Toxic Toffee

by Amanda Flower

  Finally, I reached my little house. I walked up the drive to the back door. I usually entered the house through the kitchen. I walked into the backyard and was passing the unattached garage when a hand sprang out from seemingly nowhere and spun me around. Before I knew what was happening, my face was pressed up against the rough wood siding of the garage. “I want those notes back. Where are they?”

  I was pressed up so hard against the rough siding, I couldn’t talk.

  “Where are the notes?” the raspy voice asked again.

  “I don’t have them,” I gasped.

  “Don’t lie to me.”

  I couldn’t breathe. “I . . .” The man was pushing so hard against me that I thought my ribs might crack. I couldn’t get the words out.

  “What?” the voice wanted to know.

  “—Can’t talk,” I rasped.

  He loosened the pressure on me just a bit.

  I coughed. “I really don’t have them.”

  “I don’t believe you.”

  “It’s true. I gave them to the police.”

  “You were instructed not to give them to the police. They were never supposed to go to the police.”

  “I’m not that great at following directions.” I pushed back, and immediately regretted it because he tweaked the arm that he was bending behind my back just a little bit more. Pain radiated out from my elbow.

  “You get those notes back from the police or you will be sorry.”

  “How am I supposed to do that? They are part of a police investigation now, part of the evidence.”

  “You’re a smart girl. You’ll think of something.” He yanked my arm again and I bit down on my lip to keep from crying out in pain. “Don’t make me come here again.”

  “Even if I got them back, I don’t know who you are. How would I even give them to you?”

  He laughed. “You think you can trick me into showing myself to you? How dumb do you think I am? You get the notes, and I will find you.” He pressed hard on my back, pushing himself off me. “I want those notes. If you want your grandmother to remain in good health, you will get them for me.”

  “Bailey! Bailey King! Are you all right?” Penny’s voice rang out in the night.

  The man pushed me hard against the garage, and I thought my ribs would crack.

  “Bailey!”

  Then, just when I thought my back would snap in two, the pressure ended and the man was gone.

  I turned around and slid down the side of the garage. I cradled my arm against my body. Would he really hurt Maami? I shivered. Why wouldn’t he? He’d attacked me tonight, and presumably, he was also the one who’d murdered Stephen Raber. I didn’t think he would have many qualms.

  “Bailey!” Penny called again, a little more urgently.

  I saw a swath of light move across the backyard.

  “Over here,” I croaked.

  The flashlight beam hit me directly in the eyes. “What on earth are you doing on the ground like that, girl?”

  My entire body shook, and I started to cry.

  Chapter 23

  “Oh, honey,” Penny said, kneeling in front of me. “What happened to you?”

  “A man jumped me.”

  “Jumped you? Here? In Harvest?” she said with disbelief. “No one gets jumped in Harvest. This isn’t the big city.”

  “But it happened,” I said, trying to stand up.

  Penny helped me to my feet. “I’ll call the police.”

  “No,” I croaked, willing my voice to go back to normal. “I’ll call Aiden. The man is gone now, and it would be better to call Aiden directly.”

  She clicked her tongue as if she wasn’t happy with this idea but picked up my purse and helped me to the back door of the house. When my hands were shaking too badly to unlock the door, Penny took the keys from my hand and unlocked it for me.

  We stepped into the kitchen, and I closed and locked the door behind us. Puff hopped over to me.

  Penny clicked her tongue again. “You go sit in the living room, and I will bring you some tea and an ice pack.”

  “The tea is—” I started to tell her where the tea was in the kitchen.

  “Hush,” she reprimanded. “Go sit down and call Aiden. I know my way around the kitchen.”

  I nodded and shuffled into the next room. After I settled on the loveseat, I made the call. “Aiden,” was all I managed to say.

  “Where are you?”

  “At home.”

  “Are you safe?” he asked. He sounded fully awake even though I knew I must have woken him up.

  My voice hitched with a sob before I could smooth it over.

  “I’ll be there in two minutes.”

