A Plain Malice: An Appleseed Creek Mystery (Appleseed Creek Mystery Series Book 4) by Amanda Flower Page B

Harshberger College because the position padded my résumé, which was heavy on degrees and low on work experience, and Harshberger was the only place that would hire me. Then, I met Becky and her brother Timothy, and my life changed. The thought of leaving made my heart ache.
    A twig snapped to my left. I turne d, grateful for the distraction from my black thoughts. A shadow moved near the corner of the inn.
    Angry voices floated in my direction. “You’d better not be lying to me.” A male voice said.
    I edged along the side of the building with only the tiniest needle of guilt tickling the back of my mind. I eavesdropped, yes, but I did it with the Appleseed Creek police chief’s blessing.
    “There’s nothing to worry about. What happened won’ t mess anything up,” the same voice said.
    “ You’d better be right, or I’m pulling out,” the second voice, which could be either male or female, rasped.
    I inched around the side of the building , hoping to see who they were. At least I knew one was a man, so that narrowed down my candidates from the bus tour—if it was a passenger from the bus—considerably. There were far fewer men than women on the trip.
    “And,” the hissing voice said. “This had better not cost me any more money.”
    “It won’t. What y ou have already paid is enough. More than enough.”
    I accidently kic ked a pebble with my toe, and it bounced off the stone side of the inn with a click. I froze.
    “Did you hear something?” Raspy asked.
    “It was probably a squirrel. Don’t be so paranoid,” the man said.
    “I have a reason to be paranoid. If this doesn’t go through, I’m ruined.”
    Beep! Timothy turned into the circular drive and beeped his horn. “Chloe! I’m over here!”
    The whispers stopped. I heard rustles as the pair moved away. I peeked around the side of the building. Whoever had been there talking was gone and knew I had been there. I leaned against the building’s stone face and closed my eyes for a brief second.
    I waved at Timothy and then ran around the building, hoping to catch up with the pair. They were nowhere to be seen. They must have slipped inside of the one of the inn’s many doors. Going into the inn to search for them would be no use. By that time, they would have blended with the other tour bus passengers.
    Timothy met on of the other side of the building. “What are you doing? You just took off .”
    I caught my breath. “I think I just overheard someone scheming on the other side of the building. I ran around to see if I could catch them.”
    Timothy’s brow creased in concern. “What was it about?”
    “I don’t know .” I kicked at the pebbles on the walk. “It sounded suspicious. One of them was threatening the other.” I bit my lip. “And I think they may have overheard when you called my name.”
    Timothy took a step in the direction of building as if he were trying to decide if he should run after whoever had been there. “You think that’s a problem.”
    “I don’t know, but I think it would be better if they didn’t know I had been listening to their conversation.”
    Timothy frowned. “Maybe you shouldn’t do this, Chloe. This isn’t like the other times you helped Greta. When you did this before, most of the people were Amish, and I knew them. We don’t know anything about these tourists.”
    I stopped kicking pebbles. “I promised the chief.”
    He stepped into my person al space. “I would never recover if something happened to you.”
    “Nothing is going to happen.” I swallowed hard.
    “If it does, it will be my fault for announcing you were there.”
    “For all they know I just came outside and didn’t hear a thing.”
    Timothy appeared unconvinced. “It will be my fault just like this tragedy at the farm was mine.”
    I pulled back. “How’s that?”
    His hair fell into his eyes, and he raked it away with his fingers. “It was my idea to let the tourists taste the fresh milk.”
    “That doesn’t