Changing Fortune Cookies

by P. D. Workman

  But even then, Mary Lou wouldn’t want her talking to Terry about Joshua.

  Erin didn’t see how she was going to be able to avoid it.

  Chapter 7

  Terry hadn’t returned before it was time for Erin to go to bed. She hadn’t expected him to. She didn’t know how long to expect him to be, but she assumed he would need a few hours to start the preliminaries of the investigation. Talk to Mary Lou, ask her everything he could think of about Josh. Maybe drive around town to talk to his closest friends or to check out places where they might hang out.

  When she got up in the morning, he wasn’t in bed beside her and he wasn’t asleep on the couch. Erin glanced at the door and could see that his shoes were still gone, as was his truck.

  She was going to need to have a word with Sheriff Wilmot about letting Terry work that long. If he crashed and couldn’t work again for a week, it would be their fault for exceeding the number of hours that the doctor had said he should work during the transition period.

  She did her best to put her anger and worry aside and get ready for the day. She loved her job and needed to be in a good mood for her customers.

  She talked to the animals, made herself tea and toast, and checked her lists for the day, adding an item here and there. Terry was obviously not there to drop them at the bakery. Looking out the back, she could see Willie’s truck on the gravel pad beside the garage. She texted Vic to see whether they had a ride. They would need to leave a few minutes earlier if they were going to walk, and she would leave her shopping bags at home and only take the necessities that they needed for that day.

  Vic texted back that Willie would drop them off. Erin took a few more minutes to load up the dishwasher, change the water bowls, and check one more time to make sure she had everything ready to start the day at Auntie Clem’s.

  Josh was a little less groggy when he awoke again. He tried to move around but found that his arms wouldn’t move. His shoulders hurt. A lot of things ached, but his shoulders and his head were the worst. Whatever he had drunk, it had really bothered him. He’d had way too much.

  He tried to move again. If he wasn’t at home, then he needed to wake himself up and get home. Before his mother awoke and discovered him gone.

  He didn’t know what he had done. Had it been Campbell? Had they gone out together? He’d been calling Cam, trying to set something up. But Cam hadn’t been eager to get back to Bald Eagle Falls and Josh didn’t want to get in trouble for driving into the city. Mary Lou was already irritated about his going to Whitewater to do interviews on his own. She said he shouldn’t have gone without a responsible adult to make sure he didn’t get himself in trouble.

  But what was going to happen? He was doing news interviews. On a public contest. It wasn’t like he was doing anything dangerous.

  He groaned, trying to get his arms into a more comfortable position, but he couldn’t move.

  He knew in his heart that Mary Lou had a point. There had been a murder in Whitewater associated with the contest. And he had previously shown that he didn’t have the best of judgment as far as the criminal element was concerned. So she was right; he could have gotten himself in the crosshairs of the murderer by approaching the wrong person or saying the wrong thing.

  But the culprit had been found. And Joshua had never even met Clayton.

  It was kind of disappointing, actually. He had hoped to be able to break a story that would be picked up by syndicates across the country. Or at least to provide the background, the story behind the story. He had been conditioned by Disney movies and Marvel comics to think that a teenager could make a difference. Could break the big story.

  But of course, the world didn’t work that way. He had known that all along, but he had held on to the fantasy. Nothing else in his life had gone like a Disney movie, so why did he think that his investigative reporting would?

  At the bakery, everything proceeded as usual for the first few hours of the day. They got the initial morning baking done and opened up the shop. People drifted in with their coffees to go and picked up muffins or pastries. Moms stopped in either on the way to school or after dropping their kids off. Then there was a lull, and Erin and Vic took a break for their early lunch. There was a tap at the back door.

  Erin unlocked and opened the door, and found Terry there. He looked tired, but he didn’t have the heavy-lidded, haggard look he got when he had a migraine.

  “Hey.” Erin gave him a peck. “How are you doing? You just getting off now?”

  Terry nodded. “Yeah, I just thought I’d let you know. In case you try to reach me and I’m too far gone to wake up for the phone.”

  “Thanks. I can’t believe you worked this long. You must be wiped.”

  “I am. But I’ll sleep until you get home. It will be okay.”

  “You need to be more careful. You know you’re not supposed to be working those hours.”

  “It was an emergency. I really did have to be there.” He hesitated. “Have you heard…?”

  “Not yet,” Erin admitted, though she was dying to talk to him about it. News of Joshua’s disappearance hadn’t yet reached Auntie Clem’s, and she couldn’t talk about it with Terry until it did.

  Terry sighed. He cupped the side of her face with his strong hand for a minute and ran his thumb along an escaped tendril of hair. “Okay.” He gave her no clues. He wouldn’t tell her anything about his investigation that wasn’t already public knowledge, so they would both just keep dancing around the topic and saying nothing. “I’ll see you tonight.” He looked past her and sketched a wave at Vic. “Hello and goodbye, Vic.”

  Vic smiled and waved. Terry gave Erin one more kiss and then left, K9 following close at his heel.

  Chapter 8

  “Here it comes,” Vic said in a warning tone.

