Premeditated Peppermint

by Amanda Flower

  “Oh.”

  Aiden smiled. “Any other questions?”

  “Not at the moment.”

  He looked as if he didn’t believe me, when his cell phone rang. He unclipped the phone from his duty belt and answered. “Brody here.... Yes. Okay. I’m on my way. Yes, I know where that is.” He ended the call.

  “Something wrong?”

  “That was Little. It seemed he finally tracked down Daniel, Emily, and their buggy. I had Little out looking for them because I was worried about those two.”

  My heart warmed at Aiden’s concern for the two young Amish people.

  “Little says their buggy is on the side of the road not far from where Daniel lives. Little is out there now. He says he needs some help. He doesn’t want to call for backup on the radio because of the sheriff’s attitude toward the Amish.”

  I walked around the side of the table and stood next to him. “I’m going with you.”

  Aiden shook his head. “You are needed here at your table.”

  I glanced at Charlotte, who said, “Go. I have everything handled here.”

  Considering what my grandmother had said about Charlotte, I didn’t find that very comforting. It wasn’t easy to be replaced, and that’s what seemed to be happening.

  Aiden looked as if he wanted to protest, but I didn’t give him a chance. “Let’s go. Someone will have to stand with Emily while you talk to Daniel.”

  He frowned. “Fine. I don’t have time to argue with you.” He turned and headed to his departmental car, which was parked along the edge of the square. I was right behind him. He unlocked the car, and I climbed inside.

  He climbed in on the driver’s side and closed the computer mounted to his dashboard.

  “Are you sure they’re all right?” I buckled my seat belt.

  “Little says that they are. You’re right—it might help that you come along, because I think you will make Emily feel a little more comfortable.”

  I frowned. I wasn’t so sure about that, but I wanted to go. I wanted to know what was going on and to see that Emily was okay with my own eyes. I cringed to think of what her brother and sister would do when they heard about this. They already were very strict with their youngest sister. They might lock her in the pretzel shop forever and throw away the key. She’d be the Amish version of Rapunzel.

  Aiden was quiet as we drove out of town, but just as soon as we cleared the village proper and were on a country road, he said, “I want to apologize for yesterday.” Aiden stared straight through the windshield. Outside the warmth of the car, it started to snow again. Tiny crystalized flakes fell from the sky.

  “Aiden . . .”

  He took his right hand off the steering wheel and held it up. “Please, just let me get this out. My behavior was unacceptable. I know that you love your grandmother and know that you gave up a lot to be here with her. She knows that too. What I say should have no bearing on your decision to stay or go. It has to be your decision. You need to make up your own mind.”

  What was it with everyone saying that I had to make up my own mind? I was starting to wonder if my family and friends saw me as indecisive.

  “I just hated the idea of you leaving even for just a few months,” he went on. “I know that my mother and others have been trying to push us together. I know that can be awkward at times.”

  I shifted uncomfortably in my seat. This conversation was awkward. I was regretting coming along on this ride.

  “But the truth is, I do want to get to know you better, so I was disappointed at the prospect of you going back to New York even for only a part of the year.”

  I didn’t know what to say to that. Thankfully I didn’t have to respond, because up ahead I could see the flashing lights of Little’s cruiser reflected off the snow. Just in front of the cruiser, the buggy was pulled to the side of the road.

  Aiden parked behind the cruiser, and he and I got out.

  “I don’t know why you are making me do this,” a slurred male voice said.

  “Just walk the line, Daniel,” Little said, sounding more in charge than I had ever heard him.

  I came around the buggy and found Deputy Little standing at the side of the road, pointing at the line that ran down the center. It appeared that someone, Little I assumed, had brushed the snow from the white line.

  Daniel stared down at the line and pointed. “You want me to walk that line. Why should I?”

  “Little,” Aiden said.

  The younger deputy hurried over to us. “Deputy Brody. I’m glad you’re here. The kid is drunk.”

