Sour Cherry Turnover

by P. D. Workman

  Chapter Twenty-Five

  A

  fter hearing that Adele had made arrangements to have supper with her husband at the family restaurant, Erin and Vic decided they needed a night out as well. They booked a table of their own and were pretending not to watch Adele and Rudolph as they ate their dinner. Erin and Vic were just there in case Adele needed them, like Terry had said. They both had Terry on speed dial, so he could be there in a few minutes if it looked like things were getting heated between the two.

  But so far, things seemed perfectly calm. More than that, Adele and Rudolph seemed positively friendly with each other. Adele wasn’t smiling, but she wasn’t scowling, either. That blanched, worried expression she’d had when she had first spotted Rudolph was nowhere to be seen.

  Rudolph himself was in fine form. He was practically gushing over Adele. He beamed at her and frequently slid his fingers through his hair as he flirted with her. He sat across the table and held her hand for several minutes at a time. Erin couldn’t hear the conversation between them, but there didn’t seem to be any harsh words. No argument.

  “Well, this isn’t as exciting as I expected,” Vic grumbled.

  “We don’t actually want it to be exciting,” Erin countered. “We don’t want Adele to be in any danger.”

  “I don’t mean I want her to be in danger, just not to be sitting there smiling at him and pretending she likes him. If she doesn’t want to be with him, then why can’t she look like it? She can’t be that afraid of making a scene. She’s just letting him walk all over her.”

  “Nobody’s walking over anybody. She’s just having dinner. And I assume he’s paying, so she gets something out of it. She said that she’s not getting back together with him. She’s just humoring him by having dinner and a discussion. She’ll let him down easy and he’ll go back to Mass, and that will be that. No need for any fuss or bother.”

  “I know.” Vic sighed. “I shouldn’t be wanting them to argue. I just feel like it would be healthier if they did. They should get their problems all out in the open.”

  Erin smothered a smile. “I think that’s the whole point of eating here. They want to lay it all out on the table, discuss things civilly, and then come to some kind of settlement. Which would preferably be Adele going home and Romeo leaving town.”

  They were both quiet for a minute, watching Rudolph talk earnestly with Adele, his cheeks slightly flushed, leaning toward her as he caught her up on his life or asked her for a favor or whatever he was there for.

  “Don’t look now,” Vic murmured, “but I think it’s your favorite blond accident victim.”

  Erin looked around. “Accident victim?” She spotted the woman in army fatigues. “Oh, her. She wasn’t the victim, she was the one who caused the accident.”

  They gazed at her, trying to glean anything they could by looking at her. She stood by the hostess podium, waiting to be seated. She looked just as Adele had described her, with the camouflage shirt and pants. Just no gun. What exactly had she been up to in Erin’s woods with a gun? Out hunting? But hunting what? There were still plenty of people around Bald Eagle Falls who hunted for their own food, but they didn’t do it right in town. They would go out farther into the wilds and look for deer or other big game.

  The woman looked like a hunter, so maybe she had just been in the wrong place, thinking she was on public land and would be able to bag something.

  The woman looked over and saw the two of them staring at her. She raised her brows and gave them a questioning smile. Erin didn’t know what to do; should they acknowledge that they had been looking at her, or pretend that they had just happened to be looking in that direction? She looked at Vic to see what she thought.

  “Oh, sheesh,” Vic murmured. “She’s coming over here.”

  “Well, you’re the one who wanted some excitement.”

  “I wanted to watch someone else get into an argument, not me!”

  The woman had a slow, rolling gait that brought her efficiently to Erin’s and Vic’s table without even a whisper of sound.

  “Hi. I’m eating alone today; would you mind if I joined you?”

  Erin looked at Vic, who looked back at her, and neither of them was sure what the proper protocol for such a situation was. It would be rude to turn the woman away without a good reason, but they were there to spy on Adele, not just to eat and visit.

  The woman waited for a few moments, then pulled out a chair and sat down.

