Trouble in Big Timber

by B. J Daniels

  “Hey, this is a good turnout,” Frankie remarked. Her voice was like a perky dose of sunshine. Not the kind to give you heatstroke but the extra sunny kind that felt good after a long winter.

  “It is,” Millie agreed. Though it was the usual turnout as far as she could tell.

  There were about eighty people who fell into one of three categories. Those who truly wanted to honor their founder and ancestor, Hezzie Parkman. Those with too much time on their hands who came for Alma’s homemade snickerdoodles and any gossip they might have missed. And the final group was those who made time and came only out of a sense of duty.

  Millie was in that last batch.

  Since Hezzie had been her great-great grandmother, Millie had come every year since her twenty-first birthday to represent her father and brother who always had an excuse not to be here. Like tonight, her mother was always in the front row, in the aisle seat. Doing her duty while looking perfect. Laurie Jean wouldn’t be having a snickerdoodle, and she’d been one of the scowlers when Frankie had come in and announced herself as tribute.

  As for Frankie, she was all about honoring the founder, eating the snickerdoodles and apparently having fun while doing it. Then again, having fun pretty much defined Frankie’s attitude about life.

  Millie envied that attitude. That warm sunshine voice. Heck, she envied Frankie. But admitting that would only put her and her mom and dad under more scrutiny. Her folks didn’t need any scrutiny—as Laurie Jean so often told her.

  Plenty of times her mom dressed down Tanner. And Frankie. That’s because Tanner had a habit of doing whatever the heck pleased him and no longer feared Dial Antibacterial threats. Frankie owned a costume and party supply shop and also did tats and piercings on the side. While she was good at her chosen profession, it wasn’t a profession that met with Laurie Jean’s approval. Also, Frankie wasn’t a Parkman, or a Dayton like Royce, so DNA and career choices counted against her. In Laurie Jean’s mind, a lot of things counted against a lot of people.

  “Heard about what happened at the gallery,” Frankie muttered to Millie.

  Millie suspected—no, she knew—everyone in Last Ride had heard about what had gone on at Once Upon a Time, the antiques and art gallery that Millie’s grandmother had left her.

  “What a mess, huh?” Frankie remarked.

  “Yes,” Millie agreed. “Mess is definitely the right word for it.”

  Two very large macaws, Dorothy and Toto, had escaped from the pet store and had flown into Once Upon a Time when someone opened the door. Along with spilling Millie’s megaslurp of coffee and scattering her stash of cherry Jolly Ranchers on the floor, the birds had toppled tables, knocked down paintings from easels and pooped on a Victorian silver nut spoon before being caught.

  All the while babbling Ding-dong the witch is dead.

  After the pet store owner had finally gotten them out, it’d taken Millie and her two employees hours to right everything and get rid of the stench.

  The old clock in the front corner of the town hall finally clanged six times, and it got Alma Parkman scurrying up from her front-row seat to the podium. Yes, she scurried. Alma might be past the eighty mark, but she was spry, happy and didn’t care squat if people gossiped about her. That was probably why Alma had recently announced that she was retiring as the town’s librarian and pursuing a career as a stand-up comic.

  “How-dee,” Alma greeted. She wore a pink top and capris and had her silver-colored hair pulled up in a way that resembled a mini palm tree on top of her head. “Welcome, Parkmans. And Katniss.” She winked at Frankie.

  No wink for Millie though when Alma’s attention landed on her. The pity practically gushed right out of Alma, causing Millie to dole out her customary response. A polite smile followed by the poker face. Millie had gotten good at plastering it on.

  “All righty, then.” Alma put on her thick reading glasses before picking up the gavel. “I’m calling to order this meeting of the Last Ride Society.” She banged the gavel three times. “We’ll start with a reading of the rules.” Alma looked down at the paper she’d brought to the podium with her and gave an exaggerated frown. “Hey, who scribbled that the first rule of Last Ride Society is there are no rules?”

