Hot on the Trail Mix

by P. D. Workman

  They reached the next clearing, and Vic pulled in near a beaten-up Ford truck that looked like it had seen better days. In the sixties.

  Maybe it was a classic. Maybe fixed up, it would be worth thousands. But with more rust than fenders, Erin suspected not.

  Erin was glad to get out again. She hoped that this was the end of her journey. She would find Jenny Ryder. Connect with her and let her know that the police were trying to reach her. Make sure that she and her children were all well and safe. It might not be any of her business, but she couldn’t help taking an interest in a woman out in the bush all on her own with a baby and young children.

  Of course, it wasn’t Rip’s fault that he had gotten killed, but Erin was angry with him all the same. Why hadn’t he been more careful? Why hadn’t he done whatever it took to keep himself safe so that he would be around to see his little family grow up?

  Children were playing around the tent, not hidden away in the trees like the children at the last settlement. All blond and skinny. Minimal clothing. By all appearances, having the best time of their lives, wild and free. Erin smiled a little. She couldn’t help it. As much as she knew what Jenny and the family must have been going through, seeing the children playing with wild abandon made her smile.

  “I guess this is it,” she said to Vic.

  They walked toward the grouping of tents. Not just one tent for everyone to sleep in. Maybe a few tents for everyone to sleep in, the older children on their own and the little ones with Jenny. One that was set up as a kitchen, not fully covered, with a collapsible table, a cookstove, and a closed cooler, as well as dishes and boxes of tools.

  Back in the trees somewhere, there would be a latrine set up. A hole or trench in the ground, a toilet paper roll stuck onto a branch, a shovel to cover up solid waste.

  The children shrieked with laughter. Living rough obviously wasn’t hurting them.

  One of them went into the bigger sleeping tent when the children noticed they had company. The rest continued to play as if they were used to people coming and going. If they were a part of the larger homeless community, then maybe they were used to visitors.

  In a few moments, Jenny Ryder pushed her way out of the zippered front of the tent. She turned around and zipped it tightly shut behind her to keep the bugs out. She dusted off her hands and walked toward Erin and Vic.

  “This is my property,” she asserted. “You don’t have any business here.”

  “Jenny?” Erin said.

  Jenny stopped, looking at her with a frown. Obviously, she was caught off-guard by someone knowing her name.

  “Who are you?”

  “I’m Erin Price. The owner of Auntie Clem’s Bakery.”

  “What are you doing here? And how do you know my name?”

  “When I heard that you were on your own, with all of these children, I needed to check and make sure that you are okay. With Rip not having come back…”

  “How do you know Rip?” Jenny’s voice was suspicious. Jealous, even.

  “I don’t know him. Just heard about him. I’m sorry to bother you, but I didn’t know if anyone was looking out for you, and wanted to make sure…”

  “And you can see that we’re fine. So you can just go back to Bald Eagle Falls to the bakery and bake your bread. We don’t need any of your kind looking out for us.”

  “I’m glad that you have a community out here where everyone looks after each other. That’s great.”

  Jenny nodded. She stood with her arms crossed over her chest, staring at Erin and Vic. The children stopped and watched, whispering to each other.

  “I don’t know if you’re aware… that the police department in Bald Eagle Falls is trying to reach you.”

  “Why would they be trying to reach me?”

  “They want to talk to you about Rip.”

  “What kind of trouble has he gotten himself into now? I’m not responsible for the man. I’m not paying bail if he’s gotten himself in jail.”

  “You should call them. Do you have a phone or access to a phone? It’s so remote out here.”

  “I can get a phone,” she snapped.

  “Then… you should call the police department. They can fill you in.”

  Jenny shrugged. But Erin could see that she was curious. She wouldn’t beg details from Erin, and Erin was just fine with that, because she didn’t want to be the one to have to break the news to Jenny that her husband—or partner—was never coming back. Ever.

  “So. You’ve delivered your message. You can get on your way now.”

  “Okay. We will. Do you need anything? I can bring you out some supplies. I know that you have a new baby, and it can’t be easy to take care of… him…? Her…? Out here, with all of the other kids to worry about. I’d be tired with just one…”

  “What do you know about raising kids? You got any?” Jenny looked Erin over critically. Erin was embarrassed to think that Jenny was examining her pelvis to see whether she’d borne any children, or her breasts to see if she’d nursed them. But it wasn’t like she was giving Jenny advice or critiquing her parenting skills. Just saying that it was a hard job.

  “No. I don’t have any of my own. But I’ve lived in big families… and had caregiving jobs. I know it can be exhausting.”

  “Well, until you have a family of your own, I’ll ask you not to be sticking your nose into my business.”

  “I’m just asking if you need anything.” Erin was getting just a bit put out that everyone was making a federal case out of her wanting to look after people who needed help. What was she supposed to do? Ignore them? Then people would be upset about how everyone always ignored them.

  “I don’t need anyone’s help.”

  “Okay. Good to hear it. I’m glad you’re making things work out here.”

  Erin took a deep breath, and then repeated her spiel about the bakery needing to get rid of its excess product, and wanting to help the local community if there were any need.

