Stirring Up Murder

by P. D. Workman

Alton didn’t move his arms. His knees continued to buckle, and it wouldn’t be long before he reached the tipping point and either toppled over or collapsed. Erin tried to tell Terry that Alton was injured, but still couldn’t raise her voice enough for him to hear.

  “Move aside, Vic. Holster your gun, but I’m going to need to take it from you later.”

  Vic lowered her weapon. She drew aside to allow Terry to get into the bedroom. Terry entered as Alton hit the floor. He put a hand on Alton’s back to keep him down.

  “Can you turn on the light?” he asked Vic. “I can’t see a thing. Where’s Erin, is she okay?”

  “I don’t know.”

  The light came on, blinding at first, making Erin’s eyes water. Terry saw Alton’s gun and pushed it farther away. He turned Alton onto his back and they all saw the blood-soaked shirt. Terry pressed one hand over it, and clicked his radio with his other.

  “Gunshot victim, need EMS. Center mass, heavy bleeding.”

  Terry’s eyes caught on Erin, peeking out from under the bed. “Erin. Are you okay? Are you hurt?”

  Erin swallowed. “I’m okay,” she whispered. This time he was close enough and it was quiet enough for him to hear.

  “Good. Are you sure? Come out of there and let Vic check you out. Sometimes you can get hurt and not even know it.”

  It seemed like a long time before Erin’s limbs obeyed and she was able to crawl out. Vic moved around the perimeter of the room, giving Terry lots of space, and helped Erin to her feet. They both looked Erin over, looking for any injuries. Vic found a crease across Erin’s forehead, bloody but not deep.

  “Is that from his shot?” Vic asked, sitting Erin down on the bed and pulling several tissues from the box on the bedside table to wad up and hold over the cut.

  “No. I hit it on the bed when the alarm went.”

  Tom and the sheriff had cleared the rest of the house and hovered around the door, not entering because the room was already too crowded with the four of them.

  “Everything is clear, Terry,” the sheriff advised. “Do you want me to take over there?”

  Terry looked down at the bloody mess under his hand. “I’d better keep pressure on. I don’t know if it’s doing any good, but if we can keep him alive to prosecute, I’d sure like to see him rotting in jail.”

  “What happened?”

  “Orange Blossom woke me up,” Erin explained, trying to speak up loudly enough that they could all hear her. “I guess he didn’t like Alton coming in. I don’t know how he got in. The alarm didn’t go until Vic came. He had a gun. He was trying to kill me.”

  Terry nodded, his expression grim and set.

  “Why did he come after me?” Erin demanded. “He was supposed to be going after Charley! Charley was the one being guarded!”

  “Maybe he knew that. Or maybe you were the final threat that was supposed to scare Charley into doing what she was told and disappearing for good. I don’t know.”

  Erin blinked at Vic, still pressing the tissue to Erin’s forehead. “How did you know?”

  Vic shook her head. “I heard Blossom. He never makes noise like that when you’re around. I just knew something was wrong.”

  Orange Blossom jumped up on the bed beside Erin and turned around. He puffed out his fur and hissed at K9, who was panting and watching all the excitement with interest.

  Epilogue

  E

  rin met up with Charley at her apartment. It had been a long, strange week. Strange because it had been so normal. No mysteries, no worries, no sleepless nights. Just working the usual bakery routine. So Sunday afternoon, after the ladies’ tea, she headed over to Charley’s.

  Everything in Charley’s apartment had been packed up and was in boxes, other than Iggy’s reptarium.

  “Where are you going?” Erin asked.

  As they had expected, once word got out about Charley’s familial connection with Davis, and how Davis had been implicated in Bobby’s death, Charley was no longer welcomed by the Dysons.

  “It’s not really fair,” Charley complained. “It isn’t like anything has been proven in court. And I didn’t choose to be related to the Jacksons. It isn’t like I was even raised by them.”

  “I know,” Erin agreed. “So… where…?”

  “If I’m heir to Angela Plaint’s estate, then I thought maybe… there might be a place in Bald Eagle Falls I could live.”

  “Half-heir.”

  Charley gave her a narrow look. “If Davis killed Trenton for the inheritance, then he can’t profit by it, right? And that would make all of it mine.”

  “But we can’t prove that Davis had anything to do with Trenton’s death. Trenton had an allergic reaction to the cupcakes that Joelle bought. It looks like an accident.”

  “Yeah, that’s what you said. And that might be good enough for you, but it’s not good enough for me. Not when it’s the difference between half of the Plaint estate or all of it. So I’m going to prove it, one way or another.”

  Erin shifted uneasily.

