Newlyweds Can Be Knocked Off

Book 6: Amish Matchmaker Mystery

by Amanda Flower

Genres: Amateur Sleuth; Cozy Mystery; Female Sleuths

Synopsis

After two decades as a widow, Millie Fisher, Amish matchmaker, quilter, goat tender, and sleuth is now a 60-something newlywed! But when she adds snowbird to her list amid the chill of an Ohio winter, murder finds a way to follow . . .


After years on her own, Millie has been busy adjusting to married life once again. Meanwhile, her best friend, Lois Henry, is still salty that Millie didn’t have a big wedding where she could get dressed up and be maid of honor. But there’s a way Millie can make it up to her: with a dreary January upon them, it's the perfect time for a girls’ trip to the Amish community in sunny Pinecraft, Florida. Oft-divorced Lois is decidedly not Amish, but she thinks it will be a hoot.

With the blessing of her sweet husband, Uriah, Millie agrees to go. On the tour bus that transports Ohio’s Amish snowbirds to Florida every year, Millie and Lois strike up a friendship with a young woman traveling alone. She reminds Millie of her beloved niece, and Millie takes her under her wing. But even before the end of their first day in Florida, tragedy strikes.

Millie and Lois find their new friend dead on the beach, seemingly drowned. But who would want to hurt the sweet young woman? Is there a murderous snowbird among them? Or was it someone vengeful from her past? Clearly, vacation time is over for Millie and Lois, and it’s time to dive beneath the surface to hook a killer . . .

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 304

Sample

“How much luggage do you have?” I asked my dearest friend Lois Henry as suitcase after suitcase appeared out of the bed of her granddaughter’s pickup truck. I counted three in addition to two duffel bags and her colossal patchwork purse that could double as a knapsack.

Despite the chill in the air, Lois’s granddaughter Darcy Woodin was sweating as she lifted her grandmother’s luggage from the truck bed and set it on the salt-encrusted blacktop.

That February night, it was a balmy thirty degrees. Gray snow piles topped the four corners of the parking lot like mountains of dirty ice. It would be the end of March before they completely melted away.

It was not the pretty time of winter when children made snowmen and sang carols. Patchy, snow-covered rooftops and grassy fields were blanketed all over Holmes County. We had reached the tired part of winter when the trees lifted their graying branches to the heavens begging for a reprieve. Everything was tinged in a dusty coating of salt.

The bus should have been on the road by now, but Lois had been running late. She left packing until last night and had stayed up all night coordinating her outfits for our five-day stay in Florida. Outfit coordination was very important for Lois: From the top of her red/purple spikey hair to the soles of her bedazzled orthopedic shoes, she cared about every inch of her appearance.

It was pitch black out, but we were able to see with the aid of the electric lampposts around the large parking lot that Harvest Market shared with Swissmen Candyworks, the new Amish candy factory in the village run by my friend Bailey King.

It was eleven at night, and I knew Bailey would be asleep in her bed. That’s where I wished I was at that moment.

“I just brought the essentials,” Lois said. “It’s February in Florida. The weather could be anything from rainy to cold, from hot to dry. I have to be prepared for all of it.” Lois adjusted the largest sunhat I had ever seen on the top of her head. It might need its own seat on the bus.

“Millie, I tried to get her down to two suitcases, I promise.” Darcy flipped her curly blond ponytail over her shoulder and fanned herself with a glove. “She wasn’t having any of it. She accused me of stifling her.”

I suppressed a snicker at that comment. No one restricted Lois. Ever.

“I can assure you that I’m not blaming you,” I said. “Lois doesn’t need any help when it comes to overpacking.”

“Hey, I’m right here,” Lois said. “I can hear you. Many things have gone south on my body with advanced age, but I can hear perfectly fine,” Lois said. “Besides, how much luggage do you have?”

I held up my single duffel bag.

Lois grinned. “That’s perfect. We will say that half of this luggage is yours. See, no problem at all.”

