by Elise Sax
“Geez, why do kids always get the short end of the stick?” he grumbled.
“Jack Goodnight, I know for a fact that your mother does your laundry,” Adele said with her hands on her hips. “Ask your boss who does her laundry.”
“Who does your laundry?” he asked me.
I raised my hand.
“Okay, fine.” He slid the plate over and shifted seats. I sat next to Boone, who was eating steak and eggs, toast, green chilies, pancakes, French fries, and a hot fudge sundae. He didn’t have an ounce of fat anywhere on him. He was big and muscular, but he seemed totally unconcerned with how he looked. As usual, his clothes were covered in a fine layer of dust. They weren’t dirty, but they were dusty, like he had rolled around on the ground. His thick, dark blond hair was mussed, and his shirtsleeves were rolled up to just below his elbows.
“French fries are good today,” he said to me, pointing to the fries with his fork. “Nice and crispy.”
My stomach growled. “I’ll get you a good breakfast,” Adele told me, not waiting for me to order.
“Go ahead,” Boone said to me with his mouth full. “Grab a fry. You know you want to.”
I took a fry. “Do you always eat like this?” I asked him.
“No. Normally I eat a big breakfast. Most important meal of the day.”
He cut a big piece of steak, dipped it in his runny eggs and plopped some chilies on it before putting it in his mouth. My stomach growled, again.
“Is she staring at me?” Boone asked Jack.
“Yep.”
“It’s because I’m the best-looking man in town.”
“It’s because you have egg yolk on your chin,” I lied. I liked being with him. He made me feel comfortable, even though my overabundance of trust issues had me doubting him up and down. Like maybe he was a killer, kidnapper, and shooter of dogs. Doubts like that.
But watching his handsome face scarf down five pounds of food made him endearing to me, and no matter how I tried, I couldn’t picture him as the nemesis of the girl in the forest. And what would it hurt to befriend Boone? I was off men for the foreseeable future, and my big crush on Amos Goodnight was going nowhere.
So, what would it hurt for me to share Boone’s fries?
So to speak.
I took another one. He was right. It was crispy.
“I gotta go,” Jack said, stuffing the last bite of his pancakes into his mouth. “I have three more stories to write today. This is so much better than geometry. I’m going to see if Klee can get me out of school forever.”
“No, you’re not,” Boone said. “You’re going to graduate and then go onto college. You can’t be a journalist if you’re ignorant.”
“But Uncle Boone…”
“Get out of here, or I’ll make you pay for your breakfast.”
Jack bolted like the step stool was on fire and pushed his way out of the crowded diner. Adele put a plate in front of me. “Steak and eggs. I saw how you were eyeing Boone’s. I’ve eyed Boone’s steak and eggs for years, but he never shared his fries with me.” She winked at me.
“Hey, can I get some hot sauce?” a man called from another table.
“Keep your shirt on!” Adele yelled back. “I’ve only got two hands and two feet. I’m not one of your Vegan aliens, you know.”
When she left, I made a show of cutting my steak. “Uncle Boone?” I asked.
“Term of endearment.”
“How long have you known Jack?”
“You have a lot of questions today.”
He was a man of mystery. I didn’t know anything about him, and he wanted to keep it that way. “Amos tells me more about him, and he barely speaks.”
Boone smiled and wiped the rest of the eggs off his plate with a slice of toast. “Nice one, Matilda. Low blow. I like that. Low and blow,” he added arching an eyebrow at me. I took another bite of my steak and washed it down with some coffee.
“Are you flirting with me?”
“No.”
“Good because I’m finished with men. I want nothing more to do with them.”
“Really? So no more cowboy hat and gold star? Best news I’ve had in weeks.”
“Yes. I mean, no. I mean, what the hell?” A young man in a booth caught my attention. He was showing something small and beige to his dining companion. Holy crap. It was Jamie, the chicken McNugget thief, and he had the Lincoln nugget.
