8
Chris tossed the forkful of hay into Samson’s makeshift stall, in the garage-turned-barn. Then he clipped a lead rope to Samson’s harness and led him outside to brush him down. He stroked the brush across Samson’s withers, and the horse nickered, nudging Chris’s shoulder with his nose. Normally Chris would laugh at the horse’s antics, but not now. Not after a day like today.
Currycombing the horse was Chris’s way to calm down and sort things out. Samson was annoyed that dinner was getting delayed, but tonight, it would have to wait. Chris still felt shaky inside after being hauled off to the police station like a common criminal. He was even more shocked by how the conversation with the sheriff had unfolded.
“So, Chris Yoder, tell me why you were at Raymond Gould’s farm on the afternoon of August 28th,” the sheriff had said as he settled into the chair behind his desk.
“I had been doing odd jobs around Stoney Ridge. I found the jobs on the bulletin board at the hardware store in town. Raymond Gould needed someone to lift hay into his barn loft, so I went over to his farm that morning and he hired me for the rest of the day. Said he has—said he had—a bad back.”
The sheriff scribbled down notes as Chris spoke. “Go on.”
“I was up in the hayloft, using a pulley to haul bales of hay into the loft. I heard a gunshot go off and looked out the door at the end of the barn. Down in the pasture was the farmer, Raymond Gould, sprawled flat on his back, and a bunch of frightened sheep.”
“No one else?”
“No one. I had a pretty good vantage point from the upper story of the barn.”
“Then what?”
“I scrambled down from the hayloft and took off on my horse to call for an ambulance. I remembered that I had passed by a phone shanty near the schoolhouse.”
“And then?”
“I went back to the farm, waited until I heard the police sirens, and left.”
“You didn’t bother to give Gould CPR?”
“I don’t have any idea how to give someone CPR.” He turned the brim of his straw hat around and around. “Look, Sheriff, I’ve been around farm animals enough to know when a creature still has life in it. I have to say, Raymond Gould looked pretty dead from the barn.” Chris pointed to his head. “The bullet, well, it—”
The sheriff waved that thought off. “Yeah, yeah.” He jotted down a few more notes.
Chris was growing impatient. “Am I under arrest? I didn’t do anything wrong.”
The sheriff leaned back in his chair. “No. Your story checks out. We have two calls coming in, five minutes apart, from the schoolhouse phone. And the coroner’s report corroborates your story. Turns out a sheep stepped on the rifle. The safety wasn’t on.”
“Then, can I go?” Chris started to rise in the chair.
“Not so fast. I’ve got a few more questions for you.” The sheriff tossed down his pen and fixed his gaze on Chris. “If you weren’t guilty, then why did you act guilty? Why did you leave the scene?”
Chris stifled a groan. He cleared his throat and tried to answer calmly. “I could see things were taken care of. I had nothing to add. I didn’t see the actual shooting. I would have just gotten in the way.”
The sheriff raised his eyebrows. “Or maybe you didn’t want the authorities to know you were in town.”
Maybe. “I haven’t done anything wrong. Can I go?”
“Just a few more questions.”
“Like what?”
“Like your real name.”
“I’ve told you. Christopher Yoder.”
“Your father’s name was Yoder?”
“I don’t know who my father was.”
“Where’d you pick up the name Yoder?”
“My foster mother. She raised me.”
“She adopted you?”
“No. Not officially.”
“Then why don’t you tell me what your legal name is?”
Chris sighed. “Mitchell. Christopher Mitchell.”
“Tell me about your mother.”
Chris snapped his head up. “What about her?”
“For starters, what is her name?”
“Grace. Grace Mitchell.” Chris rubbed his temples. His mother’s name always seemed ironic to him. It was as if his grandparents must have known she would require a lot of grace in life.
The sheriff scribbled it down. “Grace Mitchell.” He looked up. “Where is she now?”
Chris wanted to tell the sheriff that his mother was none of his business. He hated sharing his personal life with anyone, much less this arrogant officer. But he feared the sheriff would continue to harass him unless he answered his questions. He cleared the lump from his throat again. “I haven’t had any contact with her in quite some time.” That was the truth.
