LITMIR.BIZ

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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.”

      Over Sally’s back, their gazes locked and held again, the way they too often did. She always felt a funny fluttering in her lower belly she’d never had with Jacob. This man made her blush, too, but at least her complexion usually hid that.

      “I had to ask your friend those questions last night, get her info,” he added in a rush.

      “You’re really barking up the wrong tree with her.”

      “You said that about Jacob, too.”

      “She loves her parents, but they wanted her back in the nest under their roof and rules, and it led to harsh words. She was crushed to see the barn was gone.”

      “Sarah, she’s still bitter about all that. She’s chosen to be about as far from Amish as she can get, despite the fact she’s still dressed in black.”

      “She would never burn the barn!” she exploded at him, then put her hand up over her mouth as if she’d cursed. This man brought out all kinds of emotions in her she’d never known were there, or at least ones she’d never let out before. Why couldn’t she just be like other Amish women, content with her lot in life? Why did she have to yearn for the forbidden—to paint pictures, that is?

      “Okay, thanks for that testimony about Hannah,” Nate said, his voice clipped. “You’re starting to sound like an expert witness, but I guess I asked for that. See you later. I’ve got a long day over at the site of the burn.”

      As he strode away, she was upset she’d lost her temper. Patience and humility, not anger and pride, were what she needed. She went back to harnessing Sally but turned her head to watch Nate walk away. The man was too lanky, and she’d like to feed him up good. His head was down while he punched something into a little cell-phone type thing with both thumbs. He headed toward the back lane where he had VERA parked. She might have just kept staring, except Sally snorted and stamped her foot.

      Just as she was heading out of the end of the lane onto the road, Sarah heard the purr

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