Changing Fortune Cookies

by P. D. Workman

  “Oh, did she?” Mary Lou was politely uninterested.

  “Kim Brandon.” Erin tried one last time, tapping the name into her browser search box.

  Nothing.

  Kim Brandon had to be the right age. If Rosalie and Mary Lou had gone to school together, then Kim Brandon had to be somewhere between Erin’s age and Joshua’s. If Rosalie had married her high school sweetheart, then the baby had probably followed quickly. She had taken the Brandon name, so she wasn’t likely a child of a later marriage or relationship.

  “She has to be here. She has to have a social media account. Something. Who wouldn’t have some kind of internet presence?”

  But looking harder didn’t help. Erin couldn’t find anything on the woman. It was, as Mary Lou had said, like she had deleted herself from the internet. She had closed all of her social media accounts. Had every reference to herself that she could find deleted from the record.

  And not only that, but had any pictures of her grandma deleted as well. She had wiped out every reference to Deidre Robinson that she could find. Made people take down any pictures they had posted of her receiving her check and showing off her maple ripple ice cream. Kim had probably made up some sad story about her grandma. How she was being stalked online after winning the contest, so they had to take everything down for her protection.

  And why? Why had it been so important to take down any online information about Deidre and her granddaughter?

  Chapter 41

  Because Kim had a plan. She had a plan to stop Joshua from finding out about the money laundering. Erin didn’t know how Kim had figured out about any financial issues to begin with. Maybe, like Erin, she wondered about the rush to run the contest, the large sums of cash, and the unlikelihood of picking Whitewater Junction, Tennessee for the location of a contest that was supposed to garner attention from sponsors and media.

  Maybe she was an accountant or some kind of agent or auditor herself. It was impossible to know, since every trace seemed to have been removed from the internet. Maybe she was a computer genius.

  But Kim had discovered financial improprieties in the contest and she didn’t want her grandmother’s name sullied. Or didn’t want her to lose the prize money. If Kim were the only grandchild, then she would be in line to inherit that money. Maybe grandma was sick, or Kim planned on helping her along, or she just wanted the money to be there when she eventually died.

  “It’s Kim,” she told Mary Lou with certainty. “Got to be.”

  Mary Lou looked at her, unblinking. They were moving things forward, but she didn’t seem to be happy or excited to have discovered this news.

  “Maybe she is,” Mary Lou said. “But where does that get us?”

  Erin considered what to do next. They clearly couldn’t just go to Whitewater and knock on Kim Brandon’s door. That wouldn’t help them to find Joshua. Terry would probably throttle her.

  “Call the guys, I guess. Let Terry and the sheriff know what we found and let them follow up. I met Deputy Coleman over in Whitewater, he seems like he knows what he’s doing. They can call him and have him look into it…”

  Mary Lou nodded. But her eyes were empty. There was no guarantee that the police would find any reason to interview Kim Brandon. And if Kim didn’t feel like talking to the police, she didn’t have to. And they still wouldn’t know where to find Joshua.

  Terry and Sheriff Wilmot agreed that there was good reason to look more closely at Kim Brandon, but it didn’t feel like progress. They would run background, check to see if she had any previous charges or convictions, and talk to Deputy Coleman to see what he thought of her. But they still had to check out the other suspects as well. They couldn’t just trust Erin’s and Mary Lou’s instincts on Bella or any other contestants. They would prioritize the women over the men, but only because the person who had called the Quiki with the changed fortunes was a woman. Or passed as a woman on the phone.

  “Maybe we should go back to Whitewater,” Erin suggested. “I know it’s getting late, but…”

  “I’m not going to sleep tonight,” Mary Lou said.

  “No. We could just look around. Talk to Detective Coleman and answer any questions he might have. It’s better to go to him than to make him come to us, or interview us over the phone. He’ll want to see us face to face.”

  “Of course,” Mary Lou agreed.

  “Yeah. Do you mind if I drive?” Erin didn’t want to tell Mary Lou that she looked terrible. Erin was afraid that she wouldn’t be able to drive to Whitewater safely. Mary Lou might not be able to fall asleep, but that didn’t mean she was alert enough to drive.

  Mary Lou nodded. “That’s fine. You know the way.”

  It wasn’t hard. There were paved highway and road signs all the way.

  Erin shifted to rise. “Do you need to do anything before we go?”

  “I should tell Campbell where I’m going.”

  Mary Lou didn’t pick up her phone as Erin expected, but got up and walked toward the back of the house.

  Campbell was home, but he hadn’t bothered to come out when the police were there to talk to his mother about Joshua? She was surprised that he hadn’t at least been there to offer emotional support. But Campbell’s experience with the Bald Eagle Falls police had not been positive. Maybe he was afraid he would distract them from the real issue. Or that they would accuse him of having been involved.

  Mary Lou came back a moment later, Campbell slouching along behind her. His head was bowed. He looked up at Erin through his lashes, looking remarkably vulnerable and childlike for a young man that she knew had been experimenting with the wild life.

  “Do you mind if I come along, Miss Erin?”

