Toxic Toffee Read online

  He stared at Puff on his lap and said something I couldn’t make out. I didn’t think it was in Pennsylvania Dutch either. He had only said it too softly for me to hear.

  “What was that?” I leaned over the table and stopped myself before I cupped my ear.

  He straightened and looked me in the eye. His blue eyes were clear now, and his jaw had a determined set to it. “I have them.”

  I fell back into my chair. “You have them? You have them with you right now?”

  He nodded and reached into the inside pocket of his plain denim jacket. He pulled out a stack of folded papers. There must have been at least ten sheets of paper in that stack.

  I gaped as he set the pile in the middle of the table.

  “You can read them. Daniel trusts you, so I trust you. That’s all I need to know about you.”

  I marveled at how easy it was for the Amish to put their faith in a person if that person could be vouched for by a trusted friend. How different that was from English society. Would I put all my faith in someone because Cass told me to? I wasn’t so sure that I would. I think it was much more common in the English world for each individual to decide independently as to how he or she viewed another person. In fact, we took pride in making up our own minds. That was the very heart of what made us different from the Amish. The Amish valued community above the individual.

  In the Amish faith, everything was decided by the community, and personal pride was seen as a sin. If your friend told you to trust someone, you did, no questions asked. If your friend told you not to trust someone, the same rules applied. In the English world, we told children to be different. In the Amish world they told children to be the same.

  I was too English to not believe my way of thinking was the better of the two even when I’d seen with my own eyes happy people living the Amish way. People in my very own family were perfectly happy with their lives. The Amish would say that was prideful of me, to be sure.

  I picked up the first letter from the pile, and instantly I wondered if I should be touching it. These letters could very possibly be evidence in a murder if Eli was right. At the very least, they were evidence in a suspicious death. Even if Stephen Raber’s death wasn’t yet being called a murder, I knew Aiden well enough to be sure that he wouldn’t rest until he found out how the rabbit farmer had died.

  Tentatively, I held the letter between my fingers. I felt a need to get gloves, so that my fingerprints wouldn’t appear on the piece of paper. As far as I could remember, I had two pairs of gloves in the house, and they were winter ones, which were put away for the season, and a pair of garden gloves Maami had given me. I had tucked the garden gloves in a drawer in the kitchen somewhere. And I doubted that Eli would stick around if I left the table to find out where I had oh-so-cleverly put them.

  Carefully, just touching the edges, I unfolded the note and read out loud, “ ‘You know what you did, and God will have His revenge.’” It was written in English, but that didn’t rule out that it had been left by an Amish person. Most Amish could read and write in English because it was the language they learned in school. Pennsylvania Dutch, their native tongue, was an oral language more than written. The Amish Bible wasn’t even written in Pennsylvania Dutch, but in old-style German.

  I went on to the second note. “‘You made your mistake without repentance. God will have His revenge.’”

  I shivered. The notes were harsh in the extreme. I was afraid to go on. There was so much venom in the writing. “Do you know what the notes are talking about?”

  He shook his head.

  “And how do you know they were meant for your father? There is no name on them. Were they in envelopes with his name?”

  Eli shook his head. “Nee. I know they were for my father because I saw him collect them each day for the last two weeks.”

  “This has been going on for weeks?”

  He nodded. “Every morning my father went to the shed phone and came back with one of these letters.”

  “Are you the only family that uses that shed phone?”

  He shook his head. “There are five families on our road who use the same phone.”

  I nodded. It wasn’t uncommon in an Amish community to share a phone within the district. It was another way for the families to share costs and thereby to save money—frugality was a priority in their culture—and it was a way to keep each other accountable so that phone use was not abused. In most districts, the phone was to be only for business or in the case of emergency. That was becoming more and more difficult for church leaders to enforce as the Amish now needed cell phones just in order to do business.

  I glanced down at the first note again. The words “God will have His revenge” stood out.

  I reread the second note. “You made your mistake without repentance. God will have His revenge.”

  I picked up a third note. “You will be sorry.” This time, there was no mention of God at all. It was short and to the point. There was no vagueness in the implied threat, but could it be counted as a death threat? I wasn’t so sure about that.

  The notes weren’t like ransom letters in the movies where pieces of newsprint were cut out to reveal the message. The notes were printed on white-lined school paper in black ink. As far as I could tell, whoever had done this had made no attempt to hide his or her handwriting. That might help with the investigation if the notes were sent to a lab for handwriting analysis, but did the Holmes County Sheriff’s Department have access to handwriting analysis? If they did, would they use it on a case in which they believed the victim had died of natural causes? Even if Aiden wanted to do that, I guessed he would need permission from Sheriff Marshall because of the cost. Sadly, the sheriff wouldn’t care how another Amish man had died. He’d be happy if they all left his county.

  I set the three notes on the table and picked up a fourth, reading out loud, “‘What you did won’t be forgotten. Be prepared, the day of reckoning is coming!’”

