by Karen Harper
Ray-Lynn was one of the bidders upping the ante on the quilt, so she was obviously finished with dishing out food. That meant Sarah might be free, too. He’d been tempted to seek her out, but he should save it for later. Why be seen talking to her here with hundreds of people around?
“Five hundred fifty!” Nate called out.
The quilt was amazing with its cream background and interlocking rings of blues, greens and golds. When it was introduced, he’d learned the pattern was called Wedding Ring.
He figured M.E. would like that name. She’d really loved her husband and still missed him. To have a love like that…but to be able to include a foster son in her life. Nate seldom thought of having kids of his own, but he wanted that, didn’t he? It’s just that he’d never found the right woman, especially since he’d buried himself in his work….
“Six hundred from the lady over in the corner, Mrs. Logan from the restaurant. So do I hear six hundred fifty? An-a do I hear six hundred and fifty for this Wedding Ring quilt, a-going once, a-going twice…”
Nate looked over at Ray-Lynn. Was she hanging tough with this because he’d caught her holding back information? Her gaze caught his and she frowned as if to dare him to bid more.
“Six hundred and fifty for a beautiful quilt and a good cause!” Nate called out.
That seemed to bring the bidding to an end. The crowd buzzed. He heard his name once or twice and the hissing sounds of the whispered word arsons. He went toward the front to write a check and get his quilt, when he had a crazy idea. Maybe he could get Sarah to paint this same design and give M.E. both the painting and the quilt for her upcoming seventy-fifth birthday. Women liked decorations in their house to match and go together, didn’t they? Besides, if he was going to keep Sarah safe from involvement in the arson case—and involvement with him would only hurt her—he needed some excuse to have a little time with her. Or was that really dangerous thinking?
After Nate stowed his plastic-wrapped quilt in the back of VERA, he stood and watched a game called eckball. Kids stood in corners of a laid-out square about half the size of a baseball diamond and tried to hit people milling around inside with something they called a mush ball. Evidently, anyone who got hit had to get out, until only the winner was left.
That’s what he had to do, he told himself. Keep tossing lobs at possible perps until only the arsonist was left, and he had to do it before disaster struck again. At least he had a good handle now on who the candidates for the arsons were, unless it was someone from out in left field. If he could not discover who it was, he had to find ways to eliminate who it wasn’t, but he couldn’t lock up everyone until the arsons stopped. Sarah had helped him get to know people here, introduced him to the culture during the one week he’d been here, but he had his feet on the ground enough now that he didn’t need her. At least, that’s what he kept trying to tell himself.
He went back to the eating area; Sarah, her older sister, Lizzie, and Ray-Lynn were among the women wiping off the tables nearby now that the food line was closed. He hoped the “kindly donations” requested for the hearty and delicious food brought in a ton of money. He’d put in twenty bucks for his meal, amazed at the Amish attitude that people would give more money than if charged a specific price.
“I’d like to help clean up,” Nate told Levi Miller, who seemed to be heading up the men’s work.
The man nodded and handed him a wooden brush with metal bristles. “Pitch right in a’scraping, then dump water on it. Promised to go relieve my boy Noah, so he can come for a bit, but think I let him down. He’s upset today ’cause Jacob Yoder was a buddy of his, and he heard he tried to hurt Sarah Kauffman and got locked up for the arsons.”
News sure traveled fast on the Amish grapevine, Nate thought. “He was questioned about the arsons, but he’s being held on lesser charges right now,” he explained.
“I’ll tell Noah. And take him a good if cold dinner and hope he got some of those repairs on the loft floor done.”
“Since I fell through, I’d be happy to help pay for supplies.”
“No need. Real glad you weren’t hurt and aren’t trying to sue us like some moderns would.”
A modern, Nate told himself, feeling as if cold water had been thrown in his face. He might feel a certain camaraderie with these people, but he was a modern, an ausländer, or outsider as they liked to say. And suddenly that made him very sad.
Nate kept a good eye on the heaped pile of silvery, glowing embers discarded from the grills as he helped scrape stuck meat and sauce from them, then poured buckets of water on some if they had to be loaded back in buggies right away for the trip home. Some grill owners had chores to do, especially the dairy farmers who had to see to milking. Mike Getz, even one-handed, came over to pitch in, which impressed Nate until he saw why. Peter Clawson was starting to take photos of their efforts to put the grill fires out. Like the Amish men, Nate turned away from the camera and bent over his work. Mike maneuvered to get his face in the shot.
