Previous Confections

by Ruth Hartzler

  “I understand that, but how did your brother react?”

  Ted chuckled. “Not well at all, not at first. Still, he was never interested in law so I paid him a handsome sum of money to take the rap for me. There was no jail time or anything, just a criminal record. Even though I gave him a large sum of money, we had a falling out. That was the last I saw him. I was quite young at the time.”

  “So your brother has a previous conviction, but you don’t right?” Matilda said. “This is the secret?”

  “Yes, and it might not sound such a bad secret to you…” Ted began, but Matilda interrupted him.

  “Actually, it does sound like a serious matter.”

  “No matter.” I could picture Ted waving his hand at Matilda to dismiss her words.

  “And the police are aware of this? The police believe the vic was blackmailing you.”

  “I believe so,” he said, “only Marcus wasn’t blackmailing me.”

  “Did Marcus actually know that your brother has a previous conviction instead of you?” Matilda asked him.

  Ted said, “I’ve known Marcus for ages. He and my brother were good friends years ago. Perhaps my brother got drunk and told him, but Marcus never mentioned it to me.”

  “Are you absolutely certain of that?” Matilda asked him.

  “Yes, Marcus never mentioned a word of it to me. I don’t know how word got out, so I can only assume that my brother told Marcus at one point and Marcus told his wife.”

  “So do you think Melissa Matheson is trying to frame you for her husband’s murder?”

  “Not frame as such, but she might genuinely think I did it,” Ted said. “She’s very good friends with Candace Weatherspoon. She wouldn’t want to think Candace or Rick did it and she wouldn’t like to think it was the staff, so she has to blame someone. I’m the only one left she can blame.”

  I could hear Matilda’s fingers drumming on the table. “Let me get this straight. Your brother told Marcus who told Melissa about the previous conviction. You think Melissa is looking for someone to blame, and that person is you.”

  “Yes, what else could it be?” Ted asked in a belligerent manner. “So how can you help me?”

  “I have to go back to my office and consult my notes,” Matilda said. I heard a shuffling sound and knew she was standing up.

  “May I have one of your business cards?” Ted asked her.

  Matilda said, “No.”

  It was all I could do not to laugh.

  Chapter 13

  I was driving Rebecca, Matilda, and Eleanor to a barn raising. We had been discussing Ted.

  “I’m surprised you didn’t know Ted’s brother?” Matilda said.

  “Yes, like I said before, I never met him. He didn’t even come to our wedding.”

  Rebecca spoke up. “Thanks for driving me, Jane.”

  I looked across at Rebecca in the passenger seat. “You’re welcome. Are you sure this is a good idea?”

  She nodded. “I couldn’t sit at home alone with everyone else working so hard. It just wouldn’t be right. Surely there’s something I can do with my left hand. I’d be able to carry a plate of food at least.”

  Rebecca’s husband, Ephraim, had been there all day helping the men, and Rebecca normally would have been at the farm all day baking for the workers, but for her broken arm.

  I smiled. The Amish were amazing at helping each other out. The Rocke family’s barn had been old and past repair, so the whole community had come together to raise a new barn. Of course, all the labour was free, and the community had also donated all the materials. It wasn’t a particularly large barn and the wooden frame structure was going up in one day. Of course, the preparations had been done well in advance. It was the first time I had been to a barn raising in decades.

  The Amish women always gathered to make big meals for the men who were working awfully hard.

  As we approached the Rocke family’s farm, I could see that the frame was already half built. We drove on past row after row of horses and buggies, the horses tied to rails.

  “I’ve noticed it before but I never thought to ask,” Eleanor said. “Why are all the buggies dark? I suppose you couldn’t paint one red with yellow zigzags, for example?”

  Rebecca laughed, as did I. I imagined if Eleanor had ever been Amish, she most certainly would drive a buggy painted red with yellow zigzags.

  “The buggies in our community are gray-topped buggies,” Rebecca told her. “The Ordnung determines what color the buggies can be.”

