Karen Harper - Return to Grace

“You want to ride shotgun, Seth?” he asked. “You know, up front?”

“I’ll ride with Hannah,” he said, and walked around to sit next to her in the rear seat behind the cagelike divider that separated the front seats from the back. It was, she thought, a wide seat. Agent Armstrong was across the screen, but Seth seemed so far away from her.

“Listen,” Armstrong said as he drove slowly out of the Esh driveway past clothes blowing on the line in the brisk November day, “I’ve been calling both of you by your first names, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just call me Linc. My dad named me Lincoln for our Civil War president, Honest Abe, and that’s my motto—straight talk, full disclosure. I expect that from both of you. We’re working together on this, okay?”

“Fine,” Hannah said only. She did want to help in any way she could, including getting along with this man. She looked at Seth’s frowning profile.

“Fine with me,” Seth muttered. “You going to make straight talk a policy with everyone you question, such as Josh Troyer, about whether he used my ladder last night?”

Hannah saw Armstrong’s eyes dart toward Seth in the rearview mirror. “One step ahead of me, Seth. No, not with everyone, just key witnesses, and I don’t figure Naomi’s fiancé is one, but I’ve looked into him, too. The Troyers are a wealthy family, aren’t they, with owning the big grain elevator and that historic grist mill? Since they offer tours of the mill, I’m not sure if they’d think publicity of a murder around here would be good or bad for business.”

Hannah and Seth exchanged lightning-quick glances. This man was suspicious of everyone and considered every angle. If he thought Josh or the Troyers could be involved, anyone could be on his list.

Neither Seth nor Hannah responded. Linc Armstrong’s sharp eyes—like those of the eagle on his badge, she thought—glanced at them in the rearview mirror now and then. Could her feeling of being watched just be a reaction to his FBI surveillance and suspicious nature, no matter how friendly he seemed on the surface? She felt so torn about him, both guarded yet grateful.

When he pulled the car to a stop, almost exactly where her friends had parked at the graveyard on Halloween night, Linc said, “Seth, I’ll ask you to stay put until I’ve had Hannah walk me through things, then I’ll have you approach and enter the grounds just as you did that night.”

If “stay put” meant stay in the car, Seth ignored that order. He got out and stood near the fence, festooned with fluttering yellow plastic tape with the big, black words repeated over and over: Police Crime Scene Do Not Enter Police Crime Scene Do Not Enter … It was a good thing, she thought, that no one in the church had died right now. Her thoughts went to Kevin and Tiffany, to her other worldly friends who had not been hit by bullets that night. She wanted to write letters to their families. She couldn’t call, because Linc had confiscated her phone for now; a phone she’d need to give up, if she stayed here….

Feeling Seth’s gaze burning into her back from where he stood at the fence, she ducked under the tape Linc lifted for her, and they went into the graveyard.

“I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” Jack told Ray-Lynn as he pulled her into the inside back entry to the restaurant, despite the fact she’d just seated a party of six during the lunch rush. “I ran into complications.”

“I guess you did. If she’s come back to haunt you, she missed Halloween.”

“I didn’t mean her. Something about the graveyard case with Agent Armstrong. Ray-Lynn, why didn’t you answer your phone last night after you drove away? Or come to the door of your house when I knocked on it? Considering how you ran out, I didn’t want to just use my key—which I’d left at my house, anyway.”

“Where did she stay last night?”

“Not with me. I got her settled in at Amanda Stutzman’s B and B.”

“Oh, great! Just great. So she’s living within walking distance of my house! You told me once she worked as a hostess in this restaurant. Don’t you dare ask me to give her a job here, I don’t care if you do own fifty percent of it now! You said she used her salary to help pay for your house and the decor, so I supposed you’re thinking she still owns half of that. When she took off, you never paid her back because she didn’t want your money, right? Bet she thinks that house is still half hers and you’re all hers, because it kind of looked that way last night!”

“Would you calm down? I’ll work it out. I just didn’t want you to be upset.”

“I’m not upset. I’m way beyond that.”

“I want us to talk this out, but I’ve got obligations right now, you know that, and you’ve always understood that. You gotta trust me on this.”

“I do—to help solve the graveyard shootings. The other …” She shrugged and fought to keep from bursting into tears. “I’ve got people waiting, Jack, and you do, too. Duty calls, as they say. Does she—does she intend to stay?”

He shrugged, then nodded. “So she says. Got fed up with a shallow life in Vegas, she said, and—”

“Las Vegas? She’s been in Las Vegas and now wants to come back to Homestead, Ohio, in Amish country? Jack, she may look like a million bucks, but she’s probably just broke or running from something!”

“From mistakes, she says.”

“Did you tell her about us?”

“Of course I did. Told her not to apply for a job here or even to come in, but she said it’s a free country.”

Ray-Lynn slapped the extra menus she still held to her chest down on the pile of cartons. “You can’t handle her, can you? But you want to, don’t you—handle her, real up close and personal? You never got over her, did you?”

“Damn it, Ray-Lynn, just give me some time!”

“Oh, I will. Lots. Now, I’ve got a restaurant to run and a life to live, so excuse me,” she said, and grabbed the menus. She darted past him back into the restaurant proper, put the stack of menus by the cash register and went into the ladies’ room, the two stalls of which were blessedly empty.

With stiff arms, she steadied herself against the washbasin, afraid to look at herself in the mirror. She wanted to throw things, to break the mirror, just shatter it and scream. But she ran cold water and dabbed it under her eyes, then went back out and stood near the front door with a smile pasted on her face. The sign over the front door, the one she’d been so proud of, that her very own Amish artist, Sarah Kauffman, had painted so beautifully, really riled her now: Southern Hospitality and Amish Cooking—Y’all Come Back, Danki .

No way in all of God’s creation could she be glad Lily Freeman had come back.

“IS THIS PRETTY MUCH THE PATH THE FIVE OF you took that night?” Linc asked as they walked from the gate up the hill into the heart of the graveyard.

“Yes,” Hannah told him. “I don’t think we walked in single file, though.”

“I believe these are your grandparents buried here,” he said, indicating two of the many identical stones laid out in neat rows.

“Yes. You have cased the place, as they say,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Again, it amazed her how much background work this man had done into her life. Did he think she was somehow the key to what had happened? Surely no one had meant to shoot her that night, but she couldn’t accept that someone had been after the others, either. It must have been a random act—except for that slit screen. And was the policeman assigned to guard her hospital room just to keep reporters away? Daad had fended the media off, so was the policeman to protect her from someone else?