  Erin looked at her to see what she was talking about and followed Vic’s gaze through the front door. Melissa was coming down the sidewalk at a quick clip. In a moment, she was through the door, the bells ringing wildly and her brown curls dancing and swinging around her face.

  “My, what a day!” she exclaimed, placing a hand dramatically over her heart.

  Erin and Vic both put on innocent expressions, waiting for her to break the news.

  “What’s going on?” Vic prompted.

  “As if she hadn’t had to put up with enough already,” Melissa said, shaking her head in pity.

  “Who?”

  “Mary Lou.”

  “What happened?” Erin asked. “Did something happen to Roger?”

  “No, not Roger. As far as I know, he’s still doing just fine. No, the latest news is that Joshua is now missing.”

  “Josh?” Vic repeated innocently. “What happened to Josh?”

  “No one knows. And believe me, we have been investigating intensively ever since the call came in.” Melissa was only a part-time admin at the police department, but one would never guess it by the way she talked. To hear her tell it, Erin would have thought that she was a high-ranking detective, not a typist and file clerk.

  Vic leaned closer to Melissa, and Melissa drew in so that their heads were close together. “Nobody knows anything?” Vic asked. “What happened? He just took off?”

  “There was a note,” Melissa said ominously. She straightened her posture and nodded solemnly.

  “A ransom note?” Erin asked. Even though she knew there had been no ransom note, her heart still beat faster at the thought.

  “No, not a ransom note. A note saying that…” Melissa looked around dramatically as if she were afraid someone would hear her. When in reality, she was probably making sure that everyone was paying close attention. “A note saying that if she wanted to know where Joshua was, you know something about it.” She looked pointedly at Erin.

  Erin had known that it was coming, but she couldn’t stop her body’s automatic reaction, her face getting hot. She dabbed at her cheek with the back of her hand, wishing she could hide her flush. How many people would take blu
shing as an admission of guilt?

  “I didn’t have anything to do with Joshua disappearing,” she said. “I don’t know anything about it!”

  “Well, you can expect a visit from the police today, I’ll tell you that. I’m surprised they haven’t been here already.”

  Erin cleared her throat. “They know what time I work and where they can find me.”

  “They certainly do,” Melissa laughed. “I’m sure they’ll keep in close contact.” She waggled her eyebrows suggestively. Erin’s face heated even more.

  “I need to check some cookies,” she advised, turning her back on Melissa to hide in the kitchen.

  “I don’t think this is something to kid about,” she heard Vic say as she left.

  “Oh, I don’t think there’s really anything to worry about,” Melissa said breezily. “Just teenagers pulling a prank. You know how they are. Well, you still are a teenager. Maybe you’re in on the whole thing.”

  “I may be a teenager, but I’m not a kid,” Vic retorted. “I wouldn’t do something like that. And Josh and I barely know each other.”

  “I don’t really think you have anything to do with it,” Melissa assured her, still not adopting a more serious tone. “And neither do the police. But they’re not convinced that it is a real disappearance.”

  “A real disappearance? What would make it not real? If they found him in his bedroom?”

  “No, I just mean, there isn’t necessarily anything sinister or criminal about it. Not if it’s just kids fooling around.”

  “What would make them think it was just a joke?” Vic asked.

  Erin fanned her face, but she didn’t want to miss too much of the conversation or observing Melissa’s face and body language, so she returned to the front of the shop as if she’d finished checking on the fictional cookies.

  Melissa’s eyes closed slightly, looking like a contented cat. She stepped closer and peered into the display case. “The writing on the note. It looks like a teenager’s writing.” She again paused for dramatic effect. “It looks like Joshua’s writing.”

  Erin caught her breath. Joshua’s writing? What kind of sense did that make? Why would Joshua have written a note like that? And then disappeared? What reason would he have for making his mother worry about him or pointing the finger at Erin? He had apologized to Erin several times for the way that Mary Lou treated her. He didn’t want Mary Lou to be mad at Erin, so why would he do something that would make Mary Lou even more upset? And after all that his mother had been through, he wouldn’t want to make her suffer more.

  “Joshua didn’t write that note,” Vic said firmly.

  Erin nodded.

  “Mary Lou said it looked like his writing,” Melissa persisted.

  Erin looked at Vic. She ran the previous day’s events through her head. Had Mary Lou known that Joshua was up to something? Had she thought that it was just some big prank? She shook her head. Mary Lou had been concerned. She was worried that something had happened to Joshua. She had worried about staying close to home in case the police found his body. That wasn’t a parent who thought her son was just off on a jaunt enjoying himself.

  “No,” Vic agreed. “No way.”

  Melissa raised her brows. “I’m just telling you what they have found out. It’s the truth. How you interpret it…”

  “Someone might have a similar handwriting style to Joshua’s,” Erin said. She bit her tongue before adding that the writing had been messy. It could have been any teenager’s. It wasn’t like they were being taught penmanship in school anymore. She didn’t know how a forensic expert would have been able to tell anything from looking at that little square sticky note.

  Someone might have been attempting to mimic his handwriting style. Or Josh could have been forced to write the note himself.