  I knew I didn’t need to explain the Ordnung to Matilda and Eleanor. They had been around Rebecca long enough to know the Ordnung was the unwritten set of rules for each community. Despite popular belief, one Amish community differed in many ways from another. What was right for one community might not be right for another.

  “I’ve seen bright yellow buggies though,” Eleanor continued.

  Rebecca nodded. “The Byler Amish drive those buggies. They’re an Old Order community.”

  I parked out front and ran around to help Rebecca out of the car. “The doctor said you’re supposed to rest,” I scolded her.

  “Nee, I’m fine,” she said she walked away. I sighed. Nothing came between an Amish person and their work.

  I walked in the kitchen to see a flurry of activity. Some of the ladies were rolling pastry, while others were busy making sandwiches. Everyone was chatting happily, but everything was working with precision. The smell of good Amish coffee permeated the air.

  Wanda Hershberger was the first to greet us. “Hiya, Jane, Matilda, and Rachel. What are you doing here, Rebecca? You should be at home, resting.”

  “I can do something,” Rebecca protested. “I can stir something, surely. Would somebody give me some eggs to beat?”

  Someone immediately appeared with a whisk and soon Rebecca was beating eggs with her left hand—don’t ask me how she did it—and I was left to admire the way the Amish women got everything done and at that, without electricity. These days I took electricity for granted, but there had been a time when I had to do without it. I particularly remembered having to pull the cord to start the diesel motor on the old Maytag wringer washer. It was a laborious process, putting the clothes through the wringer into the rinsing tub, rinsing them and then putting them through the ringer again.

  I shook my head. As much as I envied the Amish, their sense of community and their work ethic, there was no way I could ever return.

  “Is there anything we can do to help?” I asked Wanda.

  “Would you make some funeral pies?”

  “Sure.” I turned to Eleanor and Matilda. “I’ll show you how to make funeral pies.”

  Eleanor raised her eyebrows. “But no one has died.” The Amish ladies standing by all chuckled.

  “You could call it a raisin pie,” I told her. “It got the name Funeral Pie because people took these pies to the family of someone who had passed away. As you know, Amish these days have gas refrigerators, but in the days before refrigeration, even if fresh fruit wasn’t available, most homes had dried raisins. The ingredients are always available and the pie keeps for ages. People could make it a couple days before the funeral, and it doesn’t need refrigeration. You can freeze it for up to three months,” I told them.

  “So it’s a raisin pie, you say?” Matilda asked me.

  I nodded. “It has raisins obviously, as well as cornstarch, sugar, brown sugar, cinnamon, allspice, apple cider vinegar and butter. We always used water, but some families use milk. Basically, it’s a double crusted pie with a lattice top. It tastes quite nice. I’m probably not describing it too well. I’ll make one when we go home tonight.”

  “You have enough to do. Maybe you can bake one after this business has all blown over,” Matilda said, wriggling her eyebrows in what I figured was her way of saying I could make one after the murder was solved.

  I combined the sugar, brown sugar, cornstarch, salt and spices in a bowl and stirred, while Matilda made the dough. Wanda H
ershberger came over and introduced us to her daughter. “I’ve always talked about Waneta—well, here she is!”

  We all greeted each other warmly.

  “Thanks so much for the information,” I added.

  She smiled. “I probably shouldn’t be passing it on.”

  “We’re all grateful that you do,” Matilda said. She lowered her voice and said, “Have the toxicology results come back yet? Clostridium botulinum?”

  When Waneta nodded, Matilda said, “Everyone expected that, but now this is confirmation.”

  Waneta turned back to her baking. Eleanor was making sandwiches as we were speaking. I was impressed that her speed could almost match the Amish ladies. I added water to the raisins and then heated and stirred until the mixture started to bubble.

  “It’s almost time to feed the menner now,” someone said, and everyone at once clutched a tray of sandwiches or a pie. I set the mixture aside to cool and grabbed a plate of sandwiches.

  “It’s way past lunchtime,” Eleanor said.

