by Elise Sax
I did what any independent woman would do. I screamed my best karate yell and attacked him with my butter knife.
Chapter 3
He was bigger and stronger than I was. And faster. He fended off my knife attack with ease, sending the butter knife flying through the air to clang on the ground on the other side of the courtyard. My towel fell off, and I quickly wrapped it around me, again. He turned me around, pressing my hands against the wall above my head, and leaned into me.
Boy, he was big. His hair was wild, and his face was covered in a thick scruff. His breath smelled of Gloria Corbella’s tamales. He was going to kill me. He had done something horrible to the blond girl, and now he was going to do something horrible to me.
“What did you do to the girl?” I demanded.
“What girl?”
“If you kill me, Silas will know, and he’ll get justice for my murder. He’s very big on justice.”
“I’m not going to kill you. What the hell’s the matter with you? I just want some peace and quiet. I’m tired, you know.”
I screamed again, and he let go of me. “Sonofabitch,” he grumbled, stepping away from me. “You’re a hell of a landlord, lady.”
“What?”
“Can’t a man take his nightly bubble bath in peace?” Silas yelled, coming out of the house, holding his towel in front of his naked body and still smoking his cigar. “Oh, hey there, Boone,” he said to the other man. “Back in town, I see.”
“He did something to a girl,” I told Silas.
“What girl?”
“There was a girl here. She was barefoot, and she was wearing a small shirt, and she said that he doesn’t feed her and that she wanted to escape, and then she disappeared in front of my eyes.”
Silas whistled long and slow. “Come on, boss, I told everyone that you’re not crazy. Don’t make me out to be a liar.”
“But…” I said, pointing at the man that Silas called Boone.
“I’m your roommate. I’ve got a year lease on half of the house,” Boone explained, gesturing behind him.
“You mean the storage area? The condemned part?”
He cocked his head to the side and smiled. “Don’t ever talk about a man’s condemned part.”
“There’s a girl. There’s a girl,” I insisted.
“I don’t know about a girl,” Boone said.
“Boone’s a good guy,” Silas said. “I’ll vouch for him. He would never hurt a girl. If there was a girl.”
“Fine,” I said. “He’s a good guy. He’s my tenant. How much rent do you pay, by the way? No, no, I’m sorry. We can go over that later. We need to call the sheriff, now. There’s a girl in trouble.”
Boone threw his hands up. “Sheriff? I’m out. I’m not sticking around to see that asshole.”
Silas adjusted his towel with one hand and took his cigar out of his mouth with his other and gestured to Boone and me with it. “You know, this is kind of awkward. I mean, if someone saw us right now with the towels and the boxers. Awkward.”
Fifteen minutes later, Sheriff Goodnight arrived. Boone had locked himself back in his part of the house. Silas finished drying off and got dressed in his dirty suit. I slipped on shorts and a tank top.
Sheriff Amos Goodnight looked exactly how he did at the pool, but the night’s shadows made him seem even bigger. I was thankful for the night because my traitorous face kept blushing.
“There’s a girl in trouble,” I told him, as we stood in the courtyard. Blush. I gave him the rundown about the barefoot girl who was trying to escape her captor. He took in my story without any visible reaction. His face was impassible. And it was a crazy sexy face. Blush.
“Matilda’s got a doozy of a case of altitude sickness,” Silas said, rocking back on his heels. He smelled like cigar and my lavender vanilla shampoo.
“That’s true,” I said. “I can barely draw a breath.”
The sheriff nodded. “You want me to take you to the clinic? Get you some oxygen?”
A date? Blush. Holy crap. He was looking right at me. Our eyes locked, and if I couldn’t breathe before, I really couldn’t now. Maybe I should let him take me to the hospital, I thought. We could sit together in his SUV, and maybe our elbows would touch on the armrest. Blush.
Then, I realized what was going on. “Wait a second. Are you saying I’m seeing things because of my altitude sickness?”
“It happens,” Silas said. “Oxygen is sort of important.”
