“Is it a large farm?” I asked.
“Nee, just enough to sustain me. I don’t need much.” He patted his ample stomach. “Although it may appear otherwise. All this candy tasting might make the problem worse. I have a sweet tooth, but I don’t know when I’ve eaten so many sweets.”
“You’re not a candy maker?”
He laughed. “Nee. I’m only a candy eater.”
“Then how . . .” I trailed off.
He smiled. “Then how did I end up one of the judges?”
“Well, yeah,” I said.
He laughed. “Margot asked me to do it as a favor to her. She was having trouble finding a second Amish judge. Most Amish don’t like to make judgments on each other.”
“But you do?”
He shook his head. “I can when the need arises, and judging candy isn’t that difficult. The ACC was supposed to be an easy assignment, and it was until . . .”
“Until Josephine died.”
He nodded. “It is tragic what happened to Josephine. It’s a great loss to the community.”
While we spoke, I was aware of other searchers shaking the bushes around the church and calling Jethro’s name.
“What time did you get to the ACC this morning?” I asked.
He frowned. “Maybe eight. Not too early.”
Only an Amish person would think eight A.M. wasn’t too early.
“Were you the one to open up the church to let the candy makers collect their supplies?”
He shook his head. “I left all that to Margot.”
“When would she have done that?”
“She said she got to the church just before me, so I would say sometime between seven-thirty and seven forty-five.”
“That’s specific,” I said.
“It is because the ACC judges met at eight-thirty sharp in the gazebo. I arrived at the gazebo first.”
“Did you see Josephine before that meeting in the gazebo?”
“Josephine Weaver? No. Why on earth would she be there? She didn’t store her supplies in the church the night before because we are so close to her shop in Berlin.”
“Jeremiah!” an Amish woman called and waved from across the parking lot.
“That is my wife,” he said. “I should go see what she wants. I do hope someone finds Jethro tonight, so we can put this all behind us.”
I hoped so too.
After Jeremiah left to speak to his wife, I scanned the group of searchers milling around outside the church. I didn’t see Cate or her friend Joy anywhere. Or Reverend Brook, for that matter, although I knew he would be there until the bitter end of the search because of Juliet.
As I walked around the building, keeping my eyes peeled for any sign of Jethro or Reverend Brook, my thoughts kept returning to what Cate said about seeing Josephine pacing outside the church. The only explanation was that she was waiting for someone. Was it Charlotte? According to the two women I’d just met, that was the only explanation that made sense. Things didn’t look good for the young Amish organist.
I wanted to help Charlotte, and not just because my grandmother had asked me to. There was something about the vulnerable, confused Amish girl that made me want to protect her. Maybe it was because, in a way, we were in the same situation. After having a life planned for us for so long, we were changing our minds. My life plan was to be the head chocolatier of JP Chocolates in New York, to have wealth, prestige, and a relationship with one of the most eligible bachelors on the culinary scene. In one visit to Holmes County, I had abandoned the plan and chosen a new life, not just to help my grandmother, but also myself. I didn’t like the person I had become in New York, but choosing a new path was much harder than I’d anticipated. I had naïvely thought that, by choosing a new and better way, the pieces of my life would fall into place like the gears of a clock. I had been wrong. If it wasn’t for my grandmother and the work I loved at Swissmen Sweets, I might have given up by now and returned to my old life.
A shout came from behind the church, and it didn’t sound like the victory cry of someone who’d found Jethro. It sounded like a cry for help. I ran around the side of the large white building and found myself in the back parking lot. A security light illuminated the rear entrance of the church; it flickered on and off above the stainless-steel door, which I knew led into a tiny utility room and then in turn to the church’s kitchen.
“This will never come out,” a large man in a wool peacoat exclaimed to two women. I recognized the trio from the gathering around the gazebo at the beginning of the search.
The man stood on the edge of the parking lot that butted up against the church graveyard. The stark white fence set off the cemetery. The fence posts were so white they reminded me of clean bones, which wasn’t the most comforting of analogies considering where they were located.
“This paint will never come out.” The man threw up his hands. “Where is the sign? Shouldn’t there be a sign here that says ‘wet paint’? I’ll make sure that Reverend Brook hears about this.” He stomped past me around the side of the church without giving me a second glance. The two women hurried after him.
I walked over to the fence. I could clearly see the place where the man had brushed up against the newly painted wood. I looked up and down the fence line, and just as the man had said, there was no sign that warned of the wet paint.
Normally, I would have thought nothing of it, but it did strike me as odd. Hadn’t the two workmen mentioned hanging a sign or wanting to hang a sign? Where could it have gone?
A breeze picked up, and cold wind snaked down the collar of my coat. I shivered, wishing that I had thought to grab one of my grandmother’s hand-knitted scarves before leaving Swissmen Sweets for the pig search. Perhaps the wind had blown off the workmen’s sign?
A shrill whistle broke into my thoughts. I followed the persistent and irritating sound of the whistle around the side of the church, across the street, and toward the gazebo. When I reached the gazebo where the rest of the search party were gathered around just like they had at the beginning of the search, I caught my breath.
