Mock Apple Alibi, page 15
“No. Someone from the Jackson clan. He was at the house last night, threatening me and Vic. We called the police, and there was a search.”
“I heard. But you two are okay…?”
“I don’t know where Vic is. You haven’t seen her today, have you? Or any time last night?”
Adele was sometimes up in the dark to perform her ceremonies. Erin kept the fact that there was a witch living in her woods quiet. Those who bought Adele’s herbal sachets and woodcrafts referred to her as a wise woman. Erin didn’t enlighten them about Adele’s ritual practices.
“No. After the police were gone, it was quiet. I didn’t see or hear anything. Except maybe…” Adele looked around, frowning. “The birds were making a racket this morning. But they stopped, so I didn’t check it out.”
“Yeah, I followed the crows to the body.”
“You should stop doing that,” Adele suggested with just the hint of an ironic smile. “Perhaps you should leave patrolling the woods and finding stray bodies to me.”
“Yeah. Sounds like a plan,” Erin agreed. It would be a while before she considered a leisurely walk in the woods again. She would stick with tai chi in her backyard and walk on the paved sidewalks.
“How long will the police be here?”
“A few hours, probably. The crime scene techs just got here.”
Chapter 29
At that point, Terry noticed Adele talking to Erin and walked toward them with purpose.
“Oops,” Adele murmured.
It was too late to escape without being noticed, so she waited for Terry to reach them.
“Missus Windsor,” Terry greeted her with a nod. “I don’t suppose you know anything about our latest discovery.”
Adele looked down her nose at Terry. “I do try to keep the woods clean of any kind of trash.”
“You were a little late in getting this cleaned up.”
“Apparently.”
“Did you happen to hear a shot last night or this morning?”
“I did not. I did hear the birds a while ago, but anything from last night was… too quiet or covered up by other sounds.”
Terry nodded toward Adele’s rifle. “That a .22?”
“Yes. But it hasn’t left my side.”
“Mind if I take a look at it?”
She shook her head. “No, I don’t think so.”
“Has it been fired recently?”
“I’m not required to answer your questions.”
“If you happened to fire at a trespasser or accidentally wing someone when you were firing at someone else, that would not be a criminal matter,” he coaxed.
But Adele was too wily to fall for his assurances. She shook her head.
“I know my job, and so do you. But I did not fire at that man.”
“I would just like to be reassured that the gun hasn’t been fired recently.”
She again shook her head and refused. Terry’s cheeks reddened. He did not like being denied when he made a perfectly reasonable request.
“I may have to ask you to come in for questioning.”
“I may have to refuse.”
Erin smothered a grin. She felt guilty for being amused when Vic was missing. She should be absolutely focused on finding Vic and not being distracted by Adele’s antipathy toward the police.
Terry didn’t have anything to suggest that Adele was the one who had killed Potter other than that she had a gun that might be the same caliber as the one that had killed him. As were millions of other guns. And, of course, she had opportunity, being free to wander the woods at will. But what reason would she have to kill Potter? Especially shooting him in the back?
Adele gave Terry a half smile and retreated into the woods. He could not hold her, and she had no desire to be around the police.
“Was Vic’s gun in the apartment?” Erin asked Terry.
Terry looked at her for a moment before answering. She expected a patient reminder that he couldn’t share details of an active investigation with her. She could usually get him to spill the beans by reminding him that the information would be public, so he wasn’t breaking any confidences by sharing it. But there wasn’t always public information to leverage.
“Her gun was there,” he admitted. “And so was her nightgown.”
Erin blinked in surprise. She tried to reconcile these two pieces of information and to figure out why Terry would tell her that. Not just the piece of information she had asked for, but an extra bit as well. It was intriguing, and she tried to puzzle out what it meant.
“Vic always wore her holster,” she said slowly. “I can’t be sure she wore it to bed; you’ll have to try broaching that one with Willie! But if she took it off for bed and just left the gun within reach on the bedside table… then she should have been in the nightgown, like Stayner said. If she was dressed, why wasn’t she wearing the gun? If she decided to get up again after Stayner had left, the first thing she would have done is get dressed and put on her holster.”
Terry nodded his agreement.
“Unless someone was there who let her get dressed but wouldn’t let her put on the gun and holster,” Erin said slowly.
Terry gave an infinitesimal nod.
Erin felt relieved and sick with worry at the same time. Relieved that Terry was putting it together and believed that something had happened to Vic, that she hadn’t just wandered off on her own. She hadn’t gone out to kill Potter and then gone to ground so that the police wouldn’t be able to arrest her for it.
Somebody had been in the apartment with her and had prevented her from putting on the gun and taking it with her.
And that meant Vic was in the hands of someone who controlled her movements, didn’t want her armed, and might intend to do her harm. If it was someone from one of the clans, then Vic had undoubtedly been taken so that they could force Willie to do whatever they demanded.
If she had been a believer, Erin would have sent up a prayer at that moment. And maybe she still should, because Vic believed in prayer, and if Erin could do anything to help her friend be safe, she would. But she had no idea how to pray, other than to hope that some force in the universe would ensure that nothing awful happened to Vic and she would return to them unharmed.
