“How long has that truck been behind us, Stewart?” Penny asked.

  He glanced at the rearview mirror as Penny leaned forward to get a better look in the side one. The vehicle was far enough behind them that she couldn’t make out the driver. It was a man, though. Looked like he was wearing a hat. Something nagged at her gut.

  “He’s been there for a while,” Stewart said.

  “Take a turn—any turn. Let’s see if he keeps going.”

  Stewart smiled faintly. “I doubt we’re being followed, Pen.”

  “Just do it.”

  Stewart signaled the next turn off the narrow highway, slowed and turned off. There was a sign for a tackle shop and some RV parking. He sped up again, and Penny held her breath, waiting. The truck stopped at the intersection, then slowly turned, hanging back.

  “We’re being followed, Stewart,” she said quietly.

  And then just as quickly, the pickup truck behind them suddenly stepped on the gas and thundered toward them...

  Patricia Johns is a Publishers Weekly bestselling author who writes from Alberta, Canada, where she lives with her husband and son. She writes romances and mysteries set in Amish country that will leave you yearning for a simpler life. You can find her at patriciajohns.com and on social media, where she loves to connect with her readers. Drop by her website and you might find your next read!

  Books by Patricia Johns

  Love Inspired Suspense

  Grave Amish Secrets

  Love Inspired

  Amish Country Matches

  The Amish Matchmaking Dilemma

  Their Amish Secret

  The Amish Marriage Arrangement

  An Amish Mother for His Child

  Her Pretend Amish Beau

  Amish Sleigh Bells

  Redemption’s Amish Legacies

  The Nanny’s Amish Family

  A Precious Christmas Gift

  Wife on His Doorstep

  Snowbound with the Amish Bachelor

  Blended Amish Blessings

  The Amish Matchmaker’s Choice

  Visit the Author Profile page at LoveInspired.com for more titles.

  Grave Amish Secrets

  Patricia Johns

  He brought me to the banqueting house, and his banner over me was love.

  —Song of Solomon 2:4

  To my husband and son—you are my favorite part of every day! I love you.

  Contents

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Epilogue

  Dear Reader

  Excerpt from Cold Case Mountain Murder by Rhonda Starnes

  ONE

  The winch moaned softly as it wound the cable, slowly drawing up a bag of bones from the depths of the hand-dug well. It was a warm, spring day with the scent of new growth and dark earth permeating a welcome breeze. The beautiful weather and chattering birds overhead were in direct contrast to the somber, grisly scene Detective Penny Moore and her partner, Detective Stewart Jones, were overseeing. But in Penny’s experience, investigations into murder seemed to go that way. Life carried on for everyone else—seasons changed, people kept right on living—and it was up to the detective to stop time for the victim and find out who’d killed them.

  But this particular investigation was personal. This wasn’t just any well. Leaves rustled softly, bringing back fond memories of childhood play in this very thicket. Forbidden play, of course, because the well made the area dangerous for children. But being the daring little rebel that she was, Penny had snuck out here to play quite often when she visited her Amish grandmother in the small, picturesque community of Little Dusseldorf.

  In a field beyond the trees, a cow mooed, the sound mingling with that low growl from the working winch that was set up over the now open well, bringing up bag after bag of fresh evidence.

  Penny let out a slow breath, trying to distance herself from the ugliness of it all. This was her grandmother Elizabeth Renno’s land, which made the discovery of skeletal remains in the long-dry well all the more eerie. This land had been in the family for generations. But considering her personal connection to this case, Penny had been very nearly told to stay clear of the crime scene. She was allowed to be part of the investigation only because she knew the Amish lifestyle and language, which would be pertinent, and the facts that her partner, Detective Stewart Jones, was leading the investigation and she was technically just consulting. But that wasn’t about to hold her back.

  “Penny—”

  Stewart squatted next to the latest remains in the cloth hammock that had come up from the well. He was a tall, well-built man who always dressed impeccably.

  A tarp stretched over a section of ground with the evidence lined up on top of it, little markers with numbers on them next to each item that had been dragged from the bottom of that well. The remnants of a black felt hat were an Amish connection to the death, so her guess was that this was a man from her grandmother’s community. There were a few fabric fragments of clothing that hadn’t completely moldered away over the years—they’d test those in the lab. The collected bones were laid out where they belonged in a human skeleton. So far, both legs were accounted for, as well as most of the spine and ribs, and one full arm.

  Penny put a hand on Stewart’s shoulder and leaned over to get a better look. In the cloth hammock, there lay a tangle of vertebrae and humerus hanging off a collarbone. But it was the skull that caught her attention. Stewart used a pen to roll it over and he looked up at her.

  There was a jagged dent in the back of the skull.

  “That looks like a cause of death right there,” Stewart said. He ran his gloved finger over the fractured bone.

  Penny looked closer. “Yeah, we’ll have to wait for the forensic team to call it, but I’m pretty sure that’ll be our cause of death.”