“Get him! Get him!” I shouted standing and pointing at Jamie with my fork.
“Is it him? The shooter?” Boone asked. He turned around to see who I was pointing at. I was too surprised and excited to answer him.
“I see you! I see you! Get him!” I shouted.
A veil of terror fell over the McNugget thief’s face. He clenched the chicken in his hand and shot out of the booth. Boone flew into action. Jamie had a hard time running away because the diner was filled with people. Boone had an easier time because he forcibly pushed them out of the way.
“Stop!” Boone yelled at him.
“Out of my way!” Jamie yelled, just as Boone reached him and tackled him like he was at the Superbowl. Jamie went flying onto a table with Boone on his back. The momentum pushed them forward, sailing over the one table and onto the next, knocking plates and cups onto the floor like they were playing a crazy bowling game. After the third table, they fell to the floor with Boone on top of Jamie.
Boone turned him over. Jamie held the chicken nugget in his outstretched hand. “No! It’s mine!”
“You attacked a woman! And a dog!” Boone yelled at him.
I stumbled over overturned tables and chairs to reach them. “The chicken McNugget!” I yelled in my best aha voice. “I found it! I found it!”
“It’s mine!” Jamie yelled.
“What’re you talking about?” Boone said.
“The Abraham Lincoln chicken McNugget,” I said. I had solved the case. I did what the sheriff’s department couldn’t. I was a hero.
“The chicken McNugget,” Boone said. “Sonofabitch.”
I looked down at Jamie’s hand. “Wow. In person, it really does look like Lincoln.”
The sheriff department was called, and Wendy showed up to arrest Jamie and confiscate the chicken. I stayed back to help Adele clean up, but I didn’t have to do much. The alien lovers were so hungry, that they righted the tables and picked up the plates and cups in a couple minutes.
Boone, on the other hand, was going to take a lot longer to clean up. He was covered in food and angry as spit at me. I followed him out of the diner, as he marched down the street. “I’m sorry,” I said. “I was so shocked that I found the nugget that I couldn’t be clear to you.”
“I thought it was the shooter.”
“Well, he was a criminal. That’s close to a shooter.”
Boone turned and pushed me in the alcove in front of the porcelain cat shop. He put his hand on the window above my head, and he wiped his face with his other hand. “You’re radioactive, lady.”
“That’s an exaggeration.”
“No. You’re Chernobyl. You’re Fat Boy.”
“I’m sensing that you’re insulting me.”
“Are you involved with Amos Goodnight?”
“What?”
“It’s a simple question. I’m not speaking in a foreign language.”
The space between his eyes was filled with lines, and his face took on an anguished quality. “I’m not involved with him,” I said. But I didn’t say that Amos’s erection had been pressing against my inseam the night before, and that he’d kissed me so well that my head almost exploded. And then he remembered his dead wife, and…no, I was not involved with him.
Boone took a deep breath, and his face relaxed, slightly. “Does he know that you’re not involved with him?”
“It was his idea. His wife…”
Boone nodded. “So, he wants to be involved with you, but his wife.”
“Something like that. Yes.”
He took another deep breath. “C
omplicated.”
“Is it?”
“Oh, yeah.”
Chapter 11
Somehow, since I had decided I was done with men, I had never been so un-done with men in my life. It was raining men all over me. Not that any of it was going anywhere. But there were two gorgeous, tall, hunky blond men in town who wanted me bad. And in a gender-bending role reversal, instead of the girl being anguished about it, the men were the ones who couldn’t cope.
I didn’t understand the dynamic. I couldn’t figure out what was going on between them and how I fit in to whatever battle they were waging against each other. Normally, I would have stopped at nothing to find out, but I was distracted by murder and attempted murder, flying saucers, giraffes, being shot at, and a vanishing girl.
Halfway to my car, my cellphone rang. “Hello, Klee,” I said.
