“All settled?” Jeremy asked, giving Erin a charming smile. “Do you want me in here or out back?”
“You can stay in here,” Erin said. “I’ll show you your room.” She led Jeremy down the hall to the bedroom that had first been Clementine’s, then Vic’s, and then Reg’s.
“This isn’t your room?” Jeremy asked, looking around it with quick eyes. “This is the master, isn’t it?”
“Yes, but I like the smaller room. Plus, I have a sewing room and the attic hideaway, so all in, I do have more space than you do.”
“Okay. If you’re sure. I don’t want to be taking your bed.”
“Sheets are clean. It’s all yours.”
“That’s not what I meant, but thank you. This is very generous of you, taking in a near-stranger who just shows up without any warning. I really appreciate the help. I would get a hotel room, but…”
“You’d have to go to the city for that, there are no hotels in Bald Eagle Falls.”
“Yeah, so I discovered.”
Jeremy went into the bedroom. Erin stood in the doorway for a minute longer, wondering if she should ask him what kind of trouble he was in. Then she shrugged. It was none of her business. He would tell her when the time was right.
Chapter Seven
E
rin returned to Auntie Clem’s after dropping a platter of treats off to Naomi at The Book Nook for the Book Club.
“Okay, I wanted to get some more pastry sheets started for the new batch of turnovers,” she told Vic. “You’ll be okay out front for a bit?”
“It’s quiet,” Vic confirmed. “Nothing I can’t handle. You’ll be done before the afterschool crowd.”
“Definitely.”
Erin went into the kitchen and pulled the chilled dough out of the fridge. She set it on the counter, floured the rolling surface, and reached for her rolling pin.
Her hand hovered over an empty space on the counter.
Erin looked around, wondering if she had somehow misplaced it. It wasn’t on any of the counter surfaces, which were gleaming and bare. It wasn’t hung up on the utensils rack. She opened and closed a couple of drawers without any luck. Not in the sink. She even looked in the fridge and freezer, thinking she might have put it there absentmindedly, or in an effort to help keep the dough cold while she worked with it. There was no sign of it anywhere.
Erin went out to the front and looked at Vic. Vic raised her brows questioningly.
“You haven’t seen my rolling pin, have you?”
“No. On the counter, last I saw. Isn’t it there?”
“I don’t think I could have missed it.”
There were only a couple of customers there, and they hadn’t made their choices yet, so Vic poked her head into the kitchen and looked around. She frowned. “Well, that’s odd.”
“I looked everywhere. A rolling pin doesn’t just go walking off by itself.”
“No, it would need someone with two legs to carry it.”
A wave of anger washed over Erin. Vic immediately saw what she was thinking. “You don’t think that…”
“Charley. Who else would it be? She decided she needed a rolling pin, and knew I wouldn’t lend her one, so she just came over here and took it. I can’t believe her!”
“I’m sorry,” Vic looked around the kitchen. “I was out front when you went over to The Book Nook, and the back door must have been unlocked. I didn’t hear anything.”
“Sometimes I wish I had never found her!”
“She’s your baby sister,” Vic said. “You had to.”
“Well, I’m not so happy about having found her, now. I’ll be back as quickly as I can.”
Vic nodded. Erin hung up her apron and exited through the front of the store, crossed the street, and went down to The Bake Shoppe. She tried the door, but it was locked. She banged on the glass.
“Charley! Open up! It’s Erin!”
She probably didn’t need to say who it was. Even if Charley didn’t recognize her voice, she very well knew who was going to be looking for her. There was no answer. She was pretending not to be there, hoping that Erin would just go back to Auntie Clem’s.
“I know you’re in there! Let me in!”
Erin banged as loudly as she could on the glass. She didn’t want to have to go all the way around the back. She knew from her previous visit to The Bake Shoppe that all of the stores were attached, and she had to go all the way down the block to get around to the back of the store. Chances are, that door would be locked too.
“Charley! Open up! You want me to call the police?”
People up and down the street were starting to pay attention to what was going on, stealing glances in her direction. Erin banged a few more times, but to no effect. She was going to have to try the back door.
She marched down the block, marching at an angry pace but taking care not to trip over the uneven sidewalk blocks. Around to the back of The Bake Shoppe. She stopped outside the door, her hand on it, remembering. The last time she had been there, she had spent hours administering CPR to a dead man. Not the best of memories. But she needed to confront Charley. Erin banged on the back door.
“Charley! I’m coming in.”
She tried the door and found it unlocked. Swallowing her anxiety, Erin marched forward, composing her speech in her head. Charley was going to get a real talking to. Erin was done with being nice to her. She was done with being reasonable and explaining and trying to humor and help Charley. Stealing Erin’s bakery equipment was going too far!
Erin stomped into the kitchen and stopped short. Her brain took separate, unconnected pictures. Flour smeared on the counter. A newly-purchased electronic scale. Erin’s marble rolling pin on the floor, dirty and contaminated with who-knew-what. It appeared to be smeared with the red filling of the sweet cherry turnovers in Charley’s ad. There was a sticky pool of the red filling on the floor. And there was a man, apparently drunk, sprawled across the floor.
