Marshmallow Malice

by Amanda Flower

  Emily waved at all of us. “Tomorrow.” She went out the door.

  The bell attached to the front door clanged as it closed behind her.

  “Yeesh,” Charlotte said. “And I thought I had problems with my family.”

  My grandmother looked at her. “Everyone has burdens. It’s the way you choose to face the burdens that is the measure of a person. When you can, you should deal with them prayerfully and look to Gott for guidance.”

  I bit my lip. I didn’t know how God was going to mend the rift between Emily and her older siblings. I thought the only way that would happen was if Abel and Esther had a change of heart. I couldn’t imagine that happening at this point.

  “What led to Emily speaking with her siblings?” Maami asked. “I didn’t know they were even saying hello to her.”

  As quickly as I could, I told Charlotte and Maami about Abel and the moonshiner. “Emily doesn’t want me to tell Aiden that Abel tried to buy moonshine.”

  My grandmother nodded. “I can see why she would feel that way.”

  “What do you think I should do?” I asked.

  “Let Gott lead you to what is right.”

  That was decidedly not helpful, and I started moving around the front room of the shop, flipping chairs over onto the tops of the tables for the night. Charlotte went back into the kitchen to finish cleaning up in there.

  “Maami, do you know this Jonathan Troyer who was about to sell Abel moonshine?”

  My grandmother pulled a spray bottle of vinegar and water out from under the counter and began cleaning the glass-domed counter. “Ya. Although Jonathan dresses like an Amish man, he no longer belongs to any one district. He wasn’t baptized into the church. There have been rumors that he has been involved in crimes around the county, but those are only whispers.”

  “Any mention of moonshine?” I asked.

  Maami shook her head. “People say Jonathan would do anything to make money.”

  “Anything?” I asked with a shiver.

  “Wow, Clara,” Cass said after she put the last chair on one of the tables. “You are quite a font of information. It must run in the family.”

  I looked at Cass out of the corner of my eye. “Please don’t say that in front of Aiden. He will have an instant ulcer at the very idea.”

  Cass gave me a thumbs-up.

  Maami finished cleaning the counter and tucked the spray bottle away. “What are you going to do now, Bailey?”

  I rubbed the back of my neck. “I’ll call Aiden and tell him what we know.”

  “And then we are going to check out Harvest Woods,” Cass said.

  I glanced at Cass. “On the way back to my house.”

  Cass eyed me. “That’s so not on the way to your house, but I’ll go with your story. That’s what best friends do.”

  “What do you think we should do, Maami?”

  She took a deep breath. “Calling Aiden is gut. He would not want you to visit Harvest Woods, but if I were you, I would go.”

  “You would?”

  She nodded. “This man, Jonathan, has to be found. Whether he killed Leeza or not, he’s still a danger to the Amish community. I have told you about the buggy accidents that have happened in the county because of alcohol.”

  I nodded.

  “There was one a few weeks ago in which a young man died.”

  “The one with the tree.”

  She nodded. “One of the customers told me that moonshine was in the buggy with him.”

  As Cass and I walked to my car on Apple Street, I carried Puff and she walked Jethro on his leash. I was well aware of what an odd foursome we must have made.

  With the animals tucked safely in the back of my car, I turned it on, cranked up the air conditioner, and called Aiden, but my call went directly to voice mail. I knew he was busy. He was juggling a murder investigation, the sheriff, and now BCI. This was one of the most high-pressure cases he had ever had. I left a message, telling him what I knew about Jonathan Troyer and omitting any mention of Abel as I’d promised Emily I would. I also told him that Cass and I were going to drive by Harvest Woods.

  When I ended the call, Cass looked at me. “You do know that he’s going to be upset about the Harvest Woods thing.”

  “I know, but I promised him once I would tell him where I’m going . . . most of the time.”

  She shrugged and buckled her seat belt. “It’s your funeral.”

