Coal Miner's Slaughter

by Elise Sax

  “Where are you going?” I asked her.

  “I’m going to Goodnight UFOs. The alien salt and pepper shakers are on markdown. Faye’s got all kinds of alien shakers. I thought they would be cute for the Diner.”

  “I need to talk.”

  Adele’s mouth turned up in a wide smile. “That’s my favorite thing to do. Meet me at Goodnight UFOs, and we’ll talk there.”

  I parked in the parking lot, and Adele met me at the back door. She gave me a quick hug. “What’s up?” she asked.

  “It’s a little delicate.”

  “Sounds juicy!” she said, excited.

  We walked inside. The store was quiet. Faye was the only one in it, and she was dusting off shelves. She was delighted that we came to visit.

  “What’s up? Do you have more gossip for me?” she asked.

  “I came for the discounted salt and pepper shakers, but Matilda wants to talk about something delicate,” Adele said.

  “Is it about the murder?” Faye asked.

  “This is between us,” I said.

  “Oh my God. This is going to be good,” Adele said. “We should call Nora. She wouldn’t want to miss this. Shouldn’t we call her?”

  “Probably,” I said. I mean, it was about a sex club in Goodnight. I needed to talk to all of my best friends about it.

  Faye called Nora. While we waited for her to arrive, Adele chose twelve sets of alien salt and pepper shakers for seventy percent off. Nora arrived about five minutes later. We heard her food truck jump the curb.

  Nora burst through the front door. “What’s delicate? Spit it out. I’ve been neck-deep in tamales and burritos and children. I’m starving for female interaction. I drove here on my own, that’s how much I need female interaction.”

  “She means gossip,” Adele told me.

  We sat in a circle, and they all leaned forward, waiting for me to talk. I told them about the Fifty Shades of Grey red room in Inga’s apartment, and their eyes nearly bugged out of their heads.

  “Whoa. I did not see that coming,” Faye said. “Inga Mueller didn’t strike me as the latex bodysuit kind of woman.”

  “Once I saw her buy men’s white briefs in bulk at Walmart,” Nora said. “I figured they were for her, but maybe they were for her male callers.”

  Adele tapped her temple. “You know what? Inga did say something recently about sex.”

  “I wanted to ask you about that,” I said.

  “What did she say?” Adele asked, looking up at the ceiling, as if she was trying to remember. “It’s on the edges of my brain, but I can’t bring it up. It was about sex, but I don’t remember what it was exactly. It’s funny because I’ve been picking up a lot of sex talk at the diner. I hear a lot of things at work, moving from table to table. Usually it’s about health and money issues. Never sex. But lately, it’s been about sex.”

  “Don’t say sex in front of me,” Nora said. “I haven’t had sex since I got the food truck. It’s been wonderful for my pocketbook, but I’m too tired to make whoopee.”

  “I thought most people in Goodnight were too tired to have sex,” I said. “But that’s actually the delicate thing I wanted to ask you about.”

  They leaned forward again, probably to make sure they wouldn’t miss a word.

  “A source has told me that all the sex Inga was having was part of a sex club,” I began. “A Goodnight sex club, full of prominent people.”

  My eyes flicked to Adele for a second, since she was one of Gazette’s profiles of the most prominent people in Goodnight, but I looked away quickly.

  “Who?” Nora breathed. “Silas?”

  I choked on my own spit. “No! I mean, I don’t know. I mean, no way!” But what did I know? Silas could be in a sex club. After all, I had a naked carpenter at home. I never thought that would happen, either.

  “I don’t know who’s in the sex club except for Inga. I’m not even sure it exists,” I said.

  “We’re having a really cold fall. Anyone else notice that?” Faye asked.

  “It’s like we’re getting winter early, or maybe we’re getting our share of the cold now and the winter will be warm,” Nora said. “Wait a second. Why did you change the subject from a sex club to the weather, Faye?”

  “I didn’t change the subject,” Faye said, smiling and looking at her fingernails. “But it’s cold. Did I tell you about my last dentist appointment?”