The sheriff leaned forward in his chair. “Let me be straight with you, Chris . . . Yoder or Mitchell or whoever you are. And maybe, then, you will be straight with me. What I want to know is what happened in your grandfather’s house, fourteen years ago.”
Whoa. Why was the sheriff ripping the scab off this old wound? Leave it alone! Chris pleaded silently. That was such a long time ago. That was the last day he had ever seen his grandfather.
Jimmy Fisher left Windmill Farm after extracting a promise from M.K. to introduce him to Emily Esh. As soon as he disappeared around the bend in the road, M.K. set out for Erma Yutzy’s house. This morning’s storm clouds had been blown away by a change in the wind, and the evening sky was high and open. She found Erma, as usual, bent over in the garden, weeding.
“Hello, Erma,” M.K. called out as she crossed over a row of spinach seedlings.
Erma lifted her head and blinked a few times. “Well, well. My new young friend is here.” She leaned on her cane as she straightened up and shielded her eyes from the setting sun. “Can I get you a piece of apple snitz? I just took it out of the oven.”
M.K. smiled and shook her head. No one came or went from a Plain home without being fed. “I just finished supper. I was passing by and thought I’d say hello.”
But Erma couldn’t be fooled. She took a few steps closer to her, pausing for a moment, sizing up M.K.’s mood. “Weeding is good for a heavy heart.”
“Really?”
“When you weed, you get rid of the things that distract a plant from growing.” Erma watched her for a long moment, then grinned. “It’s a metaphor, Mary Kate.”
Oh. Oh!
“And there are a lot of weeds.” Erma pointed to a row of carrots and radishes. “I could sure use some help.”
The two women worked their way down the row, carefully tugging weeds without uprooting carrot seedlings. About halfway down the row, M.K. quietly said, “Erma, how do you make something right when you’ve done something wrong?”
Slowly, Erma straightened up and leaned on her knees. “You ask for forgiveness and try to get things back on track, that’s what you do.”
“That’s it?”
“That’s it,” Erma said. She pointed to the carrots. “Keep weeding.”
Twenty minutes later, Erma’s carrots and radishes were safe from the distractions of intruding weeds, and M.K. said goodbye.
As M.K. scooted down the street that led to Colonel Mitchell’s house, she wondered what she might find—was Jenny left alone while her brother was thrown in jail today? Was Chris still in jail? M.K. felt terrible. When would she ever learn? This was just the kind of thing Fern was always getting after her for—she acted first and thought second. She had sent someone to jail today! And he wasn’t even guilty. Oh, what would her father say if he found out? She hoped he never would.
She zoomed past Colonel Mitchell’s driveway the first time, but found it on the second pass. The house was on a flag lot, sitting way back from the road, its long drive edged with overgrown bushes on both sides, hidden from the street. At the end of the long driveway, the house loomed, pale white in the gathering purple dusk. Fireflies flickered in the canopy of the trees, and whip-poor-wills chirped from the high grass. Fat, fuzzy bumblebees hovered in the warm evening air. Under normal conditions, she would stop to identify the variety of bumblebees. Maybe follow them to their hives. Not tonight, though. Tonight wasn’t a normal night.
As she neared the house, she slowed, astounded. It was a stately old home, in utter neglect. Something wiggled around in her memory. She suddenly realized that the house backed up to the stand of pine trees on the far edge of Windmill Farm—not far from the honey cabin. If she didn’t have the scooter, she could probably get home quicker by slipping through the fields. She set the scooter down, took a deep breath, and started for the porch but stopped when she saw Chris lead a horse out to a hitching post.
Well, at least he wasn’t in jail! That was good news.
She smoothed her skirt and took another deep breath before she approached Chris. “Hello.”
He looked over the neck of the horse at her, didn’t say anything, but calmly continued with his grooming, running the brush down the animal’s flank. For a long minute M.K. just watched him. It struck her all of a sudden that he was a very handsome young man, clean-cut and wholesome looking.
