“I can’t have this going on,” the man bellowed for anyone on the street to hear. “All the comings and goings from this shop have to stop. I’m trying to run a business next door. I don’t know what all you are doing with this candy shop, but it is most certainly not selling candy.”
Comings and goings? I wondered. Hadn’t Lindy just said the shop had been closed for at least two days? And she was at the ACC all of that time. Who else had been visiting Berlin Candies?
I stepped forward. “Can we help you?”
He glared at me. “Who are you?”
“Bailey,” I said, looking him in the eye. “I’m a friend of Lindy’s.”
“I’ve never seen you here before.” He glared over my shoulder at Lindy. “Now you are bringing your friends around because Josephine is dead? Is that it? You finally got the shop all to yourself, have you? Are you the one who’s sending people here to size the place up? Are you already making changes before Josephine is even buried in the ground?”
Lindy stepped back as if his words were blows. “I—I—”
“Wait a second. What are you implying?” I wanted to know.
“Just what everyone on the street knows. That Lindy has been waiting for this day for a long time. I have too. I can’t say I’m sorry that that horrible woman is dead. I have nothing good to say about her.” He pointed at Lindy. “She didn’t like her either. I won’t let her deny that. Josephine was awful to her. Maybe,” he said, looking at Lindy, “you finally snapped. Was that what happened?”
I glanced over my shoulder. Lindy was staring at her feet. “The same could be said for you, because you obviously didn’t care for Josephine,” I said. “I’ve only known you for two minutes, and you have made that abundantly clear.”
“Make no mistake about it. I hated the woman.” He swung his long arms, causing me to step back. He didn’t seem to notice as he went on. “She was nothing but a thorn in my side.”
“And where were you yesterday morning?” I asked, keeping my distance.
A slow smile curled his lips. “I see what you’re getting at, but it’s no use. I didn’t do anything to that Amish woman. If I had wanted to hurt her, I would have long ago.”
It was close to what Lindy had said earlier when she’d mentioned that if Jeffrey had wanted to kill Josephine, he would have done it much earlier.
“And how do we know that you just didn’t snap?” I straightened up so I could look him in the eye.
He laughed. “I wasn’t anywhere near Harvest when she died.”
“Where you were you?” I persisted.
“I was right here in my store. If you don’t believe me, you can ask my two employees who were in the store yesterday morning and two customers, one of whom was Amish. That should be enough proof for you. It was enough for the Sheriff’s Department.”
I inwardly sighed. Of course, Aiden would have already spoken to Jeffrey. He would have done so at his first opportunity. It seemed that I was always two steps behind him. I reminded myself that finding out who’d killed Josephine wasn’t a competition.
Jeffrey went on. “The vultures are already circling now that she’s dead. The candy shop, like my store, has a prime location. I wouldn’t be surprised if someone makes an offer to buy it before her body is in the ground.”
I could understand that. When I’d first arrived in Harvest in September, my grandfather had been dealing with a greedy developer who wanted to buy his shop because of its prime location across from Harvest’s town square. My grandfather had refused to sell, but the developer wouldn’t give up without a fight.
Berlin, because it was on Route 39, a main state road that traveled east and west, bisecting Holmes County, was an even better location. I wasn’t surprised that developers and others had already come to look at the property.
I glanced at the candy shop. Through the window, I could see that the shop was twice the size of my own and had a beautiful collection of displays. Jars of hard candy shone in the fading sunlight streaming through the window, and colorful boxes of chocolate and caramels were on display. Even though Berlin Candies was in competition with my own store, it would be a shame if the shop was bought out and turned into something else, but maybe that had been the plan all along and the reason Josephine had been murdered.
I felt like something was about to click. Maybe Josephine’s murder was about her shop. If the men of her district seemed too eager to examine her shop, what else could it be? What else did she have that someone would want? She was a widowed Amish woman with no children. That wasn’t to be envied. However, she was a successful businesswoman and one of the best candy makers around. That was certainly something to envy and want, but was it something to kill for? That was the part I wasn’t so sure about.
