That spring, however, Daphne had gone into early labor, her body still weak from the ravages of Buchenwald, and though the child survived the difficult birth, Daphne did not. At that point, as a young, widowed. noncombatant soldier with an infant son, the assumption was that Abe would return home, to his Amish roots and loving family. Instead, he had shocked them all yet again by hiring a nanny for the infant and remaining in Europe.
Abe and his motherless child lived there until he got word that his father had passed away back home. At the desperate, pleading request of his mother, and with the promise of a portion of the family land and homes that he had inherited, Abe had finally returned to the states with his young son. There, Abe had delivered one last, shocking blow to his family: Immediately following his honorable discharge from the U.S. Army, he had filed a court order to legally change his last name from Coblentz to Collins. When asked why, he had replied that it was an attempt to erase the shame of association with a religious sect that endorsed nonresistance. The conscientious objector had done an about-face at some point during the war, deciding that there could be no excuse, no honorable reason at all, not to fight, at least not when the enemy was as dark and evil as the Third Reich had been.
After that, the battle lines had been drawn, so to speak. And though they would never stop praying for him and never stop loving him, the various members of the Coblentz family had left Abe alone to live in and of the world as he was so determined to do.
Rounding the third curve of the grove path, the one that would bring me to the Corn Gate, I slowed again to a walk and thought about the enigmatic man and how his decision to break away from the Amish faith had resonated through the subsequent generations. Because something inside of him changed, something that no one else had ever truly understood, I was the creative director of an advertising agency in Philadelphia rather than a young Amish wife and mother in Lancaster County. Did I owe him thanks for that? At times a part of me longed for an Amish life, for its peace and simplicity and spiritual purity. Another part of me knew that theirs was a road I would never have chosen to walk down. After the funeral, I realized that thanks to my late grandfather, that was a choice I had never been forced to make.
TWENTY-TWO
Reaching the Corn Gate, I stopped and read its inscription, mounted on a brass plate amid the cornstalk pattern of the wrought iron:
Spring was eternal, and gentle breezes caressed with warm
air the flowers that grew without being seeded. Then the untilled
earth gave of its produce and, without needing renewal,
the fields whitened with heavy ears of corn.
Thinking of my grandfather now, picturing his labors over every element of this entire, magnificent grove, I was suddenly consumed with a wrenching sense of guilt. In his will, he had requested that our immediate family gather in the grove in one final, memorial act to bury his ashes there. Though the funeral service had been held several days after his death, there had been no rush on the private memorial and ash-burial. The grove had been sorely neglected in my grandfather’s last few years of life, and we all wanted to see it get fixed up a bit first before we held our little ceremony there. My grandmother hired a team of arborists and landscapers to do the job, but once they were finished we never could seem to find a date that worked for everyone.
Soon after we had finally chosen a date, my mother had been diagnosed with MS. Consumed with her care, we had postponed the gathering indefinitely, but even after she started the quarterly chemo treatments, we had never rescheduled the memorial service in the grove. Though we would mention it now and again, none of us had made of point of insisting that we follow through on my grandfather’s final wish.
Shame on us. Shame on all of us. Abe Collins may have been an odd and unknowable man, but he deserved better than to have his final remains sitting in a plastic bag in a dusty cardboard box in the back of my father’s closet.
Continuing onward, I decided that honoring this wish would be one positive result of this awful situation. When everything surrounding Troy’s death had been solved, I was going to move heaven and earth to rally the family and make sure my grandfather got the send-off he deserved. He had blessed us with this magnificent grove. It was the least we could do in return.
As I rounded the final curve, the one that would lead me to the German Gate where I had started, I decided that this leisurely jog around the grove had been just what the doctor ordered. In one sense, it had calmed me down and helped push away the panic. In another sense, it had whetted my appetite for more activity. What I now wanted, more than anything, was to hang up that punching bag on the hook at the shed and go a few rounds with all of my might.
A sharp pain suddenly stabbed at my shin, and I let out a yelp before I even looked down to see what had happened. Expecting to spy some sort of creature or beast rising up from the earth to devour me, I was shocked to realize that I had been the victim of a man-eating blackberry bush.
I stopped, pulling up my snagged pants leg to get a closer look at the tiny dots of blood on my skin. I felt like an idiot for squealing, even more so when about six people suddenly materialized from somewhere up ahead, including Georgia, ready to take on whatever danger I had encountered. I apologized, assuring them that I had simply been scratched by a blackberry bush and that I really shouldn’t have reacted like that.
“Those look like Marc Jacobs jeans you got on, girl,” Georgia said. “I woulda screamed too.”
We all laughed, and then everyone returned to their work.
I was about to finish out my jog when something dawned on me. I hesitated, thinking.
The blackberry bush. I remembered the blackberry bushes, because we used to come out here as kids and pick enough berries for my mother to bake a pie. They grew beside a marker that referred to “blackberries clinging to tough brambles.” But that wasn’t important.
