Assaulted Caramel

by Amanda Flower

  Back in the front room, I found Cass and my grandmother sitting at one of the small tables at the front of the shop. Maami smiled at me. “Was Aiden still back there?”

  “He was,” I said. As I did, I felt Cass watching me. She knew something was wrong. She knew me even better than my grandparents did. I had spent more time with Cass in the last six years than I had with anyone else.

  “Gut,” Maami said. “He’s such a kind and generous man. We’re so proud of who he has become.”

  I wondered if my grandmother would have been able to say the same of me if she really knew the person I was, not the person I allowed her to see. The true person hit people with chairs and had secret boyfriends. Maami didn’t know that Bailey King. Cass didn’t even know that Bailey King.

  Maami smiled. “I was just telling Cass about the other visitor we had this morning.”

  “Other visitor?” I asked. I immediately thought of Ruth Yoder. Had the deacon’s wife returned to pester my grandparents after Cass and I left?

  She nodded. “Ya, there was a reporter here looking for you not long ago.”

  “A reporter?” I did my best to keep the anxiety I felt from my voice.

  I felt Cass watching me.

  My stomach clenched. It had to be the same guy that Cass and I ran into outside of the cheese shop. “Did he ask you anything?”

  She frowned. “He didn’t. He only wanted to know if you were here.”

  “How did you know he was a reporter?” Cass asked.

  “I asked him if I could have his name, so I could tell you who stopped by, and he said to tell you he was from the New York Star.”

  It was the same reporter as I feared. I supposed that I should be relieved there wasn’t more than one. “I’m sure it’s nothing to worry about,” I told my grandmother. “It might have something to do with JP Chocolates. I wouldn’t worry.”

  Maami’s brow furrowed. “It seems like a long way for him to travel to ask you questions about chocolate. Couldn’t he wait until you were back in New York? Or couldn’t he have emailed you the questions?”

  Cass laughed. “You know about email?”

  Maami smiled. “I know it exists. I don’t know how it works.”

  Cass leaned across the table closer to my grandmother. “The truth is no one knows how it works, and don’t even get me started on the Cloud.”

  Maami frowned. “The cloud? Like in the sky?” She peered out the window. White, fluffy clouds bobbed like apples through the bright blue sky. Mira and Jace could not have had a more beautiful fall day for their wedding.

  “Cass,” I said, interrupting their tech talk. “We’d better head over to the church.”

  “I thought they didn’t need you until late afternoon,” my grandmother said.

  “Oh, I just want to check on a couple of things this morning to be sure we are all set.”

  Cass rolled her eyes at me when Maami wasn’t looking.

  Once we were outside, I made a beeline for the wedding tent that stood in the middle of the square. Cass jogged after me. “Hey, slow down. The wedding isn’t until six. We have a lot of time to find Jace and Mira.”

  Eileen Hutton remained on her perch in the gazebo. She put the bullhorn to her mouth. “How many times do I have to tell you!” she shouted in the horn. “The white lilies go in the sanctuary for the ceremony, not in the reception tent.”

  The two young Amish men carrying the vases of canna lilies froze as if they had been caught with their hands in their grandmother’s cookie jar.

  “The church!” Eileen bellowed into her horn.

  The men were off like a shot in the direction of the church. Water splashed out of the vases and leaves flew into the air behind them.

  Cass rubbed her ear. “Geez, doesn’t she have a volume control on that thing?”

  “I’m sure, and undoubtedly, it’s on the max,” I said. “That’s Eileen, the mother of the bride.”

  Cass winced. “They should require a license to operate a bullhorn, and it should never be given to a mother of the bride.”

  I agreed with her on that.

  Eileen lowered her bullhorn and spotted Cass and me standing at the foot of the gazebo. “Bailey, I wasn’t expecting you until later this afternoon. Please don’t tell me that there is something amiss with the dessert bar. I have too many problems as it is.”

  I smiled as warmly as I could. “Everything is fine. We’ll set the desserts out during the ceremony so that they will be fresh when the guests enter the reception tent.”

