by Elise Sax
“Did she fall? Did she trip over her crap and fall into the bucket?”
“The odds aren’t that good that her head just happened to land in a bucket.”
Adele nudged me. “Touch her.”
“What?”
“Touch her. Touch her. Do what you did to Norton.”
I crossed my arms in front of me. “I didn’t do anything to Norton.”
“You brought him back to life.”
“No, I didn’t, and don’t let the exorcists hear you.” I stepped around Inga and peeked out the window. Thankfully, there was no sign of the van. Maybe they were out de-demoning someone else.
I turned back to Adele. “We need to call 911,” I said.
“Do your thing first.”
“No. What thing?”
Adele’s eyes widened. “You know. First try the bring her back to life thing, and if that doesn’t work, do the Jessica Fletcher thing.”
“I don’t bring people back to life. Not always. I mean, not ever. Don’t tell anyone.”
Adele nudged my arm. “Do it. Do it,” she urged. “Just one finger. See what happens.”
I sighed. “I’ll touch her so that you’ll leave me alone about it, and we can put this stuff to rest.”
Adele hopped up and down on her heels. “Okay. Should I say a prayer first?”
“Adele, I’m not Mother Theresa.”
“Sorry. I’m just excited.”
I stuck my index finger out, and I walked slowly toward Inga. She was obviously dead. Really dead. Like dead for a long time. It had been nearly twenty-four hours since I had last seen her, and it wouldn’t have surprised me if she had come directly home from the diner and died as soon as she walked in the door.
“She’s wearing the same clothes as yesterday,” I pointed out.
“She’s not exactly a fashion horse, Matilda. Touch her.”
I poked Inga’s back gently and let my finger stay there for a few seconds. Then, I stepped back and watched Inga’s lifeless body. I wouldn’t admit it, but I half-expected her to sit up and ask us what we were doing in her home.
But she didn’t sit up. She didn’t take a breath. She didn’t move a muscle.
Inga Mueller was deader than a doornail.
“That didn’t go like I expected,” Adele said, obviously disappointed. “I wonder what went wrong.”
“Nothing went wrong. I can’t bring people back to life.”
Adele frowned. “Maybe the stars aren’t aligned or something. Or maybe it needs to be a full moon.”
“I think we should call 911,” I said.
“All right,” Adele said, disappointed. “I’ll call while you snoop. Do your Jessica Fletcher thing.”
“I’m not Jessica Fletcher.”
She gave me a pointed look.
“Okay, I’m a little like Jessica Fletcher,” I said.
But I didn’t have a lot of snooping time. Deputy Sheriff Adam Beatman showed up a couple minutes later, and Patrolwoman Wendy Ackerman arrived a couple of minutes after him. They asked us a couple questions and sent us away.
“That was anti-climactic,” Adele complained when we got outside. “And I guess Morris won’t get a new oven.”
“Sorry,” I said and hugged her goodbye.
Back at my house, I was happy to see that there was no sign of the HPA or the exorcists. I parked in front of the house and locked the car.
“Psst!” I heard. I whipped my head around, but I couldn’t see anyone. “Psst! It’s me!”
The voice sounded familiar and young. “Jack?” I asked.
A hand waved from the bushes by the gate. I crouched down and saw Jack hiding there. “What’re you doing? I thought you were grounded.”
“I am, but the call of the Free Press brought me back.”
“Oh, geez. You’ve been listening too much to Silas,” I told him. “You should go home. You don’t want to get into even more trouble with your mother.”
“I can’t stand it. I need a story. What’s going on? I hate being out of the loop.”
I gnawed on the inside of my cheek. Jack was a sweet kid, and I hated to keep him from his vocation. But I also didn’t want to get in the middle of family drama. And I also believed that education was important, and Jack was only a sophomore in high school.
“I can give you my notes for a Pooper Basket story. A short one. You’d have to forego your byline, of course, and do the whole thing on the down low.”
