“Jenna,” Polly Anne called. “I have someone I would like you to meet.”

  Jenna turned around and smiled. When she saw me, her face fell, and she looked at Polly Anne with questioning eyes.

  “Jenna, this is Bailey King. She was one of the women who helped out with today’s tea,” Polly Anne said.

  Jenna nodded. “It’s nice to meet you.” She glanced at Polly Anne. “I wasn’t invited to the tea.”

  “But you were there,” I said.

  Her brow knitted together. “Just for a few minutes before it started.”

  “I told Bailey as much.” Polly Anne held her hands in front of her waist.

  “Did I do something wrong?” Jenna asked. There was real worry in her voice. I guessed after what she’d gone through in her recovery, she might have real fears about being asked to leave Abigail’s Farm before she was ready.

  I was quick to set her at ease. “No, I’m just trying to talk to people who were at the tea, before, during, and after. Did you see anything strange while you were there?” I asked.

  “No, why do you ask?” Jenna was clearly confused.

  I looked at Polly Anne, and she gave a slight nod. I swallowed. “Money was stolen from the donation box.”

  She jumped back from me. “I didn’t steal it! Is that what you came here to ask me? If I took the money? I didn’t!”

  “No,” I said, even though that wasn’t the complete truth. I did want to know if she’d taken the money. “But you might have seen something that will lead us to the person who did take it.”

  She brushed her bangs away from her eyes. “I wasn’t there long enough to see anything. I was only there to share my story about Abigail’s Farm. Polly Anne said that she didn’t need or want me to do that, so I left. I waited in the village gazebo on the square until she was ready to drive back here. I don’t have a car, so it wasn’t like I could leave the village. It was a nice spring day. I didn’t mind the wait, and by the time Polly Anne was done at the tea, I had cooled down.” She turned to Polly Anne. “I know I tend to ramble, and that was the reason you didn’t want me to speak. I understand.”

  “I’m glad, Jenna. If your feelings were hurt, I apologize,” Polly Anne said.

  Jenna nodded.

  I felt my shoulders droop just a little. It seemed to me my conversation with Jenna hadn’t turned up any information at all, but maybe that wasn’t a bad thing. Marking off leads when they went nowhere was part of the investigation process. I smiled to myself, thinking how much Aiden would hate the idea that I had an “investigation process.” I motioned to the burlap rows. “What’s under there?”

  “Oh, lavender,” Jenna said excitedly.

  “Lavender?” I asked. “You can grow lavender in Holmes County? I would have thought there would be too much rain.” I remembered reading somewhere that it grew in an arid climate.

  “That’s true,” Polly Anne said. “But with the right treatment to the soil and drainage, it grows very well here. These plants are still covered from the winter. Our Ohio winters are too harsh to leave the plants uncovered when it drops below freezing.”

  Jenna nodded. “It’s my job today to check the plants and make sure they are still happy under the burlap. I’m also spreading straw with a rake to keep the weeds down between the rows. When summer hits, weeds will definitely be encroaching on our plants, and we can’t have that. We won’t uncover the lavender plants until the final threat of frost has passed. That doesn’t happen in Ohio until the middle of May. I think in another week, we can take it off.”

  Polly Anne nodded. “I think so too. Spring weather is so unpredictable in Ohio. It’s better to be safe than sorry.”

  Jenna cleared her throat. “I hope that money is found, because what I would have said if I had spoken at the tea was that this place has helped me a lot. It’s given me time to focus on caring for something, the plants and the farm animals. When I was using, all I cared about was myself and where I could get my next fix. I destroyed a lot of friendships and relationships that way. It got to the point that getting high was all I cared about. Rehab helped. It got me off the drug. I got counseling, but it didn’t make me care about anything outside of myself the way Abigail’s Farm has.”

  Tears came to my eyes. It was a moving testimony, and one that I wished Polly Anne had let her share at the tea. I thought it would have moved the women to open their pocketbooks a little bit more, but if they had, I supposed that money would have been stolen too.

  “I hope what happened with that money won’t impact the farm,” Jenna said. “I know everyone must be upset that it’s missing, or stolen, but Abigail’s Farm is going to be okay, isn’t it?”

  I glanced at Polly Anne, and her face was stoic. “Not to worry. Abigail’s Farm will be fine.”

  Jenna’s shoulders sagged in relief, and she went back to raking. Then she stopped. “I do remember something about the tea; well, it wasn’t really about the tea because it happened while I sat in the gazebo waiting for you.”

  “What was it?” Polly Anne asked.

  “That Amish man who’s always coming to the farm and yelling at you, Polly Anne, he was there,” Jenna said.

  Polly Anne gasped. “Samson Mast was at the tea?”

  “I don’t think he was at the tea, but he was at the church. He drove up in his buggy. I recognized him right away because he has stomped over here so many times when I have been checking the lavender plants.”

  “Did he go inside the church?” I asked.

  She shook her head. “Not that I saw. A woman got out of the buggy and went inside. I thought maybe she was going to the tea.” She frowned. “It didn’t seem like a very Amish thing to do, but I didn’t grow up around the Amish. I don’t really know.”

