In spite of Erin’s concern for her, she was interested in seeing where Vic had come from. Here she had grown up climbing trees, shooting squirrels and other varmints, and doing whatever chores were expected of her. She wrestled with her brothers, went to church on Sunday, and went to school, all as James, another one of the boys.
A man walked out of the whitewashed farmhouse when they stopped. He walked with a cane, leaning heavily on it but giving the impression of great strength rather than frailty. She could only imagine how imposing he had been before the accident that had left him with what Vic had simply called ‘a bum leg.’
“Can I help you folks?” he asked gruffly, confident they had just taken a wrong turn off the highway.
“Pa,” Vic said.
He looked at her. He stared. His brows furrowed deeply. “James Victor Jackson,” he rumbled. “As I recall, you said you were never setting foot on this property again.”
“I know, Pa,” Vic said. “And I wouldn’t. I just… there’s been some things going on, and I needed to see you and Mom again. I needed to make sure… everything is going okay with you.”
“Your ma and I are still above ground. Every day is a blessing of the Lord.”
“It’s just… could I come in and talk for a bit? And my friends?”
Mr. Jackson looked at the four of them with a calculating look. Was he trying to divine their relationships? Deciding whether they were two couples? If Erin had been in front with Willie and Vic in back with Charley, it would have been a more likely scenario. His eyes lingered on Willie and he took a long, slow blink. Erin was used to Willie getting second looks due to his darkly-stained skin and the state of his clothes, but this didn’t look like one of those looks. Erin was expecting him to say he knew Willie.
“Maybe you know each other,” she said, “from Trenton Plaint’s funeral?”
Mr. Jackson blinked. “Mebbe.”
Vic didn’t offer up that Willie was her boyfriend. Not when she was there looking for information. Not when she needed to be an insider for just a little while. For as long as it took to get the information they needed, and then they would be gone.
“Can we maybe come in?” Vic prompted again.
He gave a shrug and stepped back, using his cane deliberately to avoid losing his footing. “Your ma would hogtie me and beat the livin’ tar out of me if she knew you’d been here and I turned you away. So you may as well come in. But you know what we think of this nonsense. You’re not coming back here unless you give up these ideas about being something you’re not. It’s unnatural and it’s a sin.”
“Yes, Pa.”
They all got out of the car. Not looking at each other, embarrassed to be caught between the opposite ideologies. They followed Mr. Jackson into the house, in through a door that led to the kitchen. It was overly warm. The stove was on, the air humid and redolent with the smells of fresh baking, roast, and potatoes. Mr. Jackson took a deep breath of the savory air as he stepped in.
“Like walkin’ into paradise, Mother.”
The heavy woman at the stove turned around, smile wide, to answer him. But her smile and words dropped away when she saw the three visitors entering her domain.
“Oh, my stars, it’s James!” She put down her spoon and strode over to Vic, enfolding her in a big hug.
“You’re home! You came home! I prayed every day you were gone. Thank the Lord for his goodness.”
Vic pulled back from the hug. “I’m not home, Mom. Just for a visit. I wanted to make sure y’all were okay. Catch up on everything that’s been going on.” She glanced over at Willie for reassurance. It was putting a lot on her to expect her to be able to walk into her family home and somehow to extract a clue as to what had been going on in Moose River. Even if Bobby’s death had been orchestrated by the Jacksons, there was no guarantee that her family knew anything about it, or that they would have any reason to tell her.
Mrs. Jackson held Vic at arm’s length, looking over her critically. “I swear, I don’t know what’s wrong with you, child. I raised you right. We raised all of you to be strong, hard-working, faithful men. And you…” She shook her head.
Vic swallowed. She indicated the other visitors. “Mom and Dad, this is my friend and boss, Erin, and her sister Charlotte, and William, a friend of ours.”
“Well, it’s might nice to meet y’all. I’m grateful to you for being good friends to my boy.”
They all tried to smile and nod and be pleasant, but Erin was fighting back her fury at them for treating Vic the way they did. Not accepting her identity, telling her it was a sin, refusing to call her by her chosen name. Vic had run away from home as soon as she could to escape their condemnation and recriminations. Erin couldn’t understand how people who claimed to love everyone could treat her like a pariah for being true to herself.
