Hot on the Trail Mix

by P. D. Workman

  “Don’t tease him,” Vic objected. “He’s been behaving himself really well, and I don’t want him to regress.”

  “I’m not teasing him. I’m telling him not to push his luck with me.”

  “He doesn’t understand that. Just leave him alone and don’t get him excited.”

  Willie rolled his eyes and continued to take off his boots, ignoring the dog.

  “So…?” Vic ventured. “How did things go over at the police department?”

  She didn’t ask whether everything was all right and cleared up with the police. Erin had a suspicion that things were not all sunshine and rainbows. The interview that must have lasted several hours for Willie to be arriving home so late.

  “Well, no blood was shed. There are no more bodies to be cleaned up.”

  “Oh, well that’s good, then.” Vic’s tone was dry. “I’m certainly glad to hear that. I don’t think you would likely be sitting here in my apartment if there had been bloodshed.”

  “That might depend on who it was.”

  Erin wouldn’t want to hear that anything had happened to Sheriff Wilmot or any of the other regular staff. Officer Stayner, on the other hand…

  She tried to push the thought away and think about him charitably. He did have his good points. He was, apparently, a good investigator. He’d gotten good marks and reports in his training. And the man knew how to clean a kitchen. She would try to focus on those things rather than on all of the things that she didn’t like about him.

  “Did Terry come home too?” she asked Willie. If Willie was finished, then hopefully Terry was too and would be home soon, if he weren’t already waiting for her back at the house. She stole a glance at her phone screen to make sure that he hadn’t messaged her. The screen was blank.

  “He didn’t come back with me. I imagine he has a bunch of paperwork to fill out. You know how much red tape and bureaucracy there is in a police department. One reason you would never find me in that job.”

  Erin expected Vic to make some quip about other reasons Willie wouldn’t want to be a cop, but Vic bit into her taco and didn’t say anything. It would, perhaps, be a little too close to home after spending hours being interrogated about his relationship with Darryl Ryder.

  “So how well did you know Ryder?” Vic asked after a few more bites.

  Willie threw his boots toward the door. Nilla yipped and jumped after them, growling and menacing them.

  “Nilla!” Vic snapped. “Stop. Leave the shoes alone.”

  Nilla ignored her, stalking the shoes. Willie didn’t get up to retrieve his shoes or to chase the dog away from them. He stretched his legs out in front of him and watched Nilla indifferently.

  “Nilla!” Vic put her taco down. She licked her fingers and wiped them on a napkin, then went after the dog, clapping her hands in warning. “Nilla, no! Leave them alone!”

  The dog darted out of Vic’s way, circling around to the other side of the boots, nose still down, sniffing to investigate how much of a threat they were. Vic picked up the shoes and set them upright, together at the side of the entry mat.

  “Leave them,” she warned. “They’re just Willie’s shoes. And if you chew on them, you’re going to be in big trouble!”

  Nilla sat back on his haunches, considering Vic.

  “Go sit back on your bed. Go to bed.” Vic pointed at the bed. “Go on. Go to bed.”

  Nilla didn’t go to his bed, but he didn’t hunt down the boots, either. Erin considered that progress. Vic approached Nilla slowly, then picked him up and took him back to the dog bed. She put him down gently and murmured to him to stay put. He lay down, putting his chin between his paws, and watched her.

  “Good,” Vic told him. She went back over to her chair and tried to pick up the taco she had put down without making a big mess. “There’s food if you want it,” she told Willie. “Come have something. You must be famished.”

  “No. I grabbed a burger and a beer on the way home.”

  “Oh.” Vic raised her eyebrows.

  “I didn’t know what you were making, if anything. And I knew you wouldn’t want me drinking on an empty stomach.” He smiled.

  “Well, no, that’s true.”

  “Nothing against your cooking.”

  Vic shrugged. “Fine. There is beer in the fridge here.”

  “I needed time to decompress. Didn’t want to bring all of my troubles home to you.”

  Erin thought about the way that Willie had pulled his truck into the parking spot and burst in the door, expressing his displeasure. That was after he had decompressed and had a drink? She would not have wanted to see him immediately after his interview with the police.

  And even with a meal and drink, he had still beaten Terry home. She hoped Terry wasn’t putting in too many hours.

  “So…” Vic returned to the earlier conversation. “Ryder? You knew him?”

  Willie considered the question. He rubbed his forehead, just over his eyebrows. A fatigue headache. Tired after so many hours spent in the interrogation.

  “I knew him,” he agreed.

  “I didn’t know that. He hasn’t lived in Bald Eagle Falls for long?”

  “He’s been here a while.”

  “Was he… a friend?” Vic asked tentatively.

  Willie grunted. “No. Wouldn’t call him that.”

  “Did you work with him on something? How did you know him?”

  “He was… interested in the mines and caves around here. Had it in his head that if he could find a good claim, he could make it rich. Young folk these days,” Willie shook his head. “Think that they can get the money without putting the work into it. All they have to do is show up and people will hand it to them on a silver platter.”

  “He was interested in mining.”

  Willie nodded.

