Criminally Cocoa

by Amanda Flower

  Finally, I swallowed, forcing the bit of bagel down my throat, and looked up to see a young Englisch man staring at me with a half smile on his face. I knew that he must be from the crew because he wore all black as most of them did. I thought I might have seen him a few times in the weeks that Bailey and I had been on the set, but I couldn’t be sure. Other than Maria, the crew members gave me no notice and hardly spoke at all. In many ways, the crew reminded me of Amish children, who were taught not to disturb their parents and be seen and not heard. Not all Amish children were raised like that, but it was the way I had been brought up.

  “You have cream cheese on your cheek.” He picked up another napkin and dabbed at my cheek. I jerked away.

  My face turned the same color as my hair. It was one of the many times that I wished I didn’t have red hair, but the Amish don’t dye their hair. I had never had any other color.

  “Like the bagels?” he asked as he tossed the napkin into the wastebasket at the end of the table.

  I nodded.

  “I heard that this was an Amish show. Are you in costume every day to be authentic?”

  “Costume?” I looked down at my lavender dress and white apron. My blush intensified. I had been so proud of this dress when I put it on.

  He covered his mouth. “Oh man, I’m sorry. Are you, like, really Amish?”

  I wrinkled my nose. “I have to get back.” I wrapped up my bagel in a second napkin. I was no longer hungry, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away. I was just too Amish to do that. Bailey had a little refrigerator in her green room (another word that I had learned since coming to New York). I planned to tuck it in there.

  “I’m Todd Bray.” He held out his hand to me.

  I frowned at it. In my community, a man does not extend his hand to a woman he doesn’t know, but I reminded myself, I wasn’t in Holmes County any longer, and I most certainly wasn’t in my strict district.

  I gave him my hand and let him squeeze my fingers before I pulled away.

  A strange expression crossed his face, but I wasn’t going to bother to explain to him why a handshake would make me uncomfortable. He was Englisch, and he wouldn’t understand.

  “Are you going to tell me your name?” he asked.

  I lifted my chin. “I don’t know why you would want to know it since I’m Amish.” Even as the words left my mouth, I grimaced. As my father used to tell me, I should think before I spoke. I had a tendency to say the first words that came into my head. Most of the time those words shouldn’t be shared. “I’m sorry. That was rude.”

  He laughed. “I like your honesty. It’s refreshing, especially when you work in television.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “What do you mean by that?”

  “Everyone here is trying to get ahead, and sometimes that takes deceit. Even your friend.”

  I blinked at him. “Bailey? Never. Bailey is one of the most honest Englischers I know.” Granted, I didn’t really know that many Englischers, and the customers in Swissmen Sweets didn’t count—

  “Englisher?” he asked. “What does that mean?”

  I frowned. There I went speaking too much of my mind again. Maybe my father had been right, and it would be much better if I stayed quiet.

  “Oh, please don’t be like that,” he said when I started to step back. “I know I put my foot in it before, but I didn’t know you were really Amish. I thought you were an actress that they’d hired to play the part. We’re in television. They can hire anyone to play any part.”

  “Well, I’m not an actress,” I said, feeling annoyed. “My name is Charlotte.”

  “See, that wasn’t so hard. It’s nice to meet you, Charlotte.”

  I pressed my lips together. “I’m not shaking your hand again.”

  Todd laughed.

  “Quiet on the set,” Raymond bellowed. He glared at us, and I felt myself cower.

  Bailey blinked in the bright lights. She seemed to lose her train of thought when the director screamed at us.

  I frowned. I didn’t want to be the reason Bailey lost her train of thought.

  “Rolling!” the director yelled.

  Bailey gave a quick shake of her head and began talking again. “The next step is to add the marshmallow cream to your chocolate over the double boiler. In Swissmen Sweets we make our own marshmallow cream, and it’s much easier to do than you might think. If you go online to Gourmet Television dot com, you can find the instructions on how to make it there. Today, I had some ready to go.”

  Just as she walked to the other end of the set to pull her marshmallow out of the cupboard, there was a loud bang and the sound of shattering glass.

  I found myself on the ground with Todd on top of me. I rubbed the back of my head where it had connected with the floor. “What happened?”

  Todd climbed off me. “Something blew up.”

  “Blew up? Bailey!” I jumped to my feet but found that my legs were just a little bit wobbly.

  I spotted Bailey crouching on the floor. She looked stunned as she gripped a tea towel in her hands.

  A crew member grabbed a fire extinguisher and blew white foam all over the set.

  “Stop that! Nothing is on fire, for Pete’s sake! Turn off the stove!” the director shouted.

  “Is anyone hurt?” Bailey jumped to her feet. “Is everyone okay?”

  I glanced around the room. I saw Bailey, Teven the cameraman, Raymond the director, Todd—I felt myself blush just remembering how close to me he’d been on the floor— and Maria. There was no one else there.

  After I counted all the people, I looked around the set. There was chocolate everywhere. Even a huge smear of it over the lights and ceiling. Pieces of glass were scattered over the stovetop and on the floor around the island where Bailey had been standing just moments before the explosion. She could have been badly burned—or worse.

