Toxic Toffee

by Amanda Flower

  I thought it was best to change the subject from marriage and weddings. “I saw Aiden on official police business.”

  Charlotte’s mouth made an O shape.

  “What about?” Maami asked.

  “Stephen Raber. It looks like he was murdered.”

  “I thought he had a heart attack. That was what Margot said when she bustled in here right before we closed yesterday.”

  “I think that’s what Margot wants to have had happened, but Aiden told me it looks like Stephen was murdered. It seems Stephen was poisoned.”

  Charlotte gasped, but surprisingly my grandmother didn’t appear nearly as shocked as her young cousin. I wondered if it was because she’d expected that Stephen would be murdered or because she was becoming accustomed to murders in the little village of Harvest. I thought that either reason was a bad one.

  “Aiden just told you this? Usually he is more closemouthed about crime,” Maami said.

  That was an understatement. “Usually he is,” I said. “But last night the murder investigation came to me. Eli Raber, Stephen’s son, stopped by my house and asked me to solve his father’s death. He said that Daniel Keim told him to come see me.” I didn’t bring up the threatening notes. I knew Aiden wouldn’t want to let that information out. I trusted my cousin and my grandmother. However, Charlotte had been known to say too much when she was excited, and murder was something that certainly could get her talking.

  “You helped Daniel at Christmas with a similar situation,” Maami said. “It makes sense that he would tell his friend to see you when he needed help.”

  “True. I only wish the Amish trusted the police more. Aiden is a good man. They should know that he wouldn’t do anything to hurt them. They should go to him, not me.”

  “We know that.” My grandmother set her bowl of fluff on the island. “But the sheriff is still the man in charge of the department, and Aiden has to take directions from him. Until that changes, I think very few Amish would be likely to go to the police directly.”

  “Are you going to help Eli?” Charlotte asked.

  I nodded. “I said I would, but I also told him that I had to talk to Aiden about it. Eli agreed to that just as long as he didn’t have to talk to Aiden directly.”

  “Aiden won’t like that,” my grandmother said knowingly.

  I nodded. “He didn’t. I think he will try to speak to Eli. I don’t know if he will get anywhere.” I moved across the room and removed a giant block of chocolate from the other fridge. The least I could do was get to carving while we talked. “Charlotte, can you help me lift this next piece onto the island?” There was an even larger block of chocolate at the bottom of the fridge. The cold chocolate would be much easier to carve than it would be if it was warm. I would carve the rabbit’s ears, nose, eyes, and paws out of blocks of chocolate. However the body itself would be made of Rice Krispies treats. If it was made out of a solid block of chocolate, it would be too heavy to move and we didn’t have enough chocolate in the shop for a six-foot rabbit as well as everything else we needed to make from chocolate before Easter. “Also, it seems I’m rooming with a rabbit.”

  Charlotte helped me lift the block of chocolate onto the island at the count of three. When the chocolate landed on the stainless-steel countertop with a resounding thud, she asked, “What do you mean when you say you’re rooming with a rabbit? You speak in Englisch riddles. At times, they can be so difficult to follow.”

  “This one isn’t a riddle. It is a fact.” I went on to tell them about Eli leaving Puff-the-Bunny with me. I opened the drawer under the island where I kept all my best knives for carving. One of those knives, a very long and curved one, had been a Christmas present from Aiden. When I saw the knife in the drawer, my heart constricted a little. I wanted to solve this murder, but I didn’t want to be at odds with Aiden over it. I hoped he would see that we could work the case together.

  I removed one of the smaller knives to start and etched lines into the giant piece of chocolate where I planned to make large cuts. “What can the two of you tell me about Stephen? Was he well liked? Did anyone have an issue with him?”

  “Everyone loved Stephen.” Maami shook her head and repeated what Penny had told me last night. “I can’t think of a single person who would have a reason to want to hurt him. He was the kindest of men. You saw him with his rabbits. He was so gentle, a gentle giant.”

