the pain and speak rationally. “Moses really didn’t shoot Daniel?”

  “Of course not,” Lemuel said. He sounded like a ten-year-old, but Rachel knew now how dangerous he could be. “He wouldn’t do that,” he argued. “Moses couldn’t do such a thing. It goes against the teaching to strike back, even if it’s a bad person and they do evil. You return good for evil. The Book tells us that.”

  Rachel opened her eyes. Lemuel was standing there in the light from the open door. Behind him, she could see snow falling. The teen looked small and sad, not like a murderer at all.

  “Why didn’t you send Lemuel away, Alma? Somewhere Daniel couldn’t hurt him? Why didn’t you send him to Moses?”

  “You don’t understand,” Alma said fiercely, pulling her hand away from Rachel. “It wasn’t just Lemuel, it was all of them. All of them to protect. How could I send Mary Rose away from her husband? Was I to tear the baby from her mother?”

  “So you let Lemuel stay, and he was so desperate that he shot Daniel?” Rachel tried to lift her head, squinting to see her better. “How could you commit murder, Lemuel?” She tried to sound calm, but her voice rasped like an old woman’s.

  “He couldn’t,” Alma said, her tone now flat. Resigned. “My Lemuel? None of my children could do such a thing.” She stood and dusted the loose hay from her skirt. “It was me. I had to be the one to make the sacrifice for them. I had to be the one to commit the unforgivable sin.”

  “Mam, don’t say that,” Lemuel protested, his voice cracking again. “You can do what Daniel did. Repent and be forgiven.”

  Alma made a small sound of disbelief. “Only if I was truly sorry. But I’m not. I’d do it again.”

  Rachel coughed, trying to clear the dust from her throat. She rolled onto her side so that she could make out Alma in the shadows. The woman’s face was as pale as a ghost, and she looked frail despite her heavy barn coat. She was having a hard time following the conversation. Had Alma just admitted to having killed Daniel? “You . . . you killed him, Alma?”

  The old woman’s sharp chin bobbed assent.

  “Daniel was a bad man,” Lemuel said. “He hurt Mary Rose and me, and sometimes Moses, until he left the farm.”

  “I couldn’t keep protecting them, you see,” Alma explained. “As mean as Daniel could be, as mean as a copperhead with a broken back, he was afraid of me. Afraid I wouldn’t pass the farm on to him and Mary Rose.”

  The older woman wasn’t really making sense. Or maybe Rachel just couldn’t make sense of what she was saying.

  “Did he hit you, too?” Rachel asked. “If he hit you, killing him might be a kind of self-defense.” It was hard to believe what Alma
seemed to be saying, difficult to accept that a traditional Amish woman could point a gun at her own son-in-law and pull the trigger. And Alma hadn’t shot him just once. She’d shot him a second time when he lay helpless and bleeding on the ground.

  “I knew what he would be like when I wasn’t here to protect them anymore. I’ve got this thing, like a crab, growing in me.” Alma touched her abdomen. “Just like my own mother and her mother before her. They died of it before they turned fifty, and I’ll die of it, too,” she murmured. “And when I was gone, what would happen to Lemuel and Mary Rose and the baby? They’d be left at Daniel’s mercy. He’d be the head of the family. Don’t you see? He had to die. It was the only way.”

  Rachel took a breath; the stone floor of the barn was hard and cold. The cold was seeping into her muscles, making them stiff and achy. “Did . . . did Moses know it was you who killed him? Did he know and protect you by confessing to the killing?” Rachel asked.

  “He didn’t know,” Lemuel said. “Maybe he suspected, but he didn’t know. He asked me if Rosh had done it. Rosh was his friend. He knew Rosh would look after Mary Rose and the baby. Moses thought that, after a while, God would make the police understand that he didn’t do it and let him go.”

  Rachel twisted her neck to look at Alma. “You didn’t have to kill Daniel,” she argued. “You could have gone to the police.”

  “Ne,” Alma said, closing the man’s denim coat she wore. She swam in it. Did it belong to her son in jail, or her son-in-law now buried in the cemetery?

  “We don’t wash our dirty laundry in front of Englishers,” Alma said. “And what would they do? It would be our word against Daniel’s. He’d come home and we’d be the worse for it.”

  “Did you tell the church elders? The bishop?”

  “Mary Rose did,” Lemuel said. “And the bishop was angry. He told Daniel that it was wrong to mistreat his wife. Daniel just went home and grabbed the baby and shook her until she screamed. He said that if Mary Rose carried tales on him—if any of us did—we’d live to regret it.”