Juliet left our table and ran to the front of the room. Jethro’s pig ears flopped up and down as she hurried to the podium. I jumped out of my seat too.
My mother grabbed my hand. “Bailey, what are you doing?”
I stared at her hand on my wrist. “I’m going to see if I can help.”
“Why? Whatever happened has nothing to do with you. Why get yourself involved?” She shook her head. “Sit down and let someone else handle it.”
I removed my hand from my mother’s grasp. “If I can offer help, I will.” I went toward the front of the room.
At the podium, Margot stood next to Polly Anne, who looked like she would cry at any moment.
“This is so horrible. I don’t know how much longer I’ll be able to keep the farm running if we don’t get that money. Who would do such a thing?” Polly Anne asked.
“Maybe someone put it somewhere for safekeeping,” Juliet suggested, holding Jethro close to her chest. The little pig’s eyes bulged slightly.
Margot shook her head. “If none of us did, there was no one else to do it.”
“Are you really sure that the money is gone?” I asked. “All of it?”
Margot picked up the cardboard box where Polly Anne had dropped it and opened the lid. It was empty. I’d been hoping in vain that the thief had missed something.
“If the donations were checks, they would have been made out to the farm, right?” I asked. “Whoever took them can’t cash them.”
Margot shook her head again “Most of the donations were in cash, so there’s no way to trace the stolen money. I’m sure whoever took it will toss the checks and pocket the rest.”
I frowned, knowing that Margot was likely right.
“Someone in this room has to have taken the money,” Polly Anne said as she clenched her fists at her sides. “I thought the ladies here today cared about what Abigail’s Farm was doing for other women. I’m sorry to find I was wrong.”
Juliet bristled. “Now, let’s not jump to conclusions. Most of these women go to my church, and I can vouch for them as fine, upstanding ladies.”
Margot snorted at that. “Like a fine, upstanding lady never did anything wrong? Don’t be naive, Juliet.”
“I would like to think that none of these women would steal, but it has to be someone in this room. No one else had access,” Polly Anne said, then she let out a breath. “Even so, I’m sorry. I shouldn’t have thrown out an accusation like that. It takes just one dishonest person to spoil everything. I’m sorry, Juliet. You and your church have been so kind to my organization. I wouldn’t ever want to say something that would upset you.”
I swallowed hard and glanced around. There was a very good chance a woman in this room had stolen the money. But every seat was filled, so it wasn’t as if one of the women had crept away—did that mean someone was sitting on ten thousand dollars while sipping her tea and nibbling on butterscotch peanut bars? Or that someone from outside the event had slipped in with no one the wiser? I pondered this as I glanced back at Polly Anne. She was probably the only person who could’ve kept her eyes on the box, because she had been at the podium with a view of the whole room. Granted, she’d been glancing at each table, making eye contact with the attendees and occasionally glancing down at her notes. But surely she must have seen something.
Behind us, the women murmured as they watched our little conference play out beside the podium.
“Someone call the police. There has been a theft,” said a woman holding a tiny baby at the nearest table.
“How can we be sure? Maybe the money was just misplaced,” the lady next to her suggested.
“It wasn’t misplaced,” Polly Anne said to the two women. “The box holding the money is still here, and it’s clear that there is nothing in it. Someone took the money.” She showed them the box in a way that reminded me of a street magician performing some kind of trick, but this was a different sleight of the hand. It wasn’t intended to amuse and delight. It was intended to steal.
“I didn’t think that a cardboard box was an appropriate container for all that cash, but it wasn’t my place to say,” another voice tsked.
I glanced over at the elderly woman who’d said this. I wished she had made such a suggestion, or at least that someone had guarded the box at all times.
To some extent this theft was due to naivete. The kind of small-town thinking that said it was safe to keep your doors unlocked, to leave the keys in your car, to leave ten thousand dollars sitting unattended in a church fellowship hall. I should have known better, because I had learned after living in this small town for the last year that bad things happened here—just like they did every other place on earth.
Someone must have called the sheriff’s department, because five minutes later Deputy Little, a tall, thin deputy who was no older than twenty-three, walked into the room. He scanned the fellowship hall nervously. I suspected he was looking for another man to back him up, but he wasn’t going to find much male support in the middle of a Mother’s Day tea in the church basement.
Charlotte, who sat at the table next to Maami, straightened up when she saw Deputy Little, and I tried not to read too much into it.
The young deputy swallowed when he realized he was on his own. He gathered his courage by clearing his throat and shaking out his hands like an Olympic diver about to take the big plunge. Despite the seriousness of the situation, his physical reaction made me smile. “I heard a report of robbery,” Deputy Little said loudly.
