“Well, yes. I did. I just thought you wanted to go out and do something, since we’re both off tomorrow. We could… go into the city. Catch a movie.”
Terry’s eyebrows lifted, bewildered. Erin hated to do it to him. She wanted to be able to tell him about Jeremy being there so that he wouldn’t think he had done something wrong or was on a completely different page from Erin.
“Sure, if you wanted to,” he agreed slowly.
“I hear that new Marvel is really good.” Guys liked action films. He’d be delighted that she wanted to watch one with him.
“Sure. Or something more… romantic, if you like.” He tried once more to clue her in.
“You know what?” Erin rubbed the ticklish spot on Terry’s knee. “After the movie, we could go back to your place.”
Terry brightened a little, though he still looked thoroughly baffled. They never did anything at his place, Erin always preferred the space and comfort of Clementine’s home, and since they never knew whether Terry would be able to get away to see her, she always let him come to her. She could see him trying to compute why Erin would want to go back to his house, on top of the already-mind-boggling suggestion that she wanted to go all the way into the city to watch an action movie instead of just staying in and going to bed at the usual hour. Erin was a creature of habit. He knew she didn’t like unexpected changes to her schedule.
“Just stay here for a minute,” she told him. “I just need to grab my purse, and a couple of things…”
If she didn’t get up right away, she was just going to have to keep explaining herself, and that wasn’t getting any easier. Erin hurried into her room. She pulled out her phone and texted Jeremy to fill him in on the developments. She would have to give him the code to disarm the burglar alarm, because Terry would insist she armed it before they left. If Jeremy didn’t want to be stuck in the house until she returned, he’d have to disarm it.
Erin wondered if Orange Blossom would behave himself, or whether he’d start yowling when she left. He had been okay during the day, but he was used to her usual routine. If she left him alone at night with Jeremy, she didn’t want to think of what might happen.
She threw a couple of overnight items in a large handbag and returned to Terry within a couple of minutes. Not long enough to be suspicious of anything.
“Uh, I guess I’d better feed the animals their bedtime treats before we go.”
Terry stood up and watched her, not offering any objection or demanding an explanation, but she knew he had to be wondering what the heck she was thinking. She could give him a story about feeling funny about having him overnight at Clementine’s house, but then she’d have to come up with an explanation for her change of heart when Jeremy was no longer there. It was better to just let Terry come up with his own explanation for her strange behavior.
Chapter Nineteen
E
rin stretched languidly. She knew that it was much later in the day than she would normally get up, but it had been a very late night too, and she knew she didn’t have to be at the bakery, so she just let her body curl into Terry’s.
There was a buzzing that seemed far away. She thought she should know what it was, but wasn’t quite awake enough to connect her thoughts and be sure. Terry groaned and rolled over away from her. Erin made a disappointed sound, and in a few seconds, he rolled back into the warm pocket of blankets.
“What does your sister want?”
Erin squinted, opening her eyes just the barest crack to get more information. The room was too bright with morning sunshine and she didn’t want to have to wake up the rest of the way. Terry held a phone out toward Erin.
“Reg?” Erin asked. She took her phone from him and looked down at it. “Oh, Charley. Right.”
She hesitated, not really wanting to talk to Charley. She didn’t want to let anything else break into their little paradise. The phone stopped buzzing and was still and silent in her hand.
“Oh, well,” Terry said, cheek dimpling. “If it’s important, she can leave a message, right?”
Erin nodded. Terry hugged her closer to him, his eyes suggesting that he was not quite as interested in going back to sleep as she was. Erin yawned. She knew she shouldn’t be so lazy. They had the whole day together, something that almost never happened. Or it hadn’t before. She might be insisting that they manage to coordinate their schedules better in the future.
Erin’s phone started buzzing in her hand. She looked down at it. Charley again. She really wanted Erin. Maybe something was wrong at the bakery. But then it would be Vic or Bella who would be calling her, not Charley. Maybe the trustees had told Charley that she wouldn’t be able to open The Bake Shoppe after all and she needed someone to talk to about it.
“Go ahead,” Terry said, leaning back, putting a few inches between the two of them.
“I’m sorry. I’ll be right back. Promise.” She swiped the phone and put it to her ear. “Hi, Charley. What’s up?”
There was a long blast of sound from the phone. Erin pulled it away from her ear and frowned, trying to interpret it. It didn’t sound like a pocket dial. It sounded like someone’s mouth was too close to the microphone and they were yelling or crying or making some other caterwauling noise.
“Charley? Is that you? What’s going on?”
This time, she was pretty sure she could detect a few hitching sobs in the middle of the noise. She looked at Terry, frowning, and then back at the phone.
“Do you need help, Charley? Is someone else there? Do you need the police or a doctor?”
“No…” This time, at least, she was sure there was actually a person on the end trying to talk to her, and pretty sure that it was Charley.
Terry sat up, looking concerned about at least Erin’s side of the conversation. Erin wasn’t sure if he could hear or understand any of the other noises.
“Are you sick, Charley?”
“No.”
“Hurt?”
