Appleseed Creek Trilogy, Books 1-3

by Amanda Flower

  “I’ll grab a rake and pan to clean it up.” She hurried to Mr. Troyer’s workshop to collect a dustpan.

  “But I wasted all of the cow food.”

  She pulled a metal waste can over to the mess and lifted a rake that hung from the wall. “It’s no trouble. It was an accident.” She made short work of raking the feed into the pan that I held. As I dumped the pan into the waste pail, I admitted to myself for the first time that I never asked. I never asked my father why he made that decision, why he didn’t argue with Sabrina more to let me be a part of the family. It would have been hard to move to California and leave my friends, especially Tanisha, but how different would my life look? Would I have a father now? Would I know who my half brother and half sister really were instead of just reading about them in e-mail updates that Sabrina sent just to remind me how superior her children were to me? I could give myself a pass and say that I didn’t ask then because I was a hurt child who still grieved for her mother, but what about now?

  Ruth hung the rake back onto the wall. “You can’t tell anyone, even Timothy.”

  I blinked at her, preoccupied in my own family drama that was a decade old. “What?”

  She examined my face. “Where Anna and I meet. You can’t tell anyone.”

  “I won’t tell,” I said quickly.

  She picked up her bonnet from the hay bale and twirled the black ribbon around her index finger. The barn cat, which pestered Sparky, appeared on top of the hay and watched Ruth twirl and untwirl the ribbon with studied fascination. “If I want to see Anna I tie a green ribbon on a spruce tree in the woods behind her house. She goes out often enough to look for the ribbon.”

  “A green ribbon? Isn’t that hard to spy in the tree?”

  She dropped the bonnet on the hay bale and the cat dashed away. “That’s the idea. You can only see it if you know what you are looking for. The last thing we want is her daed or stepmother finding it.” She picked up her feed bucket and scooped again. “Then I hide a note that says the date and time to meet. Not every time, but most of the time she is able to slip away and meet me there. When she doesn’t make it, I know that she has tried.”

  I picked up my feed pail. My wrist gave a little under its weight. How could such a small girl like Ruth move such a heavy pail around the barn so easily? There wasn’t a bit of strain in her demeanor. “Where is your meeting spot?”

  Ruth looked away and filled two more troughs with grain.

  The metal pail handle dug into my curled fingers. I set it down. “Ruth?”

  “We meet at the old Gundy barn,” she said barely above a whisper.

  There was no need for her to add the spot where Katie was killed, because that was something I already knew.

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  Ruth added another scoop to the trough in front of her. It was almost overflowing.

  “I think there’s enough in that one,” I said.

  She glanced down at the trough and blushed. “Oh, what am I thinking?” She scooped some of the surplus feed into her pail. The cow that was already eating from the trough mooed at her. “It’s my mistake, Maisy. You can’t have that much to eat. It’s not good for you.”

  Moo.

  I watched her. “Why didn’t you mention before that you and Anna use the Gundy barn as your meeting spot?”

  “It has nothing to do with what happened to Katie, if that’s what you think.” She stuck the scoop into the pail of feed. It stood straight up like a shovel in a snow bank.

  “It doesn’t?” My voice dripped with doubt.

  She lifted her chin. “No, it doesn’t, and I couldn’t tell anyone because if her parents found out about it, they would put a stop to it. If they had their way, I would never see Anna at all.”

  “Did Katie know that’s where the two of you met?”

  “Ya. Katie knew. Last summer she caught Anna taking my note from the hollow in the tree. She promised that she wouldn’t tell, and she never did. Katie was a good sister to Anna.” Tears gathered in Ruth’s blue eyes that looked so much like her older brother’s.

  “Are you sure that Katie never told anyone?”

  “Ya. She promised.”

  Katie’s promise made to Anna and Ruth months ago may have been enough to reassure the two thirteen-year-old girls, but I wasn’t so easily convinced. It was too coincidental that Timothy and I found Katie’s body in that same location. It seemed to me that the old Gundy barn saw a lot more action than anyone in Appleseed Creek knew about. Billy used it for storage, Anna and Ruth used it for a secret meeting place . . . Katie’s killer used it for murder.

