Confectionately Dead

by Kathleen Suzette

  I took this in, then shook my head. “If it were me, I would try to focus on the good things. You don’t know for sure that anything was going on, so why torment yourself with those thoughts?” I said it as gently as I could. I knew where the mind might go in grief, but since she didn’t know for sure if anything had happened between her husband and Harper, she really was only hurting herself by going over and over these things.

  She nodded. “I’m having a boy you know,” she said with a smile. “I wanted to name him after Josh, but he said he didn’t want his son being called Junior.” She chuckled. “Now that he’s gone, I might name him after him after all.”

  I smiled. “He might’ve felt differently about it had he known he wasn’t going to get to be here for him, and for you.”

  She nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. I want my baby to remember his father, even though he never actually met him.”

  I couldn’t blame her. If my husband had been murdered, I would want to do everything I could to keep his memory alive for our children. I sighed, wishing things could have been different for Emily. And I needed to speak to Ethan about Harper.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  Try as I might, I couldn’t get Emily off my mind. Raising that baby by herself was going to be doubly hard because her husband had been murdered. Thankfully her family would be arriving to help her through this difficult time.

  The following evening, I was getting ready to close the candy shop when Harper showed up. “Hi Mia,” she said, breezing through the door. “I know I’m a few minutes early, but I thought I’d stop in and pick up some fudge before you closed. Your mother makes the best fudge in the entire world.” She chuckled and headed over to the display case and peered in. She wore her medium length brown hair in a single ponytail and her cream knit scarf had a thick and chunky weave. She wasn’t what some might consider pretty, but she had confidence in herself that transcended pretty.

  “I might be a little biased, but I’m going to have to agree with you,” I said. “My mom’s fudge is the best in the world.” I had talked to Ethan for a few minutes late the previous night and told him what Emily told me about Harper. He intended to talk to Harper, and I wondered if he had had the chance to do that yet. With a second murder, Ethan was working late hours again, and I hated to bother him, but I felt like I couldn’t ignore what Emily had said.

  She laughed again. “I’m glad it’s not all gone. I was worried I might be too late. I think I’m going to get some of that peppermint fudge, and maybe some eggnog fudge, oh and why don’t you give me some triple chocolate truffle?” She looked at me and grinned. “I’m going to pay for this come January, but I can’t help it. It’s all so delicious. And what the heck, it’s Christmas, so why not?”

  “Believe me, you aren’t going to get any judgmental looks from me. I indulge in far too much of it myself. I said I wasn’t going to keep eating as much as I have been in the hopes of staving off holiday weight gain, but I’ve got an idea that I may be failing at that,” I said, going behind the counter and opening the back of the display case. “How much would you like?”

  “You better just give me a quarter of a pound of each. I’d love to have a half a pound of each, but I know exactly where that’s going to go. Straight to my hips,” she said and chuckled again. “What happened to Josh Tate is terrible, isn’t it?”

  I nodded. “It really is. I can’t imagine who would kill him like that.”

  Carrie came out of the kitchen and went to the front door and locked it. “It’s time! We get to go home!”

  “It’s the best time of the day, isn’t it?” Harper said. “You ladies just too-da-loo on your way and go on home and I’ll take care of all the cleaning.”

  “And you don’t know how much we appreciate not having to do that cleaning,” I said and watched Carrie head back to the kitchen again. I turned back to Harper. “Did you know Josh well?”

  She shrugged. “It depends on what you mean by well. He hired me a few times to clean up after him at some of his construction jobs. So yeah, I knew him, but not what I would consider well.”

  “I stopped by to see his wife yesterday. I feel so terrible for her. She’s going to have that baby by herself and have to raise it on her own,” I said. I removed the tray of peppermint fudge and cut a piece and put it on the scale.

  She nodded. “It’s terrible, isn’t it? I feel bad for her. I need to stop by and say hello to her. Maybe bring her some fudge or something.”

  I nodded. “So, did you work for Josh often?” I asked her.