Erin’s throat closed as she looked at him, her breath whistling through the constricted pipe. A large man in a button-up shirt, spattered with the red pie filling. Balding, his face gray. She could hardly bring herself to look at his face.
Don Inglethorpe. What was he doing passed out in The Bake Shoppe? Erin supposed that he had gone there to meet with Charley. He did represent the estate that held the bakery in trust for Charley and Davis, so it would make sense for him to be there, checking up on the asset to make sure that everything was in order for the opening.
And where was Charley? Late getting to the meeting, Erin supposed. And Inglethorpe had passed out while waiting for her.
Erin had come for the rolling pin. It was on the floor. She bent down and picked it up automatically. Then the gears in her head ground and ceased up, unsure what to do next. The part of her brain programmed with her schedule said that the next step was to return to Auntie Clem’s to make the turnovers, like she had planned to do. That was the next thing on her list. But the problem-solving section kept her from leaving. The rolling pin was contaminated and couldn’t be used in her bakery again. She would need to buy a new one.
And there was the additional problem of the man on the floor.
She couldn’t just leave him there. She should wake him up, make sure that he was okay. But she couldn’t bring herself to bend over and shake him. She’d dealt with drunks before. She knew that if she woke him, he might be angry and violent, and she’d have to be prepared to get out of his way.
She could just let him sleep it off there, leave him for Charley to deal with.
And then there was the little voice that told her Don Inglethorpe wasn’t drunk and he wasn’t going to wake up or be violent toward her.
Because, of course, he was dead.
Chapter Eight
F
reeze! Hands up!”
Erin didn’t freeze or put her hands up. She turned around and looked at Terry, not comprehending anything that was going on. He had his gun out, pointing at her in
a two-handed stance. His eyes were wide, and his jaw dropped when he saw who it was.
“Erin!”
Erin looked back at Don Inglethorpe’s body again. “I just… I was looking for my rolling pin.”
“You need to put it down, Erin.”
“What’s going on here? What happened?”
“Erin.”
She stared down at Inglethorpe’s body, leaning closer to get a better look, feeling nauseated as her brain allowed her to absorb more of the details and to fully comprehend that it wasn’t a movie, it wasn’t an act or a prank, but that Don Inglethorpe lay dead in the kitchen of The Bake Shoppe, and she was standing over him with the rolling pin.
She looked at the rolling pin in her hand, not sure what to do with it. It was part of a crime scene. She wasn’t going to be able to take it back to her bakery. Not that she could anyway. How could she use an implement that had been contaminated in her kitchen?
“Just put it on the floor, Erin. Away from the puddle, if you can.”
She stared down at Inglethorpe, tasting acid in the back of her throat. It wasn’t cherry pie filling. Of course it wasn’t. Don Inglethorpe had been bludgeoned and she was holding the murder weapon in her hand. Someone had taken her rolling pin and had used it to kill the man. Charley? Would Charley intentionally implicate Erin? But why would Charley kill Inglethorpe?
Terry holstered his weapon. He ordered K9 to sit and stay so he wouldn’t contaminate the crime scene. He walked over to Erin, reaching into one of the pouches on his belt to pull out a pair of blue gloves, which he tugged on over his hands.
He took the rolling pin out of Erin’s hand and laid it carefully on the floor, away from the sticky red pool of what Erin now knew was not pie filling. His fingers closed around Erin’s forearm in a gentle but firm grip, and he gave her a little tug.
“Come with me.”
Erin’s feet moved of their own accord, following his lead.
Chapter Nine
E
rin was sitting in a car sideways, her feet out the door, as someone helped her to sip from a cold bottle of water. It was too cold. Erin shuddered, goosebumps raised on her flesh.
“It’s going to be okay.”
“I…” Erin looked around her, trying to orient herself. “What happened?”
“Drink some more.”
“No.” Erin pushed it away. She didn’t want any more water sloshing around in her stomach. She didn’t know what to do. She was supposed to be making turnovers. She would have to go to the grocery store and pick up a new rolling pin. It wouldn’t be a good one, like the marble one that had been stolen, but she could work with a wooden rolling pin until she could get to the city and replace it with something of quality. “I need to get back to the shop.”
“You’re not going anywhere. Have some more water.”
“I can’t drink any more.” Erin wiped her forehead, dripping with sweat, with the back of her arm. How could she be sweating and shivering at the same time?
“Maybe you should put your head between your knees. You’re still looking pretty pale.”
“What happened?”
“You fainted.”
“No, I didn’t,” Erin objected, though she couldn’t remember what had really happened. She was sure she hadn’t fainted. She didn’t faint.
“Okay, maybe you didn’t technically faint. I don’t know if you completely lost consciousness. But you… collapsed and you couldn’t talk to me.”
“Where is Charley?”
“We’re looking for her. You don’t know where she would be?”
“She’s not here. This is her bakery and she’s supposed to be opening tomorrow. Is it tomorrow?”
“She might have to put her grand opening off for a few days. Why did you come over here?”
“To get my rolling pin.”
“What made you think it was here?”
