Cut out cookie, p.5
Cut Out Cookie, page 5
She shook her head. “She’s not there.”
A death investigation was always stressful. Erin didn’t want to hear all of the details, yet she was curious. She knew that when she went back to Auntie Clem’s Bakery the next morning, everyone would be there to ask about the latest death. Auntie Clem’s was always busiest when there was some extra-juicy gossip or shocking news. Erin couldn’t exactly plan crimes to boost her sales, but she sometimes wondered what she could do to mimic the boost she got after something tragic happened. So far, she hadn’t found any sale campaign that could rival it.
And Erin was worried about Vic. Each of the law enforcement officers that she had talked to assured her that there was nothing to indicate that anything had happened to Vic, and they were sure she would show up at any time, safe and sound.
But how could anyone be sure without knowing why she was gone in the first place?
It had been almost an hour since Erin had woken up so abruptly when Vic finally did get home. She drove up in Erin’s yellow Volkswagen Beetle—which Erin had not even noticed was missing from the garage and had not given Vic permission to take. Erin had insisted on raising the kitchen blind again, so she saw Vic’s pale and pinched expression when she emerged from the garage, looking around anxiously at all of the police activity.
She couldn’t hear what Vic was saying, but could hear her tone, and was pretty sure that it was along the lines of “What’s going on?” or “What’s wrong?”
When they wouldn’t let her walk through the backyard, she circled around to the front. Erin hurried to open the door before she got there.
Vic grabbed Erin and pulled her close, mirroring the relief that Erin had felt when Terry assured her that it wasn’t Vic who had been killed. They just clutched each other for a few minutes before Vic finally drew back and wiped at her leaking eyes.
“I thought… it was you,” Vic blubbered.
“Yeah. And I thought it was you,” Erin agreed. She pulled Vic over to the couch, where they both sat down. Vic pulled a few tissues from the box on a nearby shelf and mopped her eyes and face.
“Who, then? What happened?” Vic demanded. She could see Terry in the kitchen, where he’d been keeping Erin company and asking the occasional question as they waited for Vic to show up. Vic looked back at Erin. She swallowed hard, her lips pressed into a thin line. “Willie? Is he okay?”
“Willie’s fine. It was…” Erin caught one of Vic’s hands and held it. “It was Theresa, Vic.”
“Theresa? Oh… thank goodness.” She gave a long sigh. “Thank goodness for that. But… where’s Willie?” She cleared her throat. “Exactly what happened?”
“Willie is the one who found the body and called it in. No one is really sure what happened yet, how she got there.”
“And where is he…?”
Erin looked in Terry’s direction. “Taken to the police department offices to make a statement, I guess.”
“Why couldn’t he just make a statement here? Why would he have to go in for that?” Vic raised her voice, aiming the questions at Terry. “Why are the police treating him like a suspect?”
Terry gave a little sigh and approached them so that Vic wouldn’t have to yell across the house at him and they could keep the conversation civil.
“If you found a body, you would have to make a statement too,” he said calmly. “You know that.”
“You didn’t answer my question.”
“You asked several questions.”
“Why are you treating him like a suspect? If he called you to report it, what have you got on him?”
“We don’t have anything on him. We’re just following the proper protocols for interviewing a witness.”
“Like heck!”
Terry looked at her, brows up.
“If it was Erin who had walked back there and tripped over a body, you’re telling me that she would be over at the police department right now underneath your heat lamps?”
“Erin has had to do the same thing in the past,” Terry reminded her.
“Every time?”
He shifted his feet uncomfortably.
“But you’ve got Willie over there now. And I know he didn’t volunteer to go to the police department.”
Erin looked back at Terry, wondering how he would respond to this allegation. It was true that Willie had resisted any attempts to interview him in the past. He would exercise his rights and insist that he didn’t have to talk to them unless they arrested him.
So, what had changed this time?
“Willie is not under arrest,” Terry said calmly. “He’s not being detained in any way. He’s making a voluntary statement about what happened here tonight. He can leave at any time and I’m sure he’ll be in touch with you soon.”
Terry didn’t say that Willie would be back soon. And he didn’t tell Vic to just go home and relax and wait for him there. Was the apartment off-limits?
Vic snorted. She pulled out her phone and unlocked it. Tapping her way through a few screens, she thumbed a quick message to Willie and pressed send. She looked at Terry.
“If he’s not being detained, then he’ll get right back to me, won’t he?”
“I’m sure he will,” Terry agreed.
In a moment, Vic’s phone lit up, and she quickly swiped to answer the call. “I’m home,” she said, though she had undoubtedly already told him that in her text. “Are you okay?”
Erin couldn’t hear what Willie answered, his voice calm and not raised loudly enough for her to make anything out.
“Can you come back here?”
Vic listened to his answer, biting her lip.
“Well… don’t be long, okay? I need you here.”
He said something reassuring, Erin assumed, and Vic tapped to end the call.
“He’s all right?” Terry asked in a neutral tone.
“So he says.”
“And he can leave any time.”
