Plain Killing (7 page)

Rachel caught a glimpse of the front page as Ell, not so slyly, set a cookbook down on top of the pile. There was something familiar about the photograph.

“Is that the
Harrisburg Patriot-News
?” Rachel asked, turning her head to get a better look.

Ell looked up at her, obviously trying to hide them from her. “I’m sorry?”

Rachel reached across the counter and slid one of the newspapers out from under the cookbook.

“I was thinking about just recycling them all,” Ell told her, tucking her arms behind her back.

Rachel stared at the four-by-six photo of a line of Amish buggies at the Stone Mill Amish cemetery. Stone Mill had made the bottom-left corner of the
Harrisburg Patriot
. Two columns. “Every paper in town?” she asked Ell with a frown.

“Bill Billingsly,” Ell scoffed. “He’d put his mother in her nightie on the front page if he thought it would sell papers.”

Rachel studied the article’s headline:
Amish Girl Plain Killed,
it read, with Bill Billingsly’s byline. She skimmed the first column. It was the same article he had published in the local paper on Saturday. The article was continued on page five.

“Don’t do it,” Ell warned as Rachel licked her finger and turned the pages.

There were more photographs, photographs not included in the local paper. One was of a group of Amish men and women in their Sunday clothes, walking down a dirt road. It had to be a photo he had taken previously and was just waiting for the opportunity to use it. They were wearing winter coats and cloaks. And photos of the Amish of the community gathered in the cemetery, heads bowed. There was also a small photo of a woman in a black skirt and jacket, her hair covered, walking away from the camera. “That’s a picture of
me!
” Rachel spun the paper around for Ell to see.

“He mentions you, too.” She chewed on a stubby fingernail. “And Willy’s murder and how you were instrumental in finding the killer.”

Rachel groaned.

“Says we’re all waiting for you to step in and solve the case.”

“Unbelievable,” Rachel breathed.

Ell worked on another fingernail. “Think you should sue him or something?”

“It would only encourage him. I don’t sue people. I wasn’t brought up that way.” She looked at the photo again. “How did he get this in the Harrisburg paper?”

“I guess the Associated Press thought it was newsworthy. Can’t be many Old Order Amish girls who are—”

Rachel folded the paper and slapped it on the desk, cutting Ell off. “Unbelievable.”

Ell reached for her coffee cup, which was in the shape of a tabby cat. “Bill never misses an opportunity to exploit the Amish.” She took a sip. “They won’t care much for the publicity, will they? The Amish?”

Rachel sighed. “No. Absolutely not. It’s bad enough for the Glicks, for the whole Amish community to have something like this happen, but then to see it in newspapers? Photographs,” she muttered.

Ell stood there, mug between her hands. She was wearing a Batman T-shirt over a long black tulle skirt. “I’m really sorry about this, Rachel.”

Rachel pushed the paper back toward her. There was no way she would buy a paper. She already had tossed her Saturday
Stone Mill Gazette
right into the recycling bin. “It’s not your fault.” She offered a quick smile. “You said my book was in?”

“Oh, right. Sure. I’ve got it right here.”

A few minutes later, Rachel walked out of the bookstore. Evan was waiting for her, parked in his police cruiser out front. He put down his window when he saw her.

“I tried calling you,” he said.

She walked slowly over to his car, tucked her book under her arm, and leaned in. “Not sure where my cell is.”

“I set up that app on your laptop after the last time you lost it, remember?” he asked.

“It’s probably in the house somewhere, unless I dropped it at my parents’ last night, in which case the battery’s dead.” She rolled her eyes.

“At least you’ll know the last location, if you run the app.” He met her gaze. “Got a minute? I need some advice.”

“Really?”

“Really.”

From the tone of his voice, Rachel suspected that he wasn’t having a good morning. The expression on his face confirmed her suspicions. “You want to stop by after work to talk?” She didn’t want to get into his car. It just didn’t seem like a good idea, mixing work with their personal lives.

“Nah. Get in.” He lifted his chin.

“You sure?”

“Yeah. I’ve already been out to the Glicks’. Them being early risers and all.” He unlocked the doors.

She slid into the cruiser, and he put her window up. The air conditioner was blasting. She glanced at the computer screen between the two of them. There were names on it. He hit a button that cleared the screen.

“So it didn’t go so well?” she asked.