“Reverend Brook, for goodness’ sake, take that whistle out of your mouth before you wake all the dogs in the neighborhood!” a male voice called from the crowd.
As if on cue, a dog somewhere nearby began to howl.
Reverend Brook let the whistle fall from his mouth, and it dangled from a string around his neck.
“What about my coat?” the man I had seen behind the church cried. “Who is going to pay my dry-cleaning bill?”
“Yes, yes. Charlie, please send the church your cleaning bill for the coat,” Reverend Brook said. He stood beside Juliet again at the top of the gazebo steps.
Juliet clutched the reverend’s arm. “Thank you all so much for looking for Jethro. The reverend and I both agree it’s far too dark to continue today. With his coloring, Jethro tends to blend in with shadows.” She took a shaky breath. “I can’t tell you how much it has meant to me that you are all here. If you could, say a little prayer for Jethro. I know there are much bigger problems in this world and much bigger problems in our town even. I think of what the Weaver family must be going through tonight, but a prayer for my little pig will help if you could just spare a minute. I—” She burst into tears and buried her face in the reverend’s shoulder again.
Reverend Brook looked every bit as perplexed as he had when she’d done it the first time. He awkwardly patted her back and managed to say. “Thank you all for coming. Please keep your eye out for Jethro.”
As the group broke up, I climbed the steps to the gazebo. Juliet released her death grip on the reverend’s hand. I hadn’t even reached the top step when Juliet threw her arms around me, nearly sending me flying back into the grass.
“Whoa!” I said, sounding like an Amish buggy driver pulling back on her horse’s reins.
“Bailey,” she moaned, “thank you so much for coming to help. If only Aiden had been here. I know that, between the two of you, you woul
d have found Jethro. You make a good team.”
“A team?” I tried to step away, but she held me fast.
“The two of you solved that murder weeks ago together.”
I frowned and stopped myself from correcting Aiden’s mother. Yes, a murder had been solved when I’d first arrived in Harvest weeks ago, but it had not been a team effort. I had solved that murder on my own. Aiden had arrested the wrong person. Despite the murder and her missing pig, Juliet always seemed to be able to steer the conversation back to Aiden and me. What she didn’t understand was that we weren’t a couple. Our families were friends. That was it.
It was time to direct the conversation away from Aiden. “Jethro will turn up,” I said with more confidence than I felt as I finally pulled away from her.
“Did you see any sign of him?”
There was so much hope in her voice, I hated to squash it. I shook my head. “There was no sign of him.”
She nodded. “We’re calling off the search for the night. It’s the right thing to do, but so hard.”
Before I could say anything, the reverend jogged across the square to his church. He could move pretty fast for a stout man.
Juliet gave me a final squeeze and ran down the steps of the gazebo after him, waving her hand. “Simon! Simon!”
They disappeared across the street, leaving me on the top steps of the gazebo, shaking my head and wondering what had just happened.
I removed my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and checked the time. It was just after eight in the evening. My grandmother would be in bed by the time I returned to the candy shop. She and my grandfather had always been early to bed, early to rise folks, so that they could make their sweets and candies fresh every morning for their customers. However, since my grandfather’s death, my grandmother had been going to bed earlier and earlier. It was as if she was happy to see the end of each day.
I didn’t have to be a psychologist to recognize the signs of depression. If I had been back in New York and found my best friend, Cass, or another friend in such a state, I would have suggested she go to a therapist to work it out. I knew better than to make such a suggestion to my grandmother. The Amish weren’t ones for counseling, and they would certainly not seek out professional help from an English person they didn’t know.
I had thought that by staying in Harvest after my grandfather’s death I could make my grandmother’s life easier. I couldn’t say definitively that I had. Yes, I had taken over most of the day-to-day work in the shop, but she seemed to move through her days in a cloud.
My grandmother had many trusted friends in her community, but she seemed to be pulling away from them now too. When I encouraged her to see her friends, her excuse was that she had too much work to do at the candy shop. I couldn’t argue with her on that point. In the last week, Maami had been almost solely responsible for minding the shop as I prepared for the ACC. I promised myself that, after the competition ended, I would lighten my grandmother’s workload if she would let me. I wasn’t certain she would.
I left the gazebo and wondered if I should return to the church to double-check that the reverend had locked the storage unit but thought better of it. It had been an impossibly long day, and tomorrow promised to be just as long with the second and final day of the ACC.
As I walked away from the gazebo in the direction of Swissmen Sweets, I couldn’t help but be disappointed that Jethro remained missing. In the short time I had known him, I had become attached to the little oinker. Even if he did have a tendency to bite me. Juliet insisted that the bites were love nips. I wasn’t so sure. But as of yet, he had never bitten down hard enough to break the skin.
After such a difficult day, it would have been nice to have something go right.
I shook my head. It was still so hard for me to believe that Josephine Weaver was dead. She was very much alive when she had yelled at me in front of everyone at the ACC that morning. I knew I shouldn’t concern myself with her death. Aiden would agree with that, but when it came down to it, I was just as much a suspect in her murder as anyone else. Maybe more so, since I had had access to the murder weapon, and I had a strong motive since Josephine had wanted me removed from the competition.
