“You might be surprised what people will intentionally do. I think you’d better move farther away from the house. I’ll put up crime scene tape, try to preserve the scene for the investigator.”
“I just don’t see… I don’t think it could be intentional. Who would do that?”
Terry motioned Erin back, and she obligingly went back toward the fire truck. Vic approached, still holding the cat under her blanket. She and Erin gave each other a sideways hug.
“You okay now?” Vic asked.
“Bit better. Yeah. Thanks.”
“It will be okay. Won’t it?”
“We’ll get it sorted out. Terry says there will be smoke damage…”
Vic nodded. “But it doesn’t look too bad, does it? I mean, the whole house didn’t burn down.”
“Someone will let us know.”
They both stood around, watching the firefighters walk back and forth and Terry string up yellow crime scene tape, K9 faithfully at his side. Erin felt separate from everything that was happening around her. Like she was in a bubble.
Terry walked back over to Erin, holding something white in is hand, held gingerly by one corner.
“What’s that?”
“That’s what I’m trying to figure out.” Terry gave Erin a frown.
Erin turned her eyes to the piece of paper. Generic, white, lined paper. But it had her handwriting on it. Erin leaned closer and tried to make it out.
“Oh. I wrote that before the funeral,” she explained. “It was just a list of names.”
Terry looked at her. “What names?”
“Just names of people who show up in my family tree. I wanted to be able to ask people who they were related to.” It sounded silly when she said it aloud. “It’s nothing. I ended up not even using it, because we went straight home after the funeral.”
“With this? It was in one of the flower beds.”
“What was it doing there?” Erin shook her head. “It must have fallen out. I remember looking for it in my purse after the funeral… but I must have left it in my pocket. And dropped it.”
“There is more on here than just names.”
Erin studied it, trying to read her own handwriting in the dimness of the night, the note flapping in the breeze.
Inheritance?
Adam Plaint dead?
Trenton and Davis?
There was also a year scribbled down. The year that Erin’s parents had died. She looked up at Terry, shrugging. “Just questions I thought of while I was at the funeral. I didn’t want to forget what I was thinking. I’m a list maker.”
Vic nodded her agreement at this. “So many lists!” she said melodramatically.
Terry tapped the paper with the back of his fingernail, careful not to get prints on it. “What were you doing investigating Trenton’s death?” His voice was flinty.
“I… wasn’t…” Erin shook her head. He looked thoroughly unconvinced. “I was just wondering about the store, who the new owner would be. That’s all. Curiosity about my competition.”
“Who did you ask?”
“Just… you. Remember, after the funeral when we stopped to talk…?”
“I remember.”
Erin was increasingly confused by his hard tone. “I just don’t understand what you are so upset about.”
“Somebody just tried to roast the two of you alive. And I think this is why.” He rattled the paper in front of her face. “Because you’ve been poking around asking questions and stirring things up instead of leaving the investigating to the professionals. I thought you learned your lesson after Angela’s death. Why would you go getting mixed up in this?”
“The only thing I’ve been stirring up is cake batter. I haven’t been investigating anything!”
He indicated the note. “Yeah? What does Adam Plaint’s death have to do with cake batter?”
“I wondered whether he was dead or had just made himself disappear, like Trenton. If he was still alive, then I thought he should have inherited The Bake Shoppe after Angela’s death.”
“No. Her will specifically left her estate to Trenton. Everything went to him.”
“Yeah, that’s what you told me. After I wrote the list.”
Terry’s eyes went back and forth over Erin’s face as if he were reading something written there. “And as far as we know, Trenton died intestate. What does that mean to you?”
Erin licked her lips. The smoke and breathing through the oxygen mask had left her mouth as dry as cotton. She needed a drink to moisten her mouth. She swallowed and tried to speak calmly. “Well, Davis said he had to have his father declared dead. To inherit the store.”
“When did you talk to Davis about it?” Terry sounded exasperated.
Erin shifted anxiously. He made it sound like he had been chasing after Davis asking him questions. Like some amateur detective on TV. “I didn’t. I mean, I wasn’t the one who went and asked him questions. He came up to me. When I was eating at the restaurant. I was eating by myself, not bothering anyone. He came up to me and started talking to me and asking me questions.”
“What was he asking you about?”
“Why I left the funeral instead of staying to visit afterward… he said he wanted to introduce me to some people.” Erin tried to remember the other aspects of their conversation. “He wanted to know… what I knew about his father, his disappearance.”
She knew by Terry’s expression that he had interpreted her words the wrong way.
“Not in a creepy way. It didn’t come out like that. Just in the course of the conversation… what did I know about his father’s death, anyway? That I couldn’t know what it was like for Davis to be abandoned like that when he was so young.” Erin sighed. “But I don’t know about that… I know what it’s like to feel abandoned at a pretty young age.”
“Davis said that his father abandoned them? Not that he died?”
“Yes. He was very definite about that.”
Terry was looking at the piece of paper. “Then why did you question on this list whether he was dead?”
“That was before I talked to Davis. It was just what I was thinking about when I was at the funeral. When he came and talked to me, it was after that.”