  Instinctively my hand rose to the place where the necklace Timothy had given me lay hidden beneath my coat and shirt. The necklace was another event at the Gundy barn. Would I ever be able to separate it from Katie Lambright’s death? Or would one always remind me of the other?

  “Do you know who Billy Thorpe is?” I asked.

  Ruth picked lint from her mittens. “Who?”

  “He’s a big guy with bright red hair like mine. He owns a mechanic shop in town. Have you seen him before?”

  Her eyes were wide. “Ya. I’ve seen him at the Gundy barn. He unloaded boxes from a truck and put them inside.”

  “Did he see you or Anna?”

  “Nee. I was the only one there. It was one of the days that Anna couldn’t come. She told me later that her stepmother had been angry because Anna burned the breakfast rolls that morning. She made Anna scrub out all the cupboards in the kitchen as punishment.”

  The image of an Amish Cinderella on her hands and knees scrubbing the kitchen floor boards came to my mind, but unlike the Disney version there were no singing mice to take away the sting of the work. Also unlike the fairy tale, Anna’s father was very much alive.

  “Is the tree far?” I asked.

  “No. It’s maybe a half mile into the woods. On a good day, I run there and back while on my chores.”

  “Let’s go now and leave a note asking her to meet both of us at the barn.”

  Her forehead bunched. “Mamm and Daed will wonder what’s taking me so long to feed the cows.”

  “They know I’m here. I’m sure Thomas told them. They will think I am keeping you.”

  She cocked an eyebrow at me. “Which is true.”

  I smiled to see a bit of her teenaged spunk back. “I need to talk to Anna again.”

  “Why?”

  I bit my lip. Should I tell her that there were rumors of abuse in the Lambright family? Surely, Ruth would have told someone if she knew her best friend was in danger. If Tanisha had ever been at risk, I’d have told everyone who would listen. Then again, I wasn’t raised Amish, and what the Amish see fit to tell and what the English see fit to tell were much different. In the short time I had lived in Appleseed Creek, I learned many of the secrets in the closed-off community, but I knew there must be that many more buried.

  “I need to talk to her about her family,” I said. “It might help me understand what happened to her sister. Also, I have more questions about Katie that only Anna can answer.”

  Ruth chewed on her lips some more, and then she crossed the barn floor to the wooden ladder that led into the hayloft. She started up the ladder and disappeared over the ledge.

  I looked up. “What are you doing?”

  Her hand appeared, waving a bright green Christmas ribbon back and forth. “I had to find the ribbon.” She slid down the ladder in a practiced manner that led me to believe she had done this countless times before. “We must be quick.”

  We exited through the back door of the barn. A large field separated us from the woods beyond, and our boots crunched on the snow-covered ground. Ruth lifted her skirts to keep them out of the worst of the snow drifts. In the woods, the snow wasn’t nearly as deep because the trees had sheltered the forest floor from the worst of the storms that ha
d raked across the Ohio countryside.

  Ruth moved among the trees with ease. She made barely a sound as if instinctively knowing where the broken limbs had fallen and how to avoid them. I, on the other hand, made noises like Big Foot running loose in the forest as I stepped, tripped over, and knocked into anything that made noise.

  Ruth’s head snapped around when I stepped onto yet another loud twig underneath the snow. “You don’t go hiking much, do you?”

  “You forget that before I moved here, I spent most of my time in front of a computer screen.”

  Ruth shook her head as if she couldn’t understand such an existence. Now, in the middle of the frozen woods I had to agree. I may know how to build my own computer motherboard or read computer code like another person reads a book, but how did that compare to this?

  “How far are we from the Lambright farm?” I asked, slightly breathless. I told myself it was from breathing in the cold air, not from being out of shape.

