Hot on the Trail Mix

by P. D. Workman

  “Public land.”

  “That remains to be seen.”

  “If a survey shows that it wasn’t public land, I’ll apologize to the landowner, if there still is an owner. According to my map, it’s on public land, and that means I have as much right as anyone to explore there.”

  “How many times have you been there before?”

  “How is that your business?”

  “Are you being obstructive?”

  “Is this part of your official investigation?” Willie challenged.

  Terry didn’t say anything for a moment. “I’m just making friendly inquiries at this point.”

  “Then I’m not required to answer them and I’m not being obstructive. If you have something else you want to know, I can refer you to my lawyer.”

  “Have you mined in that cave?”

  “Talk to my lawyer.”

  “It’s not that hard a question to answer. I’m just trying to get a clear picture.”

  “I’m not required to answer you, Officer Piper. I’m exercising my civil rights. You can’t do anything about that, official investigation or friendly questions.”

  “And you don’t have any idea who the man was.”

  Willie said nothing.

  “Had you ever run into anyone else on that property before?”

  Willie still didn’t answer, standing there by his truck, waiting for Terry to return to the house.

  Eventually, Terry made an exasperated noise and turned back toward the house. Willie nodded and headed up the stairs to Vic’s apartment.

  The kettle started to sing as Terry returned to the kitchen, so Terry would know that she had been in the kitchen long enough to overhear most of the conversation.

  He looked at her for a minute without saying anything. He sat down at the table and snapped his fingers to call K9, who was gnawing on his doggie biscuit, to come to him. K9 looked at Terry’s snapping fingers, picked up his biscuit, and walked over to Terry’s side, where he lay down and continued to eat the biscuit. Terry scratched his ears.

  Erin took a couple of cups over to the table and filled them each with hot water. Terry helped himself to a teabag from the basket on the table and dangled it into his cup.

  “You think Willie knows something he’s not telling you?” Erin asked tentatively.

  “I’m sure Willie knows plenty of things that he’s not telling me. Finding out whether any of them are related to this case, that’s the tricky thing.”

  “I suppose.” Erin sat down with him and started to prepare her tea. “But he’s not a suspect, right?”

  Terry stirred his teabag around.

  “Willie wouldn’t hurt anyone,” Erin asserted. “And if he did, why would he put the body in the pool and then take Vic out there to find it? And call you in to investigate? I’m sure he knows plenty of hiding places that are better than that, even in that one cave.”

  Terry raised his cup to his lips and sipped the too-hot tea. “You’re probably right about that.”

  “It wasn’t anything to do with Willie.”

  “Unfortunately, you’re not a police investigator. I can’t go by your gut instinct. I need to actually follow the evidence. And you know as well as I do that Willie was in the Dixon clan for five years. He is still involved with them, from what I can tell.”

  “But just doing things like computer consulting. Not… you know… mob stuff.”

  “You don’t know that. Even if it’s true, that’s still working for organized crime. It’s still a problem. And it means we have a trust problem.”

  “You have a trust problem,” Erin corrected, not wanting him to include her in the statement. She did trust Willie. He’d proven to her in the past that he had her welfare and Vic’s at heart. Whatever else he might be doing, she was sure that he wouldn’t intentionally do anything that might endanger them. And that included taking Vic somewhere he’d disposed of a body or putting her in the middle of a murder investigation.

  There was no way that Willie had had anything to do with the death of the man in the cave.

  “Yes. I have a trust problem. The police department has a trust problem. Willie Andrews is not someone we can trust to tell the truth or stay on the right side of the law. If he is involved in a case, we have to consider the possibility that he is the perpetrator of a crime. Seriously consider it.”

  “He hasn’t ever been convicted of anything, has he? He’s never done prison time.”

