Return to Grace by Karen Harper
The meat locker door opened with another icy cloud. “Sorry, Ray-Lynn but I mispla— Oh, Mrs. Freeman—I know, call me Lily. I wasn’t expecting you until later,” he said, bringing out Ray-Lynn’s four large, wrapped packages on a tray.
“Later is now,” Lily said, “but please, take care of Ray-Lynn first.”
Harlan bit back a grin, though Ray-Lynn wasn’t sure why. Something she’d missed? The last thing in the world she wanted was to like anything about this chatty, attractive woman, because that meant she could understand why Jack would, too.
Evidently her timing was good, for Hannah saw only one large buggy in the mill parking lot and no cars yet. She did not approach directly but kept to the path down along the stone-sided creek in case someone glanced out the windows of the mill. Its three stories made it and the grain elevator, to which is was attached by a covered walkway and a slanted chute, the tallest buildings in the area.
The Troyers’ historical grist mill had perched on the stony, elevated riverbank since the mid-1800s but had fallen into disuse years ago. She could understand why Levi was proud of it, despite the strictures that the Amish must not be prideful. It had been passed down to him for generations, perhaps even more precious than a barn or a field, a piece of beloved furniture or a quilt.
If he could restore it, maybe with Seth’s help, the mill could become a tourist attraction that would benefit everyone in the area. But had he gone about it wrong? She recalled a sermon Daad gave once, warning against trusting the rich and powerful of the world, for “pride serves as their necklace and violence covers them like a garment.” Was Levi Troyer in the mire with men who buried their enemies in borrowed graves? If so, she could only pray that he did not know a thing about it.
The empty flume chute and twenty-foot wooden mill wheel loomed over her. It was through the two doors next to the wheel that she and her friends used to enter the derelict building and run around inside, playing hide-and-seek amid its grinding stones and storage bins. The mill’s interior was a forest of old machinery and crisscrossing wooden trusses on all three floors. It was full of cobwebs, gray dust and white flour dust, which had made them look like gray ghosts when they’d emerged. Once they’d even gone into the creek to wash off on a warm day, and she’d held on to Seth in the current and they had kissed and floated…
“Oh, no!” she muttered when she saw the door they’d once used was completely boarded up. She should have realized that some barriers had been built to keep out vandals or someone who could be injured.
Was the Lord warning her away? Eavesdropping, spying, was wrong, but then, so was murder. If she could learn anything that linked these Detroit outsiders to the secret burials or shooting, she’d let Linc take over from there, no matter what trouble she got in with him for risking this. But the worse fallout would be from ruining the Troyer family’s reputation. Naomi’s future could be shattered. She could still hear Mamm saying that the Troyers and Eshes were one family now. Yet Hannah felt this was the right thing to do.
She craned her neck to look up. The second door wasn’t boarded shut, but she would have to climb the big cogs of the mill wheel. She hiked her skirts and up she went. Ya, this door, despite the big X of boards nailed here, had a broken lock. Sweating, panting, she pulled the latch on the door and shoved, then had to kick it inward. She boosted herself and belly-crawled through the X. Inside on the second floor, she closed the door behind her. Surely the men would be meeting downstairs. She remembered how well sound carried here, for holes were cut in each floor for the diagonal chutes and grinding poles that operated the three sets of millstones.
She heard voices below in German, so no Englische here yet. She hoped Josh had not come along on the first week of his marriage, but as she tiptoed toward the front of the mill and squinted out through a dusty window, she saw he’d been left outside with the buggy, probably not to guard it but to wait for their guests and guide them in. Ya, exactly! A big black car was pulling up.
She stepped back a bit and caught her heel in a broken floorboard, but righted herself without a sound. No wonder the Troyers needed Seth’s skills to rebuild this place. She could see a sag in this part of the floor where sacks of grain had once been piled.
Four men got out of the car, and Josh led them in. From this height, she could not see their faces, although one of them looked up and she jumped back from the window. He had silver hair and looked heavy and jowly. They were dressed rather formally; all wore tan or black overcoats but only two wore hats. The minute Josh led them inside and Levi greeted them, she could hear clearly. This was going to be much easier than she thought!
“Quite a place,” one of the outsiders said. “But it sure needs a lot of work.”
Hannah wished she could find a location to watch as well as hear them. She tiptoed across the floor and peered through a hole cut around a grain chute but she could only see one outsider and Levi.
“I’ve driven by here more than once and admired the place, so I hope this works out,” the same man went on. “We’ve appreciated your cooperating with our earlier business, Levi.”
Hannah’s heartbeat kicked up. Bingo! as Linc sometimes said. Not only did that man admit he’d been in the area before, but “cooperating” with what earlier “business”? Could that be a code for providing a place to stash bodies?
She heard voices from outside and tiptoed back to peer out the dusty window again. She’d like to wipe it off with her apron, but that would be as bad as waving, because all five Troyer sons now waited outside by the buggy. If things were on the up-and-up, wouldn’t Levi have let them stay inside? They’d been sticking tight to him earlier, so this gave her hope they didn’t know everything their father was up to.
