“You don’t have to go. I can just walk over there myself.”
“No, I want some fresh air,” Vic said.
“You guys are plotting against me. Just because I was accidentally poisoned once doesn’t mean it’s going to happen again.”
“Not if you don’t eat or drink anything Adele makes,” Vic added in a low tone.
“Don’t say that. Adele didn’t poison me. They tested the tea, and it was perfectly fine. The belladonna was in the jam. And… I don’t know how it got there, but Adele did not put it in. The belladonna berries were jellied just like the strawberries. Adele didn’t do that in the thirty seconds I was out of the kitchen.”
“No,” Vic agreed. “But—”
“No. She didn’t do that. She didn’t poison me. I’m going to visit her, and I will have a cup of tea with her if I feel like it!”
Vic didn’t argue. Willie went on his way and Erin and Vic set out on the trail through the woods toward Adele’s house. A pathway was getting worn between the two houses from the number of times they walked to and from each other’s houses. It wasn’t like the first time that Erin had ventured into the woods and to Adele’s house, when it had been so wild and unfamiliar. Erin now knew each rock and tree along the way, and what had seemed like a long distance in the dark that first night seemed much closer.
Vic and Erin didn’t have much to say on the way there. Neither one was looking for an argument or wanting to discuss Adele’s possible involvement in Erin’s poisoning.
They arrived at the clearing around the cottage and both stopped for a moment. Erin looked for any sign that Adele was outside, ears pricked for the sounds of movement or Skye’s voice. Neither of them saw her, so they headed to the door. Erin knocked on the door. They could hear movements inside and waited patiently.
The door opened, but instead of the tall, slender Adele, they saw Tom Baker, part-time police officer. He looked at Erin and Vic and shook his head. “What are you two doing here?”
“Looking for Adele.” Erin tried to see around Tom into the rest of the cabin. “Is she here? Nothing happened to her, did it?”
“Why are you looking for Adele? You know you’re not supposed to be investigating this case, don’t you?”
“Investigating what case? We just came to see Adele. She’s our friend.”
“Did she call you to come?”
“No… she told me she wanted to see Erin when she got out of the hospital,” Vic said. She too was looking around for Adele. “Did something happen to her? Is she okay?”
Erin’s stomach clenched, and her heart started to race. “She’s not hurt, is she? Tell me she didn’t get poisoned too.”
She should have anticipated it. First Joelle, then Erin; Adele was bound to be on the list somewhere too. They were all connected. Somehow.
“Adele is fine,” Tom finally assured them. “She’s not here.”
“Then, where is she? And why are you here? Did something happen?”
“Sheriff Wilmot has taken her into custody. He said she’s the only one who could have poisoned Joelle Biggs and you, Miss Price. She’s the only one who had the access and the knowledge necessary to poison both of you. And…” Tom’s eyes darted back and forth, and he leaned forward slightly, his voice lowered, “because of her past.”
“Her past?” Vic echoed.
Erin couldn’t bring herself to ask for the details. Everybody had a past, and she didn’t need to know Adele’s. She knew what kind of a person Adele was. Erin had gotten cross-threaded with the law a few times herself, through no fault of her own, and it was more than possible that Adele could have too. Erin didn’t want to hear about it. She didn’t want to be prejudiced against Adele. She tugged on Vic’s arm.
“Where is she?” Erin asked Tom. “Is she being held here?” She had no idea where Adele would have been sent once she was arrested.
“She’s at the police department right now,” Tom said slowly. “There’s nowhere she can be held for any length of time in town, so they’ll be getting a transport to have her taken to the county jail. Don’t know how long it will take. Hopefully, by the end of the day. Always a problem if we have to hold someone overnight.”
“We have to go see her,” Erin told Vic. “Or I have to anyway. She’s not the one who poisoned me, I’m sure of that. She doesn’t have any motive to kill Joelle or to kill me. Does Sheriff Wilmot think it was just random? That doesn’t make any sense.”
