“Ne,” Rachel protested. “You don’t want my help in this. It’s too beautiful for me to touch it. You know how awful my stitching is.”
The quilt was a Bethlehem, done in dark, rich blues and deep, vibrant reds. Unlike with most modern quilts, the needlewomen were working every stitch by hand. When finished, it would be exquisite. They’d found a buyer for the quilt even before it was finished. And the proceeds would go to assist in the hospital bills for an Amish family with premature twins in a neonatal unit in a Harrisburg hospital.
“I’ll be glad to stop a minute and visit with you, though, if you don’t mind,” Rachel added.
“We’re happy to have you,” Aunt Hannah pronounced. “But I warn you, we’re going to pester you for news about the Studer boy. Such a pity. Is it true he confessed to killing his brother-in-law? I just can’t believe it myself.”
“Me, either,” Rachel’s mother agreed. “Alma and her late husband are good people. They taught their children right from wrong. I don’t believe Moses could spill his brother’s blood.”
“Brother-in-law,” Anna Lapp reminded them. She was small and thin with bright blue eyes and a tiny cupid mouth. “And he and Lemuel and Mary Rose aren’t full brothers and sister. Moses was from Alma’s first marriage. He was a Studer, too. As I mind, he was killed in a lumbering accident. A tree kicked back and did him in. They couldn’t have been married six months when he died, but long enough for poor Alma to be left in the family way. She was young, too, real young.”
“So much sadness to bear.” Dora Eby tied off a thread and snipped it with a pair of tiny, worn scissors that Rachel thought might have come from the old country.
Dora was a square, practical woman who could always be counted on to lend a hand in time of trouble. The mother of eleven children, she’d readily taken in five more nephews, including a toddler with cerebral palsy, after tragedy struck a cousin’s family. So kind and loving had she been to the new nestlings that few in the community could now remember which had been born to the Ebys and which had come on a rainy August night.
“Alma will be assured a place in heaven,” Dora went on. “One husband lost to an accident, another to a long, crippling illness, three babies stillborn, and now, a son-in-law killed, maybe by violence, and one of only two living sons accused of killing him. Pray for her, is all I can say. Pray for Alma, for Mary Rose and her baby, and for Moses.”
“Every word is the truth,” Aunt Hannah agreed. “Daniel is safe with the Lord, and it’s the living who need our help now.”
“So, it was Alma’s second husband who owned the farm?” Rachel asked.
“I should say so,” Dora confirmed. “Alma and her first husband didn’t own anything but one skinny horse and the clothes on their backs.” She took up another square and eyed the pattern before beginning to stitch it onto the backing. “It was a love match, so everybody said. And they were both hard workers. If he’d lived, they would have made a living, that’s for certain.” She passed the needle to Rachel. “Thread that for me, will you? My glasses need changing for some stronger.”
Rachel took the needle and Dora went on. “She married some kin of her dead husband a year after they buried him. The first husband, not the second. He died, what, two years ago?”
“Something like that,” Rachel’s mother supplied.
“So, the farm should go to Lemuel, or maybe split between Mary Rose and Lemuel,” Dora went on. “But if it hadn’t been for Daniel, they all might have starved to death before Lemuel got old enough to leave school and do a man’s work.”
“I don’t know Moses that well,” Rachel admitted, handing the threaded needle back to Dora.
“He’s strange, that one,” Miriam said. “Doesn’t talk much and doesn’t take well to authority, my Paul says. But he’s not the kind you’d expect to do anything like that. Unless, maybe, it was a hunting accident.”
“I suppose a lot of people were hunting that day,” Rachel said innocently. “It being the first day of the season.”
“Moses for certain,” Aunt Hannah said. “And the man he works for. And our Uncle Aaron and our John Hannah. They came home to tell us Daniel was gone.”
Rachel’s mother nodded to her. “Your brother Benjamin took Danny with him hunting that morning, but I don’t expect they were anywhere near the Studer farm.”
Miriam looked up from her sewing. Her stitches were so small and even that Rachel would have thought it had been done on a sewing machine. “Paul went, too. He was gone all day. I don’t know who went with him or where they went. Didn’t get back until after dark.”
Sadie chuckled. “Probably half the men in this valley went hunting that day.”
And I probably need to talk to them all, Rachel thought as she rose to excuse herself. But first she needed to go and see Moses at the county prison, because Alma’s insistence that her son was innocent might be wishful thinking. Maybe there’s no need for me to play detective, no need to ask questions of anyone. Maybe, in spite of what his mother believes, he really did do it.
Chapter 5
“Make this brief,” Evan said. He was at the wheel of his SUV, driving her over the mountain to Bellefonte, where Moses was being held at the Centre County prison. “You’ll get to talk to him in one of the rooms used by lawyers and clients,” he continued in a brisk, officer-of-the-law tone. “Obviously, you’re not an attorney or a cop, so I had to call in some favors to get you inside.”
“I know that, and I appreciate it,” Rachel said, looking at him. She didn’t care that he was being curt with her this morning. His tough exterior didn’t work with her. She