  “Was the woman in the church for a long time?” I asked.

  She thought about this for a minute. “She wasn’t in there as long as Polly Anne, and she came out at least forty minutes before most of the other women did. I could tell when the event ended because the women were coming out of the church in groups. The Amish woman left the church before that, and she and Samson left the village in the buggy as soon as she got into it. I remember thinking that they looked like they were in some kind of hurry.”

  I shared a look with Polly Anne. It was very possible we had found the person who’d taken the money. It must have—it could have—been that Amish woman. If she was with Samson, who hated Abigail’s Farm, it wasn’t too great a stretch to think that they were the ones behind the robbery.

  “You’ve never seen the woman before?” I asked.

  “I may have. I just don’t know. I was too far away to see her face, because a bonnet covered most of it,” Jenna said as she began raking again.

  There was only one way to find out, and that meant a trip to Samson’s farm.

  Chapter Eight

  It took some doing, but I was able to convince Polly Anne not to go with me to the Mast farm. If Samson really didn’t like her so much that he would steal money from her farm, he wouldn’t want to see her.

  Before I left, I called Deputy Little.

  “This is Little.”

  “Hi Deputy, it’s Bailey. I’ve been doing some poking around on the Amish angle.” I tried to keep my voice cheerful.

  He sucked in a breath. “The more I think about this, Bailey, the more I think Deputy Brody would not like it.”

  “Oh,” I said. “I know he wouldn’t like it, but I’m giving you a heads up on what I’ve learned.” I told him about Jenna and Samson Mast. “I’m on my way to the Mast farm right now. Hopefully we will have this case wrapped up by the end of the weekend.”

  Deputy Little groaned. “I can be there in thirty minutes. You should wait until I get there.”

  “I think it’s good of you to offer, Little, but the Mast family won’t talk to me about Abigail’s Farm with you there. As soon as they see your department vehicle, they will clam up.”

  “I see your point,” he said. “But please be careful. If anything happens to you on this case, Deputy Brody will never forgive me.” He sounded terrified of the possibility.

  “What could possibly happen, Deputy Little? It’s not like I’m chasing a killer. Though I’ve done that a time or two, and everything has come out just fine.”

  Deputy Little groaned.

  I ended the call and made the short drive down the gravel road to the Mast farm. While the farmhouse on Polly Anne’s property was lavender, the house on the Mast farm was twice the size and plain white. Even the front door and the shutters were white. There was no color in the house at all, but that wasn’t to say there was no color on their land. In front of the large home, there was a flower bed overflowing with white, yellow, orange, and even pink spring daffodils.

  I parked my car halfway down the driveway and straightened my shoulders. I really didn’t know how this conversation would go, but I had planned a script in my head. I guessed that was the best I could do.

  I walked up to the house and knocked on the front door. There was no answer. I was surprised. In fact, I was even more surprised that no one had come out of the house to greet me. I couldn’t remember the last time I had to knock on an Amish door. It seemed to me, any time I visited an Amish family, they had the door open even before I reached the porch.

  Maybe they weren’t home. I frowned. I could leave, of course. That’s what Deputy Little would want me to do. I knew he was an emotional wreck knowing that I was at the Mast farm without him, but he should consider himself lucky that I’d told him at all.

  Instead of leaving, I decided to walk around the side of the house to the barn out back. It was possible that the family was working in the barn and simply hadn’t heard my car pull up.

  I had just gone around the side of the house when I heard a high-pitched keening sound coming from behind me. I didn’t even have time to turn around before what felt like a boulder hit me in the back of the legs. I toppled forward and fell onto the grass. The back of my knees were sore where I’d been hit, and my right elbow hurt from landing on it. As quickly as I could, I rolled onto my back and came face to face with a large pig snout.

  I did what any other normal person would do: I screamed, and the pig screamed back.

  “What is happening?” a deep male voice with a thick Pennsylvania Dutch accent wanted to know.

  I shimmied back on my elbows, and the giant pig that had knocked me down looked at me curiously. I spent a fair of amount of time with Jethro the pig; probably even more time than I wanted to. It seemed that any time Juliet needed a pig sitter, I was her girl. So I understood pigs a little, but Jethro was the size of a toaster. The large pink pig standing in front of me was the size of a VW Bug. Okay, that was an exaggeration, but she was definitely motor scooter size. It was no surprise that I went down when she hit me in the back of the knees.

  I stumbled to my feet and took four giant steps back from the pig. I broke eye contact with the enormous animal and found an Amish farmer standing nearby with a pitchfork in his hand—I should explain that the business end of the pitchfork was pointed away from me, but it wasn’t any less concerning.

  “Layla won’t hurt you,” the Amish man said.

  I stared at him. “She hit me in the back of the knees and knocked me to the ground.”

  “The children have taught her to play tag. She thought you were playing a game,” he said, as if it made perfect sense to play tag with a giant pig.

  I eyed the pig. Likely story about the game playing. I wasn’t buying it. I had a strong suspicion that the sow had wanted to take me out.

