A Waffle Death, page 4
“I didn’t say that you did.”
“No, but you get that look.”
“What look?” Erin shrugged and tried to blank her face, to keep any “look” from settling there.
“That look that says I’m being naive or should be worried about it. I’m not worried. He can do what he likes.”
But Vic sounded like she did care. She sounded like she was trying to cover up what she was really feeling. Normally it was okay if Willie wasn’t going to be back overnight, but maybe something was going on this time that made Vic anxious.
“So… it’s okay?” Erin asked. “Everything is okay?”
“Of course.”
“You didn’t have a fight?”
Vic opened her mouth to deny it, then stopped, saying nothing, her mouth still open. Maybe Erin had hit on it. They had fought and Vic was concerned that Willie was still mad, which was why he wasn’t there tonight.
“We had a discussion,” Vic said finally.
“The kind where you don’t both agree with each other?”
“The kind where… you are each calmly laying out your differences of opinion.”
“Calmly?”
Vic sipped her tea, hiding her face behind the mug. “Initially, yes.”
“What about?”
“Nothing.” Vic’s shoulders rose and fell. “Personal stuff.”
“Okay.” Erin accepted this and tried to redirect the conversation as if she weren’t worried about whether her friend was happy or not. “What’s he been working on lately, anyway? He always has so many projects on the go. But always at least one really good one.”
“Mining. Some odd jobs around the house. A few things to finish up home renovation jobs where Mr. Monroe had left people in the lurch. Some computer stuff.” Vic’s voice trailed off.
Some of the computer stuff Willie had been working on a year before had been for Nelson Dyson, one of the members of the Dyson clan, though Nelson said that he had split off his own organization. Erin didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Was his new organization still organized crime? Was Willie involved in anything illegal or unethical in his dealings with Nelson? Was there any personal danger? Not just of being arrested, but being caught in the middle of some kind of violence?
“He’s good at search and rescue. Maybe we could get him involved in the search for the dead man,” Erin suggested with a short laugh.
“I don’t think it counts as search and rescue if they’re already dead. I think then it becomes recovery.”
“Or zombie hunting.” Erin giggled.
“What kind of tea did you have?” Vic asked, pretending to be serious as she looked at the tag on Erin’s tea. “What did they put in there? Jimson weed?”
“No weed,” Erin assured her. “Just nice, calming lavender.”
Vic shook her head. “Even if someone did pick the lock or break into The Book Nook,” she returned to the previous topic as if there had been no intervening conversation, “how would they get a body out of there so fast? You would need at least two people to get a body up the stairs, wouldn’t you? Unless he was a giant, and then I don’t think he’d fit on the staircase. That stairway is pretty narrow.”
Erin had been thinking about that herself and, at first, she had not been able to come up with the answer, but then she had remembered how Naomi normally got cases of books—which could also be very heavy—down to and up from the basement.
“The elevator.”
“The elevator?” Vic repeated. “The Book Nook doesn’t have an elevator.”
Erin nodded. “It does. From just inside the loading dock down to the stock room. Can you imagine if Naomi had to take every case of books up and down the stairs one at a time? Or a partial box at a time if it was too heavy for her?”
“She has an elevator?” Vic repeated.
“Yes. It’s not big. But big enough for a couple of stacks of delivery boxes. If she gets a delivery of six cases of books, she can just put them all straight on the elevator, send the elevator downstairs, and unload them in the stock room.”
“That’s very smart. I wish we had an elevator at Auntie Clem’s. I hate having to take those big bags of flour down the stairs. Or back up again. It would be so much easier if you could throw the bags on an elevator and then unload them at the bottom.”
Erin had envied Naomi her elevator more than once, and agreed with Vic. She really hated carrying heavy things on the stairs, going up or down. She was always afraid she would overbalance and topple down to the bottom, ending up in a heap at the bottom.
In her mind’s eye, she again saw the splayed limbs of the man’s body. She rubbed her eyes.
