“They must have caught her off guard. Might have covered her mouth or gagged her. Or hit her over the head or even drugged her. There’s no telling. But we know that she wouldn’t leave without telling you where she was going or leave Willie in the lurch when they had plans. Vic’s just not irresponsible like that.”
“No. She’d never do that.”
“What if it was Jeremy? If he came here and told her she had to go with him right away, but she had to be quiet and not say anything to anyone, would she do it?”
Erin ran the scenario through her mind. She knew how much Vic loved her family, even if most of them had disowned her. She loved Jeremy even more for being the one member of her family who supported her. If he was in trouble and needed her help and said to be quiet and not talk to anyone… she would have done it in a minute. Erin sighed.
“Yes. If it had been Jeremy… she would have done it.”
“So scenario one is that she’s with Jeremy. Do you know if she had any contact with him after Willie took off with him yesterday?”
“No, not as far as I know.”
“She didn’t even talk on the phone with him, text him?”
“No… she was working all day. We took our breaks, but she was just visiting and eating during our breaks. Not on her phone.”
“Can you remember what she was wearing?”
Erin did her best to remember Vic’s outfit that day, but it was a challenge. They wore aprons and hats and Erin didn’t really notice what was on underneath. There had been days when she’d gone home only to find that she’d been wearing mismatched shoes all day.
“Nothing unusual happened today? You didn’t… see anything when you went downstairs or out to the dumpster? You didn’t smell anything out of place?”
Terry knew Erin’s sensitive nose. She closed her eyes and breathed in and tried to remember. Any soap or cologne? Body odor? Some other smell that shouldn’t be there?
“No. I can’t think of anything downstairs. Just… dust. Concrete. Nothing really out of place.”
“Okay. That’s fine. There isn’t always anything to smell.”
“Are we going to call people in to do a search? Like when Roger disappeared?”
“No. When Roger disappeared, we knew he was wandering, and the best bet was to get a lot of people out looking for him. But this… it’s different. She probably didn’t go under her own power. She isn’t just wandering around somewhere. She’s locked away somewhere, and we don’t know where.”
It was an impossible task. Erin didn’t even know where to start. She didn’t even know what to put at the top of her list.
“Let’s talk to Willie,” Terry said. “He could have the key.”
Erin knew that Terry had already tried to talk to Willie about it once. But Willie was stubborn. He wanted to find Vic, but he wasn’t about to break any confidences to do it.
“Vic wouldn’t want me to tell anyone where Jeremy is,” he told Terry bullishly.
“What if Jeremy came here to get her? She would have gone with him. Where would they have gone?”
“He isn’t the one who took her away.”
“You don’t know that.”
“I do. It wasn’t Jeremy. It was someone else.”
Erin rubbed her forehead. “Who would take her? You’ve got to help, Willie, you have to have some idea. Didn’t she tell you… something that was bothering her? Something she was thinking of doing? An idea she had about things that were going on in Bald Eagle Falls?”
“You girls talk way more than Vickie and I do. You know her every thought. I’m just the guy she hangs out with occasionally when her mean old boss gives her a few minutes off.”
Erin gave him a wan smile. “I should give her more time off. She should have more time to spend with her friends and family.”
“No” Willie put a warm hand on Erin’s arm. “It was a joke. That’s not what I’m saying at all. Vic loves her job. She loves working here and earning her own paycheck. It’s the best thing for her.”
“Who would take her? I don’t understand why anyone would take Vic.”
Willie shook his head. “I don’t know… it could be to get to one of us, or to get to Jeremy. We don’t know until they tell us.”
“But what if they don’t tell us? What if they just did it… to keep Vic quiet about something? Or to punish someone? Or because… I don’t know, a random attack? Then what good is sitting around here waiting for someone to tell us going to do? They might have already… done something to her. I can’t stand to think of it.”
It wasn’t like Erin needed much imagination to think about what Vic might be going through. She had been taken before, and so had Bella. It was like Erin had a curse. Everyone around her was attacked or kidnapped. But she hadn’t done anything! She hadn’t been asking questions and getting people upset. She had just been in the bakery, doing her job. It wasn’t fair. Especially not to Vic.
“We’re not just sitting around waiting,” Willie promised. “I’m not going to sit around, and Terry and the police department are not just sitting around. We’re going to figure out what happened. We’re going to dig down to the heart of it and we’re going to find Vic.”
Erin nodded, a tear running out of the corner of her eye and down her nose, to dangle precariously at the end. Erin wiped impatiently at it. Crying wasn’t going to do any good. It was time for actions. Or at least for lists.
“All the stuff that’s been going on in town… is it all connected? It has to be, right? But I can’t make it all fit together.”
“All of what things?” Terry asked. “Which things in particular are you trying to connect?”
“Well…” Erin sniffled, “first of all, all the new people hanging around town. Are they all related to each other? To the clan war over Bald Eagle Falls?”
Terry grimaced. “I wish I could answer that one. There have been representatives from both the Jacksons and the Dysons, as well as some hoods that we can only assume are from smaller organizations. Drug dealers and other lowlifes trying to ply their trade…”
“Like Bo Biggles,” Erin contributed.