The next grill was really black and hot; the water Nate poured on it hissed and sent up smoke, gray and wispy against the clear blue, late-afternoon sky. The plume of smoke seemed not to stop but drifted and curled into distant clouds.
No, that was not this smoke he saw.
His stomach tightened. He grabbed Levi Miller’s arm as he walked by with a box of food, no doubt for his son.
“Mr. Miller, see that smoke in the sky?” he said, pointing. “Could someone be burning trash? What could that be?”
The horrified look on the man’s face said it all.
“My place!” he cried as others came to look and point, too. “Have the sheriff call in the volunteers! Someone find and tell my wife!” Levi thrust the box into Nate’s hands and was off at a run toward the buggies.
“Wow, where there’s smoke, there’s fire,” Nate heard Mike Getz say.
But not an arson, please, God, not an arson in broad daylight, Nate prayed as he ran toward VERA while others ran to find the sheriff. Not with Jacob in jail and the rest of his suspects—except for Hannah Esh—right under his nose.
“Mr. Miller!” Nate shouted. “Your buggy’s too slow. Come with me!”
16
SARAH WAS WATCHING NATE WHEN HE AND THE men spotted the distant smoke. When she saw Mr. Miller run for his buggy, she moved away from the schoolhouse so she could see the sky. Oh, no! If not at the Millers’ place, near it. At least there was not much wind today to fan the flames. And a fire in daylight—not at night?
She got to Mrs. Miller just after Reuben Schrock told her about the smoke. “But, if that’s our place, Noah’s in the barn!” she cried, then pressed both hands over her mouth. She looked as if she’d collapse.
Sarah held her up by one elbow. “If we can’t catch your husband, you can go with me,” she told her as Mr. Schrock supported her other arm.
“Where is Levi?” the woman asked.
“Somewhere in the line of buggies and cars heading out,” Sarah said, scanning the area. “I don’t see him now, but I do see a way.”
She let Mrs. Miller lean on Mr. Schrock and ran to the schoolhouse lane just as Nate pulled VERA out of the field still crowded with departing, slow-moving buggies and cars. Four cars and several buggies blocked him from being able to get out on the road. Suddenly, from VERA came a rhythmic, loud croak like the honk of a goose. As the buggies pulled off to the side to let Nate through and the cars tried to get out of the way, Sarah and Mr. Schrock hurried Mrs. Miller toward VERA.
Once they were close enough, Sarah saw that Mr. Miller sat in the cab with Nate. As they hustled Mrs. Miller closer, she seemed to drag her feet until she saw her husband in the big black truck.
“Mrs. Miller’s going, too!” Sarah shouted to Nate through his open window.
“Make it fast and secure the door once you’re in!”
Her heart pounded. She was going to this fire with Nate, too. The sheriff’s car, which had been parked along the road, sped away with its li
ghts pulsing and shrill siren sounding loudly enough to drown out VERA’s lower one.
Peter Clawson appeared, out of breath, red-faced, still toting his big-lens camera. “What’s that smoke from?” he shouted at Nate, then saw who sat next to him. “Millers? Can I go, too? You owe me big-time, MacKenzie, and turnabout’s fair play!”
She didn’t hear what Nate told him, but Peter ran around in back, too. It seemed an eternity to Sarah as she and Mr. Schrock got the trembling woman in the back of the vehicle and both climbed in with her. Peter managed to get in without help. While Mr. Schrock closed and latched the back doors, Sarah ran to the small front window to the cab and rapped her knuckles on it. “Go! Go!”
The traffic ahead must have cleared, because they careered out onto the road. The four of them in back grabbed for handholds. Sarah sat Mrs. Miller down in the single chair at the narrow table. Sarah and Mr. Schrock sat on the floor, wedged in, while Peter put his equipment on the floor but stood looking around inside VERA.
Sarah was soon back on her feet, propping herself up between the table and the counter. No wonder things inside here were all bolted down or stowed away. The once-familiar roads outside the front windshield she could peek through between Nate’s and Mr. Miller’s heads went by in a blur.
