Coup de Glace

by P. D. Workman

  “You were rude to her. You said you’d apologize.”

  “I just said I would. What do you want me to do? Go to her house?”

  Adele’s house was her sanctuary. Erin didn’t know if Adele would ever forgive her if she sent Reg over there. And if Erin pushed it too much, Reg might start spreading rumors about Adele. Adele had a tenuous reputation as it was. If the townspeople decided she was more witch than wise woman, she could get run out of town, just as she had been run out of other communities.

  “Just… tone it down a little,” Erin suggested. “If you don’t want to get into trouble, you should be trying to keep a low profile.”

  She should have known that telling Reg not to do something would not go over well. Erin herself had the same failing. Telling her what to do always stirred up feelings of rebellion. No longer a teenager, Erin tried to control those inclinations, but Reg was different. Erin needed to appeal to Reg’s self-interests rather than urging the ‘right’ course.

  “Terry’s suspicions are already up,” Erin persisted. “I’d hate to see him arrest you on some trumped-up charge because you’re disturbing the usual balance of things here.”

  Reg considered this. “Yeah, okay.” She nodded. “I appreciate the heads-up.”

  Chapter Seventeen

  T

  he heat of the afternoon brought even more customers than usual, as word of Erin’s frozen creations spread through town. Mothers brought their young children in, towing them back out into the fresh air with flushed faces and popsicle smiles.

  Then the older children started to arrive as they were let out of school. Erin did a brisk trade, accepting pocket change and distributing the ice cream, frozen lemonade, and other cold desserts.

  Erin recognized one of the childish voices and looked over the customers to pick out young Peter Foster, one of her favorite customers. He introduced his friends to the bakery, telling them about Erin’s delicious baked goods. Some of the other children had eaten her food before, their mothers picking up bakery items or at the Halloween party Vic and Erin had thrown in Erin’s back yard. They did everything they could to introduce new customers to the delicious gluten-free baking, proving that it really could be just as good as its gluten-filled counterparts. It didn’t have to taste like cardboard or have the texture of sand.

  “Hello, Peter,” Erin called over to him. “How was school today?”

  Peter gave her a brilliant smile. “Hi, Miss Erin! We came for popsicles.”

  “You’re not the only ones. What would you like?”

  “I don’t know. Everything sounds so good! What’s your favorite?”

  “Hmm…” Erin considered the available selection. “I really like the cherries jubilee frozen lemonade. If you like sweet and tart. If you like something richer… the chocolate cheesecake frozen cones.”

  Peter considered, and discussed those and other options with his friends. Just like when Peter came in with his mother and sisters, he encouraged his friends to all pick something different, so everyone could share a bite of each different treat. He finally went with the chocolate cheesecake cone, his little friends made their selections, and all of the money was pooled together.

  “Okay, you’re all paid up,” Erin told them. “Enjoy!”

  They had all grabbed their selections from the cold case, so they headed outside to sit in the benches outside the bakery’s front door, shaded by the colorful awnings that stretched away from the buildings, to visit with each other and enjoy their purchases.

  Erin looked at her watch again, frowning. She understood that sometimes employees were going to be late or absent. They were held up at a traffic accident. They got up in the morning with a sore throat. Something unexpected happened.

  But Bella or any other good employee should know to pick up the phone and give Erin a call to let her know what was going on. It was common sense.

  But it was opening time and Bella wasn’t there. She hadn’t shown up for the prep. She hadn’t called to say that she’d slept in but would be there for the start of business. Erin flipped the sign on the door to open and went back behind the counter to serve customers. The first few customers trickled in, some of them yawning, some of them bright-eyed. It was amazing how differently people’s bodies handled the early morning.

  She was too busy to think of much else as she tried to greet people, help them with their choices, and then ring them up at the till.

  Erin was surprised when Terry walked into the bakery during the busy time. He knew the general ebb and flow of customers at Auntie Clem’s and usually timed his visits for when it was quiet, and Erin would be able to chat. The second surprise was that he walked around the lineup of customers waiting for their turns, barging in front of the queue.

  “Terry? Is something wrong?”

  “Is Bella here?”

  “No, she didn’t show up for work today.”

  “She was scheduled, though?”

  “Yes.”

  “Did she call you? Explain why she wouldn’t be here?”

  Erin put her hands on the counter, bracing herself. “No. What’s going on, Terry? You’re scaring me.”

  “She’s missing.”

  “Missing?”

  “Her mother called the police department this morning.”

  “But… what happened? Did Cindy wake up in the morning and Bella was gone? Did she go out and not come back? What?”

  “She was apparently supposed to go out and put the goats to pasture. When she hadn’t returned, Cindy went looking for her. The vehicle Bella should have been using was in the driveway, but she was nowhere to be found.”

  “Had Bella left and returned, or not gone out?”

  “The goats were in the pasture.”

  “So she had done it and come back.”

  “Except there was no sign she’d come back, other than the vehicle. I’m going out there to help search for her. But we’re pretty confused as to what might have happened.”

