Changing Fortune Cookies

by P. D. Workman

  “We will make a request for your phone records and for his. If you could make them available without a warrant, things would go faster.”

  And time was of the essence in finding Joshua. She didn’t know how long he had left.

  If he were still okay.

  Joshua didn’t want to wake up. His mother was shaking his arm hard, but he didn’t want to get up for school. He had been up too late, or he had drunk too much. There was no way he would be able to get out of bed and attend to his work.

  “Joshua.”

  “Mmm. No.”

  “Wake up. Come on, get up!”

  “Can’t.”

  The whisper was harsh in his ear. “Wake up now. Or you’re not going to be happy with the consequences.”

  Joshua shifted. It was not his mom. She might warn him about consequences, but that whisper was from somewhere else. Mary Lou would use her voice. She wouldn’t care if anyone overheard her. If she had to correct the boys and someone overheard her getting after one of them, it was an embarrassment for them, not for her.

  The whisper sent an icicle snaking up his spine. He tried to rub his eyes and open them, but he couldn’t move his hands. His eyes were sticky and gritty and didn’t want to open. He really needed to sleep more. But the back of his brain told him he was in danger. He needed to wake up and be aware of his surroundings.

  Something was wrong.

  He rubbed his right eye against his shoulder, and then his left, and blinked hard, trying to clear both of them. But he still couldn’t see anything. Just darkness around him, blurry and amorphous. He couldn’t identify anything.

  “Mom?”

  “I’m not your mother.”

  Josh blinked and tried to moisten his lips, but his mouth was too dry. He looked around for a glass of water, but he couldn’t see one. He couldn’t see anything.

  “What happened?”

  “No more questions.”

  It started to seep back. The long periods spent in the dark, the world looking the same whether he had his eyes open or closed. The dark, whispering figure. The hopelessness of his situation. If someone were going to pay a ransom or find him, they would have done so by now. It had been too long. He and his chances of survival were fading away.

  “Do you have food?” he asked finally. It was a question but, hopefully, the shadow wouldn’t put it in the same category as questions about what had happened to him or what was going to happen.

  The shadow didn’t move for a while. Then there was a sigh. “I will get you something. What do you want?”

  For a moment, Joshua couldn’t speak. He could ask for whatever he wanted? His head filled with all the wonderful foods he missed, his favorite foods as a child, the specials at the restaurants in Bald Eagle Falls and in the city. Even the little packaged cakes and cookies sold at the convenience store that Mary Lou complained had probably been sitting on the shelf for twenty years.

  If he asked for something too difficult, his captor would say no, and maybe he wouldn’t get anything. If he just said ‘anything,’ he might get popcorn or chips, something salty that would make him even more dehydrated than he already was and would burn the raw sores on his lips and mouth.

  “That soup,” he said in a hoarse voice that sounded too quiet to be his own. “That was really good.”

  “The soup? You want more soup?”

  “Yes.”

  He didn’t know if he dared to ask for water too, or if that would just push his captor over the edge. He couldn’t risk it. The soup had a lot of water in it, and that would have to do. He could live with that.

  At least, he hoped so.

  Chapter 28

  Erin wondered how long it would take Mary Lou to get word that it was Erin who had, allegedly, made the call to the Quiki to get the fortunes for the cookies changed.

  She kind of wished that crimes could be solved as quickly as gossip was spread. But if anyone knew who had taken Joshua, they weren’t talking. Not to the police. This time, there was no Peter to innocently spread clues to Erin to allow her to solve the case.

  Thinking about Peter, she realized that it had been a few days since she had dropped the baking off for Mrs. Foster and she hadn’t heard anything back. Not a thank you from Mrs. Foster. No word that she’d had the baby. Nothing at all.

  She’d expected at least a thank you, even if Mrs. Foster still wasn’t happy with her. It was the Tennessee way. Erin would have to go by there later to check in and make sure everything was all right. She knew how fast Peter would eat through the baking; it wouldn’t hurt to take over another loaf of bread and some of the cheese pretzels he liked.

