“I never read the article either.”
“I’m sure you still could. The newspaper will still have copies of it. And the library will have kept an archive copy.”
Erin nodded. There wasn’t any way for someone to get rid of all of the copies of Joshua’s article. But the note had distracted Mary Lou from reading it. And Erin too.
“We should read it. In case there’s something in there… the kidnapper didn’t want you to read.”
Mary Lou shook her head. “I don’t know if I can.”
“Well, I will.” Erin pulled her phone out. “Do they post it online?”
“No, they are old school.”
“How late is the paper open?”
Mary Lou looked at her watch. “Everything will be closed now.”
“Somebody must have it.”
“Everybody has it. You must get it at your house. They deliver to everyone.”
Erin couldn’t remember seeing it. “Maybe. In the recycling pile, or maybe Vic picked it up.”
Mary Lou nodded. “I don’t want… to get my hopes up. So I’m going to let you go home and look at it. I won’t expect to hear anything from you. Okay?”
“Okay.” Erin touched Mary Lou’s arm. “Take care, okay?”
Mary Lou sighed. She didn’t answer. Erin really hoped that things didn’t take a turn for the worse. She couldn’t imagine how Mary Lou would get through it if they did.
“Is Campbell still in town?”
“Yes. He’s at home. I don’t know how long he’s going to stay.”
Hopefully, until things were resolved.
Erin really hoped that they wouldn’t end badly.
Mary Lou left. Erin went to the kitchen to help Charley finish up. Charley raised an eyebrow. “So? How did it go?”
“Okay. She’s not mad at me anymore. She doesn’t suspect me.”
Charley rolled her eyes. “She never should have in the first place. I can’t think of anyone less likely to have kidnapped the kid. Really? You?”
“I don’t think that she thought I kidnapped him… Maybe that something I did caused him to be kidnapped, and that I wanted to hurt her and get back at her by putting the bad fortunes in the cookies. I don’t know. It’s all emotion, not logic.”
“Yeah. You’re right there. It doesn’t make any sense that you would have something to do with his disappearance.”
“Thanks for cleaning up back here.” Erin took a look around, and everything seemed to be more or less in place. “I guess that means it’s time to go home.”
“Is Terry picking you up?”
“I think I might walk.” Erin hadn’t heard anything from Terry. But when she said she would walk, she suddenly remembered how upset he’d been about her doing that after visiting the police department. Maybe not a good idea. She hesitated.
“You want a ride?” Charley asked.
“Yeah. Maybe that would be a good idea. If it’s not an inconvenience.”
“How could it be an inconvenience for me to drive you a few blocks?”
Which Erin took to mean that she didn’t mind doing it. They grabbed their purses and went out the back door to Charley’s car, taking care to lock the bakery securely. No point in inviting people to mess around in there while she was gone. She’d discovered enough bodies already.
Erin had a sudden flashback to Mr. Inglethorpe, lying in the middle of the floor of Auntie Clem’s kitchen, a pool of red pie filling around him.
“Whoa!” Charley grabbed Erin’s arm and steadied her. “Are you okay?”
Erin blinked, trying to clear the images from her brain. “Yeah.” She breathed hard. “Sorry, just moved too fast, I guess.”
Charley walked Erin to the car and opened the door for her, supervising to make sure that Erin got in without any further difficulty.
“You don’t need to cover up for me,” Charley said flatly when she slid into the driver’s seat and put her key in the ignition.
“Cover up?”
“That you’re having flashbacks.”
“Oh.” Erin was a little flustered. “Was it that obvious?”
“I’ve known for a long time.”
“Well… it’s not really a secret. But I don’t like to talk about it.”
“Sure. Understandable. I’m just saying, you don’t have to pretend for me. Personally, I don’t think you need to pretend for anyone else, either. It shouldn’t be a secret. People should be able to talk about what’s bothering them, about mental health and trauma and all that stuff.”