  “I’m glad someone here has their act together. I wish I could say that for the rest of the vendors.” She scowled.

  While Eileen spoke to us, the Amish men ran by with more flowers, throwing furtive glances in Eileen’s direction, seemingly relieved that she wasn’t looking their way.

  “Shouldn’t someone else handle all these final preparations?” I asked. “You’re the mother of the bride. This is your day too. You should relax and enjoy yourself.”

  “You would think, but there is no one I can trust when it comes to the wedding. I’m surrounded by a group of buffoons.”

  “Buffoons?” Cass asked. The corners of her mouth twitched as if she were fighting a smile.

  I mentally willed her not to laugh.

  Cass stared at her shoes. This was not going to go well.

  “Is there anything you need?” Eileen asked. “As you can see, I am very busy.”

  I opened my mouth to speak, but Cass was faster. “We were wondering if you knew where we could find the wedding party.”

  Eileen pulled her neck back like a turtle retreating to her shell. “The wedding party? What would you want with them?”

  It was a fair question, and I looked to Cass for the answer since she was responsible for eliciting it.

  Cass smiled brightly. “Because we would like to make a special dessert for the groom, and we thought his best man or one of the other groomsmen would be able to tell us what he’d like best.”

  I inwardly groaned at the thought of making yet another dessert for the wedding.

  Eileen stared down at her. “I can’t tell you where any of the groomsmen are. We were lucky that they showed up for the rehearsal yesterday. I told Mira she should only have had one attendant and left it at that, but Jace was insistent that he had to have four groomsmen. Apparently, that was a sticking point with him about the wedding. It’s the only thing that he asked for besides the dessert bar—which I personally still think should have been a cake, no offense to you, Bailey. I compromised to keep the peace.”

  “That must have been difficult,” Cass said.

  I had to look away from her to stop myself from laughing. Effortlessly, Cass kept a straight face.

  “It was,” the mother of the bride said somberly. “It left me scrounging up bridesmaids. I had to pull in a second cousin.”

  Again, Cass had to look away. I had to stop looking at her at that point, or I was at a real risk of cracking up. “Who is Mira’s maid of honor?” I managed to ask.

  “The second cousin. Mira wanted to have her Amish friends as her bridesmaids, but of course that would never work.”

  “Who are they? Her Amish friends, I mean?”

  She looked down at her list and made a mark on her clipboard with her pen. “Maribel and Emily. All she ever talks about is that she wished Maribel and Emily could have been part of the wedding.”

  She must mean Maribel from the Cheese Haus. It was hard for me to believe that there could be another Maribel in Harvest, and I would bet my job at JP Chocolates that Emily was Emily Esh from the pretzel shop, and Nutmeg’s former owner. “Maribel from the Cheese Haus and Emily from the pretzel shop?”

  She looked up from her clipboard. “Do you know them?”

  I nodded. “They have shops on either side of my grandparents’ shop.”

  She returned her attention to the clipboard. “Oh yes, of course.”

  “Where is the wedding party staying?” Cass asked. “Maybe the
y are still there?”

  “The Amish Door Inn. That’s where everyone is preparing for the wedding too. Mira should be in hair and makeup right now. I’ll be heading over there shortly, just as soon as I can get the workers under control.” She tapped the end of her pen against the clipboard. “There’s no point in making anything extra at this point, but if you insist, you may. I won’t pay you extra for it though, if that’s what you’re hoping.”

  “We wouldn’t dream of it,” I said.

  Cass and I said our good-byes and left Eileen with her bullhorn.

  We were still within earshot of Eileen when Cass muttered, “I didn’t realize that we needed her permission to speak to her future son-in-law.”

  “Shhh,” I hissed.

  Two Amish men carried a long table in the direction of the tent. Eileen held up her bullhorn. “Hey! That doesn’t go there.”

  “At least she didn’t call those guys buffoons to their faces,” Cass said.

  “Yeah,” I said, as Eileen ran down the steps of the gazebo after the two Amish men moving the table.

  “Doesn’t it seem odd to you that the bride doesn’t have any friends in the wedding?” Cass asked.

