Toxic Toffee

by Amanda Flower

  I looked down at my outfit. What was wrong with what I had on, and what wasn’t so English about it? I was the most English person in the room. I had lived in the biggest city in the world most of my adult life. Where did she get off telling me that my outfit was trying too hard?

  She must have seen the expression on my face. “I think you would do better with something simpler like what Katey is wearing, and then maybe you can move on to more advanced English clothing.”

  “I’m not Amish. Why would you think that I’m Amish?”

  She blinked. “Because Amish are the only ones who come here for help.”

  “I’m not Amish,” I said for a second time.

  Adam shifted his stance. “Sybil, this is Bailey King.”

  “Oh.” Recognition registered in her eyes.

  “Millie Fisher said I should talk to you.”

  She nodded. “If you come on recommendation from Millie, I know it’s for a good reason. Adam, can you continue the lesson with Katey while I chat with Bailey?”

  Katey’s cheeks turned bright red and a small smile curved her lips. Adam smiled too. I saw more emotions pass between the two of them than I had ever seen between Katey and Eli. Perhaps I had met the reason why Katey didn’t want to marry Eli. If she wanted to be with Adam she might have to leave the Amish—and that could be precisely why she was here.

  Adam sat down next to Katey and scooted his chair just an inch closer to her. I wasn’t imagining things; there was a connection between these two people.

  “I could use another cup of coffee. Let’s talk in the kitchen.” Sybil picked up a mug from the desk and headed out the door.

  Before I followed her, I glanced back at Adam and Katey. The pair had their heads bent toward each other. I would bet anything they weren’t talking about math.

  Sybil walked through a swinging door into a kitchen. Like the rest of the apartment I had seen, the room was covered in dark wood paneling and had small windows. I felt as if I was in a cave. In the middle of the kitchen was a giant marble island that was surrounded by metal stools just like the ones we had back in the kitchen at Swissmen Sweets. They were bigger on utility than looks.

  Sybil caught me examining my surroundings. “This used to be an attorney’s office. That’s why there is all the marble and dark wood. It’s not really my style; I like things more open and bright, but I can’t bring myself to change it and harm the integrity of the building. I believe that all people and all things have an innate character to them.” She walked to the coffeemaker on the counter, filled her mug, and then filled a second mug. She held that one out to me.

  The coffee smelled like hazelnut.

  “Cream or sugar?”

  I shook my head. “This is fine. Thank you.”

  She sat on a stool at the large island and pointed at the one opposite her. “Why did Millie tell you to talk to me?”

  “She thought you could help me. . . .” I trailed off.

  “In finding out who killed Stephen Raber?” She lifted her coffee mug to her mouth and arched her brow.

  Chapter 35

  I gaped at the woman across from me. “How do you know that?”

  “Don’t look so surprised, Bailey King. Do you think I have never heard of you before? Your reputation precedes you.”

  I wondered if that was a good thing or not.

  “Millie is a friend of mine, but I don’t know why she would send you here. I have no idea what happened to Stephen. I never even spoke to the man in my life. Most of the Amish I work with and know are ones who want to leave the faith. As far as I know, Stephen was never in that category.”

  “But Katey is?”

  She pressed her lips together. “Yes.”

  “What is it you do here? Millie said that you help people leave the Amish, but what does that even mean?”

  “I know it’s hard for someone who grew up English to understand, but the Amish are more secluded from English culture than it may appear. When they are born, they don’t have Social Security numbers or birth certificates, making it difficult to leave the faith and live in the English world. I help the Amish who don’t have those things so that they can move more easily into their new lives.”

  “So, you convert them to English life?”

  “No.” Her voice was firm but not sharp. “The people who come to me have decided to leave before they arrive. If they are unsure, I’m honest with them about what they will need as an English person and tell them to pray about the decision. No Amish person should take leaving the only life he or she has ever known lightly. I don’t take it lightly when they come to me and ask for help. Take Katey, for example.”

  “What about Katey?” I asked.

  “She came to me over a year ago because she wanted to leave the Amish. Her family wants her to marry a man she doesn’t love. Most Amish districts don’t have traditionally arranged marriages any longer, but there can be . . . pressure to marry. A woman is still supposed to be a wife and mother in the community. Katey is almost twenty-seven. By her family’s estimation she is losing time to have a family and follow the plan God has for her.”

  I grimaced. I was older than Katey, but not much. If I was Amish I certainly would be in the same position she was in. So, I had been right in thinking that she didn’t want to marry Eli. “But Katey is still Amish,” I said.

  “That’s because of what I told you before. I don’t talk people out of leaving the Amish. Katey is still undecided, so I let her come here and learn about English life. I think she will leave soon. She is studying for her GRE and the test is next week. She’s a very bright woman, and as nervous as she is about taking the test, I am certain she will pass. When she passes the test, she will have the confidence to leave.”

  I nodded. “If Katey isn’t happy being Amish, she should leave.”

  Sybil relaxed.

  “But why would Millie want me to talk to you? What does this have to do with Stephen Raber’s murder?”

