But things did not start out well. Mary Lou Cox was absent, which had never happened before. She was the backbone of the group. Melissa Lee was there, but she was wary of Erin, avoiding talking to her. She was usually a chatterbox, so it felt strange for her to be so terse with Erin.
It occurred to Erin that she never had followed up with Sheriff Wilmot on the possibility that Davis could somehow have been involved in Joelle’s poisoning. Was that still possible with Joelle being poisoned by the poultice instead of the tea? While she could see him instructing Melissa to slip some foxglove into Joelle’s tea, it would have been harder for Melissa to poison Joelle with a poultice. Did she or Davis have the knowledge of how to prepare a poultice? Would Melissa have been able to convince Joelle that spreading mashed-up leaves over her injury was the best way to heal it? Erin couldn’t recall ever seeing them together. Melissa was not a friend or known associate of Joelle’s. Then again, who was?
“Where is Mary Lou?” Erin asked Melissa.
“She wasn’t at church.” It was Lottie Sturm who answered instead when Melissa just turned her head away and pretended she hadn’t heard the inquiry. “Mary Lou never misses church; she must be sick.”
“I’ve been worried about her,” Erin said. “She hasn’t been looking very well lately. I was afraid she was coming down with something.”
“She must have. She wouldn’t miss church services for any other reason.”
“Maybe I’ll go over there after the tea. I’m worried about her.”
There were significant looks exchanged around the tables. Erin tried to interpret them.
“What is it? You think I shouldn’t?”
“Mary Lou doesn’t cotton to uninvited guests,” Lottie said, when no one else offered anything. “Roger doesn’t do well with visitors. If you’re going to go over there… it’s best you at least call first. But she’ll probably tell you not to come.”
“Oh.” It hadn’t occurred to Erin that there would be any problem with just dropping in for a visit. Bald Eagle Falls was normally very casual about visitors. People often showed up on her doorstep without any advance warning, much as they had done with Joelle. It was commonly accepted that neighborly people just dropped in on each other. “I didn’t know that. You don’t think she’ll want me there? Even if I’m bringing bread or soup?”
“You’d best call first.”
Terry sometimes stopped in while the ladies’ tea was going on, not to join them, but just to touch base with the community and make sure everything was running smoothly. And maybe to snitch a cookie or treat while he was there. And to make arrangements to see Erin later, if she wasn’t going to be running to the city to do some shopping.
Erin smiled and nodded at him as he came in the door. She put her teapot down and got K9 a biscuit. Terry could help himself to something from one of the trays.
“Everything quiet?” she asked.
“Quiet as a Sunday afternoon.”
Erin looked at the clock on the wall. “It’s still morning.”
“Well, then, I guess it’s as quiet as a Sunday morning. Everything going well here?” He looked from her to Vic, chatting with a couple of the customers. “I thought you’d have Bella in today.”
“She has a school exam to prep for; her mother said she wasn’t allowed to leave the house.”
Terry grinned and nodded. “Aren’t you glad you’re not a teenager anymore?”
“Am I ever.” Erin shook her head. “I didn’t have the happiest childhood; I was more than ready by the time I turned eighteen to just take off and start my own life, without parents or teachers telling me what to do.”
“But didn’t your family—” Terry caught himself. “Right. Foster family. But you didn’t have any relationship with them? Any desire to keep in touch?”
“No. There were families that I had liked over the years… but I was never able to keep in touch with them. Social services discouraged that kind of thing. Once you were gone, you could just forget everything that had happened there. Move on and make a fresh start.”
“That must have been depressing.”
Terry’s phone buzzed. He gave Erin an apologetic look and answered it. “Piper.”
He listened to the report from the dispatcher. “Okay. Tell her I’ll be right over.” He hung up the call and looked at Erin. “Mary Lou Cox,” he said.
Erin steadied herself on one of the chairs. “Is she okay? I’ve really been worried about her lately.”
“She’s okay. It’s Roger.”
“What happened? He didn’t…?”
“He’s disappeared. She’s been out looking for him but hasn’t been able to find him. I’ll go over there to talk to her, but I may be back asking for volunteers to help look for him.”
Erin covered her mouth. “What do you think happened? You don’t think he’s done something to harm himself, do you?” He had, after all, attempted suicide once before.
“Don’t know anything yet, Erin. I’ll need to talk to Mary Lou and find out how he’s been and if she has any idea where he might have gone.” Terry looked across the room, reaching out to Vic with his expression. She put down the tray she’d been passing around, and joined Terry and Erin.
“Roger Cox is missing,” Terry told her, his voice low. “See if you can get ahold of Willie for me and have him meet me here. As soon as I’ve had a chance to go through things with Mary Lou, I’ll be back, and between the two of us, we can coordinate a search.”
Erin opened her mouth to argue that Vic and Willie were no longer together, but Vic nodded briskly. “I’ll get him.”
“Thanks. Back in a few minutes.”
Chapter 18
Erin had expected Terry to return with Mary Lou with him to be part of the search for her husband, but Terry returned alone. He was focused and serious, not smiling and casual like he had been earlier. The church ladies had quieted at the news that Roger was missing and, when Terry walked back in, they fell completely silent. Terry looked around at their expectant faces.
