Amish Barn Murders Read online

  Amish Barn Murders

  Ettie Smith Amish Mysteries Book 9

  Samantha Price

  Copyright © 2016 by Samantha Price

  All rights reserved.

  No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means, including information storage and retrieval systems, without written permission from the author, except for the use of brief quotations in a book review.

  Scripture quotations from The Authorized (King James) Version. Rights in the Authorized Version in the United Kingdom are vested in the Crown. Reproduced by permission of the Crown’s patentee, Cambridge University Press.

  * * *

  This book is a work of fiction. Any resemblance to any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental. The personal names have been invented by the author, and any likeness to the name of any person, living or dead, is purely coincidental.

  Contents

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Other books by Samantha Price:

  About Samantha Price

  Chapter 1

  It was slow at the market and Thea Hersh had only sold six cheeses, rather than the twenty she would have sold by this time on a normal day. It seemed as though people had vanished all of a sudden.

  “Slow day.”

  On hearing a deep voice next to her, Thea looked to her side at the young Englisch man who ran the stall next to her. Her father had warned her not to speak to any of the stallholders who weren’t Amish, but she couldn’t be rude. She smiled at the relatively new stallholder she’d only spoken to a handful of times in the past weeks.

  He continued, “I haven’t seen this place so quiet since I’ve been here.”

  “I know what you mean,” Thea replied. “And I came here this morning hoping to make a tidy sum today, but it seems I’ll have to wait until tomorrow.”

  He took a step toward her. “Did you want the money for something special?”

  Thea looked at the young man. Her father’s warning about keeping separate from the Englischers rang in her ears, but she was only talking to him. Many in her community had to speak to the Englischers during the course of their business. Thea’s eyes turned up to the sky. “I need to get my bike fixed.”

  “What’s wrong with it?” He took two more steps until he was standing in front of her and offered his hand. “I’m Austin, by the way.”

  She shook his hand and looked into his kind brown eyes. “I’m Thea.”

  “I know,” he said. “I’ve heard your father speak to you.”

  “You’re new here, aren’t you?”

  “Yes. We had a stall on the roadside, but we’re hoping to sell more here with all of the people going by on foot. So, what’s wrong with your bike?”

  “I think the wheel is twisted. Well, it’s looked that way for some time, but I was still able to ride it, but now I can’t. Now I have to walk everywhere.”

  “Can’t your boyfriend fix it for you?”

  Thea smiled and felt her cheeks flush. “I don’t have one.”

  “What about your father?”

  “I daren’t ask him to do one more thing. He’s so tired when he gets home at night.”

  “I could fix it for you.”

  “You could? Are you sure?”

  Austin smiled, his brown eyes crinkling at the corners. “I’m pretty handy with things like that. I’ve fixed my own bikes and my brothers’ bikes. Bring it in with you tomorrow and I’ll take a look at it.”

  “Really?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Thank you so much, Austin.” Thea stepped sideways and her cheese display tilted, beginning to topple over.

  Austin lunged forward and grabbed the stack of cheeses before they fell on the ground.

  “Good catch. Thank you.”

  Austin had the cheeses balanced against his midsection, and Thea leaned forward to take them from him. When they were standing close together with only the cheeses in between them, Thea’s friend, Thomas, appeared. The pair jumped apart causing the cheeses to fall on the ground.

  Thomas glared at Austin and then looked at Thea. “What’s going on here?”

  “See what you’ve done, Thomas?” Thea bit her lip. She was always accused of speaking first and thinking later.

  Thomas, being taller than most men, looked down at Austin. “Stay away from Thea.”

  “He’s got a stall here and he was just helping me.”

  “Look after your own stall,” Thomas said to Austin.

  “Thanks for your concern, but I believe I didn’t catch your name,” Austin said.

  Glaring at Thomas for his uncalled for rudeness, Thea said, “Austin, this is Thomas. Thomas, this is Austin. My father will be here soon, Thomas.” Thea knew Thomas and her father did not get along very well; she wasn’t sure why. All Thea knew was that something had once happened between Thomas and Grace, one of her older sisters, before Grace had gotten married.

  Thomas crossed his arms in front of his chest. “That’s good; I’ll wait for him. Shall I tell him what I saw between you two?”

  Austin walked a few steps back to his stall, ignoring Thomas' comments.

  “Nothing was going on. The cheese fell, Austin caught it and I was taking it back from him. There was nothing happening at all,” Thea insisted.

  “Is that right, Queen Bee? That’s what you must be to have all that honey. Did you have your worker bees make it for you?” Thomas walked over to Austin and deliberately knocked into his display of honey and the jars toppled over and landed on the table.

  Austin hurried to steady the bottles. He caught all but one that toppled out of his hands and smashed on the ground. That got the attention of other stallholders and some customers. Everyone looked over at the two boys while Thea looked on in horror.

