A Waffle Death, page 2
“Concerns?” Erin shook her head. “No, what kind of concerns? It’s a big company, I’m sure it’s legit. And they say you retain the ownership of your recipe. So many of these contests are actually scams to get your recipes. You transfer rights to them whether you win or not. With this contest… the worst that could happen is that I develop a really good waffle recipe and don’t win the prize.”
“No, I was thinking more along the lines of… the other contests we’ve been involved with the last couple of years.”
There was the Fall Fair contest where Erin had entered a gluten-free stack cake. She had won the contest, which had been very exciting. The cruise that she had won, however, had been another story. Things had gone off the rails surprisingly quickly—if a boat could be said to go off the rails.
And then there was the CO2 contest she had judged, where entrants used CO2 to make fizzy drinks or ice cream. She should have known when she found Beryl in the walk-in freezer at the restaurant that things were not going to end well.
Erin grimaced back at Vic. “Well, I wasn’t thinking about any of that stuff. I’m sure that… everything will be just fine. Nothing will go wrong this time.”
Erin’s sweetheart, Terry Piper or, as Vic liked to call him, “Officer Handsome,” stopped by during the afternoon lull to refill his water bottle and get a gluten-free doggie biscuit for his furry partner, K9. He sat down for a moment while Erin went into the kitchen to fill the bottle, and smiled at her when she returned, a dimple appearing on his cheek. Boyishly handsome with a five o’clock shadow and a dimple. Erin’s heart did a flip when she looked at him. She handed him the water bottle, looking away and hoping he wouldn’t see her blush. It was rather silly that she should have such a physical reaction to his good looks when they were living together and the magic should have worn off. After all of the challenges that they had been through, they were like a comfortable old married couple.
Sometimes.
But there were still those sparks.
When she looked back at Terry, his eyes were dancing, and she knew he was thinking the same thing. He scratched K9’s ears and looked to see if he was finished eating his cookie.
“Well, buddy, I guess we’d better hit the pavement again.”
K9 got to his feet and shook himself off as if he were wet. Then he was ready for them to be on their way again.
Erin looked at the clock on the wall, frowning. It was nearly time to close, and she had expected Naomi to stop by with a couple of platters. Erin had taken treats over to The Book Nook for their book club meeting, and Naomi had said that she would return the platters when they were done. She was usually very good about it, but The Book Nook closed earlier than Auntie Clem’s Bakery on Tuesdays, and Erin was expecting her to have returned them by now.
“What’s up?” Vic asked, noticing Erin’s look at the clock.
“I think I’ll just pop over to The Book Nook to see if I can get those platters back.”
“They’re probably closed by now.”
“Maybe. I’ll just see. If they are, I guess I’ll get them back tomorrow.”
Vic nodded. The bakery was not busy; she could certainly handle things by herself for the five minutes it would take Erin to duck into The Book Nook and retrieve the platters. Even if she stopped to talk to Naomi for a few minutes.
Erin didn’t bother to take off her apron. It would only be a minute and she wouldn’t spill anything on it at the bookstore.
It was hot and muggy outside. The bright sun reflected off the colorful storefronts and awnings of Main Street, dazzling Erin. She wasn’t sure she would ever get used to Tennessee summers. She should be able to handle them; after all, she had been born in Tennessee, but she had spent most of her years in Maine and other places in the north and had apparently lost any tolerance for the southern sun. She was sweating by the time she got into The Book Nook, which didn’t seem like it should be possible. The bells over the door jingled as she walked in, just like they did at Auntie Clem’s Bakery. A friendly little sound that announced the possibility of a sale. Erin looked around for Naomi but didn’t see her immediately.
That wasn’t unusual. With all of the shelves blocking her line of sight, Naomi could be a few feet away from her and Erin wouldn’t know it. Especially if she were crouching down to shelve a book. Erin walked farther into the store, looking around, peeking between bookshelves, expecting to see the store owner at any moment. The front door had been unlocked, so Naomi couldn’t have closed and gone home already.
“Naomi?”
Erin stood on her tiptoes and spun in a slow circle. “Are you here?”
She was probably taking a bag of trash out to the dumpster behind the building. Erin held herself still and waited. Naomi would only be gone from the store for a minute or two.
The seconds ticked by. Erin looked at her phone several times, but that didn’t help the time go any faster. She walked through the employee-only area in the back and pushed the crash bar on the back door to open it. She looked around, but Naomi wasn’t in the parking lot. Neither was her car. Had she really left and forgotten to lock the front door? Maybe there had been an emergency and she had been too distracted, forgetting everything she had to do before leaving. It was understandable. Things like that happened sometimes.
As Erin walked back toward the front door, trying to decide the right thing to do, she saw that the door to the stairs was cracked open. What if Naomi had fallen and broken her leg, or worse? What if she was lying hurt or unconscious in the basement in need of rescue? Erin opened the door farther. The hinges creaked noisily, making her wince and put her shoulders up as if to brace herself against what was coming next.
“Naomi? Naomi, are you down there?”
She thought she could hear someone moving around, but there was no answer.
“Naomi?”
