At least, Erin hoped she was as patient when she was out of the public eye.
“Is she on bed rest?” Erin asked Peter.
He looked at her, scrunching up his brows, uncertain. “She’s resting.”
“Is she sick? Did the doctor tell her she has to stay in bed or it will hurt the baby?”
Peter shook his head. “I don’t know.”
“Would you take these things into the house? Or should I ring the doorbell?”
“I’ll take them in. Do you want to watch the girls for a minute…? I’m not supposed to leave them alone.”
“I’ll watch them,” Erin agreed. She smiled at the little girls and chatted with them while Peter took the box into the house.
Peter was back again a few minutes later and, by the working of his jaw, she guessed he had helped himself to a cookie as payment for his labor.
“Is there anything your mom needs? Does she need me to pick something up or need people to help with meals…?”
“Nnno…” Peter was hesitant with his answer. “She doesn’t want people doing things for her.”
“It’s hard to accept help sometimes. Would you tell her that if she needs anything, she should give me a call? She knows how to reach me at the bakery and, if I’m not there, my employees can give her my cell number or shoot me a text. Okay?”
Peter nodded. “Okay.”
“Are you looking forward to the new baby coming?”
“Yeah. She says maybe this one will be a boy. I’d like it if she had another boy.”
“That would be nice, wouldn’t it? But he won’t be big enough to play with you for quite a while.”
“I know.” Peter looked at the girls he was watching over, and toddler Traci in particular. “But I could still share boy things with him. Like trucks and Spiderman stuff that I’ve outgrown.”
“Yes, that’s right. That would be nice.”
“How is your kitty?” Peter asked. “Is he okay now?”
Orange Blossom had recovered from his poisoning and didn’t seem to have suffered any long-term effects. Peter had mentioned it more than once.
“Yes, he’s okay now,” Erin told him. “Back to yowling at me, demanding his dinner.”
Peter giggled. “Is he really noisy?”
“Yes. Just ask my neighbors. They can hear him all the time.”
“People complain about dogs barking.”
“Yes. But not usually about cats meowing, unless they’re outside cats that are… really noisy. Not inside cats!”
“I’m glad he’s okay.”
Erin nodded. “You don’t know who made him sick, do you?” she asked tentatively. She knew that she shouldn’t be. Mrs. Foster had made it clear that she didn’t want Erin involving Peter in any of her investigations, even if he offered something. She should just say goodbye to Peter and continue on with her other errands.
“I don’t know…” Peter trailed off. “Maybe one of the guys that was being the Grinch.”
“One of the boys involved in the burglaries?”
He nodded.
“But you don’t know for sure. You don’t know who it would have been.”
“No. I don’t talk to the big boys.”
“And no one at school ever said who it was.”
Peter shrugged. “They say lots of different things. You can’t tell which ones are true, though.”
“So is there someone… that you think might have been involved in making Orange Blossom sick?”
“No. I just think… it must have been one of them because they’re the ones who wanted you to stop. So if you were taking care of your cat, maybe you wouldn’t keep looking for them.” He shrugged. “But I don’t know who it was.”
Erin suppressed a shudder. She hated to think of someone getting into her house or getting some contaminated food into her house that Orange Blossom had eaten. She had a burglar alarm, and a policeman and K9 unit living with her. It should not have been easy to poison her cat.
She remembered the man who had walked up to her at one of the fundraising activities. A Santa beard and suit had obscured his identity, so she still didn’t know who it had been. Someone she would have allowed into her home? Was he a friend, an acquaintance, or a complete stranger? Could he have anything to do with Joshua’s disappearance?
She couldn’t imagine that anyone she knew would have had anything to do with kidnapping Josh. Still, she would have said the same about the burglaries. Was it one of the boys she had served after-school snacks to at the bakery? A teacher or administrator at the school? Someone from out of town? She wasn’t even sure he had been an adult. Some of the kids at the school were as tall as adults and had deep voices. There was no way to know who had been lurking behind that beard.
The motive for the burglaries had been obvious—greed. But the motive behind Joshua’s disappearance and the swap of the fortunes was not anything to do with money. Not that she could tell. The kidnapping and notes seemed to be aimed to hurt.
That didn’t eliminate those who had been accused or arrested in connection with the burglaries, though. They might very well have wanted to hurt Erin.
“Peter,” Karen whined as she rode closer to him on her tricycle. “You’re not supposed to talk to strangers.”
“Miss Erin isn’t a stranger,” Peter said. But he shrugged at Erin. “I need to watch them.”
“Of course. I’ll see you later, okay?”
He looked as if he would say something else, then nodded. “Sometime,” he sighed.
Chapter 30
Matt, the owner of the Quiki Print outlet down the street from Auntie Clem’s Bakery, didn’t look happy when he saw her approaching.
“Miss Price,” the words burst out of him in a rush. “I am so sorry about all of this. I didn’t tell the police that it was you that changed the order. I told them that I thought it was you when you called—when I got the call—but I don’t know you well enough to know for sure yes or no. I told them I don’t really know you, just from you coming in the day you put in the order. I never thought when you called after to say that you wanted some other fortunes added, that it might not be you. You see?”
