Marshmallow Malice

by Amanda Flower

  She took the box from me and wove around a group of customers murmuring over an Amish quilt that cost as much as the monthly payment on my car. Not that the quilt wasn’t worth that price. It was handmade. Nary a stitch was out of place.

  She set the candies on a cleared place by the cash register and smiled. “I wouldn’t be the least bit surprised if they’re gone by the end of the day.” Just as she said this, a middle-aged tourist plucked three marshmallow sticks from the box and popped them in her shopping basket.

  The woman smiled at us. “This will be just the thing for my grandchildren.” She grabbed one more and tucked it into her basket. “And for me, too.” She winked at us.

  After the woman walked away, Becca turned to me. “Let’s go to the back and discuss consignment for these.” As she said this, I noticed for the first time her eyes were red-rimmed. Maybe it was allergies, but it looked to me as if she had been crying, and recently, too.

  She walked to the back of the shop and stopped outside the wide, oak door. Removing a key from her apron pocket, she put it in the lock.

  She glanced at Cass. My friend got the hint. “I think I will do a little shopping. This kind of stuff is what Jean Pierre loves most about Amish country. He will get a kick out of any little trinket I bring him. I thought I saw a bottle opener in the shape of a buggy. That will be just the thing.” She strode away.

  I followed Becca into a large stockroom that was full from floor to ceiling with merchandise. Most of it was handmade Amish goods, from quilts to tools to wooden toys.

  There was one window in the room and a small desk under it. The desk was pristine. There was a green ledger in the middle and a calculator in the corner next to a cup of sharpened pencils. A small desk chair was tucked under the desk.

  “Please,” Becca said. “Have a seat on the chair.”

  “Where are you going to sit?” I scanned the room for another chair.

  She pointed at two blue milk crates stacked on one another. She perched on top of them. “This will do well for me, and I need to fold these tea towels so we can stock them.” She pointed at the bushel basket at her feet, which was full of white towels. “They were just laundered, so I need to fold them before they wrinkle. Englischers don’t buy wrinkled tea towels.”

  She grabbed a stack of the towels and set them on her lap. I wasn’t the least bit surprised that she wanted to do something with her hands while we chatted. It was the Amish way to continually be busy. I would have been much more surprised if she said that she just wanted to sit idly by while we spoke.

  Becca folded four towels before she glanced at me again. She took a breath. “The consignment offer that you have suggested is fine. It’s fair, and I believe it will be a good partnership between our businesses. I will put your brochures out, too, and those flyers that you gave me about your upcoming television show. We have been telling visitors about it, and they all seem very curious.”

  “I’m happy to put your brochures out at our shop as well.” I sat across from her on the desk chair, wondering why she’d called me back to chat with her in the storage room if my proposal was fine. She could have told me that at the front door.

  She nodded. “Gut. That’s very kind of you.” She folded four more towels in silence.

  “Was there anything else you wanted to talk to me about?” I asked.

  She folded two more towels, staring at her hands all the while. “I was at the wedding Saturday.”

  I blinked at her. I didn’t remember seeing her, but there were a lot of people at the wedding. Even so, wouldn’t I have seen her at the reception?

  As if she could read my thoughts, she said, “Juliet is a good customer of mine. She stops in the shop every week or so. She invited me to the wedding at the last minute, but I didn’t stay for the reception. I had to get back to the shop.”

  I nodded, knowing what it was like. When you have a small business, as we did, keeping it open was constantly on your mind. In the case of Swissmen Sweets, we had closed the candy shop during the wedding and the reception—even on a very busy Saturday. All the ladies in the shop were close to Juliet, and it didn’t seem fair to make any of them work. As the maid of honor, I couldn’t.

  “I’m sure Juliet appreciated your being there,” I said.

  She nodded. “She said she did. She is such a kind woman. Even toting that pig all about the county, there can be no fault found in Juliet.”