  “The double boiler exploded,” Bailey said, staring at the chocolate dripping from the ceiling. “At least no one was hurt.”

  “Look at this mess,” Raymond said. “How on earth are we going to stay on schedule? It will take days to clean this all up.” He glared at Bailey. “I knew it would be a disaster to work with a country bumpkin.”

  Bailey set her hands on her hips. “Excuse me? Who are you calling a country bumpkin, you egoistical—”

  “Cripes!” Linc stepped onto the set. I wasn’t sure where he had been when the boiler blew up, but not anywhere close by. “What happened?”

  “Your famous chocolatier doesn’t know what she’s doing and almost got herself and the rest of us killed by rigging a death trap on the set.”

  “I did no such thing.” Then Bailey closed her eyes. I knew she was reciting all the different kinds of chocolate in her head. It was something she did when she was trying to stay calm. She opened her eyes again. “That’s not fair. I’m a chocolatier and have worked with chocolate for over a decade. This is the first time an explosion has ever happened!”

  “Was the heat on too high?” Todd asked.

  Bailey scowled at him. “I wouldn’t have put it on high.”

  Maria was at the stovetop. She wore oven mitts on both of her hands. Each mitt was streaked with chocolate. “The burner was on high.”

  “I didn’t turn it to high,” Bailey said. “I wouldn’t keep it up that high when the chocolate was already melted. It would scorch the chocolate and make the taste bitter.”

  Linc frowned. “What are you saying?”

  Chapter Three

  “I—I don’t know,” Bailey stammered. “I just know that someone made a mistake. I don’t think it was me. At least, I didn’t change the temperature.”

  Linc rubbed his chin. “Well, it will be easy enough to see what happened if we play back the film.”

  “That won’t help,” the director said.

  “Did you have
the camera rolling?” Linc asked.

  “We can play back all you want,” Raymond said. “But she was the only one anywhere close to the stove. We were all sitting well back for a long shot to get the view of the entire kitchen set.”

  “Okay, okay,” Linc said. “We will have to close up the production for the day. I’ll call someone to come in here and clean the place.”

  “It’s going to take forever,” Maria said. “How do you get chocolate off of a ceiling?”

  “Any lost days will hurt the schedule,” Raymond said. “The schedule was already too tight as I told you countless times.”

  Linc puffed up his chest. “I’m the executive producer. Let me worry about the schedule.”

  “What do you want to me to do?” Bailey asked. “I can help clean.”

  “You’re not cleaning,” Linc said. “You’re the star. Todd and Maria can get started cleaning up the glass and dishes until I can get a professional company in here.”

  Bailey looked as if she wanted to say something else, but Linc was faster. “Bailey, let’s meet in your green room and talk about the recipes for the rest of the show. I’ll call the writer and ask her to come in. At least we can do some planning if not actual filming.”

  After that, Linc marched away with his phone next to his ear. Raymond went after him, complaining about what a mess the explosion had caused and how the show was doomed.

  Bailey watched them go with a frown on her face. I hurried over to her. “Are you sure that you’re not hurt?”

  “Only my pride.”

  “How can your pride be hurt if it’s not your fault?”

  “I should have noticed that the burner was on high.” She bit her lip. “Even so, that should not have caused an explosion. The glass bowl must have been cracked.”

  “Cracked?” I asked.

  “It’s the only way I can think of that the double boiler would have exploded. If the heat was on high and the pressure built up too much under the cracked bowl, it would shatter the bowl. I should have looked at the pot and bowl before starting.”

  “But you didn’t set the stove that way.”

  “That doesn’t matter, Charlotte. I should have checked. Had I been at home, I would have checked because I wouldn’t be relying on someone else to set up my candy-making area for me. I should have looked everything over instead of trusting that it was right.” She took a deep breath. “I’m the expert in candy making; I should have noticed.”

  I wanted to argue with her more on that point, but she patted my shoulder. “I’m going to go into my green room and get my recipes ready for when Linc comes back. I at least want to give the impression that I’m a professional.”

  “And you are,” I said.

  “I love you for saying that.” She walked away from me toward the green rooms.

  That’s when I realized I was still holding my bagel. I tossed it in the wastebasket.

  “Hate to see such a good bagel go to waste,” Todd said.

  I instantly felt guilty and brushed off my hands. “I’ve lost my appetite.” I looked around the set, and the mess was daunting. “Do you and Maria need help?”

  Todd put his hands on his hips. “I won’t turn that away.”

  Maria came onto the set and put a trash bag in my hand. “Here. Just toss anything that’s broken or ruined.” She gave Todd another trash bag and kept one for herself.

  I swallowed and nodded. I stepped around the island that had the stovetop where Bailey had been working. I didn’t dare touch anything near the stove just yet since it was all still too hot. The smell in the space was an odd mixture of chemicals and burned chocolate. Neither of those scents was appealing, and together they made my stomach turn.

