“Xander is one of your colleagues?”

  “Yeah, but probably not for long. That drone cost me a couple grand, and he busted it.” He scowled. “I’m going to have to cut him loose.”

  “The skull?” Deputy Little prodded.

  “Right, so I told Xander he had to go down into the ravine to retrieve my drone. I still hoped I could save it. When he got down there, he screamed his head off. He sounded like an extra in a horror film. I climbed down and found him staring at this skull half buried in the mud. It was creepy, man, like right-out-of-a-movie creepy. We both knew right off it was a human skull, so that’s when we called you guys. Xander and I weren’t going to babysit a skull, so we grabbed the drone and climbed out of the ravine. When we reached the top again, there was this old Amish dude standing on the side of the road like a statue. He scared us all half to death. I swear to God, I thought it was the ghost of Samuel Zook come back to the scene of the crime.”

  “That wasn’t a ghost,” Deputy Little said.

  “Yeah, I know, but I’d just found a human skull and that shakes you up a little. I mean, it was dusk, and this Amish dude just stands there without saying a word like an apparition. It had us spooked. Xander wanted to bolt, but I had a good head on my shoulders and started to film. I think it’s going to make a spooky take.”

  “I’m going to need to see that film, Tyler,” Deputy Little said.

  Tyler frowned.

  “What did the man look like?” Deputy Little asked.

  The goats came closer to me, and I held my finger to my mouth to tell them to keep quiet. Usually when I was eavesdropping, it was with Lois. That could be stressful, but not as stressful as snooping with goats.

  “He had a white beard. I mean, it’s hard to say. He was Amish. It wasn’t like his clothes were unique, you know. They all wear the same thing.”

  Deputy Little folded his arms.

  “You saw him yourself last night. He was that same Amish dude who was hanging around last night. It freaked me out how he was just staring down the ravine with this ghostly, blank look on his face. If you ask me, something is wrong with him. It’s like he needs to be put in a mental hospital or something.” He shook his head. “How can a person stare that long? It’s not natural.”

  “Did he say anything to you before the authorities arrived?”

  “He told us to call the police because there had been a murder. It was creepy. Do you think he was the killer?”

  My stomach dropped.

  Deputy Little made a noncommittal sound.

  Peter stepped out from behind the van, and I leaned over to grab him.

  “Is that a goat?” the young man asked.

  The goats seemed to think that was an opening greeting of sorts because both of them tottered around the van.

  The young man opened and closed his mouth. “There is an old Amish woman and two goats standing by my van. Like, I’m not making this up.”

  Deputy Little rubbed the back of his neck as if he had a sudden pain in it. I wondered if I was the one who’d caused it.

  CHAPTER FIVE

  “Millie Fisher, what on earth are you doing here?”

  Deputy Little asked.

  Then he turned around and found Phillip and Peter on either side of me. He gave a great sigh. Without any better idea of what I should do, I waved. “Guder mariye, Deputy.”

  The young man opened and closed his mouth. “I feel like I’m in another universe. Is it normal for old Amish people to just appear on the side of the road like this? I mean, this is the second time, so I’m starting to think it’s a thing around here.”

  I put my hands on my hips. “Who are you calling old, young man?”

  The goats lowered their heads as if they planned to butt him right into the ravine.

  He swallowed hard. Maybe I was as scary as Uriah had been to him.

  “Millie, what are you doing here?” Deputy Little asked again.

  “I’m taking my goats for a walk. Or a bike ride, really. They walk, and I ride my bicycle. We were just out for a little exercise on this fine summer morning before it grows too hot for it.”

  “I’ve definitely entered the Twilight Zone. Is this something the Amish do? Walk goats?” Tyler asked. “Are we done here? Because I have to finish shooting film so I can go back home to Cincinnati and get this production in the can.”

  Deputy Little looked back at him. “You can’t leave the county until this case becomes clearer. We don’t know the identity of the person you found at the bottom of the ravine, but we need to determine whether foul play was involved.”

