Marshmallow Malice

by Amanda Flower

  “Did you ask Reverend Brook directly? She certainly seemed to know who he is.”

  “I did.” He pressed his lips together. “He said due to pastor confidentiality, he couldn’t tell me. Normally, I would have pressed him, but I didn’t want to ruin my mother’s day any more than it already was. But be sure I will find out before they leave on their honeymoon tomorrow afternoon what his connection to that woman is.” He set his jaw.

  I frowned and wondered if I should tell Aiden that I had seen Reverend Brook speaking with the woman outside the reception tent just before the cake toppled over. I decided to wait until the wedding was over, too. I didn’t want to cause him any more worry during the remainder of the reception. But I had to admit that I was glad he was trying to get to the bottom of who the mystery woman was. I was dying to know.

  “I’d better go; the frosting is starting to stiffen up. It won’t take me more than thirty minutes to walk to my house, change into another dress, and come back.” I lowered my voice. “Between you and me, I’m quite happy that I don’t have to dance in this. I would have fallen on my face. I think the dressmaker used all the organza in Ohio to come up with this monstrosity. It’s no great loss.”

  “So you paid Jethro to topple the cake and ruin your dress, is that it?”

  My face fell as I thought of the once beautiful cake. “I hate to think of all the time Maami and the girls from the shop put into that cake, only to have it destroyed in a matter of seconds.”

  “You know your grandmother isn’t upset.” Aiden look back into the tent. “She’s having a nice time, too.”

  “I know.” I smiled. “It’s nice to see her so cheerful. Ever since Daadi died, there’s been this underlying sadness in her face. I’m glad to see she’s happy now. She loves your family very much. She wouldn’t miss Juliet’s wedding for the world.”

  He kissed my cheek. “And I love hers, most especially her marshallowed granddaughter.”

  I squinted at him. “Is ‘marshallowed’ a word?”

  “It is now.”

  “Aiden?” A woman of about thirty came out of the tent. She had beautiful red hair that fell to her shoulders in a movie star wave. Her dress was a sky blue the exact shade of her eyes. She smiled at Aiden in a way that made me uncomfortable. “Your mother sent me to fetch you. The two of you need to finish your dance.”

  “Thank you,” Aiden said in a clipped way.

  “And I hope you will save a dance or two for me as well.” She smiled up at him. “For old times’ sake.”

  Old times’ sake?

  The woman glanced at me in a measured way and went back inside the tent. I would be lying if I didn’t say I thought she put a little more sway in her walk as she went.

  I stood there in my cake-covered dress, but Aiden didn’t explain who the woman was. I desperately wanted to know, and to ask him what old times’ sake meant. He said nothing. Okay, I stored the topic away for a conversation at a later time.

  “Go,” I whispered.

  He nodded. “Hurry back.”

  “I will.” I watched him walk inside the tent. His mother waited on the temporary dance floor. She beamed at him. I hoped that the woman in the church would not make the smile waver ever again, but even I knew that was wishful thinking.

  CHAPTER SIX

  Leaving the wedding tent, Aiden, and the mystery redhead behind me, I hurried across the square and stopped on Main Street to wait for a minivan full of kids to drive past. They stuck their heads out of the van’s windows when they spotted me, and I had a feeling that several of them snapped a photograph of me with their phones. I’d be trending on social media with the hashtag “exploded cupcake” before I even reached my house. It made me wonder how many people at the wedding took photos or video of the great cake clasp. It was unlikely I would ever be asked to make a wedding cake again; the entire village had seen what happened to Juliet’s cake. Shaking my head, I knew there was nothing I could do about it. I just hoped that I’d ducked my head in time, so no one could see my face.

  I passed Swissmen Sweets on Main Street and continued down to the corner of Apple. I had my head down. In my current state, I didn’t want to make eye contact with anyone. I knew how ridiculous I looked. When I turned onto Apple Street, I saw the woman in the tropical dress again. She stood on the opposite corner with her arms folded, glaring at the proceedings around the reception tent. Part of me wanted to talk to her, ask her who she was and what she was doing here.