  “Rohilda Beaven,” she introduced herself. “Folks call me Beaver.”

  “Beaver?” Erin repeated. She looked around to see if someone was secretly filming them. It had to be some kind of joke. People didn’t just invite themselves to join you at your meal. And women did not go by nicknames like Beaver. Even if they did have strange Christian names like Rohilda. What kind of a name was that? Danish?

  “Beaver,” the woman agreed. She crossed one ankle over a knee, spreading out to take up plenty of space. Like a cat puffing out its fur to make itself look bigger. She seemed to be taking up as much real estate as possible. “And you are…?”

  “I’m Vic, and this is Erin.”

  “Vic and Erin. Nice to meet you. I hope you don’t mine me horning in on your dinner too much? I’m usually a loner, but the way you were watching me when I came in… I thought maybe you wouldn’t mind.”

  “No, of course not, we wouldn’t want you to have to eat alone,” Vic assured her. “Erin and I spend so much time together, it’s probably a good thing to have someone else join in to spice up the conversation.”

  Beaver nodded. “Are you two a couple?” she asked, making a gesture to include them both.

  Erin was taking a drink of her RC and just about sprayed it across the table. She was used to hearing comments made to Vic about her gender identity, but it had been some time since anyone had accused the two of them of being an item.

  “No, no,” Vic tried to cover Erin’s spit-take. “We work together. And I rent an apartment from Erin. We don’t live in the same house and we’re both… We’re both straight.”

  “Oh, okay.” Beaver shrugged. “Sorry. I just thought maybe you were out on a date. You said you spent a lot of time together, so I figured…”

  “No. We both have boyfriends,” Vic said firmly.

  Erin nodded in agreement. She wondered whether Beaver was gay herself or had just made a wrong assumption. There were stereotypes about a woman in army fatigues or with a brush cut. Not that Beaver had a brush cut. She had a beautiful long ponytail which would have had to be done up in a tight bun if she were actually in the army. And then there was the name Beaver. What kind of a name was that for a woman?

  “I don’t. No boyfriend or girlfriend. So, no judgments here.” Beaver looked around for the waitress. It was a few minutes before she managed to get someone’s attention to order a drink and get a menu. Then she flipped through it in a slow, relaxed pace. “What’s good here? There anything special?”

  “It’s all good,” Vic said. “All done from scratch, even the mashed potatoes. I don’t think there’s anything bad on the menu, do you, Erin?”

  “No, I haven’t ever been disappointed.”

  “The two of you work together? Where do you work?” Beaver asked.

  “I own the bakery,” Erin offered. “Auntie Clem’s Bakery. That’s me.”

  “You’re Auntie Clem?”

  “No, I’m Erin. My aunt was the real Auntie Clem. I named it after her, because I inherited from her, so I had enough money that I could take a run at opening a place of my own. It was really a great break for me.”

  “Sounds like it,” Beaver agreed. “I wouldn’t mind if someone would die and leave me a business. That seems like a pretty sweet deal.”

  “You wouldn’t want someone you loved to die, though,” Vic pointed out.

  Beaver considered this seriously before finally nodding agreement. “No, you’re probably right there. I wouldn’t want someone I loved to die. But someone else could,
that would be okay.”

  Vic shook her head, bemused. Erin decided to try to steer the conversation to something a little less morbid.

  “So, what about you? Are you a hunter?”

  “I’m a sort of a hunter,” Beaver said with a mysterious smile. “You could say that.”

  “I hear you were over on my property earlier and Adele sent you on your way.”

  Beaver looked around and saw Adele talking with her husband at their table. “That one, you mean? Yeah, she told me it was private land and I couldn’t be wandering around on it. You pay her too?”

  “Uh, well, she’s my groundskeeper. She makes sure that no one is messing around with anything out there, and she gets free rent of the summer house. It works out for both of us.”

  “You might want to suggest she start carrying a gun. Anything could happen out there, and she wasn’t even armed. You don’t know what kind of people you’re going to run into.”

