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    Botched Butterscotch
    Botched Butterscotch
    Botched Butterscotch
    Ebook100 pages1 hour

    Botched Butterscotch

    By Amanda Flower

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    About this ebook

    A slice of intrigue. . .   

    Mother’s Day is a sweet and busy time at the candy shop Bailey King runs with her Amish grandmother. This year is extra special, because Bailey’s parents are visiting Harvest, Ohio. Bailey’s father has rarely returned since leaving the Amish faith over thirty years ago, but Bailey is confident that the right treats can help sugarcoat any awkwardness. For Mother’s Day Tea at the local church, she’s whipping up her mom’s favorite: butterscotch fudge. All’s going well, until a sticky-fingered thief makes off with the money raised for a local women’s support group.
     
    While Bailey tries to discover who stuck their fingers in the cookie jar, she encounters an assortment of suspects. It doesn’t help that Juliet, mother of Deputy Aiden Brody, is conspiring with Bailey’s mom to plan Aiden and Bailey’s wedding…though they’re not even engaged! Can Bailey find the culprit before events—both criminal and personal—boil over into disaster?
     
     
    Recipe Included!
     
    Praise for Amanda Flower and her Amish cozies
     
    “As it turns out, Amanda Flower may have just written the first Amish rom com.”
    —USA Today
     
    “Flower has hit it out of the ballpark . . . and continues to amaze with her knowledge of the Amish way of life.”
    —RT Book Reviews
     
    “At turns playful and engaging . . . a satisfyingly complex cozy.”
    —Library Journal
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherKensington Books
    Release dateApr 28, 2020
    ISBN9781496726728
    Author

    Amanda Flower

    Amanda Flower is an Agatha Award-nominated mystery author (Maid of Murder), who first caught the writing bug in elementary school. She is also the author of Andi Unexpected, the Andi Boggs series, Appleseed Creek and the India Hayes series. When she’s not writing, she works as a librarian at Ursuline College near her hometown of Tallmadge, Ohio. Visit her online at www.amandaflower.com and www.isabellaalan.com.

    Read more from Amanda Flower

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      Book preview

      Botched Butterscotch - Amanda Flower

      A slice of intrigue. . .

      Mother’s Day is a sweet and busy time at the candy shop Bailey King runs with her Amish grandmother. This year is extra special, because Bailey’s parents are visiting Harvest, Ohio. Bailey’s father has rarely returned since leaving the Amish faith over thirty years ago, but Bailey is confident that the right treats can help sugarcoat any awkwardness. For Mother’s Day Tea at the local church, she’s whipping up her mom’s favorite: butterscotch peanut bars. All’s going well, until a sticky-fingered thief makes off with the money raised for a local women’s support group.

      While Bailey tries to discover who stuck their fingers in the cookie jar, she encounters an assortment of suspects. It doesn’t help that Juliet, mother of Deputy Aiden Brody, is conspiring with Bailey’s mom to plan Aiden and Bailey’s wedding…though they’re not even engaged! Can Bailey find the culprit before events—both criminal and personal—boil over into disaster?

      Visit us at www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Books by Amanda Flower

      Amish Candy Shop Mysteries

      Assaulted Caramel

      Lethal Licorice

      Premeditated Peppermint

      Toxic Toffee

      Amish Matchmaker Mysteries

      Matchmaking Can Be Murder

      Amish Candy Shop Mystery Novellas

      Criminally Cocoa

      Botched Butterscotch

      Published by Kensington Publishing Corporation

      Botched Butterscotch

      An Amish Candy Shop Mystery

      Amanda Flower

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      www.kensingtonbooks.com

      Contents

      Books by Amanda Flower

      Botched Butterscotch

      Contents

      Copyright

      Dedication

      Chapter One

      Chapter Two

      Chapter Three

      Chapter Four

      Chapter Five

      Chapter Six

      Chapter Seven

      Chapter Eight

      Chapter Nine

      Epilogue

      Clara King’s Butterscotch Peanut Bars

      About Amanda Flower

      Marshmallow Malice

      Chapter One

      Copyright

      To the extent that the image or images on the cover of this book depict a person or persons, such person or persons are merely models, and are not intended to portray any character or characters featured in the book.

      Kensington books are published by

      Kensington Publishing Corp.

      119 West 40th Street

      New York, NY 10018

      Copyright © 2020 by Amanda Flower

      All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any means without the prior written consent of the Publisher, excepting brief quotes used in reviews.