  She shrugged. “For a couple of months I was working for him two or three days out of the week. But that was back in September and October.”

  “Oh? How come you didn’t continue working for him?” I was getting pretty good at gauging how much a quarter of a pound of fudge was. The scale said exactly a quarter of a pound when I laid the fudge on it.

  “We had a ‘parting of the ways’ as they say,” she said and grinned. “We just couldn’t see eye to eye on some things.”

  I was cutting the eggnog fudge, and I stopped to look at her. “Eye to eye on what? I guess I sound nosy, don’t I?” I chuckled, trying to keep things light.

  “Not at all. He wanted me to jump every time he called and get to a work site immediately, but I had other jobs lined up, and I couldn’t just drop everything. Then he got mad at me and called me some mean names, and I told him I was done with him.”

  “Wow. He called you names? I bet he didn’t take it well when you quit,” I said. I was pretty sure Josh wouldn’t take anything like someone quitting on him well.

  “That’s why I texted it to him. Josh was a hothead, and I didn’t want to have to deal with him,” she said, nodding. “I always felt sorry for his wife having to put up with that for as long as she did.” She picked up a foil-wrapped hollow chocolate Christmas tree from a nearby shelf and set it on the counter. “I know I shouldn’t do it, but I want this too.”

  “I guess I didn’t know Josh very well. I mean, he seemed nice.” Okay, that might not have been the complete truth. My impression of him was that he was a bit of a jerk, but I really hadn’t known him well. That part was true.

  “If you ask me,” she said, and looked over her shoulder at the now empty candy shop, then looked back at me. “If I were a betting woman, I put my money on Charlie O’Rourke as the killer. He’s Ellie’s son-in-law. I’ve been thinking things over and I just have a hunch. He and Josh couldn’t stand each other. That Charlie might dress in a suit every day, but he’s a lowlife loser.”

  I began wrapping up her fudge. “How do you know they couldn’t stand each other?”

  She shrugged. “It’s something that you hear around town. Stuff like that kind of gets around, if you know what I mean. But Josh did make a comment one day and said what a snake Charlie was. Apparently, he and Charlie were running around together last year. When Charlie lied to his wife about putting in extra time at work, he was actually seeing a woman on the side. Apparently he and Josh got into an argument, so Josh told Shelly where he really was. Charlie swore he’d get him back.”

  “Charlie was cheating on Shelly?” That made me dislike Charlie more than I already did. “What was the argument about?”

  She nodded. “Josh loaned Charlie a hundred dollars and when he asked for it back, Charlie said he gave it to him, and he wasn’t going to pay it back. Josh also said Charlie stole money from his mother-in-law.”

  I looked at her, surprised. “He stole money from Ellie? How much money?” It seemed like if Charlie had stolen money from Ellie, then Laura would have mentioned it. I couldn’t imagine Laura not knowing about it if other people knew, and with the way she liked to complain, I figured she would have said something about it.

  “I heard it was a couple hundred dollars. Not much to some people, but come on, his mother-in-law was living on social security and he stole money from her!” She shook her head and made a sound of disapproval.

  “How do you
know he really stole the money? Maybe that’s just gossip going around,” I asked and placed the fudge into a paper bag.

  “Josh told me. He said Charlie told him he stole the money from Ellie because he couldn’t stand her. Wouldn’t surprise me a bit if he killed Ellie, too.”

  “If it’s true, that’s terrible that he stole from his own mother-in-law,” I said and began ringing up her fudge. “I really don’t know Charlie very well. I went to school with him, but he was a couple of years ahead of me.” I left out the part where I thought he was a jerk. Just because someone is a jerk doesn’t mean that they’ll steal money or kill people.

  “Tell me about it. I couldn’t stand that jerk. He got me fired from the car dealership, you know,” she said, nodding. “He told the owner that I was stealing supplies from there. Can you believe that?” She rolled her eyes and snorted. “I mean, come on, it’s not like I can’t afford to pay for things I need. I’ve got more work than I can handle. Why on earth would I steal something like toilet paper and cleaning supplies?”