“Not only won’t they talk to me, they won’t answer any of Sergeant Haley’s questions about their daughter. He met me there this morning. And neither will any of their neighbors or relatives. It’s as though they’ve suddenly lost the ability to understand English. They just stared at us. And any attempts to explain the importance of tracking the perp down . . .” He sighed with exasperation. “We’ve got nothing. Nowhere even to start. Almost two years ago, Beth Glick vanished, and the first time anyone sees her again, she’s dead, floating in that quarry.”

Rachel waited, not speaking, simply listening. She knew how badly Evan wanted to catch this guy, and she knew that the girl’s death was causing him sleepless nights. She could see it in the shadows under his eyes and the grim creases on either side of his mouth.

“I keep going over and over it in my head,” Evan said, staring out at the street.

A white station wagon went by, hitting its brakes when it spotted the police cruiser.

“Where was she?” Evan mused. “How could she show up back here, dead? Where has she been? And what could she have possibly done in that time that would cause someone to want to kill her?”

“The detective doesn’t have any hunches?” She’d talked to Sergeant Haley the previous week. His questions had been brief, and the interview had taken less than half an hour. She hadn’t really formed an opinion of the middle-aged detective. She hadn’t liked or disliked him. He’d just come off as a bit of a nonentity.

“No. I got the impression he was disappointed that I wasn’t more help.”

She rested her hands on
The Kitty Catastrophe
in her lap. “You know I’ll help in any way I can,” she said. “I would anyway. I want to catch whoever’s responsible as much as anyone. It will be a long time before I can forget seeing her in that quarry.” She felt a shiver run up her spine. “You can’t let what Mose Glick said get to you—that it was partly your fault that Beth died. He was just hurt and . . .” She didn’t finish her sentence.

“I know. He was talking about society in general. Which is why I wanted to be a state trooper to begin with. To keep this place safe for the Glicks, for you, for everybody. And I’m not naïve enough to think that we can chase bad guys without wearing a weapon. I didn’t join the force to hurt people.”

“I know you didn’t.” She closed her hand over his forearm. “You’re kind and thoughtful, Evan. The nicest guy I know.”

He didn’t say anything. The dispatcher came on the radio, and he turned it down.

“What about the families of the other runaways?” Rachel said, thinking out loud. “I think everyone knows about Rupert, Eli Rust’s son. He left and joined the military. He’s fine. I talked to him a few months ago. Then there was a boy from the same church as Beth who left about a year before Beth did. Did you try—”

“Enosh Kline. His father shut the door in my face. Another man turned his back on the detective and walked off into a cow pasture.” He looked into her eyes. “Don’t they care about their children?”

“They care as much as any other parent.” She leaned back on the seat. “Their leaving complicates things. And talking to the police after Bill Billingsly has—” She didn’t finish her sentence. She wouldn’t dignify Billingsly with such attention.

They were both quiet for a few long moments. “I don’t know what I should do next, Rachel. I don’t know how to do my job.”

“I guess . . . we need to think through this logically,” she said.

“Like, how did Beth get back here?” he agreed. “Why was she in Stone Mill?” He tapped the steering wheel rhythmically. “The simplest scenario is that she was coming home. She’d dressed in her traditional clothes to make her return to her family and church easier.”

“So our best chance is to find out where she’s been, who she was with, and start untangling the threads there.”

“Not
our
best chance.” He looked at her. “You aren’t the investigator. All I need you for is to facilitate communication between the Amish and me. Nothing more. And the first thing I need you to do is to try and convince the Glicks to talk to me. I need to try to find out why she ran away. Where she might have gone. They must have some idea.”

“Some do. Most families have a child or a nephew or niece who couldn’t remain in the church.” She smoothed the cover of the paperback novel on her lap. “I don’t know how much they know, honestly. It’s usually young men who choose to leave because they can at least find a job in construction. Most of the girls who leave come back in a matter of weeks. Four girls from this community gone and never seen again in the last two years is a lot. I know my parents have discussed it. They worry about my younger sisters.”

“But none of these worried families have filed missing persons reports.”

“They wouldn’t do that,” Rachel said. “Their kids left because they wanted to escape the life; their parents are ashamed. They would never go to the police.”

“So, I’ll try to find out where those missing girls are. But you leave the detective work to me. I know you, Rachel. I know how you can be. This could be dangerous.” He slid his hand across the car seat and took hers. “I don’t know what I’d do if something bad happened to you.”

“You’re the second person to say that to me.”

Evan arched a dark eyebrow. “George?”

“
Ya,
George.”

“How is he?”

“Coping. He misses Sophie. And he’s really invested in teaching his GED course. I’m glad. Despite everything, he’s doing something positive to help others. He says the supplies I sent will really make a difference.”

