Apple-achian Treasure (Auntie Clem's Bakery Book 8)

by P. D. Workman

  Terry nodded slowly. “I guess I’ll have to look into it,” he admitted. “I’m not sure who to talk to… I don’t want to take any flak for throwing aspersions on a decorated agent.”

  “I know. I don’t want to either. But I thought you would want to know. There was so much going on that day, I didn’t know if you knew when she got there.”

  “You’re right. It’s the kind of thing I definitely want to know about.”

  When Erin went by Jeremy’s room to see how he was doing, she expected to find Beaver there beside his bed, as she had found Willie sitting by Vic. But Jeremy was sleeping and there was no one else in the room. Erin moved around to the side of the bed and looked down at him, trying to assess his condition.

  He had an IV line into his arm, but there were no machines monitoring his vital signs, no catheter bag as far as she could see, and no respirator or casts. He seemed like he could just be sleeping. Maybe the reason Beaver wasn’t there was because Jeremy was fine, so she had gone home to sleep.

  “You want something, or are you just going to stand there?”

  Erin jumped and looked down at Jeremy, his eyes looking up at her, squinting against the brightness of the room.

  “Sheesh, you scared the heck out of me. I thought you were asleep.”

  “Well, I was, but people keep coming in and looking at me.”

  “I’m sorry. I didn’t mean to bother you. Just wanted to see how you are doing.”

  Jeremy lifted his hand to cover a yawn. His limbs seemed to be working perfectly normally. “How about Vic and Willie? Are they okay?”

  Erin sat down in the chair next to the bed. “Yes, they’re okay. Willie has been up and around. Well, as much as he can with a cast on his leg. Vic is sleeping, but she’s not in any danger. And you’re okay?”

  “Needed a good nap, that’s all. The doctors say there’s nothing wrong with me. None the worse for wear for my adventure.”

  “Beaver said… when you came out, you kept saying that you should have seen it. The forest gold.”

  Jeremy dropped his eyes. He looked embarrassed. “It was right there in the poem, the whole time. I didn’t know why I didn’t catch on. I mean, you would think that with what I was doing… I would have seen it immediately.”

  “The ginseng.”

  He rolled his eyes. “In my defense, I don’t spend all day at work staring at the plants. Mostly, I’m looking at the perimeter, watching for any movement. The plants themselves… they’re just background. Something pretty to look at.”

  “But when you came out of the tunnel, you saw it.”

  “I figured it out just before that. I’d been in and out, and I guess my unconscious mind decided to unlock the puzzle for something to do. I realized that there was just as much ginseng in these woods as there was at work, maybe more. And it wasn’t being guarded or claimed by anyone. Just like… gold in a mine.”

  “Do you think… that Beaver knew about it before you said anything? Or that Willie knew before he went in with you?”

  Jeremy shook his head, frowning. “No. No one else knew.”

  “Somebody knew. Somebody was there ahead of us.”

  “We don’t know that.”

  “You know it wasn’t just a cave-in, right? It was caused by an explosion. Not just old explosives left behind, and not just something that was on a timer or remote detonated. It was a tripwire. They meant to catch whoever was there in a trap, maybe to kill them.”

  “Then asking whether Beaver knew is ridiculous. She wouldn’t have rigged explosives up to blow me up.”

  “She didn’t know you were going to be there.”

  “No, we didn’t tell anyone ahead of time what we were doing, so she couldn’t have known that.”

  “Then she could have set it up to trap Vic and me whenever we went back to look at the mine.”

  “Beaver wouldn’t do that. She likes you guys.”

  “You’ve only known her for a little while.”

  “You don’t think I would know whether she was a good person or not? The kind of person who would kill my sister?”

  “She’s trained in deception.”

  “It’s not Beaver, Erin.”

  “Then what about Willie?”

  “Why would he trip his own explosives? He could have been killed.”

  “But he’s been mining for a long time. He probably knows how to handle explosives.”

