Plain Death

by Flower, Amanda

  I shook my head. “I’d rather walk.” The Pippi Longstocking comment still annoyed me.

  She shrugged.

  Before I left the room, the chief said, “I forgot to tell you, welcome to Appleseed Creek.”

  I glanced back at her, and she smiled. Only it didn’t reach her eyes.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Instead of walking around the Amish farmers’ market, I decided to go through it. The more people around, the safer I would feel. Besides, if I brought home some fresh fruit, it might cheer up Becky. I kept my eye out for Curt and Brock. Part of me expected them to jump out from behind one of the buggies parked around the square.

  I meandered near three young women sitting at a table of pies and staring at me. As I passed, I heard whispering but tried to think nothing of it. The acknowledgment that someone had deliberately tried to cause me harm—a.k.a. kill me—left a burning in my stomach and a trembling in my body that I couldn’t completely control.

  The fruit stand sat in the middle of the square by the town’s fountain, which had a bronze replica of Johnny Appleseed leaning against an apple tree in it. A mischievous grin marked the statue’s face. Dozens of donor names were chiseled into the cement wall encircling the fountain.

  I picked up a green quart container of strawberries. Becky would be able to make a pie with them. “How much for the strawberries?” I asked the fruit seller, an Amish girl who was no more than fifteen.

  The Amish girl scowled. “Two dollars.”

  “I’ll take them.”

  Gruffly, she took the strawberries from my hand and dumped them into a plastic shopping bag. I handed her the money.

  A middle-aged Amish woman marched to the girl’s side and said something in their language. The girl hung her head and put the strawberries back into the green carton while the older woman removed my two dollars from the money pouch sitting on the table. “Here is your money.”

  I didn’t take the bills. “Is something wrong?”

  She tried to force the money back into my hands.

  “What about the strawberries?”

  Her eyes narrowed. “We cannot sell to you.”

  When I wouldn’t take the money, she placed it on the table in front of me. “What do you mean?”

  The younger Amish woman replied in their language, but the only word I understood was “Glick.” My stomach dropped. This was about Bishop Glick and Becky. I stepped away from them and left the money on the table. Part of me wanted to scream for this injustice against Becky, and reveal that my brake line had been cut, but my saner, calmer side prevailed. I bit back the retorts that would only spread more gossip through the district.

  I felt the eyes of the Amish watching me as I wove around the booths and card tables. Not until I turned the corner on Grover Lane did I let out a sigh of relief. If the Amish treat me this way, how will they treat Becky?

  At the house, Becky sat on a brown folding chair on our rickety front porch. Gig was in her lap, purring. Since the house faced east, the morning light leaked though holes in the porch’s roof and reflected off of her white-blonde hair, giving her an otherworldly halo.

  When she saw me, she jumped up from the chair. Gigabyte hung from her unbroken arm and yowled, so Becky opened the front door and placed the cat inside. “Chloe, I have great news!”

  I blinked. “You do?”

  She hopped from foot to foot. “Remember, I told you about Cookie and Scotch last night?”

  I climbed the last step to the porch. “Yes.”

  “They own Little Owl Greenhouse, and I called Cookie this morning. She offered me a job!”

  I leaned against the post. It shifted under my weight, and I shuffled away. Probably a good thing Timothy planned to mend it. “She gave you a job over the phone?”

  “Yes. I start Monday!”

  “Without an interview?”

  “Cookie said she didn’t need to interview me because I was so responsible for calling her right away. She knew I would be perfect for the greenhouse.”

  My forehead wrinkled. “Do you know anything about plants?”

  “Of course. My family has a huge garden.”

  I paused. “Are the plants the greenhouse sells different from those in an Amish garden?”

  Her face fell. “I thought you’d be happy.”

  “Becky, I am happy, but I’m surprised too. Where is the greenhouse?”

  “Just off”—she paused—“Butler Road.”

  I inhaled and glanced at the sky before bringing my gaze back to Becky. “How are you going to get there? We don’t have a car.”

  Becky shifted from one foot to another. “I told Cookie that, and she and Scotch will drive me until you have a car again.”

  I mulled that one over. “That’s awfully nice of them.”

  “They live near the square too, so they don’t have to go out of their way or anything.”

  I pointed at her cast. “Did you tell them about your arm?”

  “Yes, but Cookie said there was plenty of other work for me to do.” She peered at me. “Isn’t this great?”

  I nodded, still unsure. And yet, I too was hired over the phone.

  Becky sat back down in her chair. “What happened at the police station?”

  I relayed my visit to the police station, but decided not to mention the incident at the farmers’ market.

  “Why didn’t you tell me about those men in the pickup?”

  “I didn’t want to worry you.” Tentatively, until I knew it could hold my weight, I leaned on the crooked railing surrounding the porch. Sunshine warmed my back.

  She frowned. “Why does everyone treat me like a child? Even you, Chloe.”

  “We want to protect you.”

  She took a deep breath and looked away. “What’s going to happen to me?”

  “I don’t know.” I shifted to allow more sun onto my shoulders. “Can you tell me about the accident? I haven’t heard about it from you yet, at least not all of it.”