It annoyed Sarah that Peter began to question Mrs. Miller, so she told him, “Have a heart.”
With a little shrug, he said, “But I have a head, too, and you know this fire doesn’t fit the pattern. The decorated barn does, of course, but not the timing.”
When no one answered him, he went back to eyeing the carefully labeled drawers and shelves. No doubt, Sarah thought, there would soon be a newspaper article on Nate’s vehicle. But what did Peter mean that Nate owed him big-time and turnabout was fair play? She didn’t like the way he’d called the barn she’d painted “decorated.”
At least in the rush of things, Nate hadn’t had time to argue about her going along. He’d said he wanted her off the arson case, but here she was, of course with her own finagling. If it was the Miller barn, if it was arson, didn’t that prove Jacob wasn’t the arsonist?
“Can you see the smoke through that little window, Sarah?” Mrs. Miller asked. “It can’t be our place, our barn. Not in broad daylight, not with Noah there.”
“Noah?” Peter said. “You mean someone was supposed to be protecting the barn?”
Mr. Schrock spoke, his voice shaking, but he addressed Mrs. Miller, not Peter. “Levi said Noah was doing repairs in the loft. Was it so dark he’d take a lantern up there? Is there hay or straw around?”
“Hay and lots of it,” Sarah said, before she realized she should have let Mrs. Miller answer. “We’re on your road now,” she reported. “I see the sheriff’s car way ahead, but we’re going to beat the firemen.”
“Minus two of them,” Mr. Schrock said. “Mike Getz is on leave and Levi’s with us. We’ll do what we can.”
Sarah could see now that it was the Miller place—and the Miller barn. She wasn’t sure whether to tell Mrs. Miller or let her see it for herself when she’d have her husband to comfort her. But better forewarned, she thought. She’d want to know to prepare herself for the worst, if it was her family’s barn.
“We’re almost to your house, Mrs. Miller. I see a lot of smoke but not many flames coming from the barn. Let’s pray Noah is waiting outside the barn to help fight the fire, too.”
Nate was furious. He had not been sure he had an arsonist locked up, but he had been sure he had definite suspects, knew a profile of the criminal and had figured out his M.O. But this—if it was arson, and the barn and painted quilt square said it was—blew all his work away. Once he checked out Hannah Esh’s alibi for this blaze, if she had a solid one, he had nothing. Yoder was in jail and everyone else was at the auction, including Ray-Lynn Logan, his long-shot possibility. He’d thought solving these Amish arsons would be a walk in a pretty park. What an idiot!
“I don’t see Noah,” Levi said as Nate turned into the yard and parked close to the house. Sheriff Freeman was there, his light bar blinking as red as the few flames that were visible. He was walking around the barn with his gun drawn.
Nate didn’t hit the digital electronic siren again but laid on his horn to see if that would bring Noah from the house or barn. The sheriff probably didn’t know there was a missing person here. Levi was out of the truck, running for the burning barn. Nate jumped out as Peter Clawson climbed down from the back, then Reuben Schrock and Sarah climbed out with Mrs. Miller between them. Nate knew he’d broken protocol. No civilians in the way during an active fire, certainly none packed in the back of VERA, but the Amish had changed him. He saw Mrs. Miller hurry toward the house while Reuben ran over to fill in the sheriff.
“Do you want your fire gear again?” Sarah shouted to Nate. “I can get it ready.”
“Yes! Good!”
She turned back toward VERA. What would he do without her—ever—a voice in Nate’s head shouted at him.
Both of the Millers were screaming, “Noah! Noah! Noah!” Mrs. Miller was yelling into the front door of the house, and Levi toward the barn. Nate could see he was heading to slide open the big front doors, which were, strangely, both closed. Sarah’s Crown of Thorns painting in blue, green and gold—M.E.’s colors—seemed to writhe behind the pall of drifting smoke.
“Don’t open those doors, or the air will fan the flames!” the sheriff shouted at Levi before Nate could. “Right now, it looks contained at the back, high up, maybe still mostly smoldering.”
“Wet wood and wet hay from leaks in the roof,” Nate shouted. “I checked it out on Thursday. But when the flames eat down to the dry stuff, it will really go.”