  Terry was at home when she got there, awake and watching through the window for her. He opened the door as she walked up the steps to let her in. She was greeted by an enthusiastic caterwauling and Marshmallow frisking around the house like he’d been into the ginseng. Terry shook his head at the animals. K9 was, as usual, sitting politely beside Terry, though Erin thought that from the way he was watching the other animals, he might have been wishing that he could run and play a little too. Maybe he needed to have a little more off-duty time than he had had recently. With their concerns about intruders, he was on guard even when Erin and Terry were both home.

  “You shouldn’t have walked alone,” Terry admonished, taking her in his arms and kissing her on top of the head.

  “It’s still light out. There hasn’t been any trouble. I do need to walk now and then or my legs will shrivel up and fall off.”

  Terry rolled his eyes at this. “You say there hasn’t been any trouble like we didn’t just have a resident disappear. Or have you decided now that Joshua is a runaway after all?”

  “No, I haven’t,” Erin snapped. “You know very well that he’s not a runaway. He wouldn’t be doing this to Mary Lou. He would have come forward when he realized how upset she was, even if he didn’t want to come home.”

  “How would he know how upset she was?” Terry asked.

  “I don’t know. His friends would tell him. Campbell would. He’d see the paper or hear his name in the news. Something.”

  So far, it hadn’t been in anything but the local weekly paper, and that hadn’t even been a very good article, since the police had still been saying that there was no foul play involved at that point. There were no quotes from Mary Lou or long descriptions about how overwrought she was. It hadn’t made it to the city news, let alone national. Kids disappeared every day. If there was nothing to set Joshua’s disappearance apart, it wasn’t news.

  “Next time, call me and I’ll pick you up. Or I can come over and we can walk home together. I don’t know why you didn’t just have Willie wait for you. He would have.”

  “I don’t feel unsafe walking around Bald Eagle Falls,” Erin said. She frowned. Should she? There had been enough trouble since she had moved there. Maybe a reasonable person would be afraid to walk through the town’s streets alone. Maybe Erin had faced so many shocks that she no longer knew what was normal and reasonable.

  Terry’s lips pressed together.

  Erin petted Orange Blossom and squeezed him, kissing his head and scratching his chin until he settled down. She reached for Marshmallow to scratch his ears, but he jumped up surprisingly high, switching directions mid-air, and took off, so graceful he made her think of a ballet dancer. Erin laughed at him.

  “Well. Everyone else seems to be in fine fettle tonight.” She put her purse down and stretched. “Shall we get dinner on?”

  “We? Does that mean it’s my night?”

  Erin shrugged. “I thought we would come up with something together.”

  Terry seemed to cheer a little at that. Erin was surprised. She didn’t think he usually liked to be roped in for the chores, especially in her special domain. Maybe they hadn’t been spending enough time together lately. There had been a lot of distractions and outside concerns. And their individual health problems had caused extra stress and friction. They were both feeling somewhat better now
; maybe it was time to mend fences.

  “What do you feel like?” she asked, walking into the kitchen and considering what was in the cupboards and the fridge. “Soup and sandwiches? Salad? Something more substantial? How hungry are you?”

  “Maybe soup, if it’s something hearty.”

  Erin nodded. She opened the big pantry cupboard and looked at the larger cans of soup. There were some chunky soups, some chili, and of course, they could always use one of the lighter soups as a base and add some potatoes, meat, or vegetables to it.

  “Mmm… chicken and dumpling?” she suggested.

  “Yes!”

  She seemed to have hit on a winner the first attempt. Erin smiled and pulled the can off the shelf. “You can get started on that. But if we’re going to have chicken and dumplings, we’re going to need biscuits.”

