Karen Harper - Fall From Pride

She ignored him but made a big fuss over seating four tourists from Columbus, chatting away to them, while Anna Miller took the sheriff’s order. Good—she could tell he didn’t like the lack of personal attention. It was another risk, but she’d decided some things were worth it.

She walked back to Sarah while Jack took out his own copy of the special edition of the Home Valley News. It was only about eight pages this time—a lot of ads, about half of them for businesses Peter had his finger in, even the Buggy Wheel Shop, which had only Amish customers who would go there to buy new buggies whether there was an ad or not.

“The rest of that fire article’s not so bad, is it?” Ray-Lynn asked Sarah. “As I’ve told you a hundred times before, you’re a fabulous artist and should be aiming higher than just quilt squares on barns. I know you’re yearning to do more than copy patterns even if you do choose the colors.”

“I wish he hadn’t put my age in here,” Sarah whispered, looking as if he’d written that she was a serial killer. “It sounds weird that a twenty-four-year-old woman still has her maiden name. ‘Sarah Kauffman, age twenty-four, from the Kauffman farm next door.’ Why do papers think they have to tell stuff like that, and who told him my age?”

“Listen to your friend Ray-Lynn, my girl. At twenty-four, you are still what the big, bad world would consider a young chick, believe me. Now, I know Amish women your age are usually wed by now, but it’ll happen. Besides, not to sound like a broken record, but you’ve got other talents, and I’m real sorry to see that first pretty quilt square you did got burned up with the barn. You’ve got to branch out, so my offer is still open for you to paint an Amish scene on that long wall right there instead of that old-fashioned wallpaper. I’ll never forget those beautiful drawings you showed me from your sketchbook.”

“Thanks, Ray-Lynn. I haven’t shown anyone but Hannah, Ella and you those drawings, so I guess we’re keeping each other’s secrets, right?”

“And secrets they will remain for now,” Ray-Lynn said. The thing was, Sarah had eyes like a hawk. Maybe all artists did. Though Ray-Lynn had tried to hide it, her Amish friend had picked up on the fact that she was smitten with Jack Freeman. “You just keep that offer about the mural in mind now,” she urged Sarah. “I’d pay you well for your time if we can just get permission from your powers-that-be around here.”

“Can I take this copy of the paper to show the arson investigator?”

“Why, sure. But if you don’t want to be interviewed, better steer clear of the Esh place. I think a camera crew and a few others went out there to talk to him—oops, more customers to be seated.”

“I’m supposed to take some things to the Eshes, a chicken dinner when Mamm and Lizzie get it ready.”

Though Ray-Lynn knew the Amish rarely showed affection in public, she gave Sarah’s shoulders a quick squeeze. As she passed Jack, heading to seat more folks who’d come in the front door, she said, “I’ll have Anna refresh that coffee while you’re waiting for whatever you ordered, Sheriff.”

IT WAS ARSON. BY NOON, NATE KNEW FOR SURE. He’d been interrupted more than once by curious Amish or others. Bishop Esh had said he trusted Nate’s judgment so, with two of his sons, he was planting a cornfield to the south.

Nate had stonewalled the Cleveland reporter and her cameraman, though they still hung around by their van which read News Live at Five. He’d phoned the state fire marshal from the privacy of VERA. It was going to be an interesting case file. He hoped he wouldn’t be recalled until the area supervisor returned from his daughter’s wedding in Hawaii. He’d told Mark he had some leads already, though he hadn’t told him he was convinced that there’d be another arson. He had nothing to back that up but his instincts, and Mark was a just-the-facts guy.

As he left VERA, Nate saw Sarah driving her buggy into the lane. His insides flip-flopped—probably, he told himself, because the reporter had asked him if he knew where Sarah was and he’d said no. He hadn’t exactly lied. She could have been anywhere on the three miles of road between here and the restaurant in Homestead.

“How’s it going?” she asked as she reined in.

“Arson for sure,” he told her. “I’m going to point out the evidence to the bishop when he comes back for lunch.”

“We call it dinner,” she said, “and I’ve got it right here all packed up in my buggy. A lot more food than you moderns are used to, I bet, but we’ve all been up early working hard—you, too.”

“If I ate like your people, I’d gain more than evidence about an arson around here.”

“You could afford to gain some weight,” she said, then blushed. “I mean, someone who jogs and walks all over like you do, even though you drive your truck, too.”

“VERA’s a gas hog, but I still call her my home away from home. But I’m now as much of an expert on banked, three-story barns as I am on VERA.”

Twice he’d spent late hours online and learned that banked barns were also called German barns—no surprise there. What was banked was the slanted, hard-packed earth leading up to the broad double doors. The only other entry was in the stone-constructed lower level. Originally, that was where the barn animals had stalls, though he’d observed that the local Amish kept their horses in stalls and their buggies stored on the second level called the threshing floor. A haymow or loft was on the third level under a peaked roof with a cupola on top to aerate the barn. Windows were small and minimal but threw enough light inside, especially if the double doors were open.

The most important thing he’d learned was that the window or windows were all on the third level. So the arsonist had to have been up in the loft or on a ladder to get lit trailers to go through a window. Sarah’s wooden ladders and scaffolding had been burned from outside the barn—but had they been used by the arsonist first?

“So how is VERA as a home?” she was asking.

“Cozy, maybe too cozy. I’ll show you around, and then you’ll see what I mean.”

He didn’t say so but he found the confines of the VERA’s high-tech combination of lab/office/storage/bathroom/bedroom a little claustrophobic, especially out here in the wide-open Home Valley surrounded by rolling hills. If the weather stayed mild and dry, he planned to keep sleeping out under the stars. It brought back the best memory he had of his dad when they used to camp out in Southern Ohio down by Old Man’s Cave, before his whole childhood went up in flames.

“By the way,” he said when their mutual staring in silence stretched out a bit too long, “you’d better stay in the house if you don’t want to be interviewed. As you can see by their vehicle, the TV folks are still here.” His BlackBerry tone sounded, and he looked down to see if it was his boss again. “I’ve got to take this,” he told her. “It’s my foster mother, and I always take her calls.”

“Foster mother?”

“I’ll explain sometime.”

“I’ll head straight in with the food and come out with the Eshes when you announce the arson,” she said with a snap of her reins. “Unless someone tells the TV people who I am, they won’t notice me separate from the others at all.”

But even as he took the call, he couldn’t help thinking that Sarah somehow stood out. Even among the Plain People, she didn’t seem plain at all.

Everyone ate before hearing Nate’s verdict, maybe, Sarah thought, to fortify themselves for what was to come. Then, too, though no one said so, it was possible the bishop was hoping the media outside would leave them alone to hear about the autopsy of the barn fire in private. That’s what it felt like, Bishop Esh had said, an autopsy of his dead barn, with the burial and then, hopefully, the resurrection yet to come.