Deputy Little’s Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. He shot furtive glances over his shoulder. “I can’t.”

  “Leave him be, Lois,” I said. “Deputy Little is right. The sheriff would not like it if he caught him talking to us. You know how Sheriff Marshall feels about the Amish.”

  “I’m not Amish,” Lois said. “Sheriff Marshall shouldn’t have a problem with me.”

  “You’re my friend. You associate with the Amish.”

  Lois rolled her eyes. “Name me one person in Holmes County who doesn’t have Amish associations. The sheriff can’t even make claim to that.”

  As she said this, I spotted the sheriff speaking to a paramedic at the back of an ambulance. The ambulance bay was open, and I could look inside. Part of me expected to see a person on a gurney, either injured or, worse, in a body bag. But the bay was empty except for a lot of medical equipment that I couldn’t name.

  Sheriff Marshall was a large, forbidding man. In his uniform, his ample stomach hung over his belt. Lois was right. It was odd to see him outside of the office. He usually let his deputies do the footwork. If the case went well, he took the glory. If it went poorly, he could blame everything on a deputy or two. He’d been recently reelected a year ago, so he had three more years in office, but from what I heard, he was always campaigning to keep the top spot in the department. I guessed he was here because he could use whatever was going on in the covered bridge or ravine for his next campaign. Not that he needed the help. The last three times he ran, he was uncontested. No one wanted to go up against the larger-than-life sheriff.

  Lois leaned her bare arm on the bottom edge of the window. “Are you really not going to tell us what happened? Do I have to ask the sheriff?”

  “You wouldn’t,” Deputy Little whispered.

  Lois narrowed her eyes. “Wanna bet? I’m always game for a healthy wager.”

  “Lois,” I started to say, feeling bad for the young deputy. Working for such a difficult man like the sheriff had to be challenging. Lois wasn’t making it any easier.

  Before I could finish my thought, Lois said, “Deputy Aiden would have told us what the problem was. Goodness, I miss that man, and he was easy on the eyes too.”

  Deputy Little blushed. “He wouldn’t have told you outright, and besides, Aiden Brody no longer works for the sheriff’s department. He works for the state in the Bureau of Criminal Investigation now.”

  Lois sighed. “It was a real loss to the county when he left the sheriff’s department for BCI, but who could blame him? The sheriff made it a point to make poor Aiden as miserable as possible.” She looked at Deputy Little. “I suppose he’s doing that to you now.”

  Deputy Little didn’t comment.

  “Little!” the sheriff bellowed.

  “I have to go. Please leave,” he whispered.

  “If we leave now, will you tell us what is happening later?” Lois wanted to know.

  “I’m sure you will hear all about it. Knowing the people of Harvest, I guess it won’t be long before the whole village hears the news.” He turned and walked to where the sheriff stood.

  “Well, that’s all very strange,” Lois said as she started the car. She rolled the car by the spot where the sheriff and Deputy Little stood. Sheriff Marshall was glaring at Deputy Little.

  I slid down in my seat, so the sheriff wouldn’t spot me.

  Lois poked me. “Did you drop something? What on earth are you doing?”

  I lifted the lever that lowered the seatback and lay as flat as I could. “I’m hiding. I don’t want the sheriff to penalize Deputy Little for talking to an Amish person. We need the deputy to stay in the department if we want the Amish in this county to be treated fairly at all. Deputy Aiden’s departure was a big loss for our community too, not just for the Englisch.”

  Lois shook her head. “You look like an international spy . . . well, the schoolmarm version. Maybe I should change your code name from Amish Marple to Double O Bonnet. I actually like the ring of that.”

  “Don’t,” I said from my semi-prostrate position. “I was just getting used to Amish Marple.”

  “You’re no fun at all.” She chuckled. “Maybe I will just give myself an international spy name. It goes with my hair, don’t you think?”