Was she hurt and unable to answer? Or maybe she was moving around the basement stockroom with earbuds in and couldn’t hear Erin. Erin waited a few more seconds, each one ticking by with several beats of her thumping heart. She stepped down to the first step.
“Naomi?” she called again, as if being one step closer would make all the difference.
There were noises. The shuffling of shoes or books? Or someone lying on the floor writhing in distress? Erin tilted her head, trying to see into the basement before she was all the way down the stairs, but it was impossible to see through the walls and shelving units.
Erin tiptoed. She wasn’t sure why; she had called out to Naomi already and wanted her to hear her. She didn’t like intruding on Naomi’s “employees only” space. A stair creaked, and she winced. But she was down to the bottom of the stairs in a few more seconds. She looked around. She could say that she was looking for her platters. Or for Naomi. But she felt like she was trespassing. She hesitated, deciding whether to complete her search or just run upstairs and pretend that she hadn’t ever been down there.
But she was just there to make sure that Naomi was okay and to figure out what to do about locking the store up for her. It was the neighborly thing to do when you discovered that another store owner had accidentally left the place unlocked.
Erin didn’t call out again, but made a swift circuit. She could go through the stockroom once and then go upstairs, knowing she had checked everything out and done the right thing.
It was creepy. She loved libraries and bookstores, but the basement of The Book Nook seemed hollow and ominous. She was sure Naomi wasn’t down there. She wasn’t listening to her headphones and just hadn’t been able to hear Erin calling her. She wasn’t restocking shelves or unpacking a box of new books. There was no one there. Maybe she had misheard the sounds. She’d always had a vivid imagination.
There was a hint of cologne in the air, a smell that a man she had once known had worn. It sent a shiver over her. One of Naomi’s employees must wear the same scent. She didn’t know the part-timers very well, just Naomi herself.
Erin rounded the corner of the shelves and saw a crumpled form at the end of the aisle.
CHAPTER 3
Erin ran forward. It was only a few strides sprinting, and she knew it wasn’t Naomi by the time she got there. The shape was bigger and bulkier than Naomi. The shiny black shoes on the legs lying akimbo were men’s shoes, not ladies’.
“Are you okay?” Erin asked breathlessly. The words came out as barely a whisper, even though she had meant to be loud and authoritative. She could take charge, give the person some medical assistance, and everything would be okay. It was just someone who had tripped or fainted—easily fixed.
The figure didn’t move, even when Erin reached down and shook him by the arm.
“Sir? Are you all right?” she whispered.
He wasn’t all right. Something was very wrong with him. There was no resistance in the muscles and joints. No resistance to her shaking. She pulled him up slightly to look at his face and assess what kind of medical help he needed.
She saw the hilt of a knife sticking out of his chest, but ignored it, looking at his still, gray face. This was bad. Worse than she could have imagined.
Erin felt for a pulse on his neck, breathing loudly through her mouth. She had a sense of urgency and, at the same time, felt like she was pushing her way through concrete. She felt for her phone and eventually found it in one of her apron pockets. She pushed the button to wake it up. They would need a stretcher or gurney of some kind to get him out of there. They needed to be prepared for a trauma, and she wasn’t sure if anyone in Bald Eagle Falls had the required training. There was only one ambulance in town, assuming it hadn’t been called out somewhere. Was it stocked with blood? Enough to get this man to the city for treatment before he bled out?
She couldn’t seem to get her fingers to push the right buttons on the screen to initiate a phone call. Eventually, there was a series of beeps and Call Failed popped up on the screen. Erin tried Terry’s phone number instead of the emergency dispatcher’s number. At least she would be able to get through to him. He would sort things out and ensure everything was taken care of.
Despite her best efforts, she wasn’t able to avoid looking at the hilt of the knife. She remembered Jack Ward, a knife hilt sticking out of his back, talking and complaining to her about getting stabbed. He had miraculously survived until they could get him to the hospital and surgery. He recovered from the stab wounds faster than Terry had recovered from his head injury. Maybe this victim would be lucky too. Maybe he could still be saved if she could get help.
She looked at her phone, but the call to Terry had also failed.
She didn’t want to touch the man. Her flesh crawled and she could hardly bring herself to look at him, but she forced herself to put a finger to his neck, looking for his carotid pulse. Or maybe she would be able to feel him breathing. But she couldn’t find any sign of life.
That didn’t mean he couldn’t be saved. She’d seen things on crime TV that were unbelievable. People that police thought were murder victims when they arrived at a scene but who had survived to name their attacker and recover and live for years. She didn’t know how long or what their quality of life was, but just the fact that they had survived when the cops thought they were dead was miraculous.
She took a deep breath and let it out. She tapped Terry’s name once more on her phone, and it again failed. The basement was blocking her signal—too much concrete. Or maybe there was radon or something that interfered with the signal. But she wasn’t going to be able to get through while she remained downstairs.
Erin abandoned the man crumpled on the floor and hurried up the stairs. She was back at Auntie Clem’s in a minute, the phone to her ear, breathing heavily. It shouldn’t have taken so much out of her to go up the stairs and back to the bakery. It must have been the adrenaline. She couldn’t be that out of shape.
