LITMIR.BIZ

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Jacob was outside. Could he have come from way across the field and not only been outside their barn?

      “I don’t think so,” Gabe said. “A coupla guys were smoking regular cigs outside behind the buggies—not me—but I have a time or two.”

      “I’m not blaming anyone for smoking or accusing them of being an arsonist,” Nate assured him with a pat on his shoulder. “As I said, a single dropped cigarette or match in the hay was not how the barn fire started, but if some kids were over there, maybe they saw something—something they don’t even know was important for my investigation. I’d love to talk to them. I need all the help I can get,” he added as they approached VERA. “And I can keep things confidential. You know that word, Gabe—confidential?”

      “Ya, Mr. MacKenzie. I can ask around and keep my ears open.”

      “Good man,” Nate said, and this time hit his shoulder lightly with a balled fist.

      Sarah and Gabe watched as Nate took a small bit of metal and plastic out of his pocket—not quite a key—aimed it in VERA’s direction, then pressed something. They heard a double click and VERA’s lights blinked once as if in welcome—or warning.

      “Like a magic lock,” Gabe said as he climbed up into the high cab next to Nate while Sarah sat by the passenger’s side window. “Way cool.”

      Sarah kept silent while Nate explained and demonstrated the various dashboard instruments. He showed them how the GPS worked and how the computer could perform other tasks. But Sarah sensed that it was just being in the big truck cab that impressed Gabe most. He kept touching the outer edge of the steering wheel and glancing out through the windshield. So her brother had a good imagination, too, just different from hers, that’s all, she thought.

      “Do you want to see the magic techno-cave in back now?” he asked the wide-eyed seventeen-year-old.

      “Maybe later,” Gabe said, his eyes aglow. Barbara Lantz, Sarah thought, might be jealous if she saw how her brother lusted—yes, a sin, but so human—after this big, polished, black truck cab.

      “Then while I show your sister,” Nate said, “why don’t you slide over in the driver’s seat?”

      “Nate!” Sarah blurted.

      “Don’t worry,” he said as he got down and closed the door on the rapt boy who now had his hands on the steering wheel. He came around to help Sarah down. “He can’t start it, can’t go anyplace.”

      He gestured toward the back of the vehicle, and she went with him. She’d been tempted to see VERA up close earlier today and now she would. After all, as entranced as Gabe was up front, he was here as a kind of chaperone. So what could happen while an Englische ausländer, however entrancing he was, introduced her to his sleek, brilliant, mechanical partner?

      7

      AT FIRST, NATE SHOWED SARAH THINGS INSIDE VERA she’d expected to see, like firefighting gear and an ax and shovel he’d used to examine the ruins of the Esh barn. He explained a scene light and demonstrated the neat collapsible ladder he said he’d loan her. She figured that was all to break her in easy when he began to show her the array of amazing instruments and machines neatly stowed inside VERA. But she was even more amazed by her feelings being so close to him. Despite Gabe nearby and the back doors being wide open, she felt so alone with Nate as it went from dusk to dark outside.

      Nate’s tour of VERA’s marvels with brief explanations of their uses blurred by: a thermal imager, a digital camera, a laser range finder. He showed her handheld, wireless phones. Several years before she’d heard Peter Clawson call them walkie-talkies when he used them with his reporter, before times got tough and he started doing everything at the paper himself, except for some volunteers. Nate showed her his laptop computer and his printer, copier, scanner and fax machine. He said he had a fingerprinting kit but didn’t show it to her. VERA had what he called a camcorder and a fourteen-inch color TV with a built-in DVD that played flat silver disks and worked off a generator or the truck’s batteries.

      “The antenna system you’ve seen on the roof is invaluable in the rolling terrain around here,” he went on. “The tower retracts into a rear compartment—here, see—and is raised and lowered by a single switch to go thirty-four feet into the air. Five antennae then pop out so I can get signals for communication.”

      Signals for communication—his words echoed in her head. She hoped he didn’t know how his closeness was getting to her, as if his occasional light touch on her elbow or back, the scent of his hair or skin, was giving her body silent signals.

      He was right about it being cozy in here. Besides a narrow counter for lab work on both sides of the truck, a skinny central table with newspapers open on it took up some space. She saw the Budget, the latest issue she’d been reading to her grandmother, and the special edition of the Home Valley News spread out with some things underlined or circled in red ink.

      “Any clues in there?” she asked.

      “Just trying to learn more about the area and the people. You’ve been very helpful with that.”

      “Good. We all want to help you find who did it. You told my father you didn’t think the fire had anything to do with my paintings. I appreciate that.”

      “I think it’s more likely someone’s out for revenge against Bishop Esh. But I’m glad you’ll be working at home for a while, because I don’t want to imply you don’t have to be careful painting your patterns. That’s what I’m looking for, a pattern. I’m just hoping—praying, as your mother put it—that I can find something that makes sense and leads to the arsonist. I can tell how much those painted quilt squares mean to you.”

      “What I’d really like to paint are entire scenes of Amish life,” she blurted, though she was usually so guarded about sharing that. “Ray-Lynn Logan at the restaurant, Hannah and Ella are the only ones I’ve told. To my people, it would be too personal, too prideful, even if I didn’t sign my name on them. Ray-Lynn said I have a folk style, kind of primitive, but that it would suit my subject matter. She said it would be something like a woman called Grandma Moses used to paint. She told me that several months ago, but I remembered the name.”

      “So you’d risk being a rebel to paint like that?”

      “No, I’m fine doing the barn art. That’s a big step for all of us.”

      “Your work might be like Grandma Moses, huh?” he said, leaning over the keyboard of his laptop. He tapped something, and the screen came alive, a picture of a group of men, including him, together under the sign Fire and Explosive Investigations Bureau. Then he typed in the words Grandma Moses and art, then another screen lit up with a series of paintings. He enlarged them one at a time while she stared at them in awe.

      “Oh, yes,” she said, her voice shaky, “if those rural hills and farm scenes were Amish—ya, I could do that, only with my own touches, in my own way.” They leaned toward the screen together, so close her bonnet bumped his cheek. “Well, good for Grandma Moses,” Sarah said with a huge sigh, “and that nickname probably means she was elderly, too.”

      “She took up painting very late, it says here, leaving the art of embroidery to follow her heart toward a new kind of art.”

      To follow her heart… Sarah suddenly felt almost as close to the long-gone Grandma Moses as she did to her own grossmamm Miriam. The Amish didn’t embroider—too fancy—but she’d long ago given up stitching quilts unless she absolutely had to, and she’d suffered socially for that. Still, she did not want to be elderly when she got the gumption to try entire paintings, not with the latex paint she used on the barns but in oil paint on stretched canvas like she’d seen for sale in the back corner of the hardware store in town.

      Nate left a big painting on the screen, one called The Old Oaken Bucket, with horses in the field, barns and hills, women in long skirts, even an Amish-looking man in the lower left corner of it. As much as Sarah was impressed with VERA’s insides, that picture perked things up, almost as if

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