Plain Killing by Emma Miller Read Free Book Online Page A

baptized?”
    “Probably at sixteen.” Rachel dusted the loose hayseeds off her hands.
    “I understand she’s been gone almost two years.” He straightened. “Did she go to another Amish community?”
    “No one knows, but that’s doubtful. Her parents woke up one morning to find her kapp on her bed and her suitcase and purse missing.” Rachel pulled a bobby pin from her hair that was poking her and stuck it back in somewhere else. “When you leave your kapp behind, you leave that life,” she said softly.
    The natural progression of thoughts normally would have taken her back to the day she left her parents’ home. And her kapp . But she refused to go there tonight. She just didn’t have the emotional energy.
    Evan was probably thinking something along the same lines. But if he was, he didn’t say anything about it. Instead, he asked, “How old was she when she left? She barely looked more than sixteen.”
    Rachel exhaled, trying to think. “She left when she was about eighteen, so she would be—would have been —twenty.”
    They were both quiet for a moment, lost in their own thoughts. Then she looked up at him. He’d had an awful day, too, and she doubted that he’d eaten anything. “Come inside,” she said. “We’ll see what Ada left in the refrigerator.”
    “I didn’t come to eat.” It was a weak protest.
    “Well, I’m hungry.” Which wasn’t really true, but she knew that if she didn’t eat, he wouldn’t. She shut off the barn light and the water, and they went outside.
    “You think she ran away?” Evan walked toward the house with her.
    “I assume. She left with seventy-five dollars of her mother’s chicken-and-egg money. It was taken from a sugar bowl in a cupboard, according to my Aunt Hannah. She makes it a point to keep up on local gossip.”
    “So Beth stole from her parents and took off. And no one has heard from her all this time? There must have been some contact. Letters, a phone call to a friend.” He grimaced and shrugged. “Okay, no phone calls. But someone must know something about where she was all that time.”
    Rachel opened the screen door, and Sophie launched herself through the air, barking excitedly. She jumped up and down at Rachel’s feet as though she’d been left alone for days rather than just a few hours. “Outside, girl. Do your business.”
    Sophie stopped spinning and yipping long enough to race out into the grass and disappear into the darkness. A minute later, she shot back through the door that Rachel was still holding open.
    The kitchen was dark. Rachel hit the switch. The counters and floor were spotless, thanks to Ada and her cleaning crew. Turning back to Evan, who’d followed her in, she said, “As far as I know, no one heard from Beth after she left. Not a word.”
    “Strange,” he commented.
    “Not really.” Rachel washed her hands at the big soapstone sink, dried them on a tea towel, and scooped out dog food from a cookie jar for Sophie. She poured it into a small blue crockery dish on the floor, and the dog stopped hopping long enough to stare suspiciously at the dry nuggets. Rachel groaned. “She’s spoiled rotten. She wants people food, but the vet says that this is what she should be eating.”
    Evan regarded Sophie without comment. He liked her, and he was always slipping her bits of food under the table. Rachel guessed that if it were up to him, the dog would have whatever they were eating.
    She opened the refrigerator door and peered in. Ada had left potato salad, a plate of sliced tomatoes and onions, fresh from the garden, and a roasted chicken covered with plastic wrap. “I think we hit the jackpot.” She began to pull out the dishes and hand them to him.
    “So no one, to your knowledge, heard from Beth? No word in two years?” He carried the chicken and potato salad to the table for two, by the window.
    Rachel set out plates, silverware, and cloth napkins. “Iced tea?” He nodded, and she went on. “Beth’s