“I guess I should be going to bed soon.”
“Probably,” Vic admitted, covering a yawn. “Have you had anything to eat? You really should have some supper before you knock off for the night.”
“I don’t like going to bed on a full stomach.” Erin looked toward the fridge. “I’ll find a light snack.” She stood and gathered up their teacups and the other tea things. The meaning of the gesture could not be mistaken. It was time for Vic to go home. They both needed to be up early in the morning.
CHAPTER 7
Erin slept restlessly, but the visions of the man crumpled in The Book Nook’s stock room with a knife in his chest kept repeating in Erin’s head, over and over again. She knew that Terry hadn’t returned home, and she really wanted him to be there. He would probably work through the night if there were things he could do. Maybe not interviewing witnesses, but organizing a search for the body, looking into the backgrounds of each of the employees of The Book Nook, and trying to identify the man who had been killed.
At some point, Orange Blossom came into the bedroom and jumped up on the bed to snuggle against Erin. She couldn’t keep tossing and turning with him against her, so it forced her to be still for long enough for her body to start settling into sleep, even though her brain was still whirling with thoughts and problems.
She tried to redirect them, thinking instead of the waffle contest. The different blends of flours that might work best for waffles. She wanted a flour that was light and would crisp up properly in the waffle iron. She might use superfine rice flour as the base, which would provide the crispness. Rice flour was hard, though, and would need to soak overnight for the best finished product. It would require a starch like tapioca to keep it light and provide flexibility. And a gum to hold it all together and retain moisture. Xanthan gum and guar gum were falling out of favor, with less processed ingredients like flax or chia seed taking their place. Psyllium powder, maybe?
Pumpkin pulp would provide a lot of moisture and the hearty flavor she wanted. If she did it right, she could avoid eggs, which many gluten-free products relied upon for a protein lattice structure. But eggs were a top-ten allergen and were also shunned by those following a vegan diet. She wanted the waffles to be a good choice for the widest variety of people as possible. Her business plan hinged on not only serving the gluten-free community, but other special diets and conventional diets as well. Products that were good for the whole family, no matter what their varied restrictions.
She remembered Bertie Braceling fondly. He had been such a challenge to bake for, and she often evaluated a new recipe by how many ingredients it contained that Bertie would not have been able to eat. A Bertie allergen rating scale. He would not have been able to have the rice flour or tapioca starch she intended to try for the waffle recipe. Choosing psyllium over the processed gums was a good choice. He would have been able to have that. But she couldn’t remember if she had ever discussed pumpkin with him. Had he been able to eat pumpkin or was he allergic? He was okay with most vegetables, so they were a good idea to use as the base in a recipe. Pumpkin, sweet potato, white potatoes, zucchini—they could all be used successfully in baking.
Before she even knew that she had fallen asleep, Erin was roused by the ringing of her alarm. She turned on her lamp and looked around blearily. She felt like the bed should be scattered with papers, with the notes of the various ingredients and recipes she had thought about the night before, trying to escape the visions of the man in The Book Nook and to trick her brain into slowing down and going to sleep.
But the bed was clear, occupied by just her and Orange Blossom, who stretched all of his toes out, then got to his feet and arched his back, sending shivers all the way from his neck to his tail. He gave a couple of trills of greeting and sat back to have a bath, starting by licking his back toes. Leaving him to his ablutions, Erin got started on her own.
She didn’t like how empty the house felt without Terry and K9 there overnight. But Terry often took the night shift, so it wasn’t like she was used to his being there every night. Sometimes their schedules did not mesh together well for a few days or weeks.
But that didn’t mean she couldn’t miss him.
She showered and did her hair, then pulled on some clothes and went to the kitchen to turn on the kettle and throw a slice of bread in the toaster. As soon as she was in the kitchen, Orange Blossom began singing for his breakfast, rubbing against her legs and wondering why she was taking so long. He never could seem to understand that she needed to eat as well, and her food did not come ready to eat from a can. As far as he was concerned, his needs came before hers.