  She had a point. From the sound of it, she did have more work than she could handle. She certainly did a good job cleaning the candy store, and when my mother had checked on her references, they had been glowing.

  “Do you really think Charlie could kill both Josh and Ellie?” I asked her. “I hate to think that Ellie’s son-in-law would kill her. But then, in my family, we get along for the most part and I couldn’t imagine us hating one another. It’s hard for me to understand how a family could degrade so much that one person would kill another.”

  She ran her debit card through the card reader and looked at me. “I absolutely believe that Charlie O’Rourke could have killed both of them. He’s the most coldhearted person I’ve ever met.”

  I considered this. Was she telling me the truth, or was she just bitter about being fired from the car dealership? I also wondered why the manager at the car dealership hadn’t told me the truth about Harper being let go.

  “Well, I guess we’ll get to straightening up a bit and let you get to the heavier cleaning,” I said. “I better get the deposit ready to take down to the bank, too.” I opened the cash register drawer and picked up the plastic money tray to take to the little office in back to count the money and prepare the bank deposit.

  “You know, Mia,” she said thoughtfully as she put her debit card back into her purse. “I was thinking about starting a courier service in Pumpkin Hollow. I mean, it’s a small town, so it’s not like there would be a lot of need for it, but it might be helpful to some people. All of you business owners are too busy to be running all over town, doing time-consuming things like making bank deposits. I was thinking I could pick up supplies for them too, if they need something and don’t have time to pick it up themselves.”

  “Oh? That might be a good idea. The bank is only down the street and around the corner for us, but there are businesses on the other side of town that might need that kind of service,” I said.

  She nodded. “I’m also thinking we could pick up meds for people who are housebound and drop them off at their house. I’ve got all kinds of ideas going through my head. In fact, I’ve got more ideas than I know what to do with,” she said and laughed. “My mom always said I was a go-getter, and she got that right.”

  “It sounds like you’ve got a lot of great ideas,” I agreed. “You let me know if you ever get that courier business started. We might need you to pick up supplies occasionally.”

  I headed back to the office with the money to make up the deposit. I hoped what she said about the text she had sent to Josh was true. It would give Emily peace of mind to know that her husband hadn’t cheated on her, but I didn’t know how I could bring it up in conversation without her knowing I had been talking to Harper about the situation.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  It was a week before Christmas and the night of the play had finally arrived. Pumpkin Hollow was decked out in Christmas finery along with some Halloween decorations in keeping with the town’s theme. I enjoyed walking along the streets at Christmas and looking into the shop windows. Somehow the mix of Halloween and Christmas decorations was even more appealing than either one of them alone. Everywhere you looked, there were Christmas trees with jack-o’-lanterns hanging on them, Santas holding trick or treat bags, and vampires with candy canes. The best display was at Mercer’s dry goods store. Mercer’s sold vintage inspired items you might have found in a dry goods store at the turn of the last century, including bulk grocery items and an old-fashioned soda fountain, along with a small selection of modern drugstore items like makeup and vitamins. During the Christmas season there was a life-size Santa Claus mannequin sitting on a chair at the front of the store and lining up to visit with him were mannequin kids dressed in Halloween costumes, as well as some dressed in regular clothes. There was a little ghost leaning around a small vampire, trying to get a look at Santa while a boy dressed in a snowsuit shyly sat on his lap and told him what he wanted for Christmas. It had taken Bill Mercer years to collect the entire display and was complete with two elves and a reindeer that ate hay from a manger. It was a don’t miss attraction that everyone wanted to see.

  It had been days since Ethan had gotten any time off, and I was thrilled we were able to go to the play together. We had dinner down at the Skull Cap Café, and now we were headed up to the party house. The play began at 7 o’clock and we still had plenty of time to walk along and look into shop windows. The city had hung Christmas lights that were strung across the streets as well as on the lampposts creating a cheery atmosphere as we walked along.