She tried again. “We haven’t been formally introduced. I’m Mary Kate Lapp. Apparently you have been working for my father, Amos Lapp.”
“You look like a Lapp,” Chris said.
He didn’t seem at all angry. Maybe the sheriff hadn’t told him who had turned him in. Maybe that piece of information could remain between her and the sheriff. In her detective books, the witness was always protected. Maybe that’s what the sheriff had done. She stood up straighter. Everything was going to be all right! Maybe there was no harm done, other than a minor interruption in Chris Yoder’s day. Maybe . . .
“Coming by to see if I got let out of the slammer?”
Oh. She knotted her hands, not knowing what she should say. No, that wasn’t true. She knew what to say. She just wasn’t accustomed to saying it. Finally, she pushed out the words that needed to be said. “I came over to apologize.”
“For knocking me in the ditch? For treating me like I was a leper when I offered to give you a ride home? For turning me in to the sheriff on trumped-up charges?”
Okay. Maybe this wasn’t going to be easy. It was obvious she had touched a raw nerve. “Yes. For all those things. I am . . . sorry.”
“You should be.”
“I am.”
Chris walked around her and started brushing the horse’s other side. He seemed to have forgotten she was here.
She turned to leave, when suddenly he said, “Any particular reason why you’ve got a grudge against me?”
She spun around. “No! I don’t have a grudge. I just . . . I heard the gunshot that day and remembered your pitch-black horse galloping away and then Fern’s coffee can had gone missing—and it all seemed to make sense. Like puzzle pieces that fit together. But I didn’t think it all through. I got so excited that I didn’t think it through. It’s one of my worst faults, Fern says. Acting without thinking.”
Chris looked at her, confused, squinting at her as if he couldn’t understand her. She knew she was babbling.
“Who’s Fern?”
“She’s my stepmother.”
He nodded. But then he turned his attention back to the horse. “So what’s this about the coffee can gone missing?”
“Oh that. Well, that, too, was a misunderstanding. Fern thought it was stolen—” she frowned—“come to think of it, she didn’t really think that. She just couldn’t remember where she had put it. Turns out she put it in the refrigerator while she was cleaning out cupboards. You see, she takes housecleaning very seriously. Always has. She takes it a little too seriously, I have often thought.” She stopped, realizing she was babbling again. “So it’s been found. The coffee can.”
She turned to leave again, but then he said, “Since when do Plain people turn on each other?”
She spun around. “Well, you see, that was another thing I hadn’t thought through.”
He nodded, as if he agreed, and stroked the horse’s long back with two soft brushes. One hand over the other, brushing, brushing, brushing, until that pitch-black horse shined like shoe polish.
She decided she’d had enough questions. It was time to ask Chris Yoder a few questions. “You have to admit it’s a little unusual to have a young man arrive in this little town out of the blue.”
“Something wrong with this town?”
“No, but it’s pretty small. Everybody knows everybody’s business. Except for your business. And you have a knack for staying out of sight. You haven’t shown up at church or any singings. Fern says you won’t have lunch with her or Dad. You don’t go to church.” She tilted her head. “You look Amish, you speak Penn Dutch, but you don’t have an accent. It’s like you learned it as a second language.”
Chris took his time responding. He didn’t look away. His gaze was as calm as morning, direct. He stopped brushing the horse and spoke carefully. “Is that what you think I’m doing here? Masquerading as an Amish man?”
Just like that, their fragile truce evaporated. She wasn’t born yesterday. He was answering a question with a question. He was just like Sheriff Hoffman—information only traveled down a one-way street. Same thing. Well, she had done what she came to do. Again, she whirled around to leave.
“I’ve got something of yours. You dropped it on the road the other day. The day when you treated me like I had a contagious disease.”
She spun around. He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and handed it to her. She knew what it was the moment she saw it: the passport application. She glanced at him, wondering if he had looked at it. Of course he had. He was trying not to smile.
“Any particular reason why you might need to get out of the country quickly?”
She tucked the paper into her apron pocket, trying to look dignified. “One never knows what the future holds.”
