Assaulted Pretzel

by Laura Bradford

  Eli looked from Esther to Claire and back again, his voice dipping to a whisper that stopped just short of being inaudible. “You look beautiful, Esther.”

  Not wanting to infringe on the young couple’s private moment, Claire stood and made her way toward the wagon. As she approached, Benjamin jumped down from his seat and met her halfway, the worry in his eyes not much different than what she’d just witnessed in Eli’s.

  “Claire? Are you okay?”

  She managed a smile of sorts while simultaneously hooking a subtle thumb in Esther’s direction. “I’m fine. But Esther? She’s had a rough go of it.” Following the path of her own finger, she stole a glance at Eli and Esther, their heads bent close together while Eli provided the kind of comfort Esther desperately needed. “Though, now that Eli is here, I think she’s going to be okay.”

  Her heart fluttered in her chest as she turned back to Benjamin and found his penetrating blue eyes studying no one but her. “Did you see his body, too?”

  Slowly, she inhaled, the image of Rob Karble lying faceup on the ground with a still-bleeding head wound fresher in her mind than she realized. “I did.”

  His strong hands, callused from his work in the fields yet surprisingly soft at the same time, reached for hers, the unexpected feel of his skin against hers leaving her momentarily breathless. “And you are sure you are alright?”

  She shrugged. “I didn’t like seeing that, but I was more concerned for Esther and how quickly I could get her out of there. Fortunately, Jakob did everything he could to speed up that process.”

  “That is good.”

  “I’m sure he’ll need to question her further once the body has been removed and he gets into the nitty-gritty of his investigation, but for now she gets a much-needed break.” She stole yet another glance in Esther’s direction. “She was really upset.”

  “Jakob will find who did this.”

  Claire drew back, surprised by the conviction she heard in Benjamin’s voice. “You sound so sure.”

  “Jakob is a good detective.”

  For a moment, she wished she had some sort of recording device that would enable her to play Benjamin’s words back for Jakob to hear. If she did, then maybe they’d go a long way toward erasing the hostility the detective still harbored for his childhood rival.

  “But it will not be easy for him.”

  “What won’t be easy for him?” she asked.

  “Knowing who did this.” Benjamin released her hands and rubbed his face, the motion drawing her attention to the worry lines she hadn’t noticed at first. “You saw the letter. You saw the way it upset so many. Jakob must question many people to find the answers he will need.”

  “You mean Amish people, don’t you?” Her mind had already gone there, of course, but to hear that Benjamin’s had as well surprised her more than she realized. “They’ll talk to him, won’t they?”

  At Benjamin’s weighted silence, she closed her eyes briefly. “Can’t they see that by giving Jakob the cold shoulder all they’ll be doing is hurting themselves?” Then, without waiting for a response, she turned her attention back to her young friend. “Esther? Are you okay? Do you want me to walk you home?”

  “I will take Esther home…if that is okay with Esther.”

  Even in the gathering dusk, Claire could see the tinge of red that sprang into Esther’s cheeks as the young woman nodded her agreement. It was a moment of sweet innocence against a backdrop that had brought a cold, hard reality to Heavenly’s collective doorstep. The question as to whether a member of Esther and Eli’s community had precipitated that reality, though, was one Claire simply didn’t have the heart to entertain anymore that night. Tomorrow would come soon enough for all of them.

  “Then I guess I’ll see you back here tomorrow morning?” she asked, earning herself a smile and an emphatic head nod from her one and only employee. Then, turning back to Benjamin, she flashed what she hoped was a friendly smile despite the yawn she had to work to stifle. “Thank you for bringing Eli to see her. She needed that more than anything I could have given her.”

  “Eli is not the only one who wanted to come.”

  She backtracked her way to the steps of her store to retrieve her purse, then returned to stand beside Benjamin. “Then I think it was very nice of you to want to check on Esther as well.”

