The Lesson Read online

  In her bedroom, she spent some time looking for her old detective notebook. She finally found it, tucked deep under her mattress. She opened it to a clean page and wrote SOLVE SHEEP FARMER’S MURDER!!! in bold letters across the top and underlined it three times, breaking the pencil point in the process. She found another pencil and numbered the page from one to ten.

  But how?

  She pulled out her detective books from the bottom bookshelf and spread them out on her bed.

  #1. Look for overlooked clues that the culprit might have left in his haste.

  A. Go back to the pasture.

  She spent the next ten minutes drumming the pencil against the page as she searched in vain for ideas to proceed. When her head began to ache from thinking too hard, she put her books away and stuffed the notebook back under the mattress.

  She thought the house seemed stuffy, so she opened the windows downstairs in the living room and kitchen. A breeze moved into the room, carrying a faint perfume from Fern’s rose garden. M.K. sat down, stood up, walked around, sat down again. Her mind was spinning, like dandelions in the wind. She was so antsy that Doozy gave up following her. He curled up in the living room corner and went to sleep. She jumped up and went into the kitchen, knowing just what to do to keep her mind and hands busy.

  After her sister Sadie married Gideon Smucker and left home, M.K. was at loose ends—she had finished formal schooling, she was missing the companionship of Sadie and Julia, her married sisters, and she was driving Fern crazy. A serious case of “ants in her pants,” Fern diagnosed. M.K. needed something to do, so Fern taught her how to bake bread.

  M.K. went into the kitchen and pulled out the flour canister. On the windowsill was a jar filled with a noxious-looking substance, placed where the late afternoon sun would warm it but not too much. She picked up the jar, remembering the first time Fern had shown it to her.

  It was the winter after Sadie and Gid’s wedding, two years ago. The lower half was a thick gray pillow, looking like something you’d find on the moon. Fern had shaken it up, then opened it. A strong sour smell exploded into the air.

  “Phew!” M.K. pinched her nose like a clothespin. “What is that horrible thing?” She leaned closer to inspect it.

  “It’s my sourdough bread starter,” Fern said. “It’s been in my family for generations. It came from a carefully tended mother dough that my great-great-great-grandmother brought over from Germany in 1886.”

  “How could all those grandmothers have kept it alive all that time?”

  “Some mysteries are best not to examine too closely,” Fern said in her matter-of-fact way. “Starters are sturdier than they appear. But I guard that starter like gold at Fort Knox.” She scooped out a hefty measure of foamy pale-yellow-white starter and put it in a bowl. “I refresh it every week so it stays healthy.” She turned on the tap, testing the temperature with her fingers. “I add water that’s just barely warmer than your fingers.” When she got it right she gestured to M.K. “Try it.”

  M.K. stuck her fingers under the stream. She hardly felt the water. M.K. filled a glass measuring cup and stirred it into the jar of starter. It foamed up.

  M.K. jumped back, then stared at it. “Why, it’s alive!”

  “Exactly.”

  Danger! M.K. was hooked.

  A noise outside jolted her back to the present. She peered out the window, hoping to see a buggy roll up the driveway. But no—it was only a noisy bluejay, gorging himself on black oiled sunflower seeds that filled the blue bird feeder on the porch. M.K. rapped on the window to shoo the greedy bird away.

  She took out a large bowl and measured a cup of flour. She used a sturdy wooden spoon and stirred the flour into the heady sponge, filling the air with a sour scent, unique to yeast. She turned the dough out on a layer of fine white flour that she scattered across the surface of the counter. As she began to knead the bread, back and forth, over and under, pushing and pulling, her restlessness began to slip away. Like it always did. She didn’t like to admit it, but Fern was right. Her hands needed to be busy.

  Two hours later, the loaves were baked and cooling on the counter. They were far more dense than Fern’s would have been. M.K. never had the patience to let dough rest as long as it needed. But the kitchen was clean and shiny for Fern’s critical inspection just as she walked in. M.K. met her at the door. Over Fern’s shoulder, she saw her father near the barn, untacking the horse from the buggy shafts.