She carefully measured out his food for the day. He was now eating “weight control” formula, having grown too heavy for Doc’s liking. And when Erin picked him up, she had to admit he was getting to be quite an armful.
Marshmallow hopped into the kitchen and waited patiently for his pellets and fresh vegetables.
“You see how nice he is?” Erin asked Orange Blossom, “Marshmallow doesn’t need to make a racket and trip me up all over the kitchen before he gets his food. He just waits until he gets it, and he still gets it just as fast as he would if he was harassing me.”
Orange Blossom looked up from his dish and glowered at her. He obviously didn’t believe a word of it. He knew that if he didn’t yowl like the world was ending, she would never remember to give him his food. Or she would wait until it was convenient for her, and who knew when that would be?
She knew that things would be crazy at Auntie Clem’s Bakery that morning. It always was when there was shocking news or gossip, and Erin finding a body definitely qualified. She and Vic had joked many times about how a murder always improved the bottom line at Auntie Clem’s. It was sad but true.
As expected, when she opened the door first thing in the morning, there was a larger-than-usual morning crowd waiting with their coffee cups outside. They filed in, already chattering with each other about the latest news.
“I don’t know how you do it,” Betty Thompson declared. “If there is a dead body in Bald Eagle Falls, we know exactly who will find it!”
“It’s all so mysterious.” Melissa’s dark curls bounced as she moved her head around to make sure that everyone was paying attention to her. She worked part-time at the police department, so she often had important tidbits to share at Auntie Clem’s. Information that she was not exactly authorized to release. “How could a body appear in The Book Nook and then disappear before the police could get there to investigate? I mean, it was like magic. There one minute, gone the next.”
Erin shook her head and kept a smile pinned to her face, trying not to show any irritation to Melissa. Melissa seemed to consider Erin her best friend, and Erin didn’t want to make her feel bad by showing her irritation at the comment. “There’s nothing magical about it. Someone—or more than one someone—just managed to move the body in the time it took me to get back here, make a call, talk to the dispatcher, and for the police to get here and enter the building. That’s not exactly instant.”
“When you’re talking about moving a dead body, it is. They’re heavy! And awkward. It isn’t like picking up a box with handles. It’s a two-person job, unless you’re really big or they are very small.”
“But it isn’t impossible,” Erin repeated. “There’s nothing mysterious or paranormal about it.”
She could just imagine what story her foster sister Reg would have come up with to explain the body’s disappearance. She always told the best ghost stories but, when they had been growing up together, her paranoia about conspiracies and wildly imaginative explanations for the most mundane things had been aggravating.
“Maybe there wasn’t a body,” Lottie suggested, looking sideways at Erin to watch for her reaction. Lottie wasn’t usually at Auntie Clem’s two mornings in a row. Erin suspected she was there just for the gossip. Auntie Clem’s was the place to go to discuss the latest tragedy.
Erin wasn’t sure where they had gone before she had opened the bakery. Had they gone to Angela Plaint’s bakery to discuss such things before Erin had come to town? Or had they just gotten into the habit of coming to Auntie Clem’s because she was so often involved in the investigation on one end or the other? Or maybe it was just because she was with Terry, and they figured she could get information about the police investigation from him and pass it on to them.
“What do you mean, ‘maybe there wasn’t a body’?” Vic demanded. “You think that Erin just made it up? Looking for attention?”
Lottie shrugged. “I’m just considering all of the possibilities. What proof is there, after all, that there was a body there in the first place?”
“Well, there was the blood,” Melissa pointed out.
“Blood isn’t the same as a body. Someone could have cut themself. Erin could have seen the blood and made up the rest.”
“It wasn’t just a little bit of blood,” Melissa told her, shaking her head. “There was too much for it to have just been a little accident—someone stabbing themself with a box cutter or getting a paper cut from one of the cardboard boxes. Someone was badly hurt down there; that was obvious.”