  “I didn’t hear anything from her this morning. I thought… she’d slept in… I was pretty angry she hadn’t even called.” Erin felt sick to her stomach with guilt and worry.

  “You couldn’t have known there was anything wrong.”

  “Where are you going to search for her?”

  “We’ll start with the farm. That’s the last place she was seen and where she should be. All of the Prost vehicles are there.”

  “What can I do?”

  Terry turned his head to look at the customers waiting in line. “I think you’ve got your hands full at the moment. We’ll get started and I’ll let you know what we find.”

  Erin breathed out. “Okay. Thanks. Did you let Vic know?”

  “I’m going to see if she can pin down Willie for me. He would be helpful out at the farm.”

  “Yeah. For sure. He’s always willing to help; it’s just a matter of finding out where he is and if he can get over there. He likes Bella, I’m sure he’ll want to be part of the search team.”

  Erin didn’t want to tell Terry goodbye; once he was gone it would really sink in that something was wrong, and Bella wasn’t just going to show up late with an apology. Erin felt like if she could keep Terry from leaving, it wouldn’t really be happening. That was silly, and she should let him get out of there as soon as possible so that he could find out what had happened to Bella.

  “Did Cindy check the barn? I know Bella’s not supposed to go in there, but maybe she did…?”

  “I’ll check when I get there. When you were out there, there wasn’t anywhere else that made you uneasy? Maybe something Bella said she would check later?”

  “No.” Erin closed her eyes, trying to marshal her thoughts and put all of the memories in order so she could pull out anything important or unusual. “We toured around the farm… everything in the house seemed perfectly normal. The barn was rundown and gross, but I don’t think there was really anything dangerous there. Certainly not Grandma Prost’s ghost. There was…”

>   “What?” Terry prompted impatiently, when Erin couldn’t quite catch the fleeting thought.

  “When we looked at the goat barn—well, Vic went in, I couldn’t get past the door—but we were looking for places that a body might had been disposed of and never found—and Vic was talking about the waste pit under the barn. She was talking about how deep it was…”

  Terry gave a small shudder. “Well, that won’t be a fun job. I hope we don’t have to dredge it out.”

  “No one would have put Bella down there. Tell me no one would be sick enough to do something like that. Bella’s our friend. She’s only seventeen.”

  “Assuming that Bella’s disappearance is not a coincidence… what’s the difference between murdering an old woman and a teenage girl? If you can kill with cold disregard for human life… age really doesn’t have anything to do with it. Whoever did this—if they are related—has already proven to be cold and cunning.”

  Realization washed over Erin. She hadn’t actually equated the disappearance of Bella with the disappearance of her grandmother.

  “If someone took Bella because of our investigation into her grandma…”

  “It’s not your fault, Erin. It’s the fault of whoever did it. If anyone. There might be a perfectly innocent reason she didn’t go back to the house, and she’s still somewhere on the farm, unharmed…”

  “But if someone took her…”

  “What?”

  “That means it wasn’t Grandpa Prost. Right from the start, everyone assumed he knew where Martha was, and he had done something to her. But if Bella’s disappearance is related, that means Grandpa Prost didn’t do it. We’ve been looking at the wrong person for twenty years.”

  Erin felt like she was in a daze for the rest of the work day, trying to stay focused on her customers and their needs, but continually trying to take in the fact that Bella was missing and that she might hold a key to what had happened. Vic showed up an hour or so after Terry’s visit, advising that she and Willie had cut their day off short and Vic figured Erin could use the help while Willie went to the farm to help Terry.

  “I can’t believe any of this,” Vic said. “We were just there. Everything seemed so… innocuous. Whatever happened to Martha Prost, it was twenty years ago. Why would anyone care about it now?”

  Erin counted out the cookies she was packing three times before she was sure she had it right.

  “There’s no statute of limitations on murder. If they thought that they were going to be discovered, they might have panicked.”

  “And kidnapped Bella? How is that going to make things any better?”

  “If Bella knew something.”

  “But you and I know she didn’t.”

  “Somebody thought she did.”

  Vic pressed her fingertips to her temples, massaging them briefly. “I just don’t get it. What could she have said to tip anyone off?”

  “I think pretty much everyone in town knew we were looking at the death again. Even if you and I and Bella kept it quiet, Reg has been spouting off about it all over the place.”

  “Reg! Where is she? Has anyone talked to her about this?”

  Erin looked over at Vic. “Why would anyone talk to her?”

  “To find out who she talked to. If she accused anyone. If she said she was close to finding out the secret of what happened to Martha. All of that.”

  “I don’t know. Terry didn’t say he had talked to her. I think they’ve been focused more on searching and seeing if they could find her on the farm.”

  “I’m sure he’s already thought about it, but he’s got so much on his mind right now, it could be overlooked. Are we going to go over to the farm after we close today?”

  “I don’t know. Terry is supposed to update me on what they find. Right now we would probably just be in the way.”

  Vic’s nostrils flared. “This isn’t just a job for the men. We can help too.”