  Terry raised his brows at Erin. She realized that she didn’t know that for sure. She knew that he had been part of the Dixon clan because his family had been part of the clan, and that he’d done things that he had come to regret. He had gotten out when he could, but that meant putting in five years of service first. Who knew what he had done during that time. And Erin couldn’t state for a certainty that he had never been convicted of a crime or done time. He might well have wanted to keep something like that under wraps.

  Willie lived away from Bald Eagle Falls for an extended time, so the gossips in town might not know if he’d had to do prison time. Or maybe they did, and that was why they looked down on him so much and acted like he was lazy and shiftless when Erin knew him to be a very self-motivated, hardworking man.

  Terry didn’t answer one way or the other. Maybe he didn’t want to admit that Willie hadn’t ever been convicted or done time. Or maybe he was protecting Willie’s right to privacy.

  Chapter 11

  There were a few quiet days. Days when Erin almost forgot about the man in the cave. The image of the skeleton or a decaying corpse started to fade from her dreams. Vic didn’t say anything about Willie being questioned by the police and Erin didn’t ask or mention the conversation she had overheard in the back yard. Everything was going back to normal and, pretty soon, everyone would forget all about what had happened.

  Then on a warm afternoon, Melissa walked into the bakery with a bounce in her step. She pretended to be examining the sale prices on the products in the display case. But Melissa was there often enough to know what she liked and what the regular prices were. Unless she were interested in one of Erin’s latest experiments, she really didn’t even have to look in the case at all.

  Instead, she was there to trade in information. She had something to tell.

  “Afternoon, Melissa,” Erin greeted. “What can we do for you today?”

  “The sheriff wanted me to pick up some sticky buns for the department,” Melissa said with a smile. “And he’s actually covering the cost this time. He apologized for sending me over to do the legwork, but I actually don’t mind that part.”

  “Sticky buns it is.” Erin agreed. “A dozen?”

  “That will be more than enough.”

  “I have some still in the tray in the kitchen. I’ll just be a minute.”

  Erin retreated to the warm kitchen and breathed in the smell of the cinnamon and yeast. It was one of her favorite scents. She could practically taste the particles that hung in the air.

  She assembled a box for the cinnamon buns, loosened the buns from the baking tray, and then slid them in. Everything came out without a problem, no ripped buns sticking to the tray. Erin slathered the tops with extra frosting and put a small tub of it into a condiment container so the police officers and staff could add more of their own if they wanted to go into sugar shock.

  She closed up the box and carried it out to Melissa. “Still warm from the oven.”

  “Oh, those smell so good,” Melissa enthused.

  “They are! They’re so good… it’s almost criminal.”

  Melissa groaned at the joke. “Okay, that’s enough of that! No bad jokes allowed.”

  She counted out the money to pay for the buns and passed it across to Vic at the till.

  “Did you hear that they have identified the bones you found in the cave?” She asked in a dramatically lowered voice.

  Vic raised her brows. “Did they? I’d almost forgotten about that.”

  Melissa’s mouth dropped ope
n and she began to protest, before realizing that Vic was just teasing her.

  “Just for that, maybe I won’t tell you.”

  Vic shrugged. “Well, my loss, I suppose.”

  She knew that Melissa couldn’t bear to keep a secret.

  “No, no,” Melissa protested. She leaned closer to Vic, looking at Erin to make sure that she was included in the conversation. “His name was Darryl Ryder. He was a… a drifter around here.”

  “A drifter?” Erin repeated. “What exactly is the definition of a drifter? Do you mean he’s new in town? Or that he’s… some kind of scammer? Or what?”

  “I don’t know exactly where he lives. You know how it is with these guys. They float around and never do settle down anywhere. No one ever knows where to find them.”

  “So… he’s homeless?” Erin suggested. She hadn’t seen a lot of homeless people around Bald Eagle Falls. She saw them when she went into the city. It could be profitable to beg or busk in the city, where there was a large enough audience to make some good money. And there were proper shelters and soup kitchens. It was different in Bald Eagle Falls. There were no shelters, no food pantries, no services to help homeless people to get jobs. Consequently, the homeless people didn’t come to Bald Eagle Falls.