  “I turned onto Butler Road and drove to the top of the hill. Everything was fine. I thought I would make it to the greenhouse and back before you got home from work.” Becky faced me again. “I wanted to surprise you with my new job.”

  “How do you know how to drive a car?”

  “Isaac has a license. He got it during his rumspringa. He’s always been fascinated with mechanical contraptions, so he took me out several times in his truck and taught me. I know we shouldn’t have been doing that. It was a secret we shared.”

  I winced. Having been the one who taught Becky how to drive could only make the young Amish man feel worse. “Isaac is no longer in rumspringa?”

  “No, he was baptized last spring.”

  “What happened when you reached the top of the hill?”

  “I wasn’t going fast, maybe thirty-five miles per hour. It’s steep there and the truck’s speed picked up fast. I tapped the brake to slow down and the pedal went all the way to the floor. By this time, the car was coasting at over fifty. I saw it on the numbers behind the steering wheel.”

  “The speedometer?”

  She shrugged. “If that’s what you call it.” She closed her eyes and her voice shook. “I couldn’t stop. There were brambles along the road at the bottom where the road curves. I pointed the car at those, thinking they’d stop me.” She was silent, her eyes closed for a full minute. If I didn’t know better I would have thought she had dozed off.

  I prodded her. “So you hit the brambles . . .”

  She took a shuddering breath and opened her eyes. “No. As I got there, Bishop Glick’s buggy came around the bend in the road. I couldn’t do anything. There was no time to turn the car in another direction.”

  Despite the warm sun on my back, a chill ran down my spine.<
br />
  “I saw the horse first. I turned the steering wheel hard to the right to miss the animal, but by doing that I hit the buggy full on instead.” She rubbed her hands up and down her bare arms. Tears sprang to her eyes. “Bishop Glick recognized me. He saw it was me who hit him before he died.”

  I walked over to her, knelt by the chair, and wrapped her in a hug.

  “It’s my fault,” she whispered between sobs.

  Her tears soaked through the shoulder of my yellow T-shirt. “You shouldn’t have been driving the car. You know that, but remember what the police chief said. Someone cut the brake line. You had nothing to do with that.”

  She sat up and used the end of her long braid to dry her eyes. “Do you really think it was those men?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know.”

  A hiccup escaped her. “What if it’s not? Who else could have done this?”

  “I don’t know.”

  “What’s going to happen to me?” She asked the question again, her voice an octave higher.

  Again, I told her all that I really could at this point. “I don’t know.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  An hour later, Becky lay on the floor flipping through her sketchbook while I sat in the armchair and researched on my iPad how someone could cut a car’s brake line. It was frighteningly easy. Through a simple search, I obtained step-by-step instructions with pictures.

  The article I read claimed that a brake warning light would be illuminated on the car’s dash. “Becky, did you see any strange lights glowing on the front of the car near the place you watch your speed?”

  She looked up from her sketchbook. “I don’t think so.”

  “It would have said ‘brake.’”

  She shook her head and I repressed a sigh. Would I have noticed the brake light either? Probably. I doubted Becky was familiar enough with a car’s dashboard to notice something was wrong. She didn’t even know the word “speedometer.”

  A clack, clack, clack came from outside. I closed the cover to my iPad and looked toward the door.

  “It sounds like a buggy.” Becky hurried to the window. “Grossdaddi and the kinner are here!” Some of the music had returned to her voice. She threw open the door and disappeared outside.

  I followed her.

  “Gude mariye!” Grandfather Zook grinned from his perch at the front of his glossy black six-seater buggy. The three younger Troyer children waved from the back. “Get in!” he said. “We’re going to Young’s Flea Market!”

  Becky shook her head so hard I was afraid she’d give herself a crick in her neck. “Grossdaddi, I can’t go to Young’s.”

  Grandfather Zook cocked his head. “Why not?”

  Becky looked up, and tears welled in her eyes.

  “Come here,” her grandfather said.

  Becky moped around the side of the buggy. Grandfather Zook placed his hand on her head and leaned down, whispering to her.

  His horse nudged me in the shoulder and snorted. He was a beautiful, dark brown, lean animal with a white star in the middle of his forehead. Thomas climbed over his sisters and hopped out of the buggy. “That’s Sparky.”

  I scratched the horse’s star. “Sparky? That doesn’t seem like an Amish name.”

  “That’s the name he came with. He’s a racehorse,” he said proudly. “He’s the fastest horse in Knox County. We can get places in half the time it takes most folks.”

  Grandfather Zook squeezed Becky’s shoulder. “Sparky’s a retired racehorse and not as fast as he used to be. His full name is Sir Sparkalot Lightning March.”

  “That’s quite a name.”

  “Sparky sounds better,” Thomas declared.

  Sparky’s ear flicked back and forth as if he listened to the conversation.

  “Old Spark doesn’t like it when I say he’s slowed up,” Grandfather Zook said. “He’s plenty fast for us. Any faster and we’d be breaking the speed limit. I’d hate to be pulled over by the coppers.”

  My jaw dropped. “The police pull over Amish buggies?”