  Sybil stood up and refilled her mug of coffee. I hadn’t even realized that she had finished her first cup. I’d yet to take a sip of mine. “That’s unclear to me.”

  I took a breath. “Does anyone in Katey’s family know that she comes here?”

  She shook her head. “No.”

  “Do they know about Adam?” I cocked my head. “Don’t tell me that you see them together all the time and haven’t noticed how they like each other.”

  She pressed her lips together, then said, “Adam has worked with me for a couple of years, and he knows I have a policy that we cannot get romantically involved with the Amish who come here for help. It confuses them and may influence their decision for the wrong reasons. Adam may care for Katey, but he would never violate our policy.”

  I wasn’t sure about that but didn’t say anything. I stood up. “How long have you been helping the Amish who decide to leave?”

  “For the last fifteen years. I left the Amish myself when I was twenty. It was a very difficult transition.” She peered into her coffee. “Some unfortunate things happened.” She looked up again. “If I can stop what happened to me from happening to anyone else, I will.”

  I wanted to ask her what had happened, but it seemed to be too personal. Instead, I asked, “Have you ever helped a person named Casey Raber?”

  “Raber? Like Eli, the man Katey is supposed to marry?”

  I nodded. “He’s Eli’s older brother.”

  “When would he have left?” she asked.

  “He was only twelve when he ran away. Twenty years ago at least,” I said.

  She shook her head. “No, I have never heard of him. I’m sorry.”

  I left my untouched coffee on the island. “Thank you for the coffee.”

  She nodded. “I hope you find all the answers that you seek, Bailey. I’m in the business of helping people do just that.”

  I nodded.

  “You can go out the back door if you like.” She stood up and opened the door.

  I stood too, a
nd as I did I noticed a bouquet of little white flowers on the kitchen counter. They were in bloom and tucked in a mason jar. I swallowed. “Lovely flowers. What are they?” I asked, even though I already knew the answer.

  She seemed surprised by my question and looked back at the counter. “Lily of the valley.”

  “You know they are poisonous,” I said.

  “I’ve heard that. Many beautiful things are.” She opened the door even wider. “You should go. I have much work to do.”

  I stepped through the door, and found myself standing in an alleyway with a windowless, two-story, brick building on either side of me.

  “Just walk straight ahead,” she said. “And turn right when you get to the corner of the building. You’ll find yourself back on the main road.”

  I nodded, and she closed the door. I heard a light click as the bolt on the door slid home. I stood there for a moment chewing on my lower lip. I didn’t like the idea of leaving Katey in the building. Millie trusted Sybil, but I wasn’t so sure. I thought her mission was sincere, but how could she be blind to how much Adam and Katey cared for each other?

  I shook my head. What Katey Beiler did was none of my business unless it was related to the murder. If Eli was the one who had been killed, I would have thought this clue about her leaving the Amish and being in love with an English man was pertinent to the investigation, but Eli was very much alive. His father was dead. His father, who had nothing to do with Sybil Horn or her mission to help runaway Amish.

  I followed Sybil’s directions and found myself on Route 39 again in the shadow of the forbidding courthouse. Even though the information I’d found out about Katey and Sybil might not be important to the case, I was eager to return to Harvest and talk to Aiden.

  I started walking to my car and was in the process of removing my phone from the back pocket of my jeans to see if I had missed any messages from Aiden when a hand clamped on my shoulder. I jumped, and the phone went flying from my hand, landing in the middle of the road. An Amish buggy passed by at that moment, and the horse stomped on my phone before the hard metal wheels ran over it for good measure.

  The buggy didn’t even slow down. I stood there for a moment in a daze. My phone had been crushed by an Amish buggy. What were the odds? Cass was never going to believe this. Then again, she probably would. The most ridiculous stuff happened to me, including finding dead bodies on an alarmingly regular basis.

  Katey covered her mouth. “I’m so, so sorry. Is your phone all right?”

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. The phone was most certainly not all right. I looked both ways to make sure the path was clear. I didn’t want to get hit by a buggy along with my phone. That really would be unbelievable. When I saw the coast was clear, I stepped into the street and picked up my phone. It was in three pieces. There was no coming back from that.

  “I really am sorry,” Katey said again. This time there were tears in her voice.

  I looked at her and gave her a wobbly smile. Mostly because I would have to drive to Canton to get a new phone. There were some cell phone places in Holmes County, but not the carrier that I used. It was going to be a hassle but, looking at Katey’s tearstained face, I could see that it was an accident.

  “Don’t worry about it. I can always get a new phone.”

  She nodded as if she wasn’t so sure about that.

  “Did you want to talk to me?” I figured that if I changed the topic from the phone, she would stop looking as if she might burst into tears any second.

  “Ya, I mean, yes, I would like to talk to you.”

  I could tell that this conversation was going to be more than a casual chat on the sidewalk, so I suggested that we cross the street and sit on one of the benches next to the courthouse, under the view of the Civil War soldier.

  She nodded, and we crossed the street, looking out first for any cell-phone-crushing buggies. Once we were on the other side of the street, Katey perched on the bench next to me. She sat as far away from me as she could and stared down at her folded hands.