“I don’t know if they’ll let us see her…”
Erin didn’t ask Tom whether they would or not. She just tugged again on Vic’s arm. “Come on. Please. Let’s go. If they’re transferring her out of town, I don’t want to have to go chasing after her. I want to see her now.”
“Okay,” Vic finally agreed. “All right, let’s go.”
Tom Baker didn’t try to stop them. As they turned away, he closed the door again. Erin wondered if he was in the midst of searching the cabin, or if he was there to see who came to visit Adele, or if there were another reason he was there. They started back toward the house. Erin heard a caw and looked around.
“Skye?”
She couldn’t see where he was, somewhere close by, hidden by the branches of the trees. He cawed again. Or maybe it was another crow; it wasn’t like Erin could tell them apart.
“Did you bring the peanuts?”
Vic held out a few nuts in the palm of her hand. Neither of them made any sound or movement. There was another caw closer to them and a curious little croak. Vic stood there, frozen, only her eyes moving, looking around for him and then glancing over at Erin. Neither moved. Erin didn’t know how long they should stand there waiting. While it would be nice to make contact with Skye and make sure he was okay, he was a wild animal and would be just fine whether Adele was around or not. They needed to go see Adele before she was transferred to the county jail. Erin had no idea where it was, but she imagined that, like the prison where she had visited Davis, it was probably at least a couple of hours away, and there would be specific hours and procedures that had to be followed.
With a swoosh, the black bird swooped down and perched on Vic’s arm. They both jumped, and Erin saw Vic’s mouth tighten when Skye dug his claws into her arm. He didn’t take a peanut right away, but cocked his head first at Vic, and then at Erin.
“Hey, Skye,” Erin greeted. “How are you doing? You know us, right? You remember us?”
He didn’t shy away, but kept looking at her, examining her with his glittering black eyes.
“Birds are very smart,” Vic said, barely moving her mouth. “They’re supposed to be one of the smartest animals. Way smarter than dogs.”
“I know,” Erin said, watching Skye. She really could see the intelligence in his eyes. It was like he knew exactly what was going on. “We’re going to go see her, Skye. We’ll find out what happened. She’ll be back here soon, I promise.”
He regarded her for a few more moments, then snatched up one of the peanuts in Vic’s hand, and flew off.
“We’d better go,” Erin said. “We can come back and feed him another time.”
Chapter 26
Clara Jones didn’t look surprised to see Erin and Vic at the police department. She typed a few sentences into her computer, hitting the keys fiercely, then looked up at Erin and Vic again.
“What are you doing here?” she demanded. “You can’t see her, you know.”
Erin wasn’t about to waste her time arguing with Clara about it. Clara might consider herself a cop, but she was just a secretary. “I want to talk to the sheriff.”
“Sheriff Wilmot is busy at the moment. He can’t see you.”
“When will he be free?”
“How do I know? He is working on a very important case, as you well know.”
“Considering I’m part of that case, I imagine he’ll want to talk to me,” Erin said reasonably.
“He’s busy right now.”
“Clara, just let him know we’re here,” Vic said irrita
bly.
Clara fixed her with a glare. “I don’t take orders from you, Miss Victoria Webster. Or whatever your real name is. I know my job, and the sheriff is not going to be interrupted when he’s in the middle of an interrogation.”
Erin turned her back and walked a few feet away, pulling out her phone and selecting Terry from her favorites list. After a few rings, Terry picked it up.
“Erin. Is everything okay?”
“Yes, we’re fine,” Erin said. “I just wanted to talk to Adele.”
“She isn’t—”
“She’s at the police department. That’s where I am, but your gatekeeper isn’t letting us in to talk to her or the sheriff.”
“That’s probably not a good idea right now. He needs to take the time with her…”
“Adele was not the one who poisoned me. I don’t know why she’s been arrested for something she didn’t do. I need to talk to her!”
