“I don’t need your preaching. You don’t know what my life has been like. Maybe you’re fine to go through life without a little help, but I could use a little something to take the edge off now and then.”
Erin opened her mouth to object, but Charlotte didn’t give her a chance to talk.
“I’m not an alcoholic. I just have a drink now and then and I don’t see anything wrong with drinking socially. It’s what I do with my friends. So you can take your judgmental attitude and—”
“I just said I don’t drink.” Erin gave Charlotte a steely glare. One of the looks she’d been practicing for dealing with the Bald Eagle Falls ladies when they started preaching or harassing Vic. Both Adele and Vic had been helping her, encouraging her to be assertive and not worry so much about pleasing others or meeting with their approval.
And it worked. Charlotte stopped ranting and looked at her, cheeks flushing red. She took a steadying drink from the tumbler, looking embarrassed by her behavior.
“I’m under a lot of stress,” she explained. “You’re right. You didn’t do anything to deserve me acting like that.”
“I know this must be weird for you,” Erin said. “Just showing up like this and telling you we’re sisters. Especially when you didn’t even know you had any siblings. I’m sorry… but I didn’t want to do it over the phone or email. I thought that face-to-face would be better… and I wanted to see you. To see if there was… a connection.”
Charlotte sipped her drink, still holding herself aloof. “And is there?”
“You really look like our mother.”
Charlotte considered this, shaking her head. “I’ve never been told I look like anyone. I mean, people will say I look like my adoptive mom, but she’s always very quick to tell them that we’re not biologically related. Like she doesn’t want them to mistake me for a blood relative. I’ve never… your face seems really familiar. It’s weird.”
Erin nodded. Seeing her own features and her mother’s features in Charlotte’s face was disconcerting. It had been years since she had looked anyone in the face who had resembled her so closely. It had been more than twenty years since she had looked a blood relative in the face.
“I know. It’s weird for me too.”
They were both silent for a few minutes. “So, you live around here?” Charlotte asked. “You don’t sound like you’re from these parts.”
“I do now, but I wasn’t raised here. I had a foster family who moved north, out of state, and they were given permission to take me with them. I didn’t have any relatives here I needed to stay available to. So I didn’t grow up in Tennessee, even though I was born here and lived here until the accident.”
“So, was it just the one foster family?”
“Oh, no. There were a lot of foster families.”
“Oh.” Charlotte nodded. “Sorry.”
“Don’t be. It was fine. I got to know lots of different people… different places…” She didn’t focus on the bad stuff. Never being able to keep any personal possessions. Never knowing if the family she went to was going to be nice or abusive. Knowing she was a throwaway no one ever really wanted. Charlotte didn’t need to hear any of that. Not yet.
“Must be nice,” Charlotte said. “You don’t know how many times I wished I could get out of Moose River. How I wanted to be anywhere but here.”
It seemed like an odd complaint coming from a twenty-one year old. What was stopping her from pulling up stakes and moving somewhere else? She obviously wasn’t still living with her parents. She had a place of her own. She could have moved anywhere else she liked. Erin had disappeared and left her old life behind enough times to know that it wasn’t that hard. Unless, of course, being part of the Dyson clan, Charlotte wasn’t allowed to make her own choice in the matter.
There was a knock on the door, so sudden and loud that Erin nearly leapt out of her seat and Charlotte spilled some of her drink. Charlotte swore and shook her head.
“What is it now?”
She went over to the door, and this time she did look out the peephole before opening the door. She stood there with her hand on the doorknob, hesitating.
“Who is it?” Erin whispered.
There was another loud knock, followed by “Police, open up!”
Erin stood there with her mouth open, all of Terry’s, Vic’s, and Willie’s warnings flooding her brain. Don’t get mixed up with her. Don’t go meet her. It was too dangerous to chance getting mixed up with Dyson clan business.
“What are you going to do?”
Charlotte threw a look over her shoulder, clearly irritated.
At the third knock on the door, so loud it sounded like they were already using a battering ram, Charlotte opened the door.
“You trying to get me in trouble with the landlord?” she demanded. “What’s with all the noise?”
One of the uniformed cops grasped Charlotte by the arm. “Charlotte Campbell, you’re under arrest for the murder of Bobby Dyson.”
Erin’s heart dropped to her stomach. The murder of Bobby Dyson?
“Murder?” Charlotte repeated, her voice going higher. “Of Bobby? What happened to Bobby? Why would I kill him?”
“Young Bobby isn’t exactly known for his discretion. Maybe you decided you didn’t like him fooling around on you and making it known far and wide.”
The cop pulled Charlotte’s hands behind her back to handcuff her, then checked each of her pockets and did a cursory pat down.
“Any weapons?”
“No. I’m sitting in my house visiting, why would I be wearing a gun?”
“Or maybe you don’t have it because you left it at the scene.”
“Left it at the scene? You think I shot Bobby? I loved Bobby, I’d never do that!”
“Yeah. I’m sure,” he sneered.
“I’d never hurt Bobby! Do you have any idea what they would do to me?”
The cop chuckled. “Well, I don’t imagine they’ll be too happy about it, will they?”
