Assaulted Pretzel

by Laura Bradford

  Was that simply because he, like Keith, had a feel for how such an event would play out in the business world? Or was it something more along the lines of a lucky guess?

  Or, perhaps, wishful thinking?

  “Wishful thinking,” she whispered to herself mere seconds before a chill shot down her spine.

  “What was that, Claire?”

  At the mention of her name she looked up to find Jakob watching her curiously from his position behind Al. “Excuse me?”

  “You just said something about wishful thinking.”

  In a scramble to cover her tracks, Claire quickly plastered a silly expression on her face and topped it off with a shrugged apology aimed at everyone seated around the table. “Oh, I’m sorry. I…I guess I was channeling a movie I watched last night before bed. It happens sometimes.”

  She knew she sounded like an idiot, but she didn’t care. It was the best answer she could come up with in lieu of voicing the fear that had come from left field to add a second—and potentially stronger—suspect to the lineup previously reserved for Daniel Lapp.

  * * *

  Claire stepped out of Gussman’s General Store and paused on the cobblestoned sidewalk to breathe in the crispness of the autumn day. The meeting had gone well with lots of ideas for the upcoming holiday season volleyed around, but even Claire knew she’d been a rather lackluster member of the monthly-meeting-turned-brainstorming-session.

  It wasn’t that she hadn’t tried to give some input on how best to make Lighted Way reminiscent of Dickens. Because she had. But every time she tried to focus for longer than a moment or two on someone’s decorating idea or suggested street-wide promotion, she found her thoughts wandering back toward Isaac. The fact the toy maker had bid a hasty retreat within minutes of Jakob’s departure had only made things worse.

  Twenty-four hours earlier, she’d been heartbroken at the very real possibility that Daniel had killed Robert Karble in a desperate attempt to save his livelihood. Now, after everything she’d learned from Melinda that morning and observed on her own in Isaac during the meeting, she couldn’t help but feel as if she’d had both the suspect and the motive wrong.

  Isaac Schrock certainly had a lot of factors that warranted a turn in the hot seat. He had an emotional connection with the victim—one that could have just as easily been tinged with resentment as anything else. He’d shared his love of making toys with his father and was under the impression that shared connection was going to help not only him but his coworker and even some of the people in their community. And then, while feeling good about the unexpected benefit of reaching out to the victim, he’s hit with the fact that his actions were leading the way to a business decision that was poised to hurt the same people that, only days earlier, had stood to benefit.

  The man had no doubt been on quite a roller-coaster ride the past few weeks. The only question that remained was whether he’d snapped under the pressure of the twists and turns.

  “I take it you and the detective have had some sort of disagreement?”

  She looked over her shoulder and smiled at the plump man who’d just emerged from Al’s side door. “Oh, hi, Howard, I thought you’d already left.” Turning around, she planted an affectionate kiss on the seventysomething man with the burgeoning belly, stubbled chin, and shiny-as-a-new-penny bald spot on the top of his head. “Did you enjoy the meeting this morning?”

  The owner of Glick’s Tools ’n More tucked his thumbs behind the suspenders he always wore and rocked back on his heels, his wide smile and animated eyes quickly pulling her from the doldrums. “I enjoyed the donuts most of all. But some good ideas came up today, so I guess it was a good meeting, too.”

  It felt good to laugh, and in that moment she realized just how little laughing she’d been doing since the festival. “I won’t tell Al you said that.”

  “Why? I just said that very same thing to him not more than two minutes ago.”

  She peeked around Howard’s stout frame toward the general store’s side entrance. “How did you come out after I did? When I left, the only one in there was Al.”

  “I thought, seeing as how I ate most of those donuts by myself, that the least I could do was take the plate into that little kitchen Al’s got on the other side of the storeroom.”

  “Well, that was nice of you.” And it was. She just didn’t need to sound so fervent when she said it. But she knew why she had. Somehow, someway she was hoping Howard’s happy-go-lucky demeanor could seep into her soul and get her through the rest of the day.

