Whispers from the Dead (Serenity's Plain Secrets Book 2)

by Karen Ann Hopkins

  “Damn, I can barely see thirty feet in front of the car,” I grumbled.

  “Do you want me to drive?”

  Daniel was just trying to be helpful, but I snapped back at him anyway, “Why? Do you have better eyesight than I do?”

  The rumbling snort that he answered me with made me feel bad. Trying to smooth things over, I said, “Yeah, it’s convenient to have a partner who doesn’t mind bending the rules to get inside information. Todd’s loyal to a fault sometimes.”

  “I still think that he has the hots for you,” Daniel growled.

  I chuckled, “He’s getting married this spring.”

  “He was supposed to marry her on New Year’s Day, wasn’t he?”

  I shrugged. “He had to work. Besides, he isn’t due for his vacation until March. Who wants to tie the knot and then go into work the next day?”

  “He might have other reasons to delay,” Daniel suggested.

  I took the risk of glancing away from the swirling snow to look at Daniel, wondering if he was actually serious.

  “You can’t be jealous of Todd.”

  Daniel was silent a moment, and then he said casually, “It’s not jealously, it’s more concern that you’re so distracted all the time solving cases that you don’t really notice what’s happening with the people around you.”

  Irritation swelled up inside of me. “I’m more aware than you give me credit for. But honestly, Todd and I have known each other since middle school. It’s just an excess amount of familiarity that you’re picking up on.”

  The GPS warned me to turn in five hundred feet and I pumped the brake softly to test the traction. Thankfully, my tires gripped the fresh covering of snow easily and I made the turn without any issues.

  “Do you really think these kids are the arsonists?” Daniel asked as I pulled into Brandy’s driveway.

  The neat looking brick rancher was covered in multi-colored Christmas lights and there were several cars already parked in front of the garage. The place was pretty much as I imagined it would be.

  “No, not really, but I can’t completely cross them off the list either.” I shut the engine off and leaned back, suddenly anxious to discuss the case with Daniel before I bothered the girl and her parents. “In a lot of cases like this, it is rowdy neighborhood kids setting the fires.”

  “Then why are you so reluctant?”

  “I actually ran into this same group of kids at two o’clock in the morning at the gas station the same night I arrived,” I admitted.

  “Seriously? That’s kind of coincidental. And the fact that they were out in the middle of the night doesn’t bode well for their innocence either,” Daniel observed.

  “I don’t agree. I overheard them talking and they did mention the Amish community, but they seemed to be good kids for the most part. As far as being coincidental, that seems to be the story of my life lately.”

  “Somebody snuck across a snowy field and set fire to Rowan’s barn today. That doesn’t sound to me like something an adult would do.”

  “You wouldn’t believe half the crap I’ve seen adults do while I’ve been a cop. And I get what you’re saying, except that I’m just not convinced yet that it’s the English kids doing it.”

  Daniels eyes grew wide with expectancy. I savored the moment and said, “Let’s go have a talk with Brandy Warner, shall we?”

  The snow on the pathway to the front door was trampled flat from a lot of traffic and adding to the sparkling festive lights hanging around the porch, the inside of the house was also lit up brightly. I knocked a few times on the door and then took a step back, eyeing Daniel with a here-we-go look.

  The woman who opened the door had red hair that was streaked with gray at the temples. I immediately guessed her to be Brandy’s mother. She smiled tentatively and said, “May I help you?”

  “I’m Serenity Adams, the sheriff from Blood Rock, and this is Daniel Bachman. I’ve been asked by the Amish community to investigate the arsons.”

  She nodded in quick succession. “Oh, I see. It’s terrible, I know, but why are you here?”

  “Another barn went up a few hours ago—Rowan Schwartz’s. I understand that your daughter, Brandy, is friends with some of the Amish teenagers. I’d like to ask her a few questions if it’s possible.”

  The woman’s face lost some of its color and she glanced over her shoulder nervously.