  Adele stood. “Oh my God. Faye is in the sex club. Is Norton in it, too?”

  Faye stood too. “I am not! He is not!”

  Faye was a gorgeous woman. She was wearing her normal outfit—cutoffs, work boots, and a t-shirt, without any makeup—but she still looked like Grace Kelly. A red-faced Grace Kelly, because she was blushing big time.

  Adele sat down, and we all looked up at Faye. “We’re not in the sex club,” she said, calmer. “But I know about it.”

  I could have heard a pin drop. I was holding my breath, and I would have bet money that Nora and Adele were holding their breaths too.

  “About a year ago, Mimi Pug walked into the store,” Faye began. “She said she was looking for a handyman to fix her garbage disposal. We went to the back of the store to schedule the work when she touched my back.”

  Nora gasped. “Mimi Pug, who drives a water truck?”

  “She touched your back?” Adele asked.

  “Low on my back,” Faye said and sat down. She wiped her forehead with the back of her hand. “I thought it was odd, but nothing more than that. Then she told me how beautiful I was and that I shouldn’t keep all my beauty for Norton. Then she touched me again.”

  “Where?” Nora asked. “Where did she touch you?”

  “I’d rather not say,” Faye said. “But that’s where she started the hard sell. She told me there were a select few in town who knew how to party, and they wanted me and Norton to be a part of it. She said some other things that I don’t want to talk about, and that was it. I said no, and she left. I never fixed her garbage disposal, by the way.”

  “Good for you for standing your ground and refusing to fix her garbage disposal,” Nora said.

  “I can’t believe this,” Adele said, punching the open palm of her left hand. “I’m so mad. I can’t believe that Goodnight has a sex club and I didn’t know a thing about it. I know everything that goes on in Goodnight. At least I thought I did. Now, I’m doubting my entire existence.”

  “Don’t do that,” Faye said, distressed. “You know a lot.”

  “You’re the Encyclopedia Goodnight,” Nora agreed.

  “You’re awfully quiet,” Faye said to me. “You’ve got a funny look on your face.”

  Nora pointed at my face. “I know that look. That’s your ah ha look. What are you thinking?”

  “It’s not really a thought,” I said. “It’s more like the beginning of a thought.”

  “Don’t keep us in the dark,” Adele urged. “It’s bad enough that Faye kept her almost foray into sex club life from us.”

  “I’m sorry. I put it out of my mind. I mean, Mimi Pug. Gross,” Faye said.

  “I won’t keep you in the dark,” I said. “I was just thinking that to get to the truth about Inga’s murder, I would have to investigate the sex club, and to do that, I need to get close to it. Very close.”

  Adele clapped her hands together. “Oh, this is going to be good.”

  “Can you get me in?” I asked Faye.

  “Oh geez. Does that mean I have to talk to Mimi again?” Faye asked.

  It took some convincing, but Faye agreed to contact the sex club and get me in as a member. I was going undercover to investigate a sex club. Thinking about it gave me an anxiety attack, but my drive to find the truth was louder than my neuroses.

  Nora left through the front door, and Adele and I left through the back door. As we were saying goodbye at my car, two women walked by. They took one look at me and crossed themselves.

  “What the hell was that about?” Adele asked.

  We wat
ched the women speed up, practically breaking into a run away from me.

  “I’ve got a reputation,” I said. “Somehow I need to improve it. The crazy thing was bad enough, but now I’m supposed to be possessed.”

  Adele tapped her nose, like she was trying to find a solution. “It will probably die down,” she assured me.

  “Sure,” I agreed. “As long as I don't speak in tongues, they've got to forget about the whole demon thing at some point. Right?”

  “It would be easier if people would just stop getting murdered around you.”

  A man and a woman walked through the parking lot, took a look at me, and spit on the ground against the evil eye. It was like an epidemic. The whole town thought I was possessed, now. They were all afraid that they were going to get murdered if they got near me. It was frustrating, trying to fit into a new town. I needed a new reputation, and I needed it fast. Any reputation would be better than my possessed, demonic reputation.