  “I didn’t know him well,” Charlotte added. “But he was always kind to me. Even when I decided to leave my old Amish district and join Clara’s, he didn’t ask me why I changed or when I was going to be baptized as so many other Amish do. All he said to me was, ‘Everyone has to do what’s best for him, but you will have to live with the results.’”

  I held my knife suspended in the air. Everyone has to do what’s best for him, but you will have to live with the results. Knowing what I knew about the threatening notes Stephen had been receiving, I believed he was referring to something in his own past rather than Charlotte’s decision to change districts.

  There was a small frown on my grandmother’s face. I knew she must be wondering when Charlotte would be baptized and make a commitment to the church. Charlotte was twenty-one, and by Amish standards, long past due to make up her mind. My grandmother didn’t speak a word about it though, and it didn’t seem that Charlotte noticed the crease in Maami’s forehead.

  I sliced my knife into the chocolate. I looked from my grandmother to Charlotte. “Have either of you heard any murmurings about something bad in Stephen’s past? Maybe when he was a young man?”

  Maami cocked her head. “What do you mean, child?”

  I glanced over at Charlotte, who was watching me intently, and knew I shouldn’t say anything more. I swallowed. “I just wondered what he was like as a young man. That’s all.”

  Maami thought about this for a moment. “Nee, not Stephen. If I remember right, he was baptized very young. He wasn’t even fifteen when he made the choice to join the church.” She glanced again at Charlotte, who was pouring her marshmallow mixture into an icing bag, which she would use to fill the chocolate eggshells that she had already made for the marshmallow eggs. “He’s always been kind and polite. Very friendly.”

  “What about his family?” I asked.

  “He is a widower. I think his wife died two or three years ago. Cancer,” Maami said. “His wife Carmela was an expert quilter and usually brought home a grand prize from the county fair for one of her beautiful quilts every year. Her death was a great loss to the community.”

  “I’m sorry, Maami,” I said, and made another cut into the piece of chocolate in front of me.

  She smiled at me as she slid her bowl across the island to Charlotte. “If you want to know more about the Raber family, I suggest you talk to Carmela’s quilting circle. I’ve never been a member of the circle myself because I much prefer to knit, but those would be the ladies who were closest to Carmela and they would know the most about her family.”

  “That’s a good idea,” I said. “Do you know where I can find them?”

  Charlotte began to fill a second icing bag with marshmallow from my grandmother’s bowl.

  Maami watched her young cousin for a moment before she spoke. “You could ask Ruth Yoder. She is a member of the circle.”

  I grimaced. Ruth Yoder was the uptight and persnickety wife of my grandmother’s bishop. Because of Bishop Yoder’s advanced age, Ruth was able to wield more power in the community than she normally would in an Amish district. She had been highly critical when I came to live in Harvest. She didn’t like seeing an Englischer working in an Amish business even if I had every right to be there. However, if Ruth was my ticket to learning more about Stephen, then I would have to take it. However painful it might be.

  “Where can I find Ruth?” I asked.

  “I imagine she will be wandering around the square at Easter Days today,” Maami said. “She wasn’t very happy about the idea of the festival.”

  That came as no s
urprise. Margot and the bishop’s wife were constantly at odds when it came to events happening in the village. The funniest thing was that if the two powerhouses combined their strong wills, they could very well take over Holmes County altogether, if not the entire world. The very thought of it terrified me, so I was happy with their being on either side of every issue the village faced.

  Chapter 13

  “If Stephen was poisoned, how was it done?” Charlotte asked as she carefully filled the hollow chocolate eggs with marshmallow.

  The sight of all that sugar made my teeth hurt, but it didn’t change the fact that I wanted to dip my spoon into the marshmallow bowl again.

  “Toffee,” I said finally. “Someone put lily of the valley in a piece of toffee and he ate it.”

  Charlotte made a face. “But that’s poisonous. Every Amish child is taught to stay away from it in the woods.”

  I nodded, regretting that I had said anything since the poisoning wasn’t common knowledge yet. “Which is the reason that Aiden is almost certain it was murder. The coroner will run a toxicology report to make sure the lily of the valley was what really killed the poor man.”