“Get to the bank, get the story and come back here,” Klee told me. “I need a thousand words.”
“A thousand words? That’s a big one.”
“Yes. Get over there while the scene is still hot.”
A hot scene. I was going to write a story about a hot scene. “What hot scene? By the way, I caught the McNugget thief.”
“Great. That’s another three hundred words. You’re going to be busy today.”
The bank was on the other side of the Plaza. As I walked into the bank, I heard sirens coming my way. Inside, the bank was empty except for Nora, and an old man who was hunched over a rickety desk, reading the Gazette.
Nora waved at me, and I walked over. “Hi! Are you opening an account? We have a deal on scratch and sniff checks. Two thousand free checks with a new checking account. You interested?”
Hmmm. Was that what Klee wanted me to write a thousand words about? “I’m on assignment. I’m probably supposed to write about the scratch and sniff checks.” I took my notebook and pen out.
“Oh, okay. You want to scratch and sniff them, like for research?”
“Do you have strawberry?”
“Yep. Strawberry, coconut, and kiwi.”
The sirens came closer and finally, three Sheriff vehicles parked in front of the bank. “I wonder what they’re doing here,” I said.
“They’re probably here about the bank robbery. Have you gotten any further with your snooping? I’ve got some time tonight if you want me to help you break into Rocco’s house. I know his alarm code.”
“You do? That might come in handy. Wait a minute. What bank robbery?”
Deputy Wendy Ackerman and a young, serious patrolman wearing dark glasses burst through the front door with their guns drawn. “Freeze!” they shouted.
I put my hands up. Nora checked her nails and chewed on a hangnail.
Amos marched in behind his deputies, shaking his head. “For the love of God,” he bellowed. “Put your guns away.”
His eyes slid to me for the briefest moment and then moved on to Nora. “Hi, Amos,” she said.
“What’s this about a bank robbery, Nora?” he asked.
“He got twenty grand.”
I gasped. She didn’t act like she had just been in a bank robbery. Maybe she was in shock, I thought. “Are you okay?” I asked her.
She blinked twice. “Oh, yeah. We get robbed about twice a month. You want his contact information, Amos?”
He craned his neck, and cocked his head to the side, as if he was trying to hear better. “You have his contact information?”
She gestured to us to follow her behind the bank teller window. She handed Amos two pieces of paper. “It’s my new strategy. I told him in order to rob the bank he had to provide two forms of identification. His driver’s license was expired, but I accepted it. That and his credit card.”
I peeked around Amos to look at the paper. They were photocopies of a driver’s license and a credit card. “He just handed these over?” I asked.
“He was also interested in the scratch and sniff checks, but he didn’t have time to open an account.”
“Nora, you’re a genius,” I said.
“No, just bored. It’s been slow. None of the UFO business adds to our business. They’re strictly debit card users. They don’t even use our ATM.”
“We’ll get right on this,” Amos said. “It should be easy to track him down.”
“And if that doesn’t work, you can use the GPS tracker,” Nora said.
“There’s a GPS tracker?” Amos asked.
“I put it in the bag with the money bait. Oh, and there’s an exploding dye pack, too.”
Amos closed his eyes. “I think we’ll start with the GPS.” She punched some buttons on a computer while we waited. “Matilda,” he said and tipped his hat to me.
“Amos.”
He looked everywhere but at me. Boone was wrong. I wasn’t radioactive. I was Kryptonite. It took a couple seconds to track down the stolen money. After Amos left, I stuck around to get more details from Nora. Fifteen minutes later, Wendy called to tell Nora that the robber was in custody. The dye had blown up, turning him blue, and he was cleaning himself off in the do-it-yourself Goodnight Car Wash when Amos caught him. I was scared to write my first thousand-word article, but there was more than enough information to write a lot more than that.
“So, you want to open that checking account?” Nora asked after she gave me the full rundown.