  “So what’s wrong, Claire? What’s got you and Detective Fisher avoiding each other the way you did when he stopped by at the beginning of our meeting? That’s not like the two of you.”

  She considered protesting his observation, maybe even chalking it up to the fact she hadn’t slept all night, but, in the end, she knew it was futile. The problem, though, was how to answer without clueing the good-hearted town gossip in to the fact that Jakob and Martha were talking.

  “It’s nothing, really. He’s just been distracted lately with the murder investigation and everything, and I’ve been distracted, too, worrying about Diane.”

  Like a dog who’d suddenly been thrown a bigger, better bone, Howard jumped on her words. “You tell Diane that Howard Glick says that break-in wasn’t her fault. Whoever was after that Karble fellow was just finishing the job is all.”

  “Finishing the job?”

  Howard filled his cheeks with air then slowly released it along with a slow, deliberate nod. “Of course. Seems to me that whoever ransacked that fellow’s room was just making sure there wasn’t any proof left behind tying him to the murder.”

  “But Robert Karble was murdered at the fairgrounds. How would there be any proof at an inn that’s three-quarters of a mile or so down the road from the scene of the crime?”

  “I’m not talking about physical proof like fingerprints or bloody shoe tracks or anything like that.” More than a little aware of the way she was hanging on his every word, Howard paused long enough to run a hand along his stubbled jawline before stopping to scratch his chin. “What I’m talking about, Claire, is something that links the murderer to his victim.”

  “Like…” she prompted a bit impatiently.

  “Like a picture or a letter. Something like that.”

  Reaching outward, she grabbed hold of the railing that led to the general store’s front porch and used it to steady herself against the dizzying effects of Howard’s comment.

  A letter…

  Chapter 19

  It took every ounce of theatrics Claire could muster to unlock the front door of Heavenly Treasures and engage her first few customers with the kind of welcoming smile that came so naturally on any other given day. But with Esther having the day off, she really didn’t have any other options. Besides, business had been slow enough the past few days she didn’t need to make things worse by being unfriendly.

  Still, even as she flashed just the right smile and answered any and all questions in an engaging fashion, she couldn’t help but revisit her conversation with Howard. Everything the man had said made perfect sense.

  The problem was where that perfect sense pointed. Or, rather, toward whom it pointed.

  So much about Isaac Schrock as Robert’s murderer fit. And it fit well.

  But if she went to Jakob with everything she’d learned and it turned out she was wrong, the repercussions from opening Isaac’s box of secrets could end up needlessly hurting an awful lot of innocent people, including Isaac, himself.

  No, she needed to be sure before she said anything. She had to be. Locking up his brother for murder would be hard enough on Jakob. Saddling him with that stress prematurely was unnecessary.

  She’d tell him when she had proof.

  Or when she verified her suspicion that Isaac’s letter was missing from Robert’s room.

  The familiar snort of a horse via the shop’s side window brought her to the screen in time to see Benjamin jump
down from his buggy seat and reward the animal with a quick pat to the side of its long face. Judging by the hour, the man was making the first of many stops throughout the day to check in on his sister Ruth and her bake shop. Claire would have found it curious that it wasn’t Eli in the alley if not for the fact that Esther wasn’t working, either. With any luck, the young couple was finding ways to spend the day together as they moved toward an engagement everyone knew was coming.

  When that day came, she knew she’d lose Esther as an employee. For once an Amish woman married, her attention turned toward the home and the children she’d soon birth. It wasn’t a day Claire looked forward to for herself, yet it was one she eagerly anticipated for her friends.

  Eli and Esther were good people. They deserved happiness with each other.

  Releasing the sigh that seemed to come out of nowhere, Claire turned back to the counter and the temporarily sidelined task of placing price tags on the latest round of handmade items Martha had sent in with Esther the previous day. Pricing was just one of many mundane tasks to do around the shop that day, and the longer she put it off, the later she’d be staying at the store.