Jack slid out from the bushes. He was ecstatic. I handed him my notes. “On the down low,” I repeated. “And focus more on your studies. History and math are important. You need that to be a journalist.”
Jack pocketed the notes and stood. “I watch PBS, so it’s all good,” he said and ran into the forest behind the house.
I walked through the gate on my way to the Gazette office. Somehow, we had to find a solution for Jack. We couldn’t continue handing him stories in the bushes, and I was terrified that Klee was going to throw in the towel about her new paperboy duties and pass them on to me.
The office door was open, and I could hear typing from outside. “I have two stories,” I said, brightly to head off any complaints from Klee as I walked in the office.
“Two?” Silas asked. “Prominent person and what else?”
“Pooper baskets.”
“What? Baskets made of poop?”
“No. Baskets to put dog poop in.” I leaned over and whispered in his ear: “I gave my notes to a certain young person who thinks he’s Bob Woodward.”
“We’ve got to fix this problem,” Silas said, running his hand over his balding head.
“I’m already done with Advice Annie, and I’ve started on the Word Jumble,” Tilly bragged as I sat down at my desk.
“I got held up,” I explained.
“What happened? Did the HPA go after you again?” Silas asked.
“No, I was at Inga Mueller’s place. She was dead in a bucket.”
Klee stopped typing and looked at me. Silas and Tilly were staring at me intently, too. “What do you mean she was dead in a bucket?” Silas asked.
“Her head. Her head was in the bucket.”
“Was her head attached?” Tilly asked.
“Of course it was!”
Tilly shrugged. “Well, with you, who knows? She could have been diced up into little pieces and nobody would have said boo. You just found someone in a duffel bag. Anything’s possible.”
“Her head was attached,” I insisted.
“Did she drown?” Silas asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Why was her head in a bucket?” he asked.
“I don’t know.”
“Was there any sign of a struggle?”
“I don’t know.”
Silas pursed his lips.
“It’s not my fault,” I told him. “Her house looks like it’s an annex for the dump, and Adam came two minutes after we called 911.”
“And what did he say about it?” Silas asked me.
I chewed on one of my fingernails. I could see where he was going with this line of questioning. I had screwed up. Inga’s death was a story. My third story. Why hadn’t I thought of that?
Silas picked up his phone and dialed. “What do you mean, no comment?” Silas demanded into the phone. “I didn’t ask you anything yet. What happened to Inga Mueller? What was she doing in a bucket? What do you mean, no comment?”
Silas slammed the phone down. “You have to handle this, boss,” he told me. “Does Amos still want to sleep with you?”
My face got hot. “No. His brother wants to sleep with me. But we’re not doing that. We’re courting. We’re going to the diner tonight.”
“A horny dinosaur hunter does nothing for our news coverage,” Silas complained. “Why couldn’t you have picked the sheriff?”
“I would have picked the sheriff,” Tilly said. “I like the way he wears his hat. The other one doesn’t wear a hat.”
“Doesn’t Adam Beatman o
we you a favor?” Silas asked me. “Didn’t you save him from being unjustly imprisoned?”
“Sort of.”
“Good. Call him up and get a statement. In the meantime, write up your notes on Inga.”
I broke out into a sweat and dried my palms on my pants. The next few hours passed in a blur of pressure and activity. I was slammed with getting Adam to talk and writing up the stories about Inga and Adele.
It turned out that Inga had drowned in a bucket of resin, which was a sticky substance that she used to treat the coal so it wouldn’t make a mess and fall apart when it was worn as jewelry.
“How does someone drown in resin?” I had asked Adam.
“Maybe she was smelling it, and she fell in,” Adam suggested.
“May I quote you?”
I was so wrapped up in my panic about writing the stories that I didn’t even notice when Nora came in and handed me a beef tamale and a small chocolate milk.
“My kingdom for a new reporter,” Silas said, reading my articles when I was done.
Tears of frustration burned my eyes and threatened to fall, but I bit my lip to keep from crying. A man with a pockmarked face and blond hair walked in.