  “They don’t feed the men just lunch, dinner, and breakfast,” I told her. “They need to eat. They have small meals throughout the day to keep up their strength. They’re doing hard physical labour.”

  We walked outside to low rows of wooden tables and chairs. Most of some of the men are already sitting and others were coming in from the wooden frame. I knew those table and benches were for the church gatherings, which they called ‘meetings,’ every second Sunday. The Amish did not have a building in which to worship. Instead, they alternated meetings at people’s houses. During a meeting, the men always sat on one side of the room, and the women on the other but if the house was too small, the men and woman sat in separate rooms with the preacher walking between the rooms. Sometimes the meetings were held in barns.

  Memories of my youth flooded back. The meetings generally lasted three hours. There were two sermons, the shorter first and lasting about twenty minutes, and the second lasting about an hour. Hymns were sung from the Ausbund, the Amish hymn book, and always without musical instruments. It wasn’t until I left the Amish that I realized just how slowly the hymns were sung.

  The tables and chairs set out for the men were used for the meetings. Rather, the chairs were used for the meetings and then the tables were brought out for the big meals that followed the meetings.

  I set my plate of sandwiches down and went back for more, keeping an eye on Rebecca. She seemed to be managing all right carrying one pie in her hand, but I was worried, as she should be resting.

  There was a flurry of activity for a while until all the men were eating happily.

  “What happens now?” Eleanor asked me.

  “Everyone keeps baking and preparing for dinner, and then they wait until the men have finished and clean up after them.”

  “Oh, and they don’t have dishwashers,” Matilda said, clutching her throat in alarm.

  I laughed.

  “Do you mind if we leave?” Eleanor said. “I’m a little worried about leaving Mr. Crumbles by himself for so long. He doesn’t like to be alone.”

  We said our goodbyes to Rebecca and the other ladies and were already halfway to my car when Waneta called to us. I turned around and hurried back to her, followed by Matilda and Eleanor.

  Waneta looked around and then said in little more than a whisper, “There’s some information from the medical examiner’s office. I don’t know if I should tell you, but it’s not a secret as such. The police have been freely talking about it.”

  “What is it?” I prompted her.

  “The victim’s wife, Melissa Matheson, took out a life insurance policy on her husband.”

  “Did she now?” I said.

  “But that’s not so uncommon,” Eleanor pointed out.

  “It is if it was taken out not long before he was murdered,” Matilda said.

  “How much was he insured for?” I asked Waneta.

  “Five million dollars.”

  Chapter 14

  “That’s it!” Matilda said as we drove away. “I’m going to question Melissa Matheson right now.”

  “Could you pretend you’re an insurance investigator?” Eleanor asked.

  Matilda appeared to be thinking it over. “Actually, that’s not a bad idea, but I think it’s best if I keep my cover as a private investigator. If I tell Melissa that Cherri sent me there to speak with her, she can hardly refuse to see me. I might get more out of her that way rather than pretending to be a private investigator.”

  “I wish we could be there too,” Eleanor said wistfully.

  “I know, I’ll go and buy some audio spy equipment so both of you can sit outside her house in the car and hear what I’m saying.”

  “If only I could,” Eleanor said wistfully, “but I need to spend some quality time with Mr. Crumbles.”

  “Why don’t you bring him?” Matilda said.

  “What a good idea!” Eleanor sounded quite cheery. “I’m sure he’d love to go for a ride in the car. All he gets to see are walls of the apartment and the courtyard outside. You know, I’m thinking of training him to walk on a leash.”

  I didn’t think taking Mr. Crumbles was such a good idea, but I wasn’t going to say. After all, trouble seemed to follow Mr. Crumbles. Visions of how my behind sticking out that dog door must have looked to others flashed through my mind. I shuddered and tried to think of something else.

  “Jane can drive to a surveillance store after we collect Mr. Crumbles,” Matilda announced.

  “I don’t know where one is,” I said, taking one hand off the wheel to scratch my head.

  “I can direct you.”

  I shot a glance across at Eleanor. How did she know where a surveillance shop was?

