“True.” The second man swatted at the air.
I blinked when I realized that the man with the high voice was Gabe from the winery, and the other man with him was Jonathan Troyer.
There was a snuffling sound at my feet, and I looked down to see Jethro looking up at me with a terrified expression on his face. I bet he was sorry he’d run off.
“Jethro,” I whispered and inched toward him. “Come here, buddy.”
The little oinker squealed.
“What was that?” the Amish man shouted.
Gabe raised a gun and shot it into the trees. That was all the motivation I needed. I grabbed the pig and ran.
CHAPTER THIRTY-TWO
Holding Jethro to my chest in a death grip, I ran after Cass through the forest. I prayed that she knew the way back to the car because all critical thinking seemed to have flown out of my head as soon as I heard the gunshot.
I ran straight out of the forest and into Aiden’s arms.
“What are you doing here?” I gasped.
“I’d like to ask you the same thing,” Aiden said.
Two deputies ran into the woods with their guns drawn. Behind the deputies’ car was a BCI van.
Aiden stepped back. “What are you doing running through the woods with my mother’s pig?”
It was a fair question.
Cass popped out of the woods and then doubled over to catch her breath. “I’ve never run that fast in my life. Not even when I’m trying to catch the subway.”
“I never knew you could run so fast,” I admitted.
“Hey, with the right motivation, like being shot at, I can do just about anything,” she said, then panted, “Aiden, great timing. How did you know we were here and needed backup?”
“Backup?” Aiden asked with a scowl. “Deputy Little drove by and saw your car parked outside of Harvest Woods. When he didn’t see anyone by the car except Puff the bunny, he thought it would be wise to call it in.”
I bet. Deputy Little knew if he didn’t call it in and something happened to me, he would have to contend with a very angry Aiden. Poor guy.
“Now, I will ask again. What were you doing here?”
“We didn’t plan to go in the woods,” I began.
“That’s right,” Cass said. “We were just looking at them.”
Aiden arched his brow. “Looking at them?”
“That’s right,” Cass repeated. “We wouldn’t have gone in at all if he”—she pointed at Jethro—“hadn’t run into the woods in the first place.”
Aiden ran a hand down the side of his face.
The driver side door of the BCI van opened and a woman in a pantsuit got out. She had a badge on her belt and I bet a gun under her jacket. Another state agent wearing all-white coveralls opened the side of the van. All sorts of gadgets and tools appeared. Camera, shovels, rakes, vials, and gloves, just to name a few.
The woman walked toward us and nodded to me. “I take it that this is the girlfriend, Deputy Brody.”
I straightened up and immediately bristled at her tone. “I’m Bailey King.” My tone implied who the heck are you?
She nodded. “State Agent Robbie Bent. I work for the Ohio Bureau of Criminal Investigation. We are here about the illegal still.”
Aiden frowned. “Agent Bent and her partner are helping us on this case.”
She nodded. “Or it could be that you are helping us, Deputy Brody, but let’s not get in a dispute about that.”
Deputy Little came over to us. “Sir, the other two deputies caught the men at the still.”
“Good,” Aiden said. “Were they the ones who fired the shot?”
Deputy Little nodded. “Looks that way, sir.” He licked his lips. “The still is . . . well . . . All I can say is it looks like someone blew it up.”
“Blew it up?”
“Yes, sir,” Deputy Little said. “There is metal everywhere. The suspects claim they found it that way.”
“Take them to the station. I believe we might just have found the location of Leeza’s murder,” Aiden said.
Deputy Little nodded and walked back to his cruiser.
Agent Bent left us then and went back to speak to the man in the coveralls. I guessed that was the partner Aiden had mentioned. The second BCI grabbed a shovel and strapped a backpack on his back. He and Agent Bent followed another deputy into the woods.
Aiden turned to Cass and me. “I want both of you to go home.”
I opened my mouth to protest.