  “You’d better go home and collect more honey from your bees, Queen Bee.”

  Austin stepped up to Thomas and looked up into his face. “I killed the last person who called me ‘Queen Bee.’”

  Thomas laughed and stepped away.

  Thea rushed over to stand between the two men. “Thomas, look what you’ve done.” She pointed to the ground and the broken jar of honey.

  Thomas shouted, “He threatened me and you heard him.”

  “Leave him be. Why are you here anyway?” Thea demanded.

  “I’m picking up a couple of things. I didn’t come here to have my life threatened.”

  Thea looked over at Austin who was doing his best to pick up the broken glass and sticky honey. When she turned back to Thomas, she said, “Well, if you don’t want anything, please go.”

  Thomas looked over his shoulder at Austin, sniggered and walked away.

  Thea grabbed a box of tissues that she had behind her stall, leaned down and helped Austin wipe the honey from the ground. “Sorry about that, Austin. He can be unreasonable at times.”

  “I thought Amish people were peace-loving and all that.”

  “They are, they mostly are, except for him. I don’t know what gets into him sometimes. He’s been funny since he got back from his rumspringa.”

  “Have you thought that maybe it’s jealousy?�
�

  “No, I don’t think so.” Thea looked at Austin and saw a little smile on his face, but he kept quiet.

  * * *

  Six o’clock rolled around and the stall holders packed up, as the market was now closed. Even though Thea hadn’t sold very much that day, she had enjoyed Austin’s company after Thomas had left.

  Thea’s father, Levi, showed up a little earlier than usual. “Go to the buggy now, Thea, I’ll finish packing up.”

  “It’s okay, Dat, I can do it. You wait for me; I’ll be out soon.” It was usual for her father to wait for her in the buggy and she normally wheeled the leftover goods out to him when she was ready.

  Levi looked over at Austin and from the way he stared at him Thea knew that Thomas had spoken to her father about the altercation earlier that day. “Don’t believe everything you hear, Dat. Thomas was here making trouble.”

  Turning around to look at his daughter, Levi ordered, “Go to the buggy, Thea, and wait for me there.”

  Thea drew her eyebrows together, looked at her father, and then glanced back at Austin. She walked away not daring to say goodbye to her new friend. Instead of going directly to the buggy, Thea watched from a distance hoping her father wouldn’t have words with Austin. She was right to be concerned; she saw and heard her father speaking with the young man. Austin was visibly shaken, and nodded as her father spoke. Her father was not yelling, but was speaking loud enough to attract the attention of the other workers who stopped to see what the commotion was.

  Thea heard her father say, “Stay away from my daughter! I don’t want to see or hear that you’ve talked to her again.”

  Austin nodded.

  Then her father said, “I heard what happened and I won’t have my daughter put in the middle of an argument.”

  “I wasn’t doing anything wrong. The cheese toppled over and I was helping her.”

  “Save your stories. I don’t want you to speak to her again.”

  “I have the stall next to hers. I’ll most likely see her tomorrow.”

  A baker nearby heard the ruckus and stepped up. “What’s going on, Levi?”

  “This young man has been disrespectful to Thea.”

  The baker looked at the young man and then looked at Levi. “I’m sure it won’t happen again.”

  “It won’t happen again,” Austin said with an emphatic nod, as he appeared to be growing more frustrated.

  As Levi finished packing the cheeses, he turned around and caught sight of Thea. He narrowed his eyes and pointed outside to where the buggy was. Thea obeyed immediately and as she walked out to the buggy, she hoped the situation would calm down. She’d never heard her father raise his voice before, neither had she heard him say things of that nature to anyone. It made her wonder what Thomas could’ve possibly said to her father that made him so cross.

  Chapter 2

  The next day, Ettie Smith, an elderly Amish woman, was in her kitchen putting the finishing touches on her apple pie. She was just about to place it in the heated oven when she heard familiar footsteps thumping quickly through the house. Only moments before, her older sister, Elsa-May, had headed out the door for a walk with her small dog, Snowy, before the evening air got too cold.

  “What is it?” Ettie asked as she turned to see a distraught Elsa-May leaning against the kitchen doorway.

  “There’s been a death.”

  Ettie stared at Elsa-May, scared to ask who it was. By the look of Elsa-May, she was upset but not as devastated as she would be if it were a close family member. Elsa-May was still standing squarely in the doorway in her black lace-up boots. “Who?”

  “Young Thomas Strongberg.”

  “Nee!” Ettie had been expecting another elderly person—another of their friends to have 'fallen off the perch,' not a strong, healthy young man like Thomas Strongberg.

  “Jah, he fell off a ladder in his barn.”

  “And he died from the fall?”

  Elsa-May nodded, wiping her eyes. “It was an accident.”

  “How did you hear this?”