  “Foul play? Like murder? Another murder? I know that’s what the old Amish dude said, but do you think he’s right?” Tyler’s voice became increasingly excited. “If it ties in to Samuel Zook’s death, it will be epic for my film. I mean, maybe we will be going to Sundance and Cannes.”

  Deputy Little frowned at him and then turned back to me. “If you are just walking your goats as you say, Millie, you should continue on your way.”

  “I’m going to go too,” Tyler announced. “I have more film to shoot.”

  “I have a few more questions for you,” Deputy Little said to the young man.

  Tyler held up his hands. “Hey, man, you can’t keep me here. I don’t know anything about this situation. That skull was down there for a long time. I’m no bone doctor or anything, but it could have been longer than I’ve been alive. Xander and I have nothing to do with it.”

  “Even so, you have to stay in the area until the sheriff’s department says you can leave.”

  Tyler opened and closed his mouth. “I’m going to end up making a documentary about you. My company and I are determined to document social injustice through film.”

  Deputy Little scowled at him. “It’s not injustice. It’s protocol.”

  Tyler shook his head as if Deputy Little was naïve. “When we decided to come to Amish country to shoot this film, we never for a second suspected how weird it would be. And who is she anyway?” He pointed at me. “Maybe she’s the Amish dude’s wife and knows all about the murder.”

  “Tyler, she’s a neighbor, not his wife,” Deputy Little said.

  Tyler didn’t look convinced. “If you ask me, the skull is related to Samuel Zook’s murder. I mean, part of the story is that his wife went missing the night he was killed, right? Could it be her? I’m not a detective, but I’ve watched a ton of true crime to get ready for this film, and I’d put my money on that.”

  A chill ran down my spine, and Peter must have sensed my nerves because he scooted closer to my side.

  Deputy Little glanced at me. There was a pained expression on his face. Was it because he was aware I had known the missing woman, Galilee Zook, Uriah Schrock’s older sister? Everyone had called her Gali. Everyone but her husband, Samuel.

  “We don’t know who it is yet,” the deputy said in a clipped tone.

  “Could it be Galilee?” I asked. Now I was beginning

  to understand why Uriah would be at the scene, but how could he have known that the filmmakers would find the skull? And was Gali the reason he’d come back to Ohio after so many years away? Why had he never said that to me?

  “Whoa,” Tyler said. “Did you know her? You knew Galilee Zook?”

  “I knew both her and Samuel. They were members of my district.”

  My memory traveled back to the day I’d heard the news. Kip and I had been at home making breakfast on a cold January morning when a neighbor stopped over to say that Samuel’s buggy had been found on the side of the road near the covered bridge. Samuel was dead, and Gali was missing. The entire Amish community had been shocked. Nothing like that had ever happened in our village before. No one knew what to think. There was so much fear in the community that someone was out to kill Amish members.

  I tried to remember what I knew about the night of the murder. Weather conditions had been poor, and Samuel had picked up Gali from her job as a waitress at the Amish Corner Bench, an Amish restaurant on the outskirts of Harvest. It was unusual for Samuel to pick her up. Most nights she rode her bicycle home. But neither one of them made it home that night. Samuel and Gali had no children and no one else living with them on their small farm. No one knew they were missing or in trouble until the buggy was found the next day by an Amish farmer.

  The sheriff’s department had investigated, but it was a halfhearted attempt. The Amish community was even more nervous about communicating with law enforcement back then than they are now. From what I remembered, the sheriff’s department didn’t press the community to tell them what they knew about Samuel and Gali.

  Then, a few weeks after the murder and Gali’s disappearance, there was an article in the Englisch newspaper saying that the police believed Gali was the killer. The Amish community was shocked, but no one protested the article. No one wanted to become involved with the police.

