I swallowed hard and hoped that he hadn’t noticed the nervous habit.
“I should get back to my other deputies and touch base with them.” He looked me in the eye. “You will tell me if you run into anyone who might be low on licorice extract or perhaps is missing some of it, won’t you?”
I nodded again. Unable to speak. I told myself that I wasn’t lying by keeping quiet, that he’d asked me to tell him if I ran into anyone who might be missing the extract. He never asked if I was missing it. I knew full well that I was kidding myself.
He smiled at me, and the dimple reappeared, stabbing a nail into my chest. “Thank you, Bailey. Please don’t worry about this. I’ll take care of everything.” He turned and walked away and seemed to be certain that what he said was the truth. I wasn’t nearly as certain that he’d be able to take care of any of it, let alone everything.
Chapter 13
I returned to my table just in time to help Emily pull the peppermint taffy. The taffy itself looked like a smear of bubbly red slime across the waxed paper. The red looked like blood.
Emily stood beside me with her hands on her hips. “Rethinking the red?” She must have notice the similarities too.
I winced. “Maybe.”
“Once it’s pulled, cut into pieces, and wrapped in waxed paper, it will be just fine,” she reassured me.
I eyed her. When I had met Emily a little over a month ago, she had been a scared girl, begging me to give her kitten, Nutmeg, a home because her brother, Abel, wouldn’t let her keep him. Since Nutmeg was now a permanent fixture at Swissmen Sweets, you know how that story ended.
She handed me a tub of butter. “Butter up, Englischer.”
I barked a laugh. After washing my hands with the hand sanitizer that I insisted we keep at the table and putting on plastic gloves, I dug three fingers of my right hand into the butter. As I rubbed the butter into my palms, Emily sanitized her hands, put on her own pair of gloves, and plunged her hands into the tub of butter, just like I had. We buttered our hands so that the taffy wouldn’t stick to them during the hand-pulling process.
Emily picked up the metal spatula from the table and pushed the taffy across the waxed paper, pulling it away from the surface. As she did this, I put my hand under the sticky taffy and gathered it into my hands. It was a huge red glob.
With all the taffy off the waxed paper, Emily scraped the portion of the taffy that was on the spatula into her own hands. We connected our two pieces by pushing them together and then began the long process of pulling the taffy—stretching the ends of the glob away from each other, folding the taffy, and then repeating.
By pulling the taffy, we added air to it. As this happened, its consistency and color changed from a brightly colored sticky mess to a satiny light shade of pink. It wasn’t the deep color of blood any longer.
“It does smell like peppermint,” Emily said.
I grinned as we set the now pulled taffy down on a fresh piece of waxed paper. The judges couldn’t find any fault with my techniques in this round. All by hand, all the Amish way.
I glanced over at what had been Josephine’s booth. Lindy was there, pulling the taffy offerings for Berlin Candies on a metal hook that she had clamped to her table. She seemed to be having some trouble with it. Even from where I stood across the square, I could tell she was on the verge of tears. There was a group of English tourists standing in front of her, but none of them made any move to help her.
Emily and I removed our gloves.
“Em, you go ahead and start cutting the taffy. I think I will run over and give Lindy a hand.”
Emily looked up from the long piece of taffy that ran the length of the table.
“And ask her a few questions while you’re at it?”
“She looks upset.” I wiped my hands on a cloth before walking around the side of our table. As the day had gone on, the number of guests at the ACC had increased. Both English and Amish onlookers watched in awe as fifteen of the best Amish candy makers pulled taffy in every color of the rainbow.
“Mommy, can we have some?” an English boy asked as he bounced in place. A few feet away, an Amish boy repeated the same question to his mother. The two boys must have realized they’d said the same thing at the same time and laughed together. Despite the sad events of the day, I found myself smiling. The boys’ excitement over the taffy was what the Amish Confectionery Competition was all about, and the connection the two boys shared was the end result we all wanted for everyone who attended the event. I supposed “all” might have been an overstatement. I couldn’t imagine Sheriff Marshall wanting the Amish and English to come together. It seemed to me that he had wanted from the beginning to keep them apart, so they would be separated into very divided camps. Not for the first time, I wished someone in the community would have the nerve to run against him in the upcoming election.
