Karen Harper - Fall From Pride

Bishop Joseph Esh had also reminisced about the barn, which his father had bequeathed him. Amish barns were almost a part of the family, he’d learned, the cornerstone of their way of life, necessary not only for running their fifty-or-so-acre farms but for keeping the generations working and worshipping together.

“This is Hannah Esh, from Cleveland,” Sarah said when the stranger continued to glare at him in silence. “She’s the Eshes’ third-oldest daughter, but she hasn’t lived here for three years because she’s away building her career.”

“It’s okay, Sarah,” Hannah said. “I can talk for myself. He just surprised me. I thought, at first, it might be my… Never mind. Mr. MacKenzie, a friend phoned to tell me my family’s barn burned to the ground, and I wanted to see it without bothering them. I’m a big disappointment to them and am living in so-called worldly exile.”

Hannah Esh, Nate noted, had a bitter tinge to her voice and a defiant expression on what could be—with that harsh makeup, he wasn’t sure—a pretty face.

“She’s not being shunned like Jacob. She left home before joining the church—perfectly permissible,” Sarah said.

“Then she’s able to be welcomed back with what you called open arms,” Nate said.

“I’d appreciate it if you don’t tell my parents I was here,” Hannah said. “And I certainly don’t want to see them tonight.”

She stared straight at him when she talked. Like Sarah, a strong woman—or were all Amish women?

“I would think they would be happy to know you cared,” he said.

“But only to visit to see a—a dead barn? I don’t think so.”

“Hannah, I need to know where you were last night, when the barn burned.”

“Why?” she countered instantly, and this time her steady gaze did dart away from him, back toward where the barn had been. He heard Sarah suck in a breath, so she no doubt recalled what he’d said about arsonists possibly returning to the scene of the crime. And Sarah’s quick mind would get it that Hannah, just as Jacob, had a motive to hurt the Eshes for rejecting her.

“All right,” she said, cutting off Sarah, who seemed ready to leap to her friend’s defense. Hannah folded her arms over her breasts. “I was in the recording studio, making a demo and mixing my own audio background.”

“You’re a singer?”

“I am, and trying to be a professional one.”

“She has a great voice,” Sarah added.

“So you’re saying you were alone last night,” Nate said, looking only at Hannah. “Who called you to let you know the barn burned?”

“No one you’ve met. Jacob Yoder.”

“But someone I’m going to meet real soon. I need all your contact information, Hannah, including the name and address of the owner of the studio where you work—just in case there are more questions.”

“And I’ll just bet there will be,” she said, her voice slightly shaky now. Ordinarily, he felt he could really read suspects, but with the barrier of her appearance, he couldn’t. It was tough enough to try to read the Amish, but an Amish woman who had rebelled? Maybe he could get more out of Sarah about Hannah later. She was becoming his touchstone here—his translator, as his boss had put it.

“I’d like to be able to drive you ladies back to Sarah’s but I jogged over from where I left my vehicle in the woodlot behind the Kauffman farm. So I’m going to walk you back.”

“Not necessary,” Hannah said. “No one’s out in Amish country in the dark.”

“Someone was out last night,” Nate said, handing her a small pad and a pen to write down her contact information. “Someone, I’ll bet, who had a big beef against either your father or Sarah, or both.”

Sarah loved her job taking Mamm’s and Lizzie’s half-moon pies to Ray-Lynn at the Dutch Farm Table Restaurant six mornings a week. Honoring the Amish tradition of no Sunday sales, the place had been closed yesterday. Sarah had to get up before dawn, but she didn’t mind. Grossmamm was always still asleep and either Martha, if she wasn’t in school, or Mamm if she was, came over to stay.

Some amazing sunrises greeted Sarah as she went out to the barn to hitch Sally to her buggy, but, she had to admit, never one as stunning as the orange, fuchsia and apricot blaze in the sky today. Cirrus clouds and feathery floaters made the heavens look like a kaleidoscope quilt—one with Nate MacKenzie standing near the barn, silhouetted by it all. Ya, if he’d only been wearing an Amish jacket and straw hat, what a painting that would make. As good as his word, he’d walked her to the grossdaadi haus last night and Hannah to her car down the road at the Amish cemetery. He seemed to turn up everywhere.

Somehow she managed to find her voice. “So you’re an early riser as well as a night owl,” she said as she carried her big flat basket with four boxes of half-moon pies into the barn. Daad and Gabe were already out in the fields with some of the work team, and the barn door stood open.

“I do what I must to solve a crime.”

“You’re sure it is?”

“I’ll start going through the debris today, and then—if it is—I’ll be interviewing others. Hannah just more or less knocked on my door before I was ready for her.”

“She’s had a hard time.”

“So have her parents.”

“Did they mention her to you?”

“Not a word, not even when I had a heart-to-heart talk with her father.”

She nodded, put the basket down on a hay bale and pulled her buggy out of the back corner from among the lineup of the big carriage, sleigh and smaller carts. She saw Daad and Gabe had already taken the work wagon out. Trying to stay calm near Nate when she didn’t know what was coming next, she went out to fetch her buggy horse, Sally, in the side field. Although the horses were often out in this mild weather where they could graze, she still took the mare’s feed bag with her so Sally would get her grain and vitamins. She saw three of the family’s work team of big Percherons were still grazing in the field. She whistled and her smart former harness racer came right over to the gate.

Again, she was grateful that the Eshes’ horses had not been in the barn when it caught fire. Could the arsonist, if there was one like Nate evidently thought, be Amish and know how important the horses were? No, not if he’d burn a precious barn.

She fastened Sally’s feed bag on, brought her through the gate, past Nate, and backed her up to the double-seat buggy. Most Amish women, unless they were unwed, didn’t have their own vehicle. Despite the fact it marked her as an unwed maidal, she loved her freedom and kept the horse well-tended and the black fiberglass buggy clean and shined. Although Nate was usually full of talk and questions, he came closer and leaned against a stall rail just watching.

“I have to have these half-moon pies at the Dutch Farm Table before they open at seven,” she explained. “It’s a real challenge in the winter, but I like the time alone to observe everything just waking up, any season of the year.”

“I guess the speed of a buggy gives you time for that. I keep learning about things I thought I had answers to.”

She wasn’t sure if he meant about his investigation or the way they lived here, but she just nodded as she put the crupper under Sally’s tail and the breast strap between her forelegs, then took the feed bag off so she could get the bridle on.

“When your father and brother opened up the barn this morning,” Nate said, “I really looked around in here to get an idea of the preburn layout of the Esh barn. Then I searched German bank barns on VERA’s laptop.”

“Searched?”

“Oh, yeah, sorry. On my computer. I studied up—a crash course on barns with three levels like yours and the Eshes’. I couldn’t believe how your barn exteriors are misleading. I mean, there’s so much more space inside than what I expected. It’s like, don’t judge a book by its cover, I guess, like with people, too. Sarah, I don’t want you to get the idea I’m prejudging people, Hannah or Jacob or anyone else.”