  But how could I ask any hard-hitting questions and hope to be taken seriously when I looked like an exploded cupcake?

  She began to walk, taking a winding path down the sidewalk. As if just putting one foot in front of the other was a difficult business. She stumbled toward the curb. My earlier impression, when I saw her with the minister, had been correct; she was definitely drunk. I knew she hadn’t gotten tipsy at the reception. Reverend Brook had insisted on a dry wedding. There wasn’t much dispute from anyone about it. He was the pastor of the church, and the many Amish attending wouldn’t approve of spirits either.

  Reverend Brook had spoken out many times about the troubles that alcohol caused. I knew the possible dangers of alcohol, but I wasn’t against a margarita when I was back in NYC. At the same time, I respected my Amish grandmother enough not to talk about alcohol in front of her.

  This woman needed help. I increased my pace to catch up with her. It wasn’t an easy feat, considering that I had to shuffle to keep from tripping over the cake-covered dress.

  When I was about ten feet away, she still gave no indication that she knew I was behind her. “Ma’am?” I asked.

  She didn’t even twitch.

  A little louder, I asked, “Ma’am? Do you need help? Can I call someone for you?”

  Still there was no response.

  I said it a third time, and she fell on the sidewalk.

  I forgot to worry about tripping over the dress and ran to her. “I’m so sorry I scared you.”

  She did look at me then, and I could see that her eyes were bloodshot. She opened her mouth as if she were about to say something.

  Before the words could come out, a compact red car pulled up to the curb. A man jumped out, ignoring me, and began to yell at the woman. “What are you doing out here? We need to leave. Let’s go.” He was a brown-haired, short man wearing a muscle shirt and cutoff jean shorts. He was tan from hours in the sun, but I couldn’t see the color of his eyes because they were behind aviator glasses.

  “I’m not done yet,” the woman said in a slurred voice. “You can go.”

  “I wouldn’t have to if you hadn’t made such a mess of things,” he said.

  “I told you it wasn’t me. I would never do it.”

  “You can prove that by coming with me. It’s time to go.” He reached for her arm, but she jumped away.

  “I don’t need your help! I’m perfectly capable of getting inside a car.”

  I shuffled closer to them. “Can I help? Is everything okay?”

  The woman spun around. “Who do you think you are, barging into a private conversation?” She made a rude hand gesture at me. “Get lost!”

  “I–I–” I was completely taken aback. “I only wanted to offer my help.”

  “Help? What can you do to help? Look at you!” She barked a laugh.

  The man scowled. “That’s enough. It’s time for us to go.”

  She glared at him. “I decide when it’s time for me to go. No one tells me what to do. I put up with that for too long as it is.”

  He frowned. “Please. Let’s leave now.”

  I tried one more time. I felt like I had to. “I can call someone for you.” I took my phone from the pocket of my dress. The dress’s one saving grace was that it had pockets. The phone only had a little bit of marshmallow icing on it.

  “That girl is covered in cake!” the woman in the tropical dress chortled. “Cake!” With that, she opened the passenger side door and half-fell, half-sat inside the car. “Get away fr
om us, Cake Girl.” Then she laughed at her own joke, as if it was the funniest thing she had ever heard.

  I stumbled two feet back from the car.

  The man closed the door after her, glared at me, and then ran around the other side of the vehicle. He jumped in and sped away.

  I stood there in my ruined dress in a state of shock. What had I just witnessed? Some kind of domestic dispute?

  I wished I had thought to look at that license plate number, but I was too surprised by what had happened to react. I couldn’t shake the odd feeling and decided it was time to call Aiden.

  “Are you okay?” he asked as soon as he picked up.

  “I’m fine. Still walking home. Listen, I just saw something strange.” I related the story to him.

  “That does sound alarming. Did she get in the car of her own free will?”

  “Yes, but she was drunk or on something for sure. She could barely walk.”

  “Did you get a license plate?” Aiden asked.