  “Y-you don’t have to come here. I can tell you what happened over the phone.”

  “I’ll be there in two minutes,” he repeated, and ended the call.

  I struggled to my feet because I knew Aiden would be true to his word. My arm ached, but overall, I was physically all right. Emotionally, not so much. The threat against my grandmother had shaken me.

  Penny bustled into the living room with Puff hopping behind her. She had a steaming teacup in one hand and dripping ice cubes wrapped in a dish rag in the other. She spun around as she looked for a place to set the teacup. The only table in my front room was the small dining table. She clicked her tongue and set it there. “I would like to put it closer to you, but it seems that I can’t.”

  “The table is fine,” I said.

  “I looked in the freezer for some frozen peas or an ice pack to put on your face, but all I found was ice.” She handed the dish rag of ice to me.

  It dripped on my legs. “I haven’t had time to go shopping since I got back from New York. I mean shopping other than for what Puff needed.”

  “Yes,” she said. “I see the rabbit is well stocked now.”

  My arm throbbed, and the cheek that had been pressed up against the garage stung. I placed the ice on my cheek, hoping there wouldn’t be a giant bruise or black eye on my face in the morning.

  “Thank you, Penny, for everything.”

  “It’s no trouble—it’s the neighborly thing to do.”

  I adjusted the rag on my cheek and winced. “How did you know that I might be in trouble?”

  She flushed. “Oh well, I’m a light sleeper, and I thought I saw some shadows out of the back window of my house.”

  So she had been watching my house. Maybe to see when I came home and what I was up to. That would bother me more if she hadn’t just saved me from further injury or even being killed.

  I heard Aiden before I saw him. He had his siren blaring as he came down the street. I stood up. I wanted to be the one to meet Aiden at the door. I didn’t want the first person he saw to be Penny.

  Aiden was making his way up the walk when I opened the door.

  With no other greeting, he asked, “What happened to your cheek?”

  I touched my cheek and felt the raw skin there. The skin was clammy and damp from the ice. “Is there a bruise?”

  “It’s all red. It looks like a rug burn.”

  I grimaced.

  “Why are you wet?”

  “Ice.” I stepped back to let him inside the house.

  “Deputy Brody, I’m so glad you’re here,” Penny said.

  Aiden pulled up short when he saw Penny standing there.

  “Aiden,” I said. “This is my next-door neighbor Penny Lehman. She came to my aid tonight.”

  “Oh, it was just the neighborly thing to do,” Penny said modestly, but she had her chin tilted up with pride. “I could tell that Bailey was in trouble, so of course, I came running.”

  Aiden looked from me to Penny and back again. “What happened exactly?”

  Before I could answer, Penny said, “Why, didn’t Bailey tell you that she was attacked! Right in her own backyard. A man jumped her!”

  I inwardly groaned.

  “Jumped her?” Aiden asked.

  “People can get jumped in Holmes Count
y just like any other place,” I said.

  “I know that,” Aiden said quietly, and I shivered.

  “Penny, did you see who attacked Bailey?”

  She sighed. “I’m afraid not. I just heard a commotion from the backyard. The voices were low, but I had a sense there was trouble. Whoever it was ran away before I made it there with my flashlight.”

  Aiden nodded. “Thank you for all you did tonight. Bailey and I are both in your debt.” He glanced at me, then back to Penny. “I think you should go home and rest after your ordeal. If it’s all right with you, I’m going to send a deputy to your house.”

  “Oh,” she said excitedly. “I’m happy to help any way that I can. I will go home and make some notes about the evening to avoid forgetting anything.”

  “Good plan,” Aiden said in his most cop-like voice, and then to my great amazement, I watched as he trundled Penny out the door. He stood outside in my yard until he saw she’d made it safely inside her own house.

  When we walked back into my living room, Aiden’s face was stormy, and I knew I was in for an earful.

  Aiden closed the front door. “Do you have a first-aid kit?”

  I nodded. “It’s under the sink in the bathroom.” I started to get up from the loveseat.

