Peppermint Fudge and Fears

by Patti Benning

  “Thanks,” he said. “I think I’ve got a plan, though. I want to get everything a bit more organized, then I’ll tell you and David all about it. I do appreciate the offer to come back to the deli, though. It means a lot to me.”

  “Of course,” the older woman said. “You’re family.”

  Eli had spent nearly half a year working at Darling’s DELIcious Delights, before he decided that he wanted to pursue a different career path. He didn’t think it was fair to keep working there as manager knowing he wasn’t going to stay long-term, so he had told Moira he wanted to start training his replacement. The young man they had found to replace him seemed to be in it for the long haul and was doing a stellar job of managing the deli’s day-to-day affairs, but Candice knew that Eli missed working there sometimes. It was familiar work for him, and was a lot less seasonal than the ice cream shop was.

  “Why don’t you tell us what happened at the contest, Candice?” David asked. “I know that woman collapsed, but I didn’t catch the details.”

  She told him everything she knew, which wasn’t much. “She seemed fine when I spoke to her right before the contest,” she said. “She was chatting with Suri and enjoying a piece of candy. Then, less than an hour later, she looked like she was on death’s door. It’s frightening to think how quickly someone’s health can take a turn for the worse like that.”

  “She didn’t mention any medical conditions or anything like that?” David asked.

  Candice shook her head. “She wasn’t really speaking coherently by the time she was on the floor. I looked for a medical alert bracelet, but I didn’t see one. That doesn’t mean she couldn’t have had a condition anyway, of course. I just hope she’s all right.”

  “I’m sure I’ll be able to get an update on her,” David said. “Lenny’s managed to get even more contacts than I had when I left the business. I’ll let you know as soon as I hear something.”

  Candice smiled at her stepfather gratefully. When her mother first met David, he was working as a private investigator out of a small office in Lake Marion, kitty-corner from where the candy shop now was. The office still existed, but over the years David had pulled back from that line of work. He was a silent partner in the business now, and his associate, Lenny, had taken over while David focused his attention on the microbrewery and home life with his wife. He still kept his finger on the pulse of the town, though, and seemed to have almost magical skill in information gathering. Candice had been a bit intimidated by him when her mother first started seeing him — not because he was an intimidating person, but because he always seemed to know everything and she had barely been out of her teenage years at the time. Now, he was her father in all but blood, and she felt comfortable going to him with anything.

  “Lenny,” her mother said. “He’s another one we’d better invite.”

  “The list keeps growing,” David said with a dramatic sigh. He gave his wife a fond look. “I’ll tell him he’s invited, but only if he brings some of that apple pie he brought last year.”

  “Better make that two pies,” she responded. “We’re going to have quite the full house this year.”

  Talk moved away from what had happened at the gingerbread contest in favor of a discussion about the upcoming holiday. Candice joined in happily, though worry for Leila lingered at the back of her mind.

  Chapter 6

  Sundays were the one day Candice promised herself off every week, and she was never shy about enjoying them. With her alarm off, Eli still fast asleep next to her, and Felix’s warm weight on her chest, she dozed late into the morning. It was only the buzzing of her phone that eventually convinced her to peel back the blankets and face the chill of the morning. It seemed that no matter how many windows they resealed, the old farmhouse was always drafty, and this morning was no exception.

  “You’re lucky you’ve got a fur coat,” she muttered to Felix as she moved the sleepy cat off her and placed him on top of Eli. “It would be easier to get up if the air didn’t give me goosebumps.”

  By now, her phone had stopped ringing. The screen showed a missed call from David, and she hit redial as she walked out of the room. He answered almost immediately.

  “Sorry, did I wake you?” he said.

  “Not really. I was only half asleep.” She covered a yawn. “What’s going on? Is Mom okay?”

  “We’re fine,” he said. “I just got some news about the woman who collapsed at your contest yesterday, and I thought you might want to hear it.”

  Her stomach twisted. The tone of his voice made her think it probably wasn’t good news. “Of course.”

  “Unfortunately, she passed away shortly after arriving at the hospital yesterday.”

  “Oh.” Her heart sank, and she stopped walking to lean against the wall for support. “That’s horrible. Do you know what happened?”

  “Lenny told me that she was on medication for a heart condition, but that was all the information he could get. His contact at the hospital told him they haven’t fully determined cause of death yet. I’ll let you know if I get any more information about it. Did you know her well?”

  “No.” Candice blinked, trying to focus. “I didn’t. I just met her at the contest. Suri was talking to her, so I went over to say hi. It’s just a shock, that’s all. I don’t understand how someone can go from perfectly fine to on death’s door so quickly. And now… now she’s gone.”

  “I’m sorry. Maybe I should have waited to tell you. This probably isn’t what you wanted to hear first thing in the morning.”

  “No, I wanted to know. I’d rather this than to be kept in the dark. Thank you, David.”