  As Lois drove away from the covered bridge, I peeked out the passenger-side window. A lone Amish man with a long white beard stepped behind the ambulance, illuminated by the vehicle’s flashing lights. It could have been my imagination, but I was almost certain it was Uriah Schrock.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  Lois pulled into my driveway a few minutes later, and my two Boer goats, Phillip and Peter, raced down the driveway. They were out after dark and having the time of their lives. Typically, I penned them in the barn just before dusk.

  “If it’s all the same to you, Millie, I’m going to skip the goat hugs tonight. I need to get back to the café to help Darcy.”

  I nodded and got out of the car, lost in thought.

  Usually, I would have mentioned to Lois that I thought I’d seen Uriah, but something stopped me. I wondered if I had just imagined seeing him there. Was it another man with a white beard? In the dim light, I might have been mistaken, but deep down, I knew I wasn’t. Phillip leaped into the air next to the car as I shut the door behind me.

  “Don’t you dare nick the paint with your hooves!” Lois cried through the open window.

  The goats danced away from her car but kept up their playful antics. Phillip and Peter wanted to play, and that was a sure way to run Lois off. She loved my goats, but being chased by them wasn’t her idea of a good time.

  When I got the goats into the barn and settled myself in the house, I worked on my quilting as planned. As I sewed, I was preoccupied with my conversation with Margot and the scene with the police on the side of the road. I wished that I had told Lois I’d seen Uriah before she’d left.

  There was no way to tell her until the next day. The middle of the night was not the time to walk the half-mile to the shed phone I shared with the Raber family, my closest neighbors. The phone was on their farm, and they were kind enough to let me use it whenever I had a need, but I didn’t believe that extended to after dark. Plus, I would risk turning an ankle or, worse, waking up the goats.

  When the quilting was a flop, I went to bed, but I tossed and turned on the mattress. I was so restless, my cat, Peaches, aptly named because he was the color of a ripe peach, hissed from his post at my feet. He didn’t like being bounced like a ball on a trampoline.

  “I’m sorry,” I said to him in Pennsylvania Dutch.

  He mewed softly as if filing one last complaint before closing his eyes. I had always believed cats were night creatures, but Peaches proved that not to be true. Maybe it was because he was on the same time clock now as Phillip and Peter, my goats. The three of them ran the farm and got into as much mischief as possible.

  Thinking of the goats made me wonder what they were up to. I hoped they were sleeping peacefully in the barn and not eating something they shouldn’t. It was amazing to me what they would eat. Once Phillip took a bite out of the wire fence around my vegetable garden, and I rushed him to the vet. Thankfully, he was fine, but he gave me quite a scare. The two of them were ornery rascals, but I loved them dearly.

  I lay in bed and must have fallen asleep from sheer exhaustion at some point because the light coming in through the window the next morning woke me up. The sun was not completely up yet, but it inched toward the horizon. That told me it was time to get up. I had an idea forming in the back of my mind, and it was best to start to work on it right away.

  Peaches did not share my feelings about the dawn. He rolled over and burrowed under the down quilt. He had no interest in rising early. I walked into the kitchen and boiled hot water on my propane-powered stove. A morning like this called for a strong cup of coffee made in my French press.

  The French press had been a gift from Lois, and I had to admit that I’d grown quite fond of it. It made the perfect cup of coffee. By the time the water boiled and the coffee steeped in the press, the light was breaking through the trees. I let out a breath. Sunrise was my very favorite part of the day. Each morning offered new opportunity and ways to give thanks to Gott for this life.

  I took my steaming plain white mug and went outside to watch the sunrise over the barn. I let out a breath. An old Amish saying came into my mind as I watched the sun come up. “Contentment is not getting what we want but being satisfied with what we have.” That had been true in my life. There were many things I had wanted that I did not receive, and yet, I was content with my life . . . on most days. No human I knew was content on all the days, nor did I believe the Lord expected that any more than He expected human perfection this side of heaven.

  As quiet as I was trying to be, the goats must have heard me, because plaintive bleating came from the barn. From the way they were carrying on, you would have thought I locked them inside the barn all day and all night, never letting them see the outside world at all.