“Erin?” Vic looked at her with wide eyes. “What’s wrong? What happened?”
Erin imagined she must be pale and wide-eyed. Or Vic had been startled by her dashing back into Auntie Clem’s as if she were being chased. She waved a hand at Vic to indicate that she would explain when she could, waiting for Terry to pick up the phone.
“Erin,” Terry’s voice was calm and pleasant, “are you off already?”
“Need help—someone in the basement of The Book Nook. Hurt. Stabbed.” Erin’s sentences were short because of her breathing. And maybe because she was having trouble putting coherent sentences together. It seemed like it took way too many words to explain what was happening. And the longer she took explaining, the longer it was going to take for help to arrive.
“What?” Terry’s voice was now urgent. But he didn’t make her repeat herself or calm down and take longer to explain. “I’ll be over there right away. Are you there now?”
“No. Auntie Clem’s. No signal.”
“Stay put until someone comes to get you.”
“Okay.”
He hung up. She knew he had to hang up on her to call the dispatcher and get an ambulance and the rest of the police department over to The Book Nook, but she still felt hurt that he had disconnected without even saying goodbye. Or that she had done a good job and he was proud of her.
There would be questions.
She knew there were going to be a lot of questions.
CHAPTER 4
Bald Eagle Falls was a small town. It didn’t take long before Erin heard the sirens. The sounds grew louder and louder until they were piercing. Then Terry was there. He pulled his car in front of The Book Nook. The red and blue lights danced across the front wall of the bookstore. Terry didn’t come to Auntie Clem’s first, but waited for Stayner to arrive. Stayner left his cruiser and walked over to join Terry. Terry moved cautiously into The Book Nook with his gun drawn, K9 at his side, and Stayner just behind him and to the other side. They were graceful, like dancers or synchronized swimmers. Or like an air show with planes moving in tandem. Their movements were neat and precise. Then they were out of her view, and she could only imagine them proceeding through the store and down the stairs to the basement.
They were back out before Erin expected them to be. Terry had put his gun back in its holster. There was no one else in The Book Nook, of course. No one he had to protect himself or his partner from. He entered the store, looking at Erin with concern.
“Erin, what—” He stopped short, the words dying away as he stared at her. Erin looked at Vic, then followed Terry’s eyes and looked down at her apron, which was smeared with red. She wiped at it but, of course, it didn’t come out. She might have some chance if she soaked it in cold water right away. And being white, it could be bleached.
“Tell me that’s cherry pie filling,” Terry choked out.
That brought back unwelcome memories. Erin shook her head. “No. Not pie filling.”
But he’d seen the body. He knew.
“Sit down,” Terry told her. “Take off the apron and give it to me first. Then sit down.” He motioned to one of the chairs at the front of the bakery, which they used for the ladies’ tea on Sundays.
Erin fumbled behind her back for the string to pull it loose, but her fingers were numb and clumsy. She looked back toward The Book Nook. Stayner must be the one preserving the scene. The sheriff would want a look at it, and then they would collect what evidence they could and call the city about getting the body transported to their morgue. Hopefully, that wouldn’t take more than a few hours, because bodies that sat out in the Tennessee summer heat quickly began to break down, which wouldn’t be nice. Erin could smell it already.
Terry reached for her and, putting a hand on her waist to still her, reached around her to pull the string and help her to remove the apron.
“What did you see down there? Tell me slowly.”
The same thing that he had seen down there, Erin imagined. She tried to keep her thoughts slow and orderly.
“I thought Naomi would be there, but she wasn’t. I went downstairs. The door was open and I thought she must be downstairs in the stock room. I needed to pick up my platters. She always returns them when she says she is going to.”
“From the book club treats?”
Erin nodded. “Yes. Right. I went over looking for them. And Naomi wasn’t there. I went downstairs to look for her, but then…”
Terry waited. Erin waited for him to fill it in himself. She didn’t want to have to describe the body or the scene. He had seen it for himself.
He didn’t say anything. Erin made a little gesture of impatience.
“Well, you saw it.”
“You need to tell me what you saw.”
“I saw his shoes, and then his legs, and then his whole body. I tried to call the dispatcher. I tried to call you. The call wouldn’t go through.”
“So then, what did you do?”
“I tried…” She grimaced, squinching her eyes closed. “Tried to take his pulse, see if he was still alive. Couldn’t get a pulse, so I left him and came back here to call you.”
“How long between when you found the body and you called me?”
“I don’t know. Thirty seconds.”
He frowned. “Longer than that.”
Erin didn’t know how he could be so confident about that. But he was probably right. She had probably misjudged the amount of time during those adrenaline-filled minutes.
“Maybe a minute.”
“And you couldn’t find a pulse.”
“No.”
“So he couldn’t have gotten up and walked away.”
Erin stared at him. “No.”
“There was no one down there, Erin.”
Erin shook her head in disbelief. “What are you talking about? I saw him. I wasn’t just hallucinating. I touched him. He was there. And he was dead.”
“You don’t think… that it could have been a prank of some kind? Someone who was trying to scare or fool you?”