  “No problem, Candice. I’m sorry the information wasn’t better.”

  “It’s not your fault.”

  They said their goodbyes and Candice ended the call. She gave a deep sigh, then straightened up and continued her way downstairs in silence. In the kitchen, she filled up the kettle and put it on the stove, then sat down at the kitchen table.

  Even though she hadn’t known Leila well, the woman’s death shook her. She didn’t want or need the reminder about how fragile life was. In a way, it was almost comforting that Leila had had a heart condition. At least her death wasn’t completely out of the blue, and it made Candice feel a bit better since as far as she knew, no one in her immediate family had any sort of condition like that.

  Still, she couldn’t help but wonder if the woman’s heart condition had actually had anything to do with her death. After all, she had been gripping her stomach, not her chest, and had seemed to be in a lot of pain. Candice wasn’t sure what the signs of a heart attack were, but she thought she had read somewhere that the person might experience pain in their left arm — or was it the right? — during an attack. Nothing about the stomach.

  It’s up to the doctors to figure out, she told herself firmly. Spending her morning dwelling on it wouldn’t help. She and Eli were going to visit Eli’s grandfather, Reggie, for lunch, and she had some cleaning she wanted to get done first. With any luck, vacuuming and dusting would distract her enough that she wouldn’t be in such a morose mood by the time they got to the nursing home.

  It worked, mostly. She did manage to quit wondering about Leila’s death as she cleaned, but all of the questions came clawing their way back to the surface once Eli woke up and she told him about the woman’s death. Thankfully, they had to discuss their plans for the day and put together a grocery list, and by the time that was done they had to rush out the door to get to the nursing home on time, so she didn’t have much of a chance to dwell on it.

  Eli saw Reggie at least once a week, and Candice went with him whenever she could. The elderly man had quickly become a grandfather figure to her, and she even visited him on her own sometimes. Even though he was getting up there in years, his mind was sharp, and he tended to have good advice for the two of them.

  The nursing home was a pleasant place, with food that was healthy, if a bit blander than Candice was used to. Sometime
s she snuck Reggie chocolates from the candy shop, but she hadn’t gone in yesterday and didn’t have any with her that day. When they sat down at one of the round tables in the dining area, she leaned forward and conspiratorially promised to bring him some later that week.

  Eli spent the first few minutes of their visit catching the older man up on everything of note that had happened over the past week. When he reached the gingerbread house making contest, Candice winced. She should have realized that he would tell Reggie about that. She didn’t really want to talk about it, but it was too late to ask him to keep the subject quiet now.

  “What a terrible thing to have witnessed,” Reggie said. “That poor woman. Sometimes life can be so unfair. It sounds like there was nothing anyone could do. It was simply her time.”

  “But what if it wasn’t?” Candice asked, voicing the thought that had been on her mind all morning. Both Eli and Reggie looked at her in puzzlement. “I just mean… what if it wasn’t her heart condition that killed her? David said she was on medication for it, so she was being treated, and it wasn’t as though we were running a marathon. We were building gingerbread houses. It wasn’t exactly stressful. Plus, she was gripping at her stomach, and said it hurt. I don’t know, I just feel like we don’t have the whole story. People don’t just…. They don’t just die.”

  “Sometimes they do,” Reggie said softly. “I know it’s hard, sweetie, but sometimes horrible things just happen, and there’s no one you can blame.”

  She sighed. She knew that what Reggie was saying was true, but that didn’t stop her from thinking that in this case, there was something else to the story.

  Chapter 7

  It was Monday morning, when she was about to leave for work, when Candice noticed the coat still in the back seat of her car. She felt a twinge at the sight of it. Somehow, it felt wrong to be carrying around a dead woman’s coat.

  As she stared at it, she realized she had no idea what to do with it. She had originally planned to turn it in to the lost and found at the library so Leila could reclaim it when she was better, but now she knew that would never happen. Should she track down Leila’s family and give it to them? She thought that might be the answer, eventually, but it didn’t seem right to do it right away. Giving the coat back to them now would do nothing but rub their loss in their faces.

  It might have something important in the pockets, though, she realized. A coat by itself wasn’t very important, but if Leila had her phone or her wallet in her pocket, her family might want those back sooner rather than later. She didn’t remember if Leila had had a purse or not.

  Feeling strangely like she was trespassing; she took the coat out of the back seat and carefully went through the pockets. She found nothing but a handful of candies from the sample jar at the candy shop in one pocket, and an empty candy wrapper — not one from the shop — in the other. She remembered that Suri said she had given Leila a sample. It seemed a bit sad that the other woman hadn’t even had a chance to try them.

  She left the items where she found them and, satisfied that there wasn’t anything important in the coat’s pockets, she put it in the trunk. She would find a way to return it to Leila’s family eventually, but not right now. She would give them some time to grieve first.