  Layla sat on her hind quarters in the grass. I had a feeling that she wanted to have a staring competition, but she would have to find someone else for her fun and games. I had stolen money to find. I turned to the Amish man, taking a good look at him for the first time. He was short and stocky, but it was clear that he was in shape from hours of working outside. I guessed that running from Layla during a game of tag would keep anyone in top physical condition. “Are you Samson Mast?” I asked.

  He frowned at me. “I am. Why do you want to know?”

  “I just came from Abigail’s Farm, and—”

  He shook the pitchfork in the air. “Nee, nee, I will not talk to any of the drug-addicted women from that place. I knew that your kind would slip over onto my property. I just knew it.” He shook his finger at me. “I need you to get off my land. I don’t want you near my children.”

  I frowned at him. “First of all, the women at Abigail’s Farm are in recovery. Second of all, I don’t live there. I’m Bailey King from Swissmen Sweets.”

  “Are you related to Jebidiah King?” he asked.

  “Yes, he was my grandfather. I now work at the candy shop with my grandmother, Clara.”

  He folded his arms. “I see. I knew that Jebidiah had a son who left the Amish. I take it you are that son’s daughter.”

  “I am,” I said. “And I’m here to talk to you about the Mother’s Day tea at the church on the square earlier this afternoon.”

  He scowled at me. “What do I know of it? I’m not Englisch. I have no reason to go to that church.”

  “You were spotted outside the church, sitting in your buggy.”

  I thought he would deny it, but he went on to say, “What difference does that make? Is there an Englisch law that says I can’t park there?”

  I shook my head. “No, but some money was taken. I’m here to find out what you might know about that.”

  “What?” he cried. “You are here because you think I stole money from a church?”

  Layla the pig appeared to take offense too, because she stood up and walked over to her owner in a move of solidarity. If Layla was anything like Jethro, she would be very loyal to her owner. I knew how much Jethro cared about Juliet.

  “I’m not saying you took the money, but since you were there, you might know something or have seen something.”

  “I didn’t see a thing,” he snapped.

  “You might not have, since you never left the buggy.” I took a breath. “But there was a woman there with you. She went into the church. Maybe she saw something that can help us find the money.” I paused, wondering if I should say more. I decided to do it. “The money was for Abigail’s Farm. Since you have a contentious relationship with your neighbor, and you were near the church when the money was stolen, I thought I should pay you a visit.”

  “A candy maker?” he asked. “A candy maker is paying me a visit to ask about missing money? Has the Englisch world completely lost its mind?” Before I could say anything, he went on. “I do not like the women who moved in next door. I don’t like them so close to my home and my children.”

  “They are trying to rebuild their lives,” I said.

  Layla walked over to me and pressed her cold snout in my hand. I pulled my hand back and patted her between the ears. It seemed that one of them had warmed up to me. I looked down at the pig, and she smiled. Maybe this was why I did so well with Jethro. Perhaps I had an untapped gift of pig taming. I supposed it was good I had left New York City for Holmes County all those months ago. It certainly wasn’t a gift I would get much use of in Manhattan.

  “That is well and good, but they can try somewhere else. They don’t need to do it here in Harvest.”

  “Without the stolen money, Abigail’s Farm will have to close,” I said with my hand on Layla’s head.

  “They can go to another place for help. They do not need to bring their troubles here. I have children. I must think of them first.” He paused. “They should have thought about their children and families before they became addicted to drugs.”

  I frowned. That didn’t sound like Amish compassion to me, and I knew a lot about it. My grandmother was the most compassionate woman I had ever met.

  I frowned, and was about to argue with him some more when a woman came around the side of the house. She spoke Pennsylvania Dutch, but as soon as she saw me she stopped talking. Our eyes locked for a moment, and I was certain it was the same woman I had seen standing in the doorway to the church’s kitchen.

  “Amelia, what is it?” Samson asked.

  “Rusty Benson called the shed phone. He plans to stop by later.”

  “I don’t have anything to say to the Bensons,” Samson said. “They picked their side.”

  Their side of what? I wondered.

  Amelia nodded and turned to go, but I wasn’t going to let her get away from me. “Amelia, you were at the tea earlier today.”

  She turned and looked at me. “Do I know you?”

  I told her who I was, and she shook her head.

  “Some money went missing from the tea. You were there. Did you see anything out of the ordinary?”

  Amelia shook her head and began to walk away.

  “You seemed to be upset with Polly Anne when she was speaking,” I called after her. “I saw you there, in the doorway to the kitchen.”

  I noted that her shoulder twitched ever so slightly as she continued to walk away. She didn’t get far though, because just then Deputy Little came around the side of the house.

  Samson glared at me. “You called the sheriff’s department. You think I took the money!”

  “I don’t know if you took the money,” I said. “But the sheriff’s department has a duty to try to find it.”

  “Maybe they do, but why are you here, candy maker?”

  I frowned. I didn’t think telling him that Polly Anne had asked me to help her was going to win me any praise from Samson Mast.

  “Mr. Mast,” Deputy Little said in his most official voice. “Can I ask you a few questions about the tea party?” He glanced at Amelia. “I would love to ask you both a few questions.”

 

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8