He wiped his mouth with the back of his hand, his eyes round and worried.
“It’s fine, Matt. I don’t know what happened or who it was that called, but it isn’t your fault. You thought it was me, and you did what you thought I wanted done.”
“Yes.” He nodded vigorously. “I would never have done something like that on purpose. If I wasn’t sure that it was you when you called, I would have called back or emailed you to verify. It just never occurred to me.”
“I understand.”
“And the police…” He looked sick at the thought of her being tangled up in the police investigation. Apparently, he didn’t know how many other times she had gotten cross-threaded with an investigation. “I did not mean for them to think that it was you, just that it sounded like it could have been you and I never thought to ask.”
“Yes. Matt. It’s okay.”
“They are pulling my phone logs, to try to figure out who it was that called. I know about the time you called—that the call came in—so they should be able to figure it out, right?”
“Right. That will help. Because that call didn’t come from my phone.” Erin stopped for a moment and considered whether she had lain her phone down where someone else might have picked it up and used it for a minute to make a call to the Quiki. But she couldn’t think of any time that day it would have been out of her sight or off of her person.
Matt nodded, looking only slightly reassured.
“Was there anything about the person who called in?” Erin asked. “Anything that might tell us who it was? Like… if they had an accent, or a cold, or their voice was different than mine in some other way?”
“I’m sure the police will believe that it was not you,” Matt rushed to reassure her.
“I know. But I’d still like to know who it was. We need to find out who
is doing this, not just to convince the police that it wasn’t me.”
“Oh.” Matt thought about it. “Well… no, I can’t think of anything special about the voice. It was just for a minute, you know—very short conversation. I didn’t notice… that it was any different than yours.” He considered it further. “Maybe… maybe the accent was different, I don’t know.”
He was clearly not a native English speaker, so Erin wasn’t sure how good he would be at identifying different American accents.
“Different how?”
“I don’t know,” Matt muttered. He bit his lip and rolled his eyes to the ceiling, trying to come up with something. “You sound like… you didn’t grow up here. The Bald Eagles Falls families, they all sound the same. More or less.”
Erin nodded. “A Tennessee accent. And I pretty much lost mine, because I was raised up north.”
“Yes. But some people, it comes and goes. It depends who they are talking to and what they are saying. If they are talking to me, less accent. If they are talking to an old friend from high school here, very strong.”
“So you didn’t think anything of it when I called back and talked with more of a Tennessee accent.”
“Yes. I thought it was you, still.”
Erin thought about that. Someone around her age and timbre. But who had grown up in Bald Eagle Falls or the surrounding area. Unfortunately, there were a lot of people who fell into that group.
“Was there anything else? Any background noise? Where did you think I was calling from?”
Matt scratched his nose. “I thought… you were maybe in your garage or in a storage unit. I just thought you had ideas of more things to add to the fortunes you asked for. And you were busy with something else, so you called instead of coming in or emailing me.”
“Right.”
“I am so sorry that my mistake caused anybody pain.”
“I know. Me too. I’m sorry that this ended up being such a mess. I just wanted people who can’t eat gluten to be able to have fortune cookies. To put some fun sayings in them so that people would enjoy them.”
“What can I do? Do you think the police will be able to find who did this? Is there anything else I can do?”
“Well…” Erin shrugged. “The reason I came in here was to see if you could reprint the fortunes for me. Just the original ones this time. Because we have to remake a whole bunch more cookies.”
Matt’s face lit up. “That is a wonderful thing to do. Very good. And this time, free of charge. I will replace them at my cost.”
“You don’t need to do that. You’re still putting time and materials into it.”
“But I should have gotten verification the first time. I should have gotten it right. So this time, I will get it right.”
Erin protested once more but, in the end, she let him do the reprint at his own cost. She had to cover her costs to replace the cookies, and that was not insignificant when she had to eat the cost of both of the ingredients and her employees’ time to bake and fold the replacement cookies. The Chinese restaurant was going to get their cookies. Erin would make sure that they were right this time.
Chapter 31
“A woman,” Erin mused as she went through her tai chi forms. “I don’t know why I assumed it would be a man.”
Vic was sitting on the steps up to her loft apartment. “What?”
“Oh. Just being a crazy lady and talking to myself.”
“Yeah; what about?”
“The person who called in the change order to the Quiki was a woman. Someone pretending to be me. So the kidnapper is a woman. Or the kidnapper has an accomplice who is a woman. I don’t know why…” She paused as she worked through a form that made her turn her back on Vic. “But I always assumed that it was a man.”
“It’s probably two people,” Vic said. “Sometimes it’s couples that do this kind of thing. Working together. The woman is emotionally abused or thinks that she has to.”
“Or in some cases, she’s the leader,” Erin said. She remembered a couple of cases. It wasn’t necessarily the men who were always the planners.
“Well, but usually,” Vic reiterated.
“I don’t know. Maybe. I pictured a man, anyway. I know Joshua isn’t big, but I thought it would take a man to kidnap him. Someone big enough and strong enough.”