Erin nodded, the movement very small. Charley might not have even seen it. “What about you? Do you… have that?”
“Flashbacks to when Bobby died?”
Erin didn’t say anything. Both of them were quiet almost all the way to Erin’s house.
“Yeah. Of course I do. It was a terrible thing. I try not to let it bother me, but sometimes… well, you can’t control it, can you? And sometimes it controls you.”
“Yeah. Sometimes.”
“It’s easier for me, I think,” Charley said. “I’m the irresponsible sister, so it’s okay if I blow off some community event or stay up until the sun rises before going to sleep, or have a bit too much to drink now and then. People just say…” Charley made a careless motion. “That’s Charley. What do you expect?”
Erin knew that she herself had written off many of Charley’s behaviors as just Charley being irresponsible. Was she being unfair? Was it not Charley being irresponsible, but Charley trying to handle her own PTSD symptoms?
“I didn’t know.”
“I wouldn’t expect you to. Like I said, it’s easier for me. People don’t pay that much attention to my outrageous behavior because they expect it. I can handle it however I want.”
“You could get therapy.”
“Like you do?”
Like Erin didn’t. She’d had enough therapy in the past that she just didn’t want to have to deal with it again. Therapists wanted to know all of her secrets and history, wanted to know all of the intimate details of her life, and then just had generalized recommendations for relaxation exercises or pills that didn’t work.
Erin cleared her throat and opened her door. “Thanks for the ride.”
“No problem. Have a good rest of your day.”
Erin slid out of the car.
“When are you going to get that Volkswagen fixed?” Charley asked.
“What?” Erin bent down to look down into the car at Charley.
“The yellow Volkswagen in your garage. If you’re keeping it, you might as well drive it. Why don’t you get it fixed up and drive it?”
“It was my Aunt Clementine’s.”
“Yeah…?”
Erin knew that the car was now hers, and there was no reason she couldn’t take it out, get it tuned up, and drive it. Why was she holding on to it? It was like people who saved the good china or silver for a special occasion that never came instead of using them every day. What was she waiting for?
“I don’t know,” she admitted.
Charley grinned. “See you later, Sis.”
Erin shut her door, and Charley squealed the tires as she sped away.
Terry was sitting on the couch watching TV. He blinked at Erin, and she wondered if he had fallen asleep. Orange Blossom was snoozing on the couch beside him and, while he looked up at Erin, he looked pretty dopey and just put his head back down to go back to sleep.
Blossom knew that Terry was the owner of the bothersome dog, so he usually wouldn’t cuddle with Terry. But he was clearly comfortable where he was and didn’t intend to move.
There wasn’t anything wrong with Terry occasionally falling asleep in front of the TV. She just didn’t want him regressing to the point where all he could do was sit in front of the TV and fall asleep during the day. When he’d been suffering from migraines and other problems following his injury, he hadn’t been able to do anything else. It wasn’t by choice.
“Hey. Did I wake you up?”
/> Terry shook his head. “No. No, I was just…”
“Closing your eyes for a minute?”
He cleared his throat. “Uh… exactly. Is it that time already?” He looked at the clock on the wall. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Did you walk or did you have someone drop you off?”
“Charley.”
“Oh.” He gave a laugh. “I should have recognized her driving style.”
Erin shook her head. “She’s so bad. I tell her to behave, but it doesn’t seem to help.”
“No, the ones like her, it’s worse if you tell them how to behave. They always have to do the opposite of what you say.”
Erin recognized her own rebellious feelings in his statement. She was pretty good about not letting that little rebellious gut-reaction dictate her actions as a grown-up. As a child, she hadn’t been quite so good at it.
And sometimes, just sometimes, she still did things just because someone told her not to.
“I don’t think she’s the worst driver in town, though,” Erin said.
“No? She has to be pretty close, if you’re talking about wanton recklessness.” He stopped and reconsidered his statement. “Well… except for Beaver.”
