Just Plain Murder

Book 6: An Amish Mystery

by Laura Bradford

Genres: Amish & Mennonite; Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

Claire Weatherly and her beau, police detective Jakob Fisher, learn that when it comes to murder, evil can hide in plain sight in this all-new addition to the national bestselling Amish Mysteries.

Jakob and Claire have been enjoying more time together in lovely Heavenly, PA. With Claire's help, the detective is making slow progress reconnecting with the members of his Amish family who shunned him when he left to pursue a career in law enforcement. Jakob's mentor, Russ Granger, the long-retired police chief who inspired him to become a cop, is back in town. Claire has always wanted to meet the man who changed the course of Jakob's life. But not long after he arrives in Heavenly, Russ is murdered.

Jakob can only imagine that his old friend must have been killed by someone outside of the Amish community. He and Claire soon find that things are not as they seem--and that Russ may have stumbled into something sinister before he was killed. The answers they uncover are closer to home and more shocking than they ever expected.

Release date: November 27, 2018

Publisher: Berkley

Print pages: 304

Sample

***This excerpt is from an advance uncorrected copy proof***

Copyright © 2018 Laura Bradford

 

Chapter One

She was on the porch when he drove up, the sight of his car, followed by his full-face smile as he spotted her, eliciting a dreamy sigh she was pretty sure hadn’t come from her own mouth. A glance at the wicker chair to her right simply confirmed that observation.

“I heard that, you know.” Claire Weatherly smoothed her hand over the simple late-summer dress she’d almost forgotten she owned and abandoned the porch swing. “And while I probably should say something about you being every bit as incorrigible as Grandma ever was, I’m just going to say I feel exactly the same way when I see him. Times a hundred.”

Diane Weatherly stilled her knitting needles. “I wasn’t looking at Detective Fisher, dear.”

Claire darted her own attention back to the parking lot just long enough to confirm Jakob had exited his car but was still just out of earshot. “You weren’t?”

“No. I was looking at you, dear.” Tucking her needles into the multicolored ball of yarn wedged between her knees, the sixty-two-year-old woman tilted her head down just enough to afford an uninhibited view of Claire across the top of her reading glasses. “One day, when you have a child of your own, you’ll understand.”

“That’s mighty cryptic, Aunt Diane.”

“It’s just the best defense I can offer.” Diane’s thinning lips twitched with a grin just before her eyes led Claire’s back to the handsome man now no more than three strides away from the porch steps. “Now, go give him a proper greeting so I can sigh in peace.”

Claire tried to nibble back a laugh but it was no use. Instead, she closed the gap between them, kissed the top of her aunt’s head, and then turned back toward the steps as a still-smiling Jakob reached the top. “You look mighty happy this morning. Is it from seeing me or knowing that she”—Claire hooked her thumb at first Diane and then the waiting picnic basket on the floor beneath the swing—“can’t help but toss in a few extra goodies earmarked especially for you?”

“That depends. What are these extra goodies of which you speak?” Then, pulling her toward him before her answering gasp could gain much momentum, he stemmed the rest with a sweet kiss. “Mmmm . . . You taste good.”

Bracing her hand against his chest, she stepped back just enough to ensure a front-row view of the dimple sighting she knew was near. “That’s because those extra goodies that were supposed to be for you were really, really, really delicious . . .”

“Claire!”

“What?” She peeked back at her aunt. “Don’t tell me he didn’t have that coming.”

“I did have that coming . . .” Jakob stepped around Claire, greeted Diane with a kiss on the cheek, and then claimed a spot on the porch swing. “That said, you were kidding, right?”

She joined him on the floral cushion. “I was if you were.”

“Phew . . .” He rested his right arm along the back of the swing and found the perfect amount of sway with a practiced foot. “So, Diane . . . Guess who called me last night to say he’s back in town for a few days?”

“Who?”

“Russ Granger.”