  Terry nodded in agreement. He went to get the can opener while Erin scanned the shelves for the biscuit mix. She turned on the oven and checked the instructions on the side of the box while Terry got out a pot for the soup.

  “I can’t believe that you use biscuit mix.” Terry chuckled.

  “I should make gluten-free biscuits from scratch?”

  “Of course.”

  “I’ve been baking all day. For supper, we get a boxed mix.”

  “It’s fine with me. Just don’t let any of your customers see you.”

  “I think most of them know that I’m not gluten-free at home. And I’ve never said that I don’t use mixes. At the bakery, no. But at home…” She shrugged. “I want to relax at the end of the day.”

  “We could just defrost some rolls from the freezer. That would be simpler.”

  “No. For chicken and dumplings, we have to have baking powder biscuits.”

  Terry was smiling. “Okay, then,” he agreed. He dumped the contents of the big can into a pot and set it on the stove. “What else do you want me to do?”

  “Maybe some salad,” Erin suggested. She knew she needed to watch her weight, and chicken and dumplings with baking powder biscuits weren’t exactly low-cal. She’d better be an adult and eat her veggies too.

  “Did you hear from the police department about the fortunes?” Erin started to form the biscuits and set them on the pan. “The latest, I mean?” She felt a knot settle in her stomach, taking away the feeling of lightness and well-being that she’d been feeling since they started making dinner together.

  Terry looked at her as he ripped up lettuce at the table. “The latest? Was there something today?”

  “Yeah. I found out from Stayner when I dropped the cookies off. No one tampered with the fortune cookies at the restaurant or with the bag of fortunes at Auntie Clem’s bakery.”

  “Well, that’s good news.” He paused, then looked up at her. “What does that leave?”

  “They think I called the Quiki and changed the order.”

  He frowned, brows drawing close together. “They think that you ordered different fortunes than you did?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Why would you do that?”

  “I guess I’m an evil genius. Or just evil. Decided Mary Lou wasn’t suffering enough and wanted to give the knife an extra twist.”

  “Maybe if someone didn’t know you. No one who knows you would ever think that.”

  “Thanks. I hope not.”

  He reached for a tomato and started to dice it. The knife was sharp and his movements were slow. She could tell that he was thinking through all of the implications and figuring out what this new information told them.

  “You just got those fortunes. When did you start putting them into the cookies?”

  “Just on Wednesday.”

  “After Josh went missing.”

  “Right.”

  “But when did you get the fortunes printed?”

  “Saturday. When I—” Erin cut herself off. “Before Joshua disappeared,” she realized.

  “So you supposedly had fortunes printed before Josh disappeared saying that he would never be found.”

  Erin put the biscuits in the oven and turned on the element under the soup. She gave it a stir.

  “So it wasn’t just a spur of the moment thing,” she said quietly. “It was planned ahead. Taking Josh, putting new fortunes into the cookies. Implicating me. It was all thought out ahead of time. There wasn’t anything spontaneous or off-the-cuff about it.”

  “No. Couldn’t have been.”

  “But why? Why would anyone do this?”

  “The typical motive for kidnapping, if not for the kidnapper’s own… recreation… is greed or coercion… but the kidnapper hasn’t asked for anything.”

  “Revenge?” Erin asked, the knot in her stomach tightening even more. How was she even going to eat her chicken and dumplings? “It isn’t like the kidnapper hasn’t communicated at all. He hasn’t asked for anything, but… he left the note for Mary Lou, pointing the finger at me. And he arranged for the fortunes to be printed saying that we would never find Joshua. That’s more like… he’s trying to get back at Mary Lou or me… turn us against each other, make us feel worse.”

  Terry sighed. “I need to talk to the sheriff.”

  “Wait until after dinner?”

  Terry nodded. “Yes. Of course. There’s plenty of time after dinner to discuss it.”