  “I suppose if her closest friends are Amish, it’s possible. They wouldn’t be able to wear whatever bridesmaid dresses Eileen picked out for the wedding, and I can’t see her letting them walk down the aisle in plain clothes.”

  “The bridesmaid dresses that Eileen picked out? Isn’t it the job of the bride to pick the dress?”

  “I don’t think Mira picked much of anything for this wedding. I’m starting to wonder if she even picked the groom,” I said.

  “We should head to the inn, then?” Cass asked.

  I nodded.

  Cass waved me forward. “Then lead on, Watson.”

  I stopped midstride. “Watson? I thought I would be Sherlock.”

  “Please,” she snorted. “I’m always Sherlock. Always.”

  Chapter 34

  The Amish Door Inn was on the outskirts of Harvest at the top of one of the green rolling hills Holmes County was famous for. The rental car whined on its way up the hill.

  Cass squinted at the speedometer. “Are you sure this car is safe? It sounds like it’s having an acute asthma attack.”

  “It’s fine,” I said with far more confidence than I felt. The day I flew into Ohio, the rental car agent had suggested that I wait for a newer car to be cleaned. Instead of waiting, I had opted for whatever they’d had on hand. I had been so anxious to see how my grandfather was doing, I didn’t want to wait an extra minute, let alone twenty minutes. It had been a good thing that I had made that decision since my grandfather had collapsed on the sidewalk only moments after I’d arrived. Who knew how long he’d have been lying there if I had shown up twenty minutes later. Tyson certainly wouldn’t have helped him.

  The inn was a two-story white building with an enormous wraparound front porch. Dozens of people milled around the grounds, peering under bushes and searching the area.

  Cass cocked her head. “Do you get a sense that there’s trouble afoot?”

  I looked at her out of the corner of my eye. “Afoot? Really?”

  “Hey, I’m Sherlock, remember. You were the one who dragged me into this whole playing detective thing. You should at least let me enjoy the lingo.”

  I shook my head, but I had to agree. It did look like something was afoot at the inn.

  A sheriff’s cruiser pulled into the parking lot as Cass and I climbed out of the car.

  “Oh, it’s the cute one,” Cass said.

  I gave her another look. Aiden must have left Swissmen Sweets while Cass and I had been sidetracked by Eileen and her bullhorn.

  “Don’t worry. He’s all yours,” Cass said. “I won’t get in the way.”

  I blinked at her. “What makes you think I want him?”

  “Please,” she said in return.

  Aiden climbed out of his cruiser, and my chest tightened just a little. Guilt washed over me again at how sharply I had spoken to him in the candy shop’s kitchen. He frowned when he spotted us. Most likely he assumed that I was meddling in the investigation again. I was, but that didn’t mean I appreciated the frown.

  I was wondering whether I should stop and talk to Aiden, when a young woman with her hair up in an elaborate twist, marched toward us at a fast clip.

  “Bridesmaid,” Cass said with one hundred percent confidence.

  “How do you know?” I asked.

  “You can always tell. You can smell the desperation.”

  I didn’t have time to decipher Cass’s cryptic take on bridesmaids because the girl wailed, “She’s gone! Have you seen her?”

  “Who’s gone?” I asked. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Aiden walk toward us.

  “The bride! She fled! We have a runaway bride on our hands. The wedding is off. How will I ever meet one of the groomsmen now? The only reason I agreed to this stupid wedding in the first place was to meet a hot guy. I’ve haven’t seen Mira since we were kids.”

  I could only assume this was the second cousin.

  “A runaway bride?” Cass asked. “Seriously? Are we in a Julia Roberts movie with bonnets?”

  I frowned at her. “So not helping.”

  Cass shrugged, not the least bit apologetic for her humor. I wouldn’t have expected anything less.

  “You have to find her.” The unnamed bridesmaid grabbed Aiden’s hand and clung to it. “You have to help us. File a missing person’s report or something! Should we call the television news? I would look great on TV.”

