Shunned and Dangerous (An Amish Mystery) (8 page)

“G
ood heavens, Claire, how many times are you going to read that same page before you either
turn
it or put the whole thing down?”

Surprised, Claire glanced up from the paperback mystery novel in her lap to find Diane eyeing her curiously from across the dimly lit parlor. “Oh. Aunt Diane. I didn’t hear you come in just now.”

“I’ve been sitting here for nearly ten minutes, dear.” Diane maneuvered her knitting needles in, out, and around the royal blue scarf taking shape in her hands. “Is everything okay? You were unusually subdued with the guests this evening.”

She bolted upright. “I’m so sorry. Did someone complain?”

“No, of course not. I think everyone was so hungry after their day they didn’t even notice. But I did.” The needles stilled along with Diane’s hand. “You seemed a million miles away when you got home from work, but I let it go because of timing. However, dinner is over now and our guests have retired to their rooms. So tell me, what’s on your mind? Did something happen with Jakob this morning?”

She couldn’t help but smile at the obvious hope in her aunt’s voice at the mere mention of Detective Fisher. In fact, if the sixty-something woman had her say, Claire would give in to the feelings Diane was convinced she had regarding Jakob, and another Heavenly wedding would soon be in the works.

No. As tempting as it was to vent the disappointment she felt over her abbreviated morning with Jakob at Zook’s farm, to do so would only encourage the woman. Besides, Diane was sharp. She could spot a shift in Claire’s feelings a mile away. Especially if those feelings were starting to shift in a direction Diane had been championing for months.

Instead, Claire let her head drift back against the cushioned chair while her mouth gave voice to one of the other topics derailing her pitiful attempt to read. “I know it was sixteen years ago, but do you remember much about John Zook’s murder?”

“Of course I do,” Diane said as her hands returned to the scarf in her lap. “I remember all of it like it was yesterday.”

Before Claire could formulate her next question, Diane continued. “There’d never been a murder in Heavenly before Harley’s brother. And, until two months ago, there hadn’t been one since. People only forget when something is commonplace.”

“The forgetting would be nice, but I sure wouldn’t want something like that becoming commonplace around here.” And it was true. Heavenly was supposed to be about peace and serenity, not murder.

“Amen.”

She allowed the flicker of candlelight across bookshelves and framed photographs to guide her eyes around the room until they were, once again, trained on the woman she loved like a mother. “Tell me everything about his murder.”

“It was a crime that never should have happened. And it wouldn’t have if it weren’t for pure, unadulterated ignorance.”

“Ignorance?” she echoed.

Diane nodded as the knitting needles in her hand continued to zip in and out of impossibly small loops. “The murder was classified as a hate crime.”

“Go on . . .”

“While one could argue that Harley Zook pushed the Amish envelope on occasion and let compassion rule when it came to things like shunnings, his brother towed the line perfectly. He followed the Ordnung to the letter, so to speak.”

“But the Ordnung itself is really an unwritten code of order, isn’t it? Doesn’t that, by its very nature, leave a little wiggle room?”

“If by wiggle room you mean smiling at someone like Jakob when no one else is looking, I suppose . . . but it’s rare.” Diane laid her needles down in her lap and stretched her arms over her head. “The Ordnung might be unwritten, but it’s been handed down over the generations. It’s those expectations for social and spiritual behavior that are ingrained in the Amish from birth. They really don’t know any other way. They’ve thrived under their beliefs. It’s why they don’t hide cars in their barn and take them out for a spin when no one is looking. They don’t want to do that. They embrace their world with both arms.”

Claire processed her aunt’s comments then tucked them away in favor of the question she really wanted answered. “So how does all of this figure into John’s murder?”

“The Amish, by their very nature, live a quiet life. Yes, they live among the rest of us, but they do it as quietly as possible.”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning they keep their buggies to the side of the road whenever possible. At Lighted Way business meetings they have a presence but rarely interject comments unless asked . . . and even then, it’s done in a very unassuming way.” Diane set her scarf and needles to the side and stood, the nine thirty chime of the grandfather clock in the hallway signaling her final task of the night. Crossing to the window that overlooked the darkened fields of the Amish countryside, she took one more look at her beloved town then drew the thick velvet curtains closed.

“They are passive people, Claire,” the woman continued en route back to her spot on the sofa. “They don’t believe in engaging in arguments, and they don’t force their lifestyle down anyone’s throats. As a result, there are an awful lot of misperceptions about the Amish that are born from a place of ignorance and allowed to go unchecked by a group of people who separate themselves from the ills of the world.”

Claire leaned forward, intrigued by her aunt’s words. “Okay, I’m following you . . .”

“The night John Zook was murdered, he’d gone out to his barn in the middle of the night to check on a cow who was getting ready to give birth. The next morning, Harley found him slumped alongside the new calf. He’d been shot in the back of the head.”

“Oh my gosh, how awful!”

“Harley was devastated, as was the entire town—Amish and English alike. Especially once it was determined he’d been killed by a hunting rifle from within a range that eliminated all possibility of it having been a stray shot.”

The scarf and needles remained untouched as Diane slipped sixteen years into the past. “We’d had an accident or two, of course, but, before that night, the extent of
crime
in Heavenly was confined to a rare teenage prank—a knocked-down mailbox on prom weekend, an occasional tire mark on someone’s yard on the last day of school, that sort of thing. When they were caught, they were always English. The Amish kids just didn’t conduct themselves like that.”