  “He broke his leg! Rocks fell down all around us. The roof caved in. He broke his leg and could barely move.”

  “That part could have been an accident.” But Erin didn’t really believe that either Willie or Beaver had been involved, and Jeremy’s reaction confirmed her instinct.

  “There’s no way Willie knew there was a tripwire down there. There’s no way he would have led us in there and set off an explosion. No way.”

  “Okay. I just wanted to make sure.”

  A nurse bustled into the room. “I see our patient is awake. How are you feeling, Mr. Jackson?”

  “Good,” Jeremy approved. “Ready to go home.”

  “We’ll have to talk to the doctor about that.”

  Erin looked at the time on her phone. She hadn’t been in there for very long. Jeremy had been awake only a couple of minutes.

  “How did you know he was awake?”

  “I have eyes, don’t I?”

  “But you couldn’t see whether or not Jeremy was awake. Not from out there.”

  She raised her eyebrows, then pointed to a small camera with a red light on it up in the corner of the room.

  “Big Brother sees all.”

  Jeremy and Erin both looked at the camera.

  “You have patients under surveillance?” Erin asked.

  “We have to know if someone gets up and is wandering around or falls down and needs assistance. And the nursing staff is monitored to make sure they are providing proper patient care.” The nurse rolled her eyes. “Washing our hands and not slapping the patients around.”

  Erin was aware of stories that had made it to the news of nurses being cruel to patients or ignoring their needs, especially at nursing homes. “So you can see what’s going on from your nursing station out there… all the time?”

  “We sure can.”

  “What about patients’ right to privacy?” Jeremy demanded. “Do you have cameras in the bathrooms too? This is outrageous!”

  “I told you, it’s for your own safety. Don’t go getting all worked up. There aren’t any in the bathroom. Just outside, with a timer so we know if someone has been in for too long.”

  Erin could hardly tear her eyes from the camera to look at the nurse. “Do you have sound too?”

  The nurse hesitated before answering. “The sound is turned off unless we need to hear what’s going on.”

  “So you can listen in whenever you want.”

  “Whenever it is necessary,” the nurse asserted, “for patient safety.”

  Erin looked at Jeremy. He cocked his head slightly, eyebrows raised. Erin stood by while the nurse performed a brief examination in silence, her eyes darting nervously to Erin several times, then she hurried out of the room after a forced smile and “I’ll update the doctor. We’ll see if he’s ready to discharge you.”

  Jeremy looked at Erin. “Well?”

  “I think I know who made it to the mines ahead of us.”

  Chapter Thirty-Two

  C

  harley had stopped by to see Erin before taking a trip home to Moose river for the weekend.

  “You’re getting along okay with your mom?” Erin asked.

  Charley wrinkled her nose. “I don’t know. She won’t stop trying to… mother me. It’s like she has no clue that I’m an adult now and can make my own decisions. Every time we talk, she’s trying to poke her nose into my life and make sure that I’m not getting into any trouble. Always telling me what I should do. She doesn’t trust that I can make good decisions. It’s aggravating.”

  Erin nodded. “But you’re
going back for a visit.”

  “Yeah. She is my mom, and I should make sure that I see them now and then. She’s right about that, and so were you. I might feel smothered by her, but at least I’ve got a mom and dad around. I should enjoy that while I can.”

  “Exactly. I wish I still had my parents… though in all honesty, who knows what kind of a relationship we’d have. They weren’t exactly a well-functioning unit. We all just have to take what we get and make the most of it.”

  Charley gave a shrug. “What is the matter with that rabbit?” she demanded.

  Erin looked down at Marshmallow, who kept squirming and digging his way under the couch, and then dashing out and zig-zagging around the room. Orange Blossom, spooked by his wild behavior, was perched up on the back of the couch, watching him with ears back and eyes narrowed.