  I left my mug on the edge of the planter by the back door. I had learned long ago, it did not work to have hot coffee around the goats unless you wanted it to be spilled.

  The dew on the grass dampened the toes of my black tennis shoes, but I enjoyed the fresh scent of wet earth.

  I slid open the barn door. “Good morning, you two,” I greeted the goats.

  Both goats lay in their large pen on the fresh bed of straw that I’d thrown down for them the day before. I change their straw at least twice a week. Ruth Yoder claimed they were the most spoiled goats in Holmes County. That might be true, but they also brought me much joy. Changing the straw more often than another Amish farmer might was the least I could do for them, even if they seemed to have a knack for finding trouble.

  Phillip, my black-and-white goat, was typically the instigator, but Peter, who was brown and white, wasn’t without fault. I’d bought them when I first moved back to Holmes County, to help me clear the brush around my house. Nothing is better for clearing brush than a couple of hungry goats, but after the project was completed, I decided to keep them. I learned the goats were fine companions. They amused me. They were also gut guard goats. They made sure I didn’t receive any unexpected guests on the farm.

  I put my hands on my hips and peered at them over my glasses. “Well, aren’t you both a pair of lazybones. You’re not even going to bother to get up and say Guder mariye?”

  Phillip struggled to his feet as if it was a tall order to stand. He was a dramatic goat to be sure. He shuffled over to me and bumped his hard forehead into my hand. It was gentle bump, more of a hello than I want to knock you over. He peeked behind me. I knew he was looking for the cat. Those goats loved Peaches something fierce, and Peaches chose to love them back when he felt like it, which was not quite as often as the goats hoped.

  “Nee, Peaches is not with me. He’s still sleeping inside. Neither of us got much sleep last night.”

  If Ruth Yoder, the bishop’s wife, knew that I spoke to my goats as if they were people, she would tell her husband and insist I have some type of interrogation about my beliefs as an Amish woman. Ruth Yoder liked to stage any number of interventions. I knew the goats didn’t understand what I was saying, but they listened in their own way, and when you live alone as I do, that’s just about all you can ask for.

  “Boys, I was wondering if you are up for a morning walk.”

  Peter hopped to his feet when he heard the word “walk.” Maybe the goats understood more than I thought.

  Phillip jumped in place as if he knew exactly what I’d said too.

  The goats, Peaches, and I each proceeded to eat our breakfasts. The goats had feed, Peaches had cat food, and I had a piece of lemon blueberry pound cake left over from a quilting circle meeting a few days before. All right, that was not true—I had two pieces. At my age, I thought I had a right to indulge now and again. Worry always made me hungry, and there was nothing I loved more than blueberries. I could eat blueberries or anything with blueberries in it for breakfast, lunch, and dinner. I not only could do it but thought it sounded like a delightful plan.

  With full bellies, the goats and I hit the road. Peaches stayed behind and watched from the porch while I walked my bicycle to the front of the house. The bike had been a gift from my niece. She’d found it at a local salvage yard and took it to a local Amish bike shop to have it refurbished. She’d had it painted bright red of all colors. It wasn’t very Amish to have a bright red bicycle, but Edith insisted that I was a bright red person.

  I was tickled by the gift but a little wary too. At first, I must admit, I was a little afraid to ride it. It had been such a long time since I had ridden a bike any distance, but the old saying is true: You never forget. I tucked my skirts around my ankles so that they wouldn’t get tangled up in the spokes. This would be a gut time to wear trousers like the menfolk, and Lois was quick to point out how impractical skirts are in situations like these. But after sixty-some years wearing skirts, I don’t think I could bring myself to wear anything else.

  “Let’s go!” I called to the goats.

  They ran after me. Usually when we went on these walks, I turned right on the road, toward Edith’s greenhouse, but this time I went in the opposite direction. Phillip and Peter were confused by my change of direction for a moment, but then trotted along behind me as if we went this way all the time.