His face eased a little. “Especially when a person accuses innocent people of murder and burglary. I can definitely see how such a habit might require one to flee the country.”
“I wouldn’t call it a habit.” She frowned.
“A misunderstanding. And since we’ve cleared this little misunderstanding up—”
This time he did smile, but his smile did not warm the blue of his eyes. “Little misunderstanding? You accuse me of murdering a man? Of stealing from the home of the man who has given me work? You call that a little misunderstanding?”
Here, M.K. nearly faltered. She straightened her shoulders. “I felt it was my duty to protect the citizens of Stoney Ridge.” But she knew. She knew. She had made a terrible blunder. Her imagination had always been her biggest problem.
“From a trigger-happy sheep? And a coffee can hidden in the refrigerator?”
A familiar voice behind M.K. gave her a start. “She’s the one who turned you in to the sheriff? She’s the one who’s been meddling in our business?” M.K. turned slowly to face the voice.
Jenny Yoder was staring at her with her sharp, birdlike look.
“How do you two know each other?” Chris asked.
“Because she’s the substitute teacher I’ve been telling you about,” Jenny said in a flat, cold voice. She looked at M.K. with unconcealed suspicion.
Chris looked at M.K., then at Jenny, then back at M.K. “This is the teacher you described as dumb as a box of rocks?” Then he looked back at M.K., shocked.
She was even more shocked! She had been called many things in her nineteen years—impulsive, overzealous, far too curious. But when, in her entire life, had anyone ever thought of her as dumb? Dumb? She was outraged.
M.K. had enough. She marched to her scooter, picked it up, and zoomed down the drive.
The day had started out so nicely, but it was ending as a terrible day for M.K. One of the worst.
But she had discovered something tonight. Chris Yoder carried secrets. And M.K. wanted to find out what they were.
The ante was sky-high. Jimmy Fisher had found just the right horse to race—a two-year-old warm-blooded Thoroughbred, steel-gray, fresh off the racetrack in Kentucky. This deep-chested horse looked like it could run a gazelle to death. He had bought the filly for a song, though he had to weasel an advance from Domino Joe, the promoter of all races, to complete the transaction. This evening’s race would wipe clean his growing debt and give him a little nest egg.
Domino Joe’s day job was horse trading. He purchased two- or three-year-old Thoroughbreds straight from the track in Kentucky. The horses were retired for various reasons and, with some conditioning, became excellent buggy horses for the Amish. But before Domino Joe trained them for the buggy, he ran a little side business—pony racing on the racetrack.
The racetrack wasn’t really a track but a level plowed section of Domino Joe’s property, far from any paved roads that Sheriff Hoffman might be moseying past. It was common knowledge but nothing anyone talked about, and Jimmy had seen just about every male he knew, Amish or otherwise, at one time or another down at Domino Joe’s track. Just quietly observing.
That’s all Jimmy had done too. Just quietly watched. Until a few months ago, when Domino Joe asked Jimmy if he wanted to fill in for a scratched rider. Did he? Oh, yeah. Oh yeah! Jimmy had won that race, and the next one too. Soon, he was racing at least once a week. He won some, he lost some, but then the stakes kept going up and Jimmy couldn’t stop himself. He loved competition of any kind. He owed Domino Joe several hundred dollars. Maybe a thousand, if he stopped to think about it, which he preferred not to.
But that debt led him to this particular race on a late evening in September, where the stakes were high. If he won tonight, his debt would be wiped out. He was just ten minutes away from winning. He could just picture Domino Joe’s surprised face as he handed him the cash.
Jimmy’s heart was beating at what he felt was twice its normal rate, while the last few preparations for the race seemed to take forever. He thought Domino Joe needed to kill time while the rest of the crowd filtered in to place their bets with a quiet word and a firm handshake. Finally, Domino Joe got things under way.
“Everybody back, give ’em room,” Domino Joe directed. “Line your horses up, men!”
Jimmy was racing against three other men on their mounts. As they all led their horses to the starting line, scratched in dirt, Jimmy felt the first taste of terrible doubt. It nearly did him in. These other horses looked as if they could step over him. This felt very different from the other races Domino Joe had arranged for him. Bigger. More serious. Jimmy slipped his feet into the stirrups and settled into the leather basin of the saddle. The reins were wrapped double around his hands.