  I couldn’t agree with her more. If Juliet’s one fault was being the owner of a mischievous potbellied pig, I would say she was further ahead than most of us.

  “Did you want to talk to me about the wedding?”

  She shook her head. “Nee. At least, not exactly.” She stopped folding towels. “I wanted to talk to you about Elizabeth.”

  “Who?” I searched my brain for an Elizabeth who I might know in the county. There could be several. It was a popular name among the Amish.

  “I believe,” Becca said with watery eyes, “she chose the Englisch name Leeza.”

  I gaped at her.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  “Are you telling me that Leeza is Amish?”

  “She was Amish. She’s not any longer.”

  I wasn’t completely surprised. It was something I’d suspected the moment I saw that Amish man arguing with Deputy Little outside the church. The truth was, nearly 70 percent of the people living in Holmes County could trace their lineage back to Amish roots. I was the perfect example. In some cases, the person’s parents or grandparents had left the faith. Or, like Leeza, the person herself left the faith. It wasn’t uncommon to see an Englisch person speaking to an Amish person in Holmes County in Pennsylvania Dutch.

  “Did you suggest selling my candies here just so you could talk to me about Leeza?” I asked.

  “Not completely. I do want to sell your candies in the shop. Juliet said they would do very well for us.”

  Juliet was always in my corner.

  “But I did have to find a way to speak to you about Elizabeth without my husband hearing.”

  “Why’s that?” I asked.

  “She was not welcome in our community. Ten years ago, when we were nothing more than girls, she was shunned by our district.” Tear sprang to her eyes. “It was terrible. She was my closest friend and I was told never to speak to her again. Do you have any idea how difficult that was?”

  “How awful,” I whispered, imagining being ordered never to speak to Cass again. I know I would disobey the rule.

  “My husband believed I broke off all contact with her many years ago. I know that I should have. She was shunned by the community because of her drinking.” She took a shuddering breath. “I stayed in touch with her because I knew it was my fault that she was shunned.”

  “Why do you say that?” I asked.

  She folded another crocheted tea towel and set it on the shelf with the others. The stockroom was packed with Amish gifts. I made a mental note to keep Cass out of there or she would buy everything in the room, not that I knew what she could possibly do with so many tea towels embroidered with Amish buggies.

  “When the bishop was trying to decide what to do about her behavior, he asked me if I thought she would repent and stop drinking.” She folded yet another towel and then crinkled it in her hands. “I told him that I didn’t think so. Drink was what kept Leeza going. She wasn’t going to be able to stop even if she was ordered to by the district. Based on what I said, the bishop made the decision to cast her out of the community.” A tear rolled down her cheek. “She never knew I was the reason she was cast out.”

  “You answered honestly,” I said. “He asked for your opinion.”

  “Even so, I live with the guilt over what I said about her to the bishop. I should have said nothing instead of speaking the truth.”

  I could understand the guilt she felt. In my case, it was for the opposite reason. I should have spoken up more and told Leeza not to get in that car the evening of the wedding. I should’ve fought harder to reaso
n with her.

  “Tell me about Leeza. No one seems to know who she was or even her last name.”

  “I recognized her the moment she ran into that church. I have seen her off and on over the years since she left the faith. She had come to me asking for help.” She started folding towels again. “And asking for money. I gave money to her when I could spare it. I only gave her money that I had set aside here at the store for emergencies. My husband doesn’t know about that.”

  “I won’t tell him,” I promised.

  She nodded. “Whenever she would come see me, it was always here at the store. My husband rarely comes here. We also have a thirty-acre farm, and he has to work the land most days. Leeza knew enough not to come to the farm. My husband would chase her away and tell the bishop that she was back.”

  “What was her Amish name?” I asked.

  She folded more quickly now, her fingers moving in practiced motions. “Elizabeth Chupp. She was a member of my Old Order district. Even though my shop is here in Berlin, my district and farm are in Harvest.”