  “I was concerned for Esther, too, but it is you I came to see.”

  “M-me?” she stammered.

  “Jakob told me what happened. He told me you saw Mr. Karble’s body, too. I do not like that you had to see something so troubling.”

  The man’s words alone were enough to get the flutter in her chest going all over again. But when she coupled them with the tender look she saw in his eyes, the flutter became so strong she actually had to look away to catch her breath.

  What was wrong with her? Benjamin was Amish. She was English. Anything she thought she saw on his face had to be in her imagination, didn’t it?

  “How are you to get home?”

  Inhaling deeply, she looked back at him, the tenderness she’d surely imagined in his eyes quickly replaced by reality. Benjamin was her friend. Friends showed concern for one another. His being there was about friendship and nothing more.

  “I’ll walk. It’s not all that far.”

  “I will walk with you,” he stated firmly.

  She waved aside his suggestion. “No. Please. I’d rather you and Eli see Esther home. She needs the rest.”

  “Eli will see Esther home and then come back for me. I do not want you walking alone when one who kills is still walking free.” Before she could send up a second protest, he gestured toward the end of Lighted Way that led to Sleep Heavenly and the English side of town. “Besides, it is a nice evening. Good for a walk.”

  While she tried to sort her feelings about the man’s offer, he pulled his brother to the side and told him the plan, to which Eli quickly agreed. Any opportunity to spend time alone with Esther was a good one where the youngest Miller boy was concerned.

  When he was done, Benjamin and Claire began walking, the sound of their footsteps nearly silent against a night that had given way to the beginning notes of a crickets’ chorus. One by one, they passed each of the shops along Lighted Way until the cobblestoned street bowed to blacktop and the English homes that denoted the western side of Heavenly. Here, the modest one- and two-story homes all boasted driveways and garages with at least two cars parked outside. Lamps, glowing computer screens, and flickering television sets were visible behind curtains, painting a picture of life inside that Claire had always thought was normal. And she still did in many ways. But since moving to Heavenly, she’d also come to realize that normal didn’t necessarily mean best.

  Now, she found herself strongly favoring moments like this—where comfortable silence fed her soul in a way no mindless television program or time-stealing website ever could. The fact that she felt more centered and more at peace on a regular basis these days was surely not a coincidence.

  She considered sharing that thought with Benjamin but opted, instead, to keep it to herself. After all, comparisons were meaningless when one only knew a simple life.

  “That is a lot of lights.”

  “We use a lot of electricity on this side of town,” she joked.

  “But that is more.”

  Following the path made by his now outstretched hand, Claire focused her attention on the familiar Victorian just around the next bend in the road. Sure enough, Sleep Heavenly was ablaze with light while its side parking lot played host to two Heavenly police cars.

  “Oh no…” Feeling her heart begin to pound, Claire took off in a sprint toward her aunt’s inn, Benjamin matching and then surpassing her steps to the front porch and the wide-open door beyond.

  When they reached the front hallway, she broke left, the sound of her aunt’s tear-choked voice pulling her feet up the steps two at a time. “Aunt Diane? Aunt Diane? Where are you?” she shouted. “What’s…” The words
died on her lips as Virginia Granderson stepped out of the room she and her husband had been assigned and beckoned Claire inside.

  “Diane is in here. With us.”

  She followed Virginia into the room, stopping midway to the bed at the sight of her precious aunt and the twin tears that rolled down her round face. “Diane. What’s wrong?” Instinctively, she dropped onto the Grandersons’ bed and draped an arm around the woman. “Are you okay?”

  When Diane didn’t answer, Virginia filled in the picture. “The Karbles’ room was ransacked.”

  “Ransacked?” she repeated with a voice that was too loud for the confines of a room now inhabited by five adults. “What do you mean, ransacked?”