“Is this where Matilda Tara lives?” he asked.
“Matilda Dare,” I corrected, standing.
“I’m the carpenter. Faye gave me a holler and told me to get over here on the double. She said that you’ve got troubles with HPA. I can handle that for you. This ain’t my first HPA rodeo.”
For the first time in a long time, I felt like I could breathe. “Really?”
“Not a problem,” he assured me.
We left the office, and I gave the carpenter a tour of the house and showed him the list of renovations they wanted.
“Whoa, Nelly,” he said and whistled, reading the list. “They really got it in for you. What did you do, run over their puppy or something?”
“I try to be very nice,” I said.
“I heard that you killed someone and that you ran through town in the mayor’s boxer briefs,” he said.
“None of that’s true,” I said.
“It doesn’t matter.” He put his hand out, and I shook it. “I’ll do it for you cheap and fast. The HPA won’t know what hit them.”
I clutched my chest and took a deep breath of relief. “Thank you…I don’t even know your name.”`
“Dick. Dick Boner.”
“Is that a joke?” I asked.
“Is what a joke?”
“Nothing. Forget it.”
He left, and I sighed a sigh of relief. Besides his name, Dick Boner didn’t seem eccentric at all to me, despite what Faye had said about him. Maybe it was a sign that it would all work out. All of it. The whole thing. My whole life.
The dogs circled me, asking for dinner. “Oh no. My date!” I cried. I had lost track of time, and I only had a few minutes to wash up, get dressed, and put makeup on.
After I fed the dogs, I worked fast, making myself look presentable. I chose a tight dress that showed a little too much cleavage and shoes that were a little too high for me to balance on. I was putting on a third coat of mascara when I heard Boone walk into the kitchen. Tilly whistled and said something inappropriate about how his pants fit.
I left the bathroom and found them in the kitchen. Boone was dressed in a suit that fit him perfectly. He was freshly shaven, his shoes were shined, and his hair had product in it. I stumbled back a step, and my stomach cramped. He literally took my breath away.
Lordy, Boone was handsome.
Tilly sat at the kitchen table and looked back and forth between Boone and me. “What’s going on? Are you going to the opera? Are you going to a presidential inauguration? I didn’t even know it was an election year.”
“We’re going to the diner, Tilly,” Boone said, never taking his eyes off of me.
“We might be overdressed for the diner,” I said. “Do you think we’ll look ridiculous?”
Boone shook his head. “We’ll order dessert. That will make it fancier, and we won’t look out of place.”
He took my hand and brought it to his lips. “Oh,” I breathed.
Boone waggled his eyebrows. “There’s more where that came from if you’re good.”
“Oh,” I breathed again.
The diner was about half-full. Most of the customers were old and taking advantage of the early bird special. Jeb was seated at a corner table with his cronies, and I hoped that he wasn’t going to make a scene about me and Tilly again.
I wanted a nice evening out with Boone. I wanted to move this courting thing along with some magical moments. I wanted smooching and a hand job. We sat at a booth, and Adele gave us menus.
“You guys look like movie stars,” she said. “Like you’re in a sexy movie where you get dressed up to get naked.”
My face got hot. “What’s the special tonight, Adele?” I asked, changing the subject.
“I’ve got a pot roast that’ll make you slap your mama,” she said.
We ordered the pot roast, and Adele gave us two cream sodas on the house. Boone took my hand in his and ran his thumb over my palm in gentle circles that made my insides tighten. I crossed my legs to contain myself.
“You look beautiful tonight. Did I tell you that already?” Boone asked.
“Four times, but you can say it again.”
“You look beautiful.”
“How beautiful? Like Elizabeth Taylor or Nicole Kidman?”
“I feel like this is a trick question,” Boone said. “How about I say, beautiful like Matilda Dare because Matilda Dare has a unique beauty. A superlative beauty. A sexy ass, over the top, hotter than hell beauty.”
“So, Elizabeth Taylor, then?”