  Everything they had just been through had been because Davis didn’t want to split the inheritance with Charley. Now Charley was turning the tables.

  Erin wasn’t sure she was going to like the results any better.

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  ERIN WAS SURPRISED TO hear the back door opening. Vic, her partner at the bakery, entered the kitchen. The tall, blond girl surveyed the mess the kitchen was in, cookbooks and boxes of herbs and tea strewing the counters and tables, and shook her head in mock dismay.

  “I leave you alone for the day, and come home to the house looking like it was hit by a tornado!” she drawled.

  Erin looked at the clock on the wall. “It can’t be that late already!”

  “I suppose this means you didn’t make supper.”
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br />   Not that they usually had anything fancy for supper. Even on the rare days when one of them took the afternoon or the day off while Bella covered a shift at Auntie Clem’s Bakery, there was usually so much else to do that the evening meal was usually a frozen dinner or something at one of Bald Eagle Falls’s fine eating establishments. Erin shook her head ruefully.

  “I don’t think I even had lunch.”

  Vic walked toward the fridge. In the living room, Erin heard a thump as Orange Blossom jumped off of the couch, and by the time Vic had her hand on the handle of the fridge door, he was into the room, meowing chattily at one of his favorite people. Vic looked over at his food dish.

  “It doesn’t look like you forgot to feed Blossom, though.”

  “How could I? He’d never let me forget that!”

  Vic opened the fridge. Orange Blossom wound around her legs, vocalizing loudly. “Oh, is there something in here you would like?” Vic teased him, looking over the shelves.

  He would have been happy to stick his head in the opening and climb right up into the fridge, but Vic blocked him with her leg. She found the roast chicken from a couple of nights before, and pulled the container out of the fridge. He followed her as she cleared a little space on the counter to set it down.

  “Sorry,” Erin apologized, looking around at the mess, “I’ve been cleaning.”

  “I think you’ve got it backward. Cleaning is when you put things away.”

  Vic cut a little slice of the chicken and put it in Orange Blossom’s dish, and he attacked it with vigor. Erin’s nostrils flared at the smell of the chicken, and her stomach rumbled loudly, reminding her that she had neglected it since breakfast. Used to baker’s hours, breakfast had been a long time before.

  “I wanted to clear some space in the cupboards,” Erin explained. “These things are taking up so much room, there’s nowhere for me to put my own recipe books.”

  Vic nibbled at a piece of chicken. “You’re getting rid of all of these?”

  “No, not all of them. They’re sorted into groups…” Erin knew that it looked like chaos, but there really was a method to all of the books strewn around. “I’m keeping most of the handwritten ones,” she indicated the cookbooks written in hardcover notebooks; the same kind of notebooks that her Aunt Clementine had written her journals in, “and a few other classic ones that look really interesting. “I thought Adele might be interested in some of the ones on herbs and remedies, and maybe take some of the teas.”

  Vic nodded. While Erin had spent some time helping Clementine back when she was a little girl and the bakery was a tea room, she hadn’t made a dent in the wide variety of teas and herbs that had stocked Clementine’s cupboard. Adele, who lived in the cottage at the other end of Clementine’s wooded property and acted as Erin’s groundskeeper, would put them to better use.

  “And the rest of them?” Vic inquired.

  “You can take what you want. What’s left over after that… I’m not sure what I’m going to do with. I don’t know whether there is anyone in town who would be interested in them.”

  “Maybe you could put some of them on display at the bakery and see if anyone had any interest in them. Or we could hold an auction and get you a new car!”

  “There’s nothing wrong with my Challenger,” Erin protested.

  “Nothing that a complete overhaul of the engine, transmission, and exhaust system wouldn’t cure,” Vic agreed with a wry smile.

  “Do you want to make some sandwiches?” Erin’s stomach was protesting at the smell and sight of the chicken Vic was nibbling away at. “I’ll clear some space…”

  “All of these recipe books, and you just want to make sandwiches? Shouldn’t we be making chicken a la king, or chicken fettuccine alfredo, or something more sophisticated than sandwiches?”

  “I can’t wait for anything fancy. Just slap some mayo and mustard on some bread and we can have a quick supper.”

  “Do you want them on buttermilk biscuits?” Vic suggested. “We had a few left over.”

  “That sounds great.” Erin started to gather the books into piles so they would take up less room, arranging them by the type of recipes they contained. “I can’t believe how fast the time flew by today. I thought I could have this done in an hour, but it’s stretched out to take all day.”

  “Did you get anything else on your list done?” Vic rummaged through the fridge to pull out the condiments and a salad. Orange Blossom was done his chicken and was sniffing around the edges of his bowl like he might have missed some. He wandered over to Vic, making inquiries to see whether she would give him anything else. “That’s enough, Blossom, or you’re going to get fat!”

