“What happened?” Erin asked.
“He told me to get out. He said the clan was coming after me and that I should run. Disappear. Never show my face here again.”
Erin nodded slowly. She wasn’t sure why that was so surprising. “Who is he, then? Not someone from the clan?”
“No. He’s not.”
“Do you know him?”
“He was—no. I don’t. I have no idea who he is.”
“Not a policeman?”
“A policeman wouldn’t tell me to disappear. I’m on bail. If I disappear, they don’t get to prosecute me. If they don’t want the Dysons to kill me, then they want to prosecute me.”
Erin’s head was whirling. “Then who is it? Another gang? Do the Dysons have a rival? Or is it someone from your family that wants to protect you?”
“No, I said I don’t know him. It isn’t someone from my family.”
“Should we go? Before the guys Dwight sent get here?”
Charley bit her lip, considering, then shook her head. “I’ll look guilty to the Dysons. And I can’t disappear that fast, I need to make arrangements—get money and ID. Make a plan. I can’t just run out of here and be gone.”
They both looked at the still-open apartment door.
“You should go,” Charley told Erin. “You shouldn’t be here when they arrive. I don’t want you getting mixed up in this.”
“I don’t want to leave you like this…”
“Go on.” Charley made shooing motions. “I shouldn’t have brought you here in the first place. I wasn’t thinking. Thanks for helping out with Iggy, but I think I’d better not call you again. It wasn’t a good idea. We’ve lived this long without knowing about each other. I don’t think we should talk to each other again.”
Erin walked toward the door, anxious and uncertain. She looked back at Charley but, like someone trying to chase away a puppy, Charley again made motions for her to scram. As Erin walked down the hall, the elevator dinged and the doors slid open.
There were the men from the clan. Almost twins in appearance, tall and spare, with blond sun-kissed hair and freckled faces. They weren’t in mafioso suits, but they weren’t in shabby t-shirts either. They had on polo shirts and slacks with sharply-pressed creases. They moved with purpose down the hall toward Charley’s apartment.
They obviously knew Charley by sight, because they didn’t spare Erin a second glance. She walked right by them without either one registering her presence. Erin got on the elevator and, as the doors closed, watched them enter Charley’s apartment.
Erin was in a daze as she rode the elevator down to the main floor and headed over to her car. She was completely unaware of anything going on around her. It was dark, and she should have been far more worried than she was about being alone in a strange parking lot in the city.
Someone hit her hard from behind, slamming her into the body of her car. Erin tried to fight her way free from the man’s grip, but there was no use.
“Be still and I won’t hurt you,” he whispered in her ear.
Erin was sure that was what all muggers and rapists told their victims. Be still. Be quiet. I’m not going to hurt you.
“Let me go, or I’m going to scream.”
“I know who you are, Erin Price, and you need to stay out of this.”
Erin was paralyzed hearing her name come out of his lips. How would anyone know who she was? She wasn’t from Moose River. No one in Moose River knew her. Only Charley and the police. And Charley had said it wasn’t the police who had warned her to run. Likewise, Erin didn’t think the police would be whispering warnings to her in the parking lot.
“Who are you?”
“Did you hear me?” His arm was against the back of her neck, pushing her harder against the car. “I know who you are. Stay out of it. It has nothing to do with you. Go back home, and never come back here or make contact with Charlotte Campbell again.”
Erin couldn’t raise her voice to answer him. She was so shocked by the sudden attack that she couldn’t think of what to say to him. She couldn’t argue with him, couldn’t figure out who he was. She couldn’t put her brain into gear to figure out the best course of action. She just stayed there, frozen, pressed up against her car.
“I know where you live. I know who your friends are. You wouldn’t want anything to happen to anyone you love, would you?”
Erin swallowed. “Leave me alone.”
He gave her another shove. “Why do you have to be so stubborn? You just don’t understand how this works, do you? You may fancy yourself an amateur detective, but you don’t know anything. Stay away from Charlotte and just let things take their natural course. Quit poking around and stirring up trouble. Go home and make cookies.”
Chapter Seventeen
E
rin sat in her car and shook.
She told herself it was just the adrenaline. It would make anyone shaky. She’d been unexpectedly attacked and threatened, and it was only natural for her to react emotionally and physically.
She checked again to be sure the car doors were locked. Could she drive all the way back to Bald Eagle Falls without having an accident? Or should she call Terry or someone else for help? The trouble was, it would take anyone from Bald Eagle Falls two hours to get there, just to have to turn around and drive another two hours home. She couldn’t sit there in the parking lot for two hours waiting. Even if Terry used his lights and siren, it was still going to take a significant amount of time for him to get there. Assuming he could get someone to cover for him if it was his turn to be on call.
Erin turned the key and tightened her grip on the steering wheel, trying to ground herself. She could drive home. There was nothing to it. The trip down the highway would be soothing. It was just what she needed to relax. She backed out of her parking space and focused on the journey.
The fixer watched Erin drive away, fuming to himself. Charlotte Campbell was supposed to run as soon as she got out on bail, and instead she had ended up meeting with Erin Price. One of the very people that the boss didn’t want her near.
