Peppermint Fudge and Fears

by Patti Benning

  “Can’t you just give me a chance to talk? I know my resume isn’t great but I really think I’d make a great employee, if you’d just give me the chance to convince you.”

  This was a bit too close to what the note had said for Candice. She jumped back and gripped the door’s handle, ready to shove it closed with all her might if he made one move closer to her.

  “We aren’t hiring at the moment. It wouldn’t make sense for me to interview someone when we don’t even have a position available. Sorry.”

  His fists tightened, but to her relief he took a step back. “Fine. Thanks anyway.”

  She shut the door, then leaned against it in relief. Paranoia was definitely getting the best of her. Davey might have history with her family, but he didn’t have any link at all to Leila, at least not that she knew of, and she didn’t know why he would plant poisoned candies around the candy shop if he wanted to work there. That would get her shut down, it wouldn’t open up a position for him.

  Still, she was going to talk to David about him — or maybe she should go directly to the police. They would be able to compare his handwriting with the handwriting of the note, and they might even be able to determine whether there was a link between him and Leila as well. She supposed it was possible that the two of them had been involved at some point, though that would be quite the coincidence.

  Or maybe Leila’s death had been a complete accident. Suri had given her some candy samples, after all, and if the killer had put a poisoned candy in the sample jar, Leila might have just been unlucky. After all, Leila wasn’t even from town. Why would a local want to kill her? The only possible motive Candice could think of was if someone really, really, wanted to win the gingerbread house making contest, and the prize was only five-hundred dollars, someone would have to be pretty desperate to commit murder for that—"

  She gasped as it suddenly all came together in her mind. Suri had said just days ago that she needed the hours. Before the contest, she had told Candice how much she needed the money and how much she hoped to win. Leila had been the contest’s winner two years in a row; she had told Candice and Suri as much right before the contest started. If Suri wanted to win that badly, Leila would be the one to get out of the way. And now that Candice was thinking back on it, hadn’t Suri been the first one to notice that something was wrong with Leila? Why else would she have been watching her fellow contestant instead of focusing on her own gingerbread house, unless she was waiting for signs of poisoning to show?

  None of that explained how a poisoned candy had found its way into the rest of the inventory at the candy shop, but maybe that part was an accident. Suri was in the store almost every day; she could have dropped the candy at any time and she might not have even been aware of it. It didn’t explain the package of candies someone had left on Candice’s porch either, but if Suri had killed Leila, then Candice would have to admit that she didn’t know her employee as well as she thought she did.

  Chapter 14

  “Candice, are you all right?” Suri asked. Candice straightened up, opening her eyes to find her employee standing only a few feet away from her with a concerned expression on her face.

  “I’m fine,” she said, too quickly. Suri raised an eyebrow.

  “The other day, you told me I could come to you if I needed to talk about anything. That should probably extend both ways. What’s going on? Did Davey say something?”

  “No,” Candice said. “I just… I think all the stress is catching up to me.”

  Suri gave a small chuckle. “Trust me when I say I know the feeling. We’d better finish looking for those candies, though. We can’t risk missing any. It would be terrible if someone got poisoned.”

  “Yeah.”

  Candice pushed away from the door, walking just a bit too quickly toward the other side of the room, away from Suri. She wondered if maybe she should just call the search off and leave it to the police. That might be better anyway; searching for a deadly poison in the shape of a candy while in a candy shop was like searching for a needle in a haystack anyway, and it was probably something better left to the authorities.

  Before she could tell Suri that they should probably just close down for the rest of the day and go home, the other woman’s phone buzzed. Her employee took it out of her pocket and shot her a nervous glance. “I’m so sorry, Candice, but I really have to take this. It might be important.”

  “Go ahead,” Candice said. “I’m going to count out the register.”

  Suri nodded and answered the phone, pressing it to her ear and walking over to the far corner of the room, talking on it in a low, hushed voice. She obviously wanted privacy, but Candice made no effort not to eavesdrop. She needed to find out the truth about her employee, and this was a good chance to do just that.

  “No, I can’t come get him right now,” Suri said, sounding annoyed. “Can’t you just tell your boss you’re busy? I’m working, I can’t leave in the middle of a shift. We’ve got a lot going on today and I think my boss is already suspicious that I’m hiding something.” She fell silent for a moment, then spoke again. “I know, I already tried once, but I don’t know how to—” She broke off, sighed, and said at last, “Fine. I’ll see if I can get out a little early. Bye.”

  By the time she ended the call, Candice was pretending to be completely engrossed in counting out the register. Suri walked over to the counter and watched her for a moment. “Weren’t we going to keep looking for those candies?”

  “I decided to close early,” Candice said. “I think this is probably a job for the police, more than for us. It’s not worth the chance of us missing something.”