  “Whereabouts in Harvest?” I asked.

  “Not far from Harvest Woods,” she said.

  Harvest Woods piqued my interest. It was the second time the woods had been mentioned in connection to this case. I had never been there myself, but it seemed to me that I would need to check out the woods if the name kept coming up in relation to Leeza—or should I say Elizabeth Chupp.

  “Did she keep the last name Chupp?” I asked.

  Becca shook her head. “I don’t know. She only asked me to call her Leeza. I could never quite bring myself to do that, so I called her nothing at all.”

  “Had you seen her recently? I mean, other than at the wedding.”

  “Nee. In fact, that was the first time I’d seen her in a couple of months. It was a shock, because she clearly had been drinking again. She told me the last time she came to the store that she had made up her mind to stop.” A shuddering breath escaped her. “She was excited and seemed more like herself than I had seen her in years. She said she’d stopped drinking. She said she’d found a good-paying job, too. She wanted to get herself sorted so she could come back to the community.”

  That fit with the timeline Reverend Brook had shared about Leeza coming to seek counseling from him. Because of privacy laws, I knew I would not have much luck getting any further information out of the counseling center.

  The last thing Becca had said struck me. “Did she plan to return to the Amish?” I asked.

  “I don’t know that, but I know that she at least wanted to make amends with those she’d hurt with her behavior.” She set the towel she’d just folded onto her lap.

  “Her family, you mean?”

  “Yes. Her parents are gone, but her older brother and his family still live in the farmhouse she grew up in. I know she wanted to make things right with RJ.”

  “RJ? Her brother?”

  She nodded. “That’s why I was so shocked to see her at the wedding, and in that condition. The last time I had seen her, she had been so determined to turn her life around.” She looked up at me from her tea towels. “It broke my heart to see her like that again. It made me lose hope that she could make things right.” She dropped her eyes again. “And now I know she will never be able to because she’s dead. That is the worst part of all. When she was alive, there was always hope. Now, there is none.” She took a breath. “My faith teaches me that I will not see her again because of the life she lived and the choices she made.”

  I knew this was the Amish belief. Disobedience to God resulted in punishment after death. As a non-Amish person, it was hard for me to wrap my head around that.

  “But I believe that Gott looks at all cases individually. Elizabeth was sick. Maybe she caused her own sickness by taking that first sip of alcohol, but many cause their own problems by falling in love with the wrong person, straying from Gott, or even eating too many sweets. It is my belief that everyone will get a fair chance after death, no matter what wrong we have done.”

  “I think you’re right,” I whispered.

  “That belief doesn’t make me a very gut Amish woman, now does it? I disobeyed my bishop by being Elizabeth’s friend after she was shunned. I have done things that don’t make me a very gut Amish woman.”

  “Maybe not,” I conceded. “But it does make you a good human being. A true friend. Maybe that’s enough.”

  She looked up at me with shining eyes. “I hope so, because I do not regret it.”

  I swallowed hard, and Becca dropped her eyes again to her task. In the time we had been talking, she had folded all the tea towels in the basket. There had to have been at least a hundred. She might disagree with me, but I took that as proof she was a very good Amish woman indeed.

  She stood up. “I will leave this information with you. I know that you will want to talk to her brother, RJ, but I will not speak of this again.”

  “The police will want to talk to you.” I stood, too.

  “I won’t. If you send the police to talk to me about it, I will deny everything, and my husband will, too. My husband hates scandal of any kind, and my entire family could be reprimanded by the bishop because I disobeyed the district rules by speaking to a shunned member.”

  I bit my lip. I knew that Aiden wouldn’t like this impediment to his investigation, but I also knew that she told the truth. If an Amish person said she wasn’t going to say something, I’d learned that it was best to take her at her word. They were experts in not saying too much. Several times, the Amish had iced me out or not backed up something they had previously said to me. “Thank you for telling me. I will do my very best to keep your name out of all this.”

