Free Murder, Plain and Simple by Isabella Alan Page A

the loose gravel as Anna turned into a driveway leading to her farm.
“I’m sorry that I didn’t visit more often,” I blurted out. “I mean that I didn’t come and visit Aunt Eleanor more often. I should have.”
    She smiled. “Your
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understood. She loved you like a daughter. She wouldn’t have left you her shop otherwise.”
    Her comment only made me feel worse. “I forgot how pretty it was here in the summer. Everything is green and full of life. It’s so different from Dallas.”
    Anna pulled back on her horse a tad to slow his pace as we made our way up the long drive. “I’ve never been, but I don’t doubt that. I don’t think I would care much to live in a big city.”
    I tried to place Anna, or any of the ladies from the quilting circle, in Dallas. It didn’t work. Just like placing Ryan in Holmes County didn’t work. Some folks needed to stay in their part of the world. Was I different because I could navigate in both, or was I a different person in one place than I was in the other? Neither Anna nor Ryan could mask their true selves. Maybe I was a chameleon.
    Anna parked the buggy beside a two-story farmhouse that belonged to her son, Jo-Jo, who had been my partner in crime as a child.
    Any further discussion was drowned out by the squawking of geese. A flock of thirty domestic geese clustered in a pen beside a large whitewashed barn.
    I peered under the seat at Oliver. He heard them. His nails scratched at the buggy’s floor as he tried to further conceal himself under the bench.
    “Ollie, they aren’t flying.” I looked up at Anna. “They can’t fly, can they?”
    She laughed. “No.”
    Oliver whimpered.
    Anna wrinkled her nose. “The geese are Jonah’s latest experiment. He wants the farm to succeed. That’s not an easy task with all the corporate farms producing mass crops.” She placed a hand to her head. “You would not believe the squawking. I have to sleep with three pillows over my head to find any rest, and I can still hear them. I wish my son had chosen a quieter animal to farm, like rabbits.”
    Oliver agreed.
    The screen door of the farmhouse opened, and a young, handsome Amish man in a straw hat with his shirtsleeves rolled up to the elbows stepped out. “
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, what are you doing here? I thought you were off to the quilt shop this morning.”
    “So did I, son.” She turned to me. “You remember Angie, don’t you? Eleanor’s niece. She inherited the quilt shop.”
    Jo-Jo grinned. “Sure do.”
    A memory of a towheaded boy whom I played with as a child tickled the back of my mind. I’d hated to leave him almost as much as I hated to leave my aunt and her quilters. “Jo-Jo, it’s so good to see you.”
    Jo-Jo’s face turned impossibly red. “I don’t go by that name anymore.”
    Anna smiled. “It’s been nearly twenty years since you two played together as children, hasn’t it?”
    Jonah, Anna’s youngest child, who was a year older than me, grimaced. “That was a long time ago. Much has changed.”
    I started to move my arm to offer a handshake but thought better of it. “It’s nice to see you again. Congratulations about the family and farm. It looks like you have done well for yourself.”
    His mouth tilted up at the corner. “I’ve done all right.”
    Anna jerked a thumb in the direction of the geese. “I wished you could have done all right without the addition of those monsters.”
    The geese seemed to understand Anna’s insult and began squawking with increased gusto.
    The second corner of Jonah’s mouth turned up.
    Anna pushed her glasses up her short nose. “One of them chased Ezra into the house. If I didn’t know better, I would have thought the goose was herding the poor child.”
    He had a full-on grin now and looked so much like the blond boy I remembered. “It’s
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for children to learn how to behave around the animals the hard way. That will make them remember better than anything I say to them will.” He ground the toe of