“Who have you seen here?” I asked Jeffrey. “Who in particular?”
He scowled. “There were a couple of developers who were nosing around this morning. I don’t know their names, but I know their type. They wore suits and sunglasses. No one in Holmes County dresses like that, not even the Englischers.”
I frowned. It would have been a lot more helpful if he could have gotten the names of the men.
“And her brother-in-law was here,” he added. “He had a key, so he was able to get inside.”
“Sol Weaver?” I asked.
“That’s right. Sol came once by himself, and then he came back a second time with another Amish man, a younger one.”
I was willing to bet that the other Amish man had been Deacon Clapp.
“Did they meet with the developers?” I asked.
“Not that I saw,” he said.
It sounded as if the hardware store owner had been watching the entire time. There was no doubt in my mind that Jeffrey Galwin had kept a close eye on Berlin Candies when Josephine was alive and was keeping an even closer eye on it now that she was dead.
“While the two Amish men were in the shop, I dropped in.” Jeffrey folded his arms. “I wanted to know what was going on. If they are going to sell the place, I want to know about it. I mean, I’m the one who is going to have to live with the new owners as neighbors, not them.”
“What did they say?” I asked.
He curled his hands into fists at his sides. “They said that it wasn’t any of my business, and they would do with the candy shop what they saw fit.” His face turned a dark shade of red. “It is my business. My store is right next door. What they plan to do with this building and who moves into it has an impact on me, whether they believe that or not.”
That’s where he was wrong. It wasn’t really his business to know what Josephine’s family planned to do with the candy shop, but I wasn’t going to tell him that. Even so, I wished that they had told him their plans. Jeffrey was angry enough to blurt out what they were if he’d known them.
He pointed at me. “If you find out that they are selling this place, you tell me.” He pointed at Lindy too. “That goes for you too.”
Neither of us promised him anything.
He stomped back to his store, stopped at his front door, and said, “Tell those Amish bishops or whatever they are to stay away from my property or I’m calling the police.” He slammed the door so hard after himself, I thought the glass would break.
Chapter 31
I drove Lindy home, but try as I might to convince her to talk about the encounter with Jeffrey, she wouldn’t say anything. When she got out of the car in her driveway, she thanked me for the ride and helping her get the supplies back to the shop. I watched as her husband met her at the door and pulled her into a hug. I smiled, happy that Lindy had a supportive family to go home to after the ACC, but I drove back to Harvest with a knot in my stomach. I was no closer to figuring out who’d killed Josephine or what had become of Jethro than I had been that morning.
My cell phone rang, and I answered it on speaker. Cass’s excited voice filled the car. “So did you win? Tell me you won!”
“I won the fudge round,” I said.
“You had better have
won the fudge round.” She sniffed as if personally offended by the very idea I might not have won the fudge category of the ACC. “If you didn’t, Jean Pierre and I would personally fly to Harvest in his jet and knock some Amish heads together.”
That’d be a sight. Amish Country would never be the same after their invasion. It had barely survived Cass’s solo arrival in September.
I laughed. It was good to hear her voice. “I also won taffy, but not the overall prize. Another Amish candy shop won that.”
“What? You were robbed! I might have to fly in and knock some Amish heads together after all,” she cried. “There is no way that another candy shop can make candy better than you. You were trained by the very best. You practically trained me, and I’m the best.”
I found some of my anxiety fall away as I listened to her outburst. There was no lack of self-confidence in my best friend. I never had to worry about that. After I’d decided to leave JP Chocolates to move to Ohio to be with my grandmother, my old boss Jean Pierre and the search committee had decided to give Cass the head chocolatier job at Jean Pierre’s flagship store in New York. They’d made the perfect choice. Cass had just the right kind of talent, smarts, and self-confidence to get the job done and get it done well.