I sighed.

My husband Uriah had been across the parking lot speaking to the bus driver for a long while. I could only guess what he had to say to him, but I thought it might be along the lines that Lois and I were prone to get in a little bit of trouble when we were together, so he wanted the driver to keep an eye on us.

Uriah crossed the parking lot to meet us. He was a handsome man even after seventy. His back was straight and his long white beard was freshly combed. His Amish felt hat sat perfectly on the center of his head, but his ears were bright red from the cold. I told him to wear his black stocking cap to protect his ears, but he loved his felt hat and was quite proud of it. It had been my wedding gift to him. Men could be quite stubborn creatures.

He led two large goats behind him. One goat, Phillip, was black and white, and Peter was brown and white. When they saw me, the goats ran ahead of Uriah, and my husband had to jog in order not to be pulled over onto the icy asphalt.

“We’re leaving in three minutes,” the surly bus driver shouted into the air. However, I knew he directed his shouts to Lois and me because we were the only passengers not already on the bus.

Seeing Uriah with the goats caused a wave of worry to wash over me. Was I leaving the goats and my new husband too soon after we married? I’d known Uriah my whole life, but it wasn’t until we both were widowed that we reconnected decades later. It took me a long time to allow myself to fall in love again even though my first husband Kip had been gone over twenty years.

Lois called our excursion a “bachelorette getaway.” Bachelorette wasn’t a term that I used as an Amish woman, and even if I did, I no longer qualified as one since Uriah and I had been married for several months and he was my second husband. None of this mattered to Lois, of course; she insisted this was the name she was going to use.

If Lois, who loves to gamble, had her way, we would be on an airplane to Las Vegas for the week. In the end, my friend had the wisdom to recognize that a Vegas trip was not something I would agree to. Instead, she suggested a getaway to sunny Pinecraft, Florida, a small Amish community within the city limits of Sarasota.

Truth be told, I had always wanted to visit Pinecraft. So many of my friends who were in their twilight years spent their winters in the small Amish community there. I believed that Englischers would be very surprised to learn that the Amish have “snowbirds” who summer in the north and winter in the south just like the Englisch do. We have the capacity to tire of winter just as much as the Englisch do.

Even though I was excited for the chance to see a new place and experience the ocean for the very first time in my seventy years of life, I remained unsure, and it wasn’t until Uriah urged me to go that I agreed.

“Are you ready to set off?” Uriah asked while Phillip and Peter hopped from hoof to hoof. They thought they were on some kind of adventure because they were coming to town so late at night. They would not find it nearly as fun when I left. I had never been away from them for this long. Part of me was afraid they would forget me and forge a closer bond with Uriah while I was away. I wanted them to be close to Uriah, but because of our history together, I wasn’t too proud to admit, I wished to be the favorite of my hoofed friends.

When I had been on my own before the marriage, the goats had been my saving grace. They kept me company on the little farm that I had purchased after my first husband Kip passed away. It was hard for me to imagine getting through the day without seeing them.

Phillip was the wilder one. That wasn’t saying much because his brother Peter got into his fair share of trouble too. Phillip jumped in the air and would have pulled Uriah to the ground if my husband had not been ready for it.

“Phillip, control yourself. You don’t want all these people to think that we can’t tame a goat,” Uriah said.

Phillip stopped jumping up and down, but then he looked over his shoulder at Uriah as if to say, “You don’t control me.” In all honesty, that was true. No one really controlled the goats.

“Millie, can you hold their leads? I’m going to help the bus driver load all this luggage. He’s going to need the help.”

Lois shook her finger at him. “Not you too, Uriah. I brought what I need. A fashion icon like myself needs options.”

I took the leads from Uriah, who laughingly rolled two of Lois’s suitcases to the tour bus that was idling in the middle of the parking lot.

“We really should board the bus,” I said to Lois. “We are the last people to get on.”