  She slowed down, so I could match her pace. She was only thirteen but nearly as tall as me. I knew she would pass me up all together in a few years and be as tall as Becky, who was five nine. “If you go by buggy, the Lambright farm is three miles away, but through the woods, it is only a mile. The spruce where we hide the ribbon is right at the halfway point between the two farms.”

  “And the Gundy barn? Where is it in relation to your farms?”

  She pointed west. “It’s over in that direction almost two miles from the spruce.”

  “Your meeting point is over two miles from your home?”

  “It’s not far.”

  I smiled at another way Amish and English differ. Back in Cleveland, a two-mile journey would require a car. In Appleseed Creek, it was a leisurely stroll.

  “We are almost to the tree.” Ruth pointed to another tree, a skeleton-like sycamore in the middle of the woods. Its leaves, ranging from the size of a toddler’s fist to a full-grown man’s splayed hand, had fallen and were most likely buried in deep layers of snow. There was a hollow knoll just above my head in the tree.

  She removed a scrap of paper and pencil from her coat pocket.

  “Ask her to meet us at the barn today,” I said.

  She held her pencil over the scrap of paper. “When?”

  “How is three o’clock?” I hoped Timothy would be home by then.

  Ruth scribbled away, then stuck her note inside of the knoll. She stepped back from the sycamore, removed the bright green ribbon from her other coat pocket, then walked about twelve feet away to where a spruce stood. There Ruth buried the ribbon inside the spruce’s branches. I could see the ribbon because I knew what I was looking for. A passerby would never have noticed the green ribbon among the evergreen needles. “Why don’t you tie it on the same tree?

  “Because if someone searches this tree because of the ribbon, that person might take the note.” She blushed. “We learned our lesson. That’s how Katie found out about our meeting spot. We used to hide the note and ribbon in the same tree.”

  I looked down at our boot prints in the snow. “Don’t your footprints give away which trees you are walking up to, especially in the snow or in rainy weather?”

  Ruth began stomping a zigzag pattern into the snow. I joined her. “This distracts them and makes it impossible for them to follow our trail.”

  Clearly, the girls had considered all contingencies.

  Ruth had us stomp a random path every which way through the forest for a few more minutes until she said, “Done. Let’s go back. Daed will be coming to the barn soon if we don’t show up in the kitchen.”

  The walk back to the Troyer farm was quiet as we were both preoccupied with our own thoughts. In the forefront of my mind were questions about Katie. What was her home life like? Had Caleb hurt her? Or her father? Jason accused both men of abuse, but was he a trustworthy source? I thought of the old spiral fracture of her index finger and winced. To me, that injury was more telling than her actual murder.

  The moment we stepped into the farmhouse, Ruth disappeared upstairs. Mrs. Troyer insisted on making me a full breakfast even though the family had eaten hours ago. “I know Becky cooks at your home, but you need a solid Amish breakfast, not one of those fancy recipes that she sees on the television.” Mrs. Troyer scrambled farm fresh eggs on the stovetop. I didn’t think this was the best time to tell Mrs. Troyer about Becky’s hair.

  Grandfather Zook sat at the kitchen table drinking coffee from a white ceramic mug. “Where are you off to today, Chloe?”

  “I . . .” I searched my brain for a something to say that wouldn’t worry the family. They wouldn’t be happy to learn that Timothy and I were involved in another murder investigation.

  A knowing grin crossed the older man’s face. “Because I could use a ride. I have a whole new mess of items—napkin, paper towel, and letter holders—to deliver to the Garner’s furniture warehouse. I could wait for the next pick up, but that won’t be for a few more weeks. I’d rather drop them off at the store today. In the winter time, the family could always use a little bit more spending money.”

  Mrs. Troyer flipped the eggs onto a plate along with a hot biscuit and a ham slice and slid it in front of me. “Daed, you make it sound like we are in a hardship. We are doing fine. That’s the fact of farm life. There are fat times and there are lean times.” She pointed at him with her wooden spoon. “It is a gut thing that Simon is at the auction house today. He wouldn’t like hearing you say that about money.”