He continued to surveil the building, hoping to see Charlotte leaving with a hastily-packed bag. Her car was in its reserved space. Did she not realize the danger she was in if she stayed around? The Dysons would be out for blood. They weren’t going to listen to any fanciful stories about the appearance of a mysterious stranger. They would simply put her in the ground for Bobby Dyson’s death.
Instead of being rewarded with the sight of her emerging with her luggage and making straight for her parked car, the fixer saw Charlotte exit the building between two of the Dyson boys. There were no visible weapons trained on her, but she had undoubtedly been threatened and they would have whatever arsenal was needed to ensure her compliance.
The fixer was a little surprised that they would remove her from the apartment rather than just leaving her body there in a pool of blood. But they surely had a plan and were acting under orders. Charlotte Campbell looked as cool and collected as if she were headed out for a Sunday stroll in the park. Like a lamb to the slaughter.
Chapter Eighteen
E
rin was calm when she got home. The shakes had disappeared. But she didn’t want to be alone and it was going to be hours before she was ready to sleep, which meant another caffeine-charged day at the bakery.
Willie’s car wasn’t parked anywhere that Erin could see, so she figured he must be off on a job. Willie always had something going on. Even over the Christmas holidays, it had been hard to get him to commit to a time when they could all get together. Erin picked up Marshmallow and cuddled with him on the couch. Orange Blossom yowled and complained and, after telling her all of his troubles, jumped up on the couch next to her and butted her with the top of his head, demanding that she give him just as much attention as she was giving Marshmallow. Erin rubbed and scratched both of them until they eventually settled comfortably against her, Blossom purring and Marshmallow flicking his ear every few minutes.
“You wouldn’t believe the critter my sister has,” Erin told them. “Green and scaly, eyes that go two separate directions, and a tongue that’s twice as long as he is! What a thing.”
With both pets quiet and content, Erin texted Vic and then Terry to see if they wanted to come visit.
Vic only had to cover the back yard, so she was the first to get there. She didn’t bother knocking; Erin considered it Vic’s home just as much as her own.
“You’re back! How did everything go?”
Orange Blossom abandoned his place beside Erin. He jumped to the floor and stretched his back, then flopped over and offered his belly to Vic for a scratch.
“Watch out for his pointy ends!” Erin warned. Though, of course, Vic knew this as well as she did. Orange Blossom would tolerate a tummy scratch for all of about five seconds, and then would attempt to grab Vic’s hand with his front paws while kicking with his back. An unwary victim would end up being raked with claws from all four ‘pointy ends.’ Vic gave Orange Blossom’s belly one quick scrub, then picked him up to cuddle, and sat down on one of the easy chairs.
“So, Charley is out on bail? Everything is okay?”
“She’s out, but everything is… pretty uncertain. I’m really worried about what’s going to happen to her.”
Vic frowned. “Why? What happened?”
Erin looked at her phone to read Terry’s text response, then slid it away. “May as well wait for Terry, then I don’t have to explain twice.”
“Okay, sure.”
They played with the animals.
“Did you eat?” Vic asked.
“Yeah… pizza.” Erin tried to remember how much of it she had eaten. Had she even finished one slice? It had been good pizza, but once their conversation had turned to matters of Charley’s safety, Erin wasn’t sure she had eaten anything more. She shook her head. Either way, she wasn’t hungry. She didn’t need anything else before hitting the sack. “Where’s Willie? Not around today?”
“No. He had an important job. Not sure what, but he didn’t know when he would be back.”
“Out of town, then?”
“I guess so.”
Erin stroked Marshmallow’s long, velvety ears. “He doesn’t tell you what he does?”
“Sometimes. It just depends on what kind of job it is, I guess. There are plenty of times he’ll tell me who he’s working for and what he’s doing for them. But other times it’s confidential… I just don’t ask. He tells me what he wants to offer.”
Erin supposed it was no different from Terry with his police work. Sometimes, he had no qualms telling Erin about what he was up to. Other times, he had to protect the privacy of the citizens he served.
There was a soft knock on the front door, and Vic got up to answer it, depositing Orange Blossom on the couch beside Erin so she wouldn’t get clawed up when Blossom spotted K9 and decided to make his disapproval known.
Terry entered and settled on the couch with Erin, giving her a hug and then touching her cheek with the back of his fingers. It was one of those rare occasions when he was wearing a t-shirt instead of his uniform. Obviously, not on call.
“You’re pale. Too many late nights?” he asked.
“I guess, yeah.”
“I figured you’d be heading to bed. You’re going to get sick if you keep staying out late.”
“I can’t get to sleep yet. Terry… do you know any more details about Bobby Dyson’s murder? Or could you get more?”
He settled back, the cleft in his chin more pronounced than usual. “I thought you were going to leave it alone.”
“I’m not,” Erin said, surprising herself with the vehemence in her own voice. “The more people tell me to stay away from it, the more sure I am that there’s something going on. It wasn’t Charley. She’s being set up.”
