Changing Fortune Cookies

by P. D. Workman

  Joshua had been good. He’d asked Erin about how she had felt, what it had been like to find Beryl, and so on. And he’d apparently asked other people involved in the contest about their feelings as well. The responses were emotional and resonant. They pulled the reader in.

  She tried to picture each of the winners. She had looked at their pictures on the display boards at the hotel when she and Vic had gone back to Whitewater to look for Joshua. All of the happy faces, people excited about placing top in their class. And about winning the large cash prizes. Who wouldn’t be happy about that?

  We look forward to hearing more from Joshua Cox.

  It was just a little note at the end of the article. Joshua’s name and photo were at the top of the article, and his name was included again at the end, indicating that he would be writing again.

  Erin frowned.

  She picked up her phone and dialed Mary Lou.

  “Erin?” Mary Lou sounded frightened. Surely she didn’t think that Erin had discovered evidence that something worse than being kidnapped had happened to Joshua? Not that fast. If Erin had found out something serious, it would have been the police calling Mary Lou, not Erin.

  Or maybe she was just afraid of what Erin was going to tell her about Joshua’s article. Maybe that she had to read it. Or that Erin knew what it was that had inspired the kidnapping.

  Or that she didn’t.

  “It’s okay,” Erin said. She didn’t want Mary Lou to think that it was all over. Not either way. “I just wanted to know… was Joshua going to write more for the paper?”

  Mary Lou didn’t respond at first. Erin pictured her patting her hair thoughtfully, trying to get herself into the right frame of mind, considering Erin’s question.

  “He enjoyed writing that article,” she said slowly. “He was fascinated with the process of interviewing people and developing the story. And his teacher was hoping that some extra assignments would boost his marks. So… yes, I know he planned to do more than just the one article. But I don’t think there were any particular arrangements.”

  “The news article said they were looking forward to more from him. You don’t know if he had started on something else?”

  “No.”

  “Do you have his notepad?”

  “What notepad?”

  “The one he was using to write notes about the interviews. He had one when he came to talk to me in Whitewater.”

  “I just assumed he made notes on his phone. You know how kids these days are. Everything goes on the phone.”

  Erin shook her head, remembering clearly. “No. He was using a real notepad. Pen and paper. Like a reporter.”

  “What did it look like?”

  Erin tried to remember the details. “It was just a little pocket memo pad, you know, they fit in a shirt pocket, spiral-bound on top. It was a dark color cover, but I don’t think it was black. Maybe dark green.”

  “I’ll look in his room.”

  Erin wasn’t sure whether Mary Lou would hang up, call her back, or go and check while Erin was still on the line, so she waited. She could hear Mary Lou moving around, and pictured her climbing the stairs at her house to Joshua’s room. Erin vividly remembered Josh mounting the stairs to go and prepare the guest bedroom for Brianna after Campbell had been arrested. She assumed that’s where all of the bedrooms were. She could be completely wrong. He might have a man cave in the basement.

  She wondered whether Mary Lou had to walk past his empty room every day. But if their bedrooms were close to each other, then Mary Lou would have heard something the night that Joshua was taken, wouldn’t she? Unless he had gone willingly. Erin still didn’t know what had happened, how the kidnapper had managed to get Joshua out of the house. It wasn’t necessarily with brute force. Especially not if it was a woman. A woman would have to be pretty athletic to overcome him and remove him by force, especially without waking Mary Lou.

  Mary Lou laid the phone down and began opening and closing drawers, dragging them open, shuffling the contents, and banging them shut again. Erin imagined Joshua’s drawers as being filled with a combination of stuff from school, electronics, and some old books and toys from when he was younger. The old Joshua and the new Joshua, trying to make sense of his life and what he was going to be.

  She couldn’t hear Mary Lou anymore, and wondered where she was looking. Under the mattress? In his school backpack? Through the clothes hanging in his closet or scattered on the floor?

  Mary Lou returned to the phone, sounding out of breath. “I’ve got it. Memo pad with a dark green cover. Don’t schools do anything to teach kids penmanship these days? I remember when I went to school, we had to practice our printing and writing every day…”

  “I’ll come over,” Erin said.

  Mary Lou didn’t respond immediately. “I’m going to call the police,” she said. “This is their job, not yours. They can look through it and see if there is anything that might relate to his… disappearance.”

  “I might be able to figure it out,” Erin said. “I’ve read through his newspaper article, and I remember when he interviewed me. I know more of the background for Beryl’s murder and the contest. I’ll spot something a lot faster than the police.”

  She was aware that she was venturing into dangerous waters. How many times had she been told to stay out of an investigation? But she wasn’t going to stop now. She was the only one who had thought of the notepad. Who knew how much else she would be able to spot that the police wouldn’t have any idea of? The murder had taken place in another town and been investigated by another police force. The Bald Eagle Falls police department wouldn’t even know where to start.

  “I am calling the police,” Mary Lou repeated firmly. “I don’t know how long it will take them to get here. So if you want to see it before they get here…”

  “I’ll be right over,” Erin promised.