“You’ve got a big heart, donating to prisoners,” Evan said. “It’s what I love most about you. You care more about others than yourself.”

She felt her cheeks grown warm, and she pulled her hand from his. “Enough, already. I’ll ask around. Beth has sisters. They may be willing to talk to me, if not to you. Usually, friends, siblings or . . . a favorite aunt. When young people walk away, they don’t vanish into thin air. Someone probably knows more than they’re saying. Running from an Amish life into the English world, you can’t imagine how difficult it can be. I took my birth certificate when I left, but most of these young people go off with nothing, not even proof that they exist. An eighth-grade education leaves you so unprepared to survive out there.”

“But you made it.”

“I did,” she answered.
But clearly not everyone does.

“I better get going,” Evan said from behind the wheel of his police cruiser.

“Right.” She reached for the door handle.

“You come on your golf cart?” he asked.

He always seemed amused by her campaign to persuade the locals to use electric golf carts instead of cars on their errands around town. The carts were environmentally smart: they used less energy, put out no gas fumes, and were quiet. Best of all, they traveled at about the same speed as an Amish buggy and didn’t spook the horses. In her opinion, using golf carts when possible added to the small-town ambiance of Stone Mill.

“It’s not that hot yet. I walked.”

“You want a ride home?”

“No, thanks. I can use the exercise.” They agreed to have supper together Thursday evening, and Evan drove away.

Heading for home, Rachel started down the sidewalk. She waved to one of Hulda’s grandsons, Saul, who was walking into the bank next to the bookstore. Rachel wondered if he was making the previous day’s deposit, which she knew was a no-no in Hulda’s book. He waved back and hurried inside, the telltale fabric bag under his arm. Deposits from Russell’s Hardware and Emporium were always dropped off in the night box after closing, never held overnight in the store safe. Hulda wouldn’t be pleased that Saul hadn’t followed her instructions yet again, and she would find out. For a woman in her nineties, she was difficult to get anything past, and she controlled her family business with an iron hand.

Rachel yawned. She hadn’t slept well. In fact, she’d hardly slept at all since she’d discovered Beth’s body. This morning, instead of getting right up, she’d laid in bed for a while, thinking about Beth and the possible scenarios that could have brought the poor girl to the quarry.

Eventually, Rachel had risen and gotten on with her day. When she’d checked her email, she’d been pleased to see that more people wanted to come to Stone Mill House the following weekend than she had room for. She was glad for the business, but now, she couldn’t help wondering if the national coverage of Beth’s murder had something to do with the sudden popularity of Stone Mill and her B&B. She hoped not, but a woman who had called that morning to make reservations had specifically inquired if the B&B was located in the same town where the
Aim
-ish girl had been found dead. It seemed ghoulish that visitors would want to come because of Beth’s murder. Maybe the woman had been asking simply to make conversation while Rachel waited for her reservation calendar to load. Rachel couldn’t fall into the trap of trying to read her guests’ minds and attributing the worst to them. It might simply be the end of summer and more travelers wanting to squeeze in a last vacation.

Ada had showed up promptly at her normal hour, but when Rachel had left Stone Mill House, the girls who usually came in to help with housekeeping hadn’t yet arrived. When Rachel had asked Ada why they hadn’t come to work, she’d shrugged and mumbled something suggesting that she didn’t intend to discuss it.

If Ada’s helpers still hadn’t arrived by the time Rachel got home, Rachel knew that she’d have to fill in. Besides the vacuuming and dusting of the rooms that weekend guests had checked out of, there were linens to wash and woodwork to polish. Stone Mill House required a lot of elbow grease to keep it shining. Cobwebs and dusty furniture wouldn’t do for guests, not if she wanted the B&B to be a success. Plus, Ada had been complaining that the dryer wasn’t drying properly, so that needed to be looked at. Any repairs Rachel could do herself, rather than calling a repairman, was money in her pocket that she didn’t have to waste.

“Please be there, Minnie,” she murmured. Hoping for the sight of the girl’s plain, freckled face peering over a heaping basket of laundry, Rachel quickened her step. Minnie, who was a favorite relative of Ada’s and, therefore, impossible to dismiss, worked exceedingly slow and had to be reminded of how to use the appliances. But she was usually dependable. Without her, Rachel would be lucky if she got everything done today.

At three, Rachel was on her knees in the stone-floored laundry room when Mary Aaron walked in. She’d heaved the dryer away from the wall and collected a pile of lint from the vent hose that she intended to scatter in the garden. Birds and squirrels would collect it for nesting materials.