      All Kensington titles, imprints, and distributed lines are available at special quantity discounts for bulk purchases for sales promotion, premiums, fund-raising, educational, or institutional use.

      Special book excerpts or customized printings can also be created to fit specific needs. For details, write or phone the office of the Kensington Sales Manager: Kensington Publishing Corp., 119 West 40th Street, New York, NY 10018. Attn. Sales Department. Phone: 1-800-221-2647.

      Kensington logo Reg. U.S. Pat. & TM Off.

      First Electronic Edition: May 2020

      eISBN-13: 978-1-4967-2672-8

      eISBN-10: 1-4967-2672-3

      Printed in the United States of America

      Dedication

      For Beth, Cecy, and Mary Kate

      Chapter One

      I buzzed about the front room of Swissmen Sweets, the candy shop in Harvest, Ohio, that I ran with my Amish grandmother, Clara King. As I scurried about, I hit every flat surface that I could reach with a feather duster. I dusted the maple shelves that held the glass jars of jelly beans, lemon drops, licorice, and hard candy, all of which were made in this very shop. I stopped just short of dusting the shop cat, Nutmeg, a little orange striped feline who watched my feather duster with studied interest.

      Bailey, my grandmother said from behind the half-domed glass counter where we displayed our most enticing treats: molded chocolate creations, truffles, and fudge all had a place of honor behind the glass. At the moment, my grandmother was sliding a tray of butterscotch peanut bars into the case. "You must calm down, kind. You are making us all dizzy. After the tray was in place, she patted the prayer cap on the back of her head. Your parents will be here any moment. The shop is as clean as it’s ever been. There is nothing more you can do."

      Cousin Clara is right, said Charlotte Weaver, our young Amish shop assistant and my cousin. She put away the bottle of vinegar water she’d been using to clean the counter. You are making me nervous.

      I know I’m wound a little tight. I just can’t believe that Mom and Dad are actually coming to Harvest today. I thought they never would again. I stepped behind the counter and stowed the feather duster in the cabinet below the cash register with the other cleaning supplies. As I moved, my dangly silver earrings knocked against my cheeks. Being the only non-Amish person in Swissmen Sweets, I was also the only one wearing any type of jewelry. I have always been partial to dangly earrings.

      I never thought my parents would return to Swissmen Sweets because my father ran away from Harvest when he was a young man. He left the Amish community and Ohio so that he could marry my mother. When I was a child, they came back once a year so my grandparents could see me, but once I was an adult my parents stopped those visits. I didn’t think they had been in Ohio in over ten years, except for a very brief trip to attend my grandfather’s funeral. My nerves were heightened by the fact that my parents did not approve of my decision to leave my job as a prestigious New York City chocolatier to move to Amish Country. I suspected in their eyes I’d gone backward, since I’d settled in the place they’d fled when they were young.

      I straightened up and ran my damp palms over my jeans. Maami was right. I needed to get a grip. I calmed down just as the front door opened and my mother and father walked in. Dad looked like any other suburban New England father. He wore chinos, loafers, and a light blue Polo shirt—Polo with a big P—and his gray hair was combed back from his face. A pair of sunglasses sat in the breast pocket of his shirt. He was clean shaven. Looking at him, you would never know that he spent the first twenty years of his life in the Plain community.

      My mother, on the other hand, had not grown up Amish. She was originally from Holmes County too, but from an English family in the county seat of Millersburg. She wore a long, flowered sundress and short-sleeved cardigan, and I thought the best evidence that she’d never been Amish was the flower tattoo on the inside of her right arm. It was something she got as a teenager when she wanted to assert herself, or so she’d told me when I wanted one as a child. Tattoos were forbidden in the Amish world, and I always suspected, having grown up in Holmes County, the tattoo was my mother’s way of stating her Englishness.

      My mother’s parents passed away before I was born. They were farmers, and she didn’t want that for herself or her husband. When she and my father fell in love, he left his Amish district and they ran away to New England. He went to college on a scholarship and got a corporate job, and my mother delved into her first love: painting. She sold her New England landscapes in gift shops around the region.

      When I was old enough, my parents would leave me in Holmes County for the entire summer. This gave them time to travel and see the world without a child tagging along behind them. During those weeks and months when I was alone with my Amish grandparents, I fell in love with chocolate. I know people say all

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