“I was looking for anyone who was in the right age range, but I don’t know what he looked like. So, I don’t know… he could have been hanging around the back of the chapel or in the foyer, too, and we wouldn’t have seen him.”
“But why would he come? If he disappeared all of those years ago, why come back now?”
“Trenton was his son. He might not have cared about Angela dying, but you would think that if he knew about Trenton, he would have been there.”
“But how would he know?”
Erin turned on her turn signal and waited for the light to change. Why Bald Eagle Falls even needed any traffic signals, she wasn’t sure. She didn’t exactly drive around in rush hour, so maybe they were needed during that time. If Bald Eagle Falls had a rush hour.
“How did Trenton know about Angela? How did Davis know about Trenton? They both got the word somehow, even though neither one had been here for years.”
“Yeah, I guess.”
Erin saw Terry and K9 patrolling up ahead. She tapped her horn and waved at him when he turned to look. He cocked his head to the side and motioned for her to pull over. Erin did so, and Terry walked around the car so he could talk to her on the driver’s side instead of having to shout across Vic.
“Hey. I wasn’t expecting to see you back here so soon. There’s not much point in opening the bakery back up, everyone is still at the church.”
“I know,” Erin agreed. “We just left there.”
He leaned on the side of the car. “I suppose you got out of there as quickly as you could. I’m surprised you went in the first place.”
“No, it was me,” Vic interrupted. “She would have stayed. I wanted to get out of there.”
“Oh.” Terry raised his brows. “That’s the opposite of what I would have predicted.”
Erin leaned back, readjusting one of the air vents to blow at her. Having the window open to talk to Terry was letting the hot air from outside in. She knew she shouldn’t be idling with the air conditioner going. Not for long.
“I was wondering…” Erin patted her pockets for the note, then remembered she was wearing a dress, not pants, and no apron. She didn’t have any pockets. She reached for her purse, then shook her head. “I was wondering about The Bake Shoppe. Who the new owner will be now.”
Terry pushed his hat back and wiped his forehead, thinking about it. “I haven’t heard anything yet. But why would I? The police are not involved.”
“I just thought you might have heard rumors. Or maybe you found out after Trenton died, before they decided it was just an accidental allergy exposure.”
“I would assume that after Trenton died, it would go to Davis. The next child in line.”
“Because it was a family business?”
He nodded and readjusted his hat again. “Sure. Seems only fair it would go to the surviving child.”
“I’m kind of surprised that Angela left it to Trenton in the first place. Wouldn’t a parent normally split their estate evenly between their children?”
“Maybe she did,” Vic suggested. “But Trenton was the only one who wanted to claim it.”
Terry shook his head. “The terms of Angela’s will are a matter of public record. Everything was left to Trenton.”
Erin was shocked. “Everything? I assumed that she left the business to Trenton and something else, maybe the house or her bank account, to Davis. She cut Davis out completely?”
“Those are the terms of the will.”
“Wow.” Erin looked at Vic. Vic was the one who really knew Angela. In spite of Angela’s innate nastiness, she had been Vic’s favorite aunt, until she had turned on Vic. “Can you believe that?”
“Does that mean she knew he was still alive?”
Erin looked back at Terry. “I guess. Do you think so?”
He had stepped back from the car a little and was reaching down to scratch K9’s ears.
“I’m not sure why you care about it. Why are you so interested in the terms of the will?”
Erin thought back to Clementine’s genealogical records. To discovering details about her parents’ deaths that were different from what she had always been told. She disliked the feeling of not knowing the truth. Had it been an accident? Had something happened to her parents other than what she had been told? She hated the feeling of a door being shut in her face, keeping her from the truth.
And she saw the same thing in Angela’s family. Secrets. Lies. People who disappeared and reappeared. People who were supposed to be proper Christians but who were just hiding behind a mask of sainthood, while everyone ignored the hypocrisy. Erin felt sorry for Davis. He had been lied to. He’d lost everyone in his family. He’d been shunned by Angela, written out of her life and out of her death. Like he had meant nothing to her.
“Is it because of the competition?” Terry asked, bringing Erin back to earth. “You’re worried about the business you’re going to lose if Davis reopens The Bake Shoppe?”
“What?” Erin ran back through the conversation in her mind, trying to pick up the threads of where she had left off. “No. Honestly, I don’t care if anyone reopens The Bake Shoppe. Ever since I got to town, everyone has acted like I can’t survive the competition. That there’s only enough business in town for one baker. And it’s just not true. There’s plenty to go around.” She raised both hands in a challenge. “Bring it on!”
Vic laughed. “Why don’t you tell us how you really feel, Erin,” she teased.
“I don’t care who inherits The Bake Shoppe, or if they auction it off, or sell out to a big chain. I was just… curious. That’s all. I didn’t poison Angela. Or Trenton. And I’m not going to knock off Davis.”
“No one had better try that,” Terry declared. “There have been enough sudden deaths in the Plaint family. I don’t want to be investigating any more of them.”
“Exactly,” Erin agreed.