“He said he needed to stay a little longer.” Vic’s words were slightly sullen, slightly accusatory. But Terry wasn’t at the police department offices. He wasn’t the one who was keeping Willie away from her. She could complain all she liked, but nothing Terry did was going to change things.
Vic put her phone down and dabbed at her eyes a little bit more. “So, you’re okay?” she asked, looking at Erin.
“Yeah. I didn’t have any idea what was going on. Just got up and saw Willie in the backyard talking on his phone.”
“What was he doing here? He came to see me?” Vic shook her head. “He didn’t call to say he was coming over.”
“He said that he’d tried to call you but couldn’t get you,” Erin told her. She didn’t know whether Willie had called her before or after finding Theresa’s body, or maybe even both, but that didn’t really matter. “I guess you must have been out of range or something…?”
“Cell phones.” Vic shrugged. “The one time they don’t work is when you really need them to.”
It felt that way sometimes.
“Where were you tonight, Miss Victoria?” Terry inquired. “You’re not usually out this late. Were you… expecting company?”
“Don’t ‘Miss Victoria’ me. You’re always formal when you’re acting like a cop. I don’t need a cop right now. I just need my friends around me.”
“I’m just wondering what happened. You’re not usually out this time of night.”
“I couldn’t sleep. Decided to go for a drive.” Another casual shrug, as if this were something she did all the time. “Get out, look at the stars. Reconnect with nature.”
“In the middle of the night?”
“You can’t see the stars in the middle of the day, Officer Piper.”
“No, I didn’t mean that. I have a hard time envisioning you just wandering around town, ‘reconnecting.’”
“Well, I wasn’t wandering around town. You can see the stars better away from the lights in the town. Out where it’s really dark.”
“And last time I checked, you don’t have a driver’s license.”
Vic rolled her eyes. “I can drive. Been driving a tractor since I was seven.”
She didn’t say that she did have a driver’s license. And since Erin had rarely known her to drive, Erin suspected that Terry was right. But he wasn’t likely to ticket her for it when she had come home to a dead body and the police all over the yard.
CHAPTER 9
Erin had known that she would not get much sleep before going to Auntie Clem’s in the morning. But despite Terry’s repeated suggestions, she did not call in any of her other workers, but went ahead with the shift that she had planned on. She gave Vic the option of arranging for a sub herself if she wanted to, but Vic was of the same mind. She wasn’t going to get to sleep either way. She might as well have something to keep her busy rather than sitting around with nothing to do, focused on what had happened and all of her questions and worries about it. She would have to answer all of the townspeople’s curious questions sooner or later anyway; she might as well get it over with quickly. And the bakery might as well benefit from everyone’s morbid curiosity.
So, tired as they were, they prepared for the day with some nice strong coffee, girded up their loins, and headed in to Auntie Clem’s to get started on the baking that would need to be ready by the time people came in to gawk and ask questions.
Vic yawned, mixing chocolate chip cookie dough in the big machine. “I can’t really believe that Theresa is dead, can you?”
Erin nodded her agreement. “She was so… so strong, so much of a force. It doesn’t seem possible that she could be stopped by a bullet. Like she should have been able to dodge it and keep on going. She was so skilled…”
“Even the best soldier can be taken down by a bullet,” Vic said with a shrug. “But yeah… it seems like after all of the trouble she has caused, it would take more to get rid of her. It should have taken more people, and it should have taken longer, with her fighting to the end. Right?”
Erin agreed. “Or maybe a silver bullet or stake through the heart.” She started filling loaf pans with banana bread batter. “I’d like to get started on marshmallow eggs today. Think we’ll have time to do that?”
“I don’t know. I haven’t done them before and it’s going to be pretty busy today.”
“Yeah. It will be for sure. We’ll see whether there are any lulls.”
“Might not be best to set your heart on it today.”
“I won’t. We can make some more cut-outs. We’ll have time for that.”
“Can we make some of them into sandwich cookies?” Vic suggested. “That’s always fun.”
“Good idea. Jam or icing for filling?”
“Some of each?”
Vic really was just a kid at heart. Erin smiled and wrote a few notes on the fridge whiteboard to keep them on track for the day.
“Who do you think will be first in this morning?” Erin asked, recapping the marker.
“Are you taking bets?”
“No, I can’t afford to lose!”
“Melissa’s got to be here early. Because she’ll want to tell everything she knows. Make sure that everyone remembers that she works at the police department and has all of the inside scoop.”
“Yes.”
“Charley will be the last to know because she won’t even wake up until noon,” Vic offered with a grin.
“She could have heard before going to sleep.”
“I doubt it.”
“She doesn’t always sleep until noon.”
“No, sometimes she’s later,” Vic laughed.
Erin shook her head. Charley was Erin’s half-sister, and she certainly hadn’t inherited any early bird genes. There might be some similarity in their faces, but waking up early was not something they had in common. Erin tried to make allowances, because Charley was younger. But she really didn’t believe that age had anything to do with it. Charley was just Charley. She wasn’t a morning person.
