Lethal Licorice

by Amanda Flower

  “I’ve lived here over a month, and this is the first I’ve ever seen her.”

  She shrugged. “Maybe you haven’t noticed her before. People like Ruby tend to go unnoticed.”

  “What does that mean?”

  Maami sighed. “She’s not right in the head anymore. Most blame old age.”

  “Do you think it could be something else?”

  She shrugged. “I don’t know. Talking to Ruby is difficult.”

  “Where’s her family?”

  “They own the yarn shop and let Ruby live there.”

  I ran a hand through my hair, and my fingers got trapped in a nest of tangles, which I knew had been created from my tossing and turning the night before.

  “Why don’t you go get ready for the competition?” she said. “While you dress, I will make you breakfast.”

  “Pancakes?” I asked in the same hopeful voice I had used as a child. My grandmother’s pancakes were the very best. They were almost as good as my grandfather’s fudge.

  She nodded. “Pancakes. We could all use pancakes this morning.”

  I couldn’t have agreed more.

  Chapter 22

  Maami had been right. The pancakes were just what I needed. As Emily and I set up the booth for the day, I could have gone for a couple more even after devouring four.

  “The first round of competition today is peanut brittle,” I told Emily as I pulled a large jar of peanuts out of the supply crate.

  “I hope no one is allergic to peanuts,” she said.

  I grimaced. “Me too. I think one allergy-induced death is enough for the ACC, don’t you?”

  Emily wrinkled her nose. “Can I ask you something, Bailey?”

  I glanced at her, surprised by her serious tone. “Of course, you can.”

  She picked up the jar of peanuts and hugged it to her chest. “My sister saw something this morning and told me about it. It’s been bothering me some.”

  I set the bag of sugar I’d been holding on the table and touched her arm. “What is it? What’s wrong?”

  She put the jar back on the table. “She said that she was in the alley this morning putting some trash in the Dumpster behind our shop.”

  I nodded encouragement.

  “Well, Esther said that she saw Charlotte Weaver leave Swissmen Sweets by the back door.”

  I frowned.

  “It’s all over the district that Charlotte didn’t sleep in her bed last night. Her family and the church leaders are very upset. Esther said that Charlotte must have spent the night with you. Esther believes that you hid her in Swissmen Sweets and that you may have orchestrated her disappearance from home last night.”

  I folded my arms. “I orchestrated nothing. Is Esther going to tell the district and Charlotte’s family where she is?”

  “I—I don’t know. Esther doesn’t like to get involved in things. She would much rather pretend that she never saw it.”

  “Then why did she say anything to you?” I asked.

  “I think she was making some type of point.” She stared at the tops of her plain black sneakers.

  “And that point was?” I asked when she didn’t answer.

  “That I shouldn’t be working for you during the ACC and I shouldn’t be around you at all. She thinks that your Englisch ways will make me turn my back on my family and church too. Both she and Abel think so.”

  “I had nothing to do with Charlotte’s decision to leave her family home last night. I only gave her a place to stay for a night. That’s it.”

  Emily wrinkled her brow as if she remained unconvinced.

  “Do me a favor,” I said. “If this does come up in gossip, put all the blame on me. Keep my grandmother out of it. Tell them that she didn’t know Charlotte was there. I was the one who let Charlotte stay. Maami had nothing to do with it.”

  “Did Clara know?” she asked.

  “She wasn’t the one who let Charlotte stay at Swissmen Sweets. That was me.”

  Emily nodded and returned to emptying the supply crate.

  I felt a knot form in my stomach. This was just what I had feared when I’d let Charlotte spend the night at Swissmen Sweets. I didn’t want the Amish to think badly of my grandmother or believe that she was defiant in some way for welcoming Charlotte into her home.

  I was debating about saying more to Emily when Haddie Smucker walked across the square toward her old table with a crate of supplies in her hands. She set the crate on the table next to ours. The table had been hers before she’d been eliminated from the competition.