It wasn’t until then that the little knot of policemen seemed to realize there was someone else in the apartment.
“And who are you?” the cop in charge demanded, putting his hand on his holster.
Erin tried to swallow a lump in her throat.
“I’m—I’m Erin Price. I’m Charlotte’s sister.”
He blinked at her, frown lines appearing in his forehead and his mouth turning down. “Her sister? Charley Campbell doesn’t have a sister.”
Exactly how well-known to the police was Charlotte?
“We were separated when our parents died.” Erin swallowed and licked her dry lips. “She was adopted. I wasn’t.”
The cop approached her, leaving the other officers to supervise Charley, securely handcuffed. He studied Erin’s face, and nodded slightly, perhaps seeing enough similarities in their features to accept the explanation.
“Jack Ward,” he introduced himself. “How long have you been with Charley today?”
Erin looked over at Charlotte. “Not very long,” she said. “Just a few minutes.”
“Where were you last night?”
“Uh—not here.”
“That’s not an answer.”
Erin wasn’t keen on telling the policemen any more about herself than she had to. She didn’t need everyone knowing who she was and where she was from. And more than that, she wasn’t sure she was ready to tell Charley where she was from. She didn’t need the Dyson clan following her home.
She jerked her chin a fraction of an inch in Charley’s direction. “I wasn’t around here,” she repeated.
Jack Ward apparently got her meaning. He scratched his jaw, looking from Erin to Charley and back again.
“You got yourself in a heap of trouble now, Charley.”
“I didn’t do anything.”
“We’ve got enough to arrest you and search your apartment.”
“You need a warrant!” Charley’s face was bright red.
Jack Ward unfolded a
paper and flapped it in her direction. “I have a warrant.”
Charley fumed silently. Ward grinned at her. He walked closer to her. “I’ve told you before, Charley. You hang with these guys and you’re going to get burned, sooner or later.”
Ward had Charley escorted from the apartment. He motioned to Erin.
“If I could also get you to come to the station, Miss Price.”
Erin’s stomach was clenched in a giant knot. “I didn’t do anything. I’m not under arrest.”
“As you heard, Charley just killed her lover, and there is going to be maelstrom like you’ve never seen before when the rest of the Dysons find out. Every aspect of this investigation is going to be tracked and scrutinized. If you think I’m just going to let a potential witness walk off without being questioned…” He shook his head. “It’s just not going to happen. So you can come voluntarily, or you will be compelled. It’s up to you.”
“I’m not a witness. I didn’t even get to town until this afternoon.”
“You can put that in writing, and when we verify it, you’ll be on your way.”
“This just all seems so…”
“It’s a murder investigation, ma’am. If you’ve never been caught up in one before, then everything is going to seem a little strange. But that’s just the way it works.”
Erin kept her mouth closed and did not inform him that she had been involved in a murder investigation before. More than once.
The murder investigations that she had been involved in, though, had not been shootings. They had appeared to be accidents. The investigations had been stressful, but she hadn’t been in imminent danger of being thrown in jail, even when she was a suspect.
She followed Ward out of the apartment. There were more officers in the hall outside, and once Ward had escorted Erin out, they streamed in.
“My car is just parked down on the street—” Erin attempted to split away from Ward to go get her own vehicle, but he put his hand on her arm and held her back.
“We’ll take you in. Once you’re released, someone will drive you back over to get your car.”
“But that’s ridiculous, I can just drive it over…”
“No.”
Erin again opened her mouth to remind him that she wasn’t under arrest and could therefore do what she wanted to, but she closed it and breathed deeply instead. He was doing his job. He had a mobster who had been shot. Erin imagined that such a murder could result in retaliation against anyone who was suspected of having been involved, as well as having political ramifications, as Ward had suggested. He wasn’t concerned with her convenience. He had a murder to solve while sitting on a powder keg.
Ward let go of her arm and let her walk beside him unrestrained.
“So you’ve known Charley since she was a baby?” Ward asked. “I never heard any whisper that she had a sister before.”
“No. I never met her before. I didn’t even know she existed until just a few months ago. Then I had to track her down… This was the first time I made contact with her. We’ve never met before, not even on the phone or email.”
His brows shot up. “Well, this is quite the introduction, then. I guess you didn’t know that she was involved with an organized crime family.”
“I… kind of did.”
“Kind of?”
“I had a friend check her out… you know, to see if her birthdate was right and make sure she wasn’t just some online scammer… He said that she was involved with this family somehow, but we didn’t know how. I thought… maybe her adoptive parents were part of it… something that wasn’t really her fault. I thought maybe she just had some peripheral involvement.”
“Her parents are good, hardworking folks who are heartbroken to have a daughter get involved with these guys. Charley is a wild child who’s been nothing but trouble for them since she was a teenager.”
A wild child? Erin frowned, thinking of Charley’s apartment. It had been fairly neat and clean, not some rat-infested drug den. Charley wasn’t passed out with a bunch of other junkies, spent after a night of riotous living.