“But I spoke to her,” I told the sheriff. This time I wasn’t blushing. He had that look in his eye, the one that said I was hallucinating and wasting his time. “She stood right here in the courtyard.” I leaned in closer to the sheriff and lowered my voice. “There’s a suspicious man in that part of the house,” I said, pointing behind him. “He says he’s leasing. His name is Boone. Do you want to question him about the girl?”
The sheriff adjusted the cowboy hat on his head. “I’m not talking to that asshole,” he said, adamantly. “Here’s my card. Call if the girl returns. I’ll make sure my men make double rounds in the area to look for anything out of the ordinary.” He drew out the words “out of the ordinary” like he was making a personal point. His fingers grazed my hand as he dropped his card in it. Blush. Holy cow, the chemistry was off the charts.
But I was still technically married to a killer who tried to put me away as a loony bird. So, I wasn’t too fond of the whole man thing. Maybe I’m mistaking altitude sickness for chemistry, I thought hopefully. Sheriff Goodnight tipped his hat to me and walked away. Blush.
Nope. It was chemistry.
I slept with a crowbar. Rather, I hugged it to my body while I laid in bed and stared up at the ceiling in my bedroom, trying to sleep. Replaying the conversation with the mysterious girl in my mind, I was sure that there was an evildoer somewhere close.
Silas was certain that Boone was a good guy, but I figured there was a pretty good chance that Boone had something to do with the girl in the UFO t-shirt. My curiosity was getting the better of me. I needed to know if Boone was a good guy or bad. I sat up in bed, and the dogs hopped up from the floor and looked at me. Costello put his head on the bed and shot me his sad doggie eyes, while Abbott jumped around in a circle.
“We’re not going on a walk,” I insisted. “I googled dog ownership. I know that you’re not supposed to walk a dog in the middle of the night. You hoodwinked me before, but no longer. The Dog Whisperer doesn’t walk his dogs at night. He sleeps.” Abbott stopped hopping and shot me his sad doggie eyes, too. They were very good at guilt. I didn’t stand a chance. “Fine, then. You can follow me into the courtyard but no further. You’ll defend me if Boone locks me up in his dungeon, right?”
Costello waggled his eyebrows, and Abbott scratched behind his ear with his hind leg. They didn’t look like killer attack dogs, but they did enjoy me feeding them, so when push came to shove, I figured they would defend me against a killer.
And I had a crowbar.
“Here we go, dogs.” I thought about putting a bra on, but my plan was to spy on Boone, not the other way around. Besides, he had already seen all of me when my towel dropped. I held the crowbar out in front of me and opened the door from my bedroom to the courtyard.
Outside, the air was dry and warm, and the sky was full of stars, like splotches of white paint against a black background. I tiptoed across the courtyard and plastered my face against one of Boone’s windows. Nothing. Not a light. Not a thing. When I first moved in, I had peeked through the windows and saw a bunch of trash, including rocks and debris, as if the outside had moved inside. I assumed that part of the house wasn’t used and had gone to pot. It never occurred to me that someone would live there.
I moved on to the next window. Holding the crowbar between my legs, I put my hands against the window and tried to see in. Abbott howled and ran out through the front gate, while Costello laid down by me and fell asleep.
“Where the hell is he?” I whispered. “Maybe he’s torturing
that poor girl in the basement. If there were a basement. Did you see his cold, dark eyes? Those are murderous cold dark eyes.”
“Most women say I have dreamy eyes,” I heard a deep voice say behind me, scaring me. The crowbar fell to the ground with a loud noise, and Boone picked it up and handed it to me. I looked at it suspiciously.
“What’re you doing here?” I demanded.
“I told you. I have a year lease. Paid in advance. No knife this time? What’s with the crowbar?”
I took it from him. “I’m handy.”
“At three in the morning?”
He stepped forward, and his face was outlined in the glow of light coming from my bedroom. He was right. He had dreamy eyes. He was tall and unkempt, but he had great bones. All of his bones.
“I don’t keep normal hours,” I said. “I don’t sleep.”
He nodded. “I see. I’m living with a vampire.”
“We’re not living together. And I’m not a vampire. I’m an insomniac. It’s a thing.”
“What about spying? Is that a thing?”