  “And you guys talked about that? Like, over drinks, or…?”

  “No. Not over drinks.” Willie scratched the back of his neck. “Maybe over the barrel of a shotgun, but not over drinks.”

  Chapter 14

  Erin was mid-bite, and had to suppress a gasp and an exclamation of surprise, or she probably would have choked on her taco, or at least inhaled some of the dripping juices.

  “Over the barrel of a shotgun?” she repeated.

  Willie looked at her as if he had forgotten that there was another witness. Eventually, he decided that what was said was said. He couldn’t take it back. He shrugged.

  “The guy figured he could squat on my claim. Thought that everything around here was up for grabs, he just had to decide what he wanted.”

  “So you ran him off,” Vic said.

  Willie nodded. “I did. What else would I do? Invite him over to tea?”

  Vic and Erin both shook their heads. Of course not. But it wouldn’t play well with the police. No wonder they had been so insistent about interviewing Willie and had kept him for so long. He threatened a man at gunpoint who later was murdered. Willie looked as guilty as the day was long.

  “I didn’t kill him,” Willie asserted to Vic. “You and the police know that he wasn’t killed with a shotgun. Whatever happened to him, it was nothing to do with me. But I can’t say I blame whoever did it. If the guy was planning to jump my claim, how many other people did he bother?”

  Probably Willie wasn’t the only one. Erin didn’t know a lot of people who were still mining in the hills. It wasn’t like it had been in the early days in Tennessee, when mining was the main industry in the area. The mining was mostly done by big corporations now, and not in the small caves and tunnels around Bald Eagle Falls. Most of the mines around Bald Eagle Falls were abandoned, as far as she knew. And abandoned because they were not producing enough to support a person or a family. Willie was one of the few Erin knew of who still made a living, or part of his living, from mining and processing minerals.

  “Melissa said that he had a young family,” she said to Willie.

  He nodded, scowling. “Yes, he did. Thin, washed-out looking wife and
a passel of kids.”

  “What’s going to happen to them?”

  “Not my responsibility. Especially since I had nothing to do with the death of her husband. I don’t feel responsible for her. She can go back to her own kinfolk and they can look after her. I’m sure she probably has family in these parts. I doubt if either of them ever traveled out of the state in their lives.”

  Terry had said that a lot of people lived with family or friends. Erin supposed that was probably exactly what Mrs. Ryder would do. She would go to stay with an aunt or a sister until she could find some way to support the family herself. Someone would put a roof over their heads. Although if there were a lot of kids, as Willie suggested, it made it more difficult to find someone who would take them in.

  “Have the police been able to inform her that… about what happened to him?”

  “Sounds like they’re still trying to find them. They asked me a few times where he was living and where they would find his family.”

  “Where did he live?” Vic asked.

  “They live out there.” Willie nodded toward the window. “I had to kick them out of a mine they had taken up residence in. Like I said, squatters. They think they can stay wherever they want. If they stay there long enough, it becomes theirs.”

  “They were living in a mine?”

  “Yeah. Had all of their junk stored in there. Kids everywhere. Camp stove in a clearing to cook on. Imagine they were hunting to try to keep food on the table.” Willie shifted his position, crossing one leg over the other, stretched out in front of him. He slid his hands into his pockets, considering. “You have to admire them for at least trying to live off the land instead of relying on government or family to feed and shelter them. They were trying to make their own way. I can admire that.”

  “Those poor people.”

  “Literally,” Willie agreed. “But there’s no excuse for trying to take what isn’t yours. If he wanted to live off of the land, he should have built a place of his own. Buy or rent a piece of property, put up a house, and live that way. Putting up in a mine or somebody’s fishing shack or trailer, that’s not making do by yourself. That’s theft.”

  Maybe Willie didn’t realize that not everyone would be able to do that. As far as he was concerned, all that was needed was the desire and two good hands. But building a house required materials, tools, and know-how. Not everyone had that. Or the physical ability for the hard work needed to build a shelter.

  She couldn’t shake the mental picture of the thin woman and her passel of kids, living in some abandoned shack or cave out in the sticks, waiting for her husband to come home. She had thought that kind of thing didn’t happen in Bald Eagle Falls. Many people struggled to make ends meet, but she thought that the townspeople took care of each other. That they wouldn’t put a family out on the street. There were no beggars on street corners, so she had thought that there weren’t any homeless.

  “Police will find them and let them know what’s going on,” Willie told Erin, voice gruff. “They can go back to live with her people.”

  “Maybe. Not everyone has family or gets along with them. Or if they are abusive, you wouldn’t want to take children there. Some people are alone.”

  “Then some friends can help her out. Or she can go to the city to a shelter or apply for welfare programs. She’s on her own now, she’ll qualify for help.”

  She was surprised he would suggest this after saying that he admired them for trying to make it on their own.

  “Do you have to deal with that very much?” Vic asked curiously. “Is there a problem with squatters, or was it just a one-time thing?”

  “Ryder I’ve had to deal with more than once. Most people… you confront them once, and they make themselves scarce. They don’t want to have to deal with angry owners. They want to stay unnoticed. Invisible.”