  Grandfather Zook laughed. I liked the sound of it. It was a rumble that came up from deep inside and shook his whole body, making his long white beard wave back and forth like a flag. What would my life have been like if I’d had a grandfather? My mother’s parents both died long before I was born, and my father was estranged from his mother and father. His mother is gone now, and if I tried to find my grandfather, my father would be furious. Sabrina wouldn’t be too happy about it either, but then again, nothing I did made Sabrina happy.

  “I bought him from a thoroughbred breeder two years ago.” Grandfather Zook moved the reins from hand to hand. “Lots of Amish carriage horses are retired thoroughbreds. We can give them a quiet retirement, and what horse wouldn’t want to be trotting around the countryside pulling a sharp-looking buggy like mine?”

  “Can we go now?” Ruth asked. “Anna Lambright is waiting for me at the market.”

  “You girls run back into the house and grab the things you need for the day,” Grandfather Zook shooed us on, not taking no for an answer.

  Despite the humid air, Becky wrapped her good arm around her shoulder as if she felt a chill. “Why do you want to take us to the flea market, Grossdaddi?”

  “We need to find you kinner some furniture. You said at supper yesterday that you have one chair between you.” He tsked. “The flea market is the best place to find everything you need, especially if I’m at your side.”

  Cheer returned to Becky’s face. “Grossdaddi can talk a fat man out of his fry pie.”

  Thomas giggled.

  Ruth jumped from foot to foot. “Can we go now, please?”

  Becky looked up at her grandfather. “Grossdaddi, I don’t want to go there. Not after what I did . . .”

  “Ya, you made a mistake, but you cannot hide. That will just make folks talk more. If you look them in the eye, they might think twice before they say something.”

  Or, I thought, if you’re dealing with someone like Sabrina, she’ll just insult you to your face. It was difficult for me to imagine anyone like my stepmother among the Amish.

  Becky considered me. “What do you think, Chloe?”

  I observed the sky, bright blue and clear. A sky I wasn’t used to. Rarely was there a clear sky like this one in Cleveland on the banks of Lake Erie. Instead, huge clouds rolled off the great lake and hung overtop the city. Today was a perfect day for a buggy ride. “We could use another chair or two.” I scratched Sparky behind the ear. And I could get out of the house and stop obsessing over the accident.

  Becky smiled just a little. “I am tired of sitting on the floor.”

  Grandfather Zook grinned. “No more talk, then. Into the buggy with the both of you.”

  Ten minutes later, Becky sat in the back of the buggy in between Thomas and Ruth, and I sat in the front next to Grandfather Zook with Naomi on my lap clutching her doll.

  Grandfather made a clicking sound with his tongue. “Head ’em up, Sparky.”

  I grinned. “Head ’em up?” Amish meets Old West?

  He winked at me.

  The black paint inside the buggy was polished to such a high sheen that I saw my reflection in the ceiling. Everything was spotless, even the high-gloss floorboards. “Your buggy’s beautiful,” I told Grandfather Zook.

  “It better be,” Thomas said from the back row. “Grossdaddi has me polish it once a week.”

  “I pay you in candy.” Grandfather Zook pretended to be offended.

  The girls laughed, even Becky. Maybe Grandfather Zook was right and the trip to the flea market would lift her spirits.

  Naomi held up her doll for me to see.

  “She’s beautiful,” I said. “But where is her face?”

  “Naomi doesn’t
speak Englisch,” Thomas said. “She hasn’t started school yet.”

  “Oh.”

  “Her doll doesn’t have a face because Daed says it’s wrong.”

  I glanced at Grandfather Zook. “Wrong?”

  “It makes a craven image,” Thomas said.

  Ruth snorted. “Graven image, you goof.”

  Thomas made a face at his sister.

  “That’s why Daed and Becky fight. Becky draws people with faces,” Ruth said.

  I glanced back at Becky, and a grim line crossed her delicate face. She wouldn’t meet my gaze.

  Naomi looked up at me with huge blue eyes, her forehead creased.

  “She’s a lovely doll with or without a face.”

  She smiled and snuggled into my lap.

  Grandfather Zook flicked the reins, and Sparky stepped away from the curb. “Enough talk about dolls. Off to the flea market, but first we must swing by Timothy’s.”

  I told the butterflies in my stomach to be quiet. “Timothy?” My voice squeaked.

  A wide smile spread across Grandfather Zook’s face, and I felt my own turn red. Was I that obvious? Thankfully, the children didn’t seem to notice.

  “Oh, yes, I want all my grandkinner on this trip,” Grandfather Zook said.

  “Yea, Timothy!” Thomas shouted from the back row.

  “Yea, Timothy!” Naomi agreed on my lap.

  Yea, Timothy, my heart whispered.

  Chapter Nineteen

  As Grandfather Zook drove the buggy through the neighborhood, neighbors peeked out of their windows to catch a glimpse. Yet no one seemed surprised to see an Amish buggy rolling down their street. This was an everyday event in Appleseed Creek. I tried to imagine what would happen if a buggy turned into the Greens’ cul-de-sac in Shaker Heights. I smiled at the image. Hopefully, Grandfather Zook didn’t think I was smiling because of Timothy.

  “Do you have other grandchildren?” I asked.