  Charlotte shivered. “How terrible. What a loss. I wonder what will happen to the rabbits. Every time you saw Stephen, he had a rabbit with him.”

  “Eli will take over the farm,” my grandmother said. “He will want to fill his father’s shoes. It is the Amish way. As the only son, he was destined to get the rabbit farm eventually. He will take it on without argument, and he’s of age.”

  “How old is he exactly?” I asked. “I guessed twenty.”

  “A little older than that,” Maami said. “I think he’s at least twenty-five. He was already over twenty when his mother died and that was a few years ago.”

  My grandmother, Charlotte, and I worked in silence until the shop opened at nine. It was the middle of the week, and even with Easter Days going on across the street, traffic was light in the shop this early in the day, so I decided to take a break from carving the white chocolate rabbit, which was coming together quite nicely, I thought, to see if I could track down Ruth Yoder.

  Midmorning, Maami sent me across the street to the village square with three heavy boxes of candy that Swissmen Sweets was donating to the day’s festivities. I think we were sending over enough chocolate rabbits for every child in the village and maybe half of the adults too.

  The actual Easter Days celebrations started at noon each day. It worked out well for Margot because the local schools’ spring break was Easter week as well. By the time I crossed the street with my candy offerings, there were dozens of English families with weary-looking parents who already appeared ready for spring break to be over, and it was only Wednesday.

  “Bailey!” Margot called from the top step of the gazebo. Fortunately, she didn’t appear to have her bullhorn on her, but I heard her loud and clear without it. “Have you brought the candy?”

  I lifted the boxes a little higher so that she could see.

  “Wonderful!” She hurried down the steps. “Over here, I have Easter baskets waiting where you can put the chocolate rabbits.” She guided me around to the back side of the gazebo, where two cafeteria-long tables stood covered with dozens of plastic Easter baskets. There were even more Easter baskets on the grass behind the table. The baskets were full of candy and small toys. “Aren’t these great?” she asked, puffing her chest out with pride. “It’s all donations too, just like your chocolate rabbits. We’re selling them at Easter Days to raise money for the village.”

  “What’s the fund-raiser for this time?” I asked. It seemed that Margot had been spearheading one fund-raiser or another the whole time I had lived in Harvest. Honestly, I thought her talents were wasted on our little town. She should have worked on a presidential fund-raising campaign or something like that in Washington, DC. She had an uncanny ability to convince people to part with their money. It certainly worked on me—I was donating hundreds of dollars’ worth of chocolate to her and I didn’t even know where the money would go.

  “We want to make the downtown area more inviting, so we’d like to add a small pond with a waterfall. It will be absolutely lovely,” Margot said.

  “You are having so many events on the green nowadays. Won’t that impact the amount of space?”

  “Goodness no, we wouldn’t put it in the green. We need every green inch of the square that we can get. We plan to put it in the park across the street by the new playground.”

  “Ahh,” I said. The new playground was another fund-raising initiative that Margot had spearheaded.

  “Go ahead and put those rabbits in the baskets,” she said. “I think we already have a line of customers who would like to buy them.” She smiled at the cluster of people patiently waiting not too far away from us.

  I got to work tucking a cellophane-wrapped chocolate bunny in each waiting basket. As soon as I had the first table done, people were lined up and ready to buy.

  Margot set to work collecting money from the parents buying baskets for their children. When there was a lull in the number of people buying baskets, Margot said, “Shouldn’t you go back to the shop and work on the toffee bunny? You said it would be done tomorrow.”

  I was realizing I should have given myself more time. I sighed. There was no point in correcting her now. I would just have to work late at the shop.

  “I’ll head back in just a minute.” I paused. “Did you happen to see Ruth Yoder anywhere?”

  Margot patted the top of her curls as if to make sure they were still there and scrunched up her face. “Why? What did she say to you about me?”

  I stepped back. “She didn’t say anything about you. My grandmother just said she’s seen Ruth around the square, and I wanted to talk to her.”