Adele brought our pot roast. “I heard that Inga didn’t fall into that bucket,” Adele told me as I took my first bite of the pot roast. “She was drowned in the resin. Bad way to die.”
“Who’s Inga?” Boone asked. “Someone else was murdered? It’s like an episode of The Walking Dead around here lately.”
“Don’t look at me. I’m not possessed. I don’t need to be exorcised,” I told him.
“O…K…” he said.
“I have no idea why someone would want to murder Inga,” Adele continued. “Unless the coal jewelry was worth something. But how much can coal be worth?”
“Coal jewelry?” Boone asked.
“Maybe she pissed someone off,” I suggested. “She was rather eccentric. Maybe she had dubious friends.”
Adele seemed to think about that a second and then shook her head. “I think it has something to do with that resin. The resin is the key. She bought it from a guy right here in town next to Bruce Jenkins’ place.”
“Really?” I asked.
Adele nodded. “Yep. And I think the resin is the key.”
Adele left to wait on other customers. I took another bite of the pot roast.
“You have that look,” Boone told me.
“What look?” I asked.
“The look you get when you’re going to wreak havoc on the town in pursuit of justice.”
“There’s no look,” I said. “I don’t have any look. How could you say I have a look? Really, there’s no look.”
Boone put his hands up in surrender. “Fine. You don’t have a look.”
“How about we take a walk after dinner?” I asked.
“Let me guess,” Boone said. “A walk near Bruce Jenkins’ place?”
Part II: Matilda Gets Nosy, and Inga had a Secret
Pooper Baskets Appear in Odd Places
by Silas Miller
Bandits are moving newly installed Pooper Baskets and placing them in strange places. “I was in the library, reading the latest Nora Roberts when I smelled something,” Joanne Church said. “Little did I know that some fool kid had put one of those Pooper Baskets under my table. It’s not easy to enjoy a good romance when you’re sitting next to a container full of dog crap, you know.”
Locals Mabel Kessler a
nd Rocco Humphrey installed hundreds of the Pooper Baskets as a service to dog owners, but no sooner were they attached to poles and walls, they were removed in the dark of night to strange places.
“It’s obviously a practical joke,” Sheriff Amos Goodnight said. “There’s nothing funnier than dog poop.”
But other Goodnight citizens see a darker influence in the Pooper Baskets. “People are dropping like flies, and now there’s dog doo-doo everywhere. It’s a sign. A bad sign,” a local religious leader—who wishes to remain anonymous—said.
The Sheriff’s Department is requesting any information to find the dog poop pranksters. No reward is being offered yet.
Chapter 6
We got up to leave, but Adele stopped us. “Wait. I’ll get you a couple of flashlights. That’ll help you,” she said and skipped into the back of the diner.
“Oh, God,” Boone moaned. “What’s next? Black ski caps and leather gloves?”
“We’re just going for a walk. We’re not the French Resistance,” I told him.
“Famous last words.”
Jeb and his friends were finished eating too. They got up. Jeb touched his lips and moved his mouth around, as if he had forgotten to put his teeth in. Then, he rooted around in his pants, like he was adjusting himself. Ugh. I was disgusted but couldn’t look away. Jeb caught me staring and said something to his friend, who in turn stared back at me.
“Uh oh,” I said to Boone. “We better get out of here. Jeb and his pals look like they’re out for blood.”
“I wish they would get over the whole Tilly thing. You want me to beat them up? I think I could take on four centenarians.”
Adele came back with the two flashlights. “I wish I could go too, but I can’t close up yet,” she said.
“We’re just going for a walk,” I said, eyeing Jeb and his buddies walking our way. “Let’s go!”
I ran out as fast as I could in my high heels. I wasn’t used to wearing them, and it was all I could do not to twist my ankles. The Plaza was lit up, but Bruce Jenkins’ street was dimly lit, so we turned on Adele’s flashlights to see better when we got there.
“What’re we looking for?” Boone asked.
“The resin guy.”