A quick clap hijacked Claire’s attention back to the wicker chair and the woman whose smile rivaled the late-September sun. “Oh, Jakob, that’s wonderful! I bet Callie and the children are positively thrilled!”

“Callie Davidson?” At her aunt’s nod, Claire moved on, tidbits of information she’d managed to glean during her past eighteen-plus months in Heavenly falling into place a piece at a time. “That’s the redhead that lives over by the playground, isn’t it? The one with the three little towheads that couldn’t be any cuter if they tried?”

Diane nodded. “That’s right. And Russ is her father. He retired down to Florida close to ten years ago after—”

“Serving as chief of the Heavenly Police Department,” Claire finished as she turned her focus back on her swing mate. “Oh, Jakob, no wonder you were smiling like that when you walked up! Your mentor is back in town!”

He nuzzled his chin against the side of her head and then leaned back to look out over the same fields that had served as a backdrop for his Amish childhood. “Trust me, Claire, that smile was all about you. Still, I’m pretty excited to see Russ again, too. It’s been a long time. He wanted me to come out and meet him at Murphy’s on Route 65 when he called, but I was already in bed and I didn’t want to take a chance of missing my alarm when it went off this morning.”

“We could have rescheduled our picnic!” Claire protested. “Especially for something like seeing an old friend.”

“I know that. But I didn’t want to reschedule.”

“Do you two keep in touch on the phone?” Diane asked as she transferred the yarn from her lap to the small table at her elbow.

“We try. And sometimes we go through spurts where we do pretty well with that. But more often than not, I’m busy, he’s busy . . . You know how it is.”

Hiking her calf onto the swing, Claire turned so her back was flush against the armrest and her view was of Jakob and her aunt. “Isn’t Russ retired?”

“On paper, yes. But once a cop, always a cop.”

“Meaning?” she prodded.

“Russ has police work in his blood. Which means he got himself hired on at the station in his new town inside the first month of being down there.”

“But not as a chief,” Diane interjected.

Jakob nodded. “Right. Not as a chief. According to him, he fiddles around at the front desk. Said it kept his finger on the pulse and him out of Amelia’s hair.”

“I take it Amelia is his wife?” At Diane’s slow nod and downtrodden expression, Claire sighed. “And I take it she’s since passed?”

“She did. About five years ago, I believe.” At Diane’s nod, Jakob continued. “He retreated for a while after that. Didn’t return my calls, didn’t acknowledge the notes I sent, et cetera. But eventually he got his feet back under him and he’d send me an occasional text to see how I was doing. When I told him I was considering coming back here if I could get a job, he pulled some strings and, well, here I am.”

“Remind me to thank him.” Claire rested her cheek against his hand, watching him as he appeared to drift away in thought. After a few moments of silence, though, he caught her looking at him and smiled. “So?” she asked. “When and where are you going to get to meet up with him again?”

“Tonight. At Heavenly Brews. Eight o’clock. And I’m kind of hoping you’ll be with me when I do.”

She drew back, surprised. “But you haven’t seen him in what? Two years, at least?”

“Actually, it’s been almost eight.”

“Then you don’t need me tagging along, Jakob,” she protested. “Go. Spend time with him. Talk cop stuff, tell him all the great things you’ve done since you’ve been here in Heavenly—the cases you’ve solved. You can introduce us a different day, before he heads back home.”

“I want him to meet you now, Claire. Besides, there’s nothing Russ and I need to talk about that we can’t talk about with you sitting at the table, too.” Toeing the swing to a stop, he pushed his fingers through his sandy blond hair and laughed. “I’m telling you, Russ is quite a character. He sees everything and forgets nothing. It’s one of the reasons he made a heckuva cop and chief.”

She waited for his hand to return to his lap and then captured it inside her own. “So what you’re telling me is he’ll probably have some cute stories to share about you from your Rumspringa days?”

“Oh, no doubt. Stories I’ve long forgotten but he hasn’t, I’m quite sure. Some that go back even before my Rumspringa, too.”

“Before? But how? You weren’t able to hang around the station until you were on Rumspringa, right?”