As she tiptoed back to the vantage point, her thoughts raced. From the first, Linc had thought someone had climbed up the back of the graveyard hill to shoot at them, and that was Troyer land. These men or someone who worked for them—surely not Levi himself—could have been there to shoot at her and her friends that night because they wanted to bury another body or they didn’t want the ones they’d already stashed discovered. It flashed through her mind again that she’d have to ask her father if he knew anything that might incriminate his friend Levi on the same night Daad was outside looking for a coyote with his rifle.
“You do realize, Levi,” another of the outsiders said, “that it will take close to a hundred thousand dollars to restore this mill properly, let alone get approval for a state historic site? The fact you’ll use the Amish barn builder and your carpenters rather than outside unions with their higher bids and wages will help, but we’re still talking megabucks here.”
Could those be union leaders in those graves? Hannah knew the worldly builders unions were sometimes angry at the Amish for asking fair prices, bidding lower than they could. What if these Detroit moneymen had eliminated some of them? But wouldn’t they have been missed?
“I realize it will be expensive,” Levi said, “but it will be worth it to the Home Valley community. Jobs for the rebuilding, jobs down the road when it becomes a living museum, more tourists to visit our stores and shops. Besides, I have three local investors interested, too, so that will help with funding. Harlan Kenton, a local meat store owner, is willing to pay for an Amish sandwich shop here on the first floor. And, for a healthy investment she’s willing to make, a former Las Vegas restaurant manager will run that restaurant and a gift shop.”
Hannah gasped. Lily sure got around! That’s what she was planning to do with her future here; she and Harlan had more in common than frozen salmon and Amanda. Maybe Hannah would tell Ray-Lynn about Lily’s plans, since it didn’t involve her love triangle with Sheriff Freeman.
It bothered her that Levi sounded like he was boasting as he went on. “I’ve even got a local American Indian who will pay me to include a display about his tribe which once lived in this area. But besides funding, I got another problem. The bishop and the brethren been fretting over my doing publicity for t
“That publicity should be the least of their worries!” the first speaker insisted. It was the silver-haired man who had looked up toward the window when they got out of their car. “After what’s been going on around here, they’re worried about publicity for this? Burials of executed victims being uncovered, that’s publicity we don’t need!”
Was that a confession? Someone below started sneezing, so she had trouble hearing what they said next other than, “God bless you.” How dare these men so much as mention God and blessings if they were involved in sinful schemes!
They moved out of her sight, and she tiptoed to another vantage point. It took Hannah a moment to realize the men were coming up the stairs to the second floor. They must have asked for or arranged a tour of the mill. She should have thought of that. She couldn’t go out the way she came in, because the stairs were between her and that door. She’d have to go up.
The steps to the top floor looked rickety, but she hurried up them, steadying herself with her hands. Cobwebs—real ones, unlike in the corn maze—laced themselves across her sweating face. A splinter from the handrail. Ach, a dead rat with maggots on the step! And the floor up here under the eaves was much more rotted than below, so she’d have to be extra careful where she stepped. If they came up this far, she was trapped unless she could wedge herself back under the slant of eaves, and who knew what creatures made their nests there?
Levi was telling them about how this mill used to be a mechanical marvel in its day until steam-powered wheels made it obsolete. “Renovation will be a challenge,” he went on. “The Amish timber framer I will hire is young but skilled. He’s overseen the raising of huge barns, even a large lodge in a state park. We’ll replace these hand-hewn timbers, use mortise and tenons to form joints just as when my great-grandfather built it. Look out this window. The mill wheel is called an overshot wheel because the power that turned it and the millstones came from water shot through a wooden flume above it, which we can get to work again.”
“What about pouring a concrete base to hold all this up?” one visitor asked.
“I’d like to buttress the original stone instead, ya, keep it authentic,” Levi said. “It needs to be done right. I know that will take a larger loan, but once the mill is open, I can begin to pay you back. I don’t want to be beholden to you like before. It isn’t our way.”
“A lot of things around here aren’t your way, Levi, but I like it that you can face facts and go along with what needs to be done.”
Why didn’t they just say Levi had agreed to planting bodies in the graveyard, or were they afraid the walls had ears, as indeed they did? Hannah finally found a long crack in the floorboards she could peer through to see them as they moved below her.
As she stepped back, bending down to miss the slanted roof, her bottom bumped against it. No—a person! Her inside cartwheeled. An arm pinned her wrists to her sides, and a hand clamped over her mouth as she was jerked off her feet and dragged back into a corner.
19
HANNAH WAS AFRAID to fight her attacker, or she’d give herself away. Or was it a guard they’d sent ahead? No, Amish arms. Someone working with Levi?
“It’s me,” he whispered. “Don’t cry out.”
Seth! Here doing the same thing she was?
He loosed and steadied her as they strained to hear what was being said below. She had a hundred questions but kept quiet. Besides, Seth looked furious. They glared at each other as they heard Levi say, “All right, if you want to see the top floor, that’s fine, but watch your step, ’cause it’s dangerous up there.”
So much to say but no time to talk. Seth pulled her away and across the floor. Despite the sound of footsteps on the stairs, she heard something skitter across the floor behind them. A rat? An entire den of rats here, human ones?
