Mary Aaron glanced at Rachel. “Are you sure?” she asked.
Rachel nodded, and Mary Aaron sat down again. For several moments, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the kindling on the hearth. Mary Aaron rose, used the poker to stir up a flame, and added several larger pieces of wood. Alma commented on the weather. Rachel made the appropriate reply and mentioned the likelihood of a cold winter this year. Alma agreed.
“The woolly bear caterpillars have been darker than usual this fall,” Mary Aaron remarked.
Alma agreed and again there was silence.
Rachel stirred sugar into her tea. The fire crackled soothingly. The logs were apple wood and sweet smelling. “If there’s anything I can do for you . . .” Rachel began.
“Ya,” Alma said. “There is. I know the two of you helped Hannah Verkler. It was a goot thing you did for that girl, a brave thing.”
Rachel and Mary Aaron exchanged glances. Hannah was the Amish girl they’d gone together to New Orleans to find some time ago, the girl who’d been held prisoner by wicked human traffickers. To this day, no one in the Amish community talked about that.
Hannah had returned home and put her life back together. Among the Plain people, any mistake could be corrected, any sin forgiven. Hannah didn’t live in the valley anymore, but Rachel had heard that she and her new husband had a baby, that they were happy. Rachel wondered if Hannah was really happy, if she could ever forget what had happened to her. She hoped Hannah was all right. She deserved a storybook ending, if anyone did.
“I want you to investigate my son-in-law’s death and prove to the Englisher police that Moses didn’t murder Daniel,” Alma stated in Deitsch. “Show them that he could never do such a thing.”
“I’m not a detective,” Rachel protested weakly.
Scoffing, Alma pointed a finger. “You found Hannah. When everyone said she was lost to us, you found her.”
“Ya, I did. We did, Mary Aaron and I.” The conversation continued in Deitsch. But . . .” Rachel wanted to say that they’d been lucky, that getting back a woman who’d been tricked into the underworld of human evil was a stroke of luck. But luck wasn’t a word that the Amish lived by or even used. They lived by faith. “It was God’s will that she came home to us,” Rachel said. “Mary Aaron and I . . .”
“We were only His tools,” Mary Aaron supplied. “It was God’s mercy and Hannah’s own prayers that saved her.”
Alma nodded, folded her arms, and leaned forward, her voice strident. “So, if the goot Lord uses you once, He may do it again. You ask what you can do to help. This is what you can do. My Moses is a goot boy, but he doesn’t always think. Not like us, at least. He would do anything to protect his family.”
“You mean he might tell an untruth?” Rachel asked. “He might confess to a crime he didn’t commit?”
Mary Aaron moved to stand beside Rachel. “Why would he do such a thing?”
Alma raised a finger to silence her. “Hold your tongue, girl. It is Rachel who knows these tricky Englisher police and their laws. You may listen only, you who are putting on hair dye and maybe face paint. If you were my daughter, rumspringa or not, I would give you a piece of my mind. What next? Teeny bikini?”
Mary Aaron frowned and shook her head. “No makeup. I don’t wear makeup. And I’m covered.”
“Then there is hope for you,” Alma acknowledged. “I will not tell your father how you dress. I know you will come to your senses soon and be baptized.” She reached for her mug of tea. “I only say this to you because I fear for your soul.”
Rachel’s thoughts raced as Alma and Mary Aaron exchanged words. Moses had confessed. Who was she to insert herself in this murder case? Evan would be totally against her doing so. She had a business to run, a wedding to get through. She was marrying a Pennsylvania State Trooper. What if something she did got Evan in trouble? It sounded as if Detective Sharpe was already annoyed with her.
“Rachel,” Alma said, turning back to her. “Moses is my son. A mother knows what her child will do. He would not kill.”
Alma’s plea touched her. The woman was truly frightened for her son. She believed him innocent, and Rachel wasn’t so naïve to think that only the guilty were convicted of crimes. Moses Studer had no idea how the outside world worked. “Alma,” she began. “It’s not that I don’t want to help you, only that . . . I don’t know what I can do.”
The older woman’s hands trembled so hard that tea splashed out of the cup. Tears rolled down her weather-aged face. “You must help me,” she urged. “You went out there among them English. If you don’t help my Moses, who will?” She placed the cup on the tray and covered her face with her hands. “Why would Moses want to kill Daniel? It is Daniel who saved us from ruin.”
“Maybe there was an accident,” Mary Aaron suggested. “With a gun. I’m sure Moses didn’t mean to hurt Daniel.”
“Ne.” Alma shook her head. She took her hands away from her face and stared straight at Rachel. “If he did such a thing, he would tell me. He would tell our bishop. Moses wouldn’t want such a terrible thing weighing on his soul. Ne, my Moses is a devout boy, not a killer. You must tell those Englisher police he didn’t do it.”
“Alma,” Rachel answered gently. “The police won’t take my word for it that Moses didn’t do it. He told them he did. I . . . We’d have to have proof.”
The older woman met Rachel’s gaze. “Then find proof he didn’t do it.”
Mary Aaron gripped Rachel’s arm. “Maybe you could . . . we could,