  “I’m not sure. I was wondering if maybe he hit puberty, he’s been so wild and crazy lately. But he’s neutered, so Doc says it shouldn’t be hormones. I think it might be the ginseng in the yard. I can’t keep him out of it when I take him outside. He just makes a beeline straight for it.”

  “Well, if it makes a rabbit that frisky, I can see why the Chinese think it could be a magic elixir for humans.”

  Erin heard a truck engine outside and looked out the window to see Willy pulling up to the curb. Vic leaned over to kiss him goodbye, and then got out of the truck and headed to the house. She let herself in the front door and nodded to Charley.

  “Saw your car was here and thought I’d stop in and say ‘hi’ before settling in for the night.”

  Charley looked at her watch. “I need to be getting out of here. I told my mom I’d be there before ten.”

  “You’d better get a move on, then,” Vic agreed. She cocked her head at Erin. “And I wanted to check… no word on that nurse?”

  Erin put her lists to the side and wrapped her arms around her knees. “No. I’ll let you know once I hear, right now they won’t say anything except that they’re investigating. But I know she’s the one who got to Orson’s farm ahead of us. Only the person with the maps could have. And that was somebody at the hospital. She knew way too much about the conversations I’d had with Terry and Willie. She didn’t just happen to overhear a few words. She had to be monitoring us.”

  “But she couldn’t be the one who hit you, could she? And why would she set explosives to go off when we went into the mine?”

  Erin twisted a lock of hair around her finger, frowning. “She must have had someone helping her, because I’m sure she wasn’t the person following me at the hospital when the maps were stolen. And they must have figured that the explosion would look like just a collapse. If one could collapse, then anyone would consider it too dangerous to explore the rest of the mines for treasure, and they could do it at their own convenience.”

  “But we could have been killed.”

  “I know,” Erin agreed. “And I don’t think she cared if we were.”

  Erin had initially hoped that Terry would be able to arrest Nurse Chantel right away. Erin knew she had listened in on her conversations and plotted to find the treasure before Erin and to blow up the mine with people still in it.

  But of course, the nurse was not in Officer Piper’s jurisdiction and the police couldn’t just rely on Erin’s hunch, no matter how convincing. By the time they were ready to take any action everyone had been released from the hospital and was back in Bald Eagle Falls.

  Erin and Vic were hard at work preparing for the Fall Fair when they finally got word that an arrest had been made.

  Terry leaned up against the display case to fill them in on the details.

  “The same surveillance system that allowed her to listen in on your conversations also proved what she was doing. We figured Nurse Chantel would be the one to break down and admit what she and her boyfriend had done when confronted with the truth. But it ended up being the boyfriend who confessed to the whole thing. It seems that Nurse Chantel wasn’t one bit bothered that three people were injured in the explosion. In fact, she went to see each of them to see just how badly they’d fared.” He shook his head. “The hospital had surveillance video of her checking in on each of them. You know how she was in checking on Vic while you were there?”

  Erin nodded.

  “She wasn’t even assigned to that unit,” Terry said. “She busted in there making it sound like she was in charge, but she wasn’t. She just wanted to get a peek at her handiwork.”

  Erin shook her head. She glanced over at Vic. “Can you believe it? Someone in a profession like that, and she doesn’t even care about people getting injured or maybe even killed.”

  “Maybe that’s why she’s a nurse,” Vic contributed. “She might actually get a kick out of it.”

  Erin shuddered. “Unbelievable. I’m glad she didn’t confess, because that means she won’t get a deal, right?” She looked at Terry.

  “Nope. The lowlife who knocked you out and set up the explosives might, but she won’t.”

  “Good.” Erin got a cookie out of the case for Terry. “Chocolate chip?”

  “My favorite. I also hear through the grapevine that your ginseng harvesting permit has been approved. You should get the notice any time now. That means you’ll be able to go out to Orson’s farm to harvest, when you want. No more being on your feet all day to run Auntie Clem’s. Dig a few more roots, and you can retire in style.”

