Assaulted Caramel

by Amanda Flower

  My brow wrinkled. “I don’t know what that has to do with what happened at my grandparents’ candy shop this morning.”

  The sheriff straightened up, and the chair beneath him groaned again. “I think it has quite a lot to do with it. Weren’t you there with Jace Colton, the deceased’s son?”

  I folded my hands in my lap. “His wedding is tomorrow. His future mother-in-law scheduled a wedding dessert tasting at Swissmen Sweets for this afternoon. Under the circumstances, the tasting couldn’t be in the shop. We didn’t have a kitchen to use, so we moved it to the church. Eileen was kind enough to make the arrangements with the pastor so that I could use the church’s kitchen.”

  “Why did you handle the tasting?” He lifted one of his thin eyebrows. The eyebrow looked too delicate to go with his ruddy complexion. “Your grandfather was hired to supply the sweets, not you.”

  “My grandfather is ill, and remaking everything that would have been needed for the tasting in the time available would have been too difficult for him. My grandparents have been through enough for one day. They didn’t need to deal with Eileen too.”

  “What do you mean by that?” He lowered the thin brows.

  I tried not to stare at his peculiar eyebrows as I answered. “I could tell that Eileen was going to be particular about what she wanted for the wedding. I’m used to handling particular people at the chocolate shop where I work in New York, so I stepped in and offered to make the desserts for the tasting. It was Eileen who suggested that we use the church kitchen. I was surprised to see that Jace came, considering.”

  He arched one of his thin eyebrows. “Considering what?”

  The more I stared at the eyebrows, the more I began to realize they were drawn onto his red face. What had happened to the sheriff to cause him to lose his brows? I stopped myself from asking. This probably was not a good time.

  Of course, the sheriff knew perfectly well why I was surprised to see Jace at the tasting, but I answered anyway. “Considering his father was just murdered this morning.”

  He tapped his fingers over the top of the file in a consistent rhythm. I swallowed and tried my best not to stare at it. The folder was making me more nervous by the second.

  When neither of us spoke for a long moment, I broke the silence. “Don’t you find it odd that Jace wants to go on with the wedding tomorrow? His father hasn’t even been dead twenty-four hours. Isn’t that a little cold?”

  He folded his hands over the top of the manila folder again. “Do you think he should put his life on hold because his father is dead?”

  “Not forever, but a day wouldn’t hurt, would it?”

  The sheriff looked as if he wanted to say something, but I forged ahead. “I don’t begrudge him for wanting to go on with the wedding, not really. From what I gathered, he and his father had a difficult relationship. But don’t you think they should have waited for a least a day before continuing with the wedding plans?”

  “Do you suspect him of something, Miss King?”

  I waited for a beat, trying to decide if I wanted to tell the sheriff what I had learned from eavesdropping on Jace in the cemetery. “I overheard him telling someone on the phone to ‘take care’ of something now that his father was dead, because the police would be searching his files.”

  The sheriff appeared unimpressed by the information. “Take care of what, exactly?”

  “He didn’t say.”

  “Then how do you know it’s related to the murder?”

  “Because he mentioned his father in the phone conversation,” I said, doing my best to keep the frustration out of my voice. I was afraid that my attempt was an epic fail.

  Then, his face clouded over. “Let me be very clear, Miss King. This is a police investigation. I don’t want you sneaking around my county, spying on people, and messing with my case.”

  “I wasn’t sneaking or spying,” I lied. “I was at the church and overheard the call.” I made a point of not mentioning that I had followed Jace outside into the cemetery. “Besides, it shouldn’t matter how I heard it. It’s an important clue, and one that you should follow up on.”

  He leaned forward. “Miss King, I will be the one who decides what tips we should follow in this investigation, not you.”

  “I didn’t mean any disrespect, but you have to view Jace Colton as a major suspect in his father’s murder. Close friends and family are always the first suspects, aren’t they?”

  “And were your grandparents close to Tyson Colton’s family? Were they among his friends?”