  I sighed. “I knew you were going to ask that, and I didn’t.” I went on to describe the car.

  “It’s okay. You were too upset to be thinking about license plates. I will put out an alert to be on the lookout for the car.” He paused. “I will pull Reverend Brook away from the festivities for a bit to see if he can tell me more about her. If we knew her name, we might have better luck finding that car.”

  “You don’t think I’m being an alarmist?” I asked.

  “It’s better to be an alarmist than sit by and do nothing.” He paused. “Can you describe the man?”

  I told him what I remembered of the man’s appearance. “I’m sure if I saw him again, I would recognize him.” I shivered, hoping that the uneasy feeling I had was simply the result of the woman’s storming the church that afternoon. Maybe the man who’d picked her up was a friend. Someone who was helping her. I wanted to believe it, but I trusted my intuition that something about the entire encounter was very, very wrong.

  There was no way I could track down the car, so I would have to leave that in the hands of the police. It wasn’t easy for me. I would much rather put on my running shoes and figure out myself what was going on.

  I walked the rest of the way home without incident. When I reached my driveway, my next-door neighbor, Penny Lehman, stood in her front yard with her mouth hanging open. “Bailey King, what happened to you? You look like you have been attacked by a giant doughnut.”

  I sighed.

  Penny looked like she was Amish, but she was a member of the conservative Mennonite Church. That meant that she dressed like an Amish woman, all the way from her prayer cap to her black, sensible shoes, but she was able to use technology, drive a car, and have electricity in her home. She was short, with brown-and-gray hair, and put all the nosy neighbors I’d had back in the city to shame. None of them did surveillance as well as Penny.

  “I had a run-in with a wedding cake,” I said, hoping the conversation would end there.

  Her mouth made an “O” shape. “It looks to me like the cake won.”

  “It most definitely did. It’s nice to see you. I just need to go get cleaned up.” As I hurried to the door, a piece of marshmallow fell on a nearby bush. I’d worry about that later. Or maybe Penny would. She was much more likely to clean it up before I got around to it.

  I unlocked my front door and closed and locked it behind me before she could follow me inside. Penny had been known to do that. It was most uncomfortable when Aiden was visiting and she thought that was a good moment for a neighborly chat. Aiden and I never had much time to spend with each other because of his work as a deputy, and now that I was flying back and forth between Harvest and New York City, we had even less. Penny wasn’t making it any easier.

  I couldn’t believe that the premiere of Bailey’s Amish Sweets was so close. I was nervous just thinking about it. I had been able to put the premiere out of my mind for the last week because of the wedding, but I knew concerns about the show would come creeping back in just as soon as the reception tent came down.

  I let out a breath as I stepped farther into the house. The living room was sparsely furnished because I was hardly ever home. However, I had found a secondhand leather sofa to replace the love seat in the room.

  While Cass was in town, I slept on the new couch and gave her my bedroom upstairs. The couch was a bit on the lumpy side, but it still beat the cot I used to sleep on when I shared a tiny bedroom with Charlotte above Swissmen Sweets.

  Since I had moved into the house, I had done a few more things to make it more like a home. There were now some pictures on the wall, and I’d also bought a floor lamp.

  There was a snuffling sound at my feet, and I looked down to see my large, white rabbit, Puff, hopping toward me. She was about five feet away from me when she stopped, sat back on her haunches, and looked up.

  She shuffled a few more feet back, as if my appearance was just this side of frightening.

  I groaned. “Not you, too? I thought at least my rabbit would show me some respect.”

  She dropped her eyes, turned around, and hopped back into the kitchen.

  I went upstairs to defrost myself.

  * * *

  Later that night, after the wedding festivities came to an end, Cass and I walked back to my rental house. Other than the woman who’d stormed the church and Jethro taking out the cake, the wedding had been a great success. Despite all the mishaps, Juliet looked happier than I had ever seen her. That made all the wedding preparations I had undertaken over the last several weeks worth it.