Vic nodded.
“Not that women aren’t strong,” Erin said. “Or can’t be big. But…”
“You assume,” Vic agreed. “I thought a man too. I don’t know why, after what happened with Theresa. And not just her, but some of the others we’ve run into since Aunt Angela died. We’ve both had firsthand knowledge of women committing violent crimes.”
Erin paused in her tai chi, thinking about that. She turned her head and looked at Vic. “It couldn’t be Theresa, right?”
They had never captured Crazy Theresa. Erin kept waiting for the news that someone had been able to track her down, or that she had been pulled over for a traffic stop. Somehow, someone had to find her and arrest her. She couldn’t keep running for the rest of her life.
“No. She wouldn’t come back here, it would be too dangerous.”
“But she’s crazy. Would she care?”
“She doesn’t want to get caught. And why would she do it? Take Joshua? There’s no reason to.”
“Just because she’s crazy.” Erin shrugged.
“She still doesn’t do things without a motive.”
“But it doesn’t have to be one that we would understand.”
“Maybe she… thinks that I like Joshua. I don’t know. You know she gets ideas into her head, and that she might do something that didn’t make any sense to us, if it meant that she could hurt one of us or… get one of us close to her. I don’t know the reason.”
“She likes you.” Erin pondered. “So is there any way that taking Joshua would get her closer to you?”
“He’s not a rival. She wouldn’t know that he was any kind of friend. The only time I’ve done anything with Joshua is when we went into the city looking for Campbell, and Theresa wasn’t around for that. She wouldn’t know that me and Josh even knew each other.”
“She hates me. And Willie. Because she thinks that we’ve alienated you from her.”
Vic turned her hands palms-up. So?
Erin couldn’t connect it up. Kidnapping or hurting Joshua would hurt Erin, but only indirectly. And Theresa would have to know that she cared about Joshua or Mary Lou.
“And you don’t think she would randomly take Josh and try to make us feel bad with the notes,” Erin suggested.
“This wasn’t random,” Vic reminded her. “She planned this out. She knew about the fortune cookies, and she knew about you and Joshua being friends. Or you and Mary Lou.”
“So it has to be someone in Bald Eagle Falls. Nobody outside of town would know about either of those things.”
“Well…” Vic wobbled her hand back and forth in a ‘maybe’ gesture.
“Who else would know?”
“I don’t know. Not specifically. But word spreads. Maybe this wasn’t anything that anyone was gossiping about, so it didn’t go very far. Still, people do leave town, talk to friends out of town, post stuff on social media, all that. You posted on the Auntie Clem’s social media accounts about the gluten-free fortune cookies, didn’t you?”
Erin’s heart sank. “Yes.”
“So anyone who follows you or liked those posts, they could have seen that. Or if someone shared it, one of their friends might have seen it.”
“I always ask the employees if they would share stuff around when appropriate,” Erin sighed. “If they think something is interesting or worth sharing.”
Vic nodded. “It’s sound business.”
“But I didn’t post about Joshua,” Erin said. “I never posted about him.”
“We need to go right back to the beginning.”
Erin closed her eyes as she started to go through the final forms of her tai chi. “Let me just
think for a few minutes. Finish this up.”
Vic fell silent and let Erin finish without any further discussion. When she was done, Erin sat in the grass. It wasn’t the most comfortable place to sit, but the weather was warm enough that it wasn’t that uncomfortable.
“Back to the beginning how?” she prompted.
“We need to go over anybody who had a motive to kidnap Josh, to hurt you or Mary Lou, or to drive the two of you further apart.”
Erin wanted to say that the list was pretty short. But, in fact, it wasn’t nearly as short as she would like it to be. She had been involved with investigations that had hurt the organized crime clans around Bald Eagle Falls who had tried to establish business there. And the Russian mob. Anyone in those organizations could have something against her. But having fortunes printed? That didn’t sound like something a mobster would do.
Then there were the people she had put in prison since arriving in Bald Eagle Falls. None of them could have done anything to Joshua directly, but there were other ways to reach out and influence people from prison. Someone could have been hired to do the job. Or it had been a favor. Or someone had just thought that it would make the person in prison—or still in jail awaiting their trial—grateful, and that was enough. It wasn’t a short list. How had she accumulated so many enemies in the short time she had lived in Bald Eagle Falls?
“Are you thinking about the parents?” Vic asked.
Erin hadn’t been, but she didn’t need to ask who Vic was talking about. Of course it could have been the parent of someone arrested for the Grinch burglaries. That had been Erin’s doing as well. Dozens of families had been affected. And most of them probably knew of Erin’s friendship with Mary Lou and with Joshua.
“Oh, boy.”
Vic nodded slowly. “That was very recent and people are still sore about it. I mean, things will go back to normal eventually, but it’s going to take a while.”
“I just keep thinking about Mrs. Foster and Mary Lou. If they could both be so angry with me because the police had to talk to their sons… not that they were arrested or even suspected… then how much madder are the parents of the kids who were arrested?”
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