“I wasn’t spying. I…” But I couldn’t think of a good lie. “What’re you doing in there?” I demanded, taking the offensive.
He stepped forward again, invading my personal space, but for some reason I didn’t mind. “My personal life is my personal life. This is twice in one night that you’ve bothered me. I heard you were crazy, but that excuse only goes so far. So, no more, Matilda. You hear me? Let Boone sleep.”
“But…” I started. He put his finger on my lips, effectively shushing me.
“Don’t be naughty, Matilda. Nobody likes a naughty landlady.”
He put his hands on my upper arms, and squeezing, he lifted me up and placed me down on the other side of him. “Are we clear?”
“But…” I tried again.
“Don’t be naughty, Matilda,” he repeated, interrupting. Then, he winked and flashed a brilliant smile at me, and I stumbled backward. “Sweet dreams, pretty lady,” he said and walked through his door into his mysterious part of my house.
I spent the rest of the night scrubbing the grout in my shower, replaying the scene with Boone over and over in my mind. As soon as I heard Klee drive up in the morning, I made a couple of cups of coffee and brought them out to the office with the dogs following me. “Here you go,” I said, handing her a cup.
She was wearing another beautiful hand-painted tunic and flowy slacks. “I could get used to this,” she said. “Are you ready for another assignment today? Goodnight UFOs is having a thirty-percent off sale in celebration of the sixty-third anniversary of the mass sightings. We need three hundred words. You have longer to write it this time. Tomorrow at noon would be fine.”
She unlocked the office door, and I followed her in. I helped her open the blinds and the windows. “What about a bigger story, like Silas is doing?” I asked. “An investigative piece.”
Klee barked laughter and sat down at her desk, hooking an earpiece to her ear. “You just moved into town. A story like that, you need sources. You need to know the lay of the land. You have to walk before you can run, boss.”
“What about the bleeds articles that Jimmy’s writing? Maybe I could write one of them.”
“Maybe in a month or so. And don’t step on Jimmy’s toes. He’s just a kid, but he takes this all deadly seriously. He doesn’t share bylines, and he doesn’t accept any hiccups in his plan to get out of here and join The Washington Post.”
“He does seem determined to make it big.”
“Between you and me, I’ll bet my Caddy that he’ll wind up working at his folks’ dry cleaners. He doesn’t have what it takes.”
“What does it take?” I asked.
“You have to be crazy. Just like Silas. That whole justice thing. Jimmy just wants fame. That’s not enough. How about you? You want justice or fame?”
“I want to pay my cable bill.”
“Cable? There’s no cable here. Not even a TV.”
“Exactly.”
The door opened, and a short man with a thick head of gray hair wearing a Hawaiian print shirt and khaki shorts walked in. “Hello, Klee,” he said. “Is this our new Goodnighter?”
“Hey, there, Rocco. This is Matilda Dare, the new boss.”
He pulled up a chair by me and shook my hand. “Rocco Humphrey, local businessman. You’ve probably heard of me. I invented pumpkin ice cream. I invented artichoke ice cream, too, but with much different results.”
I nodded. I had no idea who he was, but I loved pumpkin ice cream. Silas walked in wearing the same suit he wore yesterday, and he plopped down on his chair. He had a large bruise on his forehead, and his lip was slightly cracked.
“Hey, Rocco. Wade and his goons jumped me. Don’t they know that the pen is mightier than the sword?”
“I wish you wouldn’t antagonize them,” Rocco complained. “I’m trying to revitalize this town, and we can’t do that without big business.”
“They’re poisoning the water supply,” Silas said.
“That’s a mighty big accusation. Do you have proof?”
“I’ve got Jimmy out right now, undercover. A Pulitzer Prize will revitalize this town, Rocco. Then, you can donate a decent amount to the Gazette.”
“I donate every year. Least I can do,” Rocco told me.
“Exactly,” Silas spat. “The least he can do.”
Rocco ignored him and gave me his pitch. It turned out that he had been the ice cream baron of Omaha and had followed a woman to Goodnight three years ago. Since then, he had been trying to lift up the town from its dying depths, which was no easy task.
“You know we have a lot of bad giraffe karma,” he said.