What was important was that somewhere in this very same region was the marker about the dolphins.
I wasn’t sure how or why I remembered. I just knew that the dolphin marker was near the blackberry marker and that both of them had been among my favorites in the whole grove. If the one about the dolphin signified the Fishing Tree, I may have found the location Troy had sought in his search for the diamonds.
Walking around to the other side of the blackberry bushes, careful to give their thorny limbs a wide berth, I scanned the closest marker and then kept going in an ever-widening circle. Three markers away, I finally found it:
There are dolphins in the trees, disturbing the upper branches and
stirring the oaks as they brush against them.
The marker sat in front of a big oak tree, and I could remember as a child staring up at the broad limbs, wondering if they had ever really held dolphins.
Was this the Fishing Tree?
If so, had Troy found it too?
There were no holes in the ground that I could see, though as I stepped back to take a wider look, something about an uneven patch of dirt caught my eye. Bending over and peering closely, I thought what I was seeing looked like a shallow hole that had recently been dug but then filled back in.
Grabbing a stick from the ground, I poked at the dirt, trying to see if it really was loose. Almost as if I had popped the top off of a lid, a clump of brown dirt flipped away, revealing something altogether different underneath.
Inside the hole was a mixture of a little dirt with a whole lot of white powder.
Within half an hour this part of the grove had been cordoned off, with the key investigators from the various branches of law enforcement among the few who were allowed to venture inside. I tried to watch and listen for a while, but everything seemed to take so long, and it felt as though I had been watching and waiting around for things all day.
Right now, I needed to do.
I turned and walked away, weaving through the cluster of technicians who were chattering about this latest find.
I heard them spouting all sorts of
theories about the white powder, the most logical being that it had been put there for the treatment of moles. Why else would someone dig a hole in the ground and fill it up with a toxic substance that way? Soon we would know more about what the substance was, at least, and I heard someone say that a special expert was being brought in to consult.
As though there weren’t enough experts around here already?
Tired of the lot of them and eager for a workout, I was thrilled to see when I got to the shed behind the B and B that someone had picked up the mess that had been made earlier by the cops. Not only that, I realized, but the punching bag had been hung from the hook, as if someone had known that’s what I wanted.
Mike. It had to be. He must have radioed one of his people to come over here and get it set up for me.
Feeling flattered (at his attention), nervous (that his interest in me was more than professional), and guilty (that I might just be interested in him too), I decided to take out all of my emotions on the bag itself.
After safely putting aside my gun and rolling up the bottoms of my pant legs, I started right in, first by bending my knees and balancing on the balls of my feet. Tucking in my elbows, I raised my hands to cheekbone level, tightened my abs, and began hopping lightly from foot to foot, shifting my weight back and forth as I rotated around the bag.
Careful not to lock my elbows, I waited another moment and then suddenly stepped forward on my left foot and shot out a quick jab into the bag, followed by an uppercut with my right. Gaining a little more confidence with each thrust, I followed with five more jab/uppercut combos in a row, exploding my fist out each time as I did, rotating my shoulders, driving the punch for the jab and then quickly snapping back with my left and whipping upward with my right, using the force of my hip to drive the uppercut. Again, bam, pow. And again, bam, pow.
Soon, sweat was trickling down my back and I was lost in the focus and energy of the workout. This bag was old and limp, and my hands had no protection at all, but I didn’t care. At the moment, I felt brave and powerful, my scars pulsating for all the world like Superman’s blazing red “S.”
I had just switched to a right cross when something suddenly moved into my peripheral vision. Spotting a blur of black from the corner of my eye, I reacted without thinking, suddenly twisting to deliver the hardest right cross I knew how to give, thrusting the force of my hip and shoulder into the punch that swung directly at whatever had loomed into view. The punch connected and sent my victim sprawling.
Pulling back, I kept both hands up in a defense position, looking down to see that I had taken out not a beast or a creature but a man.
And older man.
An older, Amish man.
Horrified, I apologized profusely. He was rubbing his cheek where I had connected just below his eye, and already the skin was bright red and rising into a swollen lump. My hand was killing me, so I could only imagine how his cheek was feeling.
Assisting him into a sitting position, I apologized again and again, collecting his hat from where it had landed in the grass and dusting off the black felt before handing it back to him. The man was silent the whole time I tried to explain, probably still reeling from the shock of coming around a corner only to be decked by a raving lunatic who had mistaken him for a wild beast.
When he was ready to get to his feet, I insisted on helping him up and steadying him until I was sure he was okay. When he finally spoke, it was to explain that he had come here at the request of the police and had been looking for Detective Mike Wiessbaum.
“Someone said he was out this way, so when I heard the noise I thought maybe I would find him here.”
I explained that Mike was in the grove and that I would deliver him there myself, though not until we had put some ice on the lump that had already doubled in size and was turning into a fairly significant shiner. Picking up my fanny pack holster and quietly strapping it on, I could only hope he didn’t realize it held a gun.