  I drove home and gave Silas the rundown of what was happening with Inga and the sex club. While I gave him the rundown, I watched him carefully for any reaction. But he was honestly shocked about the sex club and seriously delighted at the prospect of writing the story about it. It didn’t appear that he knew anything about the sex club before I told him about it.

  There was no sign of Jack or his mother at my house, thankfully. Klee went home early to get enough sleep before her paperboy route. When she left, she gave me the stink eye, and I was sure that I was only a couple of days away from her forcing me to take over the route, no matter how big of a story I was working on.

  I fed the dogs and took them for a long walk in the forest. When I returned, I helped Tilly—who had been at the dermatologist getting skin tags removed today-- make roast chicken and rice for dinner. After, I made a plate for Boone and took it over to him. I opened his door without knocking, since he was supposed to be resting.

  His part of the house was really a workspace, filled with dinosaur bones and things he collected as a paleontologist. He slept in a small bed pushed up against the wall, and his kitchen was a hot plate and a hotel-sized refrigerator.

  I found Boone lying down in bed, reading a book about dinosaurs. He looked tired, run down, but he was still just as handsome, and I wanted to jump his bones. Not his dinosaur bones. His beautiful, perfectly structured body bones.

  “I brought you dinner,” I said. He smiled wide and sat up in bed.

  “My mother always told me to find a woman who could cook.”

  “I'm not much of a cook. I tend to be too creative, and the dishes usually wind up pretty bad. But Tilly has been training me, insisting on what she calls good old-fashioned American food. I haven't tasted the chicken and rice yet, but it looks and smells good.”

  I handed him the plate and a fork and knife, and I sat down on the edge of the bed.

  “I would ask you out again, but I have to work up my strength,” Boone said, winking at me.

  “We’re like an Abbott and Costello routine,” I said. “We can't get it right.”

  Boone's eyes grew dark, and he ran a finger down my arm. “Oh, we're going to get it right, Matilda. I promise you that. If we don't, I'm going to explode from the pressure. You know what I mean?”

  Oh boy, I knew what he meant. But I was the one who told him to court me, so I couldn't complain.

  “Maybe we should just go to a movie next time,” he suggested.

  “Okay,” I said, but I wanted to see things speed up, not slow down. It wasn't fair that Inga was having a spicier sex life than I was. In fact, it appeared that most of the town was having a spicier sex life than me. And that just wasn’t right.

  Thinking about everyone's sex life gave me an idea. It was time to move my relationship with Boone up a notch. Maybe what we needed wasn’t more romance. Maybe what we needed was more spice.

  I propped my phone against a few books on my dresser. It was two in the morning, and the house was quiet with even the dogs fast asleep. I triple-checked that Tilly was asleep because my bedroom door didn’t have a lock on it, and I didn’t want her walking in.

  For what I was about to do, I wanted total privacy. It was only for Boone.

  I found a lacy negligee in the back of a drawer that I had only worn once for my husband when we were first married. I put it on. It barely covered my breasts, which was exactly what I was going for. I teased my hair as big as it would go, and I gave my face a triple dose of makeup.

  Taking a deep breath for courage, I turned on the phone’s video camera.

  “Hello,” I said in my sexiest voice. I felt a wave of embarrassment, but I fought the urge to turn the camera off. “I’ve been thinking of you,” I continued and traced a finger down my neck and into my cleavage.

  “I can feel you touching me,” I purred, touching myself. Where was I getting the guts to do this? I must have been really desperate to take my relationship to the next level.

  I slipped the negligee strap off my shoulder. “Do you like that?” I asked, and blew a kiss. “Would you like to see more?”

  I did a slow striptease until I was naked. I shook my butt at the camera and turned around. “If you want me, just say so,” I said, blew another kiss, and turned off the camera.

  “Holy cow,” I said out loud and collapsed onto the floor in a heap of embarrassment. No way was I ever going to send the video to Boone. I was sure that I had looked ridiculous. What a gross way to flirt with a man! I had gotten completely naked and made a total fool of myself. I had never acted like that before, and there was no way I would ever let him see me like that.