“Should we go to the sitting room?” Mrs. Jackson suggested. “I can leave the stove for a bit now. We’ll be more comfortable.”
Everyone agreed and followed her into the next room. The sitting room was dim, almost too dark, due to the closed blinds and curtains shutting out the Tennessee sun. It was much cooler than the kitchen. Mr. and Mrs. Jackson took their favorite seats and Vic motioned to her friends to pick what places they wanted. She sat on the couch with Willie, but she didn’t cuddle up to him like she would have if they were at Erin’s house. Instead, she sat several inches away from him, her back stiff, hands in her lap.
“Erin is my boss at the bakery,” Vic said. “She gave me a job and I rent an apartment over her garage. It’s my own little place, and it’s really nice. We drive to work together.”
“Sounds like a good arrangement,” Mr. Jackson said. “That’s where you were working when we came out for the funeral?”
“Yes, sir.”
“People told us about the bakery when we were there,” Mrs. Jackson recalled. “Said it made those weird, trendy foods…”
“It’s a gluten-free bakery,” Erin explained. “And we cater to other special diets as well.”
“Well, I suppose there are them that need it,” Mr. Jackson said doubtfully. “Though it seems to me that it’s more of a fad these days. When I was a young buck, there weren’t any of these places around. Everybody ate bread and potatoes and meat. Now, you have gluten-free, and allergies, and those crazy vegans. Seems like everybody’s got some kind of special needs all of the sudden.”
“They’ve been around for hundreds and thousands of years,” Erin said. “It’s hard to say whether they are more prevalent now, or if we just understand more about them so that so many people aren’t dying from celiac disease and allergic reactions. Even a hundred years ago, if someone had a severe reaction, they would just die.”
Mr. Jackson gave a ponderous shrug. “God takes who he takes,” he pronounced. “We can’t always divine the reason.”
Erin tried to work out what to say in response to that. The fatalistic attitude was one of the things that she never understood about religious people. As if man had no choice in his own life path, and there was no point in trying to stay healthy and extend his life. Because no matter what he did, one day, God would just reach down from the sky and point his finger and the man would die.
Mrs. Jackson whispered something to her husband and darted a glance at Erin, her face pink.
“An atheist?” Mr. Jackson repeated, as if the comment had been shared with the entire room. “I suppose that explains everything.”
Erin blinked. She looked at Vic, trying to get a read on the situation, but Vic’s face was blank and her attention was somewhere far away. Physically, she was sitting in the room, but it was obvious to Erin that she was in pain. It was all Vic could do to sit there and talk with her parents as if they were on perfectly good terms. All for Erin’s sister. A half-sister who Erin had to admit she didn’t even really like. And she wasn’t sure Charley liked her either. It had been handy for her to have Erin around, but Erin wasn’t at all sure Charley would have had anything to do with her
if she hadn’t needed someone to help her.
“Excuse me? Explains what?” Erin asked.
“Why you would hire someone like James, in spite of… his confusion. No Christian would ever have a—a person like that in their workplace.”
“Then it’s a good thing she came to me,” Erin said, her jaw sore with how hard she was clenching it. “She’s a good baker. You should be proud of how hard she works. I couldn’t run the place without her.”
Mr. Jackson glared at Erin.
Had she just thrown away any chance they had of finding out who Bobby’s killer was? If she alienated Vic’s father, how would they find out if something was going on with the Jacksons? But Erin couldn’t bear to hear them maligning and misgendering Vic and not stand up for her.
“James was always good in the kitchen,” Mrs. Jackson admitted. “Out of all of my boys, he was the only one who was ever interested in learning how to cook and bake.”
She received Mr. Jackson’s next glare and quavered under his gaze.
“I’m here now,” Vic said, her voice cracking a little in desperation. “I, uh, heard some rumors about stuff going on down in Moose River and I was worried that there might be problems here…”
“What stuff?” Mr. Jackson demanded, pulling his eyes away from his wife.