  She watched Suri for any sign that she was frightened or nervous about the involvement of the police, but the other woman just looked slightly relieved. “Oh, that makes sense. There’s really too much for us to search by ourselves anyway. Do you need any help closing up?”

  Candice hesitated. Part of her wanted to keep Suri around so she could probe her with questions, but the larger — and probably smarter — part was eager to just give all of her information to the police and let them figure it out. She was a candy store owner, not a private investigator. She wasn’t David.

  “Nah, you can leave. It sounded like something came up for you, anyway.”

  “Yeah,” Suri said with a sigh. “My mom got called in to work and can’t watch—” She froze, as if she hadn’t meant to say even as much as she had said.

  “What can’t she watch?” Candice asked, curious despite herself. Suri was definitely hiding something, and the answer could determine whether or not she was the one who was making poisoned hard candies.

  Suri bit her lip, then sighed, slouching slightly as if defeated. “I have a son,” she said, the words so quiet they were almost a whisper.

  “A son?” Candice asked, blinking. She hadn’t been expecting this. “That’s nice. What’s his name? Why didn’t you tell anyone about him?”

  Suri met her eyes, looking embarrassed but also defiant. “I didn’t mention him during my interview because I thought if you knew I was a single mom with a two year old son you wouldn’t want to hire me. Then afterward there never seemed to be a good time to bring it up, and as time went on it just felt weirder and weirder to come out and say ‘Hey, I have a son, by the way. Surprise!’ I’m sorry, I wasn’t trying to lie to you, it just all kept building up until I didn’t know how to even begin broaching the subject.”

  “So all those times you’ve had to change shifts at the last second…?”

  “My mom got called in to work, and once my babysitter got sick and had to cancel. My mom helps out a lot because money’s tight, but I’ve been doing better now that I have this job and I’m not just living off of child support. I’ve been using sitters more often so my mom doesn’t have to watch him all the time, and there’s a daycare that he’ll be able to go to starting in January. I know I should have been upfront about everything before I started working here, but I really needed the job.”
She shuffled her feet, looking down at the floor and biting her lip, as if expecting Candice to start shouting at her.

  “Suri, it’s fine,” Candice said. “Don’t worry. You’re not in trouble or anything. I do wish you’d told me sooner; but I can see how you might have felt that it would be awkward to bring up. It definitely caught me by surprise. You should bring your boy in to the candy shop sometime, I’d love to meet him and I’m sure everyone else would too.” She chewed on her lip, watching Suri for a moment before deciding she might as well go for it. “You don’t have any idea where those poisoned hard candies came from, do you?”

  “What? No!” She shuddered. “The thought of some psycho spreading poisoned candies around town is terrifying. I can’t stop thinking about how easy it would be for my son to find one. He’s at the stage where he puts everything in his mouth if I’m not watching him like a hawk. I’m just grateful whoever’s behind this didn’t think to hand these candies out for Halloween.”

  That sent shivers down Candice’s spine. That hadn’t even occurred to her. “Well—”

  She broke off as the door to the candy shop opened. It was Brad. She groaned; just her luck, she had forgotten to lock the door after Davey left, and now her very own stalker was here.

  “Hey, Candice,” he said. “Quiet day? I wasn’t expecting it to be this empty.”

  “We’re closed,” Candice said. “You must have missed the sign. You’ll have to come back another day; I’m almost done counting out the register.”

  “Oh, I’m not here to buy anything,” he said. He smiled at her. “I just wanted to know if you got the candy, and if you’re ready to have that conversation now.”

  Chapter 15

  “What?” Candice felt as though she had entered some strange state of being where everything moved in slow motion. “What did you just say?”

  “You’re such an inspiration, Candice. I love seeing what you built here in this store. And you’re so talented. You inspired me to try to make candy, but I never knew how hard it was. It took me weeks to make something that actually tasted good. Did you like them?”

  “You sent me the candy?”

  “I figured it was the best way to show you what you mean to me. And I really do wish you’d give me a chance to talk to you. I mean really talk. If you’d just give me the chance, I could do so much for you.”

  Candice took half a step back. Suri was standing on the other side of the counter, her eyes wide as she looked back and forth between them. She had her phone gripped in her hands.

  “Brad… you killed someone. You poisoned someone! You almost poisoned a little girl!”

  “How do you know about that?” he asked, paling. “And what girl? I would never hurt a kid! Just give me a chance to explain about that woman, I’m sure you’ll under—”

  “Get out,” Candice said. “Please, Brad, just leave. If you actually care about me at all, you’ll go now.”

  “I do care about you, Candice, but I need you to let me explain,” he said. He walked slowly up to the register, his eyes on her. He leaned against the counter, his palms flat against the surface. “I just wanted to make sure you won that contest. That woman was telling everyone she’d won two years running, and I thought I’d be doing you a favor by getting her out of the way. Didn’t you want to win? I know how competitive you are.”

