Return to Grace. Karen Harper
“I didn’t mean her. Something about the graveyard case with Agent Armstrong. Ray-Lynn, why didn’t you answer your phone last night after you drove away? Or come to the door of your house when I knocked on it? Considering how you ran out, I didn’t want to just use my key—which I’d left at my house, anyway.”
“Where did she stay last night?”
“Not with me. I got her settled in at Amanda Stutzman’s B and B.”
“Oh, great! Just great. So she’s living within walking distance of my house! You told me once she worked as a hostess in this restaurant. Don’t you dare ask me to give her a job here, I don’t care if you do own fifty percent of it now! You said she used her salary to help pay for your house and the decor, so I supposed you’re thinking she still owns half of that. When she took off, you never paid her back because she didn’t want your money, right? Bet she thinks that house is still half hers and you’re all hers, because it kind of looked that way last night!”
“Would you calm down? I’ll work it out. I just didn’t want you to be upset.”
“I’m not upset. I’m way beyond that.”
“I want us to talk this out, but I’ve got obligations right now, you know that, and you’ve always understood that. You gotta trust me on this.”
“I do—to help solve the graveyard shootings. The other …” She shrugged and fought to keep from bursting into tears. “I’ve got people waiting, Jack, and you do, too. Duty calls, as they say. Does she—does she intend to stay?”
He shrugged, then nodded. “So she says. Got fed up with a shallow life in Vegas, she said, and—”
“Las Vegas? She’s been in Las Vegas and now wants to come back to Homestead, Ohio, in Amish country? Jack, she may look like a million bucks, but she’s probably just broke or running from something!”
“From mistakes, she says.”
“Did you tell her about us?”
“Of course I did. Told her not to apply for a job here or even to come in, but she said it’s a free country.”
Ray-Lynn slapped the extra menus she still held to her chest down on the pile of cartons. “You can’t handle her, can you? But you want to, don’t you—handle her, real up close and personal? You never got over her, did you?”
“Damn it, Ray-Lynn, just give me some time!”
“Oh, I will. Lots. Now, I’ve got a restaurant to run and a life to live, so excuse me,” she said, and grabbed the menus. She darted past him back into the restaurant proper, put the stack of menus by the cash register and went into the ladies’ room, the two stalls of which were blessedly empty.
With stiff arms, she steadied herself against the washbasin, afraid to look at herself in the mirror. She wanted to throw things, to break the mirror, just shatter it and scream. But she ran cold water and dabbed it under her eyes, then went back out and stood near the front door with a smile pasted on her face. The sign over the front door, the one she’d been so proud of, that her very own Amish artist, Sarah Kauffman, had painted so beautifully, really riled her now: Southern Hospitality and Amish Cooking—Y’all Come Back, Danki.
No way in all of God’s creation could she be glad Lily Freeman had come back.
5
“IS THIS PRETTY MUCH THE PATH THE FIVE OF you took that night?” Linc asked as they walked from the gate up the hill into the heart of the graveyard.
“Yes,” Hannah told him. “I don’t think we walked in single file, though.”
“I believe these are your grandparents buried here,” he said, indicating two of the many identical stones laid out in neat rows.
“Yes. You have cased the place, as they say,” she said, trying to keep her voice steady. Again, it amazed her how much background work this man had done into her life. Did he think she was somehow the key to what had happened? Surely no one had meant to shoot her that night, but she couldn’t accept that someone had been after the others, either. It must have been a random act—except for that slit screen. And was the policeman assigned to guard her hospital room just to keep reporters away? Daad had fended the media off, so was the policeman to protect her from someone else?
Linc interrupted her agonizing. “Forensic specialists have gone extensively over this site and that upland woodlot where the shooter stood. So that night you had your friends put down the blanket, the boom box, the food and wine on Lena Lantz’s grave, right?”
“No! No, I wouldn’t do that. As you said, you shouldn’t construe things. That was just chance that Kevin and Mike stopped at her grave, because they knew nothing about Lena or Seth, either. I obviously hadn’t been here for her burial, so I was upset when I saw we were near her tombstone. I wanted them to move away, but I didn’t want to have to explain why, so I didn’t say anything.”
Studying her as she spoke, he nodded. She gasped as they reached Lena’s grave. Not only was the tombstone a mess but white paint outlined the shape of Kevin’s body on the grass. She noted he had fallen sideways over the lower part of Lena’s grave. Nearby, small yellow circles were sprayed around what looked to be blood spots.
“Tiffany’s blood and yours,” he said. “We had it tested. You’re type AB, if you ever need to know.”
Linc firmly took the elbow of her good arm to steady her. Each time he touched her, even briefly—but especially when he assessed her with that hard stare—she felt heat. No one but Seth had ever affected her that way.
Hannah took a good look at what was left of Lena’s tombstone, which, they’d said, had kept her from sustaining a much worse wound when the bullet ricocheted. The rectangular stone was deeply cracked, one corner shattered. One or more bullets had blasted away the word Lantz and her death date, so it read only Lena and her birth year.
“He— Seth, I mean,” she said, “is going to replace it when you let him, when you clear away the police tape.”
“So he said. That tombstone definitely saved your wrist, pins in it or not, and it may have saved your life. The shooter took Kevin down in one head shot, and I suspect was pretty skilled, so you and Tiffany were just plain lucky.”
“Just plain blessed,” she corrected him, then realized how Amish that sounded. “I’m grateful Mike and Liz weren’t hit at all. The shooter must have been interrupted or— I don’t know. I—I see you have a gun, though your jacket hides it a bit.”
He turned her toward him and looked her full in the face. “Affirmative—yes. You’re very observant, very smart, Hannah. But this small semiautomatic handgun in my hip holster—I try to especially keep it out of sight among your people—is a far cry from what someone shot you with. That was a high-velocity—that’s a high-speed—rifle, probably with a night-vision scope. We’ve retrieved and tested the bullets, lethal for hunting big game and, obviously, for a person. And I promise you I’m going to find out whether it was a random act, an anti-Amish or anti-goth hate crime, or whether it was some sort of hit with a specific target. Okay, now talk me through what happened when all of you settled here.”
She did her best, though she’d done the same when he’d interviewed her in the hospital. Was he looking for discrepancies in what she said? As she told him about Tiffany’s wound and screams, Kevin’s scarlet bloom of blood, he interrupted for the first time.
“So the two of them were sort of dancing around and pretending to dig at Lena Lantz’s grave with Tiffany’s closed parasol when they were shot?”
The dreadful scene she’d been reliving fled. Her head cleared. She simply nodded. Did he think Seth had seen them and been angry? She darted a look down the hill at her former fiancé. He was pacing, not looking up at them, but frustration and anger emanated from the tilt of his head, his hard strides