  Emily and I stood there watching her with our mouths hanging open.

  Haddie glared at us. “Can I help you with something?”

  “Are you back in the competition?” I asked.

  She smiled. “I am.”

  “How?” Emily asked and then winced. I doubted that she had meant to ask the question out loud.

  Haddie narrowed her eyes. “It seems that one of the contestants cheated in the last round yesterday, and they had a brief competition in the church kitchen this morning between the candy makers who’d already left the competition. I came out the victor, so yes, I’m back.”

  I raised my eyebrows, surprised that I hadn’t heard anything about this sudden-death Amish candy maker match. I would have liked to have seen it. I was also surprised to hear that the standoff had occurred in the church kitchen. This meant the church was open today, even though Josephine had died there.

  “Who did you replace?” Emily asked.

  Haddie glared at her.

  I stepped in front of Emily to block Haddie’s death glare. “You said someone had cheated yesterday. Who was it?”

  She gave me a sideways smile and glanced over her shoulder. I followed her line of sight. Across the square, an Amish woman cried as she packed up her candy-making supplies. The female Amish judge, Beatrice, stood in front of her with her arms crossed. If she was going for nineteenth-century disapproving schoolmarm, she had nailed it.

  “That’s Susan Klink from Lancaster. Wow,” Emily whispered. “I can’t believe she cheated. She has one of the largest Amish candy shops in the country.”

  Haddie sniffed, somehow making it sound triumphant. “Just because you have the biggest of something doesn’t mean you came by it fairly.”

  “How did she cheat?” I asked.

  “She went into the church to use the electric microwave to heat up her molasses for her licorice recipe. Can you imagine? She used electricity. Of course, that is absolutely off-limits. She, of all people, should know better. Then again, she is Beachy Amish—you know how they are.”

  I raised my eyebrows. “How are they?”

  “They do not always follow the Amish way,” Haddie said indignantly.

  I frowned and glanced over at Susan again. In her plain lavender dress, black tennis shoes, and white prayer cap, she seemed to be following the Amish way, as far as I could tell.

  “Why did she do that?” Emily asked.

  Haddie removed a white tablecloth from her supply basket and tossed it over the top of the table. After she smoothed every wrinkle out of the cloth, she said, “She claims her gas-powered burner wasn’t working yesterday morning. She must have panicked and run to the church. Big mistake.”

  “Why didn’t she ask another one of the candy makers for help?” Emily asked.

  Haddie shrugged with that smug smile still on her face.

  “What happened to her burner to make it stop working?” I asked.

  Haddie sniffed. “I didn’t hear the reason. In any case, if she was having an issue with her burner, she should have told the judges. Maybe they could have made arrangements for her to continue on, or as Emily suggested, she could have asked another contestant to borrow their burner to heat up her molasses. But to go into the church and do that is just unforgivable.”

  Unforgivable? That sounded a little harsh to me. My head started spinning. There might be no connection between Josephine’s murder and the malfunctioning stove, but
I didn’t believe it. Two strong contenders had been removed from the ACC. The two incidents had to be related. I bit my lip. They could be related, I amended, downgrading my assumption. I couldn’t let my mind jump three steps ahead before I had a chance to speak to Susan Klink, and if I wanted to do that, I needed to move. Susan was all but packed up to leave.

  I turned to Emily. “Can you start the brittle?”

  Emily gave me a sideways glance. “You are going to talk to Susan, aren’t you?”

  “I have to before she leaves.”

  Emily shook her head. “Go.”

  Haddie must have overheard us because she said as I was leaving the booth, “Don’t meddle where you don’t belong, Bailey King. This is Amish business, and you have no right to get involved in any of it.”

  I didn’t even bother to turn around. To me that sounded like a threat, but I’d received more than my fair share of threats. Haddie’s comment wasn’t even in the top ten.