  “I don’t know. I mean, my daughter certainly doesn’t know anything about the fires.”

  “Mom, it’s okay. I’ll talk to them,” Brandy squeezed her mom’s shoulder affectionately and then glanced at me with the bland expression of inevitability.

  “All right then. I’ll be in the kitchen,” Brandy’s mother said as she opened the door wider and motioned us inside.

  “I would really rather that you’re present while I talk to Brandy, Mrs. Warner.”

  The woman looked relieved and quickly sat down on the recliner beside the sofa. I wasn’t at all surprised to see Nathan Tucker and Cody Buffet already sitting on the sofa. The TV was on and there was a bowl of popcorn and several opened cans of pop on the coffee table. How incredibly convenient, I thought, as I took the only other free chair available. Brandy hurried out of the room and returned a moment later with a kitchen chair that she set down beside me for Daniel’s use.

  When Brandy was finally seated on the sofa beside the boys, she said, “I heard you tell Mom that the Schwartz’s barn burned down. Is everyone okay?”

  There was genuine curiosity in her voice. Nathan’s mouth dropped at her words and Cody’s face lit up with disbelief. I was convinced that this was the first time that the boys had heard the news.

  “Everyone’s perfectly fine, even the animals,” I assured her and then as casually as possible, I said, “What have you guys been up to today?”

  “They’ve been sitting in this very room, watching movies all afternoon,” Mrs. Warner told me enthusiastically.

  “We did go into town to rent the movies and get snacks this morning, but other than that, Mom’s right, we’ve been here,” Brandy added.

  They were telling the truth. I’d bet money on it. But still, Joanna’s insistence about the English kids was fresh in my mind. “What about Lyell. Where’s he?”

  Nathan answered me. “His sister had a baby late last night. He went with his folks to the hospital today to see it.” Nathan came to the edge of his seat, leaning forward even more towards me and added, “Look, I know you probably don’t think much of me cause of the other night at the gas station, but none of us had anything to do with those fires and I’m telling the God’s honest truth.”

  “I’m not making accusations here. I was hopeful that you may have an idea about who’s behind the fires.”

  “You should be interviewing the Amish kids,” Nathan blurted out.

  “Nathan, shut up,” Brandy scolded the boy beside her. She met my gaze evenly and said, “I don’t think they’re doing it any more than we are.”

  I looked at the three teens sitting on the couch and carefully said, “What about Asher Schwartz. Do you know him?”

  Brandy and Cody visibly tensed and glanced quickly away, but Nathan puckered his lips as if thinking hard. Their reactions to the name were interesting to say the least.

  Nathan brushed the blond hair back from his forward and exhaled deeply. When his gaze met mine again, he looked resolute. “He’s a bad dude. It wouldn’t surprise me at all if he’s in on it.”

  “Nathan!” Brandy threatened.

  “I’m not afraid of him,” Nathan retorted.

  “You should be,” Cody muttered.

  For the first time, Cody had my full attention. The tall boy was tapping his foot nervously and avoiding eye contact with me.

  “What did you say, Cody?”

  When Cody didn’t answer me, Brandy’s mother orde
red, “Cody, answer the lady!”

  He shrugged. “He killed a man in the parking lot at Hochstetler’s Country Store last year.”

  “What?!” Daniel had suddenly found his voice.

  “The cops said that it was self-defense. He was never even charged,” Cody said weakly.

  I twisted and looked at Mrs. Warner. “Is that true?”

  She sighed, “Yes, it was in the newspapers and everything. This Schwartz fellow smashed a man’s head into a hitching rail and killed him. Supposedly it was in self-defense. The police never pressed charges.”

  I exchanged wary glances with Daniel and then turned back to the teenagers who were still tensely sitting on the sofa.

  “Do any of you ever come into contact with Asher Schwartz?” I asked, looking around the room.

  Brandy answered, “I see him around sometimes with that friend of his…Julian West.”