“Where’s Aiden?” Juliet asked. “I would think if there was a crime committed at his church, where his mother and his beloved—” She pointed to me, and I could feel my cheeks turn red. I didn’t think anyone would want to be pointed out as the “beloved.”
“I would think, if that was the situation,” Juliet went on, “that he would at least show up to investigate the case.”
Deputy Little’s bravado melted away in the face of his idol’s mother. “Deputy Brody is out on another call, and dispatch sent me since I was in the area. Please know that Deputy Brody cares very much about every case in this county. And the rest of the department is tied up with a bad accident, so I’m afraid it will only be me investigating the case at this time.”
Margot groaned.
He cleared his throat again. “You can be sure, Ms. Brody, that I will be taking this case very seriously and I will do my best to bring it to a resolution quickly.” He looked around the room. “Now, can anyone tell me what has been stolen?”
Polly Anne held up her hand. “The money. The money that was raised to keep Abigail’s Farm in operation. If we don’t get it back, we will have to close. I can’t bear the idea of telling the women at the farm. They would be devastated.”
Deputy Little frowned. “How much money are we talking about?”
When Polly Anne told Deputy Little the amount, he whistled. “And most of it was cash?” He sounded concerned, doubtful that there was any hope of seeing that money again. I think we all knew it would be difficult to recover that much money in cash. It was virtually untraceable.
“We will do the best we can to get those donations back,” Deputy Little said.
Women began to leave the tea, as it was clear that the proceedings had come to a grinding halt with the disappearance of the money. Nobody wanted to become embroiled in a police investigation, and I couldn’t say I blamed them.
Deputy Little watched them rise from their seats with alarm. “Please, ladies, do not leave just yet.”
Three women scowled at him and kept walking. His shoulders drooped even more. He was a law enforcement officer, after all, and he deserved respect.
I decided to speak up. “Please, ladies, can you wait one moment for Deputy Little to take a look at the crime scene?”
There was a murmur through the hundred-some ladies who were still in the fellowship hall, but I was gratified to see that nobody else left.
Deputy Little nodded at me, and I took it as acknowledgment that I had been of help. It wasn’t much, but at least I’d been able to do something.
He cleared his throat. “I’m going to have to ask you ladies to think back before the money was found missing. It would be very helpful if you could try to recall anything at all, no matter how small or inconsequential it might seem. I will be coming around to each table to ask if you remember anything out of the ordinary. Time is of the essence in cases like this.”
“Who was the last person to see the money in the box?” Deputy Little asked.
“That would be me,” Margot said. “I checked just before Polly Anne gave her speech, because I wanted to rally the ladies to donate even more than the cost of their tickets.”
“Where was the box at that time?” the deputy asked.
Margot pressed her lips together and pointed to the back of the room at the registration table by the door.
Deputy Little frowned when he saw how far away the box had been from the podium. I bet he and I were thinking the same thing: Leaving the box on the registration table had been a very bad idea. With all of the women focusing forward, their eyes glued to Polly Anne, someone must’ve snuck in and absconded with the cash. They could have taken it without ever being seen.
“And all the money was there when you checked the box?” Deputy Little asked.
“As far as I could tell,” Margot said. “I didn’t count it, but there was a lot in there.”
Deputy Little looked at the box as if he were trying to commit the shape, width, and depth of it to memory.
“You can keep it,” Juliet said. “It’s just an old printer paper box that I covered with wrapping paper. It’s not worth anything, and I can always make another.”
“I suggest that next time you have an event that collects this much money you do a little better than cardboard,” Margot said and sighed. “I knew I should have taken over the collection box, but I can’t do everything. A leader has to delegate somewhere.” She sighed again.
“How was I to know that someone would steal the money?” Juliet asked. “This is a ladies’ tea.”
“How were you to know that someone wasn’t going to steal the money?” Margot countered.
“I wasn’t the one who left it in the back of the room,” Juliet countered.
Margot narrowed her eyes.
I sighed. This argument could go on for hours.
Deputy Little took the box. “I will take it with me and see if we can get a print off of it. The techs will surely try. Who all touched the box?” Juliet, Margot, and Polly Anne raised their hands.
“I touched it too. It sat crookedly on the table, and I had to fix it. I can’t stand anything out of place,” an elderly woman at the table next to the podium said.
“I’m not sure how conclusive this will be. I might need to fingerprint those of you who touched the box, just for comparison’s sake.”
“You will not fingerprint me, young man. And if you have a problem with that, you can take it up with my son.” The elderly woman paused and looked around the room. “The sheriff.”
Deputy Little looked as if he might just lose his supper when he heard who the woman was. I was willing to bet he didn’t want his first solo case to involve the sheriff’s mother.