When I reached Lindy’s booth, she was still struggling with her taffy hook. It toppled over, and she just caught her long band of pulled taffy before it hit the grass at her feet. She appeared to be on the verge of tears now.
“Do you need some help?” I asked.
She eyed me with suspicion. “Nee, I am fine.” She gathered the taffy in her hands and set it on a large piece of waxed paper that lay across her table. The taffy was a light yellow color and smelled strongly of lemons. After she did that, she attempted to affix the pulling hook on her table again, only to watch helplessly as it tumbled into the grass.
We both stared at her feet.
“If you have any hope of pulling that taffy before it gets too stiff to manipulate, you will take me up on my offer,” I suggested.
She stared down at the glob of yellow on the table, and her frown deepened. “Very well. Ya, I can use your help.”
I washed my hands again, put on gloves, and stuck my hand into her tub of butter just as I had done at my own table. Grabbing one end of the taffy that Lindy had gathered into her hands, I began to pull.
I pulled the yellow taffy toward me and then folded it to meet Lindy’s end of the taffy. “Haddie seemed upset when she learned that she was eliminated from the competition.”
Lindy stepped away from me, pulling the taffy with her. “Anyone would be upset. If a candy shop wins the Amish Confectionery Competition, it could completely change the owner’s business. Everyone in the Amish world and many candy makers in the Englisch world would know about the winning shop. People would come from all over just to taste candy that came from a shop that won the ACC.” She folded the taffy toward me.
“I’m starting to realize that. When I lived in New York, I was in many candy competitions for my old employer. The competition was fierce. It took me off guard to learn that the competition in an Amish candy competition would be just as fierce.”
Lindy smiled and visibly relaxed. “We Amish are people too. We have goals and dreams, and we can be competitive, just like anyone else.”
I blushed. “I wasn’t implying—I—” I stumbled over my words.
“It is fine. I know you didn’t mean anything by it.”
My face turned a deeper shade of red. “It came out horrible though. I know that. It’s just, I guess, when I think of the Amish, I think of my grandparents. Neither of them had a competitive bone in their bodies.”
She smiled again. “True. Your grandparents are the kindest people. How is your grandmother?” She folded the taffy toward me again. “I heard that she’s been having a difficult time since your grandfather passed.”
“It’s been hard. Yes.”
The taffy was beginning to take on a satin texture and lighten in color. It would be ready for cutting and wrapping in waxed paper with just a couple more pulls.
She frowned. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have brought it up.”
I shook my head. “It’s all right. I think grief snuck up on her.” It was the most honest answer I had given about my grandmother’s state of mind to anyone.
“Grief is the most terrible pain. It’s a wild animal that you c
annot control.” She said this like someone who spoke from painful personal experience.
I started to ask her what she meant by her comment, but before I could she said, “I think we have pulled the taffy enough.”
Together we set it on the piece of fresh waxed paper on her long table.
“Danki for your help,” Lindy said. “It was very kind of you to come over. I’m sorry if I was rude at the start. It’s just been very hard.”
I stepped back from the table. “Because of Josephine?”
She nodded. “I’m carrying on and making candy for her sake and the sake of the shop, but I don’t honestly know if that’s what I should be doing. Maybe I should quit the competition. No one would blame me.”
I shook my head. “No one would.”
She licked her lips. “But I want to continue for Josephine’s sake. Winning this competition meant a lot to her, and I know that is what she would have wanted me to do.”
“Were you and Josephine close?”
“For the last five years, we worked side by side every day.” She began rolling the taffy back and forth over the waxed paper to shape it into a one-inch-thick tube to be cut into bite-sized pieces.