“One,” Domino Joe chanted.
There was not a sound from the entire crowd.
“Two.”
Each horse’s tensed ears were sharpened to a point now. Jimmy’s were, too.
Boom!
The horses hurtled into action. Jimmy managed a perfectly nice, orderly start, but soon, there was a wall of horses in his way, veering rumps that forced Jimmy’s filly to fall back. Over the hoofbeats and horse snorts he could hear cheering and shouts of advice from the onlookers, but none of it truly registered. He was aware only that the riders of the other horses shouldered him out of the way, taking turns to rocket back and forth to keep Jimmy safely behind. He tried to collect his wits about him and focus on the turn ahead—that was where he hoped to gain his lead. By now they were thundering toward the last curve and Jimmy leaned as low as he could in the saddle, streamlining matters for the horse.
It worked. His horse seemed to sense that winning was imminent. Her ears pinned back as he stretched out and they edged ahead. They were nearing the lead! Her mane flew in the wind as Jimmy bent low over her neck. Hoof and tooth they flew, as one thought ran through Jimmy’s mind: being on the back of a running horse—preferably a winning horse—was the most wonderful place in the world to be. Just one last bend in the track and he had this race won. In the bag.
But the horse didn’t make the bend. Instead, she went straight and sailed over the fence. Jimmy lost his stirrups, then the reins, and tumbled off, landing in a farmer’s hay shock. Shouts and hoots and whoops of laughter filled the air as men and boys ran down to get a better look at Jimmy’s situation. Jimmy’s horse raced on, solo, through the alfafa field.
When M.K. reached Windmill Farm, she was surprised to see Orin Stoltzfus’s horse and buggy at the hitching post by the barn. Why would the head of the school board come visiting at such a late hour? Maybe he had news about Alice Smucker. Maybe her headache was gone and she was ready to come back to teach. That would mean that M.K. would be finished with teaching two days earlier than expected. Ah, bliss!
M.K. dropped the scooter and bolted up the porch stairs, two at a time, to the kitchen. She slowed before she opened the door—Fern continually pointed out that M.K. entered a room like a gust of wind. At the sight of Orin’s face, she broke into a happy smile. “Orin, do you have some good news?”
Orin exchanged a glance with Amos, then Fern. Amos started to study the ceiling with great interest. Fern lowered her eyes and fixed them on her coffee cup.
Something wasn’t right. M.K. felt a shiver begin at the top of her head and travel to her toes.
Orin scratched his neck. “Might as well tell you, M.K. Alice quit on us.”
M.K. gasped. “But . . . isn’t she getting better?”
“Actually, she said now that she’s not teaching, she’s feeling good. Real good. Sadie—your sister—has been trying to help heal her. Sadie told her that she thought it was the teaching that was giving her so many ailments.”
M.K. understood that! Teaching could make anyone sick. On the heels of that thought came a terrible premonition—like a dog might feel right before an earthquake. Her eyes went wide. “You can’t be thinking that I’m going to fill in for Alice for a full term. Friday is supposed to be my last day!”
Orin took a sip of coffee, as calmly as if M.K. were discussing tomorrow’s weather. He avoided her eyes. “To tell the truth, Mary Kate, it’s in the best interest of the pupils to have you remain. They’re used to you. You’re used to them.” He chanced a glance at her. “And Fern tells me you’re getting some mentoring from Erma Yutzy. Fern said that teaching has been a real good challenge for you.”
M.K.’s heart knocked in her chest so fiercely she could scarcely breathe. This was terrible news! She looked to her father for support, but he didn’t return her gaze.
She was doomed. She was only nineteen years old and already her life was over.
Later that night, as M.K. tried to sleep, a single, horrifying phrase kept rolling over and over in her mind: Dumb as a box of rocks. Dumb as a box of rocks. Dumb as a box of rocks.
There was no doubt in M.K.’s eyes. This was officially the worst day of her life.