  Frankie and Alma giggled like loons, but many just looked confused. Probably because they didn’t get the Fight Club reference. Others because they didn’t approve of having a lick of fun.

  “I confess, I’m the scribbler,” Alma continued, still snickering. “Just trying out some of my new routine. But here I go for real.” Her expression grew serious. “Our illustrious town founder, Hezzie Parkman, created the Last Ride Society shortly before her death in 1950, and each and every one of you honor Hezzie by being here this evening. Honor, tradition, family. Those are the cornerstones that make Last Ride our home.”

  Even though it was a short speech that Alma gave every quarter, Millie saw a few people dab tears from their eyes.

  Alma held up one finger to indicate the first rule. “A drawing will take place quarterly on the first day of February, May, August and November in the Last Ride town hall. The winner of the previous quarter will draw the name of his or her successor.”

  Nearly everyone glanced at Ruby Chaney, last quarter’s winner. She definitely fell into the category of gobbling up this particular duty. She gave everyone a wave, obviously enjoying the last couple of minutes of her “celebrity” status.

  “Second rule,” Alma said, lifting another finger. “The winner must research the person whose tombstone he or she draws. A handout will be given to the winner to better spell out what needs to be done, but research should be conducted at least once weekly as to compile a thorough report on the deceased. The report will be added to the Last Ride Society Library.”

  Since the library occupied the large back room of Once Upon a Time, Millie often caught glimpses of the reports that had started more than half a century ago. Some had been bound professionally and were several inches thick. Others were handwritten and obviously hastily done. Ruby’s recent addition was over five hundred pages on a spinster who’d died back in the late 1800s.

  “Final rule,” Alma went on. “On the completion of the research by the winner, five thousand dollars from the Hezzie Parkman trust will be donated to the winner’s chosen town charity.”

  “I’m hoping it’s me this year,” Frankie muttered. “The baseball field needs fixing up.”

  Millie was hoping it was Frankie, too. Not only because the woman wanted it but because Frankie was right about the baseball field needing a face-lift. Millie made a mental note to set up a donation drive for just that.

  “And now to the drawing.” Alma used the gavel to drum out her obvious excitement. “Ruby, come on up to the Bowl o’ Names and get to drawing.”

  Ruby waved again and smiled at the applause. What she didn’t do was hurry. Not one little bit. Still obviously trying to hang on to her moment, Ruby crept to the table and hovered her hand over the bowl. Probably to boost excitement. Many probably hoped she’d just hurry so they could spoil their dinners with those snickerdoodles.

  Ruby finally reached into the bowl, swirling around the slivers of paper, paused, swirled some more. Only when people started to groan and grumble did she finally pluck one.

  Ruby beamed and looked directly at her. “Millie Parkman,” the woman announced.

  Oh, man. What kind of crap-ery was this? Suddenly all eyes were on her. Exactly where Millie didn’t want them to be.

  “Congrats, Millie,” Alma muttered.

  There were no congrats whatsoever in Alma’s tone or expression. No doubt because she, and everyone else in the room, were considering that Millie digging into that Bowl o’ Tombstones would maybe bring back the memories and grief over losing Royce. But Millie didn’t have to dig into a bowl to recall that memory. Everything brought it back.

  Everything.

&nbs
p; Millie forced herself to stand, and she got moving toward the front. She silently cursed the macaws because she could have used both the caffeine and sugar fix to get her through this. Unlike Ruby, she didn’t dawdle, didn’t make a production of it. Millie simply went to the Bowl o’ Tombstones and snagged the first one her fingers touched. She unfolded the paper.

  Her heart went to her knees.

  And she blurted out the really bad word.

  “The name is Ella McCann,” Millie managed to say when she got her mouth unfrozen.

  The room went tombstone-silent, but Millie figured there was already some mental gossip going on.

  Frankie jumped to her feet. “I volunteer as tribute,” she repeated.