That really didn’t answer my question. I’d had coworkers I didn’t care for. One of Jean Pierre’s chocolatiers named Caden was the first to come to mind.
I decided to change tactics. It didn’t seem to me that Lindy would speak outright against her deceased boss. I wasn’t sure if her hesitation was out of respect for the dead or because of something else. “Haddie Smucker didn’t seem to care much for Josephine. I noticed that she said something to you as she was leaving.”
Lindy pressed her lips into a thin line. “Haddie Smucker has no right to be speaking to me about Josephine or anyone else. I’m glad the judges saw her for what she is, a mediocre candy maker, and removed her from the competition.” She said this with so much venom that it took me off guard. Could this be the same woman who was speaking about grief just a few moments ago?
I decided to press, even though I knew it might destroy any camaraderie that had developed over pulling taffy together. “She claimed that Josephine stole her licorice recipe.”
“That’s a lie!” Lindy yelled.
Visitors to the ACC who were walking around the square stopped and stared at us openmouthed. It wasn’t common to hear an Amish woman yell.
She looked down at her taffy. Her face was beet red. “I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have burst out like that. It just makes me so angry that Haddie would make such a blatantly false claim.”
“Josephine didn’t steal her licorice recipe?”
“Of course she didn’t. Josephine’s licorice recipe was her great-grandmother’s and was passed down through her family over the generations. Haddie is trying to sabotage Berlin Candies’ chances.”
That was interesting. I wondered why Haddie would lie about it. Was it just sour grapes over being removed from the ACC, a parting shot as she made her way to the door?
“Haddie isn’t from Holmes County, is she?”
Lindy shook her head. “Nee, she’s not. She’s from Geauga County.”
“Then how well do you know her?”
Lindy removed a knife from her supply box and began cutting the lemon-flavored taffy into one-inch pieces. “Even though she may not live close by, yes, I know her. All the Amish candy makers know or know of each other. Haddie has a reputation.”
“Oh?” I said. I hoped that the “oh” was just noncommittal enough to encourage Lindy to share more.
She sniffed. “Haddie Smucker gets what she wants. Her little shop in Geauga County wouldn’t receive half the attention that it does if she wasn’t so pushy. Mark my words, we haven’t seen the last of her in this competition. If the judges think that Haddie will leave quietly, they know nothing about her.”
“I don’t see how she could return if she’s been disqualified. She lost the round. The competition will move on without her.”
Lindy just shook her head as if I couldn’t possibly understand, but that was where she was wrong. I came to Harvest by way of New York City. Everyone has a little bit of a competitive edge to him or her in New York. It was just a matter of survival. It seemed to me that I needed to have a little chat with Haddie Smucker if she was still around. I hoped that Aiden had stopped her from leaving the county. He had to consider her, like all the candy makers, a suspect.
Lindy continued cutting the taffy. “She will do whatever it takes to win. Being removed from the competition won’t stop her. I won’t make the mistake of counting her out. I’ve made that mistake before. Danki again for all your help,” she concluded in a way that made it very clear I was being dismissed.
“If you need any more help, Emily or I will be happy to pitch in. I know it can be hard to run the competition table on your own.” I removed my gloves, tossed them in the trash, and washed the butter from my hands in a bowl of water at the end of her table.
She simply nodded and continued to cut her taffy into precise one-inch pieces.
I dried my hands on a plain white tea towel and suppressed a sigh. There was a sadness to Lindy Beiler that I couldn’t quite pin down, though I wasn’t convinced that it had anything to do with her employer’s death.
I had started across the square back to my table again when a voice stopped me. “Bailey! Bailey!”
I turned to find Juliet running toward me. Her orange and white polka-dotted skirt flew behind her as she ran.
Chapter 14
“Oh, Bailey.” Juliet waved to me from across the square. “Bailey.” She came to an abrupt stop in front of me. Her usually perfect hair was disheveled and her eyes red-rimmed.
I placed a hand on her shoulder. “Juliet, are you all right?”