“True. But that doesn’t mean I wasn’t intrigued by men in uniform before that . . . And Russ being Russ noticed, of course. He made sure to wave whenever he caught me peeking out at him from the back of Dat’s buggy on the way through town.” Jakob turned his hand inside hers so they could intertwine their fingers and then nudged his chin toward the Amish countryside in the distance. “Some of my fascination was simply because they looked different. I saw English from the back of Dat’s buggy often, but police officers? Not so much. But it wasn’t just about the uniforms and the shiny things hanging off them. It was the way they held themselves, the way they’d get down to eye level with English children we’d pass in town, and the way the English children looked back at them—like they were something special, something to be respected.

I remember this time, when I was no more than six, maybe seven, and we were coming back from a horse auction or something. Dat was driving, of course, and I was sitting in the back of the buggy with Martha. We were heading down Lighted Way, which was nothing like it is today in terms of the number of stores. Anyway, this guy comes running out of a shop. And by running, I mean running. Anyway, a few seconds later, the shopkeeper comes out and starts yelling that this guy stole something from his store. Russ, who must have been sitting by an open window in the station house or something, comes running out, takes no more than a split second to get his bearings, and takes off after this guy. Before Dat’s horse had all four feet on the gravelly part of the road just past what is now Yoder’s Furniture, Russ had this guy on the ground with his hands behind his back.” Jakob slid his gaze back to Claire’s. “I . . . I don’t think I can ever explain just how taken I was with that—how in awe I was of Russ and the entire police profession even though I wasn’t supposed to be in awe of anyone other than God.”

Extricating her fingers from his, she scooted across the swing until they were practically nose to nose. “You actually don’t have to explain a thing, Jakob. It’s written all over your face.”

He laughed and pulled her close. “I can’t wait for you to meet him,” he said against her temple. “You’re going to love him.”

 

 

Chapter Two

“I don’t think I could have imagined a better day than this, could you?” Claire leaned back against Jakob’s chest and watched as the rock he’d been saving for last skipped across Miller’s Pond four times before sinking below the surface. “Summer is still here, but fall is most definitely knocking at the door.”

“Fall has always been one of my very favorite times of the year.” Jakob wrapped his rock-skipping arm around Claire and pressed his cheek against hers, his words serving as a tour of a life she could never seem to learn enough about. “Sure, I loved coming here in the summer with Martha. Splashing around, skipping rocks, trying to swim to the other side . . . It was all good stuff. So, too, was winter and waiting for that moment when the ice was strong enough we could play hockey with whatever stick we could find.”

“What did you use as a puck?” she asked as her mind’s eye tried to place the man she knew with the boy he was describing.

“Most of the time we used a flat rock, like the kind I was just skipping. A few times, we used one of my shoes. And once, we used a baseball hat we found on the side of the road.”

“Your mother didn’t mind you taking off out of the house with an extra shoe?”

“When we used a shoe, it was always one of the ones I was wearing.”

She cocked her head up so she could see his face. “But if the ice was hard enough to stand on, wasn’t it too cold to be taking your shoes off?”

“Amish boys at that age aren’t much different than English boys. You see an opportunity to play, you play. No matter what.”

Bringing her focus back to the water in front of them, she took in the sunlight dancing across the top, the squirrels chasing each other on the opposite shoreline, and the way the leaves on the nearby maple tree were beginning to hint at the autumn finery to come. Everywhere she looked, nature was at its best, but at that moment, thoughts of a young Amish Jakob, darting around the ice in one shoe, was all she could really see.

“So who did you play hockey with? Martha?”

His laugh rumbled against the back of her head. “Oh no . . . Martha would hang with the best of us when it came time for summer activities. But when winter came, she stuck close to home, preferring to read or work on a quilt during any free time we happened to have.”

“Isaac?”

“No, not Isaac, either. By the time he was old enough to get out on the ice without worrying he’d do something silly, I was needed around the farm more.”