  Chapter 23

  A lone tear slid down Susan Klink’s red cheek as she tucked a bag of white sugar into her supply cart. She was a pretty woman close to my mother’s age, with an upturned nose and large hazel eyes. Those eyes brimmed with tears.

  I hesitated, knowing I was intruding on this woman’s raw emotion. I almost turned around and returned to my own booth. That would have been the compassionate thing to do.

  She wiped a tear from the corner of her eye with her index finger. “I’m very sorry, but I don’t have any samples today. I’m sure one of the other candy makers can give you some.” She squinted at me. “Oh.”

  I wrinkled my brow. “Oh?”

  “You’re the Englisch candy maker,” she said. “I know Clara and knew your late grandfather very well. All the Amish candy makers who have been in this business for any length of time know each other.” She frowned. “I’m sorry I’m not able to chat. I . . .” she trailed off.

  There was a cool breeze in the air, and I tucked my hands into the pockets of my down vest. “I heard that you’re leaving the competition.”

  She nodded, and another tear slid down her cheek. She swiped it away. “I’m so glad that my husband decided to stay home in Lancaster with the children during this competition. He would not like to see me cry. It’s just my way. When I’m happy, I cry. When I’m sad, I cry. It drives him a little crazy.” She gave me a wobbly smile. “It’s a long ride back to Lancaster, so I pray that I will be all cried out by the time I arrive home.”

  I smiled. “I don’t see anything wrong with your tears.”

  “That is kind of you to say.”

  “I heard what happened, and I’m so sorry. Is there anything I can do to help?”

  “Nee, danki.”

  She rubbed her nose with a handkerchief. “It’s just so awful. If I could go back and undo what has been done, I would. Believe me, I would. This can’t be happening. I have been running my shop in Lancaster for more than twenty years. I have never had such an issue. This was the first time I’ve been accepted in the ACC in all that time, and I so wanted to do well. When my stove stopped working, I just panicked. All I could think of was that I needed to heat up the molasses. The church was right there. It was early. I thought I could get there and back with no one noticing. I know it was the wrong thing to do. I got what I deserved.”

  “What happened exactly? How did your stove stop working?”

  She pointed behind the small stove, which was just like the one at my station.

  I walked around the stove and took a closer look at the connection between the stove and the gas. The fixture where the propane tank was connected was bent. It was as if someone had taken a pair of pliers and had purposely crimped the fixture so that the hose wouldn’t connect properly. I shivered. If Susan had struck a match near the propane tank when the poor connection was on, she could have been killed. Many people at the ACC that day could have been killed.

  I straightened up. “Someone did this. This was no accident.”

  She folded the navy cloth that had been draped over her table and hugged it to her chest. “What do you mean?”

  “Someone tampered with your stove on purpose.”

  She blinked at me through her tears. “Why would anyone do that?”

  “Did you show this to the judges? Did you see that bend in the connection between the stove and the propane tank?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Nee. I was just so upset when the stove wouldn’t come on, and time was running out to make the licorice, I panicked.”

  “We need to tell Margot and the other judges about this. Whether it was done on purpose—which I think it was—or happened by accident, the malfunction was not your fault.”

  “But I was the one who went into the church and used the microwave. That was inexcusable.” She gripped the handle of her cart with both hands until her knuckles turned white.

  “It’s not as bad as tampering with the equipment. That’s truly inexcusable. We need to tell the police.”

  Her eyes went wide, and she gripped the cart handle a little more tightly. “The police? Can’t I just leave? I have already been shamed by all of this. I have no desire to talk to the police.”

  I pursed my lips together. Even if Susan didn’t want to tell the police, I knew that I had to tell Aiden on the off chance that this could be connected to Josephine’s death. “Yesterday morning, you went over to the church to heat your molasses to make licorice?”

  She bowed her head. “I did.”

  “What time was that?”

  She lifted her head. “I don’t know why that matters.”

  “Do you know what happened in the church yesterday?”