  “Oh,” she said, somewhat mollified. “The last I saw of her, she was muttering about something and walking toward the church.” She shook her head. “There is no pleasing that woman.”

  Some would say the same about Margot, but I stopped myself from telling her that. I placed the last chocolate bunny into the waiting basket, which reminded me of the live rabbits that were still on the square. “Who’s been taking care of the rabbits that are here?” I asked.

  She handed another customer a basket and collected the money. “Stephen’s son, Eli, was here this morning to feed and water them. I haven’t seen him since. I have another volunteer keeping an eye on the rabbit pen just to make sure that everything is running smoothly.” She frowned. “I do hope that Eli will be back soon because I have been asked by a couple of families if they could adopt one of the rabbits, but without Eli here to sell the rabbits, I had to put them off.” Her frown deepened as if the more she thought about this, the more irritated by it she became. “I’m sure he’s upset over his father’s heart attack, but life must go on.”

  I grimaced at her cold attitude to Stephen’s death. “You think it was a heart attack?”

  She studied me. “Is there something you’re not telling me, Bailey King?”

  Uh-oh. I was certain that if Margot didn’t already know that Stephen’s death had probably been an act of foul play, Aiden didn’t want her to know. “Nothing official.”

  “Saying ‘nothing official’ doesn’t mean you don’t know anything. It just says that you won’t say what you know.” She pressed her lips together.

  “Oh, look,” I said. “Here comes another group of families. I’m sure they will all want Easter baskets. I had better leave you to it!” I scurried away from her. I wasn’t ashamed to say I might have been running.

  “I’ll find you and find out what you know, Bailey King. This village isn’t that big. Remember that,” she called after me.

  I groaned. I knew that was true. If Margot wanted to find me, she would. There weren’t many places to hide in Harvest.

  Chapter 14

  After leaving Margot and her Easter baskets, I had no luck finding Ruth Yoder. She might have been by the church earlier in the day, but she
most certainly wasn’t there now.

  Instead of the bishop’s wife, I stumbled upon Juliet, who was planting flowers around the church. Jethro was following her, digging up with his snout as many flowers as she planted. Dirt covered the polka-dotted pig’s face. Juliet didn’t seem to notice or mind the havoc that Jethro was wreaking, so I didn’t bring it to her attention.

  Juliet hopped up and brushed dirt from her hands. “Bailey, I’m so glad you’re here. I was meaning to stop by the candy shop today to talk things over with you.”

  I winced. “Things?” I asked. Usually when Juliet had a pressing need to speak with me about anything, it was either concerning the wedding that Aiden and I were so not planning, or she needed me to pig-sit Jethro. Neither of these sounded too appealing at the moment since I was rabbit-sitting already, and I never wanted to discuss wedding plans with Juliet for fear of encouraging her delusion.

  “Yes.” Her Carolina accent sounded more pronounced, so I knew she was upset. “I wanted to talk to you again about the break-in at the church. Aiden is so preoccupied with what happened to Stephen Raber, he’s no longer worried about what happened here at the church. I can understand that. Stephen was a nice man, and now he’s gone, but the church and Reverend Brook both need to be protected. This is the Lord’s house and he is a man of God!”

  “I know Aiden hasn’t forgotten,” I said, coming to my boyfriend’s defense.

  “I know that’s true. My son is the finest sheriff’s deputy there ever was.” She removed her polka-dotted gardening gloves. The fact that the gloves were speckled in multicolored dots didn’t surprise me in the least. “But I know that you have a nose for crime too. Maybe you could take a look at the kitchen. You will bring a different perspective than Aiden had. A woman’s eye is a valuable tool.”

  Now that she mentioned it, I did want to see the church kitchen and take a look at that minor crime scene. Part of me thought it still might be related to the murder. Or maybe that was just hopeful thinking, because if toxic toffee was to blame for Stephen’s death, I most certainly didn’t want anyone to think that such a horrible thing had been concocted in my shop.