“Here you are,” Mary Aaron said cheerily. “I saw Ada hanging sheets in the backyard. She said you might still be in here.” She studied Rachel, behind the dryer. “What are you doing?”

“The vent hose was clogged. I think that’s why it was taking so long to dry stuff.” Rachel made a final sweep with the brush she had been using, laid it on the floor, and began clamping the hose back on to the dryer. Her cousin leaned on the dryer and watched as Rachel tightened the screw on the clamp. Then Rachel reconnected the other end of the hose to the wall. “There. Now, if you’ll help me push the dryer back.”

Together they slid the heavy appliance into position.

“I don’t know how you do all these things,” Mary Aaron remarked. “With the tools. You know, if you had a husband, he could do it for you.”

Rachel ignored her cousin. Next, Mary Aaron would be telling her how handy Evan was and how any woman would be lucky to have him. In her midthirties, Rachel was all too aware that, by Amish standards, she was an old maid. It was rare for an Amish woman not to marry, and her family reminded her of that often. “I don’t mind these kinds of chores. In fact, I kind of like them,” she said, gathering her tools.

Mary Aaron looked unconvinced. “
Dat
does all that at our house,” she replied, slipping into Deitsch. “Or one of the boys.
Mam
wouldn’t know what to do with a screwdriver. It’s man’s work, she says.”

Rachel shrugged. “It’s easier than scrubbing floors.”

“But washing and scrubbing, hanging clothes, and cooking, those are women’s jobs. Chores of the house. Husbands and sons should do the heavy moving and fixing. I’m glad I was not born English. Worldly women are not so fortunate, I think, to have to do women’s work and men’s work as well.”

“Male or female, cleaning out the vent hose is one of those things you have to do when you have a dryer, especially one used as much as this one.” She used the English word for dryer. Translating
clothes dryer
into Pennsylvania Deitsch was a mouthful. “Besides taking longer to dry the laundry, if the hose is clogged, a buildup of lint could cause a fire.”

“I don’t understand why you need one of these things. You’ve got the expense of buying the contraption, and then you have to pay for the electricity to run it. Better you hang the clothes outside for the sun and wind to dry them,
ya?
”

“I’ve hung my share of clothes outside when it’s so cold they freeze like boards, and I’ve helped
Mam
try and dry laundry for a big family in the cellar when it’s raining outside. I like my electric dryer, thank you very much.”

Mary Aaron regarded the appliance suspiciously. “Don’t you worry in the night that it will burst into flames, maybe burn the house down around you?”

“No more than I worry about lightning strikes.” Rachel returned the tools to her red toolbox. “They cause fires, too.”

“
Ya,
they can do that. The Peacheys’ barn burned last summer. Remember? They barely got their horses out.”

“I remember.”

The entire valley had gathered to build a new barn for the family. It was one of the things Rachel treasured about her Plain heritage. Amish might not believe in insurance, but they all came together to help one another in times of emergencies. And the Peacheys had made out well. Their old barn had been dilapidated, and their neighbors had replaced it with a larger one, built with solid timber that would last for generations—if lightning didn’t strike twice in the same place.

“Do you have time for a glass of iced tea?” Rachel asked, changing the subject. “I could use a break, and I think Ada baked cookies.”

Mary Aaron was wearing a faded green dress, no shoes, and a navy scarf rather than a white
kapp,
which meant she hadn’t come by to pack orders and take them to the post office. She always wore her
kapp
when she went downtown, and none of the Amish would be seen barefooted on the street, for fear of Englishers staring. Mary Aaron often helped out at Stone Mill House, but she wasn’t an employee. Like most things in Rachel’s life, her relationship with her best friend and cousin was complicated. Mary Aaron wouldn’t tell her why she’d stopped by this afternoon until she was ready, and rushing her would be rude.

“Ya,”
Mary Aaron said. “Iced tea would be good.”

Fifteen minutes later, the two sat in chairs under the shade of a spreading beech tree, each with a cold glass of tea in her hands. Rachel’s tasted so good that she let her eyes drift closed and sighed with content.

“It is
goot,
” Mary Aaron agreed.

Rachel opened her eyes in time to see her cousin staring at her intently.

“Rae-Rae, are you having nightmares?” Mary Aaron asked. She twisted one bare foot into the thick grass and quickly dropped her gaze to her own foot. “About . . . about seeing Beth like that?”