Terry’s eyes narrowed at her. “Yes. Like him. He’s not the only one hanging around, but he’s been one of the most visible. I’ve done my best to run them out of town, but they’re all digging in their heels. It isn’t easy. I’ve been talking to the feds about getting a task force in here to deal with things before they get too bad, but they’re not inclined to actually do anything until there have been more deaths, or at least some blood on the ground.”
Erin remembered the red pool of blood around Inglethorpe and felt nauseated. Terry must have seen a change in her pallor. He gripped her by the elbow. “Whoa, now. Hang in there.”
“I’m okay.”
He didn’t let go. “You sure?”
Erin swayed slightly. Maybe it was a good thing if he continued to hold on to her, just for a few minutes. “Go on. Inglethorpe’s death isn’t enough? Why do they have to wait?”
“Because they want proof that we really do have a situation here. Something that needs their intervention. It has to warrant the amount they have to spend on it, which is a pretty penny. So I get where they’re coming from… but on the other hand, I think we’ve given them some pretty convincing evidence of what’s going on here and they could just take it at face value and come.”
Erin nodded. “So… Don Inglethorpe… you do think he was part of the clan war?”
“I’m convinced he was… I’m not entirely sure how, but it’s just too much of a coincidence that he died right at the onset of a gang war over Bald Eagle Falls. I don’t think that it was Charley or anyone who was jealous or angry about a court case he had screwed up. He was seen arguing with a man and a woman the day before he died. Outsiders, not Bald Eagle Falls residents. I can only assume that they were clan and he was either arguing that he didn’t want to be involved in whatever they were doing… or asking for a bigger cut.”
“What do
you think they wanted him to do?”
“He’s a lawyer, so your guess is as good as mine. Set up some fraudulent corporate structure? Money laundering? Some other kind of fraud? I have no idea.”
“He was killed at the bakery.”
Terry’s eyes stopped moving around and he looked at her for a moment. “Yes. He was killed at the bakery. If he wasn’t there to meet Charley, and she wasn’t the one who killed him, then why was he there?”
“Were the people who were arguing with Inglethorpe Bo Biggles and Rohilda Beaven?”
“What makes you think that?”
“I don’t know. Just the way that they had that accident on Main Street… I’m sure they knew each other. I don’t think it was any accident. So if they were both from out of town, and knew each other, I thought maybe they were the man and woman who were arguing with Inglethorpe.”
Terry nodded. “I can’t really get into that investigation in any detail. But if it were Biggles and Beaver, what would that tell you? How would that help us to find Vic?”
“If we know who it is, then we know better where to look. Right now… I have no idea where to look. I don’t know why she was taken or where they would have taken her.”
“I’ve called in the Staties to put up some road blocks, in case they’re not out of town yet. There are too many backwoods roads to stop everyone leaving Bald Eagle Falls, but we can at least put roadblocks on the main highways. We could get lucky if someone tries to smuggle her out of town.”
At least he was doing something. With every second that ticked by, Erin grew more anxious.
“But they’re not the only ones who are new in town. There’s also Adele’s husband…”
Terry nodded. Willie looked at him. “You think he could be involved somehow?”
“It’s hard to nail the guy down, he’s a pretty slippery fish. He’s been involved in a lot of fraudulent activity in the past… He’s mostly a loner, or works a scam with one or two other people. Does that mean that he’s not involved with any of the locals? Not necessarily. It’s a small world, especially when you’re looking at criminals. They all meet each other sooner or later. So, he could be related. He says he’s just here to see Adele, and she confirms that, but you know you can’t trust the guy.”
“So probably a weasel,” Willie said, “just not our weasel.”
Terry laughed. “Exactly.”
“And what about… Jeremy?” Erin was afraid to voice the question. She wouldn’t have said it in front of Vic. She wouldn’t have ever gossiped about him with Willie or anyone else. But she knew that he was involved in the clans and it seemed highly unlikely that he hadn’t known something was going down in Bald Eagle Falls before arriving. He knew what was going on, or he had been sent and had been conducting business the whole time he’d been there.
Willie and Terry both looked at her, then exchanged glances with each other. All of them knew that Jeremy had to be a suspect, but none of them wanted to admit it. Erin had put it into words. Could he be at the center of the trouble? The person who had killed Don Inglethorpe?
“Mary Lou said that she’d seen him around town. But he was supposed to be staying in Clementine’s room and keeping his head down. So that’s another thing that doesn’t add up.”
“Do you believe that he just came to see Vic and stay with her?”
Erin shook her head. “Why would he say he didn’t want the police around if he was just there to be with us? He was hiding from someone. And that someone tried to get him out of there last night. He eludes them, and then Vic is taken…”
“Jeremy has to be mixed up in this.”
Terry looked at Willie, but Willie again shook his head. “Jeremy is right where I left him. And I’m not going to lead the bad guys right to his doorstep. We need to hang back and look around, see who is left.”
