Jonas stared at all the elements in the box as if she were telling him they were on fire. With a gruff sound, he said, “I didn’t look in the box before I carried it in.”
“If you had looked, I don’t think you would have seen anything. The sacks were set up so that nothing escaped as long as they were in the carton. And the cracks in the jars are on the sides. You couldn’t have seen those either.”
By now Vi, Jazzi, and Tessa were listening in. Finally Tessa said what everyone else might have been thinking. “Somebody sabotaged your ingredients. How could that have happened?”
Considering how she’d taken the ingredients from the pantry at the tea garden, how she’d packed them in the carton, and then . . .
Leaning against the counter, Daisy sighed. “I set the carton outside the back kitchen door of the tea garden. Then I went back inside for my purse. I was the only one there. When I was in the office, pulling my purse from the drawer, my phone rang. I answered it because the caller ID was a client. She was explaining to me exactly what she wanted at her tea, and I took notes. Then I left those on my desk, retrieved my purse, went outside, and picked up the carton. I loaded it in my car and drove home. That’s the only place anyone could have tampered with it.”
“I don’t like what that means,” Jonas muttered.
“What does it mean?” Vi asked, not following his line of thinking.
Jazzi quickly picked up his thought pattern. “It means somebody was following Mom or knows her habits and is out to play a prank on her.”
Daisy remembered those wood trees falling on her at the rehearsal at the Little Theater. Was this a prank? Or was it something more sinister?
* * *
Daisy had all morning on Thanksgiving Day to cook, reassure Jazzi that someone had just played a prank on her, and text with Jonas that she was okay. He hadn’t seemed to believe her and he’d arrived early, ready to do anything that needed to be done.
She’d given him the job of setting the table. The white tablecloth with gold threads interwoven into a geometrical design fit her table. She’d found another white tablecloth in her hutch to cover the table that Jonas had contributed. She decided to mix her set of white ironstone plates with a set of dishes her mother had given her so they’d have enough place settings for the tables. The mixture of her mother’s garden-painted china and the white ironstone went together well. So did the mugs. The silverware was a combination of a rose-pattern stainless steel set her mother-in-law had given her and Ryan when they’d married and the everyday silverware she used with Jazzi. Tessa had provided orange-and-gold-patterned paper napkins to add even more color to the tables. The artistic one, Tessa had created two arrangements, a small pumpkin, gourds, and Indian corn for each table. She’d brought them over that morning along with the napkins because Trevor would be picking her up to bring her to dinner.
Daisy had stabbed the turkey with a meat thermometer and closed the oven when Jonas came up beside her. “Have you spoken to Camellia yet?”
Daisy hadn’t thought much about her sister with everything else going on. “No, I haven’t spoken with her, but she and her guy got in last night to stay at the Covered Bridge Bed and Breakfast.”
“How did your mom feel about that? Didn’t she want them staying with her?”
“She did, but Mom wouldn’t have liked it if they were sharing the same room. This is Camellia’s method of getting her own way, yet pleasing Mom too. They stayed late last night and played cards with Mom and Dad. I did find out her boyfriend’s name is Robert—Robert Corning.”
“And that’s all you know?”
“Actually, I think he works in an advertising company. But that’s it. I’ve had my mind on other things.”
Jonas leaned so close that their shoulders were touching. Then his arm was smack up against hers. It gave her a measure of comfort just to have him here. “Have you given any more thought to who might have sabotaged your baking supplies?”
“Put that way, it sounds like a prank, doesn’t it?” She lowered her voice. “If it is the same person who killed Margaret, then my guess is Margaret’s death wasn’t premeditated.”
He leaned away to study her. “How did you come to that conclusion?”
“The holes in the flour and sugar bags and the cracks in the jars just seemed like something he or she did on the spur of the moment. No one could have known that box would be sitting outside. No one could have known I’d be gone for more than a minute to retrieve something I’d forgotten. That phone call just happened to tie me up longer.”
He pushed his hand into the pocket of his black jeans, and Daisy suspected he did that to keep from clenching his fist. “So you think somebody is following and watching you?” he asked, tight-lipped.
“They may be trying to lead me off the scent. I don’t know, Jonas. I’ve been so preoccupied with Vi and Sammy . . . and just running the tea garden. I haven’t noticed if anybody is following me. We’re so rural out here that anyone could park their car in a stand of trees and follow me when I leave.”
“That’s a chilling thought.” Jonas glanced at the sliding glass doors that led out onto the patio in the back. “Glass doors are never secure, at least not secure enough.”
“When I renovated the barn into a house, I wanted convenience to the backyard. I hadn’t even planned on a security system at that point.”
“I know you have a camera at the back as well as the front, but it wouldn’t hurt to have more motion detector lights on the property.”
“This place would be lit up as if it