  “You see any soup kitchens around here?” Jenny demanded. “We take care of our own here, we don’t need charity.”

  “I want to help take care of my community too. I don’t think that anyone should have to go hungry while I throw out bread or take it into the city. And I’ve seen a lot of people in the last few days who look like they spend a lot of time hungry. That’s not right. No one should have to go hungry.”

  The children whispered more. One of them ventured to speak to Jenny.

  “I’m hungry, Mama.”

  “Then go make yourself something in the kitchen,” Jenny snapped, motioning toward it. “There’s plenty to eat.”

  The children looked at each other, but none of them stepped toward the kitchen. It was probably against the rules. They were probably not allowed to take anything that their mother hadn’t divided up between them. Kids could eat a lot. One child being greedy could throw off the carefully planned meals that a trip to the grocery store was supposed to supply, leaving them without key ingredients. Or calories.

  “Are we going to get bread?” one of the little tykes asked.

  Jenny clenched her jaw. “We’ll get bread when I make bread. Or when I buy it. Not because some do-gooder thinks that I can’t provide for my own kids.”

  The children were silent.

  How could she provide, now that Rip was gone? How could she make money to support a family with so much responsibility already on her hands? She might not need much, squatting and getting as much as she could from the wilds, but she would still need a little bit of money to buy the supplies they needed. Or medicine if a child fell ill.

  Maybe the woman in the other settlement traded off babysitting with Jenny so she could go into the city to work. Or so that she could crochet washcloths or blankets or whatever she did to earn a little bit of money to survive.

  “Will you call the police department?” Erin ventured.

  “We’ll see.”

  Erin looked at Vic and shrugged. It was time for them to go. She didn’
t know if she could call what they had done that day progress. They had found Jenny Ryder and her children. But they might be gone again by the time the police department got out there. Erin suspected Jenny had no intention of calling the police department to get news of her no-good husband. She thought that he’d been out cheating or gambling and she wasn’t going to help him out.

  Chapter 26

  The ride back to town was quiet. Vic fiddled with the radio, eventually managing to find a station that would keep playing instead of going in and out every time they went down a hill or through the dense trees.

  Erin listened to the scratchy songs the station played, sounding like they were records from a bygone era, even though Erin knew them to be modern popular songs. She watched the trees out her window. How many other people were hidden away in the trees, trying to subsist like Jenny and the rest?

  Were they ever counted?

  Did the government even know they existed?

  Erin couldn’t imagine that anyone spent much time trying to track them down or count them.

  “Well, you did it,” Vic said finally. “I didn’t know whether we had any hope of finding her, but you did.”

  Erin nodded. “Yeah.”

  “Something good will come of it. You care about people, and that’s not a bad thing, even if they don’t accept any help. At least they know that someone cared. Someone saw them.”

  Erin didn’t say anything for a minute, then looked at Vic.

  She remembered Vic the first day they had met. Grubby, homeless, spending her nights sleeping in the bakery before Erin had discovered her. She had been one of them. Invisible. Unacknowledged. And she had accepted help. Erin had made a difference to Vic, even if she couldn’t help Jenny Ryder.

  Erin knew that Terry would be happy to hear that she had found Jenny Ryder and the children. But not happy that it had been Erin who had done it. She and Vic had gone off on their own to do what was really the police department’s job. He always told her to stay out of police matters. Erin knew better. And yet, she couldn’t seem to keep away from them. There was always something that drew her back.

  Solving the puzzle. Keeping friends out of trouble. Righting a wrong.

  She could say all she liked that she wasn’t an investigator or a ‘sleuth.’ And yet, what was she doing? Over and over, she got involved in a police investigation or family matter, following a compulsion to find out just a little more. Maybe it was some kind of illness. Something that could have been explained away if they saw the way her brain worked. Some kind of deficit in regulating her curiosity…

  “I guess… maybe you should drop me at the police department,” she told Vic.

  “Why don’t you just wait until he comes home?”

  “I don’t want him to say that I didn’t tell him right away. I’m not holding information back, I’m telling them right away.”

  Vic gave her a sideways glance, then nodded. “If you’re sure that’s what you want.”

  Erin didn’t exactly want it, but she thought it was the right thing to do. So when they reached the town limits, she steeled herself, trying to talk herself into being confident and strong, rather than coming across as tentative or weak. Vic pulled Willie’s truck up to the town center. Erin opened the door. “I’ll see you later. Be home… whenever I’m done here.”

  Vic nodded. “See you tonight, then. Or for work tomorrow.”

  At the police department offices, Erin presented herself to Clara, the receptionist. Clara was wearing big brassy moon earrings that dangled in front of her red hair. She looked disapprovingly at Erin through her narrow-framed glasses.

  “What can we do for you today, Miss Price?”

  “I need to talk to Terry, if he is around.”

  Clara considered this. “Is it a personal matter or police business?”

  “Police business. Is he in?”

  “I’ll see whether he is busy. Please have a seat.”

  Erin sat down in one of the uncomfortable waiting room chairs. Clara picked up the phone handset to make a call. Erin waited. After Clara hung up, she nodded at Erin. “He’ll be by in a bit.”