However, as I spoke, an old sedan that looked like it had been in a number of fender benders rolled into the parking lot. A young Amish woman got out of the back seat of the car and thanked her driver. She had her bonnet pulled down over her face. She wasn’t dressed for the weather. She wore only a hooded sweatshirt over her plain dress, and a long green and blue scarf was wrapped around her neck all the way to the bottom of her nose. She was slight and could have been a teenager judging from her size, maybe even younger.

She turned, and I got a view of her delicate face. Her eyes were wide set, and there was a sprinkling of freckles across the bridge of her upturned nose. Her mouth was pursed together into the shape of a heart. She looked like one of the porcelain dolls that Lois had been known to buy at the flea market. The dolls with their unseeing eyes always made me a tad uneasy. Amish dolls never had faces, and I was much more comfortable with that.

This young woman’s face was tense with unease as she looked around the parking lot. She had a small backpack on her shoulder. That was the extent of her luggage, which I supposed made more room for Lois’s overpacking.

Phillip pulled on his lead and walked over to the girl. He shoved his nose in her empty hand.

“Oh!” the young woman cried as Phillip nuzzled her hand with his nose.

“I’m so sorry,” I said. “Phillip is always excited to make new friends.”

I wasn’t surprised by Phillip’s behavior. The young woman looked sad. My goats sense others’ emotions, but I would never say that to Bishop Yoder, my district’s longtime bishop, or worse, to his wife, persnickety Ruth Yoder. It wasn’t the Amish way to give animals human characteristics. I saw nothing in the writings of the church that would forbid such a thing.

She patted Phillip on the head. “It’s all right. He just caught me off guard.”

“Phillip is an expert at catching people off guard,” I said as I pulled on his lead.

Reluctantly, the goat stepped back.

“Are goats traveling on the bus?” She sounded concerned at the possibility.

I could understand that. I wouldn’t want to travel on a bus for over twenty-four hours with Phillip and Peter, and they were my goats.

I shook my head. “Nee, you don’t have to worry about that. My husband brought them so they could say good-bye to me. I’m going to Pinecraft with my friend Lois.” I nodded to Lois, who was hugging Darcy good-bye.

Peter baaed at me as if he wanted to make it very clear that my statement was unfair and he too should be going to the Sunshine State.

She shook her head. “I have never seen goats that are so attached to a person.”

I chuckled. “I like to think of them as more like horned dogs than goats.”

She smiled. It was a tiny smile, just the slightest curve to the corner of her mouth, but it was the first that I had seen from her since she arrived.

“When is the bus leaving?” she asked.

I looked at the watch brooch that Uriah had given me for our wedding. It was pinned to the lapel of my cloak. It was plain, round, and made of sterling silver. It was much different than the typical wedding gift that an Englisch woman would have received upon her wedding, which would have had diamonds, gold, and gemstones of every possible color.

I liked my plain little watch because of the gesture it represented from my husband. I was widowed at the age of forty, and I never dreamed I would marry again. The time in between my first husband’s death and my second marriage I realized now was all part of Gotte’s plan for my life. I needed to be available to care for my family when they needed me most, which consisted of nieces and nephews and all of my siblings. I also needed to prove to myself that I was self-reliant. I could take care of myself, others, and even solve a murder or two. The murder solving was with the help of Lois, of course. Someone had to be able to drive the getaway car when we got into a sticky situation.

I read the time on my watch. “The bus was set to leave fifteen minutes ago.”

She paled. “I can’t believe I almost missed it.”

“You can thank Lois’s overpacking for that,” I said.

Across the lot, the bus driver and Uriah struggled to get all of Lois’s suitcases and garment bags into the bus’s luggage bay.

“Do you have a suitcase with you?” I asked.

She shook her head. “I just have this.” She held up her small backpack.

“That’s just perfect,” Lois said, coming over to join us. “We can say one of the suitcases I brought is yours.” She put her hands on her hips. “Can you believe that the driver said that there is a rule of one suitcase per person? Can you even imagine that? I need one suitcase just for my makeup.”

