Assaulted Caramel

by Amanda Flower

  My pulse quickened. “Who did he hire?”

  He held up his hands. “Don’t know. He never told me. He didn’t trust me. He was going to write me out of the will and the business. Wouldn’t he be mad to know that I have it all now? Whoever killed him did me a favor. If it was you, I’d like to shake your hand.” He held out his hand. “Had he lived, I would have nothing. Now, I have it all.”

  I recoiled from him. “So you don’t know any of the secrets your father gathered?”

  He shook his finger at me. “Oh, I know some of them.” He pointed at the house. “I know Emily Esh was sent away to live with an English family in Indiana because she was pregnant. I know that Maribel’s grandmother lied on her income taxes about how much money she made at the cheese shop, so she would have to pay less to the government.”

  Cass’s mouth fell open. I knew I must have the same expression on my own face.

  Jace, who was still sitting in the grass, shook his finger at me again like I was a misbehaving child. “See, the Amish aren’t perfect, not even close, but do I think they killed my father? The answer is no.” He flopped over on his side for a second time and closed his eyes.

  “Aww, man,” Brent muttered.

  “I think it’s time for Romeo to head home,” Cass said.

  I couldn’t agree more. I doubted I would get any more information out of him now that he’d passed out for a second time.

  “Brent, we’ll help you get him back into the car,” I said.

  Cass wrinkled her nose. “We will?”

  I shot her a look. “Yes, we will.”

  She groaned but joined us at Jace’s side. With some effort, we lifted to him to his feet. He was all dead weight.

  “Ugh,” Cass cried. “His breath is terrible.”

  I had to agree and covered my mouth with my sleeve.

  Brent opened the car door.

  “Could they make these seats any higher?” Cass complained. “This is not an ideal car for loading a drunk guy into.”

  I silently agreed.

  Finally, we settled Jace into the passenger seat. His head flopped back onto the headrest.

  “Where are you going to take him?” I asked.

  Brent sighed. “I guess I’ll take him to my apartment until he’s slept it off.”

  “That’s a good best man,” Cass praised.

  Brent scowled, not taking it as a compliment. I don’t think Cass had meant it to be one anyway.

  Jace’s eyes popped open. “I meant it when I said my father was responsible for my mother’s death.”

  “How?” I asked, out of range of his terrible breath.

  “He hit her one too many times, and she died in a car accident when she was trying to get away. So, you see, her death was his fault. Because of it, I was stuck with him for the rest of my life, until someone did me a favor and killed him.”

  I couldn’t help but think of how similar Jace’s story was to Aiden’s, but Aiden’s story had a happy ending. Jace’s most certainly did not.

  “Do you know what she said?” Jace asked us. “Do you know what she said to me right before she left?”

  “No,” I whispered.

  “She said I would better off with my father because he had the money to give me the life and education to succeed. She could have taken me with her, but she didn’t, because she thought it was more important that I have money than a loving parent.”

  “That’s rough,” Cass said.

  That was an understatement.

  “I was only nine. Nine.” He glared at me as if I was in some way responsible.

  “I’m so sorry.” It was all I could say. It was all anyone could say.

  He dropped his eyes to the grass. “I don’t blame her, you know. I only wish she had taken me with her so that I would have died too. That would have been better,” he said in a strangled voice, before his head fell back onto the headrest a second time and he closed his eyes. “I have his money now. I earned it. Eileen and I both agreed on that. It was only Mira who wasn’t sure. If she really loved me, she would have believed that I deserved everything too.”

  Eileen?

  Brent started to close the passenger side door, and I stopped him. “Eileen knew that your father was about to disown you.”

  He lifted his eyelids and stared at me with glassy eyes. “She knew before I did. She was the one who told me and said we had to do something.”

  “Like kill him?” Cass cried.

  His head lolled to the side. “I didn’t kill him.”

  Brent shut the passenger side door and walked around the SUV.

  Cass and I stepped back as the Hummer rolled away.

  “He claims that he didn’t kill his father, but he has a good motive, the best motive—money,” Cass said.