  I grabbed the phone to delete the video, but when I searched through the photos, I couldn’t find the video. “Oh, thank goodness I’m a moron with technology,” I said.

  I got dressed in sweats and a t-shirt, which were much more comfortable than the negligee, which I threw into the trash can next to my bed. I decided to let my relationship with Boone take its normal course and not try to rush it. After all, it wasn’t like he could do anything spicy with a concussion.

  Chapter 10

  I tried to be the first one in the office, but Klee and Silas beat me to it. “Good morning,” I said, brightly. “I brought sprinkles.”

  I had bought two dozen doughnuts, in an effort to head off Klee’s antagonism. I put a box on her desk and a box on Silas’s desk. For the first time in three days, Klee was wide awake. She stared at me with her eyes wide open as I walked through the office. Silas was looking at me, too.

  I waved at them and poured myself a cup of coffee. “Lot’s going on with the Inga Mueller story,” I said. “I’ve got an in with her sex club. Going undercover, hopefully.”

  Klee slapped her hand hard on her desk. “Sex club! That must be it. Is that it?”

  “Is that why you did it? For the sex club?” Silas asked me.

  “Did what?” I asked. I heard the roar of Nora’s food truck approach and park in front. “Nora’s doing a breakfast run this morning? That’s new.”

  Nora ran into the office. She was out of breath and red-faced. She searched the room, and when her eyes found me, she put her hand out in front of her and walked slowly to me.

  “I don’t care what anyone says, I know you’re a good person,” Nora told me, touching my back. “And who says slut anymore? That’s so old fashioned. Who cares if you like to get naked and down and dirty?”

  “I think I’ve missed something,” I said. “What’s going on? I went from being crazy to possessed to slutty?”

  Silas stood. “I’m not going to say anything because I’m a man,” he announced sheepishly and sat down again.

  “Well, I’m not a man, and I’ve got plenty to say,” Klee said, standing. “I’m an exhausted woman. Exhausted. I’m running a newspaper, a house, and now I’m getting up before the sun to throw newspapers on driveways. So, I deserve a little rest and recreation, right? Every morning, I go onto Facebook and see what my friends are up to. After this morning, I need to wash my eyes out w
ith bleach!”

  “I’m not a bleach expert, but that sounds like it would hurt,” I said.

  Klee waved her hands at me. “You ruined my whole day with your smut. And you own this paper, you know. Now the paper is smut, too, because you own the paper. Whatever smut touches is smut.”

  “I have no idea what’s going on,” I said to Nora.

  “I’ve got your back, girlfriend. Who cares if you want to get your freaky on with everyone on Facebook?”

  I froze in place, unable to move a muscle or blink an eye. “My freaky on?” I whispered. “Please, no. Please don’t let it be so.”

  A terrible thought went through my mind. “I might have made a video, but it didn’t record. I’m terrible at technology,” I whispered in Nora’s ear.

  “You’re real good at technology. The video went out onto Facebook. Last I checked, it had three thousand views,” she whispered back to me.

  I fell onto my chair and put my head between my knees. “This isn’t happening,” I moaned. “Did you see the whole video? The whole thing?”

  “From ‘Hello, I’ve been thinking of you’ to ‘If you want me, just say so,’” Nora said.

  I moaned. Bile rose in my throat. I wanted to die. In fact, I made a wish that I would die, that someone would drown me in a bucket of resin.

  “I’m not saying I saw the whole thing,” Silas said. “You know, because I’m a man.”

  “I saw the whole thing, and so did my husband, and now he’s got all kinds of questions about my breasts,” Klee spat. “I told him that no breasts look like that after fifty years and three children.”

  “Oh, geez,” I moaned.

  “Maybe you should take it off Facebook, since it was an accident,” Nora said, softly.

  “It’s still there?” I asked, panicked.

  I turned on my computer. I never used Facebook, but I friended anyone who asked. “I only have a few friends,” I said, remembering with relief.

  “It was shared quite a bit,” Silas said. “I think it’s trending. Not that I know, because I’m a man.”