“Pies? Well, Nora’s the one for pies. I never knew a woman could bake a shoofly pie like Nora, but she’ll take that recipe to her grave, mark my words.” The woman fluttered a hand toward well-laden tables of food. “We have some here. You needn’t go out to the farm.”

Maybe the code of privacy was real. The woman didn’t seem angry, but she also didn’t seem ready to fork over GPS coordinates. Still, Tessa couldn’t give up now. “I need a lot of pies—several dozen. I’d like to place a special order with the Rishels, if they do that sort of thing.”

“That many? Well, I imagine Nora would be grateful for the work. You tell her Esther King sent you.”

Back in the van, she popped a sugar-sweet berry in celebration. Her bit of sleuthing had been remarkably easy. Had she overlooked a career as a private investigator: the solo Charlie’s Angel of Green Ridge, PA? Why go to New York? She’d have all the excitement a person could dream of locating missing persons among the mountains of Pennsylvania.

Repeating the directions in her head, she veered onto Route 45. The Rishels’ farm was also located out Old Cowan Road, but it lay several miles beyond Sarah Stoltzfus’ quilt shop.

Watch for the new Mennonite church on your left and the round barn on your right, then cross the metal bridge over Buffalo Creek. Rishels’ lane is just beyond a mess of honeysuckle—don’t blink or you’ll miss it.

She navigated west into deep farm country, where newly tilled fields stretched to forested ridges. When she moved to the city, she’d miss this landscape. Speckled with quaint churches and farmhouses and crisscrossed by meandering brooks, the land had a quiet, rolling beauty—a small and peaceful splendor.

Wheels of countless buggies rutted Old Cowan Road like the thoroughfares of the Oregon Trail. She passed in turn Sarah Stoltzfus’ pink geraniums and the “new Mennonite church,” which honestly looked pretty darned old. Despite being jounced until her teeth rattled, she spotted the round barn on her right and ticked another landmark off the list. She was close now.

“Raise Plows” declared a sign on a low, metal bridge. The van slalomed over the grooved surface, and she gripped the wheel to keep on course. A wide creek, still swollen from spring rains, rushed below. Sure enough, on the far side of the bridge, nearly obscured by a tangled mass of honeysuckle, opened a narrow lane.

She made the turn, following the winding dirt lane until a pristine farmhouse came into view. So, this was where he lived. Correction: where they lived. A gray-topped buggy stood in the shadow of a deep, red barn, and dark fields, recently plowed, extended on either side of the home. She steeled herself. Could she really crash an Amish farm?