  “I wish Christy would’ve come along with us,” Ethan said as we stopped to look in the costume shop windows. Fagan Branigan had several styles of Santa suits, along with Grinch suits, and an assortment of Halloween costumes displayed.

  “I wish she would have come, too,” I said. “But she insisted she would just be a third wheel.”

  He snorted. “Please,” he said shaking his head. “She wouldn’t be a third wheel. It’s one of the biggest Christmas events of the season and I hate for her to miss it.”

  “I assured her she was more than welcome to come with us, and we would love to have her company. But you know how she is right now. And I don’t blame her for being down, it’s a hard situation to be in. When you’re miserable, sometimes being around happy people just makes you even more miserable.”

  “I guess so,” he said as we moved on to the gift shop window. We stopped and looked in. “That’s a really cute jack-o’-lantern.”

  The jack-o’-lantern in the gift shop window had a Christmas scene inside of it. I didn’t know where Polly Givens had managed to find it, but inside there was a Santa, a skeleton, and an elf playing cards at a table.

  “That is kind of cute, isn’t it?” I said. “It’s not exactly my style, but it is cute.” I loved vintage style Halloween and Christmas decorations and I had been collecting them for years. It was a thrill to discover something new, whether authentically vintage or reproduction, and I kept an eye out for them when I shopped.

  “I really like it. I might have to stop in and get that when they’re open,” he said as we moved on to the next shop. It was just after 6 o’clock and we would have plenty of time to get to the party house for the play.

  “Maybe you’d like something like that for Christmas,” I hinted. With it being so close to Christmas, I still hadn’t bought Ethan anything. I had been so busy working, that I’d lost track of the days.

  “Maybe I would like something like that,” he said and gave me a sideways glance. He grinned. “You don’t have to get me anything at all. I just want to spend time with you.”

  I rolled my eyes. “I’m going to get you a present,” I said. “So, how close are you to solving either of the murder cases?” I had restrained myself from bringing it up at dinner and was a little disappointed when he hadn’t brought it up. But I knew he was worn out from all the hours he was putting in down at the police station and I didn�
�t want to press him.

  He sighed. “Not as close as I’d like. We’re assuming of course, that the murders are related because they both died in the same manner and in the same place. They both lived in the same small town, but there’s not a lot to connect them. Sure, Josh fixed Ellie’s roof and there was a disagreement between them, but why would they both end up dead?”

  “I don’t know, either.” I had already filled him in on what Josh’s wife had told me about Harper and what Harper had said about Charlie O’Rourke. I hoped the case would be solved before Christmas, but at this point, I wasn’t sure that was going to happen.

  We looked up as someone in an elf costume walked down the sidewalk toward us. It took me a moment before I realized it was Marilyn Jones.

  “Hi Marilyn,” I said. Her face was painted white, and she had exaggerated red circles of rouge on her cheeks, and bright red lipstick made her lips stand out, making her look like a life-size toy elf.

  She grinned. “Hi, Mia, hi Ethan. Are you two headed for the play?”

  I nodded. “We sure are. What are you doing all dressed up?”

  “I’m Santa’s sidekick these days,” she said and laughed. “I can’t be a witch down at the haunted house until it reopens again, so I found another gig.”

  “That’s great,” I said. “At least you’re not sitting around idle, right?”

  She nodded and looked over at Ethan. “Hey Ethan,” she said. “Any news on who killed Ellie Adams and Josh Tate? It’s all anyone is talking about these days.”

  He shook his head. “Not yet. We’re working on it though, and I’m sure we’ll find the killer soon.”

  She nodded. “I’ll tell you something,” she said, lowering her voice. “If I were you, I’d take a look at Charlie O’Rourke.”

  Now she had my interest. I had heard enough about him to make me think he might be a viable suspect at this point. “Why do you say that?” I asked.