  “I severely doubt it.” But even as I said this, I thought of the revelation that Aiden had made about my Maami and Daadi helping him and Juliet when they’d first moved to Holmes County. I couldn’t know my grandparents’ relationships with anyone in the county, not really. However, my grandfather had nearly come to blows with Tyson in front of Swissmen Sweets. They might have, too, if my grandfather hadn’t been Amish and had an aversion to violence. “They’re not. They have never mentioned Tyson to me before. I first saw him with my grandfather on the sidewalk the day before he died.” As I said this I realized they had never mentioned Aiden and Juliet to me before either, and apparently, my grandparents had been very close to them once upon a time.

  His unusual smile broadened. “When he was arguing with Tyson, you mean? That must have been difficult for you to see.”

  I didn’t say anything.

  “Tyson was planning on buying your grandfather’s building, am I right?”

  “He wanted to buy it, but there was no chance of him doing it.”

  “Oh?” He arched his drawn-on brows. “Tyson managed to buy the other buildings on the street. What makes you think that he would fail where Swissmen Sweets was concerned?”

  “Because I know my grandfather would never sell.”

  “Why not?”

  “Because he has no reason too, and he’s stubborn.”

  “That must run in the family then.”

  I felt my cheeks grow hot. I finally knew what the Sheriff was driving at. “Tyson’s buying up property around Swissmen Sweets has nothing to do with his murder.”

  “I’m afraid it does,” he murmured.

  “You have to see how ridiculous it is to consider my ailing grandfather as a murder suspect.”

  “The only thing I have to see is that you are a suspect.” He drummed his fingers over the file.

  Again, I wondered what was inside. I refused to look at it again. “Deputy Brody already told me that I’m a suspect. I have to be because I’m the one who found the body. I know that.”

  “And because you have motive.” He ran his index finger along the outside edge of the manila envelope.

  “What motive?” I asked, even though I knew.

  “Motive,” he said, “to defend your Amish grandparents.” He laughed a mirthless laugh. “The Amish aren’t as defenseless as they might seem, and they can take care of themselves. I’ve been the sheriff of Holmes County for over twenty years. I know.”

  “Perhaps you don’t know them as well as you think,” I snapped.

  “The Amish pretend to be peace-loving folks.” He leaned far across the table, and I could smell coffee on his breath. “But I can tell you stories that would curl your toes. You have no idea what you are talking about.”

  “My grandparents are Amish.” I released my grip on the tabletop. I didn’t want the sheriff to see how what he said affected me. I folded my hands in my lap.

  “And how does that make you an expert on the Amish people? Do you know any other Amish? They don’t come out of a cookie cutter all the same. There are many differences. You would know that if you knew anything at all about them.”

  “It doesn’t seem to me that being the sheriff of an Amish county is a good fit for you if you dislike them so much.” My tone was sharp. I was no longer even trying to be polite. I had thought I didn’t care for Deputy Carpenter, but this man was worse, just as Carpenter had said he would be. I didn’t know how Aiden cou
ld work with either of them.

  He eyed me. “I grew up in this county, Miss, and I have as much right to it as any of the Amish do, probably more, since I’m a sheriff. You may think you know the Amish because of your family connections, but you’re from another world. You have no idea what goes on in my county.”

  “I don’t think—”

  He cut me off. “I’m not going to quibble with you over the workings of the Amish communities around Harvest.” He folded his hands on top of the manila folder again. “Now, I would like to talk to you about the murder. Where were you between nine PM and midnight last night?”

  “I’ve already told you that I was at the candy shop, trying to sleep.”

  He arched his thin brow. “You, a city girl, went to bed at nine at night.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms. “That’s a little hard for me to believe.”

  I frowned. “I was in my room, in my grandparents’ apartment over the shop.”

  “You didn’t leave? Not once?” he asked. “In the evening, you went to your room and straight to bed?”

  I was quiet for a long moment. “I stepped out for a minute.”

  A victorious smile crossed his face. “And when was that?”

  I remained quiet.

  He leaned forward on the table and fixed his dark gaze on mine. “Have you finally decided to tell me the truth, Miss King?”