“Erin,” Piper’s voice had that restrained quality that meant he wanted to censure Erin, but was struggling to be polite about it. “You need to let us conduct this investigation. I know you don’t think Adele did anything, you’ve made that quite clear. But the evidence points toward her. We would be neglecting our duty if we didn’t take action on it.”
“When can I talk to her?”
Terry paused, not answering her right away. He sighed. “We need to interview her, and she needs to be transported to the county jail, so that doesn’t leave a lot of time for you to be talking to her.”
“So, when?”
“At least another hour… I’ll try to get you ten or fifteen minutes before she’s transported, but if we miss the transport, then one of us has to stay with her tonight, and we’re not properly equipped to deal with prisoners here. Okay?”
“Please make sure I can talk to her before she’s moved. I need to get back to work tomorrow, and I don’t want to have to wait until the weekend to go talk to her at the county jail.”
“You don’t need to go to the bakery tomorrow. You can take another day to recover.”
“No, I need to go. I don’t want Vic to have to do everything. Even if Bella can get in for part of the day, it’s too much work for just one person. She’s already covered for me for two days.”
Vic was trying to talk to Erin, to tell her that she could manage for another day, but Erin shook her head. She knew that Vic could do it if she had to, but Erin was trying to force Terry’s hand.
“Okay,” Terry said. “I’ll do my best to make sure that you get a few minutes with Adele before she’s transported.”
“Even if you have to hold up the transport for a few minutes?”
“Yes. But I can’t hold them for long.”
“Okay. We’ll be waiting.”
Terry hung up. Erin looked back at Clara. “We’ll be in the waiting area when Adele is free.”
Clara shook her head as if she couldn’t believe their nerve and continued to attack her keyboard with ferocity of a dozen pigeons fighting over a spilled bag of popcorn. Erin took a deep breath, and she and Vic went to sit and wait. It was going to be at least an hour, and quite possibly more. No one had said how long it would be before the jail transport arrived, but Erin imagined the police department would take as much time as they could get to question Adele before the transport arrived.
Erin pulled a spiral notepad out of her back pocket and began writing lists.
Eventually, Sheriff Wilmot approached the chairs where Erin and Vic were waiting, sore and numb backsides on the hard plastic seats.
“You really didn’t need to come here,” he said irritably. “If there was something pressing you needed to talk to Adele about, you could have gone to the jail to discuss it tomorrow.”
“You know what our schedules are like,” Erin said. “By the time we finished at the bakery, I’m sure their visiting hours would be over. Not to mention how tired we are at the end of the day, and how long would it take for us to get out there?”
Wilmot gave a shrug of acknowledgment. “A couple of hours.”
“A couple of hours each way, at the end of a twelve or fourteen-hour work day? Do you really think that’s feasible?”
Even though he had started the conversation, Erin sensed that he didn’t want to argue about it. The sheriff just made a motion as if to wipe it all aside.
“You can come see her, but there’s not much time. The transport will be pulling up any minute now.”
“And you can tell them you’re processing her out and she’ll be ready in a minute,” Vic said. “You do have to prepare some paperwork, don’t you?”
“In fact, that’s what I’m going to do now.” He grimaced. “I did not choose the police force as a profession thinking that I would have all of this lovely paperwork to complete.”
He led the way to the inner offices and opened the door to one that Erin had not been in before. Unlike Terry’s and the sheriff’s offices, it was not crammed full of file cabinets, desk, and visitor seating, but was quite empty, with just a table and a scattering of chairs inside. Erin was relieved to see Adele still looking like herself; calm, relaxed, and at peace with the world.
Erin and Vic hurried in. Erin had been planning to greet Adele with a hug of comfort, but it didn’t seem appropriate with Adele looking so collected and unworried about the questioning she had just been through. She did, however, seem a little perturbed by Erin and Vic being escorted into the interview room.
“What’s going on?”