“Well…” Vic looked at the clock on the wall. “I guess it’s time to start filling the display case. We can’t open late today!”
Vic was right, and Melissa was waiting in the small crowd outside of Auntie Clem’s front door when Erin flipped the sign to Open and turned the bolt. They all poured in, trying to act casual, as if they were always there at that time. While Auntie Clem’s definitely had a morning rush, it was only that full when there was something important to gossip about.
Melissa didn’t try to pretend that she didn’t know about the previous night’s events. She was, after all, “with the police department.” She clutched at Erin’s arm and asked in a concerned tone whether she was okay, and if she really thought that she should be there working after the dreadful night she had been through.
“I’m fine,” Erin reassured her, smiling. “I don’t think the mixers count as ‘heavy machinery,’ so we can muddle through the day even though we are tired.”
“You can’t have gotten very much sleep last night. Did you get any at all?”
“Not much. But I got a couple of hours in before the body was discovered, and I did doze off for a while this morning when I was sitting on the couch.” Erin rubbed at a crick in her neck. Not the best way to sleep.
The other customers pressed forward at the mention of a body being discovered, wanting all of the details. Erin returned to the other side of the display case to start filling orders. She felt better with a physical barrier between her and the curious customers. She didn’t want them all grabbing at her to express their condolences as Melissa had.
“I hear it was Willie Andrews,” one of the older ladies declared. “I never have understood why that one is not in prison. All you have to do is look at him to see that he’s a ne’er-do-well.”
Erin didn’t look at Vic. People knew that she and Willie were together, even if they pretended not to. “Willie has always been very helpful to me. I don’t know why you would think that of him.”
But she did know why. Much of it was Willie’s appearance, his skin stained and dirty looking because of the mining and the processing that he did of his own raw ores. No matter how hard he scrubbed at his skin, it would never look clean. And there was also the fact that he didn’t work a single job with regular hours, but instead worked several smaller jobs intermittently, as he pleased. So people never saw him as “employed.”
And then, of course, there was the fact that he had also come from a clan—the Dysons rather than the Jacksons—and had been a soldier with them for several years. He didn’t talk about what he had done during that time, but Erin guessed he had done any number of things that might have landed him in prison if he had been caught. And that was what people remembered about him.
“I’m sure he did it.” Mrs. Mans insisted. “He’s just that kind.”
Erin shut her eyes and gave her head a little shake. “What would you like today?”
“Oh, yes.” Now it was time for Mrs. Mans to pay the piper for her curiosity. She couldn’t very well admit that she had only come into the bakery to gossip. “Well, those hot cross rolls look so nice and springy. I remember my mother making just that recipe.”
Erin didn’t bother to remind her that all of Erin’s goods were gluten-free, many of them her own recipes, and even if they looked like the same ones as Mrs. Mans’s mother used to make, they were undoubtedly not. “A dozen?” she asked.
Mrs. Mans opened her mouth, hesitating. She probably hadn’t been planning to take a whole dozen. But put on the spot in front of her acquaintances, people she wanted to impress, she was backed into a corner. “Yes. A dozen would be just perfect. We’re having the grandchildren over spring break, so I should have something nice for them.”
Erin nodded her agreement and assembled a box to arrange them in. “Maybe the grandchildren would like some cookies too.”
“Yes… I suppose they would. Those Easter cookies look a real treat.”
Erin added those to the order too. She glanced sideways at Vic, wondering whether she should push it and suggest that Mrs. Mans get something else as well. She would pay dearly for her comments about Willie!
Vic suppressed a smirk, but ended up snorting as she tried to keep a straight face. Erin decided that Mrs. Mans probably had all she needed for her grandchildren’s visit and didn’t press for her to buy anything else. Vic rang up the total and Erin looked to the next person in line.
Mary Lou smiled at her and did not ask anything about what had happened the night before or how they were feeling that morning. She touched her gray helmet of hair to make sure that nothing was out of place. “Just… a few slices of the banana bread,” she said, pointing. She glanced around. “You haven’t seen Joshua this morning, have you?”
Joshua, her younger son, had been going through a difficult time lately. Erin hoped that he would be able to get through it, to get back to school again and stay focused on his goals. He wanted to be an investigative reporter, so he really needed to get his high school diploma, at least. She didn’t know what other qualifications reporters were expected to have. Joshua had a few articles published with the Bald Eagle Falls weekly paper, which was a good start. Still, Erin didn’t suppose there was much competition trying to get into the weekly. They pulled a lot of their material from the bigger papers in the area and didn’t have much exclusive content. The more prominent papers would probably want reporters with a degree of some sort.
“No, I haven’t seen him, but I’ll keep my eyes open.”
Erin tried not to be concerned that Mary Lou didn’t know where Joshua was the first thing in the morning. Had he left during the night? It was not that long since he had been abducted in the middle of the night. Erin was sure Mary Lou was probably having kittens over his not being home that morning, despite her neatly-turned-out, calm and confident appearance.
“I’d appreciate that. I’m sure he’s fine. You didn’t see him last night?”