  Erin considered. Of course she didn’t mind him going along, but she needed to make sure that he wasn’t going to cause trouble. He couldn’t be jumping in to do anything rash. If she said he couldn’t come along, he would probably just follow along in his car without permission anyway.

  “Yes, you can come. But if you have any weapons, you leave them at home. Same with anything else you might have that you wouldn’t want the police to find on you.”

  “No one is going to search me.”

  “Those are my conditions.”

  Campbell looked at his mother, blushing around the neck. “Fine,” he said. “I just need to get something from my room.”

  He went up the stairs, hands in pockets, still hunched over.

  Mary Lou looked at Erin. “Thank you.”

  Erin wasn’t sure whether she was saying thank you for allowing Campbell to go with them, or thank you for ensuring that he didn’t have any contraband with him. She nodded.

  Campbell was back in a couple of minutes, and the three of them went out to the truck.

  Erin was barely out onto the highway when her phone started buzzing with a call. She tapped on the Bluetooth button and saw Terry’s number come up on the screen.

  “Hi.” Maybe he had something more to ask or something to report back on Kim. Erin didn’t expect them to get anything that fast, but maybe Kim had a record. Maybe she’d done this kind of thing before or made threats that they hadn’t known about.

  “Where are you going?”

  Erin glanced over at Mary Lou, then looked back at the road. “Uh, we’re just heading out of town.”

  “We?”

  “Mary Lou and I wanted to…” Erin trailed off, hoping that something would occur to her. Mary Lou would jump in with an explanation, or Terry would interrupt to discuss whatever he had called her about.

  “You wanted to what? Where are you going?”

  Erin cleared her throat. “We wanted to check something…”

  “In Whitewater Junction?”

  “Uh, yes.”

  “We already have Coleman and his team in Whitewater. If we need something checked out, they can do it.”

  “I know. And I’m sure they’ll do a great job. But we just hoped… I don’t know… if Deputy Coleman wants to talk to us about what we
found out and about stuff that happened at the contest, I can answer his questions. We’ll be right on hand. And if he finds out that she has… a storage locker or something that they check tonight… then we’ll be close… if he finds anything.”

  “You need to stay in Bald Eagle Falls.”

  “We’ll be back. By the time you’re done…”

  “I’m probably going to be on most of the night. Erin, it’s getting dark, it’s late, you’re not going to be able to find anything or talk to anyone tonight. Leave it until morning.”

  Mary Lou spoke up. “Joshua may not make it until morning, Officer Piper.”

  “You’re not going to find him tonight. You don’t know what kind of condition he is in or what kind of situation you could walk into. Trust the process. Going into Whitewater tonight and messing around… you’re not going to find anything. You’re not going to move the case forward. I’m sorry, Mrs. Cox, but you need to come back. This is dangerous.”

  “We’ll check in with this Deputy Coleman. Surely it’s not dangerous to talk to him.”

  “No, I didn’t say that. But I don’t think for a minute that the two of you—”

  “We will be fine. You’re not going to talk me out of it, Officer Piper, so you may as well not even try.”

  “It’s my truck,” Terry protested, his voice rising.

  “You said I could use it,” Erin argued. “It isn’t like I’m stealing it.”

  “I did not say that you could take it out of town and go looking for kidnappers.”

  “I’ll bring it back tonight, just like I said. You did give me permission.”

  “Not to go out of town.”

  Erin was watching the road signs, her foot down on the gas, figuring that once she got far enough away from Bald Eagle Falls, she could say that she was close enough to Whitewater that there was no point in turning back. She might as well go on to their destination. She knew it was a bad argument, but it would have to do.

  “How did you know I was leaving town?” she asked, thinking about her phone. A lot of couples had apps to share their locations. She had never installed one, but was it possible that Terry had put one on her phone without her realizing it? Or that he had hacked her location some other way?

  “GPS tracker in the truck,” Terry informed her.

  “Oh.” Erin eased her foot off of the gas. He could see how fast she was going and where she was on the highway. There wasn’t any point in trying to fudge where she was and say she was closer to Whitewater. Though Whitewater was not far, and she would be reaching the halfway point before too long.

  “My truck is valuable to me. If anyone takes off with it, I want to be able to track it down.”

  “Yeah, right. That makes sense,” Erin agreed.

  “I wasn’t planning to use it to track you,” Terry said. “But you’re important to me too. Come on, Erin. You know this is a bad idea. Don’t make me come to Whitewater to get you.”

  “You’ve got work to do there. Do the stuff that the sheriff asked you to.”

  Terry made a growling noise. Then he sighed. Erin knew when she heard it that he wasn’t going to follow her. He wasn’t going to try to physically coerce her into returning to Bald Eagle Falls. He’d hoped that just telling her to return would be enough.

  And normally, it would. She wasn’t an unreasonable person. But Joshua was missing and they didn’t know how long he had left.

  She couldn’t look at Mary Lou’s fading hope and do nothing. They had a clue. They had a path to follow.

  They had to follow it and see where it led.

  Chapter 42

  Erin felt guilty as they pulled into Whitewater. Night was falling quickly. She knew that Terry didn’t think it was safe or a good idea for them to be there. But she couldn’t sit at home with Mary Lou and do nothing.