  “Where have you been?” M.K. asked. “I’ve been waiting for hours!”

  A wall came up, chilled the air. Fern didn’t speak immediately. Doozy let go of a soft, joyous woof and his tail wagged slowly, then stopped.

  “Where have you been?” Fern replied, sharp as a pinch. “You were due at the schoolhouse at six. There was a work frolic to get the schoolhouse ready for school on Monday.”

  M.K.’s hands flew up to her cheeks. “I forgot! I forgot all about it.”

  Fern frowned at her. “If you were a bird, you would be a hummingbird. Flitting from place to place. You can’t be still.”

  “But there’s a reason! Something has happened!”

  “So we heard,” Amos said in a weary voice as he opened the kitchen door and walked into the room. His weather-tanned face, with its work wrinkles running down his cheeks, looked exasperated. “You ran into Alice Smucker. How did you happen to do that?”

  Oh. Oh! M.K. had forgotten all about the collision with Alice Smucker. Her mind was wholly preoccupied with the shocking murder. “Well, there’s rather a lot of Alice.”

  Amos raised a warning eyebrow at M.K. “Alice Smucker will be unable to start the school year due to a mild concussion.”

  “Really? She actually has a concussion? The doctor really, truly said that? Because—”

  Amos sent M.K. a warning frown, but too late.

  “—Alice can be a bit of a hypochondri—”

  Amos held up his hand to stop her. “Mary Kate, it doesn’t matter whether the doctor said so. That’s what Alice Smucker believes she has, and it was because you didn’t look where you were going on the scooter and you crashed into the poor woman.”

  “Dad, it wasn’t really that big of a crash. More like a tiny bump.”

  Amos shook his head. “She has a ferocious headache and can’t teach for the foreseeable future.”

  “That’s a shame,” M.K. said.

  Amos and Fern exchanged a look.

  The first ripple of concern fluttered down M.K.’s spine. “What?”

  “The members of the school board were at the work frolic,” Amos said. “They came to a decision about who can fill in for Alice.”

  “Well, Gideon, of course. He’s done it before. He’s a fine teacher. Better than Alice.” M.K. hoped Sadie wouldn’t mind having Gid gone all day. She had little twins, a boy and a girl, who ran her ragged. At least, they ran M.K. ragged whenever she popped in for a visit. To M.K.’s way of thinking, children ran everybody ragged.

  Amos and Fern exchanged another glance, and M.K. sensed something dreadful was coming, like the stillness right before a storm hit. She felt the hair on the back of her neck tingle. “If not Gid, then who? Who?” In the quiet, her question sounded like an owl.

  “The school board has decided you will fill in for Alice,” Amos said.

  “Me? Me?” she said with a squeak. “Teach school? You want me to teach school?” She was outraged! It was just an accident. She hadn’t run into Alice on purpose! “No! No, no, no, no, no. I can’t do it! Absolutely not!” The very thought terrified her. Stuck in a hot room with twenty-five slow-witted children, all day long? Boring! Supremely boring! “Dad, you’ve got to tell the school board that I just can’t do it. Tell them you and Fern need me to help at Windmill Farm.” She swept her arms in a wide arc, accidentally knocking over something from the counter onto the floor, where it shattered. She looked down, horrified. It was the jar that held Fern’s one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old bread dough starter. She covered her face, then peeked th
rough her fingers to gauge Fern’s reaction.

  At first, Fern looked stunned. Then her mouth set in a straight line. “Clean up that mess. Then you’d better get ready. The school board wants to meet with you tomorrow, 8 a.m. sharp, at the schoolhouse.”

  M.K. said nothing. As she scooped shattered glass and tangy-smelling starter into the garbage, she felt that the whole day had taken an unsatisfactory turn. She had encountered a shocking murder, she had been suspected of intentionally running her scooter into Alice Smucker (when all she had been doing was riding her scooter), and now there was this uncomfortable expectation that she would teach school.