The girl’s eyes went wide, as if she had never seen a person like Lois before. It was a reaction that I came to expect when Lois met new people. It didn’t matter if they were Englisch or Amish either. They all had the same awed look on their faces when they encountered my colorful friend for the first time.

“What’s your name, sweetie, so I can tell the mean old bus driver that my makeup suitcase is yours?” Lois asked.

“The mean old bus driver,” as Lois called him, was half our age.

“Caroline,” she stumbled over her own name. “Caroline Ha—Zook.” She blushed. “I just got married, and I’m not used to my new name yet.”

“It does take some time,” I agreed.

“Great!” Lois said. “Caroline Zook.” She hurried over the salt-gray asphalt back to the bus. “Mr. Bus Driver. Mr. Bus Driver. You must put that suitcase back on the bus. It belongs to passenger Caroline Zook.”

He looked at the luggage tag. “It has your name on it.”

“Yes, that’s because it’s my suitcase, but I’m letting her borrow it for the trip.”

He glared at Lois. “Fine. As long as there is one suitcase per passenger, I don’t care how you configure it.”

“As soon as I saw you, I knew you were a practical man.” Lois smacked him on the shoulder.

He shoved the last suitcase into the bay. “Just get on the bus.” He walked away shaking his head.

Caroline bit her lower lip. “I hope I don’t get in any kind of trouble for having my name attached to a suitcase that doesn’t belong to me. I can’t afford another ticket if I get kicked off this bus.” She looked over her shoulder as if she was afraid that someone was listening to our conversation. “And I can’t go back.”

I raised my brow. “Go back where?” I asked.

She looked away. It was clear to me that she didn’t want to answer that question. I could understand that. She’d just met me. She didn’t even know what order or district I was from. How could she know I was trustworthy? Even so, I couldn’t help but be curious about her story. I was also curious as to why she was traveling alone. That was not common for young Amish women. If they had to go somewhere far away, they were at least accompanied by another woman but more often than not by a male family member like a brother or even a cousin. As far as I could tell, Caroline was completely on her own.

She looked around as if she expected someone to jump out from behind one of the lampposts. “I want to get on the bus. I’m ready to go home.” Under her breath, she added, “This was a terrible idea.”

“What was a terrible idea?” I asked.

She shook her head. “Nothing. I was just talking to myself.”

I didn’t believe her for a second, but I allowed it to drop for now. Instead, I said, “I don’t think that you have to worry about the suitcase. Usually in these cases people agree with Lois just to get her to stop badgering them. I don’t think the bus driver will be much different on that accord. If there is any issue, I will be sure to vouch for you.”

“Danki. I cannot miss this bus.” She said that last part barely above a whisper.

“Everyone get on the bus!” the bus driver said. “We’re leaving with or without you.” It seemed the bus driver’s encounter with Lois had sent him into a bad mood. I would have to slip him some of my homemade apple muffins that I brought on the trip to return us to his good graces, or it was going to be a very long trip indeed.

“I’ll see you on the bus,” Caroline said and hurried toward the rumbling vehicle.

I wasn’t able to do that yet as I was still holding Phillip and Peter’s leads.

I had thought that it was difficult to leave my diva cat Peaches at home that morning, but as it turned out, it was much harder to leave the goats. They had been my constant companions for the last several years. I had spent more time with them than with any person since moving back to Ohio from Michigan, where I had taken care of an ill sister until she passed.

I scratched them both behind their ears. “Now, you be gut for Uriah. I don’t want to hear any tales about how the two of you have been misbehaving.”

Uriah joined me and eyed the goats. “I’ll keep them in line.” Then he laughed because we both knew there really wasn’t any way to do that.

Uriah gave me a hug, and I felt myself melt into his warmth. After decades of being alone, it was so nice to have a person to lean on again. It wasn’t until we married that I had even realized that I missed that. I had learned that I could be happy alone or married. I found that contentment was not in a person but in peace with Gott.