  “You don’t know anything about me,” she snapped, backing away from him with a mixture of disgust and fear in her expression. “And if you really thought I’d want someone to die just so I could win some stupid contest, then you’re completely insane.”

  “I just wanted to make you happy,” he said, looking hurt.

  “Innocent people dying could never make me happy,” she said. “Leaving poison in a candy shop could never make me happy. I thought you were harmless, that you just needed to be let down gently, but you… you’re a monster.”

  “I never left any of the poisoned ones here,” he said. “I wouldn’t ever leave any of them anywhere near you.”

  “Then you must have dropped it,” she spat. “Because a girl found it and tried to buy it from me.”

  “Oh.” His eyes widened. “I’m so sorry. I didn’t mean for that to happen. I really didn’t. Is that why you’re so mad at me? I’ll find a way to make it up to you. I could take you out to dinner—”

  “Brad.” She kept her voice even, but it was a struggle. She wanted to cry and shout and shove him out the door and lock it behind him. “I have a husband, and I love him. And even if I didn’t, I would never go out with you. You killed someone in cold blood, and nothing you could ever say or do could possibly change the way that I feel about that. You need to get this fantasy of us being together out of your mind and leave my store. Right now.”

  “You really mean it?” he asked quietly, his eyes fixed on hers. “You… you won’t even give me a chance? You’ll never give me a chance?”

  “Never,” she said firmly, meeting his gaze.

  His face seemed to crumple. His eager, earnest expression was soon replaced with something much colder.

  “You’re not who I thought you were,” he said. “I can see that now. I wasted my time with you. You made me think you were different, but you’re really just like all those other shallow girls. I’m going to make you pay for that.”

  He lunged across the counter and grabbed her by the front of her shirt before she had time to react. One of his hands wrapped around her throat and she tried to back away, panicking as she scrabbled at his fingers.

  But before his grip could tighten, the sound of breaking glass pierced through Candice’s panicked thoughts and Brad released her. They stared at each other, frozen for a moment. He had what looked like… blue jellybeans… in his hair. Candice blinked, and the spell was broken. He turned to look at Suri, who was holding a large jar of red jellybeans, her arm cocked back and ready to throw it.

  “Don’t touch her,” she said. She winked at Candice. “I kind of need this job, after all.”

  Brad looked between her and Suri, but the fight seemed to have gone out of him. He winced as Suri made a motion like she was about to throw the second jar, and backed away, shards of broken glass crunching under his feet.

  “You should have given me a chance,” he said as he pulled the door open, and then he was gone.

  “Thank you,” Candice breathed, letting herself relax against the counter for a moment. “I should call the police.”

  “Already done,” Suri said. And sure enough, Candice could hear the sirens off in the distance. Brad wouldn’t get very far.

  Epilogue

  Candice and Eli walked up to the door, both of them laden down with presents. It opened before Candice could knock in it, and a mostly black German Shepherd darted out, running in loops around them as they staggered through the door.

  “Here, let me take some of those,” David said. Candice smiled in thanks as her stepfather took a few of the heavier presents out of her arms. “Your mother’s in the kitchen with everyone else, but we should probably stash the presents under the tree first.”

  The gifts that Candice and Eli had brought with them joined the other presents under the Christmas tree in Moira and David’s living room, and the three of them made their way to the kitchen, Maverick following happily behind.

  The kitchen table was crowded with plates, glasses, and silverware. The food was sitting out buffet style on the counter, and Candice’s mother was putting a pie into the oven. She looked up as her daughter came in.

  “Merry Christmas, sweetie.”

  “Merry Christmas, Mom.”

  She looked around for Eli, but he was already greeting Lenny, David’s business partner. Allison caught her eye and waved her over to where she was seated next to her Aunt Thelma.

  “Hi, Candice,” the older woman said. “How’s the house treating you?”

  “Quite well. Thanks for keeping it in such good shape,” Candice replied. Thelma had lived in the old farmhouse for half a year while Candice and
Eli were living in another town.

  “It’s a special place. I’m glad it’s got a young family living in it now. I think it was always too big for me on my own.”

  “Your new house is only like two hundred square feet smaller,” Allison said, giving her aunt an amused look.

  “Well, a couple hundred of those remaining square feet are for my niece, which she would know if she ever visited.”

  Candice smiled as Allison and her aunt began arguing back and forth good naturedly. Eli seemed to be deep in conversation with Lenny about names for the pet bakery he wanted to open, and David and her mother were standing with their arms around each other, watching them all. Candice sank down into her seat, smiling. She couldn’t have asked for a better Christmas.