  “Let’s hope it doesn’t come to that,” I said, worried that she just might be right.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-ONE

  Fifteen minutes later, I slowed my car to a roll as we went by the Chupps’ strawberry patch on the way to Harvest Woods. Though it was late afternoon, there were two buggies parked by the strawberry sign, and I spotted Amish women and children in the patch picking berries. I recognized Essie Chupp running through the patch along with them. A woman was with her. I thought it might be the woman I’d seen at the Chupps’ home, the woman I had assumed was RJ’s wife and Essie’s mother.

  I glanced at Cass. “Should we stop?”

  She shook her head. “Let’s look at the woods first, and then we will come back. I really don’t want to be anywhere close to those woods after dark.”

  It was a couple of hours before sunset, but I felt the same way, and I continued down the road. Harvest Woods was about a mile and a half from the Chupp berry farm. Between the farm and the wood was wide-open, overgrown pasture. The grass and weeds were so tall that if we got out of the car, they would come up to my hip. At the moment, there weren’t any cattle or other livestock in the field.

  “Just think of all the bugs that must be in there,” Cass said with a shiver.

  “There will be bugs in the woods, too. It’s July after all.”

  “Yeah, but we aren’t going into the woods.”

  “Right.”

  Jethro peered out the back window as if he wanted to have a better look. Puff sulked on the seat, probably because the little pig was paying attention to something other than her.

  The pasture fell away and the woods came into view.

  “Do you think we have enough strawberries for tomorrow?” Cass asked. “When we go back to the patch, maybe we should pick a few more.”

  “We picked four hundred and eleven. I know the exact number because Charlotte counted them when she dipped them in chocolate.”

  “That’s probably enough.” She grinned.

  “If it’s not, we have plenty of other candies to sell.”

  Cass nodded.

  I shifted the car into Park. There was no trail sign or real entrance into the woods. I stopped the car along the side of the road.

  Cass and I stared into the woods through the car window. It was an impenetrable wall of trees. Before learning about moonshining in Harvest, all I had ever known about the woods was that it was a popular place for hunters. It was summer, so I believed it wasn’t the season for hunting of any sort. I wasn’t going to go inside the forest and risk it, though.

  She glanced at me. “Are we going to get out?”

  “I don’t know. Maybe we shouldn’t.”

  She cocked her head. “We can’t sit here all day. What did we come all this way for if we never get out of the car?”

  I arched my brow at her. “I guess I just wanted to see it. I’m trying to imagine why Leeza would have gone in there if I’m right in guessing that this is the place where she died.”

  She opened the car door and got out.

  I sighed and followed her. “Stay here,” I said to the pig and rabbit. I left the front window open for them.

  Cass walked to the edge of the woods. “Looks like there is some semblance of a path here.” She swatted the air and smacked her own arm. “And mosquitoes. I need bug spray.”

  “It is the Midwest and it is summer.” I swatted one away from my face. “There’s some on the floor in the back seat.” I had learned last summer that I shouldn’t go anywhere in Holmes County in the summer without bug spray. The horse fl
ies and mosquitoes were fierce out in the country.

  Cass opened the back door and reached under her seat. She pulled out the largest bottle of bug spray I had ever seen and doused herself with it. It wasn’t like the small bottle I kept in the car.

  “Where on earth did you get that?” I yelped and swatted at a mosquito that landed on my arm.

  “I brought it from New York. I ordered it online from this outbacker trail website. See.” She pointed to the bottle. “It promises right here ‘no bites guaranteed. ’” She held out the bottle to me. “Want some?”

  Another mosquito landed on my shirt and I smacked it away. I took the bottle from her and sprayed myself, not quite as liberally as Cass had. I wasn’t a fan of the medicinal-herbal scent.

  “Are you sure it’s safe to shower with it like you are?” I asked when she took the bottle from me and doused herself with round two.

  “No, but neither is West Nile virus.”

  She was about to put it under the seat when Jethro jumped out of the car and knocked her down onto the grass beside the country road.