Aiden cut me off. “I will get your statements later. The first thing I need to do is question the suspects and get the crime scene techs out here to process the scene.”
“One of them is Gabe, the young man Aubrey at the winery told you about. The other man is Jonathan Troyer, the Amish man who accosted Reverend Brook outside the church. I left you a voice mail about him.”
He pressed his lips together. “I haven’t listened to it yet. I was bringing Bent up to speed on the case.” He smacked his ball cap on his knee. “If I had listened to it, I would have stopped you from coming here.” He rubbed the side of his head. “Go home. You likely caught the killer today. Let me handle the rest.”
I wanted to protest, to ask if he really thought Gabe Johnson or Jonathan Troyer could be the killer or if it was both of them. I wanted to know as much as Aiden what those men were up to.
“You have to go back to the village,” Aiden said. “You have Jethro with you. I can’t have him running around the woods getting lost or compromising the scene, and I can’t have you here with BCI. It complicates things.”
I frowned because I saw his point. “You will let us know what is going on?”
“I will tell you what I can.” He paused. “Later.”
That didn’t sound very promising, but it was the best I was going to get. I put Jethro in the back seat of my car, and Cass and I climbed in.
As I drove away from the woods, I saw Aiden in the rearview mirror.
Cass and I drove by the Chupp farm on the way back to the village. The Amish families were no longer in the strawberry patch, and I wished I had stopped earlier when I’d had a chance to speak to RJ’s wife, not that I knew what I would have said. I wouldn’t have wanted to put the woman in a bad place with her husband. In an Amish family, the wife is expected to do what her husband asks of her. If RJ asked his wife not to speak to me, she wouldn’t.
As my car passed the farm, RJ Chupp stood in the middle of his driveway with his hands on his hips. I guessed that he had seen all the official vehicles go by his farm on the way to the woods. I didn’t stop, but I wished I knew what he was thinking.
“Let’s go make candy, Bai,” Cass said. Jethro was on her lap and Puff sat at her feet. “It’s what we are good at.”
I smiled at her. It was amazing that she knew exactly what I needed to hear at that moment.
* * *
Back at Swissmen Sweets, Charlotte was all atwitter. “Bailey, I’m so glad you’re all right. Aiden was here when Deputy Little called to say he found your car abandoned beside Harvest Woods. I was so worried. I didn’t tell Cousin Clara what was going on. There was no reason to upset her, and I fretted enough for both of us.”
“What was Aiden doing here?” I asked.
“He said he was looking for you. He said he needed to talk to you.”
About the murder? I wondered. Or about Kayla?
“As you can see, Cass and I are fine and in one piece,” I said and set Puff on the floor. Nutmeg ran down the steps from the apartment as if he was reuniting with a friend he hadn’t seen in years instead of a few hours. He and Jethro bumped noses. I shook my head. “I just wanted to pop in to see if we were all ready for tomorrow.”
“Oh, we are.” Charlotte patted the red bun at the nape of her neck. “I’m so very excited. It will be the first time I will see fireworks.”
“Really?” Cass asked. “You’ve never seen fireworks before and you are over twenty?”
“My family didn’t think
going to a Fourth of July celebration was a good idea. It was honoring country over Gott. I’m glad that Cousin Clara’s district is much more lenient on such matters.”
“I’m glad everything’s ready. I want tomorrow to go smoothly for us and Margot.”
“And for Deputy Aiden,” Charlotte added. “He’s seemed to be even more stressed than normal.”
“Yes, for Aiden, too,” I said. “I’m glad that we stopped by so we could set your mind at ease, Charlotte. Get some rest. I think we are all going to need it for tomorrow.”
Later that night, I was lying on my couch, tossing and turning. I couldn’t get over what a close call Cass and I had had in the woods. Aiden was angry over it. He had every right to be. I promised myself and him—even though he didn’t know it—that I would try to do better in the future. I also promised myself I would no longer take Jethro with me any time I was investigating. The pig was a liability in tense situations.