  “We’ll go home and collect Mr. Crumbles first,” Eleanor said. “And we need to give Cherri the heads up.”

  Before I even had a chance to respond, my cell phone rang. My car was too old to have Bluetooth, so I indicated to Matilda that she should answer the phone.

  “Hi Cherri, Jane is driving. I’ll put you on speaker so everyone can hear.”

  There were strange sounds on the phone and at first I thought it was a bad connection until I realized Cherri was sobbing.

  “What’s wrong?” I asked in a loud voice.

  Matilda at once held the phone close to me.

  “The police have questioned Ted again,” she wailed. “Are you close to solving the murder?”

  “Actually we were just about to call you,” I told her. “We want to question Melissa Matheson now. Actually, Matilda is going to question her and pretend she’s a private investigator working for you. Is that all right with you?”

  Cherri sniffled before answering. “Of course. Anything you want to do is fine with me. Jane darling, did you find out anything from Ted?”

  “I’ll tell you about that later,” I said, trying to avoid the question. After all, I wanted to break the news to her in person. And I was hoping Ted himself would tell her. After thinking things through for a few moments, I said to Cherri, “We’ll call you after Matilda questions Melissa and decided on a time to meet.”

  Cherri thanked me and hung up. “I feel sorry for her,” I said.

  “Honestly, Jane, she was having an affair with your husband, you didn’t even know, and then she had his baby. It must be your Amish upbringing that’s making you so kind hearted.”

  I laughed. “Don’t you feel sorry for her too? It’s not as if I have any feelings for Ted anymore. Not nice ones, anyway.” I scowled. “I’m sure he took advantage of her.”

  “That’s all well and good, but what if she’s the murderer?” Eleanor piped up from the back seat.

  “Why would she want to murder Marcus?” I asked her.

  “Who would know? We have to investigate to find out,” Eleanor said reasonably.

  “Maybe she and Melissa are in it together,” Matilda pointed out. “In Agatha Christie movies, sometimes the murderer has an accomplice.”

  We had arri
ved home. It wasn’t long before Eleanor had collected Mr. Crumbles and we were all back in the car.

  I picked up the conversation where we had left off. “What possible reason would Cherri have to help Melissa murder Marcus?” I said, thinking this was all a little far-fetched.

  “I know, it’s the old swapping murders device,” Matilda said rather happily. “I saw it on Death in Paradise once. Maybe Cherri murdered Marcus and Melissa will murder Ted.”

  “It sounds a bit unbelievable to me,” I said.

  “You’d be surprised,” Matilda said. “I’ll be interested to see if Cherri has a life insurance policy on Ted.”

  “But even Ted told you that Cherri has no money of her own.”

  “But maybe she talked Ted into it.”

  To my relief, Mr. Crumbles did not appear to mind being in the car. He sat on Eleanor’s lap and put his paws on the window staring outside. “He’s having a good time,” Eleanor said, followed by, “Oh no!”

  “What happened?” I asked her.

  “His bowl of water splashed in your car. Sorry, Jane. Maybe I filled it a little too full. Oh well, it’s not full now.”

  Eleanor had insisted on bringing Mr. Crumbles’ water bowl, food bowl, and even his litter tray. One small mercy was that his litter tray was one of those enclosed ones with a carbon filter at the top and a swinging door. Still, I was sure some litter crystals would manage to find their way onto my car floor.

  Matilda leaned over the back seat and scowled at Eleanor. “It’s a wonder you didn’t bring the pole for him.”

  Eleanor muttered something under her breath.

  There was no more chance for conversation, or bickering, because we had arrived at the surveillance store.

  Eleanor stayed in the car with Mr. Crumbles, while Matilda and I went inside to buy an audio recorder.

  The young man serving shot us a dubious look. “Can I help you ladies?”

  “Yes, we’re looking for an audio spy device that’s well concealed and accurate,” Matilda said. “I don’t know too much about the modern versions.”

  “Oh, are you wishing to record a business meeting?” he asked.