by Elise Sax
I hung up the phone and took out his cigar box, inspecting it for anything out of the ordinary. At first glance, it didn’t look like it had been tampered with, but then I saw that the second layer of cigars were placed differently. It was possible that Silas had rearranged the first layer, but it was more likely that the poisoner had done it. I used two Kleenex to put the box into a plastic bag and hoped that there would be fingerprints left on it to point to the killer.
I picked up the phone, again. “Amos, it’s me,” I said. “Matilda. The woman at the Gazette. The one you had lunch with. If that was lunch. It might have been an early dinner. I ate the chicken fried steak, and you ate the roast chicken. And then we had peach cobbler. And you talked to me this morning after Jimmy died. And then you told me something after we ate, the thing off the record. And…”
“I remember you,” he interrupted. “Trouble.”
“Excuse me?”
“Trouble. That’s you.”
“Oh.” There was a tightening in my chest, like a heart attack, but in a good way. “Trouble” could be an insult, but coming out of his mouth in his rumbly, velvety voice, it made me want to jump around in happy circles, like Abbott with the promise of a bone.
“Is that what you call me?” I asked.
“What can I do for you, Trouble?”
I blushed and flipped my ponytail and realized that I had forgotten why I had called him. “It was something important,” I started. He was quiet, waiting. I looked around me, trying to remember. Finally, my eyes landed on the bag with the cigar box in it. “I know!” I put my hand around the mouthpiece and turned my head away from Klee and Jack so they wouldn’t hear. “I have Silas’s cigar box. I think it’s been tampered with.”
There was an almost imperceptible sigh on the phone. “Trouble, don’t touch it.”
“I put it in a plastic bag. Don’t worry. I used Kleenex to carry it. Just like in CSI Miami.”
“Okay. I’ll pick it up in the morning. Don’t touch anything else. Don’t get involved. This is police business.” There was another sigh. “I’m spitting into the wind, aren’t I?”
“A little bit.”
“That’s what I thought.” And he hung up.
I hung up too and spent the next few minutes deciding what I was going to wear in the morning when Amos came to pick up the cigar box. I had a nice miniskirt with a floral print on it, and it would go great with a pink top I owned. I looked down at my feet. They were baby smooth, but my toenails needed new polish. I would have to do that tonight before bed.
“How’re those stories coming along?” Klee asked me.
“Getting right on it. Klee, if you hear from Silas, can you let me talk to him? I’m worried about him.”
“He’s got his phone off. He goes dark when he’s got a hot lead. He’s determined to nail New Sun Petroleum to the wall.”
“I hope he’s being careful.”
“Once Silas was reporting on the nuclear waste,” Jack said. “And those nuclear guys met him out in the forest about five miles from here, knocked him out, threw him into their trunk and drove him into the desert in the basin. They dumped him way out there. Old Silas survived drinking his own pee and eating cactus. For five days. He still wears the suit he wore in the desert.”
“He walked for five days back to town?” I asked.
“No, he didn’t get to town. He was way out there. Boone found him. Isn’t that right, Klee?”
“For four days, I had the Navajo trackers looking for him,” she said. “My no-good cousins. Then, I fired them and asked Boone to find him. It took him half a day.”
“Boone? The Boone who lives here?” In a condemned part of the house, filled with trash?
“He spends a lot of time in the basin,” Jack explained.
“Jack, get back to work. We’re behind,” Klee complained.
“Klee got me out of school until Silas is back to his general beat,” Jack whispered to me.
“How old are you?”
“Fifteen. But I’ve been in the paper biz for four years.”
He was a cute boy, and he looked familiar. “What’s your last name, Jack?”
“Goodnight.”
That was it. He looked like a younger, miniature version of Amos Goodnight.
“Is Amos your…?” I asked.
“Father? No. He’s a cousin. We have a really big family. We make up a good part of the town. But we had nothing to do with Daisy.”
“Daisy?”
“You know. The giraffe.”
