by Marta Perry
“Never saw them on her, but—”
“But maybe she’s been paid in some Tornelli goods instead of just money. Now, in the really pretty picture of her online, Mrs. Tornelli wore emeralds, but I’ll just bet she has diamond earrings, right?”
He felt both relieved and elated. This Amish girl was on his side. She was thinking clearly. She had accepted what he’d told her at face value. Man, not that the Plain People’s ways were perfect, but he’d lived in the big, bad outside world too long! Abigail Baughman would be called naive by the modern folk, yet what was wrong with trust—trust and love?
“Right,” he said. “But however great a picture she takes, neither she nor any woman I have ever met could hold a candle to you.”
Abby blinked back tears. They held hands, both hands, leaning toward each other across the table. “And here I’ll never have a picture taken of my face to prove that,” she said, her tone teasing, her fingers trembling despite the little smile she wore.
He could not believe how she was backing him up. Inner strength radiated from her, warming him—heating him. But if he pulled her over here into his lap, they’d never finish this conversation and decide what they must do, especially tonight. It was getting dark outside, and he’d hardly noticed.
“So,” Abby went on, when he just stared at her, “my thief could be either of those women, or Mr. Tornelli, too. Are the insurance woman and the police detective thin? The Tornellis looked pretty slender.”
Ben shook his head to clear it, then realized she would think he was saying no. “Ja, they’re all in good shape, as auslanders put it. Are you saying your pursuer today was thin?”
She nodded. “But then so are all the others I can mention to the sheriff. Elam, Burt Commons. You know, I just assumed my thief and stalker was a man, but maybe not. I think someone must have been pretty slender to get through my basement window. But now the next question—why? If it’s Elam or Burt Commons, I guess I know. Elam wants me to sell my house to the gun club in town, and he’d get a cut of the sale. Plus he’s upset I turned down his proposal to wed him. Burt is furious I intervened when he was after you. But, land sakes, why would the outsiders be after me, if it’s them?”
“Maybe whoever was on the bridge arguing thought you were watching them, then when you took the diamond… I don’t know. I do know you either need to stay here all night, or I’m going to take my sleeping bag across the bridge again and camp out in your kitchen or front room.”
“Ben, you know we can’t,” she protested, finally letting go of his hands.
“We’ve already stepped over the line big-time. I’ll explain everything to the bishop tomorrow, and you can tell the sheriff—our two main confessors, right? Just one more night, and we’ll get help tomorrow. I’m sure the bishop will get someone to come out and stay with you—maybe with me, too, until we can really be together. And I want that. I want us to have a future getting to know each other better. This whole thing has been a blessing in dis—”
“Simply a blessing. I think so, too, but not in disguise. The one in disguise is the evil person who’s been sneaking around, and I just hope and pray the sheriff will find out who and stop it.”
“As they say in the big, bad world then, my place or yours tonight? I promise I’ll control myself better than I did a while ago.”
“Just for now, I hope,” she said, standing and shaking out her soil-smudged skirts. Her kapp was still a bit awry from when they’d kissed.
“Okay,” he said. “I say we lock up tight here and head across the bridge. With you and your house being watched, it’s more important to guard your mushrooms than my boxes. But first, I want you to take a look at something in the back room—the second bedroom, not where I sleep.”
“Not another surprise, after all you told me.”
“One, I hope—I think—you’ll like.”
* * *
ABBY FOLLOWED BEN ACROSS his workshop/living area and peeked in as he flicked on an electric light. Lined up around the four walls of the mostly empty room were what she would call hope chests. Among the Plain People, maidals cherished them and filled them with heirloom quilts, towels and linens. Liddy had kept her big battery-run clock tucked in amid the sheets in hers, a chest she might have started with Ben in mind, but which had gone with her when she and Adam moved to Pennsylvania.
“They’re just perfect,” Abby told him, standing in the doorway. Her mind darted to one of the earlier circle letters she’d received from Sarah and Lena, in which they’d all talked about their hope chests, as well as their hopes and dreams for homes and families of their own someday.
“Which one do you like best?” Ben asked, eager as a boy. “Take a look. Even if you have one already, a second one can never hurt.”
“I do have one that was my grossmamm’s. It’s special to me, so I won’t say my favorite here right now.” She longed to examine each chest, but still didn’t go into the room.
“You’re right,” he said, coming back toward her. “The rules of the bann—take nothing from the hand of the one shunned.”
“But someday, I would treasure a second one, if I had a come-calling friend. I suppose I’d be off my bean enough to want one carved with mushrooms.”
He smiled at her, something she hadn’t seen much. “Then,” he said, “I’d better pay more attention to mushrooms, and not only their virgin spawn inoculator when I’m over there tonight. It will take me just a minute to get some things together and lock up.” He turned out the light and headed for the other bedroom, still talking over his shoulder. “For once, let’s go across the bridge together. I don’t want you out there alone, especially not in the dark.”
Sounds came from his room: a closet door banged, a drawer closed.
