Terry looked at Vic. “You know he was carrying concealed weapons?”
Vic licked her lips and shook her head, looking at her brother. “No. I didn’t know.”
“You have a concealed carry permit?” Terry asked Jeremy.
“Not exactly.”
“Then you’re not supposed to be walking around like this, are you?”
“I’m in my own home. Sort of. Not out in public. You can’t arrest me for having a gun in my own house.”
“You’d be surprised what I can do. I’m going to go over to Adele’s to make sure everything is okay over there, and then I’m going to be back here. I’ll take you to the police station for the rest of the night, however long that ends up being, and the girls can go back to sleep.” He looked at his watch. “For a couple of hours, anyway. You might want to open the bakery late today. Give your bodies long enough to rest and recover.”
Erin nodded her agreement, but she knew she wouldn’t. She would still get up at the regular time and open the bakery on time, even if it meant that she only got two hours of sleep all night. She wasn’t going to let the bad stuff going on around Bald Eagle Falls be a detriment to her business.
“I’ll see you in a while then,” Terry told them all. Hearing the finality in his master’s voice, K9 got up and stood at the ready. Terry kept both of Jeremy’s guns.
“You can’t take those,” Jeremy protested.
“We’ll see about that. I’m not leaving them with you right now, anyway.” He walked out the door. Erin could see him hand the guns to Tom and saw him make a motion toward the house, leaving him with instructions.
Erin waited until Terry was in his car and on his way before pulling out her phone and dialing.
It took a few rings for Adele to answer the phone. She didn’t sound tired when she answered, but then, she was usually up late and slept later in the morning than Erin.
“Erin? Is something wrong?”
“We had a bit of trouble over here. I wanted to call and give you a heads-up that Terry’s on his way over. Just to make sure that everything is okay with you. He got it into his head that somebody might make trouble for you, so he’s going to head over there and have a look around.”
“Right now?”
“He’s on his way.” Erin expected Adele to hang up, but Adele stayed on the phone.
“You are all okay?”
“We’re fine. There was a threat, but nothing came of it. I think we’ll be just fine for the rest of the night. Terry just wants to make sure everything is kosher.”
Erin could hear the smile in Adele’s voice. “If he’s looking for kosher, then he maybe shouldn’t be looking for it with a Wiccan.”
“Ha. Right. Well, he’ll come make sure it’s… whatever you would say.”
“I think that’s him now,” Adele said. Erin couldn’t hear the noise of the car approaching. She waited. Adele spoke to someone else. “We’ve got a visit from the police.”
“Police?” Rudolph’s voice was thick with sleep or maybe with drink. “What are the police doing here?”
“Just doing a check. Don’t be a pain. Don’t cause trouble.”
There was a knock at the door. Adele answered it. “Officer Piper. Come in.”
“Mrs. Windsor.” Erin kept waiting for Adele to hang up the phone, but she kept the line open and Erin could hear most of what was going on. “And Mr. Windsor.”
“What are you doing here?”
“There’s been some trouble at your landlord’s house. I’m just checking to make sure that no one ended up out here. People will be trying to get out of town, and I wouldn’t want them thinking they could hijack your ride or steal your money.”
“No one is going to do anything to me,” Rudolph growled. “I can take care of myself, thank you.”
“Never hurts to have the police around to make sure everything is peaceful. I’m sure you’d rather not have any trouble.”
“Well,” Rudolph’s voice was still belligerent, “you can see that everything is fine here. So you can get on your way.”
“Can I talk to you for a moment, Mrs. Windsor?” Terry asked, ignoring her husband’s rancor.
There was a pause, Adele considering the request. Then she made a murmur of acknowledgment and Erin could hear them both moving, then heard the bang of the door and the gentle whistle of the night breeze across the phone mic.
“What else can I do for you, Officer Piper?”
“I just wanted to talk to you about your husband. I was surprised to find him out here. Are you… is he here with your permission? No coercion? You don’t mind him being here?”
“Yes, Officer. No need for concern.”
“Okay. I just wondered because earlier… you were trying to avoid him.”
“And I told you I shouldn’t have done that. These things are better dealt with face-to-face than trying to avoid contact. It’s fine. Don’t worry about it.”
“You haven’t seen anyone out here tonight?”
“No sign of anyone.”
“I’m going to take a look around. Just make sure there’s no unusual activity.”
“I’m not sure how you’re going to find anyone in the dark.”
“I have a flashlight.”
Erin looked out her own window. She didn’t know how much difference it was going to make. Anyone would be able to see the beam of the flashlight before it reached them, and move out of its way if they didn’t want to be seen.
Erin heard the rustle of footsteps. Adele brought the phone back up to her face. “Everything is fine. Your officer will take a few minutes to look around and then he’ll be back to you. Alright?”
“Thanks,” Erin said. “I’m glad everything is okay.”
Before Adele hung up, Erin heard Rudolph growl at Adele one more time.
Before Terry could get back from Adele’s, Erin heard another approaching engine. A big engine, like a truck. It approached at a fairly high speed and screeched to a stop close by. Erin tensed up, unsure what she was going to be facing. Someone who had decided they could take on the last two cops in the police department and didn’t have to wait for anyone or anything? The bad guy, come back to take Jeremy this time without any hesitation or negotiation?