  “Just because it looks like his handwriting, that doesn’t mean that it is,” she told Melissa. “Or that it means it’s a prank.”

  Melissa shrugged. “I guess we’ll find out.”

  “Yes.”

  Melissa picked out a brownie for her snack and a loaf of rosemary bread to take home for supper.

  “You and Mary Lou have been pretty close lately,” she said to Erin. “I’m surprised she didn’t call you as soon as this happened.”

  Melissa, on the other hand, had not been as supportive of Mary Lou as she could have been following Roger’s incarceration and Campbell’s arrest. Many of the friends that Mary Lou had thought she would have been able to depend on had been silent over the past year. They had stopped going to her house, defending her, or inviting her out with them. Erin knew that she’d felt isolated, betrayed by the people she had thought were loyal friends.

  “Matter of fact,” Melissa went on, not waiting for Erin to respond. “She didn’t even call the police right away. You would think that if your child disappeared and you were concerned about what might have happened to him, you would at least call the police to make a report.”

  “I’m sure she was concerned,” Erin said coolly. “But maybe she was concerned about gossip. Or that the police department wouldn’t take her concerns seriously. It sounds like not everybody who works at the police department thinks this is something to be concerned about.”

  Melissa either didn’t feel or else intentionally ignored the barbs. “Maybe she thinks he’s old enough that she doesn’t have to worry about him anymore. Or maybe he’s gone to stay with Campbell, and she didn’t want to admit both have wandered from the fold.”

  “I don’t think Cam has wandered from the fold,” Vic objected. Erin was an atheist, so she let the younger woman take that one. “Just because Cam has moved out on his own, that doesn’t mean that he’s turned away from God.”

  “Drinking, drugs, immorality… who knows what he’s been doing.” Melissa tapped her card against the reader to pay her bill and took the proffered bag from Erin.

  “You don’t know anything about what Campbell has been doing. And if you’re listening to gossip and making judgments based on that, how Christian is that?” Vic demanded. “Didn’t Jesus say not to judge people? To welcome them and love them—”

  “He was arrested for dealing drugs!”

  “He was framed! You know that.”

  “But if it wasn’t credible, if people didn’t think that he could have been doing it, because he was involved in drugs, then they never would have charged him. They would have known it was planted and that Campbell didn’t have anything to do with it.”

  “That’s ridiculous.”

  Melissa raised her eyebrows. She turned back toward the door, her expression saying that she had done exactly what she’d come to do. Not to tell them that there was a child in danger and to get the town’s assistance in starting a search and rescue for him. To revel in the fact that she once again had firsthand knowledge of a crime that had taken place in Bald Eagle Falls. To incite drama and speculation. To be in the spotlight and have other women in Bald Eagle Falls envying her position.

  Erin didn’t say anything as Melissa smiled goodbye and left the bakery.

  Chapter 9

  Vic cussed under her breath, something she was usually far too ladylike to do.

  Erin looked at her. There were a couple of other customers waiting to be served, so they couldn’t talk about it yet. Erin wouldn’t stoop to gossiping about the situation with the other customers.

  One of the waiting customers was Mrs. Peach, Erin’s next-door neighbor. She hobbled forward to the counter and checked the goods on display.

  “You don’t think there’s anything to all of this, do you?” she questioned. “I would hate for anything else to happen to Mary Lou Cox and her family. They’ve already been through so much.”

  “I know,” Erin agreed. “It’s more than one person should have to go through.” If she’d believed in God, she would have had a word with him about it.

  “Could I get the raisin bread?” Mrs. Peach pointed. “No, not that one, Miss Victoria, the one to the left. My left. It
has far more raisins than the others.”

  Vic picked up the loaf that Mrs. Peach wanted with her gloved hands and put it into a bag.

  “Anything else?” Erin asked.

  “I don’t know about all of this nonsense about a note. Does that sound right to you? I wonder if there even was a note. That girl has been known to exaggerate at times,” she took a look in the direction Melissa had gone, back toward Town Hall.

  “It really isn’t any of my business,” Erin pointed out.

  “You ask that handsome policeman of yours,” Mrs. Peach advised sagely. She pointed at the blueberry muffins. “Are those fresh today, or are they from a couple of days ago?”

  “They’re fresh today, Mrs. Peach.” Erin tried to ignore the comment about her handsome policeman. He wasn’t going to share anything about the investigation with her, and Erin was going to have to take care not to reveal to him how much she had known before he even started.

  “I’ll have… six of those. If you can put them in a box for me so that they don’t get crushed.”

  “Can you carry all of that?” Erin asked as she packaged Mrs. Peach’s purchases. “I’ve told you before that if you want to just tell me what you want ahead of time, I’ll set it aside for you and take it home. You don’t have to come all the way here and carry it home.”

  Mrs. Peach smiled and shook her head. “I’m not that infirm, dear. I can carry my own bags. If you had a furniture store instead of a bakeshop, things might be different. But I can carry my own bread and muffins.”

  “Well, you know you can change your mind and ask any time. If it’s ever more convenient for you to just have me bring something home for you.”

  “I like to be able to come in and see what I’m buying. And to make sure that it is all fresh.”