  “What’s that supposed to mean?” Vic challenged. She looked Beaver over, her brows drawing down in anger. “Is that a threat of some kind?”

  Beaver’s eyes widened, either surprised or pretending to be. “A threat? Me? Heavens, no. What reason would I have to threaten anyone?”

  Vic dialed back her tone. “Okay, then. I just wanted to… We’ve had some things going on in town. There are some shady people hanging around, and we’re a little worried about them causing trouble. So I just… I wanted to make sure you weren’t with them and weren’t making some kind of threat…”

  “I’m not with any one.” Beaver slurped an ice cube out of her glass of water and chewed it. “I have seen some characters around town, though… I think I know what you’re talking about.”

  “That man that you rear-ended,” Erin said. “He’s one of them.”

  Beaver laughed. “Oh, you heard about that, did you? I guess word does get around, even if you’re not from these parts. Yeah, I hit the idiot.”

  “You know him?”

  “I know his kind,” Beaver said, her mouth twisting into a sneer of distaste. “And I figured I’d give him a hard time.”

  “You really shouldn’t do things like that! If you’d made him mad enough…”

  “Nah. He wouldn’t have done anything. What’s he going to do, shoot me there on Main Street? He couldn’t do anything that might attract the attention of the police. When that cop came afterward…”

  “Then he made a break for it,” Erin agreed. “But if you provoke someone like that enough…”

  “He’d have to get permission from whoever his boss is. And then he’d have to find me. And he’d have to get the drop on me. Because I’m always armed and I’m no shrinking violent about using my weapons.”

  “His boss,” Vic repeated. “What do you know about him, then? I just knew he was from out of town…”

  “That guy? He had drug dealer written all over him. But not a kingpin. Just the guy at the bottom of the totem pole, finding new clients and doing the street-level sales. Not the kind that climbs to the top. They always die before they get that far.”

  Erin’s stomach turned over at Beaver’s casual tone. Bragging that she always carried a gun and then talking about how soldiers like that drug dealer were just going to die… she didn’t like the cold, greasy feeling the conversation left her with.

  Glancing over at Vic, she saw her own feelings etched on Vic’s face.

  Chapter Twenty-Six

  T

  he waitress brought Erin’s and Vic’s meals and took Beaver’s order. Erin looked down at her food, no longer hungry.

  “Don’t wait for me,” Beaver said. “I’ll probably catch up to you. My parents always did say that I eat way too fast. I never slow down and enjoy the meal.”

  Erin didn’t believe it. Everything about Beaver was thought out and deliberate.

  “Where did you say you’re from?” Erin asked, though she knew very well that Beaver hadn’t said anything about where she hailed from.

  “Here and there,” Beaver said. She creased her napkin and unfolded it again several times. “I’ve been all over.”

  “Like Erin,” Vic offered. “I think she’s been everywhere. Me, I just grew up on a farm here in Tennessee, and I’ve hardly even been out of the state. Redneck girl if you ever saw one.”

  “I haven’t lived everywhere,” Erin countered. “Mostly northeast. I spent my first few years around here, but after that… Maine, New York, eastern seaboard… other places. I haven’t lived west coast or anywhere past the Midwest.”

  Beaver nodded. “I’ve been everywhere.”

  “Army?” Vic suggested.

  “Army brat,” Beaver admitted. “Never got the knack for staying in one place after growing up like that. I stick around too long, and my feet start to itch. My mom said she always knew when she got to the bottom of the moving boxes… then it was time to start packing again. Didn’t matter whether it took her two weeks or two years to get everything unpacked, as soon as she emptied that last box, Dad would get new orders and they’d be on the road again. So I’m more comfortable living out of a suitcase than confined to one place.”

  “That’s hard for me to believe,” Erin said. “I was always being moved from one place to another. There was nothing I wanted more than to just have one family and stay in one place. I love having a house of my own, knowing that I don’t have to ever give it up to go somewhere else. It’s mine for good.”