  I shivered. The message was much in the same vein as the others. The person alluded to something that Stephen Raber had done in the past. What could he have done that would warrant so many threatening notes, and even worse, what would he have done that would warrant being murdered? He’d seemed like such a nice man. But really, could I judge a person’s level of niceness on a five-minute conversation? Anyone can be nice for five minutes.

  There were a lot of killers whose neighbors later said that “he was the nicest guy.” I had even come up close and personal with killers like that. I couldn’t let Stephen off the hook because he’d seemed to be nice this morning. Clearly, I knew nothing about him as the notes proved. It seemed to me that his own son knew very little about him either.

  I shouldn’t go any further. I knew it was wrong to read more of the notes without Aiden present. He would be frustrated with me that I had read any of them. I’d only done it because I knew this might be my only chance. Aiden would not agree with this reasoning.

  Aiden had grown up in Holmes County. He knew better than I did how the Amish were, and how, as a general rule, they mistrusted the police. They mistrusted the police because their church elders told them to, which came right back to the riddle of community versus the individual.

  “What do you want me to do with these?” I asked as I set the last note I’d read on the table.

  “I have told you. I want you to find out who killed my father.”

  I pushed myself away from the table as if I needed to put some physical distance between us. “You need to talk to the police about these notes. They are the ones who can decipher what this all means, not me.”

  He wrinkled his nose. “Nee.”

  “I know that you might not want to talk to the police, but Deputy Aiden Brody is a good man. He will be kind and fair to you. He will take these notes and this case seriously. I’m sure if you’re from Harvest, you have heard about Deputy Brody before and will agree that the Amish community respects him.”

  He sighed. “I don’t tru
st many people unless my friends tell me to trust that person. Daniel told me to trust you, not the deputy. You can give the notes to the deputy, but I don’t want to talk to him. I won’t talk to him. If there is something he wants from me, it will have to go through you.”

  I frowned but said, “Okay.”

  Aiden was going to hate everything about this deal.

  Chapter 9

  “If I’m going to help you, I need more information,” I said.

  Eli set Puff on the floor. The large rabbit hopped across the hardwood floor and twitched her nose. She then hopped into the kitchen. I hoped that it wasn’t because she thought she would be able to find something to eat in there; I could vouch that there was nothing to be had. I really should go to the grocery store at some point. Possible murder and giant toffee rabbits will make you think of the more practical aspects of living at times.

  Eli rested his elbows on the table. “I will answer what I can.”

  “When did the letters start?”

  “I knew about them two weeks ago, but they could have started earlier. I don’t know.” He shook his head as if to push aside a bad memory. “I should get back to the farm. The rabbits are my responsibility now. My father cared a lot about those rabbits.” His voice caught when he said this. He stood up abruptly, and as he did, he knocked over the chair.

  Puff bounded deeper into the kitchen, scared off by the noise.

  “I’m so sorry.” He righted the chair before I even had a chance to stand up, then bolted for the door.

  I jumped out of my seat. “Wait! I have so many more questions. If you want me to help you, I need more answers. Who might have wanted to hurt your father?”

  He had one hand on the doorknob. “You have to find that out. Daniel said you could.” With that he threw the door open and ran out.

  I followed him. “You forgot Puff!” I called to him as he climbed into his buggy.

  Eli froze. “You keep Puff for now. I’m not able to care for her. My father gave her special treatment, and I have too many other worries.”

  Before I could argue, he clomped away with his horse and buggy.

  Of course, I could have gathered up the rabbit, jumped in my car, and chased him down to make him take the bunny back. A buggy can’t outrun a car, but I hadn’t driven the car in six weeks. I wasn’t even sure if it had a full tank of gas, or if the battery would start. And who knew how long I would have to chase Eli’s buggy.

  I let the front screen door slam closed and walked back into the living room. I peered into the kitchen and saw Puff had wedged herself behind the refrigerator. Or at least she had tried to. Her head and front paws were hidden by the fridge, but ninety percent of her was sticking out for all the world to see.

  I sat on the floor next to her and patted her rump. By this time, the sun had set, and I was completely drained from the day. All I wanted to do was go to bed and wake up in a rabbit-free house, but I still had those letters to contend with.

  I glanced back at the pile of notes. I wondered what the others said. I knew what the right thing to do was. It would be to call Aiden straightaway and tell him about Eli’s visit. I most definitely should not read those letters. Aiden would not look kindly on it if I decided to read them before I told him about their existence. But, then again, this might be my only chance. Aiden was very tolerant of my inquisitive nature, but he drew the line when it came to his murder investigations.

  Before I read another one of the letters, I knew enough not to get my fingerprints on them. I patted Puff one more time and stood up. I went into the kitchen and searched through the drawers until I found the garden gloves that my grandmother had given me. She thought that since I now had a bit of land, I would want to put in a garden. I might be great with chocolate, but I had a black thumb, so my grandmother’s thinking was wishful at best.

  I slipped the flower-printed gloves on. The gloves themselves were very non-Amish with that delicate and detailed print. Part of me wondered if my grandmother had bought me gloves like that because they were ones she couldn’t wear herself, being of the plain people.