Walking together to the B and B, I introduced myself and explained that I was the owner and the granddaughter of the man who had once lived here, Abe Collins.
“Jah, I knew Abe well,” the man said, removing his hat as we stepped inside and holding it in his hands.
He remained in the main room while I went on into the kitchen. Digging through the cabinets until I found some plastic bags, I triple-bagged some ice from the freezer and rolled the whole thing up in some paper towels.
“Here you go,” I said, coming out and handing it to him, wincing as I watched him touch it to his face. “You might want to get a look in the mirror,” I added, pointing to the one that was mounted on the wall over the fireplace. “I just can’t say enough how sorry I am.”
He did as I suggested, looking up at his own image with wide eyes as he placed the ice bag more fully against his cheek, just above the line of his beard.
“I see you favoring your hand. You might make one of these for yourself as well.”
“Good idea.”
Once I had done that, the two of us headed out to the grove together, both icing our injuries and chatting as we went. I learned that his name was Jeremy and that he worked over at Lantz Farms in Quarryville.
“I’ve always loved that place,” I said, adding that as kids we would gladly tag along whenever an adult needed to go there. As a child, I had been fascinated with their vast collection of Amish-built swing sets and playhouses, but as I grew older I spent more time in the floral shop instead, admiring the magnificent creations in the refrigerated flower cases.
As Jeremy and I walked, we passed several clusters of officers and other personnel, and though we received some strange looks with our injuries and ice bags, no one asked what had happened. When we came near the group in the grove, I apologized one last time to Jeremy, promising it wouldn’t ever happen again as long as he didn’t pop out of nowhere and startle me so, especially when I was already so jumpy. He said not to worry, and that he knew now to keep a wide berth from the feminine young lady with the very manly right cross.
Unable to keep from grinning at the compliment, I managed to catch Mike’s eye from where we stood at the perimeter of the scene, and he broke away from what he was doing to come toward us now. Taking in the sight of Jeremy’s eye, my knuckles, and both of our ice packs, he simply shook his head and said, “I don’t even wanna know.”
As my new friend was now safely delivered into the arms of the law, I stepped out of the way as Mike led Jeremy forward and began introducing him to some of the others as “the expert I was telling you about, Jeremy Lantz.”
Jeremy Lantz? I knew that was a common surname around here, but I had a feeling he didn’t just “work at” Lantz Farms but instead was the owner. How very Amish of him to have been so modest. I was just glad I had said only good things about the place.
Catching snippets of the conversation that was happening around the dolphin marker, I realized that Jeremy Lantz of Lantz Farms had been called in as an expert on pesticides. Careful not to touch anything, he knelt beside the powder-filled hole, took a good look, and began to speak.” Seeing how the others listened and made notes as the man talked, I felt an odd satisfaction at how they so naturally and immediately deferred to his knowledge. Because formal schooling for the Amish ended after the eighth grade, I knew that some people thought they were backward and unintelligent. But Jeremy Lantz was living proof that they were nothing of the sort, and that for most Amish their learning began far sooner than grade school—and continued on for the rest of their lives.
Standing there, watching and listening, I assumed Jeremy would explain the method behind this powder-filled hole. Instead, he seemed as puzzled by this sight as everyone else.
Thinking about it myself, a very disturbing question suddenly popped into my mind. What if my grandfather had dug that hole and filled it with a toxic substance not to treat moles or termites or any other garden pest, but instead to serve as a deterrent to whoever might come looking for his hidden cache of diamonds?
Technically, not to mention posthumously, that would make Grandpa Abe a murderer.
TWENTY-THREE
My pocket buzzed several times while I was standing there trying to listen, so finally I broke away to see who was trying to get in touch with me. I wanted to dump my half-melted ice pack first, but with no trash can around I ended up pouring its contents onto the ground and tucking the leftover plastic bag in my pocket.
When I looked at the screen I saw that I had two texts, one from Liz and one from my father. I checked his first, relieved to learn that he had lined up a temporary replacement for Nina through the same agency that had cared for Abe when he broke his hip years ago.
Next, I switched over to Liz’s message, which said: Great tip! I have been able to confirm investigation is almost definitely mob related. Nothing beyond that for right now, but I have some feelers out and will keep you posted.
I tried not to think about the darker side of the confirmation. On the one hand, any news was better than being completely in the dark. On the other hand, now that I knew “almost definitely” that I had been linked in some way with organized crime, I had entered a whole new playing field. Somehow, a big black beast breathing flashes of fire was a preferable danger to some nameless, faceless monster with a gun and a directive to kill. Whether Troy’s death had been a Mafia hit or not, I wouldn’t sleep soundly until this investigation was completely over, all truths had come to light, and my name had been cleared. Even then, I could only hope I wouldn’t end up on someone’s bad side. I had seen enough gangster movies to know how that would turn out.
Secrets of Harmony Grove Page 19