“Ben?”

His chin nodded atop her head. “Man, we had such fun when we were kids.”

She knew he was still talking, even managed to register the part about Ben donating his shoe on occasion, too, but mostly she was just thinking about the Amish man she called friend. Benjamin Miller was quiet, kind, hardworking, a phenomenal listener, and a respected member among his brethren. The fact that he’d actually proposed leaving his community to start a life with her the previous year had simply endeared him to her all the more. “Do you think he’ll ever remarry?”

“I don’t know. I hope so. Elizabeth has been gone a long time.” He released his hold on her long enough to push a strand of her auburn hair off his cheek. “I’ve seen him in the fields with the Stutzman boys and he’s good with them. He shows them how to do things instead of just telling them, you know? Makes me think he’d make a good dad one day.”

“I agree and . . .”

The rest of her sentence fell away as the clip-clop of an approaching horse claimed their collective attention and sent it toward the dirt pathway they’d navigated on foot not much more than two hours earlier. “Sounds like we’re about to get some company.”

“It does, indeed.” Wiggling out from behind her, Jakob rose to his feet and then held out his hand to help her do the same. “C’mon, let’s see who it is.”

Together, they cleared the oak tree that had provided shade during their picnic, as well as back support for Jakob while they talked, and made their way toward the path. As they reached the edge, a familiar gray horse with a black mane and curly black tail stepped into their line of vision, pulling an equally familiar buggy.

Claire squealed. “Ooooh . . . It’s Eli and Esther and the baby!”

Sure enough, Ben’s younger brother, Eli, lifted his hand in a wave as his wife and Claire’s former gift shop employee turned friend, Esther, broke out in a mile-wide smile. In her arms, nestled in a simple blanket, was their two-week-old daughter, Sarah.

Claire waited until Eli stopped the buggy under a grove of trees and then ran around to Esther’s side. “Good afternoon, Esther! How is that precious little girl today?”

The smile Claire couldn’t imagine being any bigger, grew exponentially. “She is good! She slept through her very first church service.”

Esther exchanged a knowing smile with her husband, who, in turn, nodded like the proud new father he was. “It was a good thing, too. Mast had to be nervous enough without the fuss of a baby.”

“Mast?” Jakob ran his hand down Carly’s mane, darting his gaze between the animal and Eli as he did. “Is he a visiting bishop?”

“He is the new minister. As of today. It was between him, Bontrager, and Benjamin.”

Jakob’s answering whistle perked Carly’s ears. “I can imagine Benjamin’s relief when he heard it was not him.”

For the first time since they came around the corner, Claire peeled her attention off the blanketed bundle and looked from Eli to Jakob. “I didn’t know Benjamin wanted to be a minister.”

“No one wants to be minister,” Jakob explained. “In fact, getting that tap on your shoulder, for lack of a better description, isn’t necessarily a welcomed moment for the Amish.”

“I don’t understand. They’re”—she motioned up to her friends on the buggy seat—“you’re such God-fearing people.”

Jakob gave Carly one more pat and then rejoined Claire. “Being minister or bishop is an added responsibility. They must still farm or do whatever it is they do to earn a living, but now they are also responsible for preaching and looking after the members of their district, as well.” Rocking back onto his heels, he continued, his words stirring an occasional nod from Eli and Esther. “If the verse is in their hymnbook, they will do it, of course. It is something they vow to do when they are baptized. But wanting to do it and doing it are generally not one and the same in this case.”

“But if Benjamin was being considered . . .” she prodded.

“His name was given to the bishop.” Eli tucked the reins beside his feet and jumped down from his seat. “Along with Mast and Bontrager.”

“Given by whom?”

“People in the district. When there is a need for a new minister, everyone is asked to nominate someone and they do so, quietly. The top vote-getters become the candidates.”

Eli took over for Jakob. “This morning, each opened their hymnbook to see if the slip of paper with the Bible verse was in theirs.”