  Aiden extracted his hand from her grasp. “Of course we will look for her, but she’s an adult, who has left of her own free will it appears. We won’t file a missing person’s report until she’s missing for at least twenty-four hours, and we mostly certainly won’t alert the media until we absolutely have to. I doubt it will come to that.”

  The bridesmaid pouted. “This wedding is a bust.”

  “Do you think she’s okay?” I asked.

  Aiden glanced in my direction. “We will do everything we can to make sure Mira is all right, but if we find her and she’s left of her own accord, we can’t force her to come back.”

  The bridesmaid paled. I couldn’t help but think it was the lost opportunity with the groomsmen and not the fact that her second cousin, the bride, was MIA that turned her smile upside down.

  “Where is the groom?” Cass asked.

  “I don’t know.” The bridesmaid was working her pout to full advantage. “Jace and his four groomsmen left a little over an hour ago. We noticed that Mira was gone not long after that.”

  “If my future husband was goofing off with his friends on my wedding day, I might run away too,” Cass said.

  “Mira didn’t say anything to anyone about leaving?” Aiden asked.

  “No!” the bridesmaid wailed. “I’m the maid of honor. If she told anyone, she should have told me. It’s my job to keep an eye on her today. Eileen is going to lose it.”

  She was probably right about Eileen.

  “Was Mira upset? Does anyone know where she might have gone?” I asked.

  The girl rounded on me. “If we knew that, do you think we would be searching for her in the bushes?”

  Cass folded her arms. “Do you really think she would be hiding in the bushes?”

  “Is her car here?” Aiden asked.

  “Yes, it’s right there.” She pointed at a silver convertible in the first parking space next to the front door. “That’s why we are searching the grounds. She couldn’t have gotten far, because there is nowhere for her to go. We’re in the middle of nowhere. All there are around here are trees and farmland. I hate nature,” she said.

  “I have to agree with her on that last point,” Cass whispered in my ear. “I’m not a big fan either.”

  “Shhh,” I hissed.

  The bridesmaid was right. The inn was in the middle of nowhere. It stood on a hill overlooking the countryside and was sur
rounded by pastureland dotted by black cows.

  Aiden nodded. “We’ll do our best to find her. She couldn’t have gone far by foot.”

  Aiden and the bridesmaid headed toward the inn. Cass started to follow them, but I grabbed her arm to stop her. “At the tasting yesterday at the church, it seemed clear to me that Mira wasn’t happy, and that her mother and maybe even Jace were railroading her into this marriage. Maybe she finally decided to make up her own mind.”

  “Kind of late to change your mind though. It is her wedding day.”

  “At least she changed it before the ceremony,” I said. “At least she didn’t get into a marriage she would later regret.”

  “Where do you think she could have gone, then?” Cass asked.

  I removed my cell phone from the back pocket of my jeans. “Didn’t Eileen say that Maribel and Emily were Mira’s closest friends? It stands to reason that she would have run to them. We could call the cheese shop and find out if Maribel is there. If she is, Mira might be there too.” As I spoke, I opened the web browser on my phone and found the listing for the Cheese Haus.

  Cass frowned. “Do you really think the cheese shop lady will talk to you after the way you grilled her?”

  “No, but she might talk to you since you bought so much.” I pressed the number on the screen to make the call and held the phone out to her.

  “Fine.” She took the phone from my hand.

  “Hello? I was in your shop earlier today. I was the girl who bought all the cheese . . . yes, yes, everything with the cheese is fine. I know that my friends in New York will appreciate it as a gift. It’s so very Amish. . . . You’re welcome. I called because I was wondering if your granddaughter, Maribel is there. I . . . ummm . . . admired her apron and wondered if she’d made it. I wanted to ask her.”

  I slapped my forehead. It was very possible that Cass and I were the worst investigators ever.

  “Oh, she’s not there. Where has she gone? Oh! Well, I’d love to speak to her before I head home to New York. Thank you so much, and again, thanks for all your fabulous cheeses. You’re welcome.” Cass ended the call.

  I arched my eyebrow at her. “You wanted to know where she got her apron? Really? This after making a fuss about wearing an apron last night.”