  In the middle of the night a storm rolled in and I was awakened by a crack of thunder so loud, I was sure the house was falling down around me. Puff pressed her nose up against my hand, which dangled over the edge of the couch. I could feel the rabbit trembling under my touch. I gathered her up in my arms and counted. “One Mississippi, two Mississippi.”

  Another crack of thunder and I hid with Puff under my blanket. Midwestern summer storms were worse than any I’d experienced in Connecticut.

  I half-expected Cass to run downstairs from my bedroom and ask if we were under attack, but she never did. The earplugs she wore at night must really have done wonders. I might have to ask her where she got them to make it through the rest of the Ohio summer.

  Eventually, Puff and I drifted back to sleep.

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  The next morning was Sunday, and it was my day off. Actually, it was my only day off because Swissmen Sweets was open six days a week. If I was in the village, I was at the shop every day we were open, but Sunday was my day. On Sundays, I spent time with Aiden if he was free. Being a sheriff’s deputy, he worked seven days a week. Even when he wasn’t on duty, he was still on duty, being the second in command at the department. His job was high stakes and stressful at times, and I wished he could slow down and enjoy life a little bit more. I would never ask him to do that, though, because I knew how much he loved his work and cared about the people of the county.

  Even though I didn’t have to go to the shop, I still had early morning duties. At the end of the reception, I had promised Juliet I would check the church to make sure everything was cleaned up before the service. She didn’t want anything to bother Reverend Brook’s Sunday morning service, not even her wedding.

  As far as I knew, it was my last maid-of-honor responsibility. Well, perhaps that wasn’t true. I was also going to watch Jethro while they were on their Prince Edward Island honeymoon. It was no surprise that Juliet was an Anne of Green Gables fan. I was, too. She’d promised to bring me a gift even though I’d told her it wasn’t necessary.

  At first she had planned to take the pig with her, but crossing international borders with what would be considered livestock was a big no-no, and she finally decided to leave Jethro behind.

  The day after his wedding, Reverend Brook had promised to preach, and then he and Juliet were off. Church wouldn’t start for two more hours. I didn’t think the janitor was even there yet. It would give m
e enough time to make sure everything was perfect for the start of services.

  When I reached the foot of the church steps, I immediately realized something was wrong. There was someone lying at the top of the steps. “Hello? Do you need help?”

  The person didn’t move or make a sound, and I ran up the steps. When I got there, I knew the woman was beyond help. There was a large gash on the back of her head and blood on the concrete landing.

  She wore the same tropical sundress that she had worn to the wedding the day before. Something about seeing her in the same outfit made her fate seem even worse to me. Had the man who’d picked her up killed her? Had she never made it home at all, wherever home might be? I felt sick. I had had a bad feeling when she was picked up on the street by that driver. I’d reported what I had seen. Aiden had told his department. I didn’t know what else I could have done. I didn’t know the car, the driver, or the dead woman. Even so, guilt seeped into my heart. I felt that I should have done something.

  I stumbled back down the church steps and removed my phone from the pocket of my shorts. “Aiden, you have to come to the church quick,” I said before he even had a chance to say hello.

  Aiden yawned. “Is it something with Jethro? I told you you shouldn’t have agreed to watch him. You need to draw some boundaries with my mother now or you will be helping her out a lot. She means well, but she can be needy.”

  There was another yawn that gave me just enough time to say, “No, Aiden, listen to me. You have to come to the church. I found something.”

  “What?” He was wide awake now.

  “You’re not going to believe this, but I found another dead body.” I whispered it because I couldn’t even believe it myself.

  Aiden said a word that would not be appropriate in any church, but considering the circumstances, it seemed fitting. I knew he was in as much disbelief as I, because . . . this wasn’t my first time. In fact, it wasn’t even my first time in this very church.

  “Do you know who it is? Was it an old person who had a heart attack?” His voice was hopeful. I knew it wasn’t because Aiden wanted anyone to die, but because he didn’t want this to be yet another case of murder in the little village of Harvest. I wished I could tell him it was a heart attack.