“Yeah. Did you know she has a glove box full of tickets?”
“Who do you think gave her most of those tickets?” he countered.
Erin laughed.
“And don’t ask me why I keep issuing them,” Terry said in a tone of disgust. “Considering that she never pays them. She just gets someone to have them wiped off the record.”
“She is a federal agent.”
“But she shouldn’t be able to do that. She should have to take responsibility for her… creative driving.”
Erin chuckled. “Yeah. Good luck with that. I think she’d just laugh at the idea.”
Terry nodded his agreement.
“Do you know if we have a copy of the paper?” Erin asked, changing the subject.
“What paper? Oh, the weekly?” Terry looked at the coffee table in front of him, stacked with a number of flyers and other papers. He pulled out a copy of the Bald Eagle Falls weekly. “Here.” He held it out to her.
Erin took the paper and looked down at it, frowning. “Oh… not this week’s, last week’s. The one with Joshua’s article…?”
“Mmm. I might have taken it in to work with me.”
Erin kept her mouth shut, trying to restrain a sharp question as to why he would have done that. It was her paper, not his. He could have picked up the one that was delivered to his house and taken it in. But of course, it was a lot less complicated just to grab Erin’s.
“Did you, or didn’t you?”
“I don’t know.” He closed his eyes to think about it, but shook his head, unsure of the answer. “Why?”
It shouldn’t be that hard for him to remember whether he had taken it in to work or not. But he still forgot things more easily. Things he should have been able to remember.
“I want to read Josh’s article.”
Terry’s eyes narrowed. “What are you investigating now?”
“Nothing. I just want to read his article. I didn’t, because it came out the same day as he disappeared, and I was more worried about helping find him.”
Terry continued to look at her, not believing it. Or maybe remembering that the day Joshua had disappeared, she had pretended to know nothing about it.
Erin ground her teeth. A bad habit and one that she shouldn’t let creep back in. She forced herself to yawn and licked her lips. “I need a drink. You want something?”
“It must be late enough for a beer, if you’re home.”
Erin nodded her agreement and got him a beer and herself a glass of water. Terry popped the top on his can.
“You just want to read Joshua’s article. Not because you’re conducting your own investigation of his disappearance.”
“What’s wrong with that? He was pretty proud of the article. I should at least read it.”
Erin went back through the kitchen to the back door, where the paper recycling bin was stored. She skimmed off the top couple of layers of flyers and miscellaneous lists, looking for the weekly. But it didn’t seem to be there. She dug farther and found the previous week’s. So Terry must have taken the issue with Joshua’s article in to work.
“Can you go to your house and get me your copy?”
“Erin…”
“I want to read it. If you don’t want to go out, just give me your keys and I’ll go.”
Terry didn’t move to do so. He hadn’t given her a key to his house. There was no reason she needed her own key, because he had taken to staying with her almost all the time.
Erin shook her head and walked out the door.
Chapter 35
Terry didn’t chase after her, calling for her to stop, like she half-expected him to do. He didn’t get up and offer her his key or to go get the paper at his house. He didn’t follow her outside at all.
Erin went to Mrs. Peach’s door and rang the doorbell. It took a few minutes for Mrs. Peach to get to the door. She was an older lady and moved slowly, but she still took a daily constitutional around the neighborhood. Erin just had to be patient and wait for her.
“Oh, hello, dear,” Mrs. Peach greeted. She looked around Erin as if expecting someone else to be with her. Terry or Orange Blossom, maybe. Or Vic.
“Hi, Mrs. Peach. I was wondering if you could do me a favor. Do you have the weekly paper from last week? The one that had Joshua Cox’s article on the front page.”
“Oh, yes. I have that around here somewhere.”
“Could I borrow it? I’ll give it right back, I don’t need to keep it, I just want to be able to read it.”
“So sad about that boy, isn’t it? I wonder what on earth happened to him.”