  I nodded. “And so does Eileen. You heard Mira. Eileen wanted this marriage to happen so that the two families could become one, and so that her daughter, and by extension, Eileen, would have access to Tyson’s wealth.”

  “I’d say,” Cass mused, “that she could become angry enough to stab someone given the right motivation.”

  I swallowed. “Exactly.”

  Chapter 37

  “Now what?” Cass asked when we were safely back in the rental car and headed to Harvest.

  “I don’t know,” I said honestly. “I just don’t know. I should probably call Aiden and tell him what we’ve learned.”

  Cass’s phone rang. “It’s Jean Pierre. I had better take this.”

  I nodded and concentrated on the road.

  “Bon Jour, Jean Pierre,” she said.

  Over the line I could hear him yelling at her in French. Cass held the phone away from her ear just as everyone did when Jean Pierre was on a rant. It was the only way to salvage your hearing.

  “All right,” she interrupted him. “I’ll head home today. Not to worry . . .” She glanced at me with raised brows. “Umm . . . Bailey has to stay here another day, but I’m sure she will be back Monday in time for the head chocolatier announcement.... I know she will be there.... Oh, you want to talk to her? Let me check if she can talk.”

  I widened my eyes and shook my head.

  “Jean Pierre,” Cass said into the phone. “I’m sorry. She’s busy right now . . . she’s in the bathroom. Ate too much Amish food, I’m afraid. It didn’t agree with her delicate system.”

  I groaned.

  Cass ended the call. “You owe me big time for that too.”

  I sighed. “I know, but thank you.”

  “I guess it’s to the airport for me. Jean Pierre has a big client with a last-minute party. He needs at least one of his chocolatiers back fast.”

  “What about Caden?” I asked.

  “Apparently, Caden’s buckling under the pressure.” She didn’t even bother to keep her enjoyment over this announcement out of her voice. “He’s out of the running as head chocolatier because of this. It’s going to be you, my friend.”

  I grimaced. Maybe she was right, if I was ever able to leave Harvest. I should be the one at the chocolate shop dealing with this, not Jean Pierre, not Cass. Not for the first time that weekend, I could feel the position of head chocolatier slipping through my fingers, but I refused to lose faith in the fact that I still had a chance

  Before I could take Cass to the airport, we had to go back to Swissmen Sweets for Cass to gather her things. I decided that I would call Aiden from the shop, but we had to make the stop quick. There wasn’t much time to get her to the private airport in time for her flight. Jean Pierre had already notified the pilot as to when he wanted Cass back in the city.

  By the time we got back to Harvest, Main Street was congested with more vendors and Amish buggies. A caterer’s van sat right in front of my grandparents’ shop. Again, I parked the rental on the side street. Cass and I got out of the car and walked around the corner.

  Cass stared at the Amish men setting up tall round tables around the gazebo for the wedding cocktail hour. “I thought the wedding was off.”<
br />
  “It is,” I said.

  She cocked her head. “Does it look off to you?”

  “Not really,” I admitted. Further up the road, two doors down from the pretzel shop, I saw Eileen jaywalk across Main Street in front of an Amish wagon. She didn’t even pause to wave her thanks when the buggy stopped to let her pass. “There’s Eileen.”

  “Where’s she going?” Cass asked.

  I didn’t bother to reply. I ran up the sidewalk after the mother of the bride just in time to see her disappear into a shop half the size of the pretzel shop. The purple awning read THE POTTER’S SHED in yellow script. I pulled up short. “This must be Mira’s shop.”

  Cass caught up with me. “What’s with all the running? Remember, I can’t run in these shoes.”

  I glanced at her feet and her black boots with the pointy toes and three-inch heels. “You should have worn more practical shoes.”

  “Fashion first, my dear.” She pointed to the door of the potter’s shop. “This is Mira’s?”

  “When I met her at the tasting, she told me she was a potter and her shop was on Main Street. This must be it.”

  “Did her mother go in there?”

  I nodded.

  “Then, what are we waiting for?” She put her hand on the doorknob.