  “We—meaning Diane, Wayne, and myself—came home from the festival maybe three hours ago?” At her husband’s nod of agreement, the sixtysomething woman continued. “We spent an hour or two just sitting over a pitcher of iced tea and talking about all of the wonderful food we tried. When we were done, we all came upstairs to freshen up for dinner and that’s when your aunt noticed that the Karbles’ door was open.”

  “It was a mess,” Diane finally said, her voice strained and tired. “The mattress was ripped open, the drawers were all taken out of their dresser and dumped over, the interiors of their suitcases were ripped…” Diane buried her hands in her face, releasing a tortured sigh as she did. “Nothing like this has ever happened here before and I feel horrible. I…I don’t know what I’m going to tell them when they get back.”

  She felt her stomach lurch. Diane didn’t know? Was that even possible? Quickly, she glanced up at Benjamin, noting the surprise in his face as well. But before either of them could say anything, Diane went on, her words muffled behind her softly wrinkled hands. “I called the police right away and they’ve been taking pictures for the past thirty minutes. I heard one of them say Jakob would be here shortly when he is done at the festival grounds. I just hope he’s here when the Karbles return because I’m sure they will be angry and want the kind of answers I’m at a loss to give right now.”

  Again, Claire looked at Benjamin, the quiet concern she saw in his eyes giving her the courage she needed to share the part of the story Diane needed to know, especially when it was obvious even to Claire that the two events were most certainly related.

  “Diane.” Leaving her left arm still draped around Diane’s back, Claire sought the woman’s now clasped hands with her right, covering them gently and offering a little squeeze. “Rob Karble won’t be coming back to the inn.”

  Her aunt’s face crumbled. “But he has to know that something like this has never happened in my inn before!”

  She took a deep breath and tried again, this time cutting straight to the chase. “Diane. Rob Karble won’t be coming back because he’s dead.”

  Diane’s gasp was echoed by Virginia and her husband, with Virginia recovering fast enough to ask the litany of expected questions. “Dead? But…how? When?”

  Claire opened her mouth to speak, but it was Benjamin who ultimately answered, his words blanketing the room in a stunned silence. “His body was found near the end of the festival. He was murdered.”

  Chapter 7

  Claire emptied the last of the quarters into their spot in the register and glanced up at the clock.

  9:40.

  Twenty more minutes and she could officially throw herself into a day that would have her greeting customers, fielding questions about the Amish, helping match people to a particular gift item, and carefully wrapping purchases for their journey home. They were tasks she always welcomed as a small-business owner who relied on tourists for survival. But at that moment, her eagerness for the day had very little to do with sales and the bottom line, and everything to do with needing a distraction.

  Sure, she’d tried to find and maintain a sense of calm for Diane and the rest of her guests the night before, but, in all fairness, there was only so much a person could do when faced with a murdered guest, the ransacked room of that particular murdered guest, and the late-night arrival of that same murdered guest’s wife.

  A snorted exhale through the open side window startled her from her thoughts and she shut the drawer, the answering rattle of the coins inside failing to trigger the smile it normally did. “You can do this, Claire,” she mumbled. “You can pretend like everything is normal.”

  A soft tap at the shop’s back door saved her from engaging in an unending litany of self-debate, and she headed in that direction. Fortunately for her, the sight of the Amish man standing on the other side of the storm door was able to accomplish what the sound of the coins hadn’t, adding a side order of flutter to boot.

  “Benjamin, hi! I figured that was your horse I heard in the alley just now.” Leaning forward, Claire pushed the door open with one hand and waved Eli’s brother in with the other.

  His normally stoic cheekbones lifted upward in a smile reminiscent of Ruth, his sister and Eli’s twin. Ruth Miller ran Shoo Fly Bake Shoppe, the wildly popular Amish bakery next to Heavenly Treasures. The two stores were separated at their sides by a narrow alleyway just large enough to accommodate a buggy visit from whichever Miller brother stopped by the bake shop to look after Ruth at any given point in the day.