Rachel nodded. “I am. I think because I’m so worried. The police need to find out who did it.” When Mary Aaron didn’t respond, she went on. “Evan’s helping with the investigation, but the Glicks won’t talk to the police. Mose told Evan to get off his farm. He said other things, worse things, and Evan feels bad about it.”

“You know how our people are about talking to an Englisher, especially police. I don’t think Mose blames Evan. He might have said it, but only because he was upset. Mose is a good man.”

“
Ya,
he is.”

“I bet he blames himself,” Mary Aaron continued. “Maybe he thinks that if he’d been a better father, Beth wouldn’t have left and she’d still be alive. He can’t admit that, so he takes it out on your Evan.” She looked up. “You’re going to help find her killer,
ya?
”

Rachel nodded again. A mockingbird lit on a branch and scolded them. “I think I have to.”

“Maybe
we
have to. I was there, too. I saw.” Mary Aaron sighed. “Maybe if we found the evil man who did this thing, we could both sleep again.”

They sat there for a few minutes more, neither saying anything, until Mary Aaron added, “Hannah Verkler went away a year ago. Do you remember? She was a nice girl, a good friend. I knew that she had trouble accepting rules, but she was a good girl. She had good parents, not so strict as the Glicks.” She hesitated. “Last night I dreamed I was at the quarry again. And this time, the girl in the water wasn’t Beth. It was Hannah.”

Rachel reached for Mary Aaron’s hand and gripped it. “We could try together to reason with the Glicks. Maybe not the parents. Another family member, maybe? I saw a young woman in their kitchen who looked like Beth. A sister, maybe?”

“Beth has sisters, but I don’t know that they’ll talk to you.” Her cousin nibbled at a lower lip. “I had an idea. Timothy wants me to meet him at a singing Thursday night. I think you should go with me.”

“To the singing?”

“
Ya.
Some of Timothy’s buddies will be there, and they used to belong to the Cut-Ups. You know, one of the young people gangs. The Cut-Ups aren’t really wild; they don’t get drunk or cause much trouble, but . . .” Mary Aaron shrugged. “Some of them probably have cell phones or radios, and I know some sneak off to movies in State College. They might know something about Beth . . . or Hannah.”

Rachel suspected that Mary Aaron had ventured to a few of those movies herself, with Timothy, but she didn’t say so. Precourting among the Old Order Amish youth was usually a private matter, and since neither of the two had been baptized yet, rules were somewhat flexible. It wasn’t until there was an official courtship that a young man and woman were considered a couple. “Timothy won’t mind if I show up with you?”

“He likes me. He wants us to start walking out together. He might mind, but he won’t say so.” She smiled. “Besides, it’s a long way to take the horse and buggy, especially coming home at night.
Mam
would be worried to let me go alone with a killer loose out there. If we take your Jeep, we’ll be safe.”

“And you think Timothy’s friends might know where Beth was all this time?”

“If anyone knows about young people who have left our community for the English, the Cut-Ups will.”

 

Thursday evening, instead of having dinner with Evan, Rachel found herself driving Mary Aaron to the youth singing at the Beiler farm. John Hannah and Alan, two of Mary Aaron’s single brothers, sent by their mother, were squeezed into the backseat. Apparently Rachel’s aunt wasn’t confident that the Jeep would allow the women to escape a crazed killer. Either that, or the boys wanted to appear cool, arriving not by buggy but in a candy-apple-red Jeep.

Out of consideration for her hosts, Rachel parked the vehicle in the pasture, out of sight of the house. The Amish kids knew that Rachel and her cousin hadn’t come in the usual fashion, and the hosting parents suspected, but no one said anything. There were already dozens of young people assembled in the yard and long, open picnic area. The Beilers of courting age, a girl and a boy, were the babies of the family. The father made his living by cutting timber, and he’d done well. The house, barn, and outbuildings were large, sturdy, and spotless. And after raising fifteen children and marrying off thirteen, the senior Beilers were accustomed to hosting singings.

The gathering brought back a wave of warm memories of Rachel’s own teenage years in the community. A farm wagon with straw bales for seating stood beside a dozen topless buggies. Boys in short-sleeved white shirts led sleek horses to an open shed beside the stable, while girls removed cakes, pies, and baskets of cookies from the backs of carriages amid a friendly chorus of teasing and greetings. Everyone loved a singing, where young people could meet up with others of their own age and enjoy an evening of fun and innocent romance. The laughter and soft Deitsch greetings were so familiar that Rachel closed her eyes and, for a few seconds, remembered the excitement and hopes such evenings had raised in her when she was young.