  “Danki,” she said quietly.

  “Do you know if Leeza—Elizabeth—had contact with any other Amish?”

  “Nee, as far as I know she only spoke to me.” She patted her neatly folded stack of towels. If we sat here much longer, I suspected she would start refolding them just to have something to do with her hands.

  “I ask because there was an angry Amish man who came to the church yesterday looking for Leeza. He clearly didn’t know that she was dead.” I described the man the best I could. I mentioned his dark hair, his beard, and his grumpy demeanor.

  Becca turned pale and then shook her head. “I don’t know him, but many men in the county look like that.”

  Beads of sweat appeared on her brow, and I surmised that Becca was lying to me. She did know who the man was. I decided to press her a little more. “You don’t know who he is? Does the description fit her brother, RJ?”

  She stood up. “Nee, RJ is much larger than you described, and he’s blond.” Holding a small stack of the tea towels to her chest, she walked to the door. “I need to put these out for sale. I thank you for wanting to partner with my shop.”

  I stood, too. I wasn’t so dense that I didn’t know when I was being dismissed.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Outside the storage closet, Becca hurried away from me as if we had never met. I had a feeling she and I wouldn’t be talking about much other than candy in the future. I found Cass at the cash register. The Amish teenager behind the counter was wide-eyed while she rang up Cass’s purchases. Towels, dolls, clothes, napkins, and wooden spoons covered the countertop.

  I raised my eyebrow at her. “Did you leave anything in the store for the other tourists?”

  “Hey,” Cass said. “I have done my Christmas and Hanukkah shopping for ten years here. Don’t knock it.”

  I smiled.

  “That will be two hundred thirteen dollars,” the Amish teen said.

  Cass swiped her credit card without batting an eye. I knew in NYC it was possible to spend that much on one meal out. It might seem like a large amount of money to the Amish girl, but it wasn’t to Cass.

  Cass signed her receipt and collected her giant bags of gifts. “I love a successful shopping spree even in the middle of Amish country.” She took her bags to the door. “While you we
re chatting with Becca, four more people took marshmallow sticks. I think we might have to make more. Perhaps we should decorate them for the Fourth of July.”

  “That’s a great idea,” I said. “Actually, with the fireworks on the square tomorrow night, it’s not a bad idea to have all sorts of patriotic candies. I will tell my grandmother and Emily and Charlotte as soon as we get back to the shop.”

  “I’m full of good ideas.” Cass held out two of her bags to me. “These are getting heavy.”

  I took the bags.

  “You were with Becca an awful long time,” Cass said. “I can tell by the amount of stuff I bought. Was she giving you a hard time about the consignment agreement?”

  “Actually, she was helpful.” As we made our way out of the store and onto the street, I told Cass about Leeza’s relationship to RJ of the Harvest district, and the way she’d been shunned by the Amish community but had been trying to make amends.

  Cass gaped at me.

  “And Leeza is not her name, or at least not the name she was born with. Her name is Elizabeth Chupp.”

  “Whoa,” Cass said. “Did Becca know the Amish guy who came to the church yesterday?”

  “I asked, and I would bet my candy shop that she knew exactly who I was talking about, but she wasn’t saying.”

  “You were right to think Leeza was former Amish. You must have some kind of Amish radar.”

  “But I didn’t guess that the Amish shunned her for her drinking problem,” I mused.

  “Alcoholism is a heartbreaking disease.”

  I filled in Cass on Leeza’s bout of sobriety, and how Reverend Brook’s counseling might have been helpful in steering her onto the road to recovery. “I wonder what happened that she started drinking again after being sober for so long.”

  “Unfortunately, it can be anything. Heartbreak, trouble at work, boredom. I’ve had friends struggle with alcoholism. It’s terrible to watch and feel that you can’t do much for the person until they ask for help.”

  I nodded. “At the very least, we have the name of her brother.”