“There’s something else.” I paused.
“Whaaaat?” she asked, drawing out the word as if she already knew that she wouldn’t like the answer.
“During the competition, I found a dead body,” I said quickly, just to get it over with. I saw telling this bit of news to Cass as akin to jumping off the high dive at the local swimming pool. It’s best to just march to the end of the board and leap. It would be much worse to draw it out. That only led to fear of jumping the next time or, worse, not jumping at all.
Silence. I couldn’t even hear her breathing.
“Cass? Are you there?” I asked.
“Bai,” she began slowly as if measuring her every word. Since Cass typically spoke at a mile a minute, I found this slightly alarming. “Did you just say that you found a dead body?”
“Yep,” I said, faking nonchalance about it.
“Am I getting this right—this is your second body in less than two months?”
I winced when she put it like that. Clearly, Cass wasn’t buying my relaxed attitude about it. I shouldn’t have expected her to. She had known me a long time. She knew me better than just about anyone. She knew when I was faking calm. Unfortunately. “I haven’t really put together the time frame, but yes. And technically I didn’t find it. My cousin did.”
“Wait! Back up!” she cried. “You have a cousin? Did I know about this?”
“I didn’t even know about it until this week. She’s the granddaughter of my grandmother’s first cousin,” I said, hoping that would ease her upset over not knowing I had cousins. I had kept secrets from Cass in the past, and that had not gone well. I didn’t want my best friend to think I was hiding things from her again.
“What does that make her to you?” Cass asked, sounding somewhat appeased.
“My second or third cousin.”
“Interesting,” she said. “Now let’s get back to the dead body. I assume Hot County Deputy is looking into the crime. Have you gotten to spend some time with him because of it?”
It was my turn to be silent.
“I’ll take that as a yes,” she said. “When is your first date?’
“Cass, a woman is dead. I’m not using someone’s death as leverage to get a date.”
She sighed as if I had learned nothing from her over the last six years of our friendship. “Tell me about the dead person.”
I told her what I had learned about Josephine.
“Suspects?” she asked.
“There’s Charlotte, but I’m certain she didn’t do it. She’s just not capable of it, and she was completely shocked when she discovered the dead body. Technically, she was the first person to see Josephine dead.”
“It’s always the quiet ones,” Cass murmured.
“She didn’t do it,” I said firmly.
“Fine, fine. Don’t be so touchy. I can understand that you want to protect your cousin, now that you have one.”
I rolled my eyes.
“I know you’re rolling your eyes,” she said.
“How?” I wanted to know.
“I heard it.”
“Whatever,” I muttered.
“What else do you have?” she asked.
If I didn’t know better, I would have thought that Cass was enjoying this.
“Not much. That’s the problem. There is her shop assistant, Lindy, and another Amish candy maker who looks a little bit shady named Haddie. I’m convinced Haddie tampered with another candy maker’s equipment to boot her out of the competition, but I have no way to prove it. Aiden believes the same thing, but he can’t prove it either.”
“Oh, I like her for the crime. A sneaky Amish woman is trouble, if you ask me, and I am glad you and Aiden are consulting each other on the case.”
I sighed. “For a minute there, I thought it could have been the owner of a hardware store in Berlin, but it turns out that he has an alibi, which Aiden already checked into.”
“I wouldn’t expect anything less from Hot Deputy,” she said confidently.
“You really shouldn’t call him that,” I said.
“What, are you going to tell him that’s his nickname?”
“Definitely not,” I said.
“Then we’re good. What else do you have?”
“The last suspect I have is her brother-in-law, Sol, but that is Charlotte’s father. I would hate, for her sake, for him to have done it. Her relationship with her family is already strained because she’s decided to leave the district, or at least she’s almost decided to leave the Amish. She’s torn over it.”