  With my gloves on, I picked up the stack of letters that I hadn’t read yet and began to go through them. I counted fourteen letters in total, including the four that were on the table that I had already read. Eli said his father had received one letter every morning for the last two weeks. If that was true, and I didn’t have any reason to believe it wasn’t, that meant fourteen days, fourteen notes. By my calculations, the letter delivery would have begun April first. Could this all be a long-running April fool’s joke? That didn’t seem likely, considering there were Amish involved. I had never heard of the Amish participating in April Fool’s Day pranks.

  Everything was feeling off. I had been home less than twenty-four hours, and in that time, there had been death, a break-in at the church, and the son of the dead man had come to my house asking for help. It was all too coincidental to have happened in such a short period.

  Puff looked up at me with sad bunny eyes as if to ask what would happen now.

  “I don’t know,” I whispered to the rabbit.

  I was about to open the first letter of the stack in my hand when there was a knock on the screen door of the little house.

  I screamed, and letters went flying in every direction, floating down to the hardwood floor like leaves falling from a tree in autumn.

  Aiden burst through the door and into the living room with his gun drawn. “Police!”

  I threw up my hands. “Don’t shoot! I’m your girlfriend.”

  He holstered the gun when he saw me in the middle of the room surrounded by the fallen letters. He was out of uniform for a change, wearing jeans, a T-shirt, and a light jacket. I wondered if he only had on the jacket to conceal his gun, which he wore in a shoulder holster. “For the love of God, Bailey, by the way you screamed, I thought someone was hurting you.”

  I winced. “Sorry, but for the record, you were the one who scared me.”

  He bent down to pick one of the letters up. Before I could stop him, he read the note. “What are these?” His voice was sharp. He picked up another and read it. “These sound like threats. Are they yours? Are they directed at you?”

  He looked so upset that I might be the person receiving the letters that my heart constricted. If I hadn’t already known that Aiden cared about me, the frightened look on his face would have proven it.

  “They aren’t mine and they aren’t directed at me.”

  His shoulders relaxed ever so slightly, and he stood up. “If they aren’t yours, whose are they?”

  “Well, I was just about to call you about that.”

  He arched an eyebrow. He bent down and picked up another letter. “These threats are very serious. If anyone is getting notes like this, it should be reported to the police.”

  “That’s why I was about to call you, to tell you about these letters.” I hoped that I sounded more convincing than I felt.

  “Have you read them?” He studied me.

  I shifted back and forth. “Not all of them.”

  “Were you planning on reading all of them?” He narrowed his eyes. “Before calling me?”

  I wasn’t sure how to answer that question, so I remained silent.

  “Bailey, you’re wearing gardening gloves, and I know for a fact that you have a black thumb. You’ve killed every flower I’ve ever given you.”

  I blushed. “But I do love flowers and I love receiving them from you. Don’t stop giving me flowers just because I kill them.”

  He smiled and the dimple in his right cheek appeared. “I won’t, even when I know I am sentencing those flowers to certain death. The beautiful smile I see on your face when you receive them is worth it.”

  I couldn’t help but smile, and I stooped to pick up the rest of the letters.

  Aiden held out his hand.

  I may have hesitated just a little, but I handed them over to him.

  He took them from my hand. “Whose letters are t
hese? Who gave them to you?”

  “That’s two different answers. Eli Raber gave them to me.”

  His gaze jerked up from the pile of letters in his hands. “Stephen Raber’s son?”

  I nodded. “The very one. He stopped by my house just a little while ago and gave the letters to me. He said he was sure his father was killed because of these letters. Stephen was the one who was receiving them.”

  “The murder victim, Stephen Raber?”

  I put my hand to my chest. “Murder?”

  Aiden nodded. “Murder.”

  It seemed Eli was right about his father’s death after all.

  Chapter 10

  “That’s what Eli thought happened to his father, but I hoped that Stephen died of a heart attack like everyone seemed to think earlier today,” I said with my hand still on my chest.

  “He did die of a heart attack. That is true.” Aiden pursed his lips together as if to decide whether he wanted to tell me more. “It’s what caused the heart attack that makes his death murder. Stephen Raber had a weak heart, so the lily of the valley he ate stopped it from beating.”

  “Lily of the valley,” I gasped. Even I knew that the beautiful, tiny, bell-shaped flower was poisonous. When I’d worked at JP Chocolates, Jean Pierre had an extremely wealthy customer who thought lily of the valley was beautiful and she wanted us to decorate the candies for her wedding with the live flower because she would have the same blossoms in her bouquet. It took Jean Pierre a long time to convince her that that was a terrible idea if she didn’t want to send all her guests to the hospital. What we ended up doing was decorating the candy with lily of the valley flowers made of white chocolate. Much safer and much tastier too.

  “Why would he eat that? And how can you know so quickly? Don’t toxicology tests and things like that take time?”

  “First of all, I am more than a little disturbed that you know what a toxicology report is.”

  I rolled my eyes. “It’s the twenty-first century, Aiden. Everyone knows what those tests are. Watch any crime show on TV or watch the news for that matter.”