A Plain Malice: An Appleseed Creek Mystery (Appleseed Creek Mystery Series Book 4) (5 page)

A coroner’s assistant rolled a stretcher with a body bag out of the barn. I cringed but was relieved that Chief Rose had the foresight to ask them to wait until the bus left the farm. As painful as it was for me to see this, I couldn’t imagine how the tourists may have felt. This was someone they knew. Two EMTs, who hadn’t left the grounds yet, helped the assistant load the first body into the back of his black SUV. The assistant went back into the barn. The elderly coroner brought the second body bag out.

Chief Rose
jogged over to him. “What do you think, Doc?” the police chief asked.

He removed latex gloves and tucked them into a black fanny pack strapped to his waist.
“My cursory glance is cardiac arrest. I won’t know what caused it though until we have test results back.”

She folded her arms.
“When will that be?”

He adjusted his glasses. “I’m not even back at the lab yet, Chief, and I have several other cases ahead of yours.”

“Doc, my case has to have priority. If I don’t close up this case in the next few days, I never will. The bus is only in Knox County for a few days unless you can find something to keep them here.”

“I’ll see what I can do, but the other cases belong to the sheriff. You might want to give him a call and sweet talk him into letting me put your
s first.”

Chief Rose grun
ted, and Doc toddled away.

“Chief Rose, you can’t believe Mr. Troyer had anything to do with this
.” I stepped in her path. “He doesn’t even know any of these people.”

The sun disappeared behind a cloud, and she pushed her
sunglasses to the top her head. They nestled in her short poodle curls. “Wishful thinking does not become you, Humphrey.”

“It’s more likely the killer is one of the other passengers on the bus.
”

“
Thanks for stating the obvious, but first rule of being a cop is you have to have an open mind. If the milk in the tank tests clean and there is nothing wrong with the cows, that’s good news for the Troyers. I’m doing these tests to help him, not to hurt him.”

I gave a sigh of relief.
“So you’re not convinced Mr. Troyer did it?”

She shook her head. “Then again, I’m not convinced he didn’t do it either.”

Perhaps the sigh was premature.

Chapter Four

Finally, the crime scene began to clear out. Chief Rose’s officers drove away in their squad car behind the ambulances, black SUV, and Doc’s pickup truck. Chief Rose was the only public servant left on the property.

Bishop Hooley
spun his black felt hat in his hand in front the police chief. “Ch-Chief Rose,” the bishop said with his characteristic stutter. “When will the travelers be able to continue with their Amish Country tour?”

She cocked an eyebrow at him. “
You think they will want to continue the tour after what happened here today?”

He
replaced his hat on his head. “B-but it is all planned. We have m-many places in the community to show them.”

Deacon Sutter
, standing next to the bishop, smoothed his dark beard. “I told you, Bishop, this tour idea would lead to trouble. All
Englischers
bring to our community is sin and corruption.” He gave me a pointed look.

At least I didn’t have to wonder
where I stood with the deacon. His feelings were clear and consistent.

The chief
slipped her aviator sunglasses over her eyes again. “I don’t know if the tour will go on. I will have a hard enough time keeping them in the county.” A small smile played on the corner of her lips. “However, I will do my best to convince them to stay on schedule. It will help your community, Bishop, but more importantly it will also help my investigation. I need them here.”

Why did I have a bad feeling about the chief’s
smile?

A white
-paneled van with the Ohio State Department of Health seal on the side of it pulled into the Troyers’ driveway as Chief Rose was leaving in her squad car. The two vehicles stopped, and Chief Rose spoke with the driver for a moment before waving good-bye to him and turning onto the county road.

Three inspectors piled out of the van in
hazmat suits and face masks. The tallest walked over to me. “Is this your farm, Miss?”

I swallowed. “No. I’m a family friend.”

“Where’s the owner?”

I glanced back at the house and saw Mr. Troyer
's face in the window. “He’s inside the farmhouse.”

The inspector turned toward the house. “He’s welcome to observe our tests if he would like, but he doesn’t have to.”

“I don’t think he wants to,” I said.

The inspector nodded. “This shouldn’t take too long.” He waved to the two other men in white suits.

Inside the barn, the cows mooed. I imagined needles being stuck in their hides. Would the health inspectors test all forty-some cows?

Unable to listen to the cows,
I went in search of Timothy and Grandfather Zook. I found it odd they weren’t there to see Chief Rose off or meet the state inspectors.

I walked around the outside of the main barn and peaked in the buggy and horse barn. Grandfather
Zook’s horse Sparky ate from the trough in his stall and Mr. Troyer’s two buggy horses and his work team kicked up dirt. They could hear the commotion in the dairy barn. Timothy and his grandfather weren’t there.

I left the buggy barn and headed to the milking parlor.
As many times as I had been to the Troyer farm I had never set foot in the parlor. Going there felt like an invasion of Mr. Troyer’s private domain.

An open air breezeway covered the twelve feet between the main
barn, where the cows lived, to the milking parlor. The breezeway didn’t have any walls, but the roof offered the cows some shelter and protection from the worst of the rain and snow during the colder months.

The
barn’s large back door was closed, but the door to the milking parlor was cracked open. I peeked inside and found Timothy and his grandfather inspecting the floor. Mabel’s plume of a tail thumped the ground when she saw me.

“What are you two up to?”
I asked.

Grandfather Zook jumped and one of his braces fell from his arm.

I bent to pick it up. “I didn’t mean to scare you.”