  “I didn’t even know that. You never mentioned him.”

  Willie considered before answering. “I think I did, actually. Rip Ryder.”

  “Rip? I thought the police said it was Darryl?”

  “People go by other names. He took on the name Rip. That’s what I knew him by. Didn’t even know his last name. Didn’t know who the police were talking about until they brought up the picture on his driver’s license.”

  “Rip Ryder. Should have been in Hollywood with a name like that,” Vic laughed.

  “Yep. Maybe he and his family would have done better out there. There isn’t much around here for people looking for the easy way to strike it rich. Not putting his own labor into it, but looking for something that would be a shortcut. The big score.”

  “You don’t know that,” Erin said. “He might have been working hard, he just wasn’t able to do what you could have.”

  “I know that some people make it, and some people never do. And he never did. And with another fifty years on this planet, he still wouldn’t have. People who are always trying to find the shortcuts never finish what they start. Because it’s too hard. If you’re not willing to put in the hard work—like you have, Erin—you don’t ever make it to the finish line. They’ll always have excuses. Why other people could do it but they couldn’t.”

  Erin pressed her lips together and didn’t argue. She hadn’t, after all, known Rip Ryder. She had never even heard of him until he was dead. But she hadn’t lived a sheltered life. She had seen a lot of different people trying a lot of different things. It was true that some of them never made it, and some people never seemed motivated to try hard enough, but she wasn’t convinced that it was always their fault. Nor had she been able to start up Auntie Clem’s Bakery and make it a success on her own.

  She took a couple more bites of her taco and set the rest down. “I’m stuffed. That was really good. I should probably head home, see if Terry is back yet.”

  Vic took her plate from the table, smiling. “Be sure not to get lost on the way.”

  “I’ll try,” Erin agreed.

  She said goodbye to them both, gave Nilla a careful pet, and went back to the main house.

  Chapter 15

  It was a while before Terry made it back. Erin had guessed that he wasn’t home yet when she had left Vic’s, but she thought Willie and Vic needed some time to talk in private, and Willie didn’t need her challenging him about Rip Ryder.

  She was sitting on the couch with Orange Blossom, reading one of Clementine’s journals, and saw Terry’s headlights as he pulled up to the house. She didn’t get up to open the door for him, which would involve upsetting the cat from her lap. He let himself in and gave a deep sigh as he stepped into the house.

  “Long day?”

  “Very,” he agreed. “I’m fine, mind you. Just fine. But bone tired.”

  “I don’t imagine it’s easy to interrogate a friend.”

  He looked at her for a minute, then shook his head. “An interrogation is never easy. And it is harder when it is an… acquaintance, and they might think they should be given the benefit of the doubt just because you know them.”

  “Well… I guess I can see that. You expect your friends to believe what you say.”

  Terry nodded. He stooped to give her a kiss, then went into the kitchen for a beer. He returned and sat on the couch next to her.

  “Have you had something to eat?”

  “Yes, we ate at the police department. Got some delivery. Everyone was tired and hungry.”

  Erin nodded and relaxed beside him, happy that she wasn’t going to have to jump up and make him a sandwich or warm up something from the fridge.

  “So you believe Willie now? About not having had anything to do with Rip Ryder’s death?”

  “I see you’ve already gotten his side of the story.”

  “Not in any detail, but I was over there having dinner with Vic, so we did talk.”

  “There isn’t anything to stop him from telling you whatever he wants to, but I can’t respond from the department’s viewpoint. I’m not allowed to talk about any of the details of an active investi
gation.”

  “I know. I just figured… now that you’ve heard his side of the story, he’s off the hook, and you can go on and investigate other possibilities. There must be other possibilities. Other… suspects.”

  “There are other avenues for us to investigate, yes. And talking to Willie doesn’t stop us from investigating those other avenues. No one is railroading him. We are looking at all of the possibilities.”

  “And you still think that he’s a viable suspect? You know he wouldn’t do something like that. It doesn’t make sense, any of it.”

  “People do stupid, impulsive things. That’s how they get caught. If everyone was as thoughtful and careful as you think they would be, we would never be able to catch anyone. Someone getting killed in the midst of an argument or altercation—that’s not a reasoned decision. It’s an instinctual, animal impulse. And even after the deed is done, the perpetrator is not thinking straight. They make mistakes at the scene and they continue to make mistakes.”

  Erin still couldn’t imagine Willie causing someone’s death. Or being so stupid as to put the body in a cave where he was later going to go hiking with Vic. Erin knew Willie to be calm under pressure and in an emergency situation.

  “I feel very sorry for his family. Did you have to make the notifications?”

  “We are… trying to track his wife down.”

  “Oh. I guess it’s harder if they don’t live in Bald Eagle Falls.” Erin fished for more information.

  “People can be very difficult to track down if they aren’t living in… traditional situations.”

  “So they are homeless?”

  “I don’t know if they are homeless or not… we won’t know that until we find them. I am aware that they have been squatting, using land close to the cave, off and on. But whether his wife and kids are still out there somewhere, or if they have moved somewhere else… it’s going to take some time to find out.”