  “The door might be lo—”

  Before I could tell her that the door might be locked, she pulled it open. “Not locked.” She grinned and went inside. I followed her.

  The shop was tiny and cramped. Shelves filled with pottery for sale crowded the space. There was a table to one side with a laptop computer on it, but the focal point of the room was the back corner, where a potter’s wheel stood. The shelves behind the wheel held all the accoutrements that a potter would need. Plastic bowls, sponges, wires, modeling tools, brushes, and other instruments I didn’t recognize.

  Eileen stood beside the potter’s wheel and scowled. “Where is she?”

  “Where’s who?” I asked.

  “My daughter? Who else? The bride who is supposed to be getting married today. The child I did everything for!” She clenched her fists at her sides. “I thought she might be here, but she’s not. That ungrateful girl is hiding from me.”

  “I think Mira’s idea to hide is a good one,” Cass whispered.

  “Shhh,” I hissed back.

  Eileen glared at us. “Do you know where she is?”

  “She was at Emily’s farm,” Cass said.

  I inwardly groaned. Cass shouldn’t have shared that information with Eileen.

  “She might have been, but she’s not now. I was just there.” She folded her arms. “What are you doing here?”

  “We are looking for Mira too,” I said.

  She picked up one of the sculpting knives from her daughter’s wheel and stabbed it into the wooden shelving. “Your friend just said she was at the Esh farm. Why would you look for her here?”

  “Sheesh,” Cass gasped, so that I was only one who could hear. “She needs meds.”

  “Don’t lie to me like my daughter has for all these years,” Eileen said. “She promised me she would marry Jace, and then we would have everything we needed because of his father’s wealth. She has no idea what I had to do to make sure we wouldn’t lose that.”

  “What did you have do, Eileen? Kill Tyson?” I asked.

  She picked up one of the unfinished pieces, a large bowl, and threw it against the wall. “Where is she?” she cried.

  Cass and I yelped in unison.

  “She definitely has enough anger to kill someone,” Cass said.

  I agreed.

  The front door to the Potter’s Shed opened, and Aiden stepped inside with his gun drawn. “Eileen Hutton?”

  “What?” she snapped.

  “You’re under arrest for the murder of Tyson Colton. Everything you say . . .” He continued to recite the Miranda warning to her as he walked across the room and cuffed her hands behind her back. She didn’t fight him. Cass and I looked on openmouthed.

  “I didn’t kill anyone!” Eileen yelled.

  Aiden held onto her arm. “We found the threatening emails you sent him. You threatened to kill him.”

  “Maybe I did, but I didn’t kill him. I was just protecting my daughter.”

  Aiden walked her toward the door. “Eileen, you said that you would stab him in the heart if he wrote Jace out of the will. That’s difficult to ignore.”

  Another deputy, one I didn’t know, waited at the door and escorted her out of the shop. Aiden turned to me. “What are you doing here?” His eyes narrowed.

  “I—we saw Eileen come inside here and—”

  “And what? You wanted to see if you could get the two of you killed? The woman stabbed a man in the chest.” He threw up his hands. “How could you be so stupid?”

  “What proof do you have other than the emails?” Cass asked.

  Aiden glanced at her. “Abel Esh came to the station this morning and told us that he saw Eileen enter Swissmen Sweets through the back door with Tyson around ten that night.”

  “Why didn’t he come forward before?” Cass asked.

  “He didn’t want to become involved. Most Amish don’t want anything to do with the police.” He returned his gaze to me. “But he came forward because he heard that glass from a broken lamp was found behind the candy shop. He knew it would eventually be traced back to him. He broke it when he was trying to look inside the candy shop’s window to see what Tyson and Eileen were doing in there. He knew it wouldn’t look good because he had a motive for the murder.”

  The broken kerosene lamp had been Abel’s. “His motive was to protect his youngest sister Emily, who had a baby out of wedlock, and thereby protect his family’s reputation in the district,” I said.

  He nodded and didn’t even ask how I knew all of that.

  Cass looked up from her cell phone screen. “I hate to break this up, but I have to go. If we don’t leave now, I’m going to miss my flight. If I do, Jean Pierre will have a hissy fit.”