“Sure. And about Rocco’s alarm code…”
Rocco lived east of town in a mansion on top of a large hill. He had acres of land. Not as many as Amos, but impressive nonetheless. I didn’t have to break in, because Rocco’s butler answered right away when I rang the doorbell.
I followed him into a cavernous living room, where Rocco was watching the cooking channel. He was pleasantly surprised when he saw me. “Wonderful,” he said, hugging me. “Have you had second thoughts about the parade? We need to make a big splash to show those alien-loving freaks what’s what.”
“Yes, I’ve been thinking about it.”
“Sit. Sit. Would you like a drink?”
The butler brought me water in a crystal goblet. “That’s water from Easter Island,” Rocco explained. “I co-own a spring there with Bezos.”
“It tastes good,” I said. It tasted like water. I never understood the purpose of designer water. My hand shook as I put the glass down on the coffee table. It was time to grill Rocco, and I was losing my nerve. I thought seriously about running away, but Silas would never let me live it down. I had to track down every lead to the big story. After all, I was the publisher of the Goodnight Gazette, and an earth-shattering, big news, news story could help push our paper into the black and my new scratch and sniff checking account into the black along with it.
“I might change my mind about riding the giraffe,” I began, lying through my teeth. “If you give me something in return.”
Rocco blinked. “I’ve got my sights on another woman.”
“No, I don’t mean that. I meant something else.”
“You mean money? How much do you want?”
“Really? You’d pay me?” That might be easier than trying to get a Pulitzer for the paper. I was about to agree to his deal, when I remembered why I was there. Murder and attempted murder. “I mean, no. No money. I want information. I want truth.”
“Oh.” He leaned back on his couch and rested his arms on the back of it. Power position. I had seen it on a TED Talk. “What kind of information?”
“I want to know what dirty dealing you have with Wade and New Sun Petroleum.”
His face hardened. He stared at me, unblinking. Fear creeped up my body. “I’m a businessman,” he said, finally, all friendliness gone from his voice. “I do business with many people and corporations. I’m afraid the details of that are confidential.”
“I don’t want to know about your business dealings. I want you to tell me that New Sun Petroleum murdered Jimmy Sanchez and pushed Silas off a building. I want proof, and I think you can give it to me.”
“And if I do that, you’ll ride the giraffe in the parad
e?”
I swallowed. “Yes.”
“Fine. I’ll see what I can do, but between you and me, I think you should look closer to home.”
“What do you mean?”
“I wouldn’t get too chummy with Boone. He’s a dangerous man. And unpredictable. What do you think he does when he leaves town for weeks on end? Nobody knows. But a man who has secrets like that can’t be trusted. He had means and opportunity.”
I tried to breathe, but my body shut down in shock. “What’s the motive?” I whispered.
“Who knows? You’re the newspaper woman. Find out.”
I left Rocco’s mansion, indescribably sad. I thought I was a woman with trust issues. I thought I was neurotic, traumatized by my marriage to a sociopath. But now my trust issues were being borne out by reality. Boone was not to be trusted.
But I wanted to trust him so much.
The rest of Thursday was a whirlwind of writing. I spent the day locked to Silas’s desk in the Gazette office, writing my two articles. Jack was in and out, juggling story after story. When we finally finished, Klee sent it all to the printer. While Jack was doing the reporting job, his friend was taking over the paperboy job.
I ordered pizza for Jack, Klee, and me to celebrate keeping the paper going, despite all the odds. We were doing well with the day-to-day stories, but I was no closer to making any headway on Jimmy’s murder and Silas’s attempted murder. Not to mention whoever had shot at me, and the vanishing girl.
I wondered where Amos was on her case, and at what point I was supposed take it seriously enough to start researching who she was and how to help her. Still not convinced that she was real and that my altitude sickness was playing tricks on my mind, I hadn’t pushed it, but the girl was constantly on my mind. She had asked for my help, and I hadn’t given it to her.
Besides that, she told me that I was in danger, too.