  She folded the newspaper and jammed it into her purse. She paused in the living room, looking at Terry.

  “Can I borrow the truck?”

  He looked at her, frowning. “Where are you going?”

  “To talk to Mary Lou.”

  “Have the two of you made up?” He sounded surprised.

  “Yes,” Erin said, impatient. “Just today. And I want to go over to her house to have a visit, now that we’re on speaking terms again. So can I borrow the truck?”

  “First you’re reading Joshua’s article and now you’re going over to his house.”

  “Yes.”

  “What did you find out?”

  Erin chewed on her lip. “He might have planned to write other articles. I want to look through his notes.”

  “That’s not your job.”

  “I want to help. What is it going to hurt to look through his papers and see if he has any notes for other articles he wanted to write?”

  “You know how it has turned out in the past, these harmless investigations of yours.”

  “I’m not doing anything dangerous.” Erin turned toward the door. “I’ll walk, I guess. I’ll see you later.”

  She didn’t need the truck. Mary Lou’s house was just ‘over the way.’ Hopefully, the police wouldn’t be in a rush to see what Mary Lou had found and Erin could still get there first. It was a Sunday afternoon. The sheriff wouldn’t want to be rushing over to Mary Lou’s to look at new evidence that probably wouldn’t lead anywhere. Stayner wouldn’t want to. Terry was home, off duty. Tom was also off.

  “Erin!”

  Erin turned her head back toward the door when Terry called her. He was standing on the threshold. “Here.”

  He tossed her the truck keys. Erin wasn’t expecting him to throw them. She batted them out of the air and then had to step onto the lawn and fish them out of the flower border.

  “Sorry,” Terry said with a chuckle.

  “Thank you.”

  Erin climbed up into the truck and started the engine. She waved at Terry and pulled out, careful to start off smoothly and not make the ti
res squeal. She was in a hurry, but there was no point in aggravating things further.

  Chapter 36

  Erin knocked on the door at Mary Lou’s and waited impatiently. She knew that local custom said she could just knock and enter, but she wasn’t comfortable with that. Especially not with Mary Lou.

  Eventually, the door opened. Mary Lou didn’t greet her, just pulled the door open and motioned Erin in. She had the memo pad in her hand. They sat down in the living room. Erin leaned eagerly toward her.

  “Can I have a look? Maybe we should be wearing gloves.”

  “It’s not something that whoever took him touched. If it contains something incriminating, they would have taken it with them. If they knew about it. They obviously didn’t know anything, or it wouldn’t have still been in his room.”

  Erin swallowed. She had a big lump in her stomach. Would there be anything in the notebook? Chances were, it would just be short notes of his interviews with the various people he had talked to about the contest and Beryl’s death. Nothing new and nothing incriminating. Nothing that would point them in the direction of the kidnapper.

  “Have you looked at it? Is there anything…?”

  “I don’t know. You read his article?”

  “Yes.”

  “Hopefully… you’ll recognize if something is out of place… something that someone wouldn’t have wanted him to know or to follow up on.”

  Mary Lou handed the notepad over to Erin.

  Erin held it in her hand, looking down at it and remembering the moment that Joshua had taken it out of his pocket, looking all professional and proud of himself. Not just a kid doing some boring work for extra credit. Writing was something that he was really interested in. While it may have started out as an assignment to write about a somewhat boring cook-off contest, there was a murder involved. He was excited to dig into the details and to figure out what had happened.

  Erin wished she had spent a little more time with him. She didn’t think she had said much that had been helpful to him. And then… it was right about that time that Charley and Chef Kirschoff had nearly been blown up with a CO2 canister. Erin had been right in the thick of things as she tried to get to Charley to find out what had happened and if she was okay.

  Erin focused on the memo pad and turned the cover. There were a few random facts about the competition and questions to ask in the interviews. Then some more excited notes about Beryl Batcombe’s death and questions like “Murder?” and “What was it like to find her?” that Joshua had, in fact, asked her those questions. She had told him as little as possible and sent him off to talk to the police or the contest organizers.

  Would it have made a difference if she had spent more time with him? If she had listened to what he had to say as well as what he had asked?

  Had he known something that had led to the kidnapping?

  Joshua’s penmanship wasn’t that bad. Still, Erin did have to spend some time deciphering a number of the entries and wasn’t even sure then if she had interpreted them correctly.

  Erin was aware that she was under the microscope. Mary Lou watched her every move and change in expression, trying to analyze whether she was finding anything that would help them solve the case and recover Joshua safely. She hated the pressure and the scrutiny, but what was she going to do? Tell Mary Lou to quit looking at her? Say that she had to go somewhere private to read the notebook?

  Instead, she did her best to ignore Mary Lou’s stare and just to focus on what was in the book.

  The notes got shorter and more excited as Josh proceeded through the interviews, and culminated with the day that the carbonated beverages had been judged and Clayton had blown up about Chef Kirschoff and Beryl Batcombe being corrupt. The day they had caught Beryl’s killer.