  “I don’t think anyone meant that. It’s what they do professionally. Our job is the bakery. Their jobs are law enforcement and search and rescue. We’ll find out after work what we can do to help them out.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  W

  hen Erin and Vic did get to the farm, things were eerily quiet. Erin had expected to find the place crawling with people, law enforcement professionals from other agencies and volunteers from town in addition to the little police department, Willie, and Cindy and the friends who had shown up to support her. But there was no one there to stop them and tell them where they could park the car, no volunteer search team being given instructions on how to do a grid search, no crowds of people milling around looking for something to do and waiting for word.

  Erin parked the Challenger and walked with Vic to the farmhouse. She waited, watching for the dog, but then saw that he was tied up to the doghouse. As they got out, she saw the fleeting form of the silver-gray cat headed toward the barn. They knocked on the door but then let themselves in.

  “Anyone home?” Vic asked.

  Cindy was sitting in the living room, along with Lottie Sturm and a couple of other women from town that Erin recognized, but didn’t really know. Erin felt awkward about showing up without something in hand. No casserole, no fresh bread or treats from the bakery; she hadn’t even thought about what she should do to support Cindy.

  Cindy looked at them but didn’t demand to know what they were doing there. She didn’t chase them back out again, either, which was what Erin had been worried about.

  “Uh, hi. We’re just wondering… how things are going, and where we can help.”

  There was no immediate answer. Erin and Vic went into the living room and found places to sit. Erin thought she should give Cindy a comforting squeeze, but she was too far away to do anything.

  “Have they… found any sign of Bella?” Erin asked tentatively.

  Cindy looked at her for a long time, as if she were far away and had to return to see and hear Erin. “No. They haven’t found her. They don’t know what happened.”

  “What do you think happened?” Vic asked. “Do you think she wandered off or got hurt somehow? Do you think someone would take her?”

  “Why would anyone take her?”

  Vic looked at Erin, silently inquiring about whether she was going to explain.

  Erin swallowed. “Because… it could be related to your grandmother disappearing.”

  “That’s ridiculous, and I told the policeman so,” Cindy said strongly. “How could this have anything to do with my mother? She was gone years before Bella was even born.”

  “If the person who hurt your grandma thought that Bella was getting too close to discovering the truth, then they might have… done something.”

  “This isn’t anything to do with my mother.”

  “So you think she just… had an accident?”

  “My mother?”

  “Bella. You think that after she put the goats to pasture, she brought the car back to the house, and then disappeared between the parking pad and the house?”

  Cindy stared at Vic, unflinching. “You don’t know anything about it.”

  “No. I’m asking.”

  “She shouldn’t have ever had anything to do with you people. You were putting ideas into her head. Filling her up with your perversions.”

  “Whoa!” Erin held her hands up to stop Cindy. “Neither of us ever said anything to her about anything but bakery business.”

  Cindy looked at Erin and Vic, her lip curled in a stubborn sneer.

  “Are you saying that Bella was getting ideas from somewhere?” Vic suggested. “Ideas you thought she was getting from work?”

  There was another delay in answering. Cindy turned and looked at Lottie Sturm, clearly indicating where the bizarre suggestion about Vic and Erin warping Bella’s mind had come from. Erin already knew that Lottie Sturm disapproved of Vic and thought they shouldn’t have anything to do with a young girl like Bella.

  “She never said anything to me,” Cindy
admitted.

  “Then what?” Vic persisted. “She came home smelling like perfume? Partied late? Brought questionable items into the house?”

  “No,” Cindy shook her head more definitely. “Nothing like that.”

  “So you just don’t like the fact that she was working with a transgender person. Somebody told you they thought it was a bad idea,” Vic looked over at Lottie, raising one eyebrow in question.

  “Yes,” Cindy agreed. “I just thought it wasn’t a good idea.”

  “You don’t think it has anything to do with her disappearing,” Erin repeated.

  “No.”

  “What do you think happened, then? Do you think she got confused or hurt? That someone picked her up? What?”

  “I don’t know.” Cindy shook her head. “It’s just so unbelievable. She’s never done anything like this. She never ran away. She never threatened to run away. She wasn’t ever one of those girls who argued and said she hated her mother or that she couldn’t stand it anymore and was going to leave. She was never that kind of girl. We always got along together.”

  “Except she wanted to know what happened to her grandma and grandpa, and you didn’t tell her the whole truth.”

  Cindy looked at Erin with a completely blank expression.

  “You didn’t fight over it. But she wanted to know things about her grandma and grandpa and you didn’t want to talk to her about it.”

  “I don’t know anything about it,” Cindy insisted.

  “How would your father have reacted if the same thing happened to him? Martha was supposed to be in the garden or the barn, and when he went out to see her, she was gone. And she never, ever came back again.” Erin paused. “How do you think that would have made him feel?”

  Cindy’s gaze sharpened. This wasn’t something she’d considered before. Erin was not blaming Ezekiel for Martha’s disappearance, but empathizing with how he might have felt if his mate had simply disappeared from the yard one day, never to return again.