  Millie considered taking her up on the offer. Considered shirking the duty that had been drummed into her since childhood. Parkman duty. Parkman pride. But it was more than that. It was spine. It would probably come as a surprise to many, but she did indeed have one. And Millie was about to prove that.

  To them.

  To herself.

  Even if Ella McCann deserved each and every f-bomb that Millie would ever mutter, she’d do this. She’d research the “other” woman. She’d dig into the life of the woman who’d died in the arms of Millie’s husband.

  Copyright © 2021 by Delores Fossen

  Keep reading for an excerpt from The Bait by Carol Ericson.

  The Bait

  by Carol Ericson

  Chapter One

  Crouching in the dirt, Detective Jake McAllister met his partner’s eyes over the dead body of a young woman, a queen of hearts between her lips, her long, brown hair placed over her shoulder, the lower half of her torso naked, her jeans tossed beside her.

  With a gloved finger, Jake traced the ring of bruises around her neck. “Maybe he raped this one.”

  Detective Billy Crouch shook his head. “He didn’t rape Juliana French, even though he removed her pants and underwear. No rape, no DNA. He’s sticking to the program.”

  Jake shifted, crunching the leaves beneath his shoes, an uneasy feeling knotting his gut.

  Raising his eyebrows, Billy said, “You know it’s true, J-Mac. We can’t ignore it. The three serial killers—Cannon, Fisher and now this sick SOB are all following some master plan. Our computer forensics uncovered an online link between Cannon and Fisher, and my guess is we’ll see the same connection to our current killer.”

  “I know you’re right.” Jake sat back on his heels and lifted the woman’s left hand, a bloody gouge in place of her pinky finger. “He’s taking their panties as his trophy. They each claimed their own trophy—Cannon stole a piece of jewelry and Fisher snipped a lock of hair—but they all made sure to sever the finger.”

  “Pulling off their pants and underwear indicates more ambition, greater risk taking.”

  “I’m counting on that to trip him up.” Jake lifted a lock of the woman’s silky hair, letting it slide through his fingers. “This one seems to have a type. Juliana had long, dark brown hair, too.”

  “That’s one thing he has in common with The Player when choosing victims. Cannon chose his based on young women coming to the coffeehouse. Fisher stalked women who lived alone and had poor security at their homes. This guy is using appearance to choose his victims, just like The Player did. Only The Player preferred blondes.”

  “I know he did.” Jake swallowed, thinking about Kyra’s mother, Jennifer Lake.

  “Are you guys finished?” Clive Stewart, their fingerprint tech, held up his black bag and indicated the waiting LAPD crime scene investigators.

  “It’s all yours.” Jake pushed to his feet and said, “Maybe we’ll get lucky again like we did with Fisher, and he’ll leave a print, Clive.”

  Clive surveyed the body on its bed of leaves and dirt and nodded. “Could be. He’s leaving a messier scene than either of the others.”

  Jake turned his back on the CSIs as they descended on the young woman. She didn’t look like a sex worker, but sometimes you couldn’t tell by appearances. Juliana French hadn’t been a prostitute. She hadn’t lived alone, either. She’d disappeared between a club and her car. There was some speculation on the task force that she’d hopped into a car, thinking it was an app ride.

  Peeling off his gloves, Jake strode away from the dump site back to the access road that bordered the trail. Too many cars had driven over the road to be able to make any sense of the tire tracks.

  He glanced up at the trees, some leaves crisping at the edges with the coming autumn, others as green as ever with plans to stay that way through the season. LA had its own fall colors that eluded the detection of transplants from the East but made their mark on natives. He could feel and smell the changing of the seasons despite the greenery around him.

  As he emerged from the foliage, the gathered press lit up, swinging their cameras and microphones in his direction.

  “Detective McAllister, is this the work of another serial killer?”

  “Is this the same guy who did Juliana?”

  “Another copycat, Detective McAllister?”

  He dropped his sunglasses from his head to the bridge of his nose and held up his hand. “No comment for now. Stay tuned for a press conference later in the week.”