  I felt my face soften, and I forgot the broken phone. “Katey, what’s wrong? Can I help you?”

  She looked at me with tears in her eyes. “Please don’t tell my family or Eli what I have been doing. I don’t want them to know just yet that I plan to leave the Amish way.”

  “Why are you waiting to tell them, if I may ask? Eli thinks that the two of you will marry.”

  She looked back down at her hands. “I know, and I feel terrible about that. I haven’t told them because I wanted to wait until I was ready. Adam tells me to wait until I know for sure. Sybil does too,” she added quickly. “I’m studying for the GRE, you see.” She lifted her chin as if in challenge to me. “I want to go to college and be a nurse.” She glanced down at her hands. “If I want to be a nurse, I have to leave the Amish. I’m sorry that it has to be this way because I love the people in my community, but education is not a priority with the Amish and it’s always been a priority to me.”

  “What about Eli? Don’t you think you owe it to him to tell him sooner rather than later? You did agree to marry him.”

  She shook her head. “I never said that I would marry him. My father said so, which is not the same.”

  This was news. “Then why didn’t you tell your father how you felt?”

  “It’s not that simple. Stephen and my father have wanted Eli and me to marry since we were children.”

  “Why?”

  She sighed. “I have no siblings. My mother died when I was a girl, and my father never remarried. If Eli and I marry, our two smaller farms would combine into one larger farm.”

  “But Liam Zimmerman is in the middle of your two properties.”

  She nodded. “That is a problem, but none of us think that Liam will be there very long. It’s clear that he’s unhappy. Like most English, he won’t commit and will move somewhere else.”

  I wasn’t so sure about that. Zimmerman had seemed very committed to his land and his study of the native Ohio plants in the woods. I didn’t know much about plants, but I assumed that it would be difficult to move the plants at this point and keep them alive.

  She shook her head. “Eli will be fine. It has always been a business deal to him. He doesn’t love me. He hasn’t done a single thing to prove to me that he loves me. He loves the land. That’s all.”

  “What will happen to the land when you leave?”

  She bit the inside of her lip. “As Adam says, that’s something I can’t worry about. When I walk away from my family, I will be walking away from my family farm too.”

  “As Adam says . . .” Hmm, that comment wasn’t lost on me.

  “What do you want me to do, Katey?” I asked.

  She looked me in the eye. “Just let me be. Let all of this go. Don’t get involved in any of it. That’s what I want you to do. For me and for yourself.”

  She stood up and walked away before I could ask her why that sounded like a warning.

  Chapter 36

  As I returned to Harvest, my head was spinning. I tried to call Aiden from the shop’s landline since my cell was smashed to pieces, but he didn’t answer.

  Maami handed a waiting candy box to the only customer still in the shop. “What’s wrong, Bailey?”

  I gave her a wan smile and was relieved that Charlotte wasn’t there to overhear our conversation. I told her about my visit with Sybil Horn.

  She nodded. “I do know of Sybil. All the Amish in the county do. Many times, she is the first person who is questioned when a child has left the faith. And you say Katey Beiler was there?”

  I nodded. “I need to tell Aiden this.”

  “Do you think you should tell her family?” my grandmother asked.

  I shook my head. “No. She made me promise that I wouldn’t tell her father or Eli. According to her, it was an arranged marriage that Beiler and Stephen cooked up years ago when Eli and Katey were children as a way to combine the two small farms into a larger, more produ
ctive one.”

  My grandmother thought on this for a moment and then said, “Do you think Stephen changed his mind and was against the wedding? If that’s the case, would someone kill him over it?”

  “And who?” I asked.

  “I can only think of the two people still living who would want this wedding to happen. Eli or Jud Beiler.”

  I shivered.

  “I really have to talk to Aiden. Normally, I would just text him so he would get the message right away. And I have to get a new phone. It’s still early afternoon. Care if I run into Canton to do that?”

  She patted my cheek. “You go. You’ve worked very hard today. Charlotte and I can handle the rest of the customers for this last hour or so.”

  Through the large front window of the shop, I saw children running around the village, enjoying Easter Days. Several Amish families were standing near the toffee rabbit, admiring it, while English families took selfies with it. “If you’re sure,” I said.

  “I’m sure, but just be careful. I will tell Aiden where you went when he calls the shop.”

  I hugged her. “I’m going to sleep at my own house tonight. I need to go back there. I’ll stop by and pick up Puff before going home.”

  “But aren’t you afraid?” Maami asked.

  “I’m tired of being afraid,” I said with more conviction than I felt.

  She nodded. “All right.”

  The drive to Canton was uneventful, and when I walked into the store of my cell phone carrier, I handed the phone to the teenager behind the desk. “Whoa, what happened here?”

  “It got run over by an Amish buggy,” I said forlornly.

  He whistled. “Bummer, but it’s not the first time I’ve heard that one.”

  I wasn’t too surprised.

  Two painfully long hours later, I left the store with a new phone all set up with my photos and calendar, which thankfully had been stored in the cloud. I called and texted Aiden that I had a new phone and was heading back to Harvest, but still heard nothing. I tried not to worry about his silence, but I would be lying if I said it didn’t concern me a little.