Shunned and Dangerous (An Amish Mystery) by Laura Bradford Page A

possible.”
    “Meaning?”
    “Meaning they keep their buggies to the side of the road whenever possible. At Lighted Way business meetings they have a presence but rarely interject comments unless asked . . . and even then, it’s done in a very unassuming way.” Diane set her scarf and needles to the side and stood, the nine thirty chime of the grandfather clock in the hallway signaling her final task of the night. Crossing to the window that overlooked the darkened fields of the Amish countryside, she took one more look at her beloved town then drew the thick velvet curtains closed.
    “They are passive people, Claire,” the woman continued en route back to her spot on the sofa. “They don’t believe in engaging in arguments, and they don’t force their lifestyle down anyone’s throats. As a result, there are an awful lot of misperceptions about the Amish that are born from a place of ignorance and allowed to go unchecked by a group of people who separate themselves from the ills of the world.”
    Claire leaned forward, intrigued by her aunt’s words. “Okay, I’m following you . . .”
    “The night John Zook was murdered, he’d gone out to his barn in the middle of the night to check on a cow who was getting ready to give birth. The next morning, Harley found him slumped alongside the new calf. He’d been shot in the back of the head.”
    “Oh my gosh, how awful!”
    “Harley was devastated, as was the entire town—Amish and English alike. Especially once it was determined he’d been killed by a hunting rifle from within a range that eliminated all possibility of it having been a stray shot.”
    The scarf and needles remained untouched as Diane slipped sixteen years into the past. “We’d had an accident or two, of course, but, before that night, the extent of
crime
in Heavenly was confined to a rare teenage prank—a knocked-down mailbox on prom weekend, an occasional tire mark on someone’s yard on the last day of school, that sort of thing. When they were caught, they were always English. The Amish kids just didn’t conduct themselves like that.”
    “How long did it take for the police to figure out who killed John?” she asked.
    “Too long.” Diane ran her fingers along the tasteful pattern on the arm of the couch and sighed. “That’s why Jakob left. He’d already had a fascination with the police—one he’d fed during his very brief Rumspringa. For him, his experimentation with the English world didn’t have him buying a CD player for his buggy or sneaking a cigarette out at the covered bridge on Route 50. He simply spent his very short Rumspringa talking to the police officers in town and riding along with them whenever he could.”
    Everything she was hearing fit so well with the man she’d come to know over the past few months. Jakob’s sense of honor, as well as the unwavering respect he had for his former community and its lifestyle, made his desire to solve John Zook’s murder easy to understand. She said as much to Diane, who offered a slow but definitive nod of agreement in return.
    “It hurt him deeply to watch Harley suffer the loss of his brother. The fact that the police couldn’t seem to finger a killer only compounded that hurt. So while the rest of his brethren waited for news of an arrest, Jakob made the ultimate sacrifice in the hopes he could help deliver that news faster.”
    “But he’d have to test into the academy and then go through months of training before he could even secure a job as a police officer . . .”
    “Yes, however, it was still an
action
as opposed to an inaction.”
    Claire of all people understood that notion. Sometimes doing something was better than doing nothing. “But then they solved it just as he left, right?” This was a part of the story she had heard before, the nugget that made the severing of ties with Jakob’s family even harder to digest.
    Again, Diane nodded. “Yes, that’s right. But by then it was too late. He was