  She placed a hand against her cheek. “Do you think I was there at the same time as whoever killed Josephine?”

  “It’s possible.”

  She trembled. “I was there close to ten in the morning, a little past actually. I remember because I needed to be quick to get back to my table in time for the judging.”

  “How long were you inside the church?” I asked.

  “Forty-five minutes. I had just enough time to mix the licorice and pour it into molds. I decided that the molds could cool at my table.”

  “You took all your ingredients over to the church?”

  She nodded.

  “Did you have licorice extract with you?” I asked.

  She picked up a tea towel from her table and folded it before dropping it into her supply crate. “Well, yes, I needed it for the recipe.”

  “What’s going on here?” Beatrice asked behind me.

  I jumped. I hadn’t even known she was there. I wondered how much she had heard. I turned around to find both Beatrice and Jeremiah standing behind me. Jeremiah held his clipboard in his large hands.

  Beatrice narrowed her eyes at me. “Bailey, shouldn’t you be at your own table preparing for the peanut brittle round?”

  “I’m glad you’re both here. I don’t think you should make Susan leave the competition.”

  “What you think, Bailey King, is of no consequence.”

  “But—”

  Beatrice narrowed her eyes. “Please don’t argue with me, Bailey, or you will put your own place in the competition in jeopardy.”

  I dropped my arms to my sides. “The competition needs to be fair, and how can it be when someone has tampered with Susan’s stove?”

  “That is a serious accusation,” Jeremiah said.

  I nodded. “I know, and that’s why I wouldn’t say anything unless I was sure.”

  Beatrice pursed her lips. “And you are sure?”

  “I am.” I pointed behind the stove. “If you look there, you will see that someone has crimped the fixture where the hose is supposed to attach to the propane tank.”

  “No one in the ACC would do that.” Beatrice sniffed.

  “You would have said that no one here could have committed murder,” I said. “But Josephine is dead.”

  Beatrice’s face flushed. “Whatever may have happened to Susan�
��s stove has nothing to do with Josephine Weaver’s death. You should remember that she did not die at the ACC.”

  “That may be, but—”

  “There is no ‘but,’” Beatrice snapped. “I have known every one of these competitors for years,” she argued. “You are the only one who is new. If I were to worry about anyone causing trouble at the ACC, it would be you.”

  “Now, Beatrice,” Jeremiah took a step forward. Even considering that he was three times the size of Beatrice, she remained the more formidable of the pair. “Bailey is Jebidiah and Clara’s granddaughter. I think we can agree that she wouldn’t do such a thing.”

  “She’s Englisch,” Beatrice countered.

  Susan ducked her head. “Please, please. This is all my fault. I thank you, Bailey, for trying to come to my aid, but what I did was wrong, and I should be removed from the ACC. I would like to leave quietly.”

  “But—” I began to argue.

  Beatrice took a step toward me. “The decision has been made. What’s done is done. I suggest that you return to your table and stop sticking your nose in where it doesn’t belong.”

  This was the second time I had received such a warning today, and it wasn’t even lunchtime yet.

  Susan lifted her heavy crate of supplies, nodded at the judges, and shuffled away toward the line of buggies parked on Main Street.

  “But—” I said again.

  Beatrice stepped in my path. “Go back to your booth, Bailey King, before you are removed from the competition as well.”

  I jabbed my fists into my hips. “On what grounds?”

  “I’ll think of something.”

  I wanted to argue with her more, but I saw Jeremiah’s face over her shoulder. He mouthed “no” at me. I frowned and decided to let it go for the moment. In any case, I wouldn’t be able to investigate what was going on at the ACC if I was kicked out of it.

  Beatrice stomped away with Jeremiah on her heels.

  As I walked back to my table on the other side of the square, I made the mistake of glancing toward Haddie. The smug expression on her face when she’d told me about Susan’s troubles was still firmly in place. If I had to guess who’d tampered with Susan’s stove, my money was on Haddie all the way.