  What could have led to that kind of trauma? There was no obvious blunt instrument in the well, or in the brush around it, that they’d found yet. All the same, this obviously wasn’t a recent death, considering that all that remained were bones. The murder weapon would be long gone, but she looked around, trying to imagine the scene that had played out here. About fifty yards beyond was her grandmother’s grassy backyard and garden. The home was a big, three-story farmhouse that had started as a single small house about four generations earlier and had been added on to since, story by story, wing by wing. Now it was spacious enough to house a very large family, indeed, although it was only Elizabeth Renno who rattled around inside these days.

  Her mind came back to the murder case before her. If the victim died out here instead of the body being transferred after death, the blunt force object could have been a rock, a piece of wood...anything large and heavy. She squatted back down next to the skull, trying to imagine what shaped instrument could have made that fracture.

  “Any idea who this might be?” Stewart asked.

  She shook her head, and then straightened. “No idea. I’ve asked my grandmother, and she has no clue, either. She’s pretty shaken up about there being a body out here, period.”

  She’d questioned her grandmother about it repeatedly, but Mammi was getting older and a little more confused over the years, and keeping her on track had been difficult. She’d been surprised that her grandmother had allowed a film crew on her land to begin with—the Amish didn’t approve of such things—but she’d allowed an art school cinematography group to use her property for a project. All innocent enough, but they’d opened the well to get some terrific shot, and they’d discovered the body.

  Penny’s mind was already ticking forward with the facts they’d collected so far. The body would have been dumped after death. It went down feetfirst. That blow to the back of the head wouldn’t have happened from the fall. She heard Stewart heave out a breath through his nose, and she looked up at him.

  Stewart fiddled at the badge on his belt—a nervous habit he had. “So there were no missing Amish men that your grandmother can remember?”

  “She’s getting more scattered lately,” she replied. “But she was clear about that. She said there weren’t any. Well, besides my grandfather.”

  Stewart angled his head to the side and met her gaze.

  “He abandoned my grandmother with five kids and left to live an Englisher life—” she did the mental math “—about fifty years ago. No, forty-eight years ago. My mother was twelve at the time. She’s sixty this year.”

  “Are you sure he left?” Stewart’s eyebrows rose.

  Her gaze moved back to the skull. Could this body be her missing grandfather? They were both eyeing the same possibility here, but if this was Dawdie—the Amish word for grandpa—then what about all the family stories about abandonment and heartbreak?

  “At this point, I really hope my grandfather did exactly what Mammi said and left the family,” Penny said. “My grandfather’s leaving affected everyone. His kids all left the Amish faith and went English. They struggled to trust anyone after that. Tragically, all of them ended up divorced. Even my dad left me and Mo
m. History kept repeating itself. If he didn’t leave—if he was killed? All that lost faith, all that lost ability to trust—all for nothing.”

  But Stewart knew about her family’s trauma response—stakeouts led to a lot of time to fill, and they’d discussed all of their personal histories. She and Stewart knew each other better than anyone at this point. It’s what made them such good partners.

  “Did anyone locate him?” Stewart asked. “I know you searched.”

  “No. I never did find him.” Her mother had asked her to look. Sarah had wanted to stare her old man in the face and tell him what his selfishness had done to them. “He might have changed his name unofficially. He might have gone off the grid—Amish guys can do that easily enough. They have the skillset.”

  Amish families lived without electricity, or modern convenience. Their children attended their own schools, which ended at the eighth grade. They fed their family with subsistence farming and local hunting. A single man without children or a wife could disappear off the grid very easily, or if he wanted some social contact, he could melt into any Amish community without too much question. And he wouldn’t stand out. Just another Amish man working as a farmhand or starting up some small business out the back of his house.

  “Or, he died.” Stewart caught her gaze and held it.

  Penny’s heart skipped a beat, and she looked over at that dented skull. Was that her grandfather’s body? Maybe he hadn’t abandoned Mammi and the kids after all. Maybe he’d been killed.

  “This looks like the remnants of leather suspenders,” Nick Adams another forensic agent said, sifting through the latest items to come up from the well. “What do you think?”

  Nick was a young man with his head shaved to mask some premature balding. He used long tweezers to hold up a leather strap. Penny walked over and took a closer look.

  “Yeah, that does,” she agreed.

  “Considering the clothing, the hat, and the skeletal cues, I’m thinking an Amish man,” he said. “All four wisdom teeth have emerged, so he’s past the age of eighteen, but he doesn’t have much bone loss around the teeth, so not past his late thirties. My guess is closer to thirty-five. We’ll know better when we get the remains back to the lab.”

  A thirty-five-year-old Amish man... She swallowed against a lump in her throat.

  “Nick, can you do me a favor?” she said.

  “Of course.” Nick looked up and met her gaze easily.

  “Check this body against the dental records of an Amish man named Caleb Renno.”