“The one guy that we know for sure is involved from the Jackson clan is Bo Biggles. So I guess I go haul his butt in and lean on him until he talks.”
Erin couldn’t restrain a nervous giggle. “I’ve never heard you talk like that before.”
“I don’t normally have to get all Kojak in a case, but this one is getting on my nerves. Every time I turn around, there are clan connections, but nothing to arrest them for. That’s what they’re counting on. That we won’t be able to get them on anything until they are thoroughly entrenched. Then it will be like picking burs out of a dog’s fur.”
“What should I do?” Erin asked. Terry was going to lean on Bo Biggles, but that left her alone. No Vic, no Jeremy, no Terry. She wouldn’t have anything to do while she sat around waiting to see if Terry’s interrogations produced any fruit.
“Go home and wait there. I don’t want you in the way. That means you’re not asking questions and not trying to track down Vic, you’re just waiting for the police to do their job. Understand?”
“I’m not going to mess it up. I just… don’t know what to do with myself while I’m waiting.”
He gave her a brief hug. “You’ll find something. Bake a cake. Make a list. Call your sister.”
“Okay.”
Willie followed Erin home in his truck to make sure that she got home safely and there was no one lying in wait there. He took a look around the outside of the house before letting her approach, then once she opened the door and disarmed the alarm, walked through the house, just to be sure.
“Last thing we need is you disappearing too. You call if you’re worried about anything. If you get a call or you think there’s someone around, anything at all, okay?”
Erin nodded.
“You should call someone. Don’t sit here by yourself going crazy. You need someone to help hold things together.”
Erin considered the advice. He was probably right. She was feeling very vulnerable about not being with Terry and not having Vic’s support. With everything else that had happened in Bald Eagle Falls, she’d always had a friend to rely on. But with Vic gone, Erin had no one to fill that void. She wasn’t going to pick her sister, in spite of Terry’s advice. Charley just wasn’t on the same wavelength as Erin, and would wind her up instead of helping to calm her down.
Adele, though… Erin had always found the tall, slim redhead to be a stabilizing influence. Even when everyone else was in a panic, Adele would stay calm and not get hysterical or blame Erin for being afraid.
“Okay. I’ll give Adele a call.”
“Good. Make sure it’s her before you open the door. I don’t want you disappearing too.”
“Where are you going?”
It was strange that he wasn’t helping Terry, but if all Terry was doing was interrogating a suspect, Willie couldn’t very well help with that. And staying home waiting for a phone call wasn’t going to get him any closer to the answers.
“I’m going to drive around… I’ve lived in Bald Eagle Falls for a lot of years, and I’m hoping I’ll be able to get a feeling for what’s out of place or who is not behaving the way they should…”
“You don’t think it’s Bo Biggles?”
“I know who the guy is. I’m sure he is wrapped up in it all somehow. But is he the one who took Vic?” Willie waited a few beats, and Erin wasn’t sure whether he was expecting her to fill something in or was just thinking about it. Finally, he shook his head. “If he took her, then it was under orders. I can’t see him doing something like that on his own. If he’s involved, then maybe Terry can get something out of him. If we’re lucky.”
Willie took one more look around the house to make sure that everything was okay, then said goodbye and headed out. Erin wanted to stay at the door and see him off, but he wanted her to be inside with the door locked to be sure she was safe. So she locked it as soon as he was out and watched the truck drive away.
“Good luck, Willie. Please find some sign of her.”
After the truck was gone, Erin sat down on the couch, scooping Orange Blossom to nestle in her arms. She juggled out her phone and dialed Adele’s number.
It
rang a few times, though looking at her watch, Erin wasn’t sure why. Adele was usually quite active in the evening, stopping by Erin’s shop if she needed something for the next few days, running any other errands, and then up throughout the evening and night for whatever it was she did. Gathering herbs, praying, communing with nature, and any of the other things she valued.
“Hi, Erin.”
“Adele! Are you busy, or could you come over? Something has happened…”
“What? What’s happened?”
“It’s Vic. She’s… missing. I don’t know what to do.”
“Call the police! Don’t wait around. What happened? Were you supposed to meet up? Wasn’t she working today?”
“We were both working today. I went downstairs to get some flour, and when I got back upstairs, she was gone. Just like that. No sign of her.”
“Willie didn’t pick her up?”
“He’s out looking right now. I mean, not looking for her, because if she was out there, we’d be able to find her, but looking around to see what’s not right, you know?”
“You need to get the police onto it too.”
“They are. Terry knows. Everyone has been brought in. They’ve looked around the bakery, and Terry is going to… question some people who might be involved.”
“Where are you?”
“I’m at home.”
“I’ll be right over.”
“Are you sure? I don’t want to put you out if you had other plans tonight.”
Adele didn’t answer immediately. One thing that Adele never did was answer a question quickly. She thought about it, composed her answer, and then thought about it some more. “Do you really think that I wouldn’t drop everything for you and Vic?”
Erin felt her face flush. “Well… okay. I just don’t want to put you out.”
“Don’t be silly. I’ll be exactly where I need to be.”
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