“Wait. So this is decided lottery-style?” Claire asked, glancing at Jakob. At his nod she turned back. “Wow. I had no idea.”

Eli walked around the buggy and reached up for the baby. After a quick check of the blanket and a kiss on Sarah’s head, Esther handed the newborn down to her husband as he continued. “It was Elmer Mast. He did not weep the way some do.”

“Weep?” she echoed.

“You have to remember Claire, the Amish do not like to elevate themselves above others,” Jakob said. “Being a minister is about leadership. It makes them uncomfortable. So if this Mast fella took it in stride, that’s unusual but good.”

She heard the name, even slightly registered a face to go with it, but at that moment all she could really focus on was the infant sleeping soundly in Eli’s strong and capable arms. “Oh, Esther . . . Eli . . . I could look at that sweet face all day.”

With little more than a grin, Eli transferred the baby to Claire’s arms and then reached up to assist his wife down to the ground. Claire, in turn, blinked back the same tears she’d been unable to hold at bay during Esther’s unexpected delivery at Sleep Heavenly earlier in the month. “Oh, Jakob, look . . . Isn’t your great-niece absolutely precious?”

When he didn’t respond, she looked up to see him watching her with a mixture of emotions she couldn’t quite identify. “Jakob? Are you okay?”

“Yeah.” He cleared his throat, stepped in beside her, and smiled down at Sarah. “I’m great. Just imagining, is all.” Then, glancing back up at Eli, he got them back on track. “So this Mast fella? He really seemed okay with it?”

Eli nodded.

“Is he the one you told me about a few weeks ago?” Jakob slipped his arm around Claire, alternating his glances between the baby and Eli. “The one who came to look after the wife’s kin and then opted to stay in Heavenly even after that kin passed?”

“Yah.”

“And Bontrager?” Jakob asked. “Which one is he again?”

“John Bontrager . . . He farms the land across from mine. Has seven kids—all sons. Family keeps to themselves outside of Sunday service. Kind of surprised me to know his name came up to the bishop so many times.”

“Especially when he has such trouble with Amos.”

Claire glanced over at Esther. “Who is Amos?”

“John’s oldest. He is on Rumspringa.”

“Seven kids? Maybe it’s best he didn’t get the verse.” Jakob pulled his hand from the baby’s chin, stuck it inside the front pocket of his jeans, and pulled out his vibrating phone. “Oh, hey, it’s the station. I better take this.”

Claire watched him wander off toward the pond and then leaned forward to kiss Esther’s cheek. “Can you three stay for a while? We haven’t had our dessert yet and there’s plenty for you and Eli.”

“Eli?” Esther peeked at the baby and then smiled up at her husband. “Would that be okay?”

Eli motioned up at the sky. “Yah. It is the Lord’s day, a day of rest and visiting.”

Tightening her hold on the sleeping mound in her arms, Claire led the way toward the blanket and the picnic basket still housed in the shade of the largest oak tree. “I got up early and made a pan of brownies from a recipe of my aunt’s. They have a drizzle of white chocolate on the top and the guests at the inn always seem to love—”

“Claire?”

Startled by the tone more than anything else, she looked over her shoulder, the sight of Jakob’s ashen face sending a chill more befitting an early-December day down her spine. “Jakob, what’s wrong? Has something happened?”

“I . . . it’s . . .” He stumbled backward into a tree. “I . . . I have to take you home. Now.”

“Is it Aunt Diane?” she murmured.

She heard Esther’s gasp, even noted the flurry of movement that was Eli as he moved into place beside her, but at that moment all she really knew for sure was the blessed relief that came from the rapid shake of Jakob’s head.

“Thank God! I thought that something . . .” The reality that was Jakob’s widened eyes and wringing hands stole the rest of her sentence and had her passing Sarah to Eli. “Jakob, please, tell me what’s wrong.”

Covering his mouth with his hand, Jakob squeezed his eyes closed for a second, maybe two. “I . . . I just can’t believe it.”

