Return to Grace. Karen Harper

a sliced window screen. Hannah and her friend Sarah, next farm over, had sneaked out in their rumspringa years to listen to the radio and fool around. But this news upset him, and not because he’d been indirectly asked if that ladder and the cut screen was his doing. If it wasn’t him, who was it? Could Josh have done it and not told Naomi? Once Linc Armstrong found out about it, he’d probably question anyone within miles who had a ladder.

      “Could someone have been trying to break in?” Seth asked, his fork halfway to his mouth. He hadn’t so much as tasted the chicken on biscuits yet, since he’d been making sure Marlena ate well.

      “Naomi’s sure the window wasn’t that way yesterday,” the bishop said. “It could be those nosy reporters with their cameras, not taking no for an answer.”

      Or it could be something worse, Seth almost said. That thought hung in the air while people went back to eating. Finally, Hannah spoke.

      “I don’t want Agent Armstrong trampling all over my private life, but he’s going to have to take a look at the window and the ladder marks.”

      “Right,” Seth put in. “One more thing. He asked me to go with you to the graveyard this afternoon. Not to hear what you tell him, but to pick up the story where I came in. To talk to us about the crime scene.”

      He said no more and tucked into Mrs. Esh’s delicious dinner, though he hardly felt hungry anymore. He’d bet a new barn that part of the reason Agent Armstrong wanted him to go along was so that he could see how he and Hannah would act when they were together. Actually, he’d like to see how they would, too.

      Hannah noted how tense Seth and Agent Armstrong were around each other as they stood under her bedroom window after dinner.

      “Those imprints look identical to your ladder’s feet, Seth,” Armstrong observed as he rose from a squat after a close examination of the imprinted soil between the bare rose canes. He’d already taken photos of the feet of the ladder, the cut screen and the scratches he called “jimmy marks” on the bedroom windowsill upstairs.

      Hannah hugged her cloak tighter around herself with her good arm as she, Seth, Naomi and Daad watched the agent’s every move. His eyes had seemed to take in everything inside and outside the Esh home, just like he tried to see inside people’s heads.

      “Of course,” Agent Armstrong added, “whoever it was could easily have borrowed your roofing ladder, though I don’t see any footprints back there but yours.”

      Hannah watched as the two very different men looked at each other, eye-to-eye. Neither blinked or flinched.

      “It’s the why that will lead us to the who,” Seth said.

      “Lead us? But I get your drift. Motive. Easier said than done, but I’ll get to the bottom of it,” Armstrong countered.

      “But what I don’t like,” Seth went on, “and what you didn’t mention is that if someone was trying to get to Hannah, he had to know what bedroom she was in, had to be some sort of insider. Bishop Esh and I checked, though I don’t think you did, to be sure no other windows in the house had a random cut screen or screwdriver marks.”

      “Who said it was a screwdriver?”

      “I— We, especially her family, just want Hannah protected,” Seth insisted.

      Bishop Esh put his shoulder between the two men to make them step farther apart. “I’m going to buggy into the hardware store in town,” he told them, “get a new screen and bolts for both Hannah’s windows and extra ones for the windows and doors downstairs. Hannah told her mother in the hospital that she could not think of anyone who was her enemy, but I know Agent Armstrong has considered that, too, Seth.”

      “Daad,” Hannah put in, “I’m sorry to cause so much trouble again for y—”

      “Ya, you have, my girl!” he said, frowning at first before he cleared his throat. Hannah jolted at his tone. Since she’d been back, she’d seen Daad had a bee in his bonnet over her leaving and defying him. Maybe he still resented the way her hair looked. She’d tried to just ignore and smooth over the tension between them. After all, she could hardly blame him after what she’d put him, as her father and as bishop, through. “Just be grateful,” he went on in a calmer voice, “you are where you should be now, that’s for sure.” He shot a side glance at Seth she could not read. “You two go on now, help Agent Armstrong.”

      Though Hannah could tell Seth didn’t want to get in the black car Agent Armstrong drove, she got in the backseat when he opened the door for her. “Watch your head,” he told her, and put a hand on her hair, then leaned over her to fasten her seat belt, evidently so she wouldn’t have to do it one-handed. She smelled a tart pine scent on him, and his hand touched her hip hard through her cape and skirt as he clicked the belt closed.

      “You want to ride shotgun, Seth?” he asked. “You know, up front?”

      “I’ll ride with Hannah,” he said, and walked around to sit next to her in the rear seat behind the cagelike divider that separated the front seats from the back. It was, she thought, a wide seat. Agent Armstrong was across the screen, but Seth seemed so far away from her.

      “Listen,” Armstrong said as he drove slowly out of the Esh driveway past clothes blowing on the line in the brisk November day, “I’ve been calling both of you by your first names, so I’d appreciate it if you’d just call me Linc. My dad named me Lincoln for our Civil War president, Honest Abe, and that’s my motto—straight talk, full disclosure. I expect that from both of you. We’re working together on this, okay?”

      “Fine,” Hannah said only. She did want to help in any way she could, including getting along with this man. She looked at Seth’s frowning profile.

      “Fine with me,” Seth muttered. “You going to make straight talk a policy with everyone you question, such as Josh Troyer, about whether he used my ladder last night?”

      Hannah saw Armstrong’s eyes dart toward Seth in the rearview mirror. “One step ahead of me, Seth. No, not with everyone, just key witnesses, and I don’t figure Naomi’s fiancé is one, but I’ve looked into him, too. The Troyers are a wealthy family, aren’t they, with owning the big grain elevator and that historic grist mill? Since they offer tours of the mill, I’m not sure if they’d think publicity of a murder around here would be good or bad for business.”

      Hannah and Seth exchanged lightning-quick glances. This man was suspicious of everyone and considered every angle. If he thought Josh or the Troyers could be involved, anyone could be on his list.

      Neither Seth nor Hannah responded. Linc Armstrong’s sharp eyes—like those of the eagle on his badge, she thought—glanced at them in the rearview mirror now and then. Could her feeling of being watched just be a reaction to his FBI surveillance and suspicious nature, no matter how friendly he seemed on the surface? She felt so torn about him, both guarded yet grateful.

      When he pulled the car to a stop, almost exactly where her friends had parked at the graveyard on Halloween night, Linc said, “Seth, I’ll ask you to stay put until I’ve had Hannah walk me through things, then I’ll have you approach and enter the grounds just as you did that night.”

      If “stay put” meant stay in the car, Seth ignored that order. He got out and stood near the fence, festooned with fluttering yellow plastic tape with the big, black words repeated over and over: Police Crime Scene Do Not Enter Police Crime Scene Do Not Enter … It was a good thing, she thought, that no one in the church had died right now. Her thoughts went to Kevin and Tiffany, to her other worldly friends who had not been hit by bullets that night. She wanted to write letters to their families. She couldn’t call, because Linc had confiscated her phone for now; a phone she’d need to give up, if she stayed here….

      Feeling Seth’s gaze burning into her back from where he stood at the fence, she ducked under the tape Linc lifted for her, and they went into the graveyard.

      “I’m sorry I didn’t get here sooner,” Jack told