“Okay, ja,” she called to him. “Only one more night, and we’ll have others to help us….” Her voice trailed off wistfully. Despite the dangers, there was something wonderful about helping each other, just the two of them against bad things in the world. But there was the bright promise of a future, in the broad light of day or in the depths of night. Surely, nothing evil could hurt them now.
CHAPTER EIGHT
THEY LOCKED THEMSELVES inside Abby’s house. While Ben looked around, checking the windows, she fixed them mushroom soup and sandwiches, and they ate by lantern light. Although they were both on edge, Abby nearly nodded off after dinner.
“I haven’t slept well since that first night I heard voices out there,” she told him as she washed the dishes. “Sorry,” she added with a yawn. “It’s not the company, really. I finally feel safe, now that you’re here.”
“We’re both emotionally wrung out, plus you had that run through the woods.” For the tenth time, he got up to glance out the windows toward the bridge. “It would shock me if this turns out to just be pranksters picking on a lone, isolated woman, but people are nuts these days. It will be good to turn things over to Bishop Esh and the sheriff in the morning. I’ll put my sleeping bag on your rag rug, stretched across the doorway between the living room and kitchen.”
“And,” she said, stacking the dishes in the rack to dry, “I’d better take a bath and get to bed. I know I’m still a mess after hiding in that log.”
“You look great to me. A little wild, but as natural and lovely as all of Eden County.” He turned toward her and she to him, between the table and the sink. He gently tugged at a curl that had come loose from her kapp, and stroked the slant of her cheek with his thumb. “Abby, th
anks to you, I’m finally really happy to be home. Despite everything we’ve been through here, I’m glad and grateful to have found you.”
It was going to happen again—a kiss, a caress. But then he moved to the kitchen door, filling it completely, making the entire house seem to shrink. She wanted to be kissed good-night. She could tell he wanted that, too. But if they did, he’d have much more to confess to the bishop than he’d planned. She had already stepped over the line with a shunned man and could be put under the meidung, too.
“Good night, then,” she said, and edged toward the door. “Turn out the lantern when you’re ready, ja?”
“Ja, Abigail Baughman.” He moved slowly out of the doorway to let her pass. “There’s a worldly saying, ‘Tomorrow is the first day of the rest of our lives.’ Let’s make that so.”
Later, despite a warm bath, full stomach and utter exhaustion, Abby had trouble sleeping again. Mostly because Ben was just one closed door and one room—one shout—away.
* * *
AFTER BREAKFAST, Ben helped Abby harness Fern to the buggy. “I’ll walk just ahead of you over the bridge, throw my stuff in the house, do a quick change of clothes, then be ready to go,” he told her.
“I hope you don’t mind driving that truck into town at about four miles an hour,” she said as she climbed up and took the reins. “I could start ahead of you.”
“No way. Until I see you walk safely through the sheriff’s front door, I’m keeping you in sight. Maybe a long time after, too,” he added, reaching up to squeeze her knee. “Wait for me by my truck.”
She giddyapped to Fern and turned toward the bridge, though she felt she could have simply soared across the river. A future with Ben. A miracle that he could learn to love her, too. Wait until she wrote all that had happened in the next circle letter.
The steel buggy wheels bounced and rattled over the plank flooring of the bridge, scattering the pigeons roosting in the rafters above. They fluttered out the windows with their wings flapping.
She glanced at her locked-up house and gardens guarded by the fringe of forest. Harvesting her mushrooms would be delayed today. As for dealing with the sheriff, it wasn’t the Plain People’s way to trust law officers, ever since their Amish ancestors had been pursued and murdered in Europe years ago. But she and Ben had no choice, and surely Bishop Esh would understand.
Abby reined Fern in on the other side of the bridge as Ben went into his house. Again, she turned back to look across the river at her home and land, then at the old bridge itself—and screamed.
Ben blasted out of the house, banging the door into the wall.
“What! What?” he cried, when she pointed toward the bridge, close to this side.
When he leaped up into the buggy, he saw it, too: two bodies swinging underneath, an Amish woman and an Englische man, hanged, with nooses around their necks.
* * *
“WH-WHAT…WHO?” Ben stammered. “It looks like…”
“Like us.”
He jumped down and ran the short way to the bridge, with Abby scrambling after him. Why had they not seen this from the other side? Oh, she thought, a supporting truss hid the bodies from her windows. So, was this meant for only Ben to see? Surely, the bodies hadn’t been there yesterday.
Her pulse pounded, matching their thudding steps on the bridge. The pigeons flapped and flew again. At the second window, Abby and Ben peered down in horror before they realized they were looking at store mannequins.
“Oh, thank the Lord!” she cried. “Not real—not people. But they look real, even this close, with hands and feet and faces. Maybe someone wanted you to see it at night and get spooked, thinking it was ghosts of the lovers who hanged themselves here years ago. Or you’d take it as a warning and make me leave—or leave yourself.”