  “Goats, want to go on an adventure?” They galloped along. I smiled. Walking the goats was something I had started earlier in the summer, and I had come to realize that we all liked it. Phillip and Peter were an active pair, and they needed things to do or they found trouble. The bike rides were gut exercise for all of us.

  My first ride with the goats had been unplanned. I rode the bicycle around the farm, getting used to the feel of it again. I also wanted to practice the old skill without an audience. It turned out I did have an audience of sorts. It was my cat and the goats. Almost immediately, when I began riding up and down the driveway, Phillip and Peter fell in line behind me. Then, to test them, I turned onto the street. They followed me there too. I rode all the way to the greenhouse that day, and the goats were always a few steps behind me. The next morning, I saw them standing by the bicycle with eager faces. It seemed that a new family outing had been born. Not that Ruth Yoder would approve of my thinking of the goats as family. Then again, Ruth did not approve of many of my ideas.

  Amazingly, this morning the goats stayed with me even though I’d changed their normal route. Lois would say it was because I was the one who fed them, so they associated me with food. Being ravenous eaters, they would follow me wherever I went. Just in case she was right, I always carried some vegetables from the garden in my bicycle basket in case I might have to lure the goats back home. As of yet, I hadn’t had to use them.

  I slowed my bicycle when the weathered covered bridge came into view. I had thought that I would be able to ride up to the bridge, peek over the side of the ravine, and maybe see whatever Deputy Little and everyone else had been investigating the night before. That wasn’t to be, because I wasn’t the only person near the bridge. The deputy’s car was there. There was also a silver van with a watermelon-sized dent in the right side and a cracked rear window.

  Deputy Little stood on the side of the road with his back to me. Across from him, a young Englisch man bounced back and forth on the balls of his feet, waving his hands around while he spoke.

  The young man brushed his artificial-looking black hair away from his forehead, but it flopped right back in his face to cover his eyes. Despite the hot and humid summer morning, he wore black jeans and a black T-shirt. Not the most practical outfit for standing in the hot August sun.

  I parked my bicycle beside the deputy’s car and climbed off. “You two stay here,” I whispered to the goats. “I don’t want Deputy Little to see you. I don’t think he would look kindly on my bringing goats here.”

  Phillip whimpered.

  “Shh. Now, stay here with the bike. I’m just going to see what’s happening, and then we are going straight home. Do you understand?”

  Phillip and Peter shared a look. I didn’t have high hopes that they would stay put as I’d asked.

  I peeked around the side of the deputy’s car. Then, seeing that neither man noticed me, I hurried over to the other side of the van, so I could hear them better.

  “I told you, man,” said the Englischer in black. “We’re making a documentary about the unsolved murder of Samuel Zook. I think it really has potential. True crime is hot right now!”

  I sucked in a gasp and clasped a hand over my mouth for fear they might hear me breathing. I had not heard the name Samuel Zook in a very long time. He was an Amish man who had been found dead in his buggy forty years ago on a cold January morning in this very spot. From what I remembered, he had been stabbed in the neck with a knitting needle. He was also Uriah Schrock’s brother-in-law. Was that why Uriah had been here last night? Was he participating in this documentary?

  “With all the interest in Amish culture lately,” the young man went on, “we thought it would be timely. We were even thinking of entering it in a film festival. We have the skills to do it. We all graduated at the top of our classes in film school. I mean, Sundance can’t be that hard to get into, can it?”

  “Tell me again about the skull,” Deputy Little said.

  Skull? Had I heard him right? Did he say skull?

  I heard the click-click of hooves on the gravel road behind me. I spun around and waved at the goats to hide behind Deputy Little’s SUV. They stood there and grinned at me as if we were all playing a fun game. This would not end well, I thought. The goats would certainly give my presence away.

  “How did you find the skull? Tell me again,” Deputy Little said.

  The young man sighed. “Oh, all right. We were trying to get an aerial shot of the ravine, and the drone malfunctioned. The aerial would have been perfect for the opening credits. This is a really creepy, rundown place, and it’s great for atmosphere. Xander was on the controls, ran the drone into the—”