  “Do you want to have a look around first? Before it gets completely dark?”

  “We won’t have long.”

  “No,” Erin agreed. She took Mary Lou’s response as a ‘yes,’ and started to work her way through the main streets of Whitewater. A lot of the residents actually lived outside of the town limits in the surrounding farms and acreages. There would be no way to find Kim without directions if she lived outside of town.

  But they weren’t going to search for Kim. They would leave that for the police. They were just going to take a look around, get the lay of the land, see if anything jumped out at them, and then they would go to the police station and talk to Coleman. If he hadn’t already called it a night and gone home for dinner or bed.

  Even though it was getting dark, Erin recognized most of the streets. She had walked them while she was getting ready for the contest and while it was on. She had gone back and looked through the streets with Vic, hoping to somehow just find Joshua. As if he had just run away and they might find him walking down the street or sitting on the library steps smoking a cigarette.

  But what more were they going to find this time? They weren’t even looking for someone who might be out walking around, but for someone who was locked up, behind closed doors.

  But Erin felt strongly that they were doing the right thing. Mary Lou and Campbell did not object, so maybe they had the same feeling. That they were close. If they just drove by the place Joshua was imprisoned, they might feel it. They would find him.

  They all watched out the windows, studying every building they went by. Some of them, Erin automatically discounted. Stores and businesses that were open to the public. Joshua couldn’t be hidden somewhere close to people, where he might make a noise and draw attention. It would have to be an outbuilding. A storage unit. A garage or shed of some kind.

  And those were not in short supply.

  “Do you think he’s here?” Campbell asked his mother.

  Her face was a stony mask. She sat in the passenger seat and didn’t turn around to look at Campbell, who was sitting with his knees turned to the side because the seats were so close together.

  “If it was Kim Brandon who took him… then he must be here somewhere.”

  “You don’t think that she kept him somewhere closer to Bald Eagle Falls? Or out in the woods?”

  “Maybe.”

  “But she couldn’t do anything that would draw people’s attention,” Erin said. “If she suddenly started disappearing for an hour or two every day, people would notice. They would wonder what she was doing, where she was going all of a sudden.”

  Assuming she was taking care of Joshua. That wasn’t guaranteed. It had been so long, what were the chances that she had kept him alive? Why would she? She wanted him to be gone permanently, didn’t she?

  They drove by a low brick building. Erin had to strain her eyes to see the sign out front, which had one dim spotlight shining on it. Two other spotlights had burned out and not been replaced. It was the Whitewater Junction General Hospital.

  “I didn’t know they had their own hospital here. When Charley and Chef Kirschoff were hurt, they were taken into the city.”

  Mary Lou nodded her head. “These little rural hospitals, they aren’t good for much more than broken arms or the stomach flu. If you are very ill, or there’s an accident, they don’t have the kind of trauma care that a city hospital has.”

  Of course not. It wouldn’t make sense for a little hospital to have the personnel or expertise to man a trauma center. Erin drove slowly past it.

  “It looks more like an old folks’ home or hospice than a hospital.”

  Erin had worked in hospice care. She’d been in a few places like that. Rooms that tried to imitate the home environment as much as possible, to be comfortable for the patients despite IV stands and other necessary hospital equipment. Quiet places, where the lights were kept dim, the music quiet and comforting, and any PA announcements were kept to a minimum. There was no Code Blue in places like that. No reason to resuscitate patients who slipped gently into the dark.

  “Yes,” Mary Lou agreed. “They probably have some hospice care here. Or a dement
ia ward. Places where you just… house people until they’re ready to go.”

  Erin pulled to a stop.

  Chapter 43

  Campbell and Mary Lou looked at her.

  “What is it?” Campbell asked.

  Erin looked at the little hospital, frowning and thinking. “So Deidre won the cooking competition. And we figure Kim is probably her sole heir.”

  “Right,” Mary Lou agreed.

  “And Kim has kidnapped Joshua to keep the whole corruption thing quiet. So that no one can find out about it and take away Deidre’s money or smear her reputation, whichever it is.”

  Campbell was listening attentively. He hadn’t heard the whole theory before. He just knew that they were going to Whitewater to look for Joshua and talk to the police about a suspect.

  “How long?” Erin asked.

  “How long what?” Mary Lou asked in confusion.

  “How long was she planning to hold Joshua? Or how long did she figure she was going to have to protect Deidre or wait until she could get the money?”

  “Kidnapping someone and planning to hold them for more than a few days is crazy,” Campbell contributed. “You can’t look after all of someone’s needs for that long; it takes you away from everything else. And if they get sick… and you have to worry about if they are going to figure out how to escape, or someone is going to cotton on to what you’re doing. The longer you hold someone, the more dangerous it is.”

  “But she had this whole plan. She must have been planning to hold on to Joshua, because she didn’t… do something permanent in Bald Eagle Falls. If she wanted him permanently out of the picture, she could have done that. Nobody would have connected it to Whitewater. However she got into the house or got him out of it, she could have gotten rid of him permanently. If that was what she had wanted. Then she wouldn’t have to worry about taking care of him. Or about him escaping or giving her away somehow.”