Lottie was smiling like the cat who caught the canary. Maybe she hadn’t really doubted that Erin had found a body and was trying to get more information about the crime scene. If so, she was sneakier than Erin had ever thought. She always believed that Lottie said everything she thought without a filter. But maybe she did hold some things back. Maybe she just liked to aggravate people but had other thoughts that she kept to herself.
There were murmurs among the women about this detail of the crime scene. Even though Erin was trying not to keep picturing what had happened, she tried to visualize what the crime scene had looked like after the body had been removed. She hadn’t seen a lot of blood, but it had probably pooled under the body. A stab to the chest could be expected to bleed a lot, unless it was directly to the heart and stopped it from pumping.
She was glad she hadn’t seen how much blood there was.
“Who do you think it was?” Melissa asked. “You must know pretty much everyone in town now. It wasn’t anyone you had ever seen before?”
Erin shook her head. “It wasn’t anyone I’ve ever seen around Bald Eagle Falls. I don’t know everyone, but I think he must have been an out-of-towner. If it was someone associated with the bookstore, I think I would have seen him going into or coming out of there sometime.”
“If he was from out of town, how are the police ever going to figure out who he was?” Betty asked Melissa. “It isn’t like Erin saw his identification. They can’t check his fingerprints.”
“They took fingerprints at the scene,” Melissa said. “He may have left prints while he was there if he wasn’t wearing gloves. And he wasn’t, was he, Erin?”
“No. I don’t think… no,” Erin agreed. Her stomach was tight. If they managed to find the man’s fingerprints in The Book Nook’s stockroom, it wouldn’t take long to identify him. Even without a body, they would know who he was. The investigation would move forward.
“Or there could be a missing person report,” Vic offered.
“He could have come from anywhere,” Betty pointed out. “Can they check for missing person reports all over the country? Or even Canada? It isn’t impossible that he came here from Canada, you know.”
“I’m sure if there’s a fingerprint record or missing person report from Canada, we’ll find it,” Melissa said firmly, but the frown on her face indicated otherwise. An international investigation would take on all kinds of new complexities.
CHAPTER 8
“What can I get for you today?” Erin asked Lottie.
Normally, she would have served Betty first, since she was the oldest and used a walker. Erin didn’t like to keep her waiting on her feet for too long. But if Lottie was going to come to Auntie Clem’s just to gossip or make more trouble for Erin, she wouldn’t get away with sneaking out of the store when no one was looking and not buying anything.
Lottie met Erin’s eyes and seemed to understand what she was doing. She shrugged and chuckled. “Well, something decadent,” she suggested. “Something like ‘Death by Chocolate’?”
Erin reviewed the selections to see what might qualify. “I have double fudge brownies. You could warm them slightly in the microwave and top them with ice cream or whipped cream and chocolate sauce. Or I have a nice Black Forest cake,” she pointed to the chocolate cake under glass, with plenty of creamy icing, cherries, and curls of bittersweet chocolate.
Lottie pondered the two possibilities, finger to her chin. She took a deep breath and sighed. “I guess it had better be the double fudge brownies. I don’t think I can eat a whole cake before it begins to go off. Two double fudge brownies.”
Erin nodded and got them out for Lottie, making sure they were generous portions. As far as she knew, Lottie lived alone, which might explain why she came to Auntie Clem’s to gossip so often.
It was a while before the flow of traffic into the bakery slowed and Erin and Vic could take a breather. They took a few trays of cooled cookies from the kitchen and restocked the display case, enjoying the momentary quiet.
The bell on the door jingled. Erin looked up and saw that it was Dave Wolfe, one of Naomi’s part-time employees. He was around her age, maybe a little younger. In his late twenties or early thirties. He was a nice-looking young man with a preppy style that fit with the bookstore, and he had always been pleasant with Erin when she stopped by The Book Nook and he was there. She had conversed with him once or twice when she’d had to wait for Naomi but, usually, a wave and nod of greeting was about as far as their interactions went.