As if he knew that I was thinking about him, Jethro snorted on his towel on the floor and kicked his legs in his sleep.
My phone beeped, telling me that a text message had come in. I picked it up. The only person who would text me at this time of night was Aiden.
“I’m outside your house. I don’t want to wake up Cass. Can you come outside to talk?”
“Meet me in the backyard,” I texted back.
Jethro sat up and, in the process, woke up Puff, who had been sleeping beside him on the towel.
I sat up and whispered, “Oh no, neither of you are going out with me, especially not you, Jethro.”
The little pig snorted a retort.
I grabbed a blanket off the back of the couch, and with one eye on the animals, I moved through the kitchen and let myself out into the night.
Aiden’s form sat at the picnic table in the corner of my tiny yard. The table had been left there by a previous tenant. I never used it, truthfully because I was rarely home. I was either at Swissmen Sweets or in New York. I couldn’t remember spending more than an hour or two in my rental house unless I was sleeping. In many ways, it was a place to crash, not a real home.
Aiden held out his arms to me, and I stood in front of him with my blanket wrapped around my body, kimono style. He rested his hands on my hips.
“Don’t you have a million questions to ask me?” he said finally when I stood there for several minutes without speaking.
“I do,” I admitted. “But I was sort of waiting for you to tell me how stupid Cass and I were today. I thought we could get that out of the way first.”
He laughed. “It was stupid, and I’m happy to hear that at least you know you were in the wrong.”
“Really, Jethro was in the wrong, but that’s neither here nor there.”
Aiden shook his head.
“What is it?” I whispered.
“I got a call from Reverend Brook,” Aiden said. “He called me while driving my mother to the airport for their honeymoon.” He dropped his head. “I can’t believe my mother married another drunk like that.”
“He’s not like your father.”
“How can I know for sure?” He sounded as if he might cry.
“You can’t,” I whispered back and squeezed him tight.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
I rewrapped myself in the blanket but left my right hand out. I sat next to Aiden on the picnic bench. I took his hand in mine. “Reverend Brook is not your father.”
“Maybe not, but he’s a liar like my father was. He misled my mother, so that she would fall in love with him and marry him. He didn’t show her his true self until after they were married. Those were all things that my father did.”
“He would never hurt her,” I said.
He turned to face me. “Don’t you think what he told her today hurt her? He basically told her that he’s been hiding his past from her for years . . . years . . . Bailey. I would never do that to you.”
Kayla’s pretty face popped into my mind, but I pushed it away. This wasn’t the time to bring her up. I didn’t know if there ever would be a time.
He turned to me with bloodshot eyes. “I feel exhausted. This case is getting to me more than others have. I suppose because it involves my mother on several levels.”
“Reverend Brook’s drinking?” I asked.
He nodded. “I was six when Mom got me out of that house with my father, but I remember some of it.” He turned away from me. “I remember him coming home wasted. I remember hearing him hit her.”
I squeezed his hand. “Reverend Brook would never hurt Juliet. He loves her. That was clear to the whole village even before the two of them admitted it.”
Aiden forced a laugh. “You don’t have to be in law enforcement long to know that many people who claim to love each other will do horrible things to each other, too.”
I didn’t know what to say to that. I knew it was true. There was no point in arguing with him.
“I think all you can do is give Reverend Brook time to prove to both you and Juliet that he is the man he claims to be today, not who he was thirty years ago. You can’t keep judging people for their past mistakes, especially when they have actively made a change to be better.”
“He should have told her. How can she trust him when he kept this secret from her for so long?” Aiden balled his fist. “I know why he did it. He did it because he was afraid that she would stay away from him . . . as she should have.”
“It’s up to your mother to decide how she will take the reverend’s news. Clearly, she has accepted it enough to continue on the honeymoon with him. I still have Jethro. If she was back in the village, she would want her pig with her.”
He squeezed my hand and then let it go. “You’re right of course.”