“Am I the only one trying to get a paper out?” Klee demanded in a quiet but very firm voice.
I put my notes on the desk, and Jack and I started typing. I worked on the fish story first because it was a lot more straightforward. I led the story with the ladies squealing in pleasure as the fish ate away at their calloused feet. Then, I added in some details about how many women were there and what Mabel was trying to accomplish. Then, I added in some colorful quotes and ended with details on when the next round of fish pedicures was going to take place.
I printed out the story and handed it to Klee, who handed it to Jack. He picked up a red pen and went at it, like he was painting a masterpiece. I broke out in a sweat, watching him cover the page in red. When he was finally done, he handed it to Klee.
“Good job,” he told me with a smile.
I shook my head and started the next story. Journalism was a head scratcher.
Writing the UFOs story was a lot more fun. I had a ton of good quotes from Norton, and the whole history of the UFOs invasion in the fifties was fascinating. After I finished the article, I printed it out and handed it to Jack.
He held the red pen poised over the paper and started reading to himself. A wide smile broke out on his face, and then he began to laugh. He laughed and laughed and laughed. When he finished reading, he looked up with tears streaming down his face. He hadn’t marked a word with his red pen.
“That was awesome!” he exclaimed. “I love the stuff about the mob. That’s so perfect. And the Andromedans and the Ziplocs? Classic! Can I save this and show it around? Where’s the real article?”
My face dropped, and I broke out into a sweat. “What do you mean? That’s the real article.”
“Ha! Funny one. Nah, where’s the real one?”
I stared at the paper on his desk.
“Oh,” he said after a moment. “Well, don’t worry. We can fix it.” He took out all of the Norton quotes except for three. “It’s not about the aliens invading. You see?” he explained, patiently. “It’s about the shop having a sale. So, we put in about the sale and the inventory, a little about the history of the store and the owner with one or two colorful quotes. See?”
I walked around the desk and stood behind him, watching him write an entirely different story in red between the black letters. “There you go. It wasn’t hard,” he said and handed it to Klee. “When you get more experience, you’ll input all the changes yourself. For now, Klee does it faster.”
“That’s for sure,” Klee said under her breath.
“Thank you, Jack. I’m going to make you cookies. Do you like cookies?” I said.
“Do I ever!”
He was the nicest fifteen-year-old boy I had ever met. He deserved a lot of cookies. But when I went to the kitchen, I realized I didn’t have the ingredients to make cookies, and I didn’t have a car to go shopping with or my wallet to pay for it.
Suddenly, I was exhausted. The day had been five days’ worth of stress, trauma, and anxiety. But I had been productive, too. I had reported on and written two articles, and I had brought food to a grieving family. An insomniac like me is always tired, but when exhaustion hits like it was hitting me, it offered the happy possibility that I might be able to get some sleep. I took a short bathroom break and then snuggled under the covers of my bed and closed my eyes.
The second my eyes closed, however, my sleepiness stepped aside, making room for my worry about Silas. If he had been the true
target for murder, he was in real danger. I had tried to get in touch with him, but he was nowhere to be found, and his phone was turned off. He might be back in the basin, but this time, he might not have been left alive, and Boone might not be able to find him.
Boone. Maybe I should ask him to help me find Silas before something bad happened to him, I thought. Or Amos. Amos could put out an alert and have his deputies find him. I should have told him on the phone, but all I could do was blather on like an idiot. Having a crush was a pain in the butt.
I tossed and turned for another fifteen minutes, trying to clear my mind so I could get some sleep, but it was no use. I threw the covers off of me, made the bed, and walked out into the courtyard. The sun had set, and it was dark. It was a hard decision to make between knocking on Boone’s door for help or to call Amos again, but as I stood in the courtyard with the dogs at my feet, the decision was made for me.
Klee stumbled out of the Gazette office with her hands outstretched, as if she had turned blind. It was the first time that I had seen her lose her composure, her face was highlighted by the light coming from the office, filled with panic and something else. Despair.