“About Bobby Dyson getting shot,” Vic said. “It’s been all over the news. I was worried about relations between the families. Stuff like that always causes tensions.”
Mr. Jackson nodded, frowning deeply. “You heard about that all the way to Bald Eagle Falls? Nasty business. Who would do a thing like that?”
Mrs. Jackson shook her head. “It could start a whole war,” she agreed. “Things have been pretty quiet between the families lately. The usual upsets, but nothing major. And then Bobby Dyson.” She closed her eyes and continued to shake her head slowly. “He was a horrible boy, but I would never suggest anyone killing him. It’s a bad, bad idea.”
Erin took a quick glance at Charley to see how she took the comment about Bobby being ‘a horrible boy,’ but Charley didn’t seem to be offended by it. He had, after all, tried to kill Charley. If he was regularly violent with her and cheated on her as she’d said, Charley had probably had much worse thoughts about him than that he was a horrible boy.
“Do you know who did it?” Vic asked, eager to get the news and get out of there.
“I heard it was his girlfriend,” Mrs. Jackson offered in a low voice.
“It wasn’t,” Vic said. “There was someone else there. It was all caught on video.”
“Then you know who did it?”
“No, because the video didn’t show his face. The police can’t identify him. They need more evidence. Better proof.”
“How do you know all that?” Mr. Jackson asked suspiciously.
“I… I know the police in Bald Eagle Falls. Erin is really good friends with one of the officers. So we see him and talk with him a lot. He knew I was from around here, so he thought I would be interested.”
“And they have video of Bobby Dyson getting killed?”
Vic tried to avoid getting tangled up in the details. “It’s so frustrating,” she said, leaning forward confidentially, “because if they can’t prove who it is, then they’re going to think it was done by the Jackson clan. And I don’t know if it was.”
Mr. Jackson looked at his wife and shook his head. “I haven’t heard anything like that. Do you think it was the family?”
“It is the Dysons,” she said.
“I don’t know.” Mr. Jackson shook his head at Vic. “I don’t think so. We would have heard something through the organization. Once news spread about Bobby getting killed, there would have been rumblings.”
“And nothing…?” Vic asked. That wasn’t good news. Not when they needed to prove Charley’s innocence if they were all to stay safe. If it wasn’t one of the Jacksons, then it was back to the drawing board, and Nelson was not going to like that. He was going to think they were just putting him off.
“No,” Vic’s father said. “Nothing at all. If it was someone in the family, they kept it quiet. Couldn’t have been official business.”
“Oh.” Vic was trying to look reassured at this news. “I’m glad. I was worried that it was… someone in the family. Someone that we knew.”
Mrs. Jackson’s eyes flashed, picking up something from Vic’s words and body language that Erin hadn’t. “Your own brothers, James? For shame. I can’t believe you would even think such a thing.”
“No… I didn’t really think so, but you worry about your own family. And the boys are always so… so brash and boastful. They’d love to be able to say that they had done something like that.”
“Certainly not,” Mrs. Jackson said primly. But Erin caught an uneasy look exchanged between Mrs. Jackson and her husband. Not this time, maybe. But sometime soon.
“Good,” Vic repeated. “I guess that’s all I wanted to know. I was just worried.”
“You should know better. Don’t speculate. Don’t judge your brothers. They’re good boys.”
“I know they are. Is anyone around today? I kind of thought I’d be able to say hi. To Jeremy, at least.”
“They’re all out working. But they’ll be back for supper. Which I’d better check on…” Mrs. Jackson leaned forward, hands on knees, until she managed to raise herself up. She shuffled toward the kitchen. “We wouldn’t want it getting ruined because we’re having so much fun visiting.”
Erin’s stomach growled at the thought of food, but no one invited them to stay. Vic’s eyes followed her mother out of the room, and Erin wondered if Vic wanted to talk to her alone. Mr. Jackson quickly took advantage of his wife’s departure.
“Why don’t you come home for good, James? We never turned you out. You could come back, if you weren’t so stubborn. You can see that you’ve made a mistake. We accept that. Everybody makes mistakes.”
