Chapter 1
The delivery truck rattled to a stop outside Cartwright's General Store. Harry Blunt killed the engine and grabbed his clipboard, eyeing the five boxes of overpriced chocolates in the back. He knew Herman the shopkeeper would mark them up triple and sell them to tourists as “authentic Pennsylvania Dutch treats.”
Harry went to the back of the truck just as an Amish woman came out of the store. She wore the traditional dark dress and white prayer kapp. Their eyes met as she stepped outside—she was elderly, with weathered features and something else.
For a moment, neither moved. Her dark eyes held his with an intensity that seemed to bore straight through him. He gave her a nod, and she returned the greeting with what might have been a smile—or a grimace—before she hurried away.
Harry turned his attention back to his work. “Herman!” Harry called, hefting the first box into the store. “Got your chocolates.”
He carried the box inside and set it on the worn counter. The store felt wrong—not just empty, but abandoned. The usual sounds were missing: no radio playing in the back, no rustling of papers, no familiar grunt of acknowledgment. Herman should have been there, and if not Herman, then Brian should've been manning the register. The silence pressed against his eardrums like a living thing.
“Herman? You here?”
He made three more trips, his calls growing sharper with each unanswered shout. The fluorescent lights hummed overhead, casting harsh shadows between the aisles of canned goods and tourist trinkets. By the time Harry carried in the final box, sweat beaded his forehead despite the cold seeping through the old windows.
“Hello? I need you to sign this so I can get going.” Harry wiped his palms on his jeans and approached the swinging door to the back room. Something made him hesitate—maybe it was the complete stillness, or the way the door hung slightly ajar when Herman always kept it latched. “Herman, I'm coming back there.”
He pushed through the door and immediately knew something was very, very wrong.
Then he saw them: the boots. Good leather work boots pointed at the ceiling at an unnatural angle, toes aimed toward the bare bulb that swayed gently overhead.
Harry's chest tightened. His mind tried to process what he was seeing, to make it into something innocent—maybe Herman had fallen, maybe he was hurt, maybe this was all some ridiculous mistake. But as his eyes traveled up from those boots, taking in the still legs, the twisted torso, the way the arms were flung wide among scattered feed sacks and overturned mason jars, reality crashed down on him like a physical blow.
Herman Cartwright was dead.
Really, truly, unmistakably dead.
Harry stumbled backward, his hip catching the doorframe hard enough to send pain shooting down his leg. His hands flew up instinctively, as if he could block out what he'd just seen. But when he squeezed his eyes shut, the image was still there—burned into his mind.
No, no, no. This couldn't be happening.
He forced himself to look again, hoping desperately that his eyes had played tricks on him. But there was no mistake. Herman lay motionless on the floorboards. His face was turned away, but Harry could see enough to know the man would never complain about late deliveries again.
The room seemed to spin. Harry gripped the doorframe to steady himself, his knuckles white against the painted wood. His heart hammered so hard he could feel it in his throat, in his temples, behind his eyes.
And then, like a bolt of lightning, the Amish woman's face flashed through his memory. Those frightened, knowing eyes. The way she'd looked at him as if measuring whether he could be trusted. The hurried way she'd fled.
Harry fumbled for the wall phone with shaking hands, his fingers so unsteady he had to dial twice before getting it right. The ancient rotary dial seemed to take forever to spin back into place.
“911, what's your emergency?”
“This is Harry Blunt,” he managed, his voice coming out as a croak. “I'm at Cartwright's General Store on Main Street. Herman Cartwright, the owner of the store, is... he's dead.”
“Sir, are you certain? Sometimes people can appear—“
“He's dead,” Harry interrupted, surprising himself with the force in his voice. “I'm sure. Very sure.”
“Can you check for a pulse, sir? Just to be certain?”
Harry's stomach lurched. The thought of touching that still form, of getting close enough to see whatever had happened to Herman's face, made him want to run screaming from the building. But the dispatcher was waiting.
“I... I'll try.”
He crept back to the doorway on unsteady legs, reached down toward Herman's neck. His hand hovered inches from the cold skin, trembling like a leaf in a hurricane. Finally, he forced himself to make contact. Nothing. No warmth, no pulse, no life.
“Nothing,” he reported, jerking his hand back. “He's definitely dead. Trust me on this.”
“Units are on the way, sir. Don't touch anything else and don't leave the scene.”
Harry backed out of the storeroom, positioning himself by the front counter where he could watch both the front door and the swinging door to the back room. His whole body was shaking now, adrenaline coursing through him like electricity. Soon this quiet little store would be crawling with police and paramedics asking questions he didn't have answers to.
But all he could think about was the Amish woman's face—the fear in her dark eyes, the way she'd looked at him as if he might already know her secret. The way she'd hurried away from this place where death was waiting in the back room.
He was pretty sure he'd never forget her face. The face of someone who knew exactly what had happened to Herman Cartwright.
The face of a murderer.