  Vic looked at Erin, her mouth dropping open. “You’re going to close Auntie Clem’s Bakery?”

  Erin shook her head, laughing. “Not a chance! I might hire a couple of other people so we don’t have to put in such long hours, but I’m not quitting! I didn’t work this hard just to retire to the easy life the first time I found a root worth thousands of dollars.”

  “They’re not all going to bring in that much.”

  Erin knew they wouldn’t all be worth as much as one of the old ginseng roots she had retrieved from Orson’s cellar, which she had already put up for private auction, but with the number of plants that had been growing on the farm for decades, they could make a comfortable living, as long as it didn’t become known where she was getting her money or where she was harvesting the ginseng.

  “I have enough to buy Charley out,” she said. “If she wants me to. Enough to hire new employees. And maybe if you want to travel, we could go on a vacation or two.”

  The morning of the Fall Fair was bright and clear. The air was crisp and the sun was shining brightly. Erin checked to see that everything was properly wrapped and arranged at her stand, but Vic had already taken care of everything, even with her arm in a cast.

  “You don’t have to do anything but smile and accept the compliments today,” Vic said. “You did an amazing job on everything. All of your lists are checked off. Now it’s time to enjoy yourself.”

  “I feel like I need to do something,” Erin objected.

  “Go look at all of the booths. And at the animals and other contest entries. There’s lots to see.”

  “Okay, but I’ll come to spell you in a while, so that you get a chance to look around too.”

  “And we shut down at three o’clock for the awarding of prizes.”

  Erin nodded. “I’m excited to see who wins. Did you notice that Mary Lou put a jar of jam in the preserves competition?”

  “I did! So maybe Jam Lady Jams isn’t dead after all.”

  Erin left Vic to man the booth and wandered among the other displays of quilts, preserves, and all kinds of arts and useful crafts. The variety was stunning.

  “I hear you entered something in the baking competition.”

  Erin turned to see Adele. “Hey, I didn’t expect to see you here. Yes, I do have an entry in the baking competition. But I can’t tell you what it is.”

  “I’m patient. I’ll find out when they award the prizes.”

  Erin felt herself blushing. “Well, maybe, but it’s my first competition, so I’m not counting on winning anything.”

  Adele just smiled
.

  Chapter Thirty-Three

  E

  rin couldn’t help but be excited and nervous at the awards ceremony. The sheriff was announcing the winners and had been on the tasting committee.

  “As always, the baking competition was a tight race. Everything was delicious. The judges tasted, consulted, loosened their belts, and tasted some more.” The sheriff jiggled his heavy belt ruefully, drawing laughter from the crowd. “In first place, with a traditional Tennessee dessert, was the mile-high Apple-achian Stack Cake!” Sheriff Wilmot ripped open the envelope. “By Erin Price, of Auntie Clem’s Bakery!”

  Vic gave a whoop and did a little victory dance. Erin couldn’t suppress the big grin that spread across her face.

  “I suppose since this came from Auntie Clem’s Bakery, that it is gluten-free?” Wilmot directed the question to Erin over the heads of the crowd.

  Erin nodded and called back. “Yes, it is!”

  “And the entry said that there was a special ingredient included to honor Tennessee’s history,” Sheriff Wilmot read from the card. “Are you going to reveal that ingredient?”

  “Yes. I added ginseng.”

  “Ahh. There was a time when ginseng grew wild in these parts,” Wilmot observed. “Now you have to go out of the county to find it, but maybe one day we’ll have it growing wild again here.”

  Erin nodded and smiled. “Maybe so.”

  Erin spotted Mary Lou later in the afternoon as they were cleaning up their booth.

  “How did you do?” Erin asked her.

  “Not too badly,” Mary Lou said, allowing herself a small smile and smoothed her well-fitted blazer jacket over her hips. “I got first in two categories.”

  “Not bad?” Erin repeated. “That’s great!”