  Grandfather Zook snorted. “Bah! My son-in-law doesn’t like most of what I say, but he puts up with me.”

  Mrs. Troyer shook her head. “I don’t know if I want you to go out today. The temperature is supposed to drop this afternoon, and I’m afraid that you will catch a cold. Remember that awful case of pneumonia you had two years ago? You scared me to death.”

  My eyes widened. “I don’t want you to become ill.”

  Grandfather Zook reached his wrinkled hand across the table and squeezed mine. “Don’t mind my Martha, she worries too much. Besides, we won’t take Old Spark and the buggy to the store. We’ll go in Chloe’s car.” He wiggled his eyebrows at me. “What do you call it? Your cockroach?”

  I nearly choked on my biscuit and took a big gulp of milk. “It’s a VW Beetle, but mostly I call it a Bug.”

  He tsked. “Beetle, cockroach? What’s the difference? You still name your vehicle after a pest. You Englischers surely choose the strangest names for things.” Grandfather Zook held up his coffee mug to his daughter, who refilled it without a word. “Since we’ll be in Chloe’s Bug machine, she will have the heater on. That will keep me warm and the pneumonia away.”

  “I’ll have it on full blast,” I promised between bites of egg.

  He grinned. “See? I will be nice and toasty.”

  I promised Timothy that I wouldn’t go to the warehouse without him, but because Grandfather Zook had a believable reason for being there, my appearance would be far less suspicious. The Garners met me on the Troyer farm and knew I was close to the family. It wouldn’t be too much of a surprise to them if I drove Grandfather Zook around town on errands.

  Thomas bounced into the room. “Can I go to the furniture store too?”

  The child must have overheard our conversation from the living room.

  “Nee,” Grandfather Zook said sharply, and then he smiled to take some of the bite out of his words.

  Too late. Thomas stumbled back. “I-I thought I could help you, Grossdaddi.”

  Grandfather Zook held out one arm to his youngest grandson. “I’m sorry to have snapped at you, kinner. There is no need for you to come because I will have Chloe with me to help.”

  “Oh,” Thomas said, still unsure. He allowed his grandfather to squeeze him in a bear hug, and by the end of it, he was squealing to be let go. Next Naomi ran into the room, demanding a hug of her own.
/>   Thomas may have been taken aback by Grandfather Zook’s reaction, but it convinced me that the elderly man knew exactly why I wanted to visit the Garners’ business—and that it had nothing to do with furniture.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  I turned my car onto the Appleseed Creek square. “Do you care if we make a stop before going straight to the warehouse?”

  Grandfather Zook yanked on the seat belt, holding it away from his neck. He wasn’t happy when I insisted that he wear it while inside my car. “Where would you like to stop?”

  “The cheese shop. I want to talk to Mr. Umble.”

  He laughed. “You have a cheese emergency. Does Becky need some exotic flavor for one of her recipes?”

  “Not that I know of.” I tapped the steering wheel. “Katie Lambright worked at the cheese shop until six months ago.”

  “Ahh.” Grandfather Zook nodded. “I could use some gouda.”

  I laughed.

  It was still early morning and the bakery next door to the cheese shop was doing a brisk business, so all the parking spots in front were full. “It’s not even ten yet. The cheese shop may not be open.”

  Grandfather Zook waved away my concern. “Amos Umble will open his door to me. Drop me here.”

  I frowned at the frozen-over slush clinging to the curb. “Do you need any help reaching the door?”

  “Nee. I may move slowly, but I will get there eventually.”

  I gnawed on my lip as I watched him shuffle over the slush. A car behind me honked its horn, but I ignored it until Grandfather Zook was safely onto the salted sidewalk.

  I parked on the square, and when I reached the shop’s glass door, I saw that Grandfather Zook sat on a barstool across from the cash register where a chubby Amish man, who looked to be in his sixties, smoothed dollar bills on the counter with sausage-like fingers.

  I tried the door and it was locked. The man tucked the bills back into the drawer, then approached the door and let me inside. “You must be Chloe. Joseph was telling me all about you.”