  “Snowy and I got to the end of the road and Nancy Miller was driving past in her buggy. She stopped and told me, and she said she'd heard it from Doris Wyberger.”

  Ettie frowned and looked back at her uncooked pie. It was a sad thing when a young person died before they’d lived out their life to reach old age. She picked up a fork and pressed the prongs against the edges of the pastry to make a nice pattern.

  “Don’t you care, Ettie?”

  Ettie turned back to look at her sister. “I care, but what can I do?”

  “We can visit his familye; that’s what we can do.”

  “Give it a day or two.” Ettie finished decorating the edge of her pie, opened the oven door and slid the pie onto the middle rack.

  Elsa-May spat out, “That’s what I meant.”

  “I’m not arguing with you.”

  “Gut!”

  “Do you think it’s true?” Ettie asked.

  “I do. Doris wouldn’t have made something like that up.”

  “I don’t mean that. I know Doris wouldn’t make something up. I meant about Thomas falling off a ladder to his death. When was the last time someone was killed by falling off a ladder?”

  “It’s possible to die from a fall.”

  Ettie raised her eyebrows. “Seems odd to me, that’s all. I would’ve thought he’d get a broken arm or a broken leg.”

  “They say he landed on his head and that’s what killed him.”

  * * *

  News had always traveled through the Amish community at lightening speed, and it didn’t take long for the talk to spread amongst the Amish that Thomas Strongberg was found dead in his family’s barn. Rumors spread that an Englisch man at the farmers market had threatened him the day he died.

  Old Doris Wyberger had stopped by Thea’s house to tell the family the dreadful thing that had happened to the Strongberg family. Thea was in tears; she’d only seen Thomas the day before at the market. Even though their friendship had been rocky in the recent past, he was still a friend that she’d grown up with.

  When Doris left the house, Thea’s father told Thea, “It’s no secret that Thomas and I haven’t always seen eye-to-eye about things, but Thomas told me that the young man at the market had threatened to kill him. I can’t have you around that man again. We’ll have to see about getting your stall moved.”

  “Nee, Dat. Austin didn’t mean it. That was only because Thomas was being mean to him. Anyway, Thomas was well over six feet tall, and Austin could only be about five feet nine or ten. I don’t think that Austin would have been able to overpower someone like Thomas, if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  “I told you no good would come of speaking to the Englischers.”

  “He said hello, and I said hello back, and that’s all. Surely there’s no harm in that. I’ve got to be friendly, don’t I? And my regular customers know where I am. It’ll be a huge financial risk to move the stall.”

  Her father remained silent.

  Thea continued, “Anyway, everyone speaks to Englischers. Mamm says it’s all right as long as we don’t become friends with them.”

  Her mother, who was sitting alongside Thea, nodded.

  “What else has Mamm always told you?”

  “She said something about the wheat mixing with the chaff.”

  “That’s right, Thea, don’t make friends with them was what your mudder meant.”

  “Jah, that’s what I meant, Thea.”

  Levi glared at his wife. “Hush.”

  A chill ran through Thea. She’d never heard her father speak harshly to her mother, and he had never hushed her.

  Her mother was upset. She stood and hurried out of the room.

  Thea would go to her as soon as she finished setting her father straight about Austin. “Austin offered to fix my bike. He’s only been nice to me.”

  “What’s wrong with your bike?”

  “I’m not sure; it’s not working
.”

  “I’ll fix it.”

  “You will? Denke.”

  “Jah! I’ll fix it by throwing it on the scrap heap. I’ll take it to the recycling center.”

  “Nee, Dat, it’s still usable; it just needs fixing. Unless, you’re thinking of buying me a new one?”

  He shook his head. “You need to be punished for disobeying me. You’re too big to take the strap to, so I’ll take your bike away instead.”

  Thea looked at her hands in her lap. Her father had always threatened to take a strap to her and her sisters, but had never done it. He’d never treated her four older sisters this bad before they’d left home to get married.

  “I didn’t feel right about that boy. He’s got the devil in him.”

  “You mean Thomas or Austin?”

  Her father nodded. “Maybe both of them. Thomas changed somewhere along the way. Well, I guess we’ve got a funeral to go to this week.”

  Thea stood up and, risking another outburst from her father, she said, “You don’t like Austin and you didn’t even like Thomas. You don’t like anyone.” With that said, Thea rushed out of the house to the barn. She unloaded the cheese from the large cold box into the chilled cartons in the back of the buggy that they carried the goods to the market in.

  A little later, Thea crept back into the house to see if her mother was still in the kitchen. She’d gone and her father was nowhere to be seen either. They’d both gone to bed and left a sole light burning in the kitchen for her return.

  * * *

  Her father never said anything about her heated words and drove her to the market in silence the next morning. She wheeled her goods in and unpacked them, just as she'd done every other day. Austin arrived a little after she had.