  “I was really happy at first, realizing that the fortunes weren’t tampered with by someone at the bakery. But… all of this just makes me feel worse. I’m still glad it wasn’t someone that works for me. But it’s personal. I just don’t know which of us it is aimed against.”

  Chapter 29

  Erin had arranged to take the day off at Auntie Clem’s so she could get some other things done. She stopped in anyway at the quiet part of the morning, arriving through the front door like a customer and checking to make sure everything was going smoothly.

  “No problems,” Bella offered cheerfully, “other than the occasional misshapen loaf. Business has been brisk today.”

  Probably because of the rumors about Erin being involved with Joshua’s disappearance. The findings about the fortunes being printed wrong probably just ramped up speculation more. Business always improved at Auntie Clem’s when a major crime was committed. She could almost count on it as a marketing technique if things ever slowed down too much. Commit a crime, or start gossip about a crime being committed, and everybody would start coming around to find out the details.

  “What can we get for you today?” Gwen asked cheekily. “There’s a sale on banana bread.”

  Erin smiled. “I want to grab a few things for the Fosters, actually.” She indicated the various baked goods that she thought she should take, and Vic put them into a box, which would be easier for her to take to the door than multiple bags, which might end up crushing the goodies.

  “Thank you. Give me a call if anything comes up,” Erin advised.

  They agreed, but Erin wasn’t expecting there to be any trouble. It wasn’t like Mary Lou would be coming in with another fortune cookie.

  But that made Erin think about the Chinese restaurant. They still had a large supply of cookies, and there was no way to know how many of them contained fortunes designed to upset people. They would have to completely redo the order. Get new fortunes printed, mix up new batches of dough, and start baking and folding all over again. It had been a big job the first time. It would go faster the second time, but she still wasn’t looking forward to it. They would all be thinking about Joshua and whether he were going to be okay.

  With every day that passed, it became less and less likely that they would find him well and safe.

  But miracles happened. There had been that girl in Utah. And there had been other cases. Sometimes girls escaped after years of being held prisoner in basements or back yards.

  Girls, Erin realized, not boys. It was never boys.

  “Are you okay, Erin?” Bella asked.

  “Oh. Yes, I’m fine. I was just thinking…” Erin didn’t finish her thought, but Bella could apparentl
y read it in her face and voice anyway.

  “Yes,” she said soberly. “I’m worried too.”

  When Erin arrived at the Fosters’ house, Peter and his sisters were playing in the yard. They were noisy, and Peter directed and bossed the girls mercilessly, taking his role as big brother very seriously.

  When he saw Erin pull to the curb in front of the house, he ran over. “Miss Erin!”

  “Hi, Peter. How are you?”

  “Good!” He looked at the box as she picked it up to take to the door. “When do I get to come to Auntie Clem’s Bakery again?”

  “I don’t know, sweetie. You’ll have to ask your mother.”

  “Dad says it’s nice that you’re bringing food to the house so he or Mom don’t have to go out to get it.”

  “I hope it helps. I know your mom probably isn’t having a very easy time getting around these days.”

  “She has to rest a lot,” Peter agreed. “That means she has to lay down and we’re supposed to be quiet and not disturb her.” He rolled his eyes and looked around at the little girls. “They are not very good at being quiet,” he informed her. “It’s best if we come outside.”

  “Yes, better to be where you can make some noise,” Erin agreed. It would be difficult for them to all be inside, playing or looking for something to do that wouldn’t make any noise. She remembered being in homes where one of the parents worked on shift, and how hard it was not to raise her voice or do anything that might involve banging or other noises for hours on end. It had been so easy to forget and get involved in something either by herself or with foster siblings that would end up getting out of hand. Then the foster mom would be thundering in, shouting at them to be quiet. Erin could remember that feeling of horror when she would suddenly realize what she had done and have to face the fury of an angry parent.

  At least Mrs. Foster wouldn’t be that way. She had always seemed like a very nice woman, patient even when Peter was in his argumentative ‘lawyer mode.’