“Oh, will she be shunned? The Amish are big into that, aren’t they? I’ve been watching those Amish Gone Wild shows to learn more about your culture.”
I sighed. “I wouldn’t call those shows a fair representation of Amish culture, and I don’t know if Charlotte will be shunned. I don’t think she has been baptized into the church, so she shouldn’t be, but the new church deacon is very strict. I wouldn’t be surprised if he changed the rules about that. He’s changed so many already. Maami asked me to help Charlotte. I’m doing the best I can, but I’m afraid I’m just spinning my wheels.”
“Do you need me to come out there?” Cass asked after a beat. “Because I will. I can get someone to mind the place back here. Caden would be happy to do it. He is still trying to prove himself.”
Caden had been the third assistant who was in the running earlier that fall to be head chocolatier at JP Chocolates. I was certain he would be thrilled if Cass left so soon after she was given the position, so that he could prove that it should have been given to him.
“No. Aiden is here. He can be my backup.”
She laughed. “I knew you liked him.”
“I was joking.” I paused.
“You shouldn’t be. The guy is perfect for you. Unlike He Who Shall Not Be Named.”
“Eric is not Voldemort.”
“Says who?” she asked.
“I’m not over Eric yet. I want to be, but I’m not.” My voice trailed off.
“Even more reason for you to spend time with Deputy Aiden. He’s twice the guy that Eric ever could be. Eric was never right for you, and had I known about your secret romance, I would have told you that at the beginning, made you dump him, and saved you a lot of tears and grief over that pond scum.”
I couldn’t help but smile at Cass’s choice of words. I would never call Eric pond scum, but as my best friend, Cass reserved and used the right to call him that, among other much more colorful names.
“Which is why I didn’t tell you. I should have. I’m sorry. You would have saved me a lot of grief,” I admitted grudgingly.
“That’s over and done with. We are moving forward now, but no more secrets, okay?”
“No mo
re secrets,” I agreed as I parked the compact in front of Swissmen Sweets.
“Call me whenever. Day or night,” she said. “I know I’m far away, but I’m always here for you. I’ll even listen to you talk about Eric if it will help.”
I laughed, knowing how much she hated my ex-boyfriend. “I know. And I’m always here for you too.”
She laughed. “I’m counting on that.”
Chapter 32
My cell phone rang again just as I hung up with Cass. I sighed. It would be just like Cass to call me right back, probably to tell me a creative new way to dispose of my ex-boyfriend that she’d thought up.
“Cass—” I started without looking at the screen to see who the call was from.
There was mumbling on the other end of the line that was most certainly not my best friend. I couldn’t make out what the person was saying.
“Hello?”
Nothing.
I was about to hang up when I heard a voice whisper in my ear, “It’s Charlotte.”
“Charlotte, where are you? Are you at Swissmen Sweets? I’m right outside the shop. I will be inside in just a minute.” I pressed my ear against the phone, hoping to be able to hear her better.
“Nee, I am at my father’s buggy shop,” Charlotte said in a breathy voice.
“You are?” I asked, surprised. “What are you doing there?”
“Can you come and get me?” She sounded desperate. “Please.”
I sighed. “I’ll be there as soon as I can. Where is it located?”
She rattled off the location of the shop while I shifted my car into reverse.
* * *
Weaver Buggy Company was at the top of one of the rolling hills Holmes County was famous for. The buggy shop was a large, aluminum-sided barn overlooking the countryside. My small car chugged its way slowly up the hill. The car was a new addition to my life. I had had no need for one in New York, but I had learned, after just a week in Holmes County, that I couldn’t get many places without some mode of transportation, and my grandfather’s old buggy wasn’t a practical option. Daadi’s buggy sat in the alley behind Swissmen Sweets. My grandfather had long ago sold his horse to another church member when he became too ill to care for the animal himself. He, like so many Amish, depended on Amish drivers, Englischers who drove an unofficial Amish taxi service, to take him and my grandmother around the county.
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