  “Missing local?” Nick asked.

  “Yes. My grandfather.”

  Nick’s eyes widened and he gave a curt nod. “I’ll let you know as soon we find out one way or another.”

  “Thanks.”

  Because if Dawdie hadn’t walked out on the family and had been murdered instead, she wanted to know it. She wanted her grandmother to know it, too. Maybe it could begin to heal a lifetime of heartbreak, believing her husband simply hadn’t loved her enough to stay.

  * * *

  Detective Stewart Jones watched with arms crossed over his chest as the last of the skeletal remains were dredged up from the depths of the well. Penny squatted down in front of the skull, turning it slowly with a ballpoint pen. Her brow was knit, and her lips were pressed together. Was this her grandfather’s body? They could do a DNA test against one of his children, but that would take a whole lot longer than checking dental records. Regardless, they’d figure out if this was Caleb Renno or someone else.

  For Penny’s sake, he hoped it was someone else. Penny looked tough. She had that slim, toned build that betrayed the time she spent in the gym kickboxing, and a no-nonsense look about her. Her dark hair was pulled back into a sleek bun, and she wore a pair of tan slacks and a tweed sport coat that added to her professional charm. But Stew also knew her. Like, he really knew her. They’d been partners for the last three years, and she was tough as nails when it came to her job, but she had some soft spots, too. Like when it came to her family.

  Penny stood up.

  “Let’s go talk to your grandmother,” he suggested. “I want to hear her story about your grandfather’s disappearance myself.”

  He was taking lead on this investigation, and it might go absolutely nowhere, but the boss had been clear about how this would run. Stewart was in charge, and he’d have to keep a handle on the case, or they’d both be reassigned. And Penny needed this—if she had to walk away from the body in her grandmother’s well, it would drive her crazy. Besides, if this ended up being her grandfather’s remains, she’d need Stewart to keep a clear head. She wasn’t going to see any of this dispassionately, no matter how much she believed she would.

  “Yeah, let’s go do that,” Penny agreed. “From the clothing, the victim looks Amish to me. Mammi might know more than she thinks she does right now. Maybe we can spark her memory.”

  Stew fell in beside her, his boots crunching over dry sticks and undergrowth as they made their way through the brush toward the tree line beyond, where the lush, green lawn took over. Bugs flew up from the leaves, and he brushed a spiderweb off the sleeve of his gray sport jacket. He wore his dress shirt open at the neck, letting in a cool breeze.

  “Now, I need to take the lead when we talk to her,” Stewart said. “I want to get her memory of the day your grandfather disappeared.”

  “You really think it’s him?” she asked.

  “It’s a good chance,” he replied. “And if it is, and we tell her, she’ll be in shock and will probably remember less. I want to hear her version of events now, and if that does turn out to be your grandfather, I want to hear how she tells it then.”

  “You’re acting like she’s a suspect,” Penny said. “This is my grandmother. I told you—she was really upset to think there was a body out there. This is my grandmother’s land, and that is all.”

  And Penny would read her grandmother’s reactions through a lens of love. That was normal—healthy, even. But her reading of the situation would be far from unbiased.

  “Pen, if we don’t do this properly, any evidence we do uncover could be jeopardized in court. Do you need me to do this alone?”

  She cast him an irritated look. “I know the job, Stewart.”

  “Good. So then, let’s treat this like any other case,” he said. “I want an unvarnished telling of your grandfather’s disappearance.”

  “I doubt it’s him,” she countered.

  “Maybe it’ll jog loose some more memories from that time period, because right now, he’s the only missing person who would match the description. Maybe she’ll recall someone else—a visitor from another community, a local farmer who everyone thought left...something.”

  Penny nodded. “She’s losing her faculties, though. You’ll have to go gently with her. She was incredibly upset when I talked to her earlier, and sometimes she forgets the year we’re in, or what we were talking about.”

  “Of course.”

  Stewart had never met Penny’s Amish grandmother, but he’d heard plenty of stories about her amazing cooking and her stubborn refusal to leave her Old Order Amish home that didn’t even have running water or indoor toilets. And today, he’d get to meet the matriarch of Penny’s family. He truly wished it were under different circumstances.

  They emerged out of the trees and into the warm June sunlight. He scanned the neat yard. Several law enforcement vehicles were parked along the drive, theirs at the end of the line.

  “What’s that on our windshield?” Penny veered off and headed up the gravel lane toward their cruiser. A piece of paper was stuck under their windshield wiper, and by the time Stewart caught up to her, she was already reading it.

  She passed it over to him wordlessly. The words were handwritten in cursive: Let sleeping men lie. It was a long time ago. Don’t make me hurt you.

  “Not so long ago, it seems.” Stewart scanned the area—the only people he could see were all law enforcement, but obviously someone had crept up with their message. He felt a shiver slide down his spine.

  “Threatening cops, are they?” Penny shook her head.