  At least, not that she had seen.

  Their streets were clean of both trash and homeless folks sitting and begging, setting out their caps or holding up their homemade signs. Erin did what she could to help with the situation in the city, donating baked goods that didn’t sell quickly enough. She froze them, and once she had as much as she could fit in her freezer, she made a run into the city and donated them to one of the kitchens or shelters. Or to a school breakfast program or whatever else she could find. Erin liked to be part of the solution. She had been on the edge of homelessness enough times herself. She wanted to help others. Make sure that they knew that they were valued and worthwhile people.

  “We don’t have homeless people here,” Melissa argued, wrinkling her nose. “We don’t have to deal with problems like that. Big city problems. But… that doesn’t mean we don’t have our poor people, and people who… would rather get a free ride from a friend or family member than take care of themselves or their own families. What kind of a person won’t work and makes other people support his family instead?”

  “So you knew him?” Erin asked. “This Darryl? He was out of work?”

  “I don’t know if you can say out of work, exactly. If you’re not looking for a job, are you really out of work?”

  “Darryl Ryder,” Vic said thoughtfully. Her brows were drawn down like she was trying to think of whether she’d ever heard that name before. “I don’t think I’ve ever run into him.”

  “Well, except that one time,” Melissa pointed out, breaking into giggles at the inappropriate comment.

  Vic made a noise of disgust. “Melissa!”

  “I’m sorry. I know you meant you never saw him while he was alive.”

  “Yes.”

  “Well, I guess we’ll see about that. Now that the police have verified his identity, they can investigate the case more deeply. It’s pretty hard when you just have a John Doe and you’re trying to figure out who might have had motive to kill the guy.”

  Erin adjusted the positioning of some of the baking in the display case. “Does that mean that it’s been determined it was murder? Not an accident?”

  Melissa nodded meaningfully. “That’s what it looks like,” she agreed. “They’re still waiting for tests back from the lab and medical examiner, but it looks like the guy was smashed over the head. Not an accident.”

  “He could have hit it on something in the cave,” Erin suggested. “An overhang. He could have slipped and fallen.”

  “This was no slip and fall,” Melissa said. She looked at Vic. “Was it? You know it wasn’t.”

  Vic took a deep breath in and let it out. “No, I don’t think it was an accident,” she admitted.

  Melissa was off, headed back to the police department to make everyone fat on sticky buns.

  Erin wasn’t sure she wanted to know any more about the man in the cave. She preferred to let the nightmares fade away again.

  Vic kept looking at her sideways, waiting for Erin to start asking her questions.

  Erin didn’t ask Vic any more about the condition of the remains.

  “You don’t know this Darryl Ryder?” she asked Vic eventually. “I don’t think I’ve ever heard the name before.”

  “No, can’t think of it. It sounds familiar, like I might have heard of him before, but I’m pretty sure it isn’t someone I ever met. Pretty sure he never came in here as a customer!”

  “No. Doesn’t sound like the kind of person who usually comes into Auntie Clem’s.”

  How would she have reacted if he had? If he were poor and possibly homeless, Erin hoped that she wouldn’t have turned him out, but that she would have found some way to help him. It was difficult to know what to do or say sometimes. She didn’t want to enable someone with an addiction or to end up with someone stalking her because she had been nice to him. But people with addictions still had to eat too. If the man were hungry, she hoped that someone would have reached out to feed him. Even if he hadn’t gone into Auntie Clem’s.

  “I’m glad we don’t have a big homeless population here,” she commented. “That’s at least one thing we avoid by living in a small town instead of in the city.”

  “I think there are a lot of positive things about being in a small town. I wouldn’t want to live in the big city.” Vic gave a mock shudder. “I’m a country girl at heart. I think I’d waste away to nothing if I had to live in the city, surrounded by nothing but concrete all the time. I need my green spaces. Trees and sky, things that feed the soul.”