“I heard that,” I said. I didn’t know what it meant, and I didn’t want to ask.
“I’m bringing in a whole herd of giraffes into town to make up for what these yahoos did to poor Daisy back in 1882. They’re going to be paraded through the Plaza to show that Goodnight loves animals. You know, especially giraffes.”
I took a swig of my coffee. “You’re going to parade a herd of giraffes through town to show that Goodnight loves animals?”
“Genius, right?”
“Uh…” I said.
Silas’s phone rang, and he answered it. “Kiss my patooty,” he yelled into his cellphone. “The press cannot be silenced!”
“Are you in?” Rocco asked me.
“Am I in what?”
“The giraffes. Here’s the thing,” he said, lowering his voice and leaning in to me. “Goodnight has one good-looking woman. Two, now that you’re here. We need a pretty girl to ride the lead giraffe.”
“Excuse me?” I said.
Silas barked laughter into his cellphone. “Oh, yeah? You think you can? You and what army?”
“Of course, Faye’s a damn fine specimen of femaleness,” Rocco continued. “But she’s not what you’d call feminine. She likes power tools. She won’t take off her utility belt. But you would be perfect. You’re a real stunner. The men in town are drawing lots to see who’s going to court you. So, you could put on a pretty dress and ride through town, leading the parade. Can’t you just picture it?”
Me on a giraffe, riding through town? No, no I couldn’t picture it. “People ride giraffes?” I asked.
“I’m getting a special saddle made,” Rocco explained.
“Come on, Wade!” Silas yelled. “The press is bullet-proof. If you shoot me, there’ll be someone to take my place. I’m looking at one right now.” He winked at me, and I broke out into a sweat. “Our new boss is gung-ho. She’ll take a bullet for truth, and she’ll smile as the bullet tears through her flesh and ravages her internal organs.”
“Uh…” I said.
“So, you’re in, right?” Rocco asked me, again. “You just watch. Once we shrug off the bad giraffe juju, this town is going to rebound. We’ll be the next Santa Fe. Better than Santa Fe! You know, because we have the UFOs, too. Folks love UFOs.”
“Fine! Shoot me! S
hoot the boss! Democracy laughs at your poisonous corporate aggression!” Silas yelled and clicked off his phone. He began to type furiously at his computer in a frenzy of euphoria. “What a great story. Pulitzer, Pulitzer, Pulitzer,” he muttered to himself.
Jimmy walked in, and he seemed euphoric, too. “I’ve got the story,” he announced. “I meet with my source tomorrow. It’s locked in.”
He noticed me sitting at his desk, and his smile dropped. I quickly stood to give him his desk back. “That’s wonderful, Jimmy,” I said, shaking his hand.
“Hello, Washington Post. Goodbye, nuclear waste dump,” he declared with glee.
Silas nodded at him. “Good work, kid. I’m glad I sent you out there early this morning. Who’s your source?”
“I’m not sharing that information, Silas. You’ll steal him from me and take the credit.”
Silas laughed. “Jimmy, you’ll be a great guy once your balls drop. But for now, you’re a real pinhead.”
“When am I getting this great story of yours, Silas?” Klee asked.
“If Jimmy isn’t lying, set up part one for Friday and parts two through five after that.”
Klee nodded and typed on her computer. Gloria, the tamale lady, walked in. “I know I’m early,” she said. “But I’ve got a special delivery out by the fracking fields today, and I didn’t want you to go without.” She eyed Silas when she said this, but he was busy writing about corrupt corporations and ignored her.
“Just the woman I wanted to see,” Rocco told Gloria. “Can you make tamales and burritos for Saturday’s parade?”
“Sure. How many do you need?”
“I think forty thousand will do it.”
“I can give you two hundred.”
“Deal,” he said.
“Will you shut the hell up?” Jimmy demanded. “I’m trying to work here. I’m a Washington Post man sitting in a Goodnight Gazette seat. Talk about crimes against humanity.”
“Don’t talk to your elders like that. I know your mother,” Gloria chastised and threw a burrito at Jimmy, which hit him in the head hard and made him fall backward.