  “Good morning, Claire.”

  She looked up from the hand-sewn doll dress in her hands to find Benjamin standing in the open doorway between the actual store and the back room, his blue eyes trained on her face. Setting the dress down on the counter, she used the sides of her chocolate brown skirt to erase the sudden clamminess of her palms. “Benjamin. Hi. I saw you in the alley just now but I assumed you were here to check on Ruth.”

  A flash of red rose in his cheeks only to disappear with the swipe of a strong, callused hand and a curiously timed cough. “I will look in on Ruth, but I want to see how you are this morning.”

  She felt the matching flush as it marched across her own face, claiming all attempts at an intelligent reply. “Oh. Okay. Sure.”

  He allowed himself to take in her day’s attire, his gaze moving quickly down the sage green sweater set that looked surprisingly good with the midcalf-length skirt she’d paired with simple boots. When he reached the ground, he returned his focus to her face and the simple high ponytail she’d pulled together as she was walking out of the inn that morning.

  “You, you look very…pretty. But that does not stop the worry I see in you. Or the worry I feel for you.”

  His voice still held its normal strength, yet, at the same time, it was raspy with an emotion that seemed out of character. It left her scrambling for something to say that could lessen the sudden charge in the room.

  “Please do not worry about me, Benjamin. We both have enough on our plate right now without adding things that just don’t matter.”

  “You matter, Claire. To me.”

  She blinked away the moist haze ushered in by his words. “I…I’m fine. Really.”

  He took a handful of tentative steps into the showroom only to stop just shy of the items she was no longer pricing. “I thought about what you said. About Daniel and his toy business. I do not want to believe he would be driven to sin by money. It is not his way. It is not the Amish way.”

  Twelve hours ago, she’d have given some thought to arguing Benjamin’s claim; the note from Sarah, coupled with everything she’d learned from Esther about Daniel’s farm, giving her grounds to at least consider Daniel Lapp for murder. But now, after her talk with Melinda and her own observations at the monthly business meeting that morning, her suspicions were shifting.

  To a different Amish man.

  She allowed herself to meet Benjamin’s intense gaze despite the emotion she was still fighting to hold back with a few well-timed blinks. Only now, the confusing feelings his genuine concern and telling words had stirred up were slowly morphing into more of the worry variety. How did she tell him she suspected yet another member of his peaceful community? How did she tell him that a man he knew and respected had come into the Amish community on a lie?

  You don’t…

  But even as her heart nixed the notion of uttering Isaac’s name aloud, her head was all too aware of the plaguing questions that needed to be asked and answered. By somebody.

  “There is something else—something new, is there not?”

  His spot-on assessment of her mental state renewed the threat of tears and started the rapid-fire blinking once again. Never, in her life, had she ever met a man who seemed as if he was able to see inside her soul and know when something was wrong regardless of whatever false bravado she felt compelled to display. Finding him now—and in an Amish form—seemed almost punishing.

  “Benjamin Miller is Amish, dear. Forgetting that will only bring you heartache.”

  She closed her eyes against the mantra Aunt Diane had taken to spouting during their many special talks and willed her heart to embrace the sentiment. Although she found the increase in similar reminders tiresome at times, she couldn’t argue the why behind the words. Benjamin touched something inside her, plain and simple. And no matter how many times she denied that fact to her aunt, she knew, deep down, it was true.

  So, too, did Diane.

  “I am here.”

  The feel of Benjamin’s hand on her arm, coupled with the sincerity of his words in her ear, forced her to open her eyes and focus. “I just learned that someone who is close to people I know is not what he seems. Or, rather, he is what he seems now, but he didn’t come about it in the way they believe.”