Erin nodded. Her eyes burned and she wasn’t sure if she could say anything, with the lump in her throat.
“I’ll just see if I can find that,” Mrs. Peach said, giving Erin’s arm a comforting pat.
Erin wondered if Mrs. Peach knew that she and Josh were friends, or just recognized that she was a little teary-eyed over the comment.
She had to wait for a while as Mrs. Peach walked through her house, probably to the back door where she kept her own paper recycling. Then searched through it for the paper and walked back across the house again to the front door. Erin wondered if she should have offered to go around to the back door so Mrs. Peach didn’t have to make the trek all the way back and forth.
“There you are,” Mrs. Peach offered, holding it out to Erin. “That one?”
Erin looked down at the front of the paper, half expecting it to be the wrong edition yet again. But it wasn’t. Josh’s article was right there on top, the lead story.
Of course, Bald Eagle Falls didn’t get much real news, and the lead story had been about the cook-off in the next town over. Not anything earth-shattering.
“Thanks so much, Mrs. Peach. Do you want it back?”
“No, you can keep it, dear. Or put it into your paper recycling. Don’t throw it in the garbage. It should be recycled, you know.”
“Yes,” Erin agreed. “I’ll do that. Thanks.”
Mrs. Peach nodded and closed the door.
Erin walked back into the house. Terry was still sitting on the couch, and pretended to be occupied with the TV. If he didn’t want to discuss it, that was fine with Erin. She walked past him into the kitchen and picked her glass of water up. She sipped it as she sat down at the table by herself and spread the paper out, looking for what was wrong.
Josh’s assignment had been to write about the cook-off, but of course, he had focused on the murder that had taken place before the kick-off event. Beryl Batcombe. She had been one of the judges, like Erin. They had arrested Clayton for it. Beryl had stolen his family recipes and passed them off as her own family recipes. The plagiarism had incensed Clayton and he had started stalking Beryl and her part-time boyfriend, Chef Kirschoff. Eventually, he had killed Ber
yl and had also tried to kill Chef Kirschoff.
Josh didn’t know all of the details, but he’d gotten everything he could from Erin and the other witnesses, and had put most of it together, filling in the cracks with guesses and speculation that were pretty close to being on target.
He was a good investigative reporter. Better than Erin had expected him to be. Especially considering that he was still a teenager.
Erin read the entire article and then sat looking at the paper, her eyes unfocused. So what had he discovered that someone didn’t want Mary Lou to read? The kidnapper had cut Joshua’s article out of Mary Lou’s paper and had left the sticky note about Erin there in its place.
What had Joshua discovered that the police didn’t already know? They had Clayton in custody. He had been charged with the murder and would go to trial.
Was Clayton involved in the kidnapping? Had he hired someone or imposed on one of his friends to make Joshua disappear? Or was there someone else involved?
She studied the article again.
Who had he interviewed?
Erin. Each of the winners—six of them.
Not Clayton, because Josh was a juvenile and couldn’t get into the jail to see him without permission. And of course, Mary Lou would deny him permission.
He had a few quotes from Chef Kirschoff as well.
For a moment, Erin just let sadness wash over her. She had counted Chef Kirschoff as a friend. She had enjoyed working with him and talking about recipes with him. But he had turned out to be amoral. Cheating on his wife with Beryl Batcombe, giving her the judgeship even though he knew she had stolen the recipes she had published as her own family recipes.
The guy probably cheated on his taxes too.
Joshua had focused mostly on Beryl Batcombe’s murder, because it was, as he had said, the most interesting part of the contest. Who would really be more interested in the coke and ice cream treats than in the woman found dead in a freezer?
Erin already knew all of the details. Beryl had been gassed with carbon dioxide and dragged into the freezer, most likely hoping that everyone would believe she had died in there. But they hadn’t. It had been evident to the medical examiner that she had been moved.
Changing Fortune Cookies Page 17