“No.” Charley burst into bubbling, noisy tears again. Erin was really starting to get concerned.
“Where are you? Are you at home?”
Erin thought—or imagined—she could hear a ‘yes’ in Charley’s answer.
“Okay. I’m going to come over there. Is that okay? Is that what you want?”
More noise from the other end of the phone. Erin shook her head at Terry, unable to make any sense of it.
“I’ll be right over. Hang in there,” she told Charley, and hung up the call.
“What’s going on?”
“I don’t know. It sounds like she’s crying. I think. It’s really hard to tell. But I think she said she’s at home, so I’m going to go over there and see if I can help her.”
“I’ll come with you.”
“I really don’t think she’s going to want you there. She’s got a real thing about police.”
“I don’t have to stay if she doesn’t want me there. But I think I should at least check and make sure she’s safe and hasn’t been the victim of violence.”
Erin nodded. “Uh… okay. That makes sense. Just don’t be insulted if she acts like you’re an intruder. She did call me, and I’m telling you, she doesn’t like dealing with police after everything that’s happened to her.”
“Understood,” Terry agreed. “No problem.”
He got out of bed and started pulling on his uniform. Erin followed suit, grabbing her own clothes and ducking into the bathroom to change.
“You don’t have to hide,” Terry called to her through the door, chuckling.
Erin’s face burned. “I know. It’s just… faster this way…” she explained, telling herself that she could take off her nightie, get dressed, use the commode, and brush her teeth all more efficiently if she were already in the bathroom.
“I’ll make some coffee. Do you want anything else? I have a few muffins in the freezer.”
“Yeah, maybe you’d better thaw some out. I’m not ready to eat yet, but I don’t know what kind of a sta
te Charley is in. She might need something, or I might end up being there for a long time.”
“See you in a minute, then.”
Erin quickly got herself together and was in the kitchen before Terry could finish thawing the muffins. She let K9 out of his kennel, and he ran excited circles around her, his big tail making wide sweeps back and forth.
“Settle down, partner,” Terry told him. “We’ve got work to do.”
At the word work, K9 stopped playing and was still, waiting for a command from Terry.
“I’m going to leave you to get breakfast together,” Terry said. “Throw the coffee in a thermos and find a container for the muffins. Juice or jam if you want them. I’m going to take him outside, then we’ll be right back.”
“You got it,” Erin agreed.
Terry went outside and Erin familiarized herself with the kitchen. In ten minutes, they were both ready to go, and Terry drove over in the squad car.
“She’s at her house, not at the bakery?”
“That’s what she said. She wouldn’t be able to get into the bakery, would she? Isn’t it still a crime scene?”
“It’s been processed. She can access it if she wants to. Depending on what the trustees of the estate have to say.”
“She must really hate having to check with them on everything she does. She’s so independent.”
Terry nodded. “I suspect you’re right.”
“But that doesn’t mean she would kill one of them just because he wouldn’t do what she wanted.” Erin didn’t want anyone saying she was trying to throw suspicion on Charley.
“Particularly when he was letting her do what she wanted to,” Terry agreed.
They pulled up to the house and Erin jumped out of the car first. She hurried up the sidewalk to Charley’s door and knocked. Terry was right on her heels.
“Don’t you think I should go in first?”
“No. She’s just upset. It isn’t a crime.”
Terry acquiesced. Erin knocked on the door again, harder. “Charley, it’s Erin. Open up.”
It took a couple more times, then the door finally opened. Erin stepped in and gasped.
Chapter Twenty
C
harley’s apartment in Moose River had been neat and well-maintained. Charley had been embarrassed at having left a pair of socks and other everyday things out where they didn’t belong. But her house looked like someone had turned it upside-down and shaken it. Erin looked around, gaping.
“What happened? Did someone break in?”
“No,” Charley blubbered. Her face was red and sweaty, wet with tears and snot. And it was no wonder. It was obvious someone had broken into the house and ransacked the place. Erin would have been in tears too. “No, it’s just me,” Charley said, voice thick and choked. “I’ve been busy with the bakery… I haven’t had time to take care of anything around here… and I just… can’t… deal…”
Erin could smell the alcohol oozing from Charley’s pores.
She looked back at Terry, who was trailing them into the house. If the house was in that state just because Charley was busy and hadn’t been able to look after herself, then she clearly needed help. Maybe a maid and maybe a psychiatrist.
“Why don’t we sit down, and you can tell me what happened?” Erin suggested.
Charley made gulping noises, attempting to stop the tears, but it appeared to be useless.
“Shh. It’s going to be okay,” Erin soothed. “Just tell me.”
“It’s all too much,” Charley bawled. “Trying to open the bakery, and people stealing things, and Don Inglethorpe getting himself killed on my property, and Bobby! I miss Bobby!”
Erin was doubly shocked. Charley had barely mentioned her late boyfriend in the months since she had been falsely accused of his murder. Erin had decided that Charley hadn’t really had any feelings toward him at all, but had just been attracted to someone who was powerful in the organized crime syndicate she had been working for. He might have been handsome, but she hadn’t actually loved him.