  “Sit down,” he ordered.

  “I can get it. I’m not helpless.” I stood.

  “No one said you were.” He sighed. “Sit down, please. I’ll go get it and you can tell me what happened while we get you fixed up.”

  I sat back down on the small loveseat with a thud. Normally, I would protest to prove how tough I was, but I had to admit I wasn’t feeling all that tough at the moment. All I could think about was the threat against my grandmother and what might have happened if Penny hadn’t investigated the noise. I jumped out of my seat and went to the window. How did I know the man was really gone and that he wasn’t headed to Swissmen Sweets right that very moment to attack my grandmother?

  I stepped away from the window. “Aiden!”

  Aiden came back into the living room carrying the red first-aid kit. “What? Did something happen?”

  “I hope not.” I went on to tell him about the threat to my grandmother. “If I don’t get those notes back from you, I know he’ll hurt her.”

  “Bailey, you know I can’t give you those notes back even if I wanted to. They are evidence in a homicide.”

  “But Maami . . .”

  “We’ll keep a close eye on your grandmother and you. Let’s verify that she is all right. I’ll send Little over there to be a night guard for her and Charlotte.”

  I frowned. “I know my grandmother, and I know that she won’t like having an Englischer who’s practically a stranger in her home.”

  “Little can stay in the candy shop. If he’s on guard, he shouldn’t be sleeping in any case.”

  “I’m going with you if you plan to check on my grandmother tonight. I don’t want you or Little scaring her or Charlotte. It would be better for me to go inside the shop first and make sure they are all right. I’m sure they’re asleep.”

  Aiden nodded. “That’s a good plan. Go pack a bag. I’ll be waiting for you down here.”

  “Pack?” I asked.

  “You’re spending the night at Swissmen Sweets.”

  “But—”

  “You’re spending the night at Swissmen Sweets or you’re spending the night with me. You aren’t staying here alone.”

  Puff knocked into the boxes that corralled her in the kitchen as if she was pulling off a jail break. Maybe that was her plan.

  “I’m not completely alone,” I said, nodding in her direction.

  “Rabbits don’t count. You can’t stay here because I would worry about you. I would stay with you here, but I never know when I will be called out. I don’t have enough deputies to put one both here and at Swissmen Sweets.” He pointed at my cheek. “And anyone who could do that to a woman can’t be trusted.”

  “Puff has to come with me.”

  “I expected that,” he said. “Now, pack up. Little should be at the candy shop by now.”

  “Tell him to wait outside until I get there. I don’t want Charlotte and my grandmother to be upset,” I said. I rubbed the back of my neck. This was one of the times when it would be much more helpful if my grandmother had a cell phone or even just a landline in her apartment. All it would take was one short phone call to verify that she was okay. Unfortunately, the only phone was in the candy shop and my grandmother turned the ringer off every night, so that it wouldn’t wake them up. The only way to reach her and Charlotte at this late hour was to go into the shop. “It will take me three minutes to grab what I need,” I said, heading to the stairs that led to my bedroom. “Can you pack up Puff’s stuff?”

  He blinked at me. “Puff has stuff?”

  “You have no idea,” I said as I ran up the steps.

  Aiden insisted on carrying my overnight bag and Puff’s overnight bag to his SUV while I carried the heavy rabbit out of the little house and locked the door behind us. It was close to two in the morning now, and the street was completely quiet. The house directly across from mine had one light on, and I saw the curtains move. I groaned. I had a feeling that my midnight escapade with the police would be the talk of the neighborhood. I hadn’t known Penny long, but I sensed that she was going to love passing on every tiny detail. It was good that we were going to my grandmother’s tonight. If not, she might hear about the attack through the Amish grapevine before I even had a chance to tell her myself.

  Aiden put our bags in the back of the SUV. “You can put the bunny back there too.”

  I shook my head. “I’ll hold her.” I was comforted by Puff’s warmth, and she seemed to be calmer settled in my arms.