“Believe what?” Slowly, carefully, she captured his hand in hers and pulled it away from his face. “Jakob, please. Talk to me. Maybe I can help if you—”

“It’s Russ.”

“Your mentor?”

His answering nod was short, labored.

She glanced back at Eli and Esther, their confusion crossing into the same worry she felt clear down to her toes. “Jakob, I—”

He opened his mouth to speak only to close it in exchange for a hard, quick swallow. “He . . . he’s dead, Claire.”

 

 

Chapter Three

She was wide-awake and waiting when, at nearly two o’clock in the morning, she heard his footfalls on the exterior staircase that led from his parking spot behind Gussman’s General Store to his second-floor apartment. Dropping her feet onto the living room floor, she made a mad dash toward the door in an effort to keep him from having to fiddle with the lock in the dark.

“I’m here,” she said, swinging the door open.

Jakob jumped. “Claire!”

Something about the look in his eye and the way his hand moved to his hip sent an uneasy shiver through her body. “I’m sorry . . . I . . . I probably shouldn’t have let myself in, but I was worried about you.”

He righted himself with the help of the vestibule wall and then stumbled past her through the doorway. “No. It’s fine. I gave you the key. I just didn’t see Diane’s car.”

“It’s out front. On the street.”

“I didn’t notice.” Pulling her to him, he lingered a kiss against the top of her head. “I’m glad you’re here, Claire. I really am. It’s just really late and I hate that you’ve been waiting up for me this whole time instead of—”

She shushed the rest of his words away with a gentle kiss and then, stepping back, cupped his face in her hands. “Can I get you anything? A glass of water? A soda? Anything?”

“No.” He slid her right hand around to his lips, kissed it, and then used it to lead her over to the couch. “Can we just sit? Together? I think I need that more than anything right now.”

“Of course.” She sank onto the cushion beside him, pulled the quilt off the back of the couch, and draped it across their laps. “How are you holding up?”

“I think I’m numb. I mean, I did everything I needed to do with the scene but I still just feel—”

“The scene?” she echoed, drawing back. “What scene?”

His Adam’s apple jumped with his swallow. “Russ was murdered, Claire.”

“Murdered?” she echoed. “But I thought his daughter found him . . . I assumed he had a heart attack or something . . .”

“No,” he said, only to wave his answer away. “I mean, yes, Callie found him, but it wasn’t a heart attack.”

“But h-how? W-when?” she stammered as her brain worked hard to catch up with her ears.

Cocking his head against the back of the couch, he stared up at the ceiling. “He was stabbed. Time of death appears to be sometime between two and four a.m. last night.”

“Where did she find him?”

“Outside. Not far from the detached garage.”

“At two a.m.?” She tugged the nearest throw pillow to her chest as she mulled his words. “Wait. That was the same night he was out at that bar he wanted you to come to, yes?”

Jakob nodded.

“Do you think someone may have followed him home from there?” she asked.

“I don’t think so. The investigation is still early, of course, but the one thing I know for certain is that he’d been back in the apartment for a while before this happened.”

“I thought he was staying with his daughter while he was in town.”

“He was. Callie’s place has an apartment over the detached garage. She thought her father would get more sleep over there what with the kids being such early risers and all.” He raked a hand through his hair and then released a sigh so long and so loud it echoed around the narrow room. “The only blessing in all of this is that her ex-husband took the kids to the park in the morning, arriving and departing with them via the main house. Kept the grandkids, if not his daughter, from seeing him like that.”

She closed her eyes against her own memory involving a dead body and willed herself to breathe, to step outside her own head space and imagine what it would be like to find a loved one dead like that. Yet just as she did, her thoughts yanked her back to Jakob’s words . . .

“Jakob?” She waited for him to look at her, but when he did, the pain she saw there was so raw, so intense, she had to look away for a moment just to maintain her composure. “How can you be so sure Russ had been back at his place for a while before this happened?”

He blinked hard and then stood, his feet taking him on a path toward the fireplace and the mantel adorned with a half doz