  “Jethro!” I leaped for the pig, landing on my stomach in the dead leaves along the side of the road. I missed. The little pig squealed and ran into the woods.

  Cass and I just stood there for a moment in complete shock.

  “That’s not good,” she said.

  No, it wasn’t.

  “We have to get him out of there,” I said.

  Cass glanced back at the car. “Will Puff be okay?”

  “She will be fine. Let’s just open all the windows for her. She can’t climb out.” I ran around the car and lowered the power windows.

  We did this as quickly as possible, and Puff looked at us with big, blue eyes. I could almost read the question on her bunny face. Where did Jethro go?

  “I don’t know,” I whispered to her. It was taking all my willpower to fight back the panic that rose in my chest. I had to find Jethro. I couldn’t lose him. Juliet would never recover.

  Cass sprayed herself with more bug spray for good measure. “Let’s move out.”

  I had an awful feeling about this.

  Inside the woods, I called, “Jethro! Jethro!” There was no answer. “How can we possibly know where he went?”

  “No idea,” Cass said and swatted at another mosquito. I didn’t know how well her spray was working because I was sure I’d been bitten twice since we’d entered the woods.

  “He’s not the bravest pig in the bunch. He’s probably hiding,” I said. “That will make it even more difficult to find him. There are so many places to hide in the woods. Maybe we should call Aiden.”

  “And report a missing pig to the police? Do you really think the sheriff will contribute any extra manpower to that search?”

  I chewed on the inside of my lower lip.

  “You do know that this is how every horror movie starts, right? Two girls walking in a place they shouldn’t be. It’s very possible we will be chopped into bits.”

  There was a scuffling to my left and I thought I saw a flash of white and black. “Jethro!” I took off after what I thought was the pig. I heard Cass crash through the forest after me, cursing as she went. I kept running, following the white-and-black bullet of a pig. It was incredible how fast he could run.

  “Bai! Stop!” Cass called behind me. “I’m going to die.”

  I slowed down. Jethro was nowhere to be seen. I’d lost him. I spun around and watched as Cass stumbled her way through the brush to reach me.

  “Dear God, did you take up running after moving to Ohio?” she panted.

  “The only running I do is after that pig, but it seems to happen with a certain amount of frequency.” I bent at the waist to catch my breath. I didn’t realize how much I had exerted myself until I stopped moving. My body was happy to remind me that I was not an athlete by any measure.

  “Where the heck are we?” Cass asked.

  I grimaced. “In Harvest Woods.”

  She gave me a look. “I know that.”

  I removed my phone from the back pocket of my jeans and turned on the GPS. From what I could see, we were in the middle of the great, green glob that was Harvest Woods. I zoomed in to see the road where we’d left the car. “I think we went a mile away from the road.”

  “No wonder I’m dying. I haven’t run the mile since high school gym, and even then I cheated by running across the soccer field when the gym teacher wasn’t looking. We should go back.”

  I frowned down at the light blue arrow that marked where we were. “Jethro was right here.” I pointed at the screen, as if it was some sort of proof. “Let’s give it ten more minutes, and then I will call Aiden. If we don’t find Jethro in that time, we will need help.”

  She shook her head. “A pig search and rescue—only in Ohio.”

  “Maybe not a sanctioned one, but Aiden will look, and I’m sure Deputy Little will pitch in, too. Jethro!” I called again.

  I glanced over my shoulder at Cass. She looked so out of place in her black designer jeans and tank top, with her purple and black hair matted to her forehead. It was July and we were in the middle of the woods. The thing that I’d learned about Ohio summers was that they were hot and humid. If a cold front wasn’t coming in, the temperature sweltered in the mideighties. That wouldn’t be so bad, except for the 80 percent humidity on top of the heat. “Maybe you should go back to the car and call Aiden. I can keep looking,” I said.