  Their silence told me that they were finished talking. Reaching into my pocket, I pulled out a few business cards with my cell phone number on them and passed them around.

  “If you think of anything else, please call me,” I said rising.

  Brandy and Cody nodded, but Nathan seemed lost in thought. When we stepped out into the moonlight, the snow had stopped falling and the night was crisp and clear.

  Daniel waited until we were back on the road to finally speak. “So what did you make of all that?”

  “For the most part, those kids were telling the truth. I don’t think that they had anything to do directly with the fires, but I am concerned with Brandy’s and Cody’s aversion to talk about Asher.”

  “Again, it keeps coming back to the Schwartz family,” Daniel offered.

  “Yes, it does,” I agreed. After a pause, I asked, “Why would the Amish kids want to burn barns down?”

  “Maybe for a thrill, I’m not sure really. I think it’s odd that the bishop’s wife was pointing the finger at the English kids and in return, they were singling out the Amish kids.” He turned to me and said more directly, “Is it possible that Asher Schwartz really killed a guy and didn’t even get arrested.”

  “Absolutely, I’ve heard of many instances where small town authorities deem a killing to be self-defense and no charges are filed. But in the same breath, when a person is involved in violent situations, it’s usually a tell-tale sign that they’re walking on the wrong side of the law themselves. Asher’s rap sheet in Indy includes battery assault on a girlfriend, and a slew of drug offences. He’s not a good guy.”

  “Then why would Sheriff Gentry let him off the hook so easily?”

  “That’s a question that I don’t have the answer to. I can imagine a few reasons why, and none of them paint the sheriff in a very good light.”

  “Are we going to pay Asher Schwartz a visit tomorrow after the church service?” When I glanced at Daniel, he wore a small grin and his eyes were bright.

  “Why the corny face?” I asked suspiciously.

  Too quickly, he said, “No reason.”

  Yeah, right, I thought as I pulled into Rowan’s driveway. It was after nine o’clock and there were still a half dozen buggies in the driveway and the house was lit up brightly. I needed to talk to Todd again and attempt to pull some information up on my phone. If I was lucky, Daniel would hang out with the Amish until I was already in bed. I was exhausted from the insane day and the last thing I wanted to deal with was his smoldering glances and sexual innuendos. I was in no mood for it tonight. But bothering me something fierce was the awareness that my mind could be changed quickly.

  Even heavier on my mind was Asher Schwartz, though. Could he be responsible for the arsons after all? I hadn’t been completely honest with Daniel. I actually had a pretty good idea why he had literally gotten away with murder, and couldn’t help but shiver at the thought of what was going to happen if my suspicions turned out to be correct.

  19

  My butt was sore and my legs were cramped from sitting on the hard wooden bench for nearly three hours. I glared across the room at Daniel, who was wedged in between an old man with a long, snowy white beard and a middle aged, chunky fellow wearing glasses. Now I knew why he had been so damn amused the night before in the car.

  The weirdness of being separated into two groups, the men all on the left and the women on the right, had finally worn off, but the drone of the bishop’s sermon in German and awkwardness of being pressed up against an old Amish woman still made the ordeal torturous.

  The one good thing to come from being trapped in Elijah Mast’s cold buggy shed during the overly long and boring service was that it gave me the opportunity to really think about the case. The night before when I’d finally gotten off the phone with Todd and re-read Brody’s files, I was too exhausted to put all the information into perspective. And then there had been Daniel.

  Sharing a room with the man was driving me insane on top of everything else. His close proximity through the night had kept me awake for hours, even though he had annoyingly fallen asleep fairly soon after he’d laid down on the trundle.

  My thoughts disappeared when Abner Fisher abruptly stopped talking and the congregation began singing. Without the accompaniment of instruments, the music was rather dull, but it was more the somber tone that the Amish sang than the song itself that bothered me. If I closed my eyes, I would have thought that I was at a funeral in Germany, instead of an Amish church service in Indiana.