The fact the fire was high up, Nate thought, was like the first fire, and this barn was built somewhat like the Esh one, despite the fact it was much older and run-down. And, like at the Esh fire, a ladder lay on the ground, next to the barn that he hadn’t seen there two days ago. He had to get geared up and go inside to see if Noah had been knocked out or was down from smoke inhalation. That could be as deadly as the flames.
“Is there a first floor door in back, like the Esh barn?” Nate asked Levi and the sheriff as he held the Amish man’s arm to keep him from lunging at the doors. Once he and Sarah had seen that painted note and the torrents of rain began, they had not made a complete circuit of the structure, nor had he when he came out with Levi. He knew now he should have.
“Ya, a door, but it’s got years of vines all over it, sealed shut. What if he fell and bumped over a lantern while he was working? Fell in the loft like you did? Noah! Nooo-aaaah! I should have stayed with him! Nooo-aaah!”
Sarah was dragging Nate’s fire gear over to the edge of the yard just a few feet from them, laying it out in order just as he had learned to do in fire school. The woman was amazing.
Then, they heard someone scream.
They all froze, looking at one another, listening for the muted sounds over the increasing crackle of roof flames. “Those great horned owl nestlings?” Sarah asked, cocking her head. But then the scream became not an eeeeeee sound but “Help meeeee!”
The sheriff ran back to his vehicle for something. Levi lunged for the barn doors, and Nate let him as he dragged his heavy fire pants up, pulling the suspenders over his shoulders. On her knees before him, Sarah untied his running shoes and yanked them off and shoved his boots toward him, so he could jam his feet into them. She thrust Nate’s heavy jacket at Reuben Schrock; he held it for him as he shrugged it on. As Nate moved under the weight of it toward the barn, Sarah held out his hood, then his oxygen mask, for him.
Levi had one door partially open. The heat blast from the barn smacked them, even thirty feet away. Smoke belched out, blinding them as Reuben grabbed Levi to keep him from running inside. Like a harbinger of doom, the barn owl flew out past them with a whoosh of its huge wings. Mrs. Miller lifted and clasped her apron to her face, not to stop the stench of smoldering wood and hay, but to wipe away tears so she
could see.
Nate jolted as a deep, loud voice behind him said, “Noah Miller, are you inside the barn? Noah, this is the sheriff. Where are you?”
The sheriff had brought out his bullhorn.
“Help me!” Noah called weakly from within.
Nate adjusted his oxygen mask and turned on the flow. He heard only his own breath. His Amish superwoman handed his hat and gloves to him. As Reuben held Levi back from plunging into the heat and smoke, Nate took the big flashlight she held out to him and walked into the burning barn.
Sarah moved and talked as if something within her had taken over. She blinked back tears from fear as well as from the stinging smoke. How could Nate so much as see in there? He’d said sometimes firemen found victims by crawling on the floor or by stumbling over them. The place where they’d kissed and caressed had become an inferno, and if Noah was trapped in there…
She remembered how Noah used to follow Jacob around. He was younger, but somehow they’d hit it off at school—or had that been at Lizzie’s wedding? Jacob had the answers for everything then, and Noah had been thrilled when Jacob gave him attention, got him a job sweeping up and greasing axels at the Buggy Wheel Shop. She was grieving to think that another Amish barn with one of her paintings was going up in flames, but a life was much more precious.
Then she remembered the window high up. Nate had tried to look out of it during the storm, hoping to see what was making the knocking sound or even get a glimpse of someone who’d left that note on the barn.
The sheriff had gone back to his car. Sarah left the Millers and Reuben Schrock as they waited and prayed for Noah and Nate. Around the side of the barn, she saw the flames, and the worst of the black smoke roaring through the broken roof seemed to be on the other side. It was probably too smoky inside to see much, but she could try looking in through that high window.
When she ran around the barn, she saw the sheriff had driven out on the road and had left his car there with the light bar blinking. He was jogging back toward the barn after setting up orange cones to stop traffic coming from the direction of the freeway, but he’d left open the way from town. Peter was standing back a ways, photographing the burning barn. The flames from the roof reflected in his huge lens as if his camera was on fire. Where were those firefighters? It seemed she’d been here hours, but it was probably mere minutes.