  “You didn’t mention it when you called.” Aiden flipped up the collar on his coat against the cold.

  “I didn’t realize it until he fell out of the buggy.”

  “The Amish get drunk? I never heard of that.” I pulled my stocking hat down farther over my ears. The December wind was biting cold.

  Aiden laughed. “Of course the Amish get drunk, and they get high, and they get in barrels of trouble just like every other member of society. There are upstanding Amish just like there are upstanding English, but there are Amish who get in trouble too, just like there are English who get in trouble. There is no cultural escape from trouble.”

  When I thought about the murder investigations I had been a part of since moving to Amish Country, I knew that trouble could, indeed, be found in Holmes County, too much trouble as far as I was concerned.

  “A DWI is a serious offense,” Aiden said.

  “You can get a DWI in a buggy?” I asked.

  “You can get a DWI on a lawn mower,” Aiden said. “Did you give him a Breathalyzer test?”

  Little shook his head. “He refused to take it, so I just asked him to do the line test. He’s refusing to do that, too.”

  Daniel took a couple of steps along the line and then threw up, after which he promptly toppled into the snow. Aiden sighed. The horse shook his reins, and Emily reached up and grabbed the horse bridle with her small gloved hand.

  Aiden walked over to the teen in the snow. “Daniel?” Aiden said.

  There was no response

  “Is he dead?” Deputy Little asked.

  As if he wanted to prove himself far from dead, Daniel moaned and rolled onto his side.

  “Maybe we should take him to a hospital,” I suggested. “He could have alcohol poisoning.”

  “We will to be safe, but he’s also getting a ticket for DWI, ” Aiden said.

  “Where did he get the alcohol?”

  Little nodded to the buggy. Aiden and I peeked inside. There were seven jugs of clear liquid, and I didn’t think it was water. The open bottle smelled like strong liquor. “Moonshine,” I said. “Where did he get all that?”

  Emily, who stood a little bit away from the buggy, wrapped her arms more tightly around her waist. “It was my brother’s. It was inside the buggy. I didn’t know it was there until Daniel found it. I told him not to drink it, but he wouldn’t listen.”

  “This is Abel’s buggy?” I asked.

  She nodded.

  “Does he know you borrowed it?”

  “Nee.” She looked down at the top of her black boots. “Abel is going to be so angry.”

  I grimaced. Her temperamental brother became angry over the slightest thing. The fact that she had taken her older brother’s horse and buggy without his permission, her boyfriend had drunk his moonshine, and the police would probably arrest him for having that moonshine made me believe she was right. Abel threw a fit over far less.

  I walked over to her. “Are you hurt?”

  The girl shook her head and then looked at Daniel, who was staring at the line as if he didn’t know what to do with it. “I should have stayed at the pretzel shop. My sister and brother will be furious. They must have noticed by now that I’m gone and so is the buggy.” She shivered.

  “You’re freezing. Aiden, can we go sit in your car?”

  He nodded. I walked Emily to Aiden’s SUV and had her climb into the backseat, where I sat be
side her. “Tell me what happened from the beginning.”

  She folded her hands on her lap.

  “Please, Emily, I want to help you.”

  A large tear fell from her eye onto her folded hands. She brushed it away. “I don’t know why you want to help me after the way I’ve treated you these last few weeks. I wouldn’t even speak to you.”

  “I know you were hurt that I couldn’t give you a job at Swissmen Sweets after Charlotte came on board, but you have to believe me when I say I wanted to. I would love to expand the business so that you can work for me. I know what a great worker you are and what a help you were to me during the Amish Confectionary Competition. I’m not going to forget that.”

  She sniffled. “I’ve missed talking to you. It’s been very hard. I’ve missed Nutmeg, too.”

  I smiled. “He’s missed your visits very much. He goes to the window every morning looking for you, and he’s always trying to escape the shop to see you.”