  Suddenly M.K. was looking ahead, into the terrible future. Her life had been completely rearranged. This was too much. It was all too much!

  What a day. The worst of her life.

  2

  The early morning air was quite sharp, hinting of summer’s end. Amos stood by the barn and watched his youngest daughter zip off on her scooter to meet with the school board. Mary Kate had a woebegone look on her face, as if she were heading off to the gallows. He nearly caved, nearly gave her an excuse to tell the school board that she was needed at the farm and couldn’t possibly teach school. But then he would have to face his wife with that news and the thought stopped him short.

  Besides, he knew Fern was overly blessed with a sixth sense about his children. Last night, she told him that Mary Kate had turned down Ruthie’s request for her to go through baptism instructions this fall. For three years now, Ruthie had pleaded with M.K. to join her in the classes and M.K. always said no, that she wasn’t ready. This time, Ruthie was going ahead without her.

  “That restive spirit has always worried me about M.K.,” Fern told Amos. “It’s nothing new, though it’s getting worse. She slips around rules, she reads books in church, she sticks her nose where it doesn’t belong, and now look at this.” Out of her apron pocket she pulled a folded piece of paper and thrust it at Amos.

  He unfolded the paper. “A passport application?”

  “I sent her to the post office to mail a package to Julia and Rome, and look what she came back with.”

  “Where did you find it?”

  “It had slipped under the bench in the buggy.”

  He folded it and handed it to her. “Put it back where you found it. She’ll be looking for it.”

  Fern slipped it back into her pocket with a sigh. “You’re not going to let her know we are aware she is planning to flee the country?”

  “She’s young,” Amos said in M.K.’s defense. His greatest hope in life would be that his children would accept his beliefs and join the church, but he was a believer in free will. He would never insist or put a timetable on that important decision. Time belonged to God. “Younger than most.”

  “She’s nineteen. And I don’t think age has anything to do with it.”

  “Then what do you think her problem is?”

  “It’s that quick mind of hers. It’s got to be kept busy or it gets her into trouble. Teaching school would be challenging for her, Amos. She’ll end up learning more than the scholars.”

  But would the scholars survive her? Amos loved his youngest daughter, but she had a unique way amidst a community that frowned upon uniqueness. How many times had Deacon Abraham taken Amos aside, in his quiet, gentle manner, to suggest ways of redirecting M.K.’s bottomless pit of energy? His daughter always meant well, her intentions were good, but she had a nose for trouble, a knack for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. She thought her real job was to know everyone in Stoney Ridge and everything that was happening. And she was filled with excuses. Nothing was ever her fault. Just like careening into Alice Smucker last night.

  Amos wouldn’t have said so at the frolic yesterday, with the school board tsk-tsking over Alice’s concussion, but he had to agree with M.K. about Alice’s hypochondria. Alice was rumored to be absent more days than she was in the schoolhouse teaching. He’d never known Alice not to have an ailment, magnified to serious proportions.

  Even Sadie, his middle daughter, who never said an unkind word about anyone, gave Alice a tea remedy each week to help manage her sensitive digestion. Earlier in the summer, Sadie had confessed to Amos that the remedy was just tea and sugar, nothing more. “Alice just wants someone to listen to her,” Sadie said. “Since her father remarried, she’s just lonely. Once I figured that out, I realized I was wasting time trying to find remedies for her symptoms. I gave her tea and sugar one time, and she said that was the best cure of all.” Sadie lowered her voice. “I didn’t tell her it was just tea and sugar.”

  Amos straightened his straw hat. He had a full day ahead—and a young fellow was coming by to see about cutting hay for him.

  Maybe Fern was right. Maybe teaching would challenge M.K. and keep her mind out of trouble—like the trouble she could get into by trying to solve the murder of that poor sheep farmer. “Leave that to the police!” Amos had told M.K. last night. But he could see that she was itching to get involved and solve the crime. She gave him six different scenarios last night, accusing every single surrounding neighbor of the terrible deed. As Fern frequently pointed out, once she latched onto an idea, she was like a fox with an egg in its mouth—all the hollering in the world wouldn’t make her drop it.