The sheriff’s mother rose from her seat. “And now, I’m going home.” She grabbed the last two pieces of fudge from the service dish on her table, wrapped them in a napkin, and tucked them into her purse. With that, she bustled out of the fellowship hall.
Deputy Little didn’t make a single move to stop her. His Adam’s apple bobbed up and down. “If anyone has anything odd to report, I would love to hear it.”
No one said a thing.
“Deputy Little,” I said. “Can I talk to you for a minute?”
He looked at me with relief, since getting information from the other women wasn’t going well. Deputy Little followed me away from the crowd and the podium. “Did you see something, Bailey?”
“Maybe,” I said, doing my best to keep my voice low. “There was an Amish woman here earlier, and it struck me as odd.”
“Your grandmother and Charlotte are here,” he said.
I couldn’t help but notice that his voice went up an octave at the mention of Charlotte. I really hoped I wasn’t reading too much into his reaction.
“Yes, but that’s because I bought them both tickets. They are the only Amish here. This really isn’t an Amish event.”
“I guess you’re right,” he said. “Who was the Amish woman you saw? What was her name?”
I shook my head. “I don’t know. I asked my grandmother who she was, but by the time Maami looked at where she was standing in the kitchen doorway, she was gone.”
“Do you think she would take the money?” Deputy Little asked.
I pressed my lips together and thought. There was nothing to indicate that she would steal, but I did have the gut feeling that something was off about her. “I don’t know. She wasn’t anywhere near the box when I saw her, and she wasn’t here very long. The only reason I mentioned it was because this is a very English tea, and her presence seemed odd.”
He nodded. “I will make a note of it and ask the other witnesses if they saw her.” He lowered his voice. “I can’t let anything go wrong on this case. It’s very important to me. Deputy Brody wants me to work this one on my own.”
My eyebrows went up.
He licked his lip. “It will be the first case I have conducted completely solo. I mean, other than a traffic stop. Deputy Brody told me this was my chance to show the sheriff what I can do. If it goes well, I have a chance at a promotion. Do you think the sheriff’s mother will turn in a bad report about me?”
“You let her leave,” I said. “There’s no reason for her to say anything to the sheriff about you.” In my head, I thought if the sheriff’s mother was anything like her son, she wouldn’t need much of a reason to speak ill of someone.
“Would you like a little bit of help from me?” I offered.
“I don’t think that’s what Deputy Brody meant when he said he wanted me to take this case alone.”
“You know that I know Aiden well, and I’m certain what he meant was no other help from the department. Help from me doesn’t count, and I can look for the Amish woman.” I smiled and tried to look as helpful as possible.
“Well, I suppose you do have more access to Amish women than I do.” He blushed. “I only mean that you know more of them, and they will talk to you. I know the Amish are not fond of law enforcement.”
“You’re right about that.”
He pressed his lips together as he thought it over.
“It will be our little secret, Deputy,” I said. “Don’t worry about it at all. Aiden never has to know.”
The beads of sweat that gathered on his forehead said he was worried, and I was kidding myself. Of course Aiden would find out. He always did, but if I could find the Amish woman before that, all the better.
After my conversation with Deputy Little, the young deputy moved around the fellowship hall and spoke with each of the women. After he’d spoken to them, the women were free to go. Maami and Charlotte went back to Swissmen Sweets to help Emily shut up the store. The ladies from the church began to clean up the tables one by one. It was sad that such a wonderful event had ended on such a low note. Polly Anne was surely shaken up by it, as she sat next to her friend Linda, who was patting her hand. “The police will find the money. Don’t you worry about it.”
Polly Anne nodded dumbly. By the look of it, shock had set in. I wanted to ask Linda how she was so certain, but Juliet beat me to it. “You don’t worry about it at all. My Aiden will get to the bottom of this, and he has Bailey to help. No crime goes unsolved with the two of them on the case.” She looked at me. “Bailey will find out what happened to the money.”
I pointed at my chest with my brow up way past my hairline. “Me?”
Juliet nodded. “Of course, it’s what you do. You find the bad guy.”
Jethro, who was in her arms, grunted as if he agreed with that assessment.
“Bailey, what on earth have you been up to since you moved to Harvest?” my mother wanted to know. “Why does Juliet think you can find out who stole the money? You make candy.”
“You didn’t know that Bailey solves murders?” Juliet asked, as if this were a fact everyone on the planet was aware of.
“What?” My mother shouted almost as loudly as Polly Anne had when she’d discovered the money was missing.
I jumped out of my seat. “I’m going to help the ladies clean up.” I hurried into the church kitchen. Maybe I was a coward, but a conversation about murder wasn’t something I wanted to have with my mother right then, if ever.