But then she heard a voice greet the sheriff and she settled down, recognizing the familiar rumble. Willie was in the door a few minutes later.
“What’s going on?” he demanded. “What happened?”
Vic hurried over to him to give him a big hug. “Not much time for talk,” she said. “Everybody’s okay, but people know Jeremy is here and we need to protect him. Terry wants to take him into custody and make him sleep at the police department.”
“That doesn’t sound like a whole lot of fun,” Willie said. “I can tell you from experience that their facilities are not exactly the Ritz.”
Erin wondered when Willie had had the opportunity to enjoy the police department’s hospitality.
Willie looked at Jeremy. “Jeremy. How long have you been here?”
“A few days.”
“I should have guessed that something was up. So, what do you need?”
“We need to put him somewhere no one is going to find him,” Vic said. She looked Willie in the eye. “We can do that, right?”
Willie nodded. “Sure. I know of places.”
Vic made a hurrying motion to Jeremy. “Go with him. Before Terry gets back.”
Jeremy and Willie looked at each other, then left together. Vic looked at Erin. “You don’t know where they went,” she said firmly.
“Well… no, I don’t.”
Vic nodded. She gave a big sigh and rolled her eyes. “What a night.” Erin was sitting alone on the couch, so Vic sat down beside her and gave her a sisterly hug. “How about you, are you okay?”
“I am right now… whether I’m going to fall apart in another hour when the adrenaline wears off, I don’t know.”
“I hear you,” Vic agreed.
Erin looked a
t her young assistant. Despite the fact that Vic claimed to understand, Erin didn’t know if she really did. She wasn’t the one who had seen Inglethorpe dead and bloody. She wasn’t the one getting crazy calls in the middle of the night.
“Are you going to be able to get back to sleep after all of this?”
“I don’t know,” Vic looked at the wall. “A little too late to be taking sleeping pills. What about you?”
“I don’t think so.”
“Then after everyone is gone, why don’t we just throw a movie on, and we’ll veg and watch it. It will be more relaxing than tossing and turning or having nightmares all night. How does that sound to you?”
Erin nodded. “Yeah. That sounds good.” It would help her to relax just knowing that she didn’t have to try to sleep. And if either or both of them did fall asleep, that would be just fine.
Chapter Thirty-Two
T
hey both had bloodshot eyes at the bakery the next morning. Erin took a break from the baking to hold an ice pack over her eyes to try to disguise them. It was best if the customers didn’t know that they had been up all night.
It soon became obvious that even though the incident had taken place late at night and the police had not used any sirens, everyone knew something had happened at Clementine’s house. Again.
Even Charley, when she stopped by in the afternoon, was up on the gossip. She wasn’t a fully accepted member of the Bald Eagle Falls community, but she was still attached to the grapevine.
“Are you going to tell me what happened last night?” she demanded from Erin, as if Erin had been trying to keep a big secret from her.
“Not much to tell,” Erin said with a shrug. “We just got a phone call, I was a little worried about it, so I called Terry… everything ended up being okay. Nothing happened.”
Charley learned in. “Come on, give me the real scoop!” she insisted. “That’s just what you tell everyone else. I want to know the sister’s inside scoop.”
“The only scoops we have are ice cream,” Erin pointed to the cold case. “You pick out your flavor, and I’ll give you a scoop. Two, even.”
“Erin! Come on, don’t be a tease. I’m worried about you.”
Erin had a pretty good idea that Charley wasn’t asking because of her deep concern over her half-sister, but due to her own curiosity and wanting to know what was going on with the clans in Bald Eagle Falls.
“We got a threat,” Erin said. “Sort of a threat.” Because she couldn’t remember exactly what the voice had said to her. Had he threatened her at all? “So I called Terry. When he got there, whoever had made the threat was gone. End of story. Terry spent a bunch of time looking around, and Vic and I sat up watching movies because we were too hyped up to go back to sleep after the visit from the police.”
“You don’t look like you slept.”
“Well, that would be why.”’ Erin studied Charley critically. “You’re actually not looking like you got a whole lot of sleep yourself. Are you okay?”
For a moment, Charley gave her a deer-in-the-headlights look, and then she managed to mask it. “I sleep just fine in this Podunk little town. Why wouldn’t I?”
Erin wasn’t so sure of that. “You weren’t feeling too well the other day.”
“I’d just had a bit much to drink. I’m sorry I bothered you. Sometimes… a story needs to be told. That one kind of got away from me. I didn’t mean to bother you and your sweetheart with my tales of woe.”
“You can talk to me about Bobby,” Erin said. “It sounds like you’re really missing him.”
“What’s to tell? If he was still alive, we’d be together. But we’re not. I don’t have what it takes to do a memorial or something for him. I just wish… that I could have the chance to mourn him. But that’s not the way things work in this life, is it? We all have to keep on living, even if someone we love dies. Life goes on. There’s no point in making a tragedy out of it.”