She revved her engine, looking at the temperature gauge. “I have to get moving again and park this baby in the shade. Do you want to come over later, when you’re off shift?”
Terry grimaced. “I’m not sure. I’ve got a lot to do. I might not be able to get over tonight.”
Chapter Eleven
ERIN DROPPED VIC AT home and decided to head into the city to do a big grocery shopping run while she had the chance. It was rare for her to get an afternoon—or part of an afternoon—off in which she could do something like that. Normally she had to squeeze it into the evening or the weekend. And working most of Saturday meant it had to be a Sunday after the post-service ladies’ tea. Her going into the city to shop on a Sunday was even worse in the church ladies’ eyes than the sin of being an atheist. They could almost forgive her being an atheist, but they could not abide her breaking the Sabbath, both by running errands and by doing things like exploring caves on Sunday. They believed that she was only an atheist because she hadn’t yet learned the truth. Even though she had explained that she wasn’t searching for any supernatural truth. But breaking the Sabbath… that was just wanton hedonism.
The drive to the city was only forty-five minutes if the highways were clear and there was no one to slow her down or pull her over. And usually, everyone was in just as much of a hurry to cover the ground as she was. In her old life, she would have considered forty-five minutes an unmanageable distance to travel to get to a grocery store. But she had learned not to mind it. It gave her a chance to unwind and just let her mind wander, rocking out to the stereo. Provided she played her own music, since the radio stations were few, fuzzy, and far between.
She made a list in her mind as she drove, thinking about all of the things that she might need before she got to the city again. It wasn’t so much things like eggs and milk that were a problem to get in Bald Eagle Falls—though the prices were higher—but the more specialized baking ingredients, alternative grains and flours, and fun-shaped decorating sprinkles were just not carried by the stores in Bald Eagle Falls.
Erin parked the Challenger and heade
d for the main doors of the grocer.
“Erin! Erin Price!”
She stopped and turned around, frowning. She hadn’t recognized the male voice. But then she saw who it belonged to.
Alton Summers.
Erin pressed her lips together, irritated. He apparently hadn’t gotten the message the last time he had approached her. She didn’t have anything to talk to him about. Erin turned back toward the store.
“You don’t want to make me chase you, Erin,” he warned. “I really don’t think you want all of the attention you would get if I had to go in there, shouting after you. It could be very embarrassing for you.”
Erin looked back at him, stopping again. “If you are going to harass me, I will call the police. Did you follow me here?” She’d barely glanced in the rear-view mirror after leaving Bald Eagle Falls. Did he just happen to be at the grocery store at the same time as Erin? While it was the closest big store to Bald Eagle Falls and where most of the residents would go for their big shopping days, she just didn’t think that matched Alton Summers’s personality. She didn’t picture him shopping at the grocery store and eating his own meals. She imagined that he ate mostly fast food out of boxes in his hotel room. He wasn’t the domestic type.
“Don’t you think you’d better hear what I have to say before you call the police and start throwing around accusations?” he demanded.
“No. I’ve got nothing to say to you and you don’t have anything to say that I want to hear.”
He looked at her for a moment, smiling. “Really.” He looked like the cat that ate the canary. “Maybe you’d better rethink that. Do you really want everyone to hear about your life as Erica Landers? Or under one of your other aliases? You do seem to have a lot of them.”
“Just leave me alone,” Erin snapped back. But there was a lump in her throat. She wasn’t about to walk into the grocery store and have him throwing wild accusations around about things that she had never done. There were bound to be shoppers from Bald Eagle Falls there, or shoppers that would make their way back to Bald Eagle Falls at some point. Or call their friends in Bald Eagle Falls to discuss all of the juicy gossip about that new lady baker. Mud slinging was practically an official sport in the region.
Summers waited and saw that Erin wasn’t going to go barging into the store after all. He nodded his approval.
“You’ve had a very checkered past, my dear,” he said in a soft, smooth voice. “I think that now that you’re trying to earn a reputation as a good, law-abiding member of the community, that you probably don’t want to hear certain ugly rumors about you spread around.”
“I don’t want you spreading lies about me, no. And if you’re going to, then I’ll sue you. Defamation of character. It’s still against the law in Tennessee, you know.”
“I wouldn’t have to tell any lies. Just repeat certain accusations that were made. Whether they were ever proven or not is beside the point. All people need to hear is the suggestion that something illegal was done. They’ll assume that where there’s smoke, there’s fire, and that you wouldn’t be accused if you weren’t doing something wrong. Especially not accused more than once. You know that once people hear that, you’ll be convicted in their minds. There’s no need to wait for a trial.”
“Just what is it you want from me?”
Alton Summers’s face brightened noticeably. “What do I want? Just what’s rightfully mine. Nothing more.”
“You’ve already collected your fee where I’m concerned. You were hired by Clementine’s estate to find her heir, and you did that. For that, you got a percentage of the estate. Don’t tell me you spent it already.”
But she could tell from the desperation in his eyes that it was all gone. She could have lived off of what he had been given by the executors of Clementine’s estate for a couple of years, and Alton Summers had already blown through it in a few months. He obviously had some expensive tastes. He had to be either an addict or a gambler.