“Did he see this piece of paper?” Terry stared Erin in the eye. She felt like she was caught in the crosshairs of a gun sight. “Erin, I need you to be sure of this. Did Davis ever see this piece of paper? Did you have it on the table while you were eating? Did you pull it out to write a phone number on or this date reference? I need to know where it was from the time you wrote it until now.”
Erin’s legs were wobbly. She grasped his arm to steady herself. Terry took her back over to the fire truck, where she had been sitting before, and settled her into place.
“Are you okay? Feeling lightheaded?”
“A little,” Erin admitted. “I don’t know what came over me. The smoke, I guess.”
“It can leave you feeling a little queasy. You’ve had lots of excitement.”
He stood there looking at her, and Erin knew he expected her to answer his question.
“Uh… I wish I could tell you what you want to know… I didn’t give that paper to Davis, or to anyone else. I didn’t have it on the table when I talked to him. I’m pretty sure, anyway. I had it at the funeral…” Erin shook her head and looked at Vic, who had followed her back to the fire truck and was hovering close by, pretending not to listen to the conversation, but clearly drawn in by it. “Vic… you saw I had it at the funeral.”
“Yeah, sure. You were writing down a list. I saw that, but I didn’t see what you wrote.”
Erin looked at the note Terry still held in his hand, pinched by the very corner of the piece of paper. He was trying to preserve it as evidence. There could be fingerprints on it. She went over each of the lines in her mind. She should have written down a more detailed list of questions when she had gotten home. But things had gone off the rails when Vic’s parents started spreading the word about he
r history. Erin had forgotten she even had questions about The Bake Shoppe. Without the list to refer to, it had all just faded from her mind.
“I had it then, at the funeral,” she told Terry. “Then when we stopped to talk to you, I was looking for it… but I couldn’t find it in my purse. So, I just asked you…”
“And when did you see the note again after that?”
“I don’t remember. I don’t know if I did. It wasn’t important. I didn’t look for it again. It might have been in my purse, or in a pocket.” She looked over at the bushes where Terry had picked it up. “It might have fallen out when I took my keys out of my purse. Just because it was in the bushes… I don’t think that necessarily means that whoever lit the fire had it.”
“The last time you remember seeing it was at the funeral.”
“Yes.”
“It hasn’t been outside for that long.”
“But it might have been in my purse until today. Or yesterday. There’s no proof anyone else had it.”
“Unless it has their fingerprints on it.”
Erin nodded. “You really think this has something to do with the fire? You think that someone lit my house on fire because of what was written on that note?”
“Yes. It’s too big of a coincidence.”
But what was on it that was important? Erin thought back to the notes she had scratched down quickly.
Adam Plaint dead?
Trenton and Davis?
“Do you think…” Erin stared at the note. “Do you think someone thought I was accusing Trenton and Davis of killing their father?”
“It could certainly be taken that way.”
Erin was glad she was already sitting down. She leaned her head against the fire truck and tried to breathe normally. Not to hyperventilate. Not to panic about Terry thinking that she had been the victim of an attempted murder. Because someone thought that she had accused him of murder.
“Davis.”
“He’s the only one around to be concerned about this theory of yours.”
“It wasn’t my theory!”
“Your apparent theory.”
“Should I tell him that I don’t suspect him?” Erin asked. “I can explain the note to him… so he doesn’t think I’m trying to put him in jail?”
“No! You shouldn’t talk to him at all. Especially if he is our arsonist. That’s going to be my job.”
His mouth had a grim set to it. He walked away from Erin and Vic for a minute, going over to talk to the police chief, who had just come out of the house. Then he went to his car to retrieve an evidence bag. After putting the note in it, smoothing it all out flat, so there was no extra air in the bag, he went back to Erin.
K9’s nose quivered as he sniffed in Vic’s direction, where she still held Orange Blossom under her blanket.
“The thing is…” Vic said slowly. “If Davis came after you because he thought you were accusing him of murdering his father… then wouldn’t that mean… he thought you could prove that he had?”
Erin’s stomach flipped over. Her head was still whirling, and Vic’s suggestion didn’t help matters.
“No! How would I be able to prove anything? I’m not a witness. No one came forward when his father disappeared in the first place. The case is cold, now. There’s no way for anyone to prove that Davis or Trenton had anything to do with Adam’s death or disappearance.”
Terry was looking down at the note. “Except maybe this interview list.”
“That’s not an interview list! Most of those people are dead. They don’t know anything, or they would have come forward when Adam died.”
“Davis has been gone from Bald Eagle Falls for almost as long as Trenton. How would he know who was alive and who was dead?”
Erin shook her head. “It was a list of relatives of people in town. Who to ask them about if we got into a conversation after the funeral. Just a way to be more comfortable around people and get a better idea of how everyone was related. It’s not a witness list!”
Terry shrugged. Erin heard the echo of his words. How would Davis know that?
“You wrote down the year that Adam Plaint disappeared. Or died. Why?”
Erin shook her head. “No. I wrote down the year that my parents died. Davis was talking about Trenton’s life… when he had done different things. I wrote down the year that my parents died because I wanted to remember to follow up on some… discrepancies.”