I took her hand. “Klee? What is it? Are you okay?”
“Silas,” she croaked. “It’s Silas. He’s been murdered.”
Part III: Silas is Attacked by a Flying Saucer, and Matilda Wants Revenge
UFO Falls on Local Reporter
by Jack Goodnight
Goodnight Gazette Senior Reporter Silas Miller is in serious but stable condition at the Goodnight Clinic after a UFO fell on him Tuesday evening. Mr. Miller suffered a concussion and several broken bones. He’s expected to remain in the clinic through the weekend.
“They tried to kill me. It’s not the first time someone tried to kill a story by killing me, but you can’t kill Silas Miller by throwing a flying saucer on my head. I’m a lot tougher than a UFO,” Mr. Miller said from his hospital bed.
The UFO in question was situated on top of the Goodnight UFOs shop. It was a landmark in town, covering the store’s roof and half of a city block. It spun around when an ON button was pushed inside the store.
According to Mr. Miller, he was set to meet a confidential source on the roof when he was pushed off. A minute later, the flying saucer fell off the roof, too, landing on him.
“The horror! I saw the UFO fall to the ground. It was like losing a baby,” Norton Perkins, owner of Goodnight UFOs said at the scene.
The UFO was said to cost the price of a house, and it was a one-of-a-kind feature in American retail. The sheriff’s department said it was investigating the accident as a crime, but there were no suspects at the time of this article’s writing.
The thirty-percent sale at Goodnight UFOs is still going on, according to Mr. Perkins. “We promise nothing will fall on your head. Just walk around the flying saucer. We’ll give a free moon keychain for every purchase of twenty dollars or more. We may be in the middle of an intergalactic war, so get your extraterrestrial merchandise now,” Mr. Perkins said.
Chapter 7
As usual, I didn’t sleep Tuesday night, but neither did half of the town. News of Silas’s death had been premature, but we didn’t know that when we rushed to Goodnight UFOs. When we got there, it looked like all of Norton’s fantasies and nightmares had come true, right by his front door. At first glance, it seemed that a giant UFO had crashed, like it was the second arrival of the Vegans, just as Norton predicted.
But it became clear pretty quickly that the flying saucer on the ground had been the thing on the roof, and that somehow, it had fallen off and hit Silas dead on. When Klee and I arrived, the paramedics were already working on him, but he was still unconscious. They quickly took him to the clinic.
“It’s like the entire staff of the Gazette is being targeted,” Klee said to me, as we watched the ambulance drive away. She eyed me up and down, as if I had something to do with the demise of the Gazette’s reporters. She had a point. I arrived and then everyone started to drop dead.
“It’s not my fault,” I told her. “I’m not a jinx. I didn’t put a hex on the paper.”
Klee put her hands on her hips. “Just because I’m a Navajo doesn’t mean I believe in jinxes and hexes.”
“I didn’t mean…”
She waved her hands. “No time for that. Let’s get to the clinic.”
As we left the scene, two sheriff vehicles arrived. I watched as Amos’s tall frame got out of his SUV and sauntered toward the flying saucer.
Klee and I spent the rest of the night at the clinic. She left when Silas finally woke at four in the morning to tell us about the “bastards who pushed me off the goddamned roof.” But I stayed on, since I didn’t sleep anyway. Klee was going to go home and change and then head back to the paper and feed the dogs.
Silas looked like a mess. His head was bandaged, and he had two legs in casts and traction, and one arm in a cast. But the near-death experience had sparked something in Silas. He was nothing short of euphoric. His attempted murder proved to him that he was a real journalist. A dangerous one. Someone important enough to throw off a roof.
He was also excited by the idea that it was a second attempt, the first with the poisoned cigar that had been inhaled by poor Jimmy. “They can’t get me,” he told me with earnest glee, as he pushed the button for more morphine. “I’m immortal. Do you know why?”