  Erin nodded. “Yes… though you can get some of that in the city, too. Living in the city doesn’t mean that you never see the outdoors again. There are parks and sky. Cities are trying to cut down on light pollution so that you can see the stars again.”

  “Still not for me,” Vic asserted, shaking her head.

  Terry seemed to be in a good mood when he picked Erin up. He suggested that they go out for a dinner date, which was a nice change from having to make supper. It was still nice to get out sometimes. She liked the idea of letting someone else wait on her for one meal.

  “That sounds good,” she agreed. “What do you want? Barbecue?”

  “Yes,” Terry agreed quickly. “Barbecue would be amazing.”

  Erin smiled at his enthusiasm. “Barbecue it is. I’m surprised that you’re hungry.”

  He raised his brows. “Why?”

  “Melissa bought sticky buns today. I figured with one or two of those under your belt…”

  “Oh, that.” Terry gave a little laugh. “I’d already decided that I wanted to go out tonight, so I didn’t overindulge. I didn’t even have a full one. Gave the rest to Stayner.”

  Stayner was a younger man with a faster metabolism, and he probably didn’t mind too much having a sticky bun for dinner. He probably went to the restaurant all the time. That, or ate a lot of macaroni and cheese.

  She felt a little guilty at assuming he ate like a bachelor. What did she know about his diet? She knew from experience that the man knew how to clean up a kitchen properly. If he knew how to clean up and where to put things away, chances were he’d done a fair amount of cooking himself. He might be a gourmet, she wouldn’t have any idea.

  They got settled at the restaurant and placed their orders. Erin sipped a soft drink while they waited for their food. “So, I guess you got the identity of the man in the cave confirmed today.”

  Terry nodded. “The Bald Eagle Falls grapevine is alive and well, I see. Yes. Darryl Ryder. It helps with the investigation. Pretty hard to figure out motives and timelines before you know who you’re dealing with.”

  “That’s good, then, I’m glad you have the information you need. So… is he someone known to the police? Melissa said that—the grap
evine said—he was a drifter. So does that mean you didn’t know him? Or you did?”

  “A drifter. Well, that’s not the way that I would classify him. I think people around here use the term to describe anyone they see as less desirable. They don’t belong in Bald Eagle Falls. So even if they’ve been here ten years, they’re ‘drifters.’”

  “Had he been here a long time, then?”

  “We will need to gather more information about that. But he wasn’t just passing through town.”

  “Did he live in town? Or on a farm?”

  “We’ll sort that out.”

  “You don’t know?” Erin was surprised.

  “With some people, where they live is not as clear.”

  “He was homeless?”

  “We don’t have homeless people in Bald Eagle Falls.” Terry swirled his drink and reconsidered his answer. “Not permanently homeless, out on the streets.”

  “Right. But without a legal address?”

  He shrugged. “People living with friends or family until they can get on their feet, squatting on land in a shack or an RV, moving from one place to another. I suppose we have a few who are… less adequately homed.”

  Erin looked at him, her brows drawn down. She shook her head. “Less adequately homed?” she repeated.

  Terry looked away, chuckling. “Okay. You got me. I guess we do have our share of homeless. But… it doesn’t look the same as it does in the city.”

  “Even in the city, homeless doesn’t always mean begging on the street or living out of your car or a shelter. Sometimes it’s couch surfing, or a whole family squeezed into someone’s back room, a mom and her kids moving from one relative to another because she doesn’t have a place of her own and no one can take her long term.”

  Terry shrugged. “I suppose. You just don’t see those ones. You see the beggars and buskers on the street.”

  “Yeah. So your Darryl Ryder, did he have a ‘less adequate’ address?”

  “Trying to sort that out. He and his family apparently moved around. They were looking for somewhere more permanent, but hadn’t found it yet.”