When Terry had been kidnapped, crazy Theresa had nearly killed him and Jack Ward. When Erin herself had been kidnapped, she had been left for dead in one of the natural tunnels that ran through the mountain like Swiss cheese. Hit over the head, bound, and left for dead. That had not been the only time Erin had been abducted. But it had been the scariest, and the one that had brought her closest to death.
She couldn’t bear to think of Vic injured and restrained, waiting for them to find her.
“What are we going to do?” she asked Terry softly.
“Everything we can,” Terry promised. “Did you talk to Jeremy?”
“Yes. He’s going to make some calls. Do you think they’ll tell him anything?”
“It’s a long shot. But they are more likely to tell him something than they are to tell me.”
Erin nodded her agreement. “Is there anyone else who might have killed Potter?”
“Too many people to be sure of anything. It could have been another Jackson or a Dyson. More likely a Dyson, because they were actually enemies. But you never know what might have been going on with internal politics. There are plenty of resentments and conflicts within the clans, too, sometimes more than the outside conflicts. Willie himself, of course, especially if he heard that Potter had just held his girlfriend at gunpoint.”
“Is there anyone else working with the clans who might be able to tell you something about internal politics? Like an undercover FBI agent or something like that? Or DEA or whoever. There are so many agencies, I get dizzy trying to figure out what they all do and how they work together.”
“I will ask over those channels. But they will stonewall me. Or they won’t have the answers, and I won’t know whether that is because they are not close enough, or because they know but don’t want to tell me because I might get in the way of their investigation.”
“What about Beaver? She might know something.”
“I’ll reach out to her,” Terry agreed.
“Have you talked to her the last few days? She was in town on Wednesday. Is she still?”
“I couldn’t tell you. She comes and goes like a ghost. She doesn’t tell me where she is going to be.”
Erin chuckled. She remembered the first time that Terry had met Beaver and had tried to arrest her without knowing who she was. The number of weapons she had been carrying had been impressive, as was Beaver’s physique when Terry had commanded her to take off her jacket. Erin was continually surprised and impressed by Beaver. The woman was like a real-life comic book hero.
Chapter 30
There wasn’t anything else for Erin to do. The police were continuing with the investigation. They would comb the woods for any sign of Vic or the person who had kidnapped her. But that didn’t mean they would be able to find anything. There was no guarantee that they had even gone in that direction.
It might just be a coincidence that Potter had been killed. Maybe Adele had seen him out there and fired a shot in his direction to scare him off and had accidentally killed him. Maybe a group of teens out snipe hunting had taken things too far. Vic’s kidnapper might just as easily have led her out to a waiting car on the parking pad in the back or the street in front of the house. There was no evidence they had gone through the woods.
Erin returned home, anxious about Vic’s disappearance and frustrated with the lack of police leads. They needed to find Vic before something happened to her. Erin had already been worried about Mary Lou’s disappearance, but she was even more worried about Vic.
She knew that Vic had not taken off on her own. They talked about everything, and Vic knew better than to do something like that. And Vic had not decided to go after Potter because she had seen him outside in the yard again.
More than that, there were a number of reasons that Vic was in more danger than Mary Lou. Mary Lou was calm and cool and thought things through carefully before acting. She would be watching for a way to get away or for an opportunity to develop a relationship with the kidnapper or one of his people to help improve her odds of survival or escape.
On the other hand, Vic was more likely to react without thinking, to be angry or hot-headed, and to try something inadvisable. Vic was more likely to earn a violent response from her kidnapper or to make him decide that she was too dangerous to hold. Not only that, but being Willie’s girlfriend made Vic a target, not just as a means to put pressure on Willie, but to actually hurt him by hurting or killing someone he had strong feelings for. Someone, either Dyson or Jackson, who wanted Willie out of the clan leadership, might use Vic to distract or disable him with grief.
And if those weren’t enough reasons to be worried about Vic, there was also the way she was hated and targeted by people for being transgender. Even the nonviolent church ladies in Bald Eagle Falls had targeted her with hate speech. Others, particularly clan men, viewed her as a thing or a nonhuman. And if she was a thing or nonhuman, then they had no problem treating her violently.
People who didn’t see their target as human were far more likely to commit violence against her. Erin could easily see a clan member holding her captive, but then deciding she was too much trouble to allow her to live.
Erin shuddered at the thought.
Was she overreacting? Or was she just being practical and seeing things as they really were?
She had to get Vic back before anything could happen to her.
As Erin approached the house, she could hear Nilla barking. She looked at the sky. It had been longer than the hour that Terry had promised, and Nilla had been out in the dog run the whole time.
It wasn’t cruel to leave the dog outside for a few hours in nice weather. It was good for him to have the fresh air and sunshine to work off his energy so that he would be quiet when she returned him to his crate.