  Maybe Fern was right. Maybe teaching school was the answer for M.K. He hoped so.

  “Whoa.” Chris Yoder pulled back on the reins, drawing the horse to a halt. He leapt from the buggy seat and hopped down to find the owner of this big farm. A soft meow greeted him. He bent over and scooped up a barn cat that wove between his feet. “Who are you?”

  “That’s Buzz.”

  Chris looked up to see a tall, muscular, middle-aged Amish man facing him. “Amos Lapp?”

  The man nodded. “Are you the fellow sent to me by the manager of the hardware store? Chris Yoder?”

  Chris nodded. “How did a cat get a name like Buzz?”

  “I always let my children name the animals. My youngest daughter went through a stage when she was naming every animal names that sounded like sounds.”

  “Onomatopoeia.”

  “That’s it! That’s it exactly!” Amos laughed. “I couldn’t come up with that word if my life depended on it.”

  Chris set Buzz on the ground and reached out a hand to shake Amos’s. “I was told at the hardware store that you needed some help with fieldwork. The manager, Bud, said you’d had some heart surgery.”

  “You heard right,” Amos said. “I had some serious surgery awhile back and there are limitations as to what I can do in the fields.”

  “I’ve had a lot of experience with growing crops.” Chris looked over the fields. He could see that the corn tassles were drying out, which meant the corn was about ready to pick. The third cutting of hay needed to get done before the predicted rainstorm at the end of the week. “Should I get to work on the hay? Or the corn?”

  “Not so fast!” Amos grinned. “Though I like the way you think. Can you tell me a little about yourself?”

  This was the part Chris dreaded. He kept his gaze on the fields. “What would you like to know?”

  “What brings you to Stoney Ridge?”

  “I need a job.” Chris didn’t mean to sound rude, but he didn’t want to volunteer anything he didn’t need to. The less people knew about him and his little sister, the better.

  Amos watched him for a while. A long while. Then, to Chris’s relief, all that Amos said was, “Let’s give it a day’s trial, then.” He put his straw hat back on his head. “When you hear the dinner bell clang, come up to the house and join my wife and daughter and me for lunch.”

  “I brought my own lunch. I’ll be fine.” That was a lie. His first lie. He didn’t have a lunch. But he didn’t want to get chummy with Amos Lapp and his family. For now, it was better to keep his distance.

  Amos Lapp shrugged. “Suit yourself.”

  Chris chanced a look at him. “Tools for haying in the barn?”

  “Yes. Back ro
om.”

  Chris nodded. “I’ll go get started.” He hurried to the barn before Amos Lapp thought of anything more to ask him.

  A single brown horse grazed under the shade of an oak tree, and a bright flash of blue and orange darted across the road—a bluebird. It was going to be another hot, humid day. Mary Kate’s face felt beet red. A bead of sweat dripped down her back. She slowed the scooter as she rounded the bend in the road that led to the schoolhouse. The door of the schoolhouse was wide open. The school board members were already there, waiting for her. Her stomach twisted into a tight knot. This was a terrible thing. A terrible, terrible thing.

  She set her red scooter against the building, told Doozy to stay, took a deep breath, and walked into the schoolhouse. At the sound of her arrival, the men stopped talking and looked up. Orin Stoltzfus, Wayne Zook, Allen King. She knew each of these men—had known them all her life. Yet right now, she felt like she was being judged and came up lacking. Orin Stoltzfus stood up. He had the most experience on the school board. School board members were voted in and served a three-year term. Each year, an old board member finished his term and a new member was voted in.

  Orin gave her a warm smile, showing the gap in his front teeth. “Good morning, Mary Kate. So glad you offered to step in for Alice.”

  Offered? Offered?!

  Fern! This is all your doing, she thought for the hundredth time. “Just how long do you think Alice will need some relief?” M.K. planned to drop by Alice’s later today with a loaf of freshly baked bread. A peace offering. “A few days?”