  He ducked into his sedan. Waiting for Billy to join him, he took out his phone and tapped through the pictures he had taken of the crime scene—horrific pictures, indecent pictures. He said through gritted teeth, “What do you do with their panties, freak?”

  He jumped when Billy yanked open the car door. “Talking to yourself again, brother, or singing? I saw your lips moving.”

  “I’m talking to this piece of scum.” Jake flashed his phone at Billy.

  “Did you tell him we’re going to nail him, just like the other two?”

  “Something like that.” Jake cranked on the engine and pulled around a group of emergency vehicles, including the coroner’s van. “What took you so long? You weren’t giving an exclusive to your reporter girlfriend, were you?”

  “I did go over for a chat, but Megan Wright isn’t my girlfriend, and even if she were, she’s not getting any details and she knows it.”

  “Is that why she’s not your girlfriend?”

  Billy punched Jake’s arm. “Are you implying that’s the only reason she’s going out with me?”

  “So, you are still going out.”

  “We’re going out, but she’s not my girlfriend. I mean, we’re not exclusive...unlike you and Kyra.”

  “Kyra and I...” Jake shrugged. What he and Kyra had was complicated. “Did you finally meet with the PI?”

  Billy knew a subject change when he heard it, and he grinned. “Yeah, we met.”

  “Do you like him? Do you think he’s going to be able to help you find your sister?”

  “She. The PI is a lady.”

  “Questions remain the same.”

  “I like Dina. I think she can help, and yes, she is attractive.”

  “Uh-oh.” Jake glanced at Billy. “Is that going to be a problem for you?”

  “Moi?” Billy flicked his tie in front of him. “Not at all. She happens to be involved with Jansen, Narcotics. That’s how I got her name. The first guy I contacted fell through, and someone in Narcotics heard I was looking. Put me in touch with Jansen, who put me in touch with Dina.”

  “All joking aside, I hope she can help you find your sister.”

  “Me, too,” Billy said, and stared out the window.

  Their drive back to the station was unusually quiet, considering they’d just come from the dump site of a second body that looked like the work of a third copycat serial killer. How unusual was this? The only reason the Feds hadn’t moved in yet was due to the success of the LAPD task force in identifying and stopping the first two copycat killers.

  When they got back to the task force w
ar room that had been functional for over three months now, Billy took it upon himself to start going through the files of missing women in LA to see if he could find a match to the body in the canyon.

  Ever since Billy’s sister, Sabrina, had gone missing, Billy had taken a special interest in the lost girls of LA. Jake left him alone with his sad obsession and trooped to Captain Carlos Castillo’s office to give him an update.

  The captain’s door stood open and he wasn’t on the phone, but Castillo favored a certain protocol so Jake tapped on the door as he hovered in the hallway.

  Castillo glanced up from his computer screen and waved him into the office, his dark eyes flashing. “You don’t even have to tell me. I know it’s the same MO as Juliana French for our third copycat. I’m tired of this. What makes The Player so special that these sick guys are emulating him?”

  Jake dropped into the chair across from Castillo. “I’m hoping our computer forensics team can tell us that. They’re still looking into the online connection between Cannon and Fisher, the first two killers. It seems they both favored a certain online message board for crime.”

  “I’m not going to pretend I understand any of that.” Castillo held up his hand as if to ward off too much technical information, not that Jake had any to give him.

  “Bottom line—those message boards are a way for people to communicate without sending emails, but they usually require an email address to register. If we have email addresses, we can trace those to IP addresses and locate the person’s physical address where the computer resides.”

  “You lost me at IP address.” Castillo ran a hand through his salt-and-pepper hair. “I trust Brandon Nguyen and the others to know what they’re doing. Tracing a link between Cannon and Fisher might help us ID this third killer?”

  “It might.” Jake rapped on the edge of the desk. “But so will solid detective work. Billy’s looking at missing women now. We’re running this victim’s prints, and the medical examiner is doing a rape kit on the body.”