“So her involvement with these guys…” Erin was reluctant to call them a gang or syndicate, or whatever they considered themselves. “That’s because she’s the girlfriend of one of them?”
Ward gave a bark of laughter. “You’re not listening to me, honey. She isn’t in the Dyson clan because she’s Bobby Dyson’s girlfriend. She’s his girlfriend because she’s in the clan.” He paused for a moment, and amended his statement. “She was his girlfriend. Now that’s all changed.”
He opened the door of a dark sedan for Erin and she slid into it. He shut her door and walked around to the other side. When he got in, he didn’t speak to her, but started the car with a scowl on his face, lost deep in thought.
Erin watched out the window at the unfamiliar city streets whipping by. She’d only left Vic to take care of the bakery for one afternoon. What if she weren’t back there by morning? How was she going to explain it to Vic? And worse—to Terry? Ward had said that all she needed to do was to sign a written statement, and then she could go home. Erin could only hope that it would really be that easy.
Chapter Ten
E
rin finished writing up her witness statement, which was really no more than couple of lines saying that she hadn’t ever met Charley before six o’clock and had no knowledge of what had happened before then, and then she waited for Ward to return to the room and tell her she could go home. She was tired, in need of dinner, and trying to figure out if she should drive back to Bald Eagle Falls or stay overnight and let Vic know that she wasn’t going to make it back in time to open up in the morning. Vic could either keep Auntie Clem’s Bakery closed for the day, or she and Bella could work out some arrangement that suited them.
But Erin really didn’t want to leave Vic in the lurch, so once Jack Ward told her she could go, she would probably grab a burger at a drive-through and hit the highway. She might not get much sleep, but she could at least be there to lend a hand. With an extra cup of coffee in the morning, she should be able to function, at least.
There was a polite knock on the door and Ward entered, reading a sheaf of papers in his hand. Erin shifted in her seat to get up and he motioned her to stay put. He sat down across from her without looking at her, and continued to flip through the printouts, absorbing whatever important information had been gathered. Erin’s statement wasn’t long, so she wasn’t sure why he was still keeping her. It wouldn’t have taken more than thirty seconds for him to read it and send her on her way.
Finally, Ward put the papers down on the table in front of him. He cocked his head to the side, looking at her.
Erin shifted uncomfortably. “What?”
“You don’t exactly have a squeaky-clean record yourself, do you?”
Erin licked her lips. “I’ve never been convicted of anything. Unless you count parking tickets. And I’ve paid all of those.”
He stared at her for a minute, letting the silence lengthen. “What makes you think this is a good time to joke?”
“I’m not. I’m telling you—I don’t have a record. I don’t have any criminal convictions.”
“Maybe not. But you’ve certainly been investigated a number of times, on a number of different charges. Under a number of different names or identities.”
“I haven’t done anything wrong. It’s not illegal to use an alias.”
“You haven’t done anything wrong?”
Erin shook her head. “None of those charges have gone anywhere. I haven’t done anything.”
“These accusations just keep popping up,” he said sarcastically, “all by themselves.”
“Misunderstandings. Or circumstances. There was never any real evidence against me for anything.”
He looked down at his printouts. Erin swallowed and tried to keep her face open and unemotional. Yes, she’d been investigated in the past, but she’d always been proven to be innocent, or there hadn’t be
en enough to proceed. He couldn’t hold those charges against her.
“You’ve been investigated for murder,” Ward pointed out.
“It’s not like that. A woman died in my bakery from anaphylaxis. But it wasn’t from anything I did. It wasn’t even an accident, it was somebody else. And she went to prison for it. I was completely cleared.”
He frowned, still reading through the pages. “If I’m reading this right… not once, but twice.”
“It wasn’t me either time. Just because someone uses my baking as a vehicle for poison, that doesn’t mean I’m guilty of anything. If someone pushes someone else in front of your car and you run over him, are you guilty of murder?”
Ward gave a little smile. “I guess that would depend on the circumstances.”
Erin’s face warmed. “I didn’t have anything to do with either one of those deaths. I didn’t set them up, or hire someone, or do anything. I had no motive. They ate baked goods that I made. That’s all. I had nothing to do with it.”
“Your record goes back further than that. You weren’t exactly pure as the driven snow before you moved to Tennessee were you?”
“I didn’t have an easy life up north. I ran into trouble a few times. But I was never convicted of anything. You can call up any of those cops who had anything to do with me, and they’ll tell you. I never did anything.”
“Seems like maybe this rebellious streak runs in the family.”
“I was never rebellious,” Erin insisted. But even as she said it, she knew it wasn’t true. No, she had never gotten into drugs or crime or other things she shouldn’t have as a teenager and young adult. She’d known from an early age that she was going to have to be able to support herself once she aged out of the system, and had planned accordingly. But she had defied her foster parents. Many foster parents. She had never been able to believe what she was told and trust in adults who had more experience than she did.
Instead, she’d had to figure it out herself. She had to test the limits. She disobeyed. She did the opposite to what she was told. Sometimes the adults in her life were right, but sometimes they were wrong, and she never had figured out a way to tell which was which without testing it out herself.
Stirring Up Murder Page 6