“We wanted to make sure you’re okay,” Vic said. “And you said that you wanted to see Erin when she got out of hospital.
“Yes… well, I wasn’t expecting it to be under circumstances like this.”
“We went to see you at the cottage,” Erin told her, “and Tom told us that you’d been arrested. I don’t understand how they could do that! You didn’t poison me!”
Adele shook her head. “No, I didn’t. I’m glad you have the sense to realize that, even if the police don’t. Why would I want to hurt you? As soon as something happens to you, I’m out a home. I can’t support myself with my craft. I have to find a new home, a new job, not to mention, I’d be run out of town on a rail. The fact that I’m your groundskeeper is the only thing that makes me respectable enough to the town that they put up with me being here.”
“Well…” Erin shrugged, embarrassed. Adele made her sound noble, when really, it was just a convenient arrangement for both of them.
“It’s not an exaggeration,” Adele said. “I’ve been through other towns like this. I know how people react.” She motioned to the chairs and they all sat down.
“Are you okay?” Erin asked. “I don’t understand why they’ve arrested you.”
“As far as they are concerned, I am the only one who could have poisoned you. And with Joelle…”
“There could have been someone else in town who was helping her out. I’m sure you’re not the only one who knows how to prepare a poultice.”
“There is,” Adele agreed, “since I’m not the one who put the poultice on her leg.”
Erin was relieved to hear that. Adele could be lying, but at least there was still the chance that it could have been someone else.
“Do you know who? Did she tell you?”
“No. She didn’t have it the last time I saw her. Someone else must have been there to help her. I guess you and I weren’t the only ones who decided to be neighborly and drop in on her.”
“I didn’t give her the poultice either.”
“No,” Adele agreed.
“The church ladies are always dropping in on townspeople who are sick or hurt. They’re very well-organized. She could have had a lot of visitors.”
“Except I don’t think any of them were too inclined to help Joelle. She wasn’t part of the church group and she wasn’t a very nice person.”
“I don’t know if that matters to anyone. They’re supposed to help anyone, whether they like them or not, aren’t they?”
“Sure t
hey are,” Vic agreed. “Love thy neighbor. But Christians are fallible just like anyone else. We don’t always do what we’re supposed to. It’s easy to find excuses or not be available.”
“I suppose. Somebody did go see her.”
“We just have to find out who,” Erin said.
Vic and Adele both turned toward her, frowning.
“Haven’t you had enough?” Adele asked. “Leave it to the police.”
“They’ve already arrested you; they’re not going to find out who really did it.”
“Well…” Adele’s shoulders dipped slightly. “I would hope that they don’t stop investigating just because they’ve arrested me. They still need to be able to prove that I was the one who poisoned you and Joelle, and that’s not going to be easy, since I didn’t.”
“You don’t have a motive. So that’s one point in your favor.”
Vic nodded her agreement. Adele wasn’t so quick to agree. Erin waited for her to defend herself, but Adele didn’t.
“You had a motive?” Vic asked.
Long seconds of silence ticked by. “I knew Joelle before I came here,” Adele said finally.
“You knew her,” Erin echoed.
Did that mean they had been friends? Was there significance to Adele’s move to Bald Eagle Falls? It seemed like a stretch that Adele and Joelle had just happened to know each other and had both chosen to go to Bald Eagle Falls by pure coincidence.
“We grew up together,” Adele explained. “Not friends, but in a community much like this one… the type of place where everyone knows everyone else’s business.”
Erin and Vic nodded, waiting for more.
“Joelle was the type of person who always wanted attention and was always trying to be part of the hip, popular crowd. But it didn’t matter how hard she tried, she was never able to pull it off. Everybody could always tell she was poor and that she was trying too hard. Not that the girls in the popular clique were exactly happy or secure in their positions either.”
“They never are,” Vic agreed. “Everyone is insecure as a teenager and those girls just pick at each other, looking for any sign of weakness.”
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