  At the time, my husband, Kip, said someone should look for Gali and that she could not have killed her husband. When he said that, I asked him to go to the bishop and the sheriff. He claimed it wasn’t our place, and we shouldn’t get involved. That was the end of the conversation. I was a young Amish wife who was doing her best to follow her husband’s lead. It was what I’d been taught to do. Sometimes, in the dead of night, I wondered how Kip and I would get along these days, had he lived. After twenty years on my own, I was surer of myself. I don’t think I’d take his decisions as law any longer.

  I swallowed hard as I thought back to that time. We stood on the spot where Samuel had died; a skull had been found at the bottom of the ravine; and Uriah was at the scene last night. I could see how Tyler had made the leap that it was all connected. I found myself making the leap as well.

  “Oh, wow, this is great,” the young Englischer said. “Could I interview you for the documentary? I think it would add a lot to have first-person accounts of that time. Maybe you can put me in contact with other Amish people who were around back then? How old were you at the time?”

  “Tyler,” Deputy Little said. “You’re here so that I can interview you about what your drone found, not so you can interview Millie.”

  “Drone?” I asked. Tyler had said that word before, but I hadn’t known what he was talking about.

  “I’ll show you,” Tyler said and ran over to the van.

  “We have your drone in evidence,” Deputy Little said.

  “Dude, do you really think that’s the only drone I have? You never know when these things will malfunction or run into a tree. It happens a lot if I have Xander piloting the drone. The guy never learned to fly it well. I should have taken the controls.”

  He opened the sliding door of his van and rooted around inside. Deputy Little stiffened and put a hand on his duty belt near his gun.

  The inside of the van was a tangle of cords, plastic food wrappers and containers, crumpled sheets of paper, and precarious towers of cardboard boxes. I didn’t know how Tyler hoped to find anything at all in the mess, but in less than a minute, he came out with a black contraption that looked like a mini airplane with a propeller on top.

  He held it out to me for a better look. “A drone. Isn’t she a beauty? This one is my favorite. She’s great for long distances. Thankfully, this was not the one that fell into the ravine. That one cost me twenty-five hundred, but this one was four times that.” He pointed to the bottom of it. “This is where we attach the camera.” He turned to Deputy Little. “I will be getting my other drone and camera back, won’t I?”

  The deputy nodded. “You should be, in a day or two.”

  “Good. I need to protect my gear. Being an independent filmmaker takes money, most of which I don’t have. I don’t have a big studio backing me.”

  “Did I hear right that you said you found a skull in the ravine?” I asked.

  Deputy Little opened his mouth as if he wanted to say something, but Tyler was faster. “Oh, yeah. Yesterday, we were doing aerial shots of the ravine for our film. My friend Xander crashed the drone into a tree, and it took a nosedive down. We climbed down there and it landed right near a human skull. It looked like an animal had dug it up.”

  I shivered.

  “That’s enough, Tyler,” Deputy Little said. “You’re free to go now. I will find you if I need to ask any more questions, and I’ll let you know when you can come to the station to claim your drone.”

  “All right,” Tyler said and set his drone back into the messy van. “But it can’t take too long. We have to get this project done if we want to submit it to the film festival. I need to edit at home in Cincy. I don’t have the right equipment here.”

  Deputy Little frowned but made no promises. Peter and Phillip stepped around me, closer to the ravine’s edge, as Tyler climbed into his van and drove away.

  After he was gone Deputy Little looked at me. “Millie, what are you really doing here? And don’t tell me that you were walking your goats.”

  “I was walking my goats. I have walked my goats every day this summer.” I paused. “But I was snooping too.”

  “At least you’re honest,” he muttered.

  “Now, tell me about this skull. What does it have to do with Uriah?” I peered down my nose at him, which was a bit hard since he was taller than I was.

  The young deputy frowned. “Who said anything about Uriah?”

  “I heard Tyler talking to you about the murder that happened here. Uriah’s brother-in-law was killed on this very spot and his sister went missing. Also, Uriah didn’t show up to work the Friday night concert last evening, and Margot was fit to be tied.”