  “All right,” I whispered.

  Chapter 21

  I cleared my throat. “I never lied. No one has asked me where I was at that exact time.”

  The half smile was back. “Don’t you think it would have been helpful to us if you had been more forthcoming with your whereabouts?”

  I folded my hands in my lap so that he wouldn’t see them trembling. “I didn’t know why they would be so important.”

  The smile disappeared. “Miss King, Colton died sometime between nine in the evening and midnight. Whatever you were doing during that window of time, I want to know about.”

  I bit the inside of my cheek to hold back another smart retort. I was only prolonging the conversation by talking back. “Around nine, I stepped out of the shop for a minute.”

  “Did you tell your grandparents you were stepping outside?”

  I gripped my hands together a little more tightly. I wasn’t going to bring my grandparents into this. “No, they were in bed for the night. My grandfather was ill and my grandmother needed her rest after taking care of him and the shop all day.”

  “Why did you leave the shop?”

  “I needed some air,” I said sharply. So much for holding my tongue. I knew it would get me in trouble.

  “Why did you need air?”

  “Because Daadi is ill,” I snapped. “And his doctor didn’t give me the impression that he would improve. In fact, I think—” My voice caught. I couldn’t verbalize what I thought the doctor’s expression had told me about Daadi’s prognosis. Maybe if I didn’t say it aloud, it wouldn’t be true.

  He chuckled mirthlessly. “I didn’t realize you spoke Amish.”

  I wished that I could reach into the air and take the Pennsylvania Dutch word for my grandfather back. It seemed too personal to say in front of this man, whom I disliked more by the second.

  I ground my teeth. “Is there anything else you’d like to know?”

  “You arrived yesterday just in time to see your grandfather collapse on the sidewalk in front of Tyson Colton. That must have been very hard.”

  I didn’t even bother to respond to that obvious statement.

  “How did Tyson react to your grandfather’s collapse? Did he offer any assistance?”

  “No,” I said.

  “He was a busy man and had places to be,” the sheriff excused. “A busy man, indeed, since he was in the process of buying up as much of Harvest as he could get his hands on, including Swissmen Sweets.”

  “He wanted to buy it, yes, but my grandfather would never sell. We’ve already been over this.”

  “But Tyson was aggressive, wasn’t he?”

  “According to my grandfather, yes, and he must have been persuasive too. The businesses on either side of my grandfather had already agreed to sell to him. Perhaps you should talk to those shopkeepers.”

  “Please don’t give me any more advice as to how to run my investigation, Miss King.”

  I snapped my mouth closed.

  “So, was that all you did when you left the candy shop? You got some air?” he said, returning to the night of the murder. “You didn’t make a phone call?”

  “I made one call, yes.”

  He frowned as if he wasn’t pleased that I’d told the truth. Maybe my phone records were in the manila folder, and that was the evidence he wanted to use against me. “Where did you make this call?” he asked.

  “Just across the street from the shop. I sat in the gazebo.”

  “Did anyone see you?”

  “I doubt it. Harvest is completely abandoned at that time of night.”

  “Then what happened?”

  “I made my call and went back into the shop and plugged in my phone in the kitchen. The kitchen was fine when I left it. No one was there.”

  “Did you see anything unusual?”

  “The only thing that was unusual was that it was nine o’clock on a pleasant night, and I was the only soul outside. I suppose that’s another way Harvest and New York differ.”

  “And who did you call from the gazebo?”

  I pushed my chair back from the table. “Really, why does that matter? It has nothing to do with the murder.”

  He leaned back in his chair again. “I think it does. How can I be sure that you weren’t calling the victim and inviting him to the shop?”

  I stared at him. “Inviting him to the shop, so that I could kill him? You can’t be serious.”

  He leaned forward. “I’m deadly serious, Miss King. Earlier in the day, you saw this man upset your daadi.” He said the Amish word as if were a curse. “So much so that it caused him to collapse and sent him to bed. Maybe you lured that man back to the shop on the pretense that you wanted to discuss selling the shop. The two of you argued, he rushed you, and you picked up the knife and stabbed him. It could be argued that the murder was in self-defense. Tyson was a large man.”