“We can’t go out a window this high,” Hannah mouthed to him, but he pulled her on.
“The connecting chute to the grain elevator,” he whispered, pointing.
“We can take the walkway.”
“Too long—might be seen. Windows. Chute faster.”
He was right. The walkway had light slits cut in it, but the grain chute would be dark. Maybe Seth had been here recently to assess both for the restoration. She had to trust him.
The stairs creaked as Levi came up, then called down, “All right, one at a time and be careful!”
Hannah saw the entry to the chute was unblocked, but the door to the walkway was closed, maybe locked. Seth must have known that. The slant of the chute hadn’t looked this steep from outside, a black throat waiting to swallow them.
Seth boosted her up, then hoisted himself up beside her. With her good hand, she held to the mouth of the chute. She might reinjure her wrist going down, but they had no choice. What she could see of the inside looked coated with dust and grain chaff.
What would they hit at the bottom and would they be trapped below? If Seth had toured the place, he must know. “Protect your injured arm,” he mouthed to her as if he’d read her thoughts.
The last thing she saw was Seth with one finger over his lips as if to say, Don’t scream! She had screamed and screamed that time years ago, when they went on a roller-coaster ride at the county fair. Seth had laughed and thrown his arms up in the air, but she’d hated every minute of it, out of control, her stomach dropping away, her head whipped around and…
Too late. Too late for so much… Seth pulled her good hand away from the edge, held it tight and they careened together into utter blackness.
Seth tried to hold her tight to him as they slid down, down, but she slipped sideways, then away before he grabbed her again. At least the chute was only about two people wide. He didn’t think they’d slide this fast. Grappling Hannah to his side, he fought to keep them going feetfirst. He’d seen the grain spew out of a spout over waiting boxcars—he felt like that. When Levi had showed him around, he’d said there was still some corn below, but that was more than two weeks ago. He prayed it would cushion their fall—and not bury them.
They didn’t make a sound until they hit the corn. Both of them went in thigh-deep, their upper torsos thrown across the bed of kernels. Breath whoofed out, and they lay panting and stunned in a cloud of chaff that made them sneeze and cough. It was dim here but, even with watering eyes, so much better than the pitch-dark chute.
As Hannah tried to right herself, he saw her cape and skirt were up to her waist, showing her black stockings, panties and white thighs. That sight froze him for a minute, then he moved, thrashing about, trying to get up while Hannah pulled herself out and straightened her clothes. Her bonnet hung by its strings around her neck. He’d lost his hat in their wild ride. He spit out several grains of corn.
Hacking at the chaff, he said the obvious, “We have to get out of here.”
“I hope we weren’t wrong to leave Levi with them.”
“You mean because he’s going to agree to their terms again and get in even deeper?”
“No, what if they harm him—throw him down through the broken flooring and tell his sons it was an accident? They must be killers, and he knows what they’ve done.”
“Hannah,” he said, grabbing her arm to turn her back to face him, “they’re loan sharks. They don’t want him dead, they want him paying them back at a steep rate for years, partnership in the mill and who knows what else he owes them already. His biggest worry is the church will put him under the meidung when they find out, if you ask me.”
“But I heard some things that suggest those men could be the ones who put the bodies in the graves. So they shot at—or, more likely, hired someone to shoot—me and my friends. Couldn’t you hear them from the third floor?”
“Ya, from the beginning, when they came in the mill. Did you come in here thinking they might be the killers, and you’re spying on them and could have been caught? I couldn’t believe it when I saw you creeping up the steps to the third floor!” Their
“You should talk!”
“Levi gave me permission to come into the mill whenever I want, so I had that excuse. I was only trying to find out if they were usurers or on the up-and-up, so I could decide whether to agree to oversee the rebuilding project. But you’re playing judge and jury on more than that!”
“Of course I am. I’m going to tell Linc!” she insisted, shouting so loud they got back the echo Linc…Linc…Linc…
Seth lowered his voice. “Look, we don’t need Attorney Arrowroot here to tell us that anything you tell Agent Armstrong about what you overheard is what they call hearsay, maybe entrapment. You’re way out of line and out of your league again. He will hit the ceiling for more than one reason.”
“And you and I have hit rock bottom,” she insisted as she glared at his grayish-white clothes and brushed madly at her own. She half stumbled, half swam through the pile of corn, then said over her shoulder, “How do we get out of here?”
“Assuming your comment about rock bottom refers to our relationship as well as this mess, my answer is the same. We’re going up.”
He pointed to a metal ladder attached to the far side of the dim storage bin, then slogged toward it himself. This was hard enough going, so he was grateful it was too late in the season for more wagonloads of grain waiting to be dumped into boxcars from here.
“You go up first,” he told her. “In case you fall, I’ll be just behind.”
She glared at him again. He wanted to grab her and kiss her, but there couldn’t be a worse time or tactic.
“At least,” she told him as she began to climb, “this will let us out on the far side of the elevator, and I can walk the tracks back near where I left my buggy.”
“You’re not going anywhere alone. All you do is get into trouble. And, in the long run, Linc Armstrong is not the one to help with that.”
“Really?”