  She looked up at me. Tears brimmed in her big blues eyes. “He does?”

  I nodded. “He does. He may be my cat now, but he was your cat first. We share him.”

  “That’s so nice of you to say.”

  She looked as if she were about to burst into another bout of tears, so I asked, “Are you and Daniel courting?”

  Her face turned red. “For just a few weeks. He’s so nice to me. He knows . . .” She trailed off. I knew she had been about to say that he was aware of the baby she’d had out of wedlock and whom her siblings had forced her to give up for adoption. Illegitimate children were still a big no-no in the Amish world. Having a child in the community under those circumstances could be very difficult. I knew that it was one reason why her older siblings were so strict with her, but Emily was twenty now. She was an adult. They needed to learn to trust her again.

  “Esther and Abel don’t know. They are very strict with anyone who tries to court me. Daniel is from my church district. I have known him my whole life, but I wanted to get to know him in this way without my siblings becoming involved.”

  “I can understand,” I said. “How did you end up at the Christmas tree farm with Abel’s buggy when the police arrived?”

  “I didn’t know that the police or you would be there. Daniel had called the pretzel shop from his shed phone and asked me to come. He said there was something important he had to tell me. I was the only one in the shop at the time, but he was so desperate sounding that I felt I had to go. He needed me.” She licked her lips. “I had come into town with my brother in his buggy and knew it was out back behind the pretzel shop. Abel was busy getting things ready for the Christmas Market for Margot. She’d hired him to move tables and the like, and Esther had stayed back home on the farm because she has a bad cold. I thought I could get to Daniel’s and back before anyone noticed that I was gone.” She shook her head. “I saw Daniel’s father with the police. I knew that the police thought he had killed that Englisch woman from New York.”

  That English woman from New York? Did that mean Emily didn’t know that Rocky was Daniel’s mother, Rachel? I wondered if that’s what he was so desperate to tell her. It made sense that he would want to talk to her about it. It was clear he couldn’t talk to his father, who would have been furious, or Grandma Leah, who’d had no idea of the truth until I had told her.

  “But his daed didn’t kill that woman,” she said in hushed tones. “I know this.”

  I stared at her. “How do you know?”

  She chewed on her lower lip.

  I grabbed both of her hands in mine. “Emily, how do you know that he didn’t kill Rocky?”

  She looked me in the eye. “Because I saw the murder.”

  Chapter 35

  I blinked. “You saw the murder?”

  She dropped her eyes to her hand again. “I wasn’t close enough to the gazebo to see any faces. I was at the pretzel shop. We needed to have plenty of pretzel dough for the Christmas Market, and my sister told me to stay late and make it.”

  “How late were you there?”

  She removed her gloves and twisted them in her hands. “I stayed all night. Abel didn’t want to come back with the buggy for me, so I slept on a cot in the front room.”

  I frowned. “Does that happen very often?”

  “Now and again. I don’t mind. It’s nice to have some time away from my brother and sister. I almost look forward to it.”

  The more I heard of how Esther and Abel treated their younger sister, the angrier I became. “Emily, if that happens again, come over to Swissmen Sweets. We would love to have you. I hate the idea of you staying alone in your shop all night.”

  “It is really no burden, but I would like to visit your shop and see Nutmeg.”

  I squeezed her hand. “Any time. Our door is always open to you.”

  “Danki.”

  “Tell me what you saw and when.”

  “I finished making all the pretzel dough around eleven, so I started to make my cot up in the front room about then. I remember sitting on my cot and looking out the window. It had started to snow. The gazebo and the Christmas lights were so pretty in the snow. I knew that I had a long day ahead of me at the Christmas Market the next day and I should go to sleep, but I just wanted to watch the snow. It was so peaceful. That’s when I saw the red-haired woman.”

  “Rocky?” I asked

  She nodded.

  “How did she get there?”

  “She climbed out of that big white van that was on the square the day the television people arrived. She got out of the van, and then it drove away.”