  Aiden didn’t argue; he simply opened the front passenger door, and Puff and I took our seat.

  To walk between my house and the candy shop took about twelve minutes. To drive there, it was about two or a little more if you got caught at the stop sign waiting for a buggy to cross before you turned onto Main Street. There were no buggies out tonight. All the Amish had long since gone to bed. It made me wonder if the person who’d attacked me was Amish or English. I knew it was a man by the feel of his body and his voice. I wished I had been able to turn my head just for a moment to catch a glimpse of him. I hated knowing that there was a faceless man out there lying in wait to catch me unawares again, or worse, my grandmother.

  Aiden parked the car in front of the candy shop. “Stay put. I’ll get the door for you.”

  I waited for Aiden and noticed that Little’s cruiser was already there, but I didn’t see the young police officer in the car. He might have been close by, but it was so dark at this time of night it was hard to see anything that wasn’t directly under the gas lamppost.

  Aiden opened my door just as there was a loud crack from the direction of Swissmen Sweets.

  “Was that a gunshot?” I yelled.

  “Stay here!” Aiden slammed the door closed on me and ran toward my shop with his gun drawn. I could see him speaking into his cell phone as he went. I knew he must be calling for backup.

  I dropped Puff on Aiden’s driver’s seat and said, “Stay here,” just as Aiden had to me. She flattened her body onto the seat. Clearly, the rabbit had no interest in being a hero. All I could think about was Maami and Charlotte. I knew that the shot must have woken them up and they would be terrified. Unless they were . . . I couldn’t even let myself complete the thought. They were fine. Scared, I was certain, but fine.

  I ran toward the shop. All the lights came on in the front room. Through the large display window, I saw Charlotte and Maami in their nightclothes, and Aiden and Deputy Little.

  As far as I could tell, no one else was in the room, and Aiden no longer had his firearm out. I opened the door and stepped inside just in time to hear Aiden say, “Good job, Little, you shot the chocolate rabbit dead.”

  I turned to the chocolate bunny and saw the right side of his face w
as gone.

  Chapter 24

  I stared at the fractured head of the rabbit and spotted where its right ear used to be. “You shot my toffee rabbit?”

  Little looked as if he was about to cry. “I came through the back of the shop and saw it in the middle of the front room. I thought it was an intruder and it wouldn’t respond to any of my commands to get on the floor.”

  “Maybe because it’s made out of sugar,” I said. “It doesn’t speak English.”

  “Bailey,” Aiden quietly admonished.

  “Aiden, that could have been my grandmother or Charlotte. They could have been killed.”

  Little turned a sickly shade of green when I said that, and Aiden pressed his lips together. Aiden knew I was right.

  “I didn’t know what else to do. Deputy Brody said that the candy shop had been threatened. I thought this was the intruder he was expecting.”

  “So you shot it?” I cried. I still couldn’t believe that Little could be that stupid. Didn’t they teach officers to shoot as a last resort?

  Little licked his lips. “I couldn’t find the light switch to verify who it was.”

  I would give him that there weren’t many light switches in the shop. That was on purpose because it was an Amish business. There was one by the stairway leading up to my grandmother’s apartment, so that she could turn the lights off as she went upstairs, and there was one in the kitchen. But in my mind, that still wasn’t an excuse to blow the head off my toffee bunny. “So, it’s better to shoot first and ask questions later?”

  “We are going to have to remove the bullet from the wall,” Aiden said. “Any time a deputy uses his firearm, we have to gather the bullet for evidence and file a report.” He glanced at Little before he walked over to the wall and started to cut the bullet out of the wood with his pocketknife.

  Little folded his arms as if he suddenly felt a chill, and I felt a little bad for yelling at him. “I know it was an accident, Little.”

  He gave me a small smile.

  I rubbed my forehead. “Margot is going to freak out.”

  Maami patted my hand. “Charlotte and I will help you fix the rabbit. She’ll never have to know. Among the three of us we can get him put back together before morning.”