  “Oh, so you want me to let you get chopped up into bits alone? What do you think I could say to Hot Cop if that happened? Nothing. Nothing at all. He would surely ask why I hadn’t gone into the woods with you. Being from New York City is not a good answer.” She swatted at the air. “Neither are the bugs. I swear, I will never complain about the cockroaches in the city again.” She froze. “Do you think there are ticks out here? If I find a tick on me, you will never hear the end of it.”

  I didn’t doubt for a minute that was true. “Just stick to the path and don’t touch anything.”

  “Path? This little deer trail does not qualify as a path.”

  There was a snap like a twig breaking somewhere in the woods.

  “What the heck was that?” Cass asked in a hoarse whisper.

  “It was probably a deer, or it could have been Jethro. Let’s go look.”

  “I don’t want to meet a deer in the woods. I’ve seen those videos on the internet where a deer goes all kung fu on an unsuspecting hiker. I can’t have a deer kicking me in the face. I’ve spent a fortune on my skin.”

  “I haven’t heard of any kung fu deer here in Holmes County.” I quickened my pace toward the sound. I prayed it was Jethro. If it turned out not to be him, I promised myself that I would go back to the car and call Aiden. It was going to be a very difficult call to make. How many girlfriends have to tell their boyfriends that they’ve lost their mothers’ pigs? I bet I was the one and only.

  I came to the edge of a tiny clearing. There was a stream running through it. I froze, and Cass’s nose ran into my back. “Geez, let me know when you are going to hit the brakes like that.”

  “Wait,” I hissed. “That sound wasn’t Jethro.”

  “How do you know that?” she hissed back.

  “Because Jethro and deer don’t wear clothes.” I pointed into the woods at a yellow T-shirt that moved back and forth.

  “Oh great,” Cass whispered back. “There’s a hunter out here thinking that we are deer and he’s going to shoot us dead!”

  “It’s not deer season,” I said as calmly as I could, but I wasn’t feeling all that calm.

  “Hello poaching? This really isn’t how I wanted to die, Bai.” She squeezed my arm so hard, I was certain there would be a bruise later.

  “You are the problem! We lost both of our stills and it’s all because of you!” a voice rang out in the silent wood.

  I put a finger to my lips, hoping Cass would get the hint. This wasn’t a time for talking.

  “I tell you, I didn’t kill her.
I would never kill anyone, not even to save the still. I’d just move. Why don’t we move it altogether? We could go to Wayne or Knox County and start over. It’s not that far,” a different, high-pitched voice said.

  “We can’t do that,” the other voice said. “We have customers who need us here. If we don’t deliver, they will find us.”

  “Do you think one of the customers killed Leeza?” the high-pitched voice whined.

  “Maybe. But it was a dumb move for you to dump her body at the church without telling me. You should have buried her and been done with it.”

  “I couldn’t treat her like that,” the first voice said. “I knew she would be treated with respect by the church, and it would warn the reverend to keep his mouth shut in the future.”

  “You may have wanted that to happen, but all you did was get the sheriff’s department involved. Now they’ve called in BCI, too. We are in so much trouble,” the second voice said. “And she owed me money.”

  I felt a bug on my ankle, but I was too afraid to swat it away for fear of drawing attention to our hiding place in the trees.

  “That’s why we have to leave this area,” the second man said.

  “I already told you, we can’t.”

  Cass looked at me with eyes as wide as saucers.

  I made a motion that I was going to walk on a little farther to see if I could get a peek at who was speaking.

  Cass shook her head, but I went on anyway. I slipped behind a large oak tree. The tree was so thick, it could have hidden me twice over. I peeked around the tree. There were two men standing beside what looked like the site of an accident. Pieces of metal lay everywhere, as well as a blown-out copper barrel.

  One of the men picked up a piece a metal and then tossed it into the creek at his feet. “Let’s salvage what we can and get out of here and start over. We will have to find a new place. Harvest Woods is no longer safe for us.”

  “It’s a shame,” the second man said. “The spot was perfect—plenty of cover and a water source.”

  “The bugs are hell,” the first man said.