  I grew very still. That had to mean that someone from the production team had driven from the guesthouse, where she had just had a fight with Josie, to the gazebo. It couldn’t be anyone else. In my mind, I wrote Josie off. Why would Rocky get into a van with her after they had had such a terrible fight and she’d fired Josie? I didn’t have as strong a reason to do it, but I wrote Eric off for the same reason. Why would Rocky get into the van with him when she was so upset that he was dating Josie? That left Linc, Roden, and Pike.

  “Then what happened?” I asked.

  She stared at her hands and clasped and unclasped them on her lap.

  “Emily, please tell me.”

  “Daniel came, and she walked with him into the gazebo.”

  I waited. I knew there was something more she wanted to tell me.

  “I couldn’t sleep then. I just stared out of the window at the gazebo, waiting for them to come back out. I didn’t know that she was his mother then. He told me later. I . . . I thought . . . She’s a beautiful woman from New York, and I’m just an average Amish girl.”

  I shook my head. Emily was far from average. She was one of the most beautiful women I had ever seen. Her features were delicate, and she had blond hair and large blue eyes that gave her an angelic innocence.

  “Daniel and Rocky came out of the gazebo twenty minutes later. She hugged him before he left, and I really thought . . . I thought the wrong thing. She hugged him like any mother would hug her child. I just didn’t know that at the time. Daniel left, and the woman waited by the road where the van had dropped her earlier. Instead of a van, a horse and buggy drove up. I recognized the buggy as Daniel’s father’s. He jumped out of the buggy and walked toward Rocky. I couldn’t hear what they were saying. She stomped away from him toward the gazebo. It was starting to snow hard then, so it was more difficult to see.”

  “Did they go into the gazebo?” I asked.

  “Nee, Thad left in his buggy when she stomped away. She went into the gazebo alone. The snow was much worse at this point. It was almost a whiteout. I couldn’t see much of anything, except for the twinkle lights on the gazebo through the snow. I thought I saw someone else on the square, but I couldn’t be sure because of the snow.”

  “You think it was a man you saw on the square,” I said.

  She shook her head. “I do not know. The snow was too thick then. What I remember most after Thad left was that
the lights on the gazebo moved.”

  I grew still. “What do you mean by moved?”

  “Like they were pulled down from around the gazebo.”

  I swallowed. The image of the Christmas lights wrapped around Rocky’s neck came back to me in a rush, as did her staring gray eyes. The same eyes as her son.

  “How long did this take to happen? From the moment you saw Daniel until the lights moved?”

  She shook head. “I think forty minutes. It wasn’t long. I remember looking at the clock on the wall because I thought so much more time had passed. By that point, I was so tired, I couldn’t keep my eyes open any longer. I lay down on my cot for just a moment. I must have fallen asleep. The next thing I remember was my sister shaking me awake and telling me to get to work.” She looked me in the eye. “All I know for sure was that Rocky was alive when Daniel’s father left.”

  “Did you tell Aiden this?”

  She shook her head. “I didn’t want to get involved. I knew how angry Esther and Abel would be with me if I got involved in another murder.”

  “Your brother told me that he saw people coming and going on the square that night.”

  “He might have. He was there fixing the oven until nine or so, and then he left.” She wouldn’t look at me. “He said that I was taking too long making the dough for the pretzels and he could not wait for me. He told me that I had to spend the night at the shop.”

  I wondered if there would ever come a time when Esther and Abel would forgive their sister for the mistake she’d made when she was young. They seemed determined to punish her for it for the rest of her life.

  The door on my side of the car opened. “Bailey, can you step out for a second so that I can have a word with you?” Aiden asked.

  That was just fine with me. I wanted to have a word with him too. I squeezed Emily’s cold hands before I slid out of the car.

  She held on to my hand for a moment. “I know you will tell Aiden, and I understand. Thad deserves to be set free.”

  I nodded and exited the car.