  The cat sat back on his haunches, looking offended. He licked his paw and started to wash his face.

  “I did some laundry and some other general cleaning up and tidying. Took three bags out to the garbage bin, so I must have gotten something done today.” Erin stopped and surveyed the kitchen, hands on her hips. “It won’t take that long to put these away, into boxes or back in the cupboard. At least I’ll have gained some cupboard space.” She had her own recipe books that she needed a place for, mostly printed on letter size paper and inserted in clear plastic sleeves in binders. Running a gluten-free bakery that tried to cater to a variety of dietary restrictions, she was always on the prowl for new recipes and techniques, and she couldn’t store all of them in the kitchen and tiny office at the bakery.

  She and Vic worked together for a few minutes, Vic getting supper prepared and Erin sorting the books into boxes and putting a few back into the cupboard.

  “You didn’t find any journals mixed in with those?” Vic inquired, nodding to the hardcover notebooks.”

  “No. I was kind of hoping that that missing journal might be in there. But I’m afraid it must be lost or stolen for good.”

  “You think Uncle Davis has it?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t see how he could have gotten his hands on it, but we didn’t have an alarm system yet around the time of the funeral. So who knows. Maybe.”

  “Officer Piper has already searched his house. It wasn’t there.”

  “I don’t think Terry could have missed it,” Erin agreed.

  Vic helped get the table cleared, and put out the sandwiches and salad.

  “Why don’t you wash off the dust and take a break?”

  Erin agreed. She was used to being on her feet all day at the bakery, but for some reason, her day of cleaning and sorting out the kitchen had left her feeling more tired and sore than usual. She was happy to get off her feet to enjoy a light supper with Vic.

  Erin’s usual routine of sitting with Vic in the living room and making lists before bed to organize the next day’s activities was comforting to her. She liked to get everything down on paper and have some idea of what the shape of the day would be. Of course, she never got everything on her lists done, but she was pretty productive.

  Orange Blossom was curled up on Vic’s lap while she read a book, and the brown and white rabbit, Marshmallow, was lying on Erin’s feet.

  The next day was Sunday, which meant the ladies’ tea at the bakery, an old tradition Erin had resurrected from when it was a tea room. Tea, cookies, and gossip. Even though Erin wasn’t part of the church community at Bald Eagle Falls, she had come to enjoy the quiet Sunday ritual and the chance to visit with her friends in a more relaxed environment.

  “You could take a few of Clementine’s teas to the ladies’ tea,” Vic suggested. “There might be a few adventurous souls willing to try something new.”

  “I might do that.” Erin added it to her list of things to take with her to the bakery in the morning.

  “Just make sure they’re labeled. None of those bags of unlabeled herbs.”

  “I can tell what most of them are, even if they don’t have labels. I can identify any of the teas Clementine used to serve in the tea room.”

  “But some of those… I don’t know. They just look dubious to me.”
>
  “I’ll give them to Adele. She can use them, or compost them if she doesn’t know what to do with them. Her herbal knowledge is pretty good.”

  “As long as no one expects me to drink anything unidentified.”

  Erin laughed. “We’re not going to poison you, Vicky! Has Adele ever given you anything that’s hurt you?”

  “So far, I’ve been able to avoid drinking anything she has made.”

  Erin was almost expecting her to make the sign of the cross to ward off any evil. Adele was a practicing witch, and despite Vic’s acknowledgment that Wicca was just a pagan religion and Adele was not going to work any magic on them, she avoided eating or drinking anything Adele made. Erin had never suffered any ill effects from Adele’s herbal teas, but Vic just couldn’t bring herself to take the chance.

  “I think Charley is going to come by for the ladies’ tea tomorrow,” Erin said, changing the subject.

  “Really? I thought she said she wasn’t comfortable around ‘all those church ladies.’”

  Erin smiled and nodded. “I know. But I think I’ve persuaded her just to give them a chance. If she wants to make friends in Bald Eagle Falls, she’s going to have to socialize somehow.”

  “And if she’s going to open up The Bake Shoppe, she’s going to need to know her clientele,” Vic agreed.

  Erin’s stomach clenched into a knot. She took a few deep breaths, waiting for it to subside. She knew she should be happy that her newfound half-sister was willing to consider opening up a legitimate business, putting her criminal activities with the Dyson clan behind her. It was just that Erin wasn’t sure how it would impact her business at Auntie Clem’s Bakery. She’d said from the start that she believed the town could sustain two bakeries, but deep down, she wasn’t one hundred percent sure it was true.