Vic chewed on her lip, looking down. “It wasn’t a mistake,” she said softly. “And if you’re waiting for me to admit that it was, you’re going to end up waiting a long time. I could never move back here because you and Mom would never accept me the way I am. Besides, I’m an adult now. I have my own life, and I like it. I’m comfortable in my own apartment, with new friends…” Her eyes went to Willie, but she didn’t out him as her boyfriend. “I love my job. I like helping people and nourishing them. Making sure that they can get really good food that isn’t going to make them sick.”
“I wouldn’t think that such a place would make much of a profit,” Mr. Jackson said, rubbing the space between his eyebrows like he was getting a headache. “It doesn’t seem to me that there would be that many people who would want to eat there. Maybe in the big city, where there is more demand for… unusual foods… but in a little town like Bald Eagle Falls? You would be much better off working at a conventional bakery. Like your Aunt Angela had.”
“Erin’s bakery has been doing really well. It’s the only bakery in town, so we get plenty of people who are just looking for good freshly-baked goods, whether it is gluten-free or not. And we’re always looking for ways to expand and place our products in more locations. Like the local restaurants, bake sales, county fair, everywhere you could think of.”
“Who got Angela’s bakery?” Mr. Jackson asked. “Are they going to reopen it?”
“He’d like to,” Erin said, “but he’s run into some legal trouble.”
“Who is that?” Mr. Jackson asked.
“Davis Plaint.”
“Davis?” He scowled. “How would it go to Davis? I thought Angela left everything to Trenton. Did Davis challenge the will in court? Or did she change it?”
Erin shook her head. “It’s a little complicated. Angela left it to Trenton. But he died intestate—without making a will—and when that happens, then the state’s intestacy laws go into effect. His estate goes first to his parents, if either of them is surviving. So that means it would go to Adam Plaint, who at that point was only missin
g. He hadn’t been declared dead. The estate had to try to find him, so they hired Alton Summers for that. He’s good at that, he’s the one who tracked down Trenton and Davis.” Erin looked over at Vic, worried she was monopolizing the conversation. But Vic was again staring off the other direction, apparently happy to have someone else keeping her father engaged. “I don’t know how much of this you already know…”
Mr. Jackson was leaning forward, interested. “Go on,” he encouraged.
“Then we found out that Adam Plaint was dead. He had been for years, long before Angela died. So her estate could never flow into his.”
“Where does his estate go? If Trenton’s assets go to him, then…”
“But Trenton’s estate couldn’t flow into his either. Same reason. Adam died years before Trenton did.”
“So Trenton’s estate, the bakery, goes to Davis?”
“Right.” Erin nodded. “Since Trenton died intestate, and neither of his parents were living, it then goes to his siblings. Their sister also died a number of years ago. It was just Trenton and Davis. So the bakery that Angela left to Trenton actually ends up going to Davis… except he’s in prison right now, so he can’t actually start it up again. My guess is that he’ll have to liquidate it instead…”
Vic’s head suddenly went up and she looked at Erin. Erin tried to read the surprised expression on her face. Charley’s head turned slowly toward Erin at the same time.
Erin’s jaw dropped. “Except… it wasn’t just Trenton and Davis.”
Mr. Jackson snorted. “Of course it was. You’re not telling me that Sophie is still alive and just faked her own death.”
“No. Not Sophie. Adam Plaint fathered one more child just before he died.”
“Angela never had any more children. He disappeared from the picture. Are you telling me he picked up with some other woman?”
“Yes!” Erin didn’t mean to sound so delighted about something that had had such a lasting negative effect on her life. All eyes in the room were on her. Willie had caught up with what the others had realized and was looking not at Erin, but at Charley in wide-eyed shock. “He had an affair with my mother. And she became pregnant with Charley!” She quickly amended, as they had decided it was best not to use Charley’s nickname with the Jacksons and give away who she actually was. “With Charlotte, I mean.” Erin pointed to Charley. “My sister is also Trenton’s sister. Since she and Davis both survived Trenton, they both receive equal shares in the estate. Half of the bakery!”
Stirring Up Murder Page 20