“Bobby? What does any of this have to do with Bobby?”
Charley scrubbed at her eyes. “Nothing!”
“Nothing, but…?”
“I just miss him. Nothing has been the same since he died. I thought that if I came here and opened the bakery, everything would be fine. I’m not with the clan anymore, but I could start something new and it would turn out okay.”
“But things haven’t worked out the way you were hoping,” Erin surmised.
“Why did that idiot have to get killed in my bakery? Do you know what a pain it is having someone killed in your place of business?”
Erin looked at Terry and couldn’t help smiling. “Well, actually, yes. It sucks.”
“Who’s going to come to a bakery where someone was killed? Two people, if you want to count Trenton Plaint, but that happened before I ever came to town, so that’s not my fault!”
“None of it is your fault.” Erin cleared a place on the sofa for Charley to sit down and guided her into it. She sat beside Charley, giving her a sisterly hug around the shoulders. “None of this is your fault. It’s just the way things go sometimes.”
“I’m never going to be able to open the bakery now. So where does that leave me? I’ve got nothing! I was hanging on to this, thinking that if I could make it work, I could be independent of my family and the clan and just be a… a businesswoman like you. How come everything works out for you, and it just turns to crap for me?”
“Charley…” Erin rubbed Charley’s shoulder and shook her head. “Everything doesn’t work out for me. My mom and dad died, and I went into foster care. I had nothing. I was out on my butt at eighteen and had to find a way to survive. The only reason I’ve got the bakery is because my Aunt Clementine died and left it to me. And starting it out hasn’t been all roses. Angela Plaint dying of an allergic reaction on opening day wasn’t exactly the thing to convince everyone how well I could handle baking for people with special diets.”
“But it worked out,” Charley sobbed.
“Yes, eventually. But not all in a day. I had to work through the same things that you are.”
“Not all of them,” Charley snapped.
Erin shrugged. “Maybe not.”
“You don’t even know all the stuff that’s going on with the clans in Bald Eagle Falls right now.”
Erin broke out in goosebumps. She shivered. All of the stuff going on with the clans? She looked at Terry, but he gave her wide eyes and a shrug. He didn’t know what Charley was talking about either.
“What?” Erin pushed a lock of Charley’s hair back behind her ear. “What’s been going on with the clans?”
Charley sniffled. She wiped her sweaty red face with the back of her arm. “Nobody cared about Bald Eagle Falls before. It’s such a little place, no one bothered to add it to their territory.”
“And that has changed…?”
“They’re fighting over it. Dysons and Jacksons. Maybe some of the smaller players too, I don’t know. Someone is going to get it. And there’s going to be more blood shed before they do.”
“But why would anyone want Bald Eagle Falls?” Erin was shocked. It was such a safe little community, despite the rash of murders, she couldn’t imagine that there was any benefit to a crime family claiming ownership over the community.
“Why do gangs fight over inner-city blocks?” Charley countered. “It isn’t because they’ve valuable. It’s just to prove who is more powerful.”
“How do you know all this? How do you know they’re fighting over Bald Eagle Falls?”
“I might not be in the Dyson clan anymore, but I still hear things.” Charley snorted, sucking back the mucousy tears. “This sleepy little town isn’t as sleepy as you might think.”
Erin looked at Terry. His expression was stony. This was not good news for him or anyone in town.
Erin rubbed Charley’s back soothingly. “It will work out in the end,” she repeated, though of course
she had no way of knowing if that were true. Charley had been through some pretty rough times recently, and if the clans were stirring things up, who knew what else they all might be facing.
Images from old black and white movies about prohibition times and The Godfather series flashed through her brain. They might not be strictly factual, but she had met with a couple members of the Dyson clan in Moose River, and they weren’t just paper-pushing figureheads.
Charley rubbed her eyes. “If you had any sense, you’d get out of Bald Eagle Falls,” she said. “All of you.”
Terry was quiet as they got into the squad car. They had only taken as long as was needed for Erin to get Charley calmed down, knowing that Terry needed to get in and report the rumors of a possible clan war in Bald Eagle Falls to the sheriff and to consider how to address it.
“Do you think it’s true?” Erin asked.
He glanced sideways at her, not answering immediately.
“I think she spent a long, hard night drinking,” he said eventually. “That’s obviously going to affect her perceptions. She has been through a lot of challenges and big changes lately. That may be all it is.”
“But you don’t think it is.”
“No,” he admitted. “I’ve seen some signs… people hanging around town that shouldn’t be. Increased chatter. I was hoping it was just people who were attracted by news of a murder. You do get people who want to be where it all happened, whenever something sensational happens. I was hoping that it would just die down naturally.”
“But if it’s some kind of gang war, then it’s not going to, is it?”
He stared off into the distance before starting the car. “It depends how much they really want Bald Eagle Falls. It could just be a flash in the pan, and then they get bored with it. There’s not that much to attract big criminals here. But if they really do decide to have a showdown…”
“I sure hope not.”
“Me too. I’ll talk to the sheriff, but chances are, we’re going to need to get the feds in here. Our little force is just not equipped to deal with something of that scale.”
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