“No idea.” Mary Aaron shook her head.
“So, we just give up and leave?”
“What else can we do?” Her cousin grimaced. “I’m not dressed for mountain climbing, and no way am I letting you try to force your way in there. If the man says it’s not safe, you take his word on it.”
Rachel started the engine and turned the Jeep around. “He didn’t say who or what I’d be in danger from.”
“Maybe it’s for the best that he wouldn’t let you in,” Mary Aaron said, glancing over her shoulder at the forbidding gate. “Chuck Baker is one of your suspects.”
“Persons of interest,” Rachel corrected.
“Whatever.” Mary Aaron turned toward Rachel. “If there’s the slightest possibility that he’s a killer, does it make sense that you—that we go up there? I know you want to prove that Moses is innocent of Daniel’s murder, but it can’t be at the risk of your own life.”
“Chuck wouldn’t hurt me. He might have killed Daniel, but I know I’m safe with him.”
“You know that?” Mary Aaron frowned. “How do you know?”
“It’s just a feeling. He likes me.”
Mary Aaron threw up her hands. “Okay, so maybe he won’t kill you. Instead, he’ll tie you up and hide you in a cave. Rachel, if the man isn’t right in the head, you don’t know what he’ll do.”
“Chuck has his problems and he might be capable of doing physical violence to someone, but not to me. Somewhere under that scary shell is a gentle soul who is desperately trying to find peace.”
“So maybe you should pray for him.”
Rachel sighed. “I have.”
“I will, too. In the meantime, what are you going to do with the pie?” She pointed to the backseat.
Rachel smiled. “I’ll leave it for Mary Rose and her family. After what I went through to sneak it out of Ada’s pantry, I’m not going to try and put it back.”
“She’ll never know. She made at least a dozen pies for the B&B. Chocolate, peach, apple, pumpkin, and sweet potato. What’s she going to do? Count them? Ada’s gone for the day with her family. She won’t know whether your guests ate it or you did.”
“She’ll know,” Rachel insisted glumly. “Ada knows everything.”
“Why not give it to Evan’s mother?”
“She wouldn’t eat it. She once asked me if Ada’s home kitchen is inspected by the state. She has the idea that the Amish are living back in the nineteenth century and don’t have her standards. Evan’s mom likes her pies wrapped in shrink-wrap and baked at a factory. She’s always telling stories about an Amish girl they hired to help in the kitchen who brought them homemade butter that tasted sour and eggs that hadn’t been properly washed.”
“Ew. Mam wouldn’t stand for us bringing in eggs from the chicken house without washing them before we put them in the egg cartons.”
“My mother, either,” Rachel agreed. “It’s going to be interesting, having her for a mother-in-law.”
Mary Aaron laughed. “Just take her out to Aunt Esther’s kitchen. You could eat off her floors. She’ll soon set her straight.”
“Maybe I will,” Rachel said. “But in any case, she’s not getting this sweet potato pie and neither is Chuck Baker.”
A short time later Mary Aaron instructed Rachel to let her out at the end of her father’s lane. “No sense in taking the chance that Dat will see you in those jeans. Especially on Thanksgiving Day. He wouldn’t be pleased.”
“No, he wouldn’t,” Rachel agreed.
They’d stopped at the Studer place to leave the pie, and Alma had kept them talking longer than she’d wanted. Alma had been upset, her eyes red and swollen from weeping. The older woman looked as if she hadn’t slept at all. As Rachel and Mary Aaron drove out of the driveway, the midwife was just approaching in her open two-wheel cart. Either Salome was coming to spend the day of prayer and fasting with the family or she was coming to see a patient. Rachel couldn’t help wondering which it was.
As Mary Aaron walked away from the Jeep at her parents’ house, Rachel pulled her phone out of her pocket and checked the time. She grimaced, seeing that it was later than she’d thought. She’d have to hurry if she was going to be ready.
She was a mile from the house when she blew the right front tire. It wasn’t a total disaster because she had a good spare and she knew how to change a tire. But it did delay her enough so that when she pulled into her drive, Evan was there waiting.
Rachel inhaled sharply. “Sorry,” she said as he opened her driver’s side door. “I had a flat.”
He was in his best suit. Sometime since she’d seen him last, he’d gotten a haircut, and his shoes were shined so that she could see her reflection in them. “I told Mom that we’d pick her up in thirty minutes.” His expression was grim.
“I’m sorry,” she said.
“Mrs. Morris joining us?”
“No.” Rachel pressed her lips together. “Evan, I’m sorry. The time just got away from me.”
“Do whatever you have to do and do it as quickly as you can. You know how she hates to be kept waiting.”
And so did he. Rachel swallowed. She felt terrible. If only she hadn’t driven over that nail, she would have been home safe. She’d perfected the art of dressing in a hurry years ago. She’d twist up her hair and add just a hint of lipstick. “I’ll be down in ten minutes,” she promised.
He sighed. “Rachel, you knew this was important to me,” he said. “And to Mom. What was so imperative that you had to leave the house instead of getting ready?”
At this point, she didn’t want to get into a discussion about Moses. “Grab a bottle of water or a cup of coffee,” she told him. “I won’t be long.”
“I’ll wait in the car.”
She kissed him on the cheek. “Let’s not argue,” she said. “It’s my fault. I’m running late, and