Vic and Terry both shook their heads automatically. But they didn’t know anything. They just didn’t want her looking into it.
“I know you’re worried that I’m going to get mixed up somehow with this Dyson family. I get that. They’re… scary. They’re dangerous. But I’m not doing something that’s against their interests, I want to find out who really killed Bobby.”
“What makes you think it isn’t Charley?” Terry asked. “She was heard there. Her fingerprints are on the weapon. You can’t get much more certain that that.”
“But what if it’s a setup? What if the female voice the neighbors heard wasn’t Charley? What if the gun was a plant? What if the police are setting her up?”
“Contrary to what you see on TV, that’s not something that’s usually done,” Terry said. “Sure, half the people who get arrested are going to tell you they were set up or that drugs or weapons found in a search were planted by the police, but that doesn’t make it true. Most police officers would never consider tampering with evidence.”
“But that doesn’t mean it never happens. And with cases that do involve criminals who keep getting away with breaking the law over and over again, don’t the police get more and more frustrated? It would get more and more tempting to do something about it to get the person put behind bars.”
Terry shrugged. “Again… TV. Do you think I would do that?”
“Get tempted? I don’t know. You’re human, so I assume you could be tempted just like anyone else.”
“I just do my job. It isn’t my job to ensure convictions. Just to make sure that there is enough evidence to perform an arrest. If they get off, that’s not on me. That part isn’t my job.”
“I just want to know what else you know about Charley’s case. You talked to Jack Ward, right? So tell me what you found out. Were there any other fingerprints on the gun?”
Terry hesitated. He looked at Erin and at Vic, then down at K9. “Yes, there were unidentified prints on the gun. Most of them too obscured to get a good match. The ones that were clear had not been identified. But it takes longer to get a hit when you don’t have a short list of suspects to compare it against. It isn’t like you can just pop it into the scanner and have an identity ten minutes later. Not usually.”
“Was the gun registered to Charley?”
“No. Still registered to a previous owner. It changed hands a number of times, and the final owner never registered the change of ownership.”
“So it wasn’t Charley’s.”
“They can’t prove it was Charley’s. That doesn’t mean it was not.”
“She said her gun was still in the gun safe in her apartment. But the safe wasn’t there, so the police must have confiscated it in their search.”
“Which would be within their rights. They would need to catalog any firearms and to account for any that might have been registered to her.”
“Did they take her safe? Was her gun still inside?”
Terry gazed at her. “I’d have to ask Jack Ward. That’s not the kind of thing he would just offer up to me in casual conversation. And by now, he’s probably heard about the connection between the two of us, so he’s not going to want to divulge details to me that he knows are going to get back to you.”
“She says they’re going to swap her gun for the one that was found at the scene. As proof that it was her.”
“They can’t do that when the other gun has already been logged and its serial number noted.”
“Then don’t you think it at least points to the fact that it wasn’t Charley? If it was her, why would her gun still be at home? Whose gun did she use?”
“There’s nothing to stop her from owning more than one gun. If I was going to kill my boyfriend, I would choose the unregistered gun over the one registered in my name.”
“But they don’t think it was premeditated, do they? She didn’t go there to kill him.”
“We don’t know that. If he was cheating on her—and from what I understand, there’s no question of that fact—that might be exactly why she went there.”
“What if it wasn’t her he was arguing with? If he was cheating on her with other wo
men, couldn’t it have been one of the other women who confronted and killed him?”
“Witnesses say it was Charley. I’m sure the Moose River police department will be getting whatever surveillance video is available inside and outside the building.”
“If they just heard her, it could have been someone else. They might have just assumed it was her. They probably didn’t hear Bobby calling her by name…”
“Erin… you’re so determined to prove that it wasn’t Charley. But what if it was?”
“I just… can’t believe that.” Erin closed her eyes, trying to separate her emotions from the facts of the case. “My parents… they’re gone. Maybe their deaths were accidental, but if they’d made better choices… maybe they’d still be around. I just found Charley. I don’t want to lose her. And I don’t want to think that she’s a murderer. I want… a sister.”
She let out a long, shaky breath. “Before I left her place… a couple of the guys from the Dyson gang came to get her. And someone… threatened me to stay off of the case. Someone who knew my name.”
“What do you mean, someone?”
“He came up behind me, so I didn’t see him. It was a man. Bigger than me. Strong. But I never saw him.”
“He knew you?”
“He called me by name. He knew I was from Bald Eagle Falls. He knew I was a baker.”
Terry scratched the back of his neck, frowning. “Those are all basic background, but it’s still disturbing. He would have to know who you were to look you up. And you aren’t known in Moose River. Or at least, you weren’t. You were questioned when Charley was arrested, so your name is on the police records. They could have a leak.”
“Did you recognize his voice?” Vic asked.
Erin tried to replay it in her head, and immediately shook her head. “No. He was whispering. So I couldn’t recognize it.”
“Words he said? Phrases? Diction?” Terry interrogated.
Stirring Up Murder Page 12