“I want everybody to go home,” he told them. At their noises of protest, he raised his hand to silence them. “I want you to check your yards and outbuildings. Have your neighbors check theirs, and everybody keep passing the word along. Call the emergency dispatch number to report every property that has been checked. We’ll start marking a map. If you want to be involved in a more extensive search, meet in the parking lot at First Baptist after you’ve checked your own property. We’ll coordinate manpower from there.”
He lowered his hand and waited for their responses. The ladies murmured to each other, gathering up their purses and Bibles and heading out. The bakery emptied quickly. Terry looked around.
“Did you manage to get Willie?” he asked Vic.
“He’s on his way.” Vic looked over at the clock on the wall. “He should be here within five minutes.”
“What did you find out from Mary Lou?” Erin asked. “Is there anything you can share?”
“Roger has been having increasingly frequent bouts of agitation and confusion. They’ve tried to arrange it so that there is always someone at the house to keep track of him, but there are only three of them, and the boys have school, so sometimes it’s just not possible. Even when they are home, sometimes he manages to sneak out without anyone noticing. He goes for walks to calm himself down, and usually he comes home on his own, but sometimes he gets confused and loses his way.
“Why didn’t she tell us what was going on? Get some help? It sounds like they could use a home care worker, at the very least.”
Having worked in the industry, Erin knew that family members were often reluctant to admit there was a real problem and to get the assistance they needed. Mary Lou had weathered her past troubles on her own, and maybe thought she could continue to keep track of Roger on her own too, but she was going to have to face up to the problem before Roger got hurt. Hopefully, she would have the opportunity. They would find Roger and return him home safely, and Mary Lo
u would get the help they needed.
“Not the time to be asking those questions,” Terry advised. “She’s already beating herself up. She’s beside herself with worry. They’ve checked all of the places they know he normally goes, but there’s no sign of him. Probably, he’s just wandered to another part of town, but if he’s off in the wilderness…” Terry shook his head grimly. People who wandered into the bush didn’t often come back.
The bells on the door jangled and Willie came in. He was dressed for work, a filthy ball cap on, loose fitting clothes, and laced-up boots. His face was, as usual, stained dark by his mining and processing activities. He looked around at each of them briefly. He didn’t avoid looking at Vic. Erin wondered briefly if he’d lost a little weight lately. He seemed like he had diminished since she had talked to him last. She’d seen him around town, doing the odd jobs that sometimes occupied his time, but he had remained at a distance and she hadn’t had a chance to talk to him.
Willie nodded at Vic, then his eyes went back to Terry. “What have we got, Piper?”
Terry pulled out one of the wrought iron chairs previously occupied by the church ladies and sat down. Willie did the same. Terry started to outline the details he knew. As he talked, Willie pulled out a worn map of the area and spread it across the table. He studied it intently while Terry spoke.
“Where are his usual haunts? The places they’ve checked already.”
Terry pointed out each location, explaining what it was and why Roger would go there, if they knew. Willie pulled a sheet of stickers out of his pocket and placed a colored dot over each of the locations.
Willie looked around the shop, as if just realizing that it should have been full, but instead was empty. Terry explained about sending the ladies home and telling them to check their yards and spread the word.
Willie nodded. “Okay, good,” he agreed. “They may contaminate potential scenes, but the faster we can cover the town, the better. If he isn’t found, the police will need to do an official door-to-door search, but that will take a lot longer. We might need to get Search and Rescue and the feds involved, if it goes that far.”
Terry told Willie about having set up the church as the central hub for the search, and Willie got to his feet.
“Let’s get over there, then. It won’t be long before people start showing up, and there will be complaints if we aren’t ready for them. No one wants to stand around waiting when Roger could be sick or hurt.”
“We’ll come too,” Vic announced.
Terry frowned. “I was hoping I could get you working on the back end,” he said. “We’re going to have a lot of people to coordinate and take care of. We’re going to need sandwiches, urns of coffee and tea. People aren’t going to want to stop. They’re not going to want to go home to make supper and then get back into it. They’ll want to just grab something when they check in and continue working.”
“Sure,” Erin nodded. “I’ll start a list of what we’ll need…”
Vic bit her lip. She obviously would have preferred to have been a part of the actual search, but she accepted the job they had been assigned. “Go ahead then. We’ll be up there with what you need as soon as we can.”
Chapter 19
Poor Mary Lou,” Vic said, as they unpacked the plastic-wrap covered platters of sandwiches and urns of coffee for the volunteers. “Can you believe that after everything she’s had to go through, now she gets this thrown at her as well? The poor woman!”
Erin nodded. “After losing everything and then almost losing her husband… then just when it seemed like she was getting back on her feet with the you-know-what…” The rest of the town didn’t know that Roger was the creator of the Jam Lady Jams, so Erin had to be careful what she said around other people. “Just when it seemed like things were going better, this happens.”
They continued to load up the tables so that as the volunteers returned from their search areas, they could grab something to eat before heading back out.
“Why would God let that happen?” Vic said.