He slipped the brace back on his arm.
“I thought you were the lady copper.”

“Chief Rose left
, as did the coroner and Deacon Sutter and the bishop. The health inspectors are the only ones left. They said their tests won’t take long.”

Timothy
pursed his lip. “I hope that’s true.”

Timothy’s half collie, half German
shepherd, half who knew what, shaggy black and brown dog got up from a horse blanket by the door and sniffed my hand.

“Hello
, Mabel, what are you doing in here?”

“
Daed
told me to close her up in here while the tourists were on the grounds. He thought some of them might be afraid of dogs.”

I laughed.
“Afraid of Mabel?”

I scanned the room
as Mabel licked my hand. The floor was cement and there were two raised cement platforms on either side the main floor. There were three narrow metal pens on either platform. Each pen had a clean milking machine, hanging from a metal hook and waiting for the next use. A bottle of weak iodine solution sat on a shelf by the parlor door. The iodine was used to sanitize the cow’s udders before milking. It looked like any modern milking parlor, but the milking machines and the stainless steel refrigerator against the back wall were powered by propane not the power grid.

“Those lab
coats stalking about give me the willies.” Grandfather Zook shivered. “Reminds me of when I had polio.”

“What do you mean?”
I asked.

“When there was an outbreak of p
olio in my Amish community in Pennsylvania, the state sent a dozen of those lab rats to the community to test us. It was terrifying. Remember, when I was a child we had a lot less contact with the outside world. They said it was because of our ‘inbreeding’ that we got sick. Many of my friends and siblings were sent to
Englischer
schools to make them more
Englisch.
They didn’t send me because I already had the disease. I suppose in their minds I wasn’t worth making
Englisch.
”

Timothy stared at his grandfather. “I never knew that. You never told me that before.”

I shivered. “That’s terrible. How old were you?”

“
Nine.” He chuckled. “It was a long time ago.
Gott
has given me many blessings since, but I hope you don’t mind if I give those lab rats a wide berth.” He adjusted his hold on his braces.

I peeked out the door and saw one of the health inspectors s
earching the ground around the barn.
What was he looking for?
“I won’t let them come near you,” I said.

Grandfather Zook
grinned. “You
are
gut
to me, Chloe. My grandson is a lucky man.”

Timothy’s face spilt into a smile,
and I blushed. The fact that Timothy wasn’t the least bit embarrassed by his grandfather’s statement made my heart jump.

I cleared my throat.
“So what are you two doing in here?”

Grandfather Zook bent his head in a conspiratorial way.
“We are looking for evidence. My eyes aren’t as good as they used to be, so I asked for Timothy’s help.”

“Evidence?”
I scanned the dusty cement floor and didn’t see anything amiss. The back door of the milking parlor stood open. Through the door, I saw the back pasture. Beyond the pasture there were the woods that separated the Troyer farm from the Lambright farm, where Anna lived. “Why’s that?”

He fluffed his snow white beard with the back of his hand. “
Early this morning, I heard a noise behind the barn. It may have come from the milking parlor. At the time, I thought it was a deer or a barn cat, but now, I wonder. We’re looking for tracks. The cop lady always looks for tracks.”

I
examined the ground. There were blurry tracks on the floor, but it was impossible to tell if they were there from the morning or from our shoes. “What time did you hear the noise?”

“
Just about six o’clock. I was in the main barn feeding the barn cats—Simon says they can fend for themselves, and that’s true, but it doesn’t hurt to do them a kindness. Naomi was with me and she heard the noise too.” He patted the barn’s white-washed siding. “I was right on the other side of this wall.” He hobbled over to the open door that led to the breezeway and pointed. “My workshop is right about there. He pointed at the south corner of the barn. The cats eat in my workshop, so that’s where we were standing when we heard the noise.”

Grandfather Zook made wood handicrafts which sold to the Amish gift shops in town to earn a little extra money for the family.

I peered through the door. “That’s a ways away, Grandfather Zook. It’s hard for me to believe whatever you heard came from the milking parlor. It would have to be awfully loud. What did it sound like?”

Grandfather
Zook cocked his head. “It was a bang, like a rake handle hitting the milking parlor wall.”

A sound like that would get my attention too.
“You didn’t go look?” I asked.

He shook his head. “Naomi was scared and wanted to
go back inside the house. When I told her to run inside without me, she started to cry. I agreed to go with her because I thought it was an animal knocking something over. The old farm makes a lot of noises, and there’s no telling what critters are on the land at any given time.” He frowned. “I wish I had gone to see what it was. I would have stopped whoever did this.”

Naomi may have saved her grandfather from confronting a killer.

“With all the spring rain,” Timothy said, “had someone or something been back here I would have thought there would be a track between the barn and milking parlor.”

“Did you see an
y tracks in the mud?” I asked.

Timothy
shook his head.

I stepped away from the open parlor door.
“Did you tell Chief Rose about the noise?”

Grandfather Zook turned from the door to face me.
“
Nee.
I wanted to see if I could find some type of proof first. I know the lady cop likes her evidence.”

T
his was true. I wasn’t sure if I should be horrified or amused that Grandfather Zook, an elderly Old Order Amish man, knew that. It was certainly a sign that the Troyer family had too much interaction with the Appleseed Creek police.

Timothy ran his hand through his white-blond hair
. “We’ve been searching for twenty minutes and haven’t found anything outside or inside the parlor. I’m beginning to wonder—”