“I got what the executors of the estate owed me,” he said slowly. “But I would think that the heir of the estate would be able to match it. To keep everything quiet and peaceful.”
“Match it?” Erin repeated. “You’ve got to be kidding! There wasn’t that much liquidity in the estate. It’s all tied up in the business and the house. I don’t have cash to pay you off. I don’t owe you anything, and you’re not blackmailing me into giving you something you don’t deserve.”
“Blackmail?” He shook his head, pursing his lips. “What an ugly word. It’s not blackmail. It’s just you… showing your appreciation for what I got you. One hand washes the other, right?”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
“If I hadn’t found you, you wouldn’t have inherited anything. Isn’t that true?”
Erin nodded, conceding the point. Summers had been the only one who had succeeded in tracking her down. She hadn’t left a very broad trail, orphaned young, buried in the foster care system, moving around and changing her name as often as she did once she aged out of the system.
“I chose you,” Summers said, leaning closer to her. She was sweating in the heat, but she could smell him, a mixture of garlic and cheap cologne, of unwashed clothes and oily hair. It turned her stomach. “I chose you to inherit all of that money. Don’t you think you should show a little appreciation for that?”
“You chose me? You didn’t choose me. I was the person you were hired to find.”
“I think we both know that isn’t true,” he said in a hoarse whisper. “Erin Price was just one of your names. And you were just one of the Erin Prices living in the country. I could just as easily have picked one of the others and presented her to the executors as Clementine’s heir. Any of those other Erin Prices.”
“Well, you could have picked one of them, but that wouldn’t have made them the heir.”
“I would have made them the heir. It wouldn’t have been any harder than cleaning up your documentation. Sanitize everything. A little spritz here, a little there. I did you a favor.” He shrugged. “When someone does you a favor, you should do something for them. A little payback.”
“I don’t owe you anything,” Erin insisted, getting angrier and more desperate to get rid of him once and for all. “You were hired to find me. You did. You were paid. Get the hell out of here.”
“Fine.” He stood there with his hands in his pockets. “Then I’ll just go back to the executors, and explain to them how a mistake was made. You assumed someone else’s identity. You’re a con artist. You have a long history of duping people out of their money. You especially like pulling one over on old ladies. Old people trust you. They give you their money. And then you can have all the money you need to do anything you want.”
“You know it’s a lie. Nothing like that ever happened.”
“No? Tell that to Ebony Greer’s son. Or ask… what was her name… Cheryl Mason? I’m sure her family would jump right to your defense, wouldn’t they?”
“Those people were mistaken. I never took anything from anyone. I never asked anyone to give me anything. They did that on their own.”
“They weren’t competent to realize how much they were giving to you. They couldn’t just give away their money and their jewelry that way. The money and jewelry that was supposed to go to their children when they died. You were paid to be their caretaker, and you took what wasn’t due to you. You took advantage of senile old ladies.”
“No, I didn’t!”
Erin raised her voice so much that everyone around her stopped what they were doing and looked at her. Erin shook her head. She poked her finger into Alton Summers’s chest.
“If you start repeating those accusations, I’m going to sue you. I’ll do it. And you know I’ll win and you’ll lose. You’ll lose everything, even what you don’t have yet.”
There was fear in his eyes. Erin knew that fear. The fear of being out of money and out on the street, without a person in the world who cared. She had lived that life for years. Liv
ing from one paycheck to another and one gift to another, never sure where she would be in another week, another month. Alton Summers had dug himself in too deep. He needed money, and he needed it right away. But he wasn’t going to get it from Erin.
His jaw tightened. He was like a bulldog, sure that if he just held on, he would get what he wanted. But he wasn’t going to get what he wanted from Erin.
“I’m not giving you anything. You can just get the hell out of Bald Eagle Falls because you’re not getting anything from me.”
His eyes were shuttered. He drew a step back from her. She thought he was going to make another threat. But he didn’t. He just stood there, jaw clenched tightly, staring at her with angry, intense eyes.
Erin went into the grocery store. He didn’t follow her.
When the doorbell rang in the evening, Erin’s first thought was that it was Terry, and he had been able to get rid of his other responsibilities in order to relax and visit with her. She closed Clementine’s book. Her second thought was that it was going to be Alton Summers again, trying for the third time to blackmail her. She didn’t open the door immediately, but checked through the peephole first.
“Who is it?” Vic asked.
Erin opened the door. “Hi!”
Mary Lou gave her a reserved smile. “Good evening.”
“Come on in.”
Mary Lou entered. She looked around and sat down on the couch. Orange Blossom was lying on the couch. He raised his head to look at Mary Lou, then laid it back down again. Erin sat down on one of the chairs, and Vic stayed on the floor, where she had been alternately working on a crossword puzzle and teasing Orange Blossom with the eraser-end of her pencil.
“What can we do for you?” Erin asked. Mary Lou didn’t often come over to visit. When she came by the house, there was a reason.
Mary Lou rubbed the back of her neck slowly. “You know there have been rumors going around,” she started out, feeling her way along.
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