“It was tragic. You loved him and you must really miss him.”
“You know what else I miss?” Charley asked.
“What?”
“Being in the know. It used to be, I pretty much knew everything that was going on. Top level stuff. Anything important, I knew about it. I knew where Bobby was and what his plans were, even if they were just to go out on the town and have drinks with his buddies. I knew what the Dysons were doing and what my place was and what I was supposed to be doing.”
“Did you know they were interested in Bald Eagle Falls and were planning on coming over here?”
“No. No one had hardly even heard of Bald Eagle Falls. Nothing ever happened here, so why would anyone care about it?”
“But they do now.”
“Yeah, my wonderful sister attracted their attention. And I moved here, and I guess they caught up with everything else. Now, it’s the place to be. Everyone wants a piece of the pie.”
Erin saw cherry pie in her mind’s eye. When was she going to stop conjuring it up out of thin air?
“What pie?” she asked. “What exactly is it they’re trying to do? Cook and sell drugs? I can’t imagine there’s that much of a market out here.”
“If there’s a big enough market to support you on baking, then there’s enough for a drug trade.”
“But I’m sure… not that many people would buy drugs.”
“No. But they’ll pay a lot more for dope than they will for sugar. Sugar may be a gateway drug, but it’s not going to put a lot of cold hard cash in your hands. Drugs, on the other hand…”
Erin remembered her dream. The part of the dream where she had seen the flour on the floor of the bakery, and Vic had told her it wasn’t flour. Or maybe it had been Charley. Had Charley been in that dream as the other baker?
“But you didn’t… I mean you don’t… You’re not looking to get in on the drug trade, right? You wanted to run the bakery, not a front for the drug trade.”
“My plan was to have a legitimate business,” Charley agreed. “But it looks like that’s a dream, now. No one is going to let me open the bakery, which means I’m just going to go further and further in debt until I can get a job that pays more than the grocery store does. And where am I going to get that, other than going back to crime? Man, Erin. You’re so lucky. You just fell into this whole thing. I feel like it’s all just such a mess. Everything I touch turns to dust. I might as well not even try.”
“I wish you wouldn’t give up. Isn’t there any way to talk the trustees into letting you open it up? Just even on a trial basis?” Even as she encouraged Charley, she felt a stab of anxiety. She wanted her sister to succeed, but not at the expense of Auntie Clem’s.
“No. They’re not going to do it. They’re too afraid of the negative press about people dying there. Pretty soon, everybody will think that just setting foot inside the door could be enough to get someone killed.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“Yeah, but we’re talking about people who still practically believe in fairy tales. These aren’t rational human beings. They’re superstitious. They believe all of it. They might say that they don’t, but they totally do.”
“I know they’re superstitious, but believe me, they all want The Bake Shoppe to open again.” Erin let out a sigh. It was true; she could see it whenever she looked at her church ladies. They told her how much they wanted Erin to succeed and how good her baking was, but they made no secret of the fact that they missed The Bake Shoppe and that if they could, they would just buy regular food at the regular bakery. They didn’t want gluten-free baking and other specialty baking. No one except for Erin and the few who need gluten-free or other special diets.
“You and me,” Charley sighed. “It seems like one of us has to fail while the other succeeds.”
“Yeah.”
“I always hoped that we could be like the brothers in that story.”
“What?”
Charley grinned. “There’s this story about these two brothers, and they ran compet
ing businesses. I forget what they were supposed to be, but their shops were right next to each other, and they had this vicious rivalry going on for their whole lives.”
“Okay.”
“Well, after they both died, when people went in to take care of all of their personal effects and to sell the stores, they found out that there was a tunnel between the two stores. The two brothers had really been devoted to each other and had spent all of their time together in the evenings. The rivalry had all been for show.”
“Why would they do that?”
“I guess people thought they were getting a good deal, because the rivalry kept the prices honest. Or they liked the drama or liked to gossip about them. Whatever it was… it was the magic ingredient in their businesses…”
Erin shook her head. “Funny story. I think I might have heard it before. It would be fun if our stores were side by side and connected by a tunnel.” But then, Charley drove Erin crazy, too. If Charley had been back and forth to Erin’s house and business twenty-four hours a day, Erin might just do something she’d regret.
“There are supposed to be tunnels between some of these buildings,” Charley offered.
“What? In Bald Eagle Falls?”
“Yeah, you know, dating back to civil war, or something. People who needed to hide or to escape. They could slip through the underground tunnels and stay safe. Or maybe it was just a way to get around without having to face the Tennessee heat!”
“Which buildings were supposed to have tunnels?”
“I don’t know. Most of them, I think. So people had somewhere to go that was safe. It’s kind of fun to imagine.”
“There isn’t any tunnel in my basement.”
Charley shook her head. “Mine either. I checked! If there is any tunnel down there, it’s been bricked over so no one can access it.”
Erin thought of the bricks that lined a couple of the walls of her basement. Not the whole basement, just a couple of walls. Had those walls been made differently because they were built at a different time? Was there something to hide or had they just shored up a crumbling wall?
Sour Cherry Turnover Page 17