“No. Why?” I asked.
“Because I’m the press, baby. I’m the First Amendment. I’m democracy and all that’s the best of this wonderful and terrible country of ours. Do you understand?”
No, I didn’t understand at all. One man was dead, and another almost killed. I wasn’t sure that a water rights story involving frackers was worth a life. “I guess so?” I said like a question.
“And that means that you’re immortal, too, boss. You get me? You’re immortal. And now you’re going to be my eyes and ears. My legs, boss. You’re going to be my legs.”
I tried to swallow, but I couldn’t. “I’m not sure I can be your legs,” I said.
“You don’t want to find out who killed Jimmy?” he asked. “You don’t want to find out who tossed me off the roof of Goodnight UFOs?”
“Yes,” I breathed. My pulse began to race, and my breathing grew ragged. I wanted to find that out more than anything. It was like a disease, like a crack addiction, but with me it was simple curiosity. And a matter of justice, too.
Oh my God, Silas was contagious. I had been bitten by the justice bug. I had whodunititis.
“I do want to find out.”
“You’re in luck, boss. I know who did it. Wade and Steve from New Sun Petroleum.”
I pointed at his bandaged head. “I knew it. Did you see them on the roof?”
“No. I was ambushed. I didn’t see a thing. But it makes sense. My story was going to hang them out to dry. Ruin them. They couldn’t afford to let me live.”
“You want me to call the sheriff?”
“No, we need proof. Amos is irritating about proof. I wish Deputy Sheriff Adam Beatman was in charge. He doesn’t care a thing about proof. Are you ready to accept this mission, boss?”
“Just like Tom Cruise,” I said. I could hear the Mission Impossible music play in my head, and my pulse sped up.
“You want breakfast?” Silas asked. “They make a good scramble, even if they push the whole wheat toast thing like it’s the cure for cancer and heart disease or something.”
“I could go for a little something.”
“Maybe we can convince them to give us white toast.”
Faye surprised me at seven o’clock. “Adele, Nora, and I heard that you’re out of a car. So, we’re going to take turns being your right-hand man. Klee says you’re going to find Silas’s almost killer. She says you have experience with psychos.”
I asked her to take me to the scene of the crime. Even though there had been nothing at the spot where Jimmy had been killed, I had more hopes for the roof of Goodnight UFOs. Pushin
g a large man like Silas hard enough to send him flying probably meant that the roof had been disturbed and maybe Wade had left some signs proving that he was guilty.
We drove over there. Faye turned the corner and had to drive around the large flying saucer that had landed in the middle of the road. The street was packed with parked cars, and a group of lookie-loos were inspecting it, hanging back behind the police tape that surrounded it, as if it was an exhibit at a zoo.
“Amos isn’t letting me repair the shop until the investigation is over, but we’ve never had so much business,” Faye explained. “Norton’s hoping the investigation takes years.”
She turned into the alley and parked behind the store. We went inside, and I could hear the store buzzing with activity. “This way to the roof,” Faye said, and I followed her up the stairs two flights to the roof.
It was covered in tar paper and gravel, a cheap roof, damaged now that the giant flying saucer had been ripped off its moorings. We stood over the broken metal that it had been attached to. “It was crudely done,” she told me, inspecting the damage. “They should have used an angle grinder, but it was cut with a hacksaw. And see how there are different marks? I think the person who did this came back here more than once. They didn’t do it all at once.”
“Or maybe it was more than one person,” I suggested.
“That’s a good point. Klee was right. You’re like a detective.”
I loved the compliment. For the first time in my life, I felt important. I felt like I was doing what I was good at. Snooping.
“So, maybe Steve helped Wade,” I said.
“Steve and Wade from New Sun Petroleum? I think they would know how to use an angle grinder.”
My face dropped. “They would?”
“But maybe they wanted to use a hacksaw,” she said, obviously trying to save my feelings. “They’re men, so they’re dumb. So, anything’s possible.”