I stepped up to the locked door of Swissmen Sweets and removed my key from my coat pocket. I was just about to put it into the lock when someone said, “I need help.”
And my keys flew into the air.
Chapter 20
I scooped my keys off the sidewalk and shoved them into my right fist with the pointed ends poking out of my knuckles, the way I had done when walking home from the subway at night. I scanned up and down the sidewalk. Nothing. The square was empty. When the choir members and others who had helped search for the pig decided to clear out, they didn’t mess around. I was the only one on the street.
“Is someone there?” I asked.
“It’s me.” The whisper came from around the side of Swissmen Sweets in the narrow alley between the candy shop and the pretzel shop next door. “I need your help.” The voice was high and young.
“My help?” I asked. “I can’t help you if I don’t know who you are.”
A small figure inched out from around the side of the building. She had her head down, and a large black bonnet covered much of her face, but the light from the lamp over the door reflected off strawberry-blond hair. “Charlotte?”
“You said if I needed help, I should come find you. I do, so I did.” Her body trembled beneath her black cloak.
I turned to unlock the door to Swissmen Sweets. “You had better come inside and tell me what’s going on.”
When we stepped into the shop, the sharp scent of vinegar filled my nose. Despite its harshness, I found the smell comforting. As always, Maami had cleaned all the counters and tables before going to bed. Even in the middle of her great grief, she completed all her self-appointed tasks.
Nothing conjured the image of my grandmother more than the smell of vinegar. When I had lived in New York, my best friend, Cass, had never understood why I loved the scent so much or insisted that we clean all the work stations at JP Chocolates with vinegar instead of chemical disinfectants. Until recently, Cass hadn’t known about my connection to the Amish. I simply told her the vinegar was more ecofriendly, which was true.
Nutmeg wove in and out of my legs and meowed. He looked up at me with his big amber eyes. I shook my finger at him. “I know perfectly well Maami fed you dinner before going to bed. Don’t give me those ‘poor me’ eyes.”
Charlotte laughed. “You talk to your cat like he’s a person.”
“He’s not a person?” I asked in a teasing tone. “Don’t tell him that. It would break his kitty-cat heart.”
She stared at the cat in alarm.
I chuckled. “I’m teasing. Even if you told Nutmeg he wasn’t human, he wouldn’t believe you.”
“He is a sweet kitten.” She knelt and held out her hand to the small orange-striped ball of fluff. As she moved, her cloak and long skirts hit the floor.
Nutmeg, never one to turn down the chance to make a new friend, toddled over to her. While the two got acquainted, I removed the chairs from the top of one of the café tables in the front room. “Why don’t you have a seat while I grab us some fudge. Then you can tell me what you are doing here.” I walked across the room to the sale counter and lifted the piece of wood that separated the front of the shop from the work area behind the counter and slipped through.
She perched on the edge of one of the chairs, and Nutmeg jumped onto her lap. The cat spun in a circle before settling into a tight ball.
Charlotte stroked the cat’s back. “I don’t want any fudge.”
I set the knife on the cutting board. “You might not want any, but I think I’m going to need a substantial helping. My grandmother doesn’t keep alcohol in the house, so this is the next best thing for a day like today.”
I opened the back of the refrigerated, glass-domed counter and removed the tray with the chocolate
peanut butter fudge on it. I knew I needed to pull out the big guns for this one, and in times of crisis, nothing worked better than my grandfather’s chocolate peanut butter fudge . I sensed that Charlotte was in a time of crisis. I took two small white plates from the shelf behind me and set two healthy pieces of fudge on each.
“How does chocolate peanut butter sound?” I asked.
She smiled. “That’s my favorite.”
I grinned, holding the two plates up for her to see. “A girl after my own heart.”
She looked at the ceiling. “I don’t want to wake your grandmother.”
I stepped back around the counter. “Don’t worry about that. Maami’s bedroom is in the back of the building.” I set the plates on the table and took the seat across from her.
She had removed her black bonnet, but she left the cloak on as if taking it off might signify that she planned to stay for a little while.
I glanced at the large plain clock that hung on the wall behind the counter. It reminded me of the clocks that had hung in every classroom of my high school back in Connecticut. It was close to nine. “Charlotte, does your family know where you are?”
She shook her head. “Nee, they do not.”
“Oh-kay.” I slid her piece of fudge in front of her and waited.
“They can’t know that I came to talk to you. They would not like it. They believe I’m in my room at home.”
“You snuck out of your house?” I broke off a small corner of the chocolate peanut butter fudge. It seemed to me that sneaking out of the house wasn’t a very Amish thing do to. I started to stand. “I can give you a lift home, and you can tell me what’s going on in the car. I don’t want your family to worry.”
She shook her head and placed her hand on the table. “Bailey, please. I can’t go home right now.”
“Won’t your family worry if they discover you are gone?” I hesitated for a moment and sat back in my seat.
“When they realize I’m gone, they will. But that can’t be helped. I can’t go home. I can never go back home again.”
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