“What discrepancies?”
Erin rubbed her forehead. “I don’t see how that matters…”
“Erin. This is my investigation. You need to answer my questions. Even if you think they aren’t relevant.”
Erin looked over at Vic, who shrugged and nodded. “It’s not anything to do with the Plaints.”
Terry waited.
“I remember when my parents died,” Erin said. “Not the date… but I remember about when it was. And that it was before my eighth birthday.”
“Uh-huh.”
“But the dates that Clementine has down in her genealogy book were after my birthday. And not both the same day.”
Terry squeezed his brows together and shook his head. “You’re right. That doesn’t seem relevant. Except that you wrote it down on this piece of paper. This piece of paper that reads like an accusation that the Plaint boys killed their father.”
“That wasn’t what I meant.”
“But whoever read it didn’t know that.”
“Davis said his father had abandoned them. I believed him. Why would he come after me after that? I mean, if I started trying to blackmail him, sure.” Erin thought about Alton Summers and the way he had tried to blackmail Erin into giving him money. There was a connection in her brain, something that was just beyond her reach. She tried to follow it for a few seconds, but couldn’t figure out what it was, and focused back on the conversation with Terry. “But I didn’t. I didn’t do anything that would make him think I believed he’d killed his father. I accepted what he told me, and I never talked to him again.”
“Something obviously made him believe otherwise.”
“Maybe he was just being extra cautious,” Vic suggested. “Maybe he didn’t care whether Erin believed him or not, he just wanted to… tidy up all of the loose ends.”
It was late. Or it was early. Erin’s usual wake-up time was approaching, and she felt rotten. The only sleep she had gotten was the couple of hours before the fire. Her throat hurt. Her head ached. She was so tired she wanted to just lie down and sleep for three days.
“Erin.”
Erin forced herself to sit up and open her eyes. It was Terry. He had to have been up all night too, but he looked better than she felt.
“Yes?” It came out as a croak. Erin cleared her throat. “What is it?”
“The fire chief would like to walk you through the house. You can point out if anything is out of place, ask him any questions you have about the damage. You’ll want to contact your insurer and this way you’ll have some idea of what to say to them.”
“I thought someone was coming from the city…?”
“I don’t know when that will be. Maybe not for another day or two. Are you up to it? Do you want to walk through?”
“If it’s safe.”
“He won’t take you anywhere that’s unsafe. Come on, then.”
Terry led her to the door of Clementine’s house and introduced her to the fire chief, Ben Mackie. Erin was pretty sure she had sold baked goods to a Mrs. Mackie. She must have been Ben’s wife.
“Chief Mackie,” Erin greeted, with a nervous nod.
“Just Ben. We’re going to be walking through your house, so we may as well be friends.”
“Can we come along?” Vic asked.
‘We’ had to refer to her and Orange Blossom, who against all odds was still cradled in Vic’s arms. Erin had figured the cat would have insisted on being released hours before. Or else Vic would have to find somewhere he could be shut away or kenneled safely.
“Only o
ne of you,” Chief Mackie said crisply. “I want to be sure that nothing gets touched. I can’t watch more than one person.”
Erin gave Vic an apologetic smile and wave and went into the house with Mackie. It was still before sunrise, so the only light in the house came from the few streetlights outside. Mackie had a powerful flashlight that lit up the whole room. He played it around the living room when they walked in the door. That was where the fire had seemed to center, so Erin was prepared for the worst. But there seemed to be surprisingly little damage. The furniture was in a bad state, the walls burned and blackened with smoke. But the ceiling hadn’t collapsed and seemed relatively undamaged. Erin took courage that perhaps the rest of the house wouldn’t be too bad.
“Is it a total write-off?” she asked Mackie. “Will they have to knock it down and rebuild? Or is it salvageable?”
“I’ve seen worse. It will be the insurer’s call.”
“But what do you think? Is there damage to the structure of the house? Load-bearing walls and all that?”
“If I thought there was, I wouldn’t be walking you through it.”
He took her into the kitchen, then down the hall into each of the bedrooms and the commode.
“What about the attic?” Erin asked.
“Is it developed?”
Erin nodded. She pulled down the attic stairs. They appeared to be undamaged. Chief Mackie played his flashlight over them, then examined one step at a time, mounting them only after assuring himself that each one was safe. Erin was reminded of Orange Blossom’s cautious ascent of the stairs. She followed Mackie up. He shone the flashlight around the attic room.
Erin could still smell the smoke. But the attic room seemed to be in pretty good shape. The fire hadn’t made it all the way up there. The walls were not scorched. There were no holes in the floor.
“I only want you to step where I do,” Mackie instructed. “Even though the floor looks sound, I only want you to walk where I do. Single file. One step at a time.”
Erin obeyed him. They moved across the room and looked at the genealogy books and journals Erin had been studying. In spite of their flammability, they had been protected by being left in the attic. Some of the boxes and books in the other rooms had been damaged, but the ones in the attic looked pristine. Erin reached for the journal. The one that contained the information about her parents’ deaths.
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