  “I’m sure she was,” Deputy Little said. “I think it would be more newsworthy if Margot was calm.”

  “You won’t have that when it comes to her special events on the square.” I paused. “Also, I know that Uriah is somehow involved in this. I saw him on the side of the road when Lois and I were leaving last night.”

  Deputy Little sighed.

  I studied the deputy’s face. “Is he in trouble?” Deputy Little wouldn’t look at me; instead, he rubbed the back of his neck. “Millie, I can’t talk to you about this case.”

  “Why not? It clearly has connections to my Amish district, and I was living here at the time of the murder. I knew Samuel and Gali Zook. Not well. They were a bit older than I was, but I knew who they were, and I certainly know Uriah.”

  He sighed. “This is the first big case we’ve had since Aiden Brody left the department.”

  “Is it a murder investigation?”

  “Not yet,” he admitted. “Right now, we’re considering it a suspicious death. When the coroner tells me how old the bones are, whether they are male or female, and how the person might have died, then we can make a better determination.”

  “You found more than the skull?” I shivered.

  He made a face, and then said finally, “We found most of a skeleton. It was buried. How long ago, we don’t know.”

  I shivered. “If it was buried like that, doesn’t that mean murder?”

  “Depends how long the body was there. Mud and leaves could have covered it over time.”

  “But you said most of it was there. Wouldn’t—” I paused and closed my eyes. Then I opened them and forced myself to go on. “Wouldn’t an animal have scattered the bones if the body was left out in the open? Or wouldn’t someone have stumbled on it before? I know that not many people come down this road anymore, but a hunter or a hiker should have seen something.”

  Deputy Little studied me. “You know way more about murder than the average Amish matchmaker.”

  “Is that a compliment?”

  Instead of answering, he removed his ball cap and smacked it on his knee. “If this is a homicide investigation, I can’t mess it up.”

  “And with my help—well, Lois’s and my help—you won’t. You know that Lois will want to be involved too.”

  “I wouldn’t expect anything else.”

  Phillip ran to the edge of the ravine and peered down. The goat’s movements made me forget the skull and Uriah for the moment.

  “Phillip.” I put my hands on my hips. “You come away from there. You could fall.”

  He looked at me, then back into the ravine. He was a surefooted climber, but he wasn’t a mountain goat. If he got down to the bottom, I didn’t know if he’d be able to get back up to the top.

  I pointed at my feet. “I want you over here right now.”

  Phillip looked at Peter, and Peter backed up. Usually, Phillip could convince Peter to go along with all his harebrained schemes, but that didn’t seem to be the case when it came to galloping into ravines. Peter feared heights. Once, Phillip had climbed on the top of my buggy, and Peter watched from below. It didn’t matter how much Phillip bleated at his brother; Peter never climbed to the top.

  “Do you want me to grab him for you?” Deputy Little asked.

  “Nee, if you try to, he will think it’s a game and run down into the ravine twice as fast. You both might be hurt.”

  I reached into my bicycle basket and came out with a carrot that was as thick as my wrist. The vegetable garden had done very well this year. Peter jumped after the carrot.

  “Nee, Peter. I will give you one in a moment for being a gut goat just as soon as we convince your brother to stay out of trouble.” I shooed him away. “Phillip! Phillip! Come get your carrot.”

  The black-and-white goat stared down into the ravine as if mesmerized by the possibility of adventure.

  I called again, and he finally turned his head in my direction. I held out the carrot to him. “Shame on you, Phillip. You can’t get in the way of police work.”

  He didn’t seem the least bit remorseful, but he did look very interested in the carrot. He moseyed over to me to chomp on his treat.

  Peter stamped his hoof like the prodigal son’s older brother, and I reached into the basket to remove a carrot for him as well. I held it out to him, and he delicately took it from my hand.