  “You are well this morning?” Benjamin stepped into Heavenly Treasures’ stockroom and turned to face Claire, his dark blue eyes searching her face with an intensity that only served to increase the flutter factor. “You were able to get rest?”

  Rest. That was such a subjective term, wasn’t it?

  Had she been able to shut her door and retire to her bed at some point during the night? Yes. But only after Ann Karble had stopped screaming and been settled into a spare room on the first floor, the police had gotten everything they needed from the ransacked room, and Diane had finally wept herself into something resembling sleep. Had she actually been able to close her eyes and drift off? Not if the dark circles that had lined the bottom of her eyes in the mirror that morning were any indication.

  To Benjamin, though, she gave a quick and shallow nod before redirecting the conversation. “I have to thank you for both your calm and your help last night. I’m not sure what I would have done without you there.”

  “It was the least I could do. All of that was too much to leave you and your aunt to handle.” Benjamin peeked out the screen door at the horse he’d tethered to the hitching post beside the bake shop’s back door and then stood up tall once again. “I only wish I could have helped to right such heavy furniture in Mr. Karble’s room so you do not have to worry about such things.”

  She closed her eyes against the image of the guest room across the hall from her own, the period pieces her aunt had so lovingly collected in the years leading up to the grand opening of the inn tossed about like they meant nothing. But when she heard Ann Karble’s screams echoing up the stairs from the parlor below, she forced her eyes open. “The officers needed to leave the room exactly as it was found until their investigation is complete. And until Jakob can get in there, it can’t be released.”

  “When he does, you will let me know so I can help?” Benjamin asked. “I do not want you moving such heavy things.”

  “I’ll let you know. Thank you.” But even as she said the words, she knew the status of Room Six was the least of everyone’s worries.

  A man had died. A man who had angered many, many people, including some both she and Benjamin called friend.

  The jingle of bells in the shop’s main room cut through her reverie and guided her attention to the hands of her wristwatch.

  9:55.

  Shrugging, she turned on the two-inch heels of her boots and strode into the showroom, Benjamin following at a respectful distance. “Good morning, welcome to Heavenly Treasures…”

  The more formal greeting died on her lips at the sight of Jakob standing just inside the shop’s front door with a camera in one hand and a pair of gloves in the other. “Jakob…uh, hi.”

  The detective mustered a weak smile for C
laire then tipped his head ever so slightly at Benjamin. “Ben. Good. I was hoping to track you down at some point today.”

  Before Benjamin could reply, Claire moved still closer to Jakob, the uncharacteristic droop to the man’s broad shoulders sending her antennae pinging. “Jakob? Are you okay?”

  “Long, long night. Sorry I couldn’t get to Diane’s before this morning but things were just too busy at the fairgrounds and then back at the station once we were able to locate the victim’s wife.”

  “Where was she when everything was happening?” she asked before her brain had a chance to catch up with the inherent nosiness of the question. “Wait. I don’t really expect you to answer that.”

  Jakob waved her worries aside and stopped at the counter in the center of Claire’s shop, setting the camera and the gloves down as he did. “Seems she went into Breeze Point to do a little research at the library and then to an office store to mail some things. She found out about her husband when she called his cell and I answered it.”

  She shivered at the notion of such a call. “Did you tell her on the phone?”

  “Of course not. I told her who I was and asked her to come to the station.” Jakob lifted his hand to his face and exhaled slowly. “Officer Melnick brought her back to the inn when we were done talking and…you can probably take it from there.”

  Once again, the memory of Ann’s cries from the bottom of the stairs looped their way through her thoughts, reminding her of the distraction she desperately needed work to provide for the next seven or so hours.

  “Did you see her when you went to the inn this morning?” Benjamin asked from his spot somewhere behind Claire.

  “No, she was still sleeping. Diane had made up a room for her on the first floor so I was able to spend time in the room she’d shared on the second floor with the victim without rousing her unnecessarily.”