  I felt sweat gather on my forehead. “You can’t be serious. That’s not what happened.”

  “You must be in a hurry to return New York.” He lifted the corner of the manila folder just enough to peek inside. “You want to go home and find out if you will be appointed as the head chocolatier at JP Chocolates. Maybe you thought offing the man who you saw harassing your grandfather would allow you to leave the county more quickly.”

  I laughed even though nothing about this conversation was the least bit funny. “Don’t be ridiculous. It was nothing like that. I called a friend back in New York. That’s it. He didn’t even answer the phone.”

  “We pulled your phone records. In fact,” he said, “I found that you called one Eric Sharp in New York City.”

  I pressed my hands into my thighs. “Yes. That’s my friend.”

  He waggled those eyebrows again. “Just a friend?”

  “I don’t understand what this has to do with anything. Yes, I left the shop for a few minutes to make a call to a friend back home. There are some things happening with my work, and I wanted to check in. Eric would know what was going on.”

  “Miss King, what you’re doing with Sharp in New York is none of my concern, but it will become my concern if it cascades into my investigation. Do you understand? It would do you well to be honest with me.”

  I stared at him for a long moment. I still couldn’t bring myself to tell him that Eric was my boyfriend. I wasn’t sure what Eric would say if the police asked him to corroborate my story. “Eric’s my friend. You should be able to see on the phone records that I never spoke to him or anyone else that night. I didn’t talk to him until early the next morning after I’d already found Tyson.”

&nb
sp; He leaned back. “Now, was that so hard? You’ll be happy to know your account matches what we have found as well.”

  I scowled in return.

  “Are you sure your grandfather wasn’t giving Tyson’s offer some serious thought? If the businesses on either side of him sold and now belong to the developer, Tyson could certainly make life difficult for your grandfather, couldn’t he?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “He’d be a neighbor, and, as such, he could make your grandfather’s life difficult. You know all about difficult neighbors, don’t you, Bailey?”

  “I don’t have any idea what you are talking about,” I said, but it was a lie. I knew precisely what he meant. I prayed I was wrong.

  “I just found an interesting police report in my file. That’s all. I’m only pointing out the fact that you have a history of violence. Do you deny that?” The smile came again.

  I balled my fists at my sides. “I do not have a history of violence.”

  The sheriff opened his folder all the way this time and lifted out a piece of paper. He didn’t show me what was written on the paper. He didn’t have to. It could only be one thing.

  “If you are referring to the incident that happened at JP Chocolates three years ago, it has nothing to do with Tyson Colton, my grandfather, or this case.”

  He arched his thin eyebrow. “Doesn’t it, though? It proves to me that you have the will to defend yourself and the ones you care about.”

  I pressed my hands harder into my thighs. “That man was trying to rob Jean Pierre’s store. I didn’t have a choice.”

  He shook his finger at me as if I were a naughty child. “You always have a choice, Miss King. Always. You could have given the intruder the money and called the police. That’s what you should have done. That’s what any reasonable person would do when a thief enters their shop with a gun, demanding money. Any reasonable person would do that, but not you. You put a man in the hospital.”

  I winced. My mind went back to that horrible day. It was winter and already dark out when I was closing up the shop. A man—a boy really—came into the shop with a gun and demanded that I give him everything we had in the cash register. Cass was with me. He threatened to shoot her too. I couldn’t let him kill us, I just reacted. Instead of giving him the money, I hit him with a chair. It was a stupid and dangerous thing to do, and I broke the intruder’s arm in the process. I didn’t sleep for weeks after the incident. I kept playing what had happened over and over in my head, knowing that my rashness could have gotten both Cass and me killed. The sheriff was right—I should have just handed over the money to the man with the gun, but I wasn’t going to admit that now. “All I was guilty of was protecting my employer’s property and my coworkers from an intruder, and that was years ago.”