Candy Cane Crime

Book 0: Amish Candy Shop Mystery

by Amanda Flower

Genres: Cozy Mystery

Synopsis

A candy-striped caper . . .



Christmas is coming all too quickly for Harvest, Ohio's famous chocolatier, Bailey King. Thanks to her new cable TV show, her shop has more candy orders than she can handle this holiday season. Fortunately, her beloved Cousin Charlotte is happy to take the Candy Cane Exchange off Bailey's to-do list. After all, Charlotte has come to Harvest from her conservative home district to find her future outside of her family's influence. What better way than by taking on the Englisch task of pairing the sweet notes everyone is exchanging with a peppermint treat, just in time for Christmas Eve delivery? But when Charlotte discovers some of those delicious missives are for her, suddenly she's staking out the festive postbox, hoping to catch her secret admirer in his intriguing tracks . . .



When Charlotte sees something underhanded going on beneath the merrymaking, she enlists the help of Sheriff Deputy Luke Little to find out if her unknown correspondent is none other than the town's biggest suspect. And the surprising truth about her suitor's identity has her contemplating leaving her Amish roots behind forever . . .

Release date: October 27, 2020

Publisher: Kensington Books

Print pages: 83

Sample

Chapter One

The soles of my black sneakers slipped and slid along the icy sidewalk, but I didn’t slow down. I was just in too much of a rush to reach Swissmen Sweets to tell my cousins the news I had just heard. The cold wind blew dime-sized snowflakes against my bare cheeks. The scarf that I wore to protect myself from the blustery weather was no use. I felt it whipping behind my large, black bonnet in a gray curtain, and my legs caught in my thick skirts. It was no matter; I had to tell Cousins Clara and Bailey before Margot Rawlings did. They needed to be warned.

I ran across the village square and across Main Street. There was no traffic today. The weather was too poor. Amish farmers and merchants knew not to go out in weather like this, and even the Englisch schools had closed for the day due to the heavy snow. Perhaps half the village would be closed, but I knew that bad weather was not going to keep Margot away. If she was on a mission, that woman would stomp through a hurricane to reach her goal. Bailey said it was her most admirable—and terrifying—quality.

When I made it across the street, I grabbed the door handle to Swissmen Sweets, the Amish candy shop where I worked and also lived, and pulled hard. The wind fought me as I struggled with the door, but finally, I opened it wide enough to stumble inside, surrounded by a cloud of snow.

The candy shop fell silent as I regained my balance just inside the door. Everyone in the front room stared at me openmouthed, including Margot Rawlings, who had beaten me there. The woman had to be some sort of Englisch magician to pull off such an feat. I had been told she was at the Harvest Market almost a half mile away. I should have been able to reach the shop first because I had been only across the square delivering candy to Juliet Brook, the pastor’s wife. And yet, there Margot stood, staring at me with her appraising dark eyes, her signature short curls covering the top of her head. She wore jeans and a thick sweater under an open winter coat. Her coat was still on, so I knew she didn’t plan to stay long. It would be just long enough to announce her decree and leave. Her clipboard was in hand, so I knew she meant business. Poor Bailey.

I suspected that Margot had already told Bailey what she wanted her to do from the pained expression on my cousin’s face. Bailey wore jeans, a fitted, purple flannel shirt, and dangly silver earrings. Her long brown hair was pulled back into a ponytail, and her blue eyes were worried. I would not have expected anything less after a face-to-face with Margot and her massive to-do list.

“Charlotte,” Cousin Clara, Bailey’s grandmother, said. “Come in from the cold and take off your cloak before the snow on it melts and you are soaked through.”

Bailey sat across from where Margot stood, at a small round table at the front of the shop. We had the tables there so that customers could chat and taste our candies without the pressure of making a quick decision.

“I’m too late,” I said.

Cousin Clara shook out my damp cloak with her wrinkled hands and hung it on the coat tree in the corner of the front room. She held out her hand and said. “Give me your bonnet as well. It needs to dry out, too.”

I did what I was told. “I got here as quickly as I could,” I whispered to Cousin Clara.

She added the bonnet to the coat tree as well. “Why were you in a rush to come home?”

“I had just heard that Margot was heading this way with a job for Bailey. I wanted to beat her to warn you both!” I glanced back at the table where Bailey and Margot spoke. Bailey was shaking her head “no” and Margot was nodding hers “yes.”

“I’m too late.”

“Oh, Charlotte, no one can beat Margot Rawlings when she is on a mission,” Cousin Clara said in a low voice, so that Margot wouldn’t overhear. “Other than the bishop’s wife, Ruth Yoder, Margot is the most determined woman I’ve ever known. If the two of them joined together, none of us would have any peace. It’s for the best the pair of them are rarely in agreement.”

I had to agree with her there. Ruth Yoder scared me even more than Margot, but that had more to do with her being the bishop’s wife and the fact that I was twenty-two years old and still not baptized into the Amish church—something Ruth Yoder did not approve of. She made no secret of what she thought, too.

“You are the obvious choice,” Margot was telling Bailey at the table. There was a large cardboard box in the middle of the table between them, and she pushed it in Bailey’s direction. “You’ve already made all the candy canes in this box. I’m not asking you to make more. You can always get others from Harvest Market. I don’t think people will even know the difference between the ones made by Swissmen Sweets and the store-bought ones.”

Bailey frowned and pushed the box back across the tabletop. “I know it makes sense for Swissmen Sweets to handle that Candy Cane Exchange. We are the only candy shop in the village. We were happy to make the candy canes for it. Charlotte did a great job with them. However, I thought we agreed that’s where Swissmen Sweet’s involvement would end.”

“I don’t remember saying that was the end of it for Swissmen Sweets,” Margot said.

Bailey sighed. “I know why you thought of us first, and I am so grateful, Margot, that you think of our shop when problems arise.”

I glanced at Cousin Clara and she smiled at me. I think we were both surprised that Bailey had been able to say that with a straight face.

“But,” Bailey went on, “as much as I would like to help, Margot, I just can’t. Because of Bailey’s Amish Sweets, the candy orders this Christmas are three times what they were last year. We’re working around the clock to finish everything on time. To make matters worse, I have to go to New York tomorrow morning to do more promotion for the show. That leaves my grandmother, Charlotte, and Emily with all the work. You can see why I wouldn’t want this to fall on their plates, too, can’t you?”

Margot folded her arms and didn’t comment.

“We just can’t take it on.” Bailey pushed the box a little closer to Margot, and then Margot put her hand on the other side and pushed back. The cardboard creased as they pushed from the two opposite sides. If they pushed any harder, the candy canes inside would be crushed.

“What’s the project? I made the candy canes, but I didn’t know what they were for exactly,” I said. Juliet had told me about the candy exchange when I was at the church, but I hoped that I could distract them both by asking. It would also keep the candy canes from being pulverized.

Margot eyed me and then removed her hand from the box. Bailey did the same.

“We’re raising money for new costumes for the annual Christmas pageant on the square,” Margot said. “We’ve had the same wardrobe for the last ten years, and the shepherds are starting to look threadbare. It’s a disgrace! I know they were poor workhands on the hills of Bethlehem, but they can’t have translucent robes. There are children in our audience.”

Bailey made a face and brushed her long ponytail over her shoulder. As she did, the Christma. . .