  Now that the floodgate was open, she began to ramble. “I mean, it wasn’t his fault; he wasn’t party to the misinformation and didn’t even know about it himself until he opened a letter a few weeks ago…but he does now and I worry what that knowledge will do for his relationships and what it may have made him do to one that didn’t go as he’d planned.”

  There. She’d said it.

  Though, what exactly she’d said was hard enough to remember let alone try to decipher. Even for her.

  With obvious reluctance, Benjamin removed his hand from Claire’s upper arm and took a long, deep breath, exhaling it just as slowly. “A letter?”

  She nodded. “It was written for him more than twenty years ago and…” The seemingly generic story crumbled on her tongue as Benjamin shifted from foot to foot in a way that suggested he understood far more of the story than she’d chosen to share.

  His response served as confirmation. “You’re talking about Isaac, are you not?”

  Unsure of what to say, she looked down at the floor.

  “I have always wondered about his mother. I think many Amish did. She did not know things she should have known,” Benjamin explained before allowing his gaze to fix on a spot somewhere over Claire’s head. Geographically he was standing in Heavenly Treasures just as surely as Claire. But in terms of whatever was playing through his thoughts at that moment, he was somewhere very different. “I remember when Isaac’s mother came here. I was ten, maybe eleven. She sat on a bench next to me at church that first day.”

  She waited for him to explain how the woman’s choice of church seating had alerted a young Benjamin to something being amiss, but, instead, he went on, citing a few more examples as he did.

  “Then, when it was her turn to have services at her house, I went with Dat on the bench wagon the day before the service. When I went to the door to tell her Dat had arrived with benches, she did not know she was to host.” Benjamin sidestepped his way to the edge of the counter and leaned heavily against it, the weight of his childhood suspicions coming to roost.

  And then she got it. Regardless of which Amish community you lived in, Amish families took turns hosting a Sunday service for their district. It wasn’t something confined just to Heavenly. As a supposedly Amish woman, Isaac’s mother should have known that.

  “But what was it about her sitting with you that you found odd?” Claire finally asked.

  “Men and boys sit on one side of the room for service. Women and girls sit on the other.” Benjamin paused to study her before going on, his not-so-subtle attempt to gauge her rea
ction to the tradition catching her by surprise. “I whispered her mistake to her. But even as young boy, I knew something was not right. These were things she should have known.”

  She willed herself to concentrate on the conversation unfolding between them rather than the flutter in her chest every time he looked at her in the way that he did. “Will Isaac be kicked out?”

  Benjamin pushed off the counter, his head shaking side to side almost immediately. “No. Of course not. Isaac was baptized. He accepted the Amish life for himself. He is Amish now just as I am Amish.”

  She inhaled a sense of relief only to have it disappear against a reality she’d managed to ignore thus far. “You’re not going to tell anyone, are you?”

  “I do not see why I—”

  “Because his real identity stands to hurt more than just Isaac. And she’s been through so much already this week that I…I can’t imagine burdening her with something like that.”

  Benjamin drew back in confusion. “I do not understand. Who do you speak of being upset? Mary Schrock died many, many years ago.”

  She opened her mouth to answer but closed it just as quickly. The way Isaac had come to be was not all that unusual any longer. Television programs and newspaper stories had desensitized the English to such accounts, removing much of the surprise to such real-world tales in the process. But for the Amish, the notion of a child growing up amid lies of their paternity was a novelty.

  “Claire?” Benjamin prodded again. “Please. I do not understand what you say.”

  There was a part of her that wanted to tell him everything about Isaac’s true paternity and the fears it had stoked in her heart. But there was also a part of her—a part she hadn’t been aware of until that very moment—that wanted to view the world through Benjamin’s untainted eyes, instead. After all, it was a far nicer view than the one her world afforded at times.

  Knowing she had to give him some sort of answer, she offered the best one she could without telling more than absolutely necessary. “I’m talking about the woman who was married to Isaac’s father. Learning of Isaac’s existence on the heels of her husband’s death might just be the thing that brings on a nervous breakdown.”