“How long did it take for the police to figure out who killed John?” she asked.

“Too long.” Diane ran her fingers along the tasteful pattern on the arm of the couch and sighed. “That’s why Jakob left. He’d already had a fascination with the police—one he’d fed during his very brief Rumspringa. For him, his experimentation with the English world didn’t have him buying a CD player for his buggy or sneaking a cigarette out at the covered bridge on Route 50. He simply spent his very short Rumspringa talking to the police officers in town and riding along with them whenever he could.”

Everything she was hearing fit so well with the man she’d come to know over the past few months. Jakob’s sense of honor, as well as the unwavering respect he had for his former community and its lifestyle, made his desire to solve John Zook’s murder easy to understand. She said as much to Diane, who offered a slow but definitive nod of agreement in return.

“It hurt him deeply to watch Harley suffer the loss of his brother. The fact that the police couldn’t seem to finger a killer only compounded that hurt. So while the rest of his brethren waited for news of an arrest, Jakob made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes he could help deliver that news faster.”

“But he’d have to test into the academy and then go through months of training before he could even secure a job as a police officer . . .”

“Yes, however, it was still an
action
as opposed to an inaction.”

Claire of all people understood that notion. Sometimes doing something was better than doing nothing. “But then they solved it just as he left, right?” This was a part of the story she had heard before, the nugget that made the severing of ties with Jakob’s family even harder to digest.

Again, Diane nodded. “Yes, that’s right. But by then it was too late. He was already cut off and there was no going back even if he’d wanted to. But for Jakob the calling that had convinced him to leave the Amish didn’t go away just because John’s killer was found. So he kept his plan to become a police officer and he did so in New York.”

There was so much about Jakob’s life in New York she wanted to hear, but now was not the time. Besides, the questions she had weren’t ones Diane could answer. No, those would be for a future date with Jakob.

A future date . . .

Shaking the part-frightening, part-intriguing thought from her head, Claire forced herself to focus on the details her aunt remembered about the senseless crime they’d been discussing.

“So the police apprehended Carl Duggan for John’s murder, yes?”

“Yes.”

“Did he know John personally?”

“No. John’s death was a hate crime against the Amish as a group. Carl Duggan simply picked a random barn and waited.”

“But why? What did the Amish do to him?”

“Carl was struggling financially. He’d lost his job, he was behind in his taxes, and he was in danger of losing the home he shared with his wife and young son.”

Claire shifted her feet off the ottoman and onto the floor, leaning forward as she did. “That’s this Patrick fellow, right?”

“That’s right.” Diane stilled her finger atop the arm of the sofa and closed her eyes briefly. “So, rather than try to change his situation somehow, Carl lashed out against the Amish, convinced of the often-spread yet completely wrong allegation that they don’t pay taxes.”

She felt her jaw slack. “What?”

“Carl, like so many other ignorant people, believed the Amish don’t pay taxes. That, of course, isn’t true. They pay taxes just like the rest of us with the exception of social security since they don’t partake in that program. Mind you, the bulk of the taxes they pay go to services they don’t utilize, but they pay them anyway. Just like everyone else.”

“So this man killed John in retaliation against a myth?” she said, the gasp in her voice making them both look toward the front hallway and the stairs just beyond. When no guest doors opened on the second floor in response, she breathed a sigh of relief. “Sorry about that, Aunt Diane. I . . . I just can’t imagine someone losing their life in such a tragic way to begin with, only to find out it all happened because of
a lie
.”

“That’s why I always make a point of sharing as many facts about the Amish with our guests as possible. So much of what people think they know about them is wrong.” Diane plucked her canvas knitting bag from the floor and set it on her lap. Then, with loving hands, she put her scarf, yarn, and knitting needles inside. “Harley was robbed of a brother that fateful night. But instead of becoming bitter the way so many of us English would, he turned the other cheek the way he was taught. He tried to reach out to Carl’s wife and son, and let them know he did not hold them accountable for his brother’s death. He cast aside his own interest in woodworking to run John’s dairy farm. And he tried, unsuccessfully, to champion Jakob in the eyes of his own community.”

“So that’s why Harley had Patrick working as his apprentice? Because of the whole turning the other cheek thing?”

Diane met Claire’s eyes across the top of the knitting bag. “Patrick was almost ten, I believe, when his father went off to jail, sending him into quite a tailspin from what I’ve heard here and there over the past sixteen years. His acting out certainly compounded the strain on his mother, I would imagine.

“Harley heard of the trouble Rita was having with Patrick and decided to try and help. He told me he understood Patrick’s aimless wandering because he’d felt that way, too, since John’s death. He felt that by continuing to devote his life to John’s dairy farm, he was remaining stuck in the past. That’s why he decided to heed my advice and start his mobile carpentry business.”

She listened to all that Diane was saying, the gaps her aunt was helping to fill in invaluable. “And bringing Patrick on was Harley’s attempt at pulling Carl’s son out of the past, too?”

“That and the fact they shared a common loss.”

“A common loss?”

“Of course. Carl Duggan may still be alive, but his actions made it so Patrick grew up without a father just as those same actions made it so Harley no longer had a brother.” Diane grasped the handles of her knitting bag and scooted forward on the couch. “He was hoping the lift that he got from working with his hands would be shared by Patrick.”