  Aiden nodded. “Go. This is finally over.”

  I met his eyes one last time before I left The Potter’s Shed.

  Chapter 38

  “Daadi! Maami!” I called when Cass and I entered Swissmen Sweets a few minutes later. Nutmeg was the only one who answered.

  “What about the name Dr. Pepper?” Cass asked.

  I rolled my eyes and spotted a note on the glass counter. I picked it up and recognized my grandmother’s handwriting immediately.

  We’re at the church helping with the wedding.

  We’ll see you soon. We hope you and Cass are having a nice visit.

  “I wish you had the chance to say good-bye to them,” I said.

  She nodded. “Me too, but there’s no time if I want to make the flight. Please tell your grandparents good-bye for me.”

  I promised that I would.

  “I have a feeling I’ll be back here anyway,” Cass said.

  I smiled. “Me too.”

  * * *

  On the drive to the airport, Cass and I were quiet, both lost in our thoughts. Mine were preoccupied with the reality that Eileen was the killer. I knew I hadn’t liked her, but I hadn’t suspected her until it was almost too late. It was hard to believe it was really all over.

  Cass’s cell phone dinged, and she removed it from her pocket. At the same time, my cell phone—which lay on the dash—rang. I immediately knew who it was by the ringtone. I made a move to grab it, but Cass was faster.

  “You shouldn’t answer the phone while driving,” Cass said, “especially out here. You might hit a buggy or something.”

  “Cass, don’t—”

  But I was too late. The phone was already at her ear. “Hello? Eric? What are you doing calling Bailey? It’s Cass Calbera. Who do you think it is? Are you calling about the selection committee?”

  I felt Cass watching me. My hand tightened around the steering wheel. I swallowed. “Tell him that I’ll call him back later. Now isn’t a good time.
”

  Still watching me, Cass repeated my message to Eric.

  “Bailey!” I heard Eric yell through the phone. “What the hell is going on over there? I heard from Jean Pierre that you are involved in some kind of murder, and now there is this article in the New York Star with your picture. We agreed to keep this quiet!”

  I held out my hand to Cass, and she placed the phone into it without a word. I put the phone to my ear. “Eric, this isn’t a good time.”

  Out of the corner of my eye, I saw Cass scroll through something on her phone. She grew very still as she read whatever was on the screen. A sinking feel fell over me.

  “Not a good time?” Eric bellowed in my ear. “Well, excuse me. You know I made space in my busy schedule to call and find out what’s going on, and you say this isn’t a good time?”

  I cringed, knowing that Cass could hear every word of this conversation. She was listening to my side of the call even if she pretended to focus on her phone’s screen.

  “How did your photograph end up in the New York Star? Answer me that,” Eric ordered.

  My gut instinct had been right about the reporter outside of the cheese shop. He had been there because of my relationship with Eric. How I wished that I had been wrong just this once.

  “You need to tell me what’s going on! Right now!” Eric shouted.

  “I don’t have to tell you anything,” I snapped.

  “Have you even thought for a minute how this could impact me?” His voice was sharp.

  “Impact you? What are you talking about? I’m the one who has no hope of being the head chocolatier now.”

  “Don’t be dense, Bailey. Our relationship is all over the Internet. This will ruin the reality show. The angle the producers are going for is the famous bachelor pastry chef in New York. A girlfriend will ruin my image.”

  My hands were shaking so much, I had to pull the car over to the side of the road and shift it into park. When we came to a complete stop, Cass held her phone out to me without a word. A New York Star article about Eric and me was on the screen. The headline read, SHARP FINDS A NEW LOVE WHEN SECRET LOVER CHARGED WITH MURDER.

  I grabbed the phone from Cass’s hand and read the first line of the gossip article. “While his secret girlfriend, chocolatier Bailey King, was a prime murder suspect in Ohio’s Amish Country, pastry chef Eric Sharp stepped out with fashion model Vivian Cone.” I scrolled down and saw a picture of Eric kissing Vivian, and it wasn’t a peck on the cheek either.