Erin tried to recapture her mental processes. She was feeling disoriented, out of sync with the present. “Charley took it. So I came to get it back.”
“Why would Charley take your rolling pin?”
“Why?”
She realized that it was Terry talking to her, not just a disembodied voice. She looked at him, saw him there in front of her, his face concerned, but set into that serious, no-nonsense expression he took on when he was investigating a crime. She looked down at her hands, encased in plastic bags. She wiggled her fingers to make sure that she was really seeing them and that they were connected to her body.
“We need to preserve any trace,” Terry said. “Anything you might have touched in there.”
“I didn’t touch anything.”
“Okay.”
“I think…”
Terry waited for her to finish her thought. When she didn’t, he raised his brows and prompted her. “What do you think?”
“I think… that was Don Inglethorpe in there.”
“Yes, it was.”
“And he was… dead.”
“Yes. Not that he’s been declared yet, but there isn’t anything we can do for him.”
“It wasn’t something he ate.”
Terry’s eyes searched her face. “No. Not this time.”
“Did she use my rolling pin?” Erin shook her head, angered. “That was a really special tool. It’s marble.”
“You’re sure it was yours?”
“Yes!”
“Why would anyone take your rolling pin? Charley must have her own.”
“She said people had stolen things from the bakery. It was fully-stocked when Angela was running it, but people must have taken things home when it closed down. They probably didn’t think it would ever open again and no one would know the difference. Charley kept discovering that things that should have been in the bakery, weren’t.”
Terry nodded. “Did she borrow yours? Did she ask for it?”
“She asked for other things, but I told her no. They couldn’t be contaminated with gluten flours.”
“And you think she went into Auntie Clem’s and took it anyway?”
“Yes! Who else would have?”
“Did you see her? Did anyone see her?”
Erin shook her head. “I went over to The Book Nook. The back door was unlocked while I was gone. Vic was in the front.”
“So, anyone could have walked in.”
“Yes. But no one else would have wanted it. Just Charley.”
“Do you have a security camera?”
“No.”
“We’ll see who else on the block has one. Maybe we’ll get lucky.” Terry offered her the water bottle again. “Have another drink.”
“I don’t want any more water. Unless you want me to throw up on your shoes.”
“Not particularly.” The corner of Terry’s mouth twitched, and the dimple appeared in his cheek. Erin wanted to reach out and touch it, but it wasn’t appropriate. She couldn’t be a murder suspect again. After all that had happened, how could she be sitting in his car, her hands wrapped in plastic, the central suspect or witness in another murder investigation? It couldn’t be happening.
Sheriff Wilmot approached. “Scene’s secure.” He looked down at Erin, a fan of fine wrinkles appearing at the corner of his eyes. “You feeling a bit better, Miss Price?”
Erin wanted to scratch an itch on her temple, but didn’t think she should with the bags over her hands. She might tear a hole and compromise the evidence.
“I… I guess I’m okay.”
“You’re still white as a ghost. But you’re talking sense and that’s an improvement.”
“I’m just a little… it doesn’t feel real.”
Terry took her by the arm and touched a couple of fingers over her radial pulse. “I would think that with the number of bodies you’ve come across, this would be old hat.”
“It’s not.”
He let go of her. “Why don’t you tell Sheriff Wilmot what happened while I go get a collection kit?”
“Okay.” Erin watched him wal
k away, feeling a little insecure. She wanted him to stay by her side and reassure her. She forced herself to turn to the sheriff, and started her description of having left Auntie Clem’s to find the rolling pin.
“And why did you assume that Charley Campbell had it?” Sheriff Wilmot asked.
“She kept asking to borrow other stuff. She couldn’t seem to understand that I couldn’t allow any of my equipment to get contaminated. So, when I reached for it and it wasn’t there… and I checked the whole kitchen and couldn’t find it… I figured she had popped in the back door while I was at The Book Nook and took it.”
He nodded. “Okay. Go on.”
Erin told him about knocking on the front door and getting no response, then going around the back way.
“Did you cross paths with anyone else going from the front to the back? Anyone who might have been coming from this direction?”
Erin thought about it. She shook her head. “I don’t think so. I saw other people on the street, but no one in the alley or the side street. But I kind of had tunnel vision. I might have walked right by someone without really registering it.”
“Did you knock on the back?”
“I knocked and then tried the door. It was unlocked, so I went in.”
“Tell me what you saw when you walked in.”
Erin described the fractured impressions she’d had on walking into the scene. She shrugged, her face getting warm. “I just thought… I’d been thinking about cherry turnovers, and I just thought it was all cherry sauce.”
He smiled. “Our brains do funny things sometimes, trying to come up with explanations for things that we don’t want to believe. I’ve heard the same thing described many times. People who thought they had walked into a TV set or a prank of some sort. The victim was just pretending. Can you tell me what you did? What you might have touched?”
“Nothing. I didn’t touch anything.”
“Terry said you were holding the rolling pin.”
“But it’s my rolling pin.”
“Right now, it’s evidence. Where was it when you picked it up?”
Sour Cherry Turnover Page 4