Free Hearse and Buggy by Laura Bradford Page B

crossed to the same porch railing where Jakob had perched just moments earlier. Only instead of sitting, she merely shielded her eyes from the sun’s remaining rays. If she leaned slightly to the left and looked to her right, she could make out the beginning of Lighted Way and the road that linked the English and Amish worlds. They were different no doubt. Different in everything from transportation and clothes to customs and beliefs. But, in the end, they were all people. People with hopes and dreams and memories held dear.
    And if Jakob was missing Martha, she had to believe there was a part of Martha that missed Jakob as well.
    She said as much to the detective.
    “I wish I could know you’re right, Claire. Not because Iwant my sister to hurt but because I’d know I wasn’t alone. But the Amish are steadfast in their beliefs first and foremost. And I broke those.”
    Slowly, she turned around, her mind processing everything Jakob said against what she had learned so far about her friends. Sure, she didn’t know Martha well—the bulk of Claire’s information was based only on stories Esther shared during quiet moments at the shop. But what she did know cast a shred of doubt on the man’s words.
    “I’d like to help if I can,” she whispered.
    “If today was any indication of the walls I’m going to hit with this investigation, I might have to take you up on that.” Jakob rose from the swing and came to stand beside Claire.
    “I wasn’t talking about that.”
    His shoulders dropped ever so slightly. “You weren’t?”
    She rushed to explain. “I mean, sure, I’ll do my best to be a liaison of sorts with the Amish if that’s what you need while you get to the bottom of what happened to Walter Snow. But I was talking about something more than that.”
    He studied her face closely, the warmth of his eyes sending yet another unexpected tingle through her body. “Oh?”
    “I’d like to help you get close to your sister again.”
    She’d have to have been blind not to see the way her words impacted the detective, to see the flash of hope that flickered behind his eyes before disappearing altogether.
    “I appreciate that, Claire, but it will never happen.”
    “Never,” she repeated. “That’s a word I used a time or two when things seemed bleak. But Aunt Diane showed me how that word lies again and again. Now I guess it’s my turn to show you the same thing.”

Chapter 10
    T he moment the tires of Aunt Diane’s car left the tourist-friendly section of Lighted Way, Claire felt the change. The pace slowed, storefronts gave way to wide open fields, and occasional buggy sightings became the norm.
    Slowly, she inched the borrowed car around one curve and then the next, her focus alternating between the road and the farms as she soaked in her surroundings. She’d been so busy acclimating herself to the shop and helping at the inn that the closest she’d gotten to the Amish side of Heavenly had been via her day-to-day contact with people like Esther and Ruth. But now, as she left the slightly whitewashed version of Amish life and headed smack-dab into the middle of their reality, she couldn’t help but feel her excitement brewing.
    Sweeping farmland as far as her eye could see was parceled into fields of varying colors. From Esther, she’d learned that typical crops for the Fisher family and theirAmish brethren were things like hay and wheat, barley and rye, corn and soybeans. Vegetables grown often ended up as wares in an every-once-in-a-while roadside stand that served as yet another way to feed their large families.
    She glanced to her left, her gaze playing across a small sheep-tended cemetery with several rows of simple headstones, then to the right at a team of mules hitched to a piece of steel-wheeled farm equipment and pulling a man clad in black suspendered pants, a collared shirt, and a straw hat through thick alfalfa.
    In the distance, cattle grazed in lush fields while a homemade wheel