He broke off the embrace that was a bit longer than it would normally have been. In our culture, public displays of affection were frowned upon. Rarely did you see an Amish couple hugging or holding hands in public, and kissing wasn’t even considered. Just the idea of kissing Uriah in front of all these people turned my cheeks red. If anyone asked why I was flushed, I would blame it on the cold.

Uriah smiled down at me. “Do me a favor. Don’t find any dead bodies while you’re down there, okay?”

“I won’t. I promise. Lois and I don’t know anyone in Pinecraft. How would we even be involved in a murder?”

He shook his head. “In my experience, you seem to always find a way.”

What I would learn soon enough was it was a promise that I could not keep.

Lois and I were the last to climb on the bus, and we waved to Uriah, Darcy, and the goats as it pulled away from the parking lot. Just as the bus turned onto the road, an Amish courting buggy came careening into the parking lot. The driver pulled back hard on the reins and came to a stop just a few yards from the bus.

The bus driver swore.

There was a murmur through the passengers asking who the young man was, but he was out of the light of the lampposts and no one could see his face.

After so many delays, our bus driver wasn’t going to stop to find out. He kept going as if he couldn’t leave Harvest fast enough.

Across the aisle from Lois and me, I saw Caroline Zook had sunk low in her seat as if she didn’t want to be seen.

We had just crossed over into West Virginia and wound our way through the Appalachian Mountains. All around us the trees were bare, and what could be seen of the mountains in the dark looked like brown stumps against a gray-black sky. It wasn’t the most picturesque time to be traveling across the country.

Lois was bent at the waist holding a plastic bag between her legs as I rubbed her back. In my mind, I willed her not to be sick. We had a long way to go, and I didn’t want to make this trip any more unpleasant. Not to mention, she was already on the bus driver’s naughty list.

Slowly, she sat up. “I think the nausea has passed, but until we get out of these winding roads, I think I should sleep. Thank heavens I brought my sleeping pills.” She set the plastic bag aside and rooted through her massive purse until she came up with a bottle of pills and a bottle of water. She opened the pill bottle, threw two chalk-white tablets down her throat, then chased them with a big gulp of water. She leaned her head back against the headrest and closed her eyes. “I took a little extra. I should be out cold in no time. Wake me up when we’re on flatter ground or if we stop to use the facilities. At our age, we cannot miss a rest stop opportunity.”

I promised her that I would, and I was very glad that I had given Lois the window seat. Otherwise, I would have been trapped in my spot for hours on end.

I was flipping through a quilting fabric catalog that I had brought with me when I heard the faint rumbling of a snore. I glanced to my right, and Lois was out cold with her forehead propped on the cold glass pane of the window.

As carefully and as quietly as I could, I balled up my cardigan and tucked it in between her head and the glass. She didn’t look that much more comfortable, to be honest, but at least if the bus jerked, she wouldn’t knock her temple against the glass.

I sat back in my seat and sighed. The sleeping pills would give me a few hours of silence to rest my own eyes or to work on my quilting. I loved Lois dearly, but my friend could talk and talk and talk. And talk some more.

While Lois snored in my ear, I removed my quilting from my bag. It wasn’t practical to bring an entire quilt to work on during the trip, but I could not stand the idea of being still for the duration of the long drive. I had compromised in making quilt coasters with candy-patterned fabric. Bailey said that she would sell them on consignment in her candy factory store. If they did well, she said, I could make even more to sell in her family’s candy shop, Swissmen Sweets, as well.

I set the small quilting pieces on my lap. As much as I loved making full-sized quilts, it was enjoyable to make something a bit more portable and less time-consuming. A full-sized quilt would take months and months with the help of my quilting circle, Double Stitch. I could make four coasters in an hour. I brought enough material on the trip to make forty. I thought that would be plenty to test at Swissmen Candyworks and see if they appealed to Bailey’s customers.

I threaded my needle.

A quiet voice . . .