  There were several dishrags that were so splattered with chocolate that I knew not even my maami would have been able to get the stains out. I knelt behind the counter to pick them up with the intent of tossing them into my trash bag. As I did, I noticed that the stove knobs seemed to be on upside down. I frowned. Could that have happened from the explosion? They were just below the burner where the pot blew, and since the pot and the glass bowl had exploded upward, hitting the ceiling—the dark chocolate stain on the white ceiling was proof of that—I didn’t think that was the case. Maybe since the knobs were on incorrectly, Bailey had turned the burner up to high.

  Could the stove have been tampered with? And if it had, did the person who’d done it know that the chocolate scene was to be a long shot, which meant the only person at risk of being hurt was Bailey? I shivered. I had to be wrong about this, I told myself. I just had to be.

  Maria came around the side of the island and found me squatting in front of the stove knobs. “Are you going to help or hide on the floor?”

  I grabbed the ruined towels and tossed them into my trash bag as I popped up to my feet.

  Maria rolled her heavily made-up eyes and started putting salvageable dishes in the sink to soak on the other side of the set.

  Todd threw a pan into his bag. “Don’t worry about Maria. She has a chip on her shoulder that is at least a thousand pounds. She might not like you—”

  I looked over my shoulder at the other woman, who had a scowl on her face as she stacked the dishes in the sink. “She doesn’t like me? What did I do to her?”

  He laughed. “Nothing. What I was going to say was she might not like you, but she doesn’t like anyone. There’s no use worrying about it or trying to change her mind.” He glanced down at the stove knobs while holding a piece of glass in his hand. “What were you looking at back here?”

  I twisted the edge of my trash bag in my hand, wondering if I could trust this young Englisch man I had just met. He had protected me from the explosion. As awkward as it was to have him on top of me, his action could very well have kept me from getting hurt. “Does anything look strange to you about those knobs on the stove?”

  He frowned and peered at the knobs. “They aren’t on right. That’s odd. I’m sure whoever installed the stovetop would have noticed that and corrected it right away.”

  “I wonder if Bailey just assumed that they were on correctly and set the temperature accordingly.”

  “You don’t think Bailey made a mistake with the heat?” he asked.

  “Bailey wouldn’t have made a mistake like this.” I paused. “That can only mean one thing…”

  “What?” Todd asked.

  “I—I don’t know,” I said realizing the mistake I’d made in speaking aloud.

  He shook his head. “You do know. You think someone was up to something.”

  I bit my lip, feeling afraid to even consider the thoughts that were flying through my head. “What if someone did this because they wanted to stop the show? Because it’s stopped now. Or because they wanted to ruin Bailey?”

  “We all work for the show.” Todd arched his brow. “Why would anyone want to halt production? Why would someone want to do that?”

  I shook my head. “I don’t know. It’s a ridiculous idea. I shouldn’t have said it.” I regretted speaking my thoughts out loud—again, and regretted even more that Todd had heard. I didn’t know him. I didn’t know if I could trust him.

  He removed his phone from his pocket and took a photo of the stove knobs.

  “What are you doing?” I asked.

  “Taking a photo, so we know what it looks like after they replace this. I think you are onto something, and it had to be someone here today. I can tell you it wasn’t like that when Maria and I set up the scene this morning.”

  I shivered and stared at him.

  He held up his hands. “It wasn’t me if that’s what you’re thinking.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “I found something too.” He held up the piece of glass. “Look at this. Look at how clean the edge is, like it’s been cut. That didn’t happen on accident.”

&n
bsp; “Bailey said that she thought the glass had to be cracked in order to make it explode like that.”

  He shook his head. “I don’t think it was cracked. I think it was cut and possibly by whoever tampered with the knobs. Someone wanted to make sure that there would be an accident in the kitchen.”

  I felt sick. “How would they cut the bottom of a glass bowl?”

  “With a diamond or a file, really anything to make a crease. That glass bowl wasn’t particularly thick. It was ingenious, really.”

  I took a step back from him.

  “You can’t possibly think I did this, can you?” he asked. “Why would I tell you that and get myself in trouble?”

  I sighed. “I’m sorry. This whole thing is so confusing. Bailey is just about the nicest person you will ever meet. I don’t know why anyone would want to cause her any trouble.”

  “Maybe they don’t want to cause her trouble, but they do want to get the show off the air like you said.”

  I frowned at him. “Why are you telling me all this? And why are you trying to help me?”

  “Maybe because you look like you could use some help.” He smiled.

  I scowled. “I don’t need any help from you. And why would you want to help me?”

  “Okay, maybe I could use the distraction. There’s not much for me to do around here between setups.” He looked around. “Although Maria and I will be busy for a while getting the place put back together. As you can see, I don’t have the most exciting job in the world. I prepare the set for cooking shows. It’s not what I wanted to do when I went to film school, but everyone in the industry has to start somewhere, and for me that somewhere is at the bottom. I’ve been out of film school for nine months and I have already moved up some. I don’t have to fetch the producers’ coffee any longer, for one. I guess I want to occupy my time while I wait for my next big chance.”

  “You want to help me because you’re bored.” I played with the hem of my apron.