  The cold breeze slipping through the gap in the shed’s door made me shiver, even though I was sitting close to the generator-run heater in the corner. In all, there were probably about one hundred and fifty people crammed into the new construction. Before the service began, Rowan had introduced me to Elijah and I asked him a few questions, but the skinny man with the medium length black beard didn’t enlighten me with anything new. The only thing that I took away from the conversation was that Elijah had a more difficult time keeping his emotions hidden than the other Amish I’d encountered. He’d spoken angrily about losing his own barn and the local sheriff’s inability to solve the case.

  It was nice to know that some of the Amish were emotional about the crimes. At least it made Elijah seem more human.

  The song finally came to an end while I was still deep in thought. I began stretching my sore limbs the same as everyone else. I blinked and searched for Daniel in the crowd. He was waiting by the door and I wasted no time meeting up with him there.

  “Thanks for the warning,” I said tersely.

  Daniel shrugged and grinned broadly. “It’s really impossible to prepare someone for such an experience.”

  No kidding. Briefly I wondered how he managed to keep the dark bristles on his chin at the perfect cropped length, before I asked, “Did you find anything else out from the other men?”

  I watched the steady stream of women passing by us in an orderly line, and I thought I recognized a couple of them from the gathering in Rowan’s kitchen from the night before. Mareena and Lucinda had already passed, both smiling warmly. Anna slowed long enough to point towards the Mast’s house where she had already explained the lunch would be served in the basement. She was holding Cacey’s hand and for the first time the little girl actually acknowledged me with a slight wave of the hand.

  “I did get some more information about Asher,” Daniel whispered, leaning in closer. “It seems that Rowan and Asher’s father was diabetic. Since the two were the oldest, it fell on their shoulders to keep the family business going when he was sick. At about the same time that their father lost his leg to the disease, Michael Gentry, Brody’s son, outbid the boys on a big construction project. I guess losing the contract put the Schwartz family in a difficult way for a while and there were bad feelings between the two families.” He took a breath and glanced around before continuing, “Asher might have been a rebellious kid, but he still worked hard alongside Rowan to support the family.”

 
I looked up at Daniel with a narrowed gaze. “You sound like you respect the jerk.”

  Daniel glanced away and then back again. “I wasn’t that different when I left the Amish. I’d grown up quickly, doing a man’s job while I was still a child. I helped to put food on the table and then when I left, I was shunned, just like Asher. I bet he has a lot of pent up resentment about it, the same as I did.”

  My voice raised a little and I had to consciously tone it down. “That’s no excuse for becoming a professional criminal. There are a lot of people out there who were dealt hard-knocks when they were kids and they didn’t grow up to sell drugs, beat up their girlfriends, or kill a man. Look at yourself, for example.”

  “Things aren’t always black and white.”

  “In my world, gray isn’t a color.”

  The bishop paused beside us with questioning brows. “I hope you’ll be staying with us for dinner. It’s just a simple fare, homemade peanut butter sandwiches, but there is more than enough to fill your bellies.”

  “Of course we will. I was just answering some of Serenity’s questions about the service.

  Abner looked more closely at me and asked, “Is this your first time?”

  I nodded, “Yes. It was…very long.”

  Abner laughed out loud. “That’s what all the English say. I would have thought that Aaron would have invited you to attend one of Blood Rock’s services by now.”

  “Actually, he did. But there was a traffic accident that I was called into that morning.”

  Abner smiled again and motioned for us to follow him.

  The area between the transitional buggy shed/church building and the other metal sided barn was crowded with people. It surprised me that each group was still strictly segregated between men and women, even after the service had ended. After a moment of observation, it didn’t seem that the separation of the sexes was being enforced, more just expected.

  “Why aren’t the men and women mixing?” I whispered to Daniel as we fell a few more steps behind the bishop.

  Daniel smiled fondly, and not for the first time, I got the impression that there were some aspects of the Amish lifestyle that Daniel missed.