“It could be more than a sick prank—maybe a trap or diversion.” He leaned way out the window to look toward his house, then hers. “I don’t see anyone. Keep looking both ways,” he ordered, as he pulled his cell phone out of his jeans pocket. “Since I’ve decided to return to the church, I’ve been trying not to use this, but I’m getting the sheriff here, even if I miss the meeting with the elders.”
“Ben, you can’t miss that!”
“They’ll have to understand when we tell them everything. This way we’ll protect the evidence and show it to the sheriff and the bishop—maybe the Cincinnati detective, too. I swear that insurance investigator could be behind this, trying to panic me into some kind of confession, or get me to move back to Cincinnati where she can watch me better. She’s been desperate to nail me, even before I came back here.”
He began to pace while he made the call. Abby kept looking both ways on the bridge, at her house, then Ben’s, even up and down the river. The rapids rushing over the rocks below made her dizzy, as if the bridge—the whole world—were moving.
* * *
BEN WAS UPSET when the sheriff answered and said he wasn’t back in town yet, but was on the road from Cleveland, “’bout an hour out.” In a rush, Ben explained things.
“Okay,” Sheriff Freeman said, “I’ll use my siren and light bar and be there in half the time. Sit tight.”
Abby looked upset when he told her.
“I think we should cut these figures down and take them into town, not wait here,” she insisted.
“They’re the best evidence we’ve had for all this, especially since the diamond and note telling you to get out disappeared. Fingerprints or DNA could be on those plastic bodies. I’ve been fingerprinted and all that, so I know. Abby, this is my chance to be cleared, to be myself again, be Amish, be with you.”
“All right. I trust you.”
“I’d even like to drape the mannequins with sheets, preserve whatever hair and fibers might be on them.”
“Hair and fibers? You mean their wigs and their clothes need to be protected for fingerprints?”
“No, not like that. I read up on all the evidence the police got after the jewelry theft, things they said pointed to me. I was advised to hire a lawyer, but I didn’t—still Amish to the core.”
“In the online photos of you carving your boxes, you never let them show your face.”
He nodded. “Now here’s my plan. I’m going to run over to my house and grab two clean sheets. You’ll be able to see me go in and out. Be right back!”
He was so excited about clearing his name, she thought, but she understood. To have something that terrible hanging over one’s head…
As the pigeons fluttered back into the rafters above, she looked up. What was that stuck in one of the old swallow nests up there? It looked like a short string of pearls, maybe a bracelet.
Abby glanced at Ben again, saw him unlock his front door and rush inside. She took two steps back and squinted up into the dim rafters to see better. What if some other piece of jewelry had been dropped here and some bird or squirrel had found it?
Wait until she told Ben! If she just had a ladder to get up there to check that nest…
She could see he hadn’t come back outside yet. She ran for her buggy, got in and made her way back onto the bridge, directly under the nest. Yes, for sure this was the spot where she’d found the diamond. “Whoa,” she told Fern. From this higher vantage point, she could see the nest better. Ja, a pearl bracelet, like the one she’d seen spilling from Ben’s boxes on the jewelry store website. But where was Ben? Wait until she told him and the sheriff this latest twist.
T
rusting Fern to stand stock-still, she balanced a foot on the splashboard and the other on the seat. Steadying herself with one hand on the buggy’s roof, she stretched, reaching for the dangling pearls. But she noticed something else. Wedged into the angled space where the bridge roof met the side beams was a polished wooden box—no, two of them, maybe with two more jammed behind. Ben’s boxes?
She got down inside the vehicle and pulled out the buggy whip she never used. If she could just slide one of those boxes out of its niche, maybe she could catch it and—
Fern snorted. The buggy shifted. Abby bounced back in the seat as the box she’d loosened tipped and fell, showering jewelry over her, until it thudded onto the bridge floor in a final spray of shining gems.
Knocked back hard into the seat, she saw what had startled Fern. Her hemp-masked pursuer stood ten feet away, without gloves this time. Beautifully manicured hands with painted crimson nails and big, gold rings pointed a gun at Abby. Just beyond, someone was dragging an unconscious—or dead—Ben toward her on the bridge.
Abby gasped and let out a little scream.
“I see,” the woman said as she came closer, “you found the jewels Benjamin stole from our store. Pity he’s so full of remorse that he’s going to hang himself here. And you, madly in love with him, will join him in a suicide pact, just like those sad lovers years ago. Hurry up, Cesar,” she shouted over her shoulder. “Let’s haul up the mannequins and get this over with! If all we’ve done hasn’t made Miss Amish here leave so we only have to deal with Ben, nothing will. And we don’t need that insurance harpy showing up before we’re through! We can just reuse these nooses, so let’s get going!”
“I had to hit him really hard to knock him out,” Cesar Tornelli said. He was struggling, huffing and puffing as he dragged Ben.
“Ben would not have stolen this,” Abby said, her voice shaking as she swept necklaces and bracelets off her lap. “You put Ben’s boxes with your store’s jewels here, didn’t you? I’ll bet you kept some back and hoped they wouldn’t be found, so you could have the insurance money and the jewels. You thought if you hid some of them here, Ben would be blamed!”