  “Never say never,” Beaver warned. “Fate is always listening, and just like my mom unpacking those last boxes… as soon as you say you’re safe and secure and no one can take anything away from you… that’s for sure when you start to tempt fate.”

  “I don’t believe in fate.” But Erin couldn’t deny the foreboding Beaver’s words stirred up in her. Had she become too complacent? What if something did happen? What if she did lose everything, like she always had before?

  “I think Erin’s been through enough in life,” Vic said. “She’s burned through all of her obstacles. Leave some for the rest of us.”

  Erin chuckled and shook her head.

  She was trying to eat her ribs daintily, but it was no use. She couldn’t help getting sauce on her fingers and on her face, and eventually, she just had to give up trying to keep them clean. “Just don’t look at me,” she said. “This is way worse than it should be. You’d think I would have learned how to eat by now.”

  “You just look like you’re enjoying it,” Beaver said. “If I was you, I’d make as big a mess as I could. If you’re going to get dirty, you might as well get really dirty!”

  The waitress eventually brought over Beaver’s steak and potatoes, and Beaver proceeded to cut everything up efficiently. She didn’t exactly stuff her face, but she was making her way through her meal a lot more quickly than Erin had expected. Beaver looked at Erin.

  “I did warn you. I’m going to be done before you are.”

  “You probably are,” Erin admitted, looking at the couple of bones she had cleaned off. She still had a long way to go.

  “It’s not a race,” Vic said primly. But she was eyeing Beaver’s plate, looking at her own and calculating how long it was going to take her to finish.

  Beaver looked over at Adele and Rudolph. She studied them for a few minutes.

  “You said that she rents from you. Not her and her husband.”

  “That’s right,” Erin admitted. “He doesn’t live here. He just showed up today. She’s supposed to be turning him down, but it doesn’t look as if she is. They are looking pretty friendly.”

  “She’ll turn him down,” Beaver said certainly. “She’s got a good head on her shoulders.”

  “What makes you think that?” Vic asked. “You only just met her today for two minutes. How did you even know that they’re married? We didn’t know until this afternoon.”

  “I know his kind.”

  “I hope she’s not going to take him in,” Erin said.

  Beaver continued to watch the interplay betwe
en Adele and her husband.

  “What is it you do?” Erin asked. “You know that we are bakers and you said you’re sort of a hunter, but that just leaves me wondering what it is you actually do?”

  Vic cocked an eyebrow at Erin. Erin was normally reluctant to pry into people’s personal lives. Too much experience with foster care, where the social workers and foster parents weren’t supposed to share information about their kids’ backgrounds even with the other kids, and asking was taboo. She usually just sat back and let other people do the asking, or watched and waited until people revealed themselves.

  But there were too many people with unknown pasts showing up in town lately. Erin was too anxious not to ask. It was obvious Beaver was holding back, giving only general answers and focusing the conversation on things other than herself. Normally, people loved to talk about themselves.

  Beaver didn’t answer at first. She was intent on eating her steak and potatoes, and was putting them away at a surprising rate. After a few minutes of silence, she wiped her mouth with her napkin and looked at Erin.

  “Okay,” she said, “why not? I’m not the kind of hunter you might think I am. I don’t hunt animals.”

  Erin waited, but a more full explanation was not forthcoming. Erin ran through the possibilities. Maybe Beaver was a bounty hunter or a private investigator. Maybe she was like Alton Summers, someone skilled at tracking down heirs or other people who had dropped off the radar.

  But if she wasn’t hunting animals, what was she doing with a gun?

  Chapter Twenty-Seven

  B

  eaver had remained coy about what exactly it was she hunted, just grinning at Erin’s and Vic’s questions and giving nothing away. But they had her name, assuming that she hadn’t made up Rohilda Beaven, and that at least gave them some leverage to figure out more.

  “We should give her name to Terry,” Erin said as they discussed Beaver, sitting in the living room making their plans for the next day. “He can run background on her.”