Erin had decided to go to Auntie Clem’s to keep herself busy, but she couldn’t leave Nilla in the house. He was like the Tasmanian Devil from cartoons, ready to tear the house apart if left alone for even a few hours.
“I’m coming, Nilla,” Erin called out, hoping Nilla would stop barking and not aggravate the neighbors before she could get there and get him settled in his crate. They would complain to the police or call Erin to tell her to take care of it, even though Nilla wasn’t hers. They had no idea what was happening with Vic; they would think she was neglecting her animal and ignoring the noise.
Calling out to Nilla seemed to only make him louder and more frantic, and Erin was irritated with herself for making it worse. She should have known Nilla would just get more excited.
She hurried to the dog run once she reached the yard and lifted the latch to open the door and let Nilla out.
Nilla jumped excitedly at her legs but didn’t pause for ear scratches; instead, he circled around her energetically, begging for a game of chase or fetch.
“Come on, crazy!” Erin told him, laughing. “I have work to do. I don’t have the time to stop and play right now. Come on, you need to go back in your crate.”
He barked at her and crouched down, waiting for her to chase him. She should have had his leash waiting and not allowed him out of the run until she had it clipped on securely.
“Nilla! Come on, silly pup. Let’s go home. Do you want a treat? A treat?” Erin coaxed. “Come with me. Let’s go inside and get a treat.”
He knew she just wanted to lock him in his crate, and he was much faster than Erin was. He kept coming closer to play with her, then running away before she could catch him. Erin looked around and found a much-chewed ball.
“Okay, you want to play? Huh? Are you going to get the ball? Here… are you ready…” She wound Nilla up, getting him super excited, then threw the ball for him. He raced after it like greased lightning, then brought it back to her. Erin threw it for him a few times, even though she felt like she was wasting time.
After a few throws, Erin grabbed Nilla’s collar at the same time as she reached to take the ball from his mouth.
Nilla yipped and objected, but he didn’t pull away from her, and Erin was able to lead him up to the stairs, bent over to reach his collar. Erin managed to juggle her keys so that she could unlock the door and hold on to Nilla’s collar at the same time.
Once they were in the apartment, she let Nilla go. She would at least be able to catch him again inside.
She filled his food and water bowls and put them in the crate. It was a big crate, larger than most people would probably have recommended for a small dog like Nilla. But Erin thought it was nice for him to have a little more room to move around.
“Come on, Nilla. Bet you’re mighty thirsty after all that running around. Come on.”
She pulled his blanket out and gave it a little shake to release any grit and fluff it up. Something fell out of the folds and pinged on the floor. Erin shook the blanket and returned it to the crate before picking up an errant brass button. She polished it on her shirt. A button from Terry’s uniform. He must have snagged it when he had taken Nilla out that morning. She hadn’t noticed he’d had any loose buttons. He was usually very diligent about the upkeep of his uniforms. But they had been in a hurry that morning, distracted by Vic’s disappearance. Erin slipped it into her pocket.
When she called Nilla over to the kennel, he was obedient, for once, and didn’t make Erin chase him all over the apartment. Erin latched the door, and he whined.
“It’s okay, Nilla,” she soothed. “You just relax now. Take it easy for a while and I’ll be back later to take you for a walk.”
Nilla walked over to his bowls to sniff them, acting uninterested. But Erin knew as soon as she was out of sight, he would eat, drink, and curl up in his blanket for a nap. He’d gotten plenty of sun and exercise and would be tired.
Maybe by the time she returned, they would know more about what had happened to Vic. Maybe Vic would even be back.
Erin sighed. She knew it was unlikely, but she couldn’t let go of the possibility. She had to believe that they would be able to get Vic back quickly.
Chapter 31
Erin had not been scheduled to work at the bakery, but she knew she would be at loose ends at the house, wandering from one room to another, lonely and unable to focus on anything. At the bakery, at least there were other people, and they could keep her company. She could lose herself in the routine of baking.
If it were quiet, it might even be a good day to take her first run at the mock apple pie. She was curious to see how close she could get to a pie that would convince the taste tester that it was made with real apples.
So she worked at the bakery, helping to keep the display case stocked and a few extra goods waiting in the kitchen for when they ran out of the pizza pretzels the Cox brothers loved or the Morning Sunrise muffins the pilgrims kept showing up for. There were always more of them on a weekend.
“Erin?”
Erin wrested herself back from her solemn thoughts of Vic and what might have happened to her to focus on Bella, standing in the doorway to the front of the bakery, looking inquiring.
“Oh, sorry, Bella. What’s up?”
“Customer here to see you.”
She didn’t ask Erin if she had time to talk to the customer, like she normally would. Erin raised her brows, waiting for more details, such as who was there and if they were looking for particular allergy information.
Bella didn’t tell her what it was all about.
“Okay,” Erin agreed. She put aside the pastry crust she was working on and followed Bella out to the front of the store. She looked around, and Bella nodded toward a boy standing on the other side of the display case. Young Peter Foster, one of Erin’s favorite customers. She smiled, happy to see him.
“Hi, Peter. How are you doing?”