She grabbed my hand from her shoulder and clasped it in both of hers. Tears brimmed in her eyes. “I’m so sorry to have dragged you into this mess with Josephine! If I’d never asked you to help me find Jethro, you would have had nothing to do with this. I feel just horrible about it all. Now, you’re a suspect in a murder again, and it’s my fault.”
A woman walking by us stopped and stared. I forced a smile. “We are practicing lines for a play.”
She narrowed her eyes as if she didn’t believe me.
I removed my hand from Juliet’s tight grasp. It took some doing. “Juliet, you might not want to announce to the world I’m a murder suspect.”
She clamped her hand over her mouth. “I’m so sorry. What was I thinking?” Her words were muffled because her hand was still over her mouth.
“Don’t worry,” I said, keeping my voice low. “How did you find out I was a suspect?”
“Aiden,” she said, barely above a whisper. “Of course, you know he doesn’t talk to me about his cases, but when I said that he couldn’t possibly suspect you of any wrongdoing, he got very quiet. That’s how I knew.” She shook her head. “That boy! He should know you well enough by now to know that you are incapable of such a terrible act.”
“Aiden has known me for only a few weeks, really,” I said, automatically coming to her son’s defense. I didn’t know why I was defending him when he considered me a murder suspect. I couldn’t stop myself from doing it.
“But he’s known your grandparents for most of his life. That should be enough for him.” She placed a hand on my arm. “I hope this doesn’t have any impact on your future together.”
Future together? What future together? There wasn’t one, as far as I knew. I thought it was best that I not ask Juliet those unspoken questions. “In any case, I don’t think it’s your fault I’m a suspect. Even if I had not been there when Charlotte found the body, I would still be a suspect. Because of how Josephine died, all the candy makers at the ACC are suspects.”
She nodded. “Maybe this is true.” Juliet pressed a tissue to the corner of her eye. “But I still can’t believe he would think that about you. What happened to Josephine is just awful. She wasn’t the kindest woman in the world, but to
be shoved into the organ like that? It’s just so awful.”
A couple walked by and glanced at us in surprise. Clearly, the middle of the square was not the best place to have a conversation about murder. Time to change the subject. “Any news on Jethro?”
She shook her head. “No. He’s still missing. It’s almost been a full day. I’m just heartbroken over it.” She removed a tissue from her purse, dropped the tissue in the grass, and clasped a hand over her mouth. “I can’t believe I said that. You must think I’m a horrible person. Here I am crying over my pig being missing while Josephine . . .” She dissolved into tears again.
I patted her arm. “Jethro is important to you. A member of the family. There is no reason for you to feel bad about missing him.”
She lifted her head and looked up at me with tears in her eyes. “Yes, that’s exactly it, and he’s never been away from me for so long. I rarely let him out of my sight. He must be terrified.”
“What can I do to help?” I asked.
“I can’t ask you to do anything else. Not after what happened this morning.” She shook her head like a stubborn toddler who had made up her mind.
I laughed. “Sure, you can. If you can’t ask your friends for help, who can you ask?”
She smiled, gripping my hands a second time much more tightly than the first. “You are my friend, aren’t you, Bailey? I never had a daughter. I love my son, of course, but part of me always wanted to have a girl too. I think that’s what most mothers want, whether they admit it or not. And now I have you. You will be like a daughter soon.”
I opened my mouth to protest, but she was faster.
“I knew when you moved to Harvest that it would be good for Clara, but I’ve quickly learned that it’s good for the whole town.”
I felt myself blush.
“If you have the time, there is a way that you can help look for Jethro.”
“Name it.” I glanced over my shoulder at the table. I knew that I needed to get back to it. Emily would worry about me missing the judging again if I took too long. When I turned, I saw her brother Abel standing in front of our table. Abel was a large man. Like his sister, his hair was blond and almost as light as Emily’s from countless hours in the sun.
Lethal Licorice Page 10