  Both Suri and Allison were helping out in the candy shop today, because Candice had a holiday fudge recipe that she wanted to try, and she knew already that she might end up spending all day in the back, experimenting. Making candy was, in some ways, more difficult than most other types of cooking. Sugar was very sensitive to heat, and if she cooked something for too long or at too high of a temperature, then the sugars would burn; too low of a temperature, and the sugar crystals wouldn’t fully dissolve, leading to gritty candy.

  Even with as much practice as she had, she sometimes made mistakes. It would be easier if she had automated machines to do all the heating and mixing, but she liked doing it by hand. And besides, those machines were expensive and took up precious space.

  She let herself in through the back door of the candy shop. Allison’s car was already in the parking lot, so Candice wasn’t surprised when her half-sister’s head poked around the corner.

  “I just finished making sure everything up front was re-stocked,” she said. “There’s nothing else for me to do but wait for opening. Do you want help with anything in the meantime?”

  “Nah,” Candice said. “I’m going to head straight to the kitchen. Let me know when Suri gets here, though. I need to talk to her about something.”

  Allison raised an eyebrow, but agreed without asking any questions. “I’ll send her back when she shows up. I’ll be up front if you need anything. Let me know when that fudge is done, I want to try some.”

  “Of course.” Candice grinned. “You’re always my guinea pig for new recipes.”

  “And I’ve only ever regretted it once,” Allison replied with a laugh.

  Candice hung her coat up and changed out of her winter boots and into the flats she kept in the coat closet at the shop, then made her way to the kitchen. Before getting any ingredients out, she synced her phone with the Bluetooth speaker that was hanging in the corner and started playing one of her favorite Christmas playlists. She knew it was silly, but she was convinced that the music made the candy taste better.

  She placed a large saucepan on one of the burners and measured out cocoa powder, milk, and sugar into it before turning the burner on. She stirred as the mixture heated up, humming to herself as she did so. In the distance, she could hear the bell over the front door ring as a customer came in and smiled to herself. Things would run smoothly with Allison out front, she knew, and she enjoyed making her candy and chocolates during the shop’s open hours. Hearing the customers come in always acted as encouragement and a reminder that what she was making would go to make someone happy, even if just for a minute or two.

  She stirred the mixture as it came up to a boil, then turned down the heat to let it simmer. Once it was bubbling nicely, she put the candy thermometer in. It didn’t take very long for the fudge to hit the right temperature. She removed it from the burner immediately, and mixed in just a little bit of peppermint extract. She didn’t want it to be overpowering, or to cover up the flavor of the chocolate.

  Beating the fudge until it lost its sheen was the hardest part, but once that was done, the fudge was all but finished. She scraped the mixture into a large pan, then grabbed the candy canes from where they were sitting on the counter. She took particular enjoyment out of crushing them, letting some of her feelings about Leila’s death come out during the process. It was a simple matter to sprinkle the crushed candy canes over the pan of fudge, and then… she was done. All she had to do was wait for it to cool before she and her employees could sample it. If it met their exacting levels of perfection, it would be out on the shelves by the end of the day. She had no doubts it would be a big seller; her regular chocolate fudge was already a customer favorite.

  The kitchen door opened just as she finished, and Allison peeked her head in. “Oh, it smells great in here,” she said, her eyes landing on the pan of fudge. “Absolutely delicious.”

  “Give it some time to cool,” Candice said, making shooing motions at the other woman. “I’ll let you know first thing when it’s ready, I promise.”

  “Fine, fine, Mrs. Scrooge.”

  Candice rolled her eyes. “Was there something you needed, or did you just come in to beg for candy like a five year old? Is Suri here yet?”

  “No, she’s not, though she’ll probably be here soon. She’s always early. I came back to get you because Mr. Smith just came in.”

  Candice groaned. “Why does he love to torment us? Does he really think I’m going to stop selling candy just because he rants about it?”

  “I think he’s just old and bored,” Allison said with a shrug. “You’re one of the only shopkeepers who doesn’t kick him out. And he really likes those ginger candies we sell.”

  “Those candies are horribl
e. We only sell them because Reggie managed to convince me they’re a classic. Fine, I’ll come out. You clean up in here. It’s only fair, for making me go deal with Mr. Smith.”

  She washed her hands and paused in the bathroom on her way to the front to double check her hair. It tended to come down a bit while she was wearing a hair net, and she hated to appear less than professional in front of Mr. Smith.

  Satisfied that she looked every inch the shopkeeper that she was, she braced herself and walked out front.

  Chapter 8

  Mr. Smith was walking slowly along one of the walls, frowning at the bins of sweets. He looked up when he heard her.

  “Still selling that milk chocolate, I see. Dreadful stuff. You lose all of the benefits of cocoa by adding so much sugar.”

  “Yes, well, the milk chocolate is very popular. Sometimes people just want a bit of something sweet.”