  So he was out, not just closeted in his office. Erin supposed that was better. He always preferred being out in the fresh air and on patrol to sitting in a stuffy office doing paperwork. He would be in a better mood when he got home at the end of the day. Except that he wouldn’t necessarily be in a good mood about her coming by the police department to talk to him. Maybe she should just have waited until he was home to give him her news.

  Erin took her planner out of her purse and began to go through it, checking items off that she had completed, adding notes and tasks to her projects and lists. It kept her mind occupied so that it didn’t seem like it had been more than a few minutes since Clara had called for Terry.

  She heard K9’s panting before Terry walked in. Terry looked at Erin, sitting there, and forced a smile. Not the kind that reached his eyes and brought out his dimple.

  “Erin. Good to see you. What’s up?”

  “I have some information for you.”

  He looked at her for another moment, then nodded. He motioned to his office. Erin closed her planner and tucked it back into her purse. Terry shared an office with Stayner now, but Stayner was apparently out. Maybe not on shift that afternoon. Erin was relieved, because she didn’t really want to have the conversation in front of him. Erin sat down in one of the chairs, and Terry sat down behind the desk. K9 lay down behind the desk, out of Erin’s sight. But she heard him sigh loudly, something he did when he was bored and wanted to be outside working instead of inside waiting.

  “I found Jenny Ryder,” Erin explained. “Or… whatever her legal name is. I guess she and Rip weren’t actually married, but I didn’t ask her what it really is. Genevieve, but I don’t know her last name.”

  “You found her. Where did you find her?”

  “Out near where Rip was killed. A few roads over. She’s still camping out that way with her children. Squatting. Is it camping when it’s a permanent location? Or only when you’re on vacation?”

  “Where exactly?”

  Erin did her best to describe it, beginning at the clearing near the cave and counting off the roads to get to Jenny’s encampment.

  “So you just thought you would go looking for her.”

  “I was worried about her. Especially with a new baby. I thought someone should find her.”

  “Yes, and that someone should be from the police department.”

  “I didn’t know whether you were going to be able to find them. You did have a head start.”

  “We were trying to track her down through her extended family. But apparently, none of them knew where she was. And she didn’t have a cell phone, or we could have used that.”

  “I told her to call you. I asked if she had access to a phone, and she said she did. But I don’t think she meant she had her own, just that she could borrow one from someone else or use a payphone. Are there any payphones in Bald Eagle Falls?”

  “There are a couple if you know where to look.”

  “I guess she would. If that’s the only way for them to make contact.”

  Terry fiddled with a pen on his desk, the corners of his mouth turned down. “So exactly what did you tell her?”

  “Just that she should call here. I didn’t say what it was about or that Rip was dead. I think she figured he was under arrest. She said she wasn’t going to bail him out.”

  Terry did smile at that. “Well, at least she has some sense. Do you think she had any inclination to call and find out what it was about? Or I guess the more important point… is she going to run, because someone knows where she is camped out now?”

  “She could, I guess. But it would take time for her to get everything packed up and ready to go, and I just left. I don’t think… she could go somewhere else, but she was all settled there. Everything set up. She’s part of a little community. They help each other out. I don’t think she’d want to
leave all of that behind. But maybe she knows where there are other places she could go… or she could retreat deeper into the woods, hoping you wouldn’t look any farther.”

  “How long ago did you leave her?”

  Erin looked at her watch and tried to calculate it out. “An hour and a half, maybe? I really don’t think she could pick everything up and be gone in that length of time.”

  He nodded. “But she also has however long it takes me to get out there to see her. I’m just going to have to cross my fingers that she doesn’t run, or doesn’t get out of there as fast as she would like to.”

  Chapter 27

  Erin knew that she wasn’t going to get to see much of Terry that evening. Even if all he did was drive out to Jenny’s, inform her that her husband was dead, and drive back, he wouldn’t be back until after supper, and Erin had to retire to bed early to be up for the bakery.

  And she suspected he would spend more than a few minutes talking to Jenny, unless she chased him off with a shotgun. He would comfort her, question her, try to fill in all of the blanks about who might have had a grudge against Rip and what day he had failed to come home. He would probably ask her about her own movements, and about phones, and what things might be missing from Rip’s possessions. It would take a lot of time, so Erin wasn’t expecting to see Terry much before bed.

  She sat with the newspaper and her planner and thought about upcoming promotional opportunities and themes, what new ingredients were becoming popular in the trendy food shows, and anything else that might dictate the direction of her marketing efforts. If she wanted to keep Auntie Clem’s interesting and fresh, she had to keep changing and adapting.

  There was a knock at the door. Erin blinked, wondering whether she had drifted off to sleep. She looked toward the window, but it was the wrong angle to see if there were anyone at the door, and she didn’t see a vehicle parked on the street in front of the house. Despite the fact that Bald Eagle Falls was a small town, Erin found that people often drove from place to place. It wasn’t very good for the environment. But she was as guilty of doing it as anyone else. Part of that was Terry’s fault, since he didn’t want her walking to the bakery in the dark. So it wasn’t all by choice.