I squeezed his hand back. “I really think your mom and Reverend Brook are going to be all right.”
He turned to me, and the side of his face was illuminated by the porch light. There wasn’t enough light for me to see his whole face, just the outline of his features. His cheekbones, strong jaw, and straight nose. It was too dark to even see the color of his blond hair. “I don’t know what I would do without you at times. I know we’ve only known each other a year, but in a lot of ways, it’s felt like a lifetime. I don’t know what life was BB.”
“BB?”
“Before Bailey.”
I smiled. “I don’t know what life was BA.”
The shadow of his mouth curved into a smile, and then it was gone. “We finally know where Leeza died.”
“Jethro found the spot?” I asked.
Aiden’s jaw twitched. “I’m not going to tell you again what a dumb choice it was to go to those woods.”
“Good, and I won’t tell you again that we never planned to go into the woods. Jethro forced our hand.”
His outline shifted. “It seems he does that a lot.”
“True,” I conceded. “I’m guessing he and Puff are getting into all sorts of trouble in my house right now because I didn’t let them come outside with me. I fear for my throw pillows.”
“Whether you found the location of Leeza’s death or Jethro did, it doesn’t matter. It was certainly at that still. The second one to be found in Harvest Woods.” He shook his head. “Had we kept looking after we found the first one, we would have found it. Agent Bent was sure to point out what a screwup that was on our department’s part. The sheriff is furious and blames me for making us look bad in front of BCI.”
My eyes widened. “Are there two groups of moonshiners working out of the woods?” I asked.
He shook he head. “No, Gabe and Jonathan claimed both stills. The first one my officers found when Reverend Brook made that anonymous tip was a mock still.”
“A mock still?” I asked.
“It had all the trappings of an active still, but it wasn’t active. It was a decoy really, to throw off the authorities, and it worked. After, the deputies found that they hadn’t gone deep enough into the woods to find the second, real still. Agent Bent claims tha
t her investigators wouldn’t have been fooled if we’d brought them on for support earlier. But Sheriff Jackson never would have agreed to that.”
I nodded. “What was the connection to Leeza?” I asked.
“It was exactly as Aubrey from the winery said,” Aiden replied. “Leeza and Gabe were seeing each other. Shortly after they started dating, he brought her into the business. He thought she was the perfect person to drum up more business for the moonshine. She could gauge which of the customers who came into the winery might be interested. Also, she was a pretty, petite woman. No one would suspect her of smuggling illegal alcohol. The longer her relationship with Gabe went on, the more work she did as a runner, meaning she was the one who picked up and dropped off the moonshine at agreed upon locations.”
“Did Stardust Winery know about her side business?”
“I had Little go over there to talk to the owners, and they were shocked. I tend to believe they weren’t involved, but of course, I will always keep the possibility that they knew something in the back of my mind.”
I sat up straighter on the bench. “So, was the coroner right in guessing the cause of death was from a blast of some sort?”
“Yes.”
“After seeing the scene, I can easily believe that, but I still can’t get over the fact that no one heard the blast. It must have been very loud.”
“I agree, but you have to remember, Harvest Woods is miles from the village, so it would have been unlikely for anyone to hear it.”
I thought back to Saturday night and the moment I’d sat up in bed because I had been scared awake by the storm. The thunder and lightning were so close, the next crash of thunder hit before I could even reach a count of three.
“And,” Aiden went on, “there are only a handful of Amish farms that might have overheard the blast. It’s far too late tonight, but I have deputies lined up to go out and canvass the area again, asking if anyone heard anything.”
“How did the still blow up?” I asked.
“Gunshot.”
“What? Gabe or Jonathan shot the still?”
He shook his head. “At least they claim they didn’t, and I tend to believe them because the explosion destroyed their business. They are both very worried about not delivering to their customers. I can’t see them destroying the still and putting themselves in danger. People who buy illegal liquor can be a dangerous bunch.”
Marshmallow Malice Page 20