Erin looked at her. “I’m the last person you want to ask that. God didn’t have anything to do with it. Roger has brain damage from trying to kill himself. That’s all there is to it. They thought they could manage without bringing in more help, but they were wrong.”
“I know you don’t believe in God. But don’t you think there has to be a limit? That at some point, things have to get easier?”
“No. People have to go through horrific things. We tend to have it pretty good in North America. Other countries, they would consider Mary Lou blessed to still have a husband and two nearly-grown sons. It’s a matter of perspective.”
“I suppose. It just doesn’t seem fair, though. I think she’s been through enough.”
“Then maybe you should mention that to God next time you pray,” Erin advised.
Vic scowled. “Are you making fun of my beliefs? You know, just because you don’t understand how God works or about how to use natural remedies or you don’t think magic could be real, that doesn’t give you the right to make fun of other people who do.”
Erin’s jaw dropped, and she wasn’t able to work out an answer immediately. Vic turned away from her abruptly and busied herself with getting another coffee urn out of the little car.
“Vic, I didn’t mean it that way,” Erin insisted, following her. “I wasn’t mocking you, I meant it sincerely. You pray about things that bother you, so I just thought…”
She could see Vic take a few deep breaths before she turned back around. When she did, her face was calm, but flushed. “I’m sorry. I overreacted. I’m all emotional for no good reason and I just snapped.”
Erin touched her arm tentatively. “You’ve been through a lot lately. This business with Joelle dying when we were right there in the house, and people suspecting that we were involved somehow. That maybe we poisoned her, when neither of us would ever harm a fly. And breaking up with Willie. Now you’re worried about Mary Lou and Roger, just like I am. There’s a lot of stress right now. Even Mary Lou snapped at me the other day. If she can lose her composure, anyone can.”
“Well, now we can see why. The poor woman’s been dealing with this all by herself.”
“And Adele,” Erin reminded her. “Adele was over there the other day.”
Vic frowned. “I wonder why…”
“Maybe something to help her to sleep. She was looking so fatigued the other day I almost wondered if someone was poisoning her.”
Vic shook her head but didn’t put her doubts into words. They continued to work side-by-side, not saying anything for a while.
“You can’t really say that I would never hurt a fly,” Vic said.
Erin looked at her, confused.
“You said that they shouldn’t have suspected us of having anything to do with Joelle’s death, because neither of us would hurt a fly.”
“Yes…?”
“But you can’t say that. Because I have.”
“Hurt a fly?”
“Hurt someone.”
Erin just looked at her blankly before it finally dawned on her. “Alton Summers?” she asked finally. At Vic’s nod, Erin shook her head vigorously. “Hurting Alton Summers doesn’t count. The man was trying to kill me!”
“I know… but I didn’t even hesitate. I didn’t even stop to think if it was the right thing to do or if it was the only way to handle the situation. I just grabbed my gun and shot him the first chance I got.”
“And a good thing you did, or I might be the one lying in hospital instead of him. Or worse, in the morgue, because I don’t think he would have hesitated to shoot me at point blank range.”
“So Alton doesn’t count.”
“Of course he doesn’t.”
Vic straightened the stacks of cups near the coffee urns. “I can’t get shooting him out of my head. If it wasn’t for my Xanax, I wouldn’t get a wink of sleep. I’ve only ever needed it occasionally before, but now I can’t sleep at all without
them.”
“It’s no wonder you’re emotional! I didn’t even think about how hard that must be on you. I just… was so relieved that you were there to save me, that I never considered that you might have a hard time dealing with it. I’m so sorry!”
Vic swiped at her eye with her wrist and kept working away. Erin knew she should insist that they sit down and have a good talk over everything, but there was work to be done, and she and Vic had always talked best while they were working together. She gave Vic a quick sideways hug.
“I’m fine,” Vic promised. “I guess I’ve just been holding a lot in.”
“You need Willie. I wish you two would make up.”
“It isn’t that we’re fighting. We just… have different viewpoints. Maybe we’re not as compatible as I thought we were. I thought initially that our differences were just superficial, but now…” She trailed off and let out a deep sigh. “Maybe you were right about him being too much older than me. He’s from another generation. He’s set in his ways. He has… a longer history than I do. The wrong choices he made as a teenager and young man are way in his past, he’s had years to get over them. But for me, I’m right in the middle of that stage of life, thinking that I know all of the answers; and if I do, then why couldn’t he have made the right choices when he was my age?”
“It’s not his age that bothers you. I don’t think it’s even the stupid stuff that he did, getting involved with the Dysons that bothers you.”
Vic snorted. “You don’t know.”
“Okay, I don’t know.”
But in a minute, Vic was chuckling and wiping at her eyes. “What makes you so smart, Erin? That’s not what upset me the most. I could deal with all that stuff.”
“I only know because you told me. You’re mad at him because you told him your secrets and revealed who you were, and he didn’t reciprocate. He knew you were a Jackson and that he should tell you he was a Dyson, even if it meant you would break up with him. It isn’t like he’s just keeping his business secrets to himself. He was being dishonest because he knew being honest could mean that it was over between you.”
Brewing Death Page 12