  Then the notes started to run dry. Facts and figures about the contest. Listings of expenses and how much it had cost to run. The hundreds of thousands of dollars of prize money that had been awarded.

  Erin kept going. There were a few more notes about the winners of the prizes. Short bio notes and questions he had asked them. And then… nothing more. A few blank pages remaining at the end of the book.

  Erin stared at the blank page. “Did he… were there any more notebooks?”

  Mary Lou shook her head. “A few from when he was a kid, you know the little cartoon ones you put in birthday loot bags. That one,” Mary Lou nodded toward Erin’s hands, “came from a package of six.” She easily anticipated Erin’s next question. “That was the only one taken out of the package. The other five are still there.”

  Maybe he had switched to using his phone, like Mary Lou had expected. Maybe he found that he wasn’t an old-style newspaper reporter, but one who was more comfortable in using modern technology than an old analog system that couldn’t even be searched by keyword.

  “What about his phone? Did he put anything on it? Was it… missing? Did he have it with him?”

  “The police have his phone. It was still here.” Mary Lou swallowed. She would know as well as anyone how important a phone was to a teenager. It was his lifeline, his entire world. He wouldn’t have voluntarily gone anywhere without it. He wouldn’t have left it behind on purpose.

  “And there wasn’t anything on it about the contest? More interview notes?”

  Mary Lou wrapped her arms around herself as if she were cold. “I have no idea. I don’t know what they found on it. They don’t call me and tell me all of the developments. But I don’t get the idea that… they thought it was very important. I don’t even know if there is anyone in the department who is qualified to search a phone properly.”

  “I wouldn’t expect it takes a lot of skill.”

  “There’s more to it than just opening each app,” Mary Lou countered. “How much stuff is stored in the cloud? What’s on his camera roll? How many programs did he use where the information disappears after a few minutes or days? Kids use some pretty sophisticated methods to hide stuff.”

  Erin thought about the police department. Stayner was young enough that he would know some of the tricks. But the rest of them?

  The sheriff was still using a flip phone. He claimed it got better reception than any of the newfangled smartphones. Maybe he was right. It was important, as remote as they were, to have coverage that was as reliable as possible.

  Erin started going through the notebook a second time. She had to find something of importance before the police came and took it away. If she didn’t find anything, what were the chances that they ever would? She was the one who had been in the contest, who knew all of the players.

  Mary Lou gazed at Erin with sad eyes. She could tell that Erin wasn’t getting anywhere. It had ended up being a dead end, just like every other avenue that had been investigated.

  “The contest was already investigated,” Erin said. “With Beryl’s murder, the police already did background checks on everyone who was involved. They would have checked to make sure that everything was kosher, right? When Clayton accused Beryl and Chef Kirschoff of being corrupt, they would have looked into everything.”

  Mary Lou made a face. “It isn’t like on TV,” she pointed out. “You don’t get an answer in half an hour. It can take years to root out corruption. All kinds of federal agents looking into every possibility.”

  Erin shook her head. Would it really take as long as all of that? They already knew that Beryl had plagiarized the recipes in her book and that Chef Kirschoff hadn’t been honest about everything he was handling. So they would have known if there were other problems. They already knew who to look at.

  “And that’s if they got anyone other than the local police department to look into it,” Mary Lou continued with the bad news. “Do you really think that the FBI would get involved in a backwoods Tennessee cooking contest?”

  Erin held her arms over her stomach. “But there was a murder. They must have taken it seriously.”

  Chapter 37

  Mary Lou shrugged helplessly. “I don’t know. You wo
uld have to talk to the police department in Whitewater Junction and see if they would tell you anything. But I suspect you already know that they aren’t going to tell you anything at all. They’re not required to tell you about their investigation and what they have found yet, and whether they involved any federal departments.”

  Erin nodded. Of course they wouldn’t tell her anything. She could barely get anything out of the Bald Eagle Falls police, which her boyfriend was a part of. Although she had always suspected that it would have been easier to get information out of the members of the police force other than Terry. He always tried to be extra careful not to tell her anything unless it were already public knowledge.

  She had to start at the beginning. Erin paged through the notebook again. If she knew nothing about the cook-off, what information would she have found the most interesting? What would be the best parts to write additional newspaper articles on? Any follow-up news was being published after the contest was ended, so all of the hype was gone.

  He could publish the results of the science fair that had been held in coordination with the contest. Or the hot dog eating contest. But those were not really exciting, other than for the people who had won.

  He could do a follow-up story on what people were going to spend their prize winnings on, or where the next contest was going to be held. He could do profiles of the winners, or the sponsors, of any of the organizers who had been involved in getting it set up in the first place.

  But Joshua didn’t have notes on any of those topics. Other than some basic bios. A follow up on the contest winners would be interesting to people. Where the recipes they used had come from, whether they were traditional family recipes or of the winner’s own creation. What had drawn them to enter the contest. What they did in their ‘normal’ life. Maybe a couple of profiles a week. Or the three winners of the beverage contest one week and the three winners of the ice cream contest the next. That would have a nice symmetry.