by Penny Warner
“Sluice, listen carefully,” I said gently. “Someone shut me in there. Did you see anyone?” It hurt to talk from all the screaming I’d done.
Sluice shook his head. His mouth hung open, saliva lined his lower lip. He reeked of alcohol and cigar smoke.
“I din’t do it! I din’t do it! I heard the screamin’. I thought it was that damn cat. I din’t do nothin’.”
I looked at the terrified man, not knowing what to say. I hadn’t had a lot of experience dealing with old mentally challenged prospectors.
“Sluice, it’s okay,” I reassured him. “Someone locked me in there and you got me out. You saved my life.” I wiped the bloody hand on my pant leg and felt a new bruise on my thigh. My pants were missing a button and my top was disheveled and torn at the neck.
“I din’t do nothin’.” He turned away and shuffled quickly out of the Selection Room. I was left alone with a roomful of caskets.
And the memory of a lingering smell. Mints? Mouthwash? Or did chloroform smell like Tic Tacs?
I brushed myself off, and looked around for something to wrap my bleeding hand. The mortuary was dim, except for a few night-lights. Shadows seemed to dance in the empty room, and I shivered. Whoever it was that locked me in here could still be around. I headed for Celeste’s office, wondering how—and when—Sluice had gotten out of the hospital.
Celeste’s door was locked. I debated just leaving the damn place, but returned to the lobby where I located a pay phone in a far corner by the restrooms. I dialed a number using my credit card and waited a few seconds before speaking.
“This is Connor. If you can hear me, I need you to come over to the mortuary as soon as possible. It’s urgent. I’ll be waiting outside. God, I hope you’re listening. Please hurry!” I repeated the message two more times, then I hung up the phone.
I left a similar message at the sheriff’s office, then hung up the phone again. I stumbled out the front door. My hands were shaking and I felt my heart still beating rapidly. Halfway down the mortuary driveway, I saw Dan Smith running up the slight incline. I guessed he was breathless by the way his chest heaved up and down rapidly.
“What’s going on? I got your phone call! What the hell’s up?”
I looked at him. “Dan, where have you been? What have you been doing the past—” I checked my watch—God, two hours “—the past two hours?”
“Your hands are shaking. You’re bleeding! Connor, what’s going on—”
“Please, Dan, just answer. Where were you?”
He shrugged his now familiar one-shouldered shrug. “I don’t know. I … let’s see. I cleaned up Boone’s office, switched on his little TV and watched some Hitchcock movie. They’ve been running them all week. North by Northwest. Had some microwave popcorn. Started to doze off. Then you called.”
I leaned into him, trying to smell his breath. But I must have given him the wrong impression, because he took my shoulders and pulled me closer. He kissed me.
The kiss lasted a little longer than strictly necessary for my scientific purposes. But you gotta do what you gotta do.
“Popcorn,” I said, and smacked my lips.
Dan frowned. “That’s all you can say?”
“You taste like popcorn. And you smell like popcorn.”
“You got a problem with popcorn? I could change to potato chips. Chew some Dentyne. Gargle a little Brut.”
I laughed. “No, you taste just fine. I mean—” I’m sure I blushed. I could feel the tingling on my chest and neck as heat fanned out like a spreading virus.
He tried to stifle a grin but couldn’t quite manage it. I took his hands and lifted them up to my face, then took a big whiff. They smelled like popcorn, too. With butter. And salt. And a hint of pine-scented soap. He must have thought I had some kind of hand fetish. He might have been right. Hands are as expressive as faces to me.
“So what’s all this about?” he asked, not letting go of my hands when I tried to release him.
I explained my recent adventure, and the last thing I remembered before I awoke in the casket—the smell of mint and chemicals.
“God, Connor! So you thought I might have …” Dan let go of my hands as he trailed off.
“No, of course not,” I said a bit too quickly. “But I had to rule you out, you know, just to be sure.”
“Connor … don’t you know me yet?” He lifted my scraped and bloody hand and stroked the back of it gently.
I said nothing. I didn’t know him any better than I knew anyone else in this town. But he didn’t smell like Tic Tacs or chloroform, so I figured he must not have been the one who locked me into Edgar Allan Poe’s nightmare.
We stopped by the sheriff’s office to make a report, but only the dispatcher was in. For some reason she hadn’t received my message, so I left a note for the sheriff to call me at home. Dan and I walked back to the hotel. I washed off the blood in the hall bathroom while Dan waited in my office. When I returned, he was glancing around at my books and posters and comic books.
“Nice place you got here.” He pulled out a copy of Robert Louis Stevenson’s The Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.
I wasn’t interested in small talk. “Whoever did this had to have had a key to my diner. It was locked up tight—I’m sure of it. The odd thing is, whoever it was could have killed me right away, but didn’t. So why was I locked up in that coffin?”
“You probably would have suffocated in there eventually,” Dan said.
I gathered my thoughts for a moment. “Everything points to the mortuary. The casket, the trocar, the death of a man married to three widows who used Memory Kingdom for their dead husbands’ services.”
Dan put the book back on the shelf and sat down in the chair opposite my desk.
“Maybe someone wanted to scare you.”
“Why? What have I done?”
“Maybe they don’t want you writing anything in your newspaper. Maybe you’re too nosy. And maybe you’re onto something and the killer knows it, even if you don’t.”
“But I’m not! I don’t know anything! I don’t know who killed Lacy or James Russell. I don’t know who may have killed your brother, or who pushed Sluice into that hole, or who tried to suffocate me! I don’t know a thing!” I was confused and angry, but also on the verge of tears.
To keep from crying—and to release some of my anger—I slammed my hand down on the desk, which was a mistake. The impact caused a newly formed scab to break open, and my hand started bleeding again. I grabbed a rumpled paper napkin lying on my desk and stanched the bleeding wound. At least my poison oak wasn’t itching, I thought, as the porous paper filled with blood.
And then, watching the paper napkin slowly change from white to red, it came to me. I did know something after all. Actually, I knew plenty. All I had to do was come up with a way to prove it.
Memory Kingdom might have been a gold mine for some. The Eureka! was my gold mine of opportunity.
It was getting late—only a few hours until my newspaper deadline—when I opened the file to the lead story that was supposed to run in the morning and keyed in a fresh headline.
IDENTITY OF LACY PENZANCE’S KILLER REVEALED!
I should study the tabloids more. I began typing:
Lacy Penzance, found dead early Tuesday morning with a stab wound in her chest, was not a suicide as originally reported by the Mother Lode Monitor.
Sheriff Elvis Mercer is now calling Penzance’s death a homicide. The murder weapon was discovered to be a trocar, a mortuary tool used in embalming the dead.
After a lengthy and thorough investigation by the sheriff’s department, the unidentified killer remains at large.
The suspect may also be responsible for the slaying of James Russell, a transient who resided temporarily at the Mark Twain Slept Here Bed-and-Breakfast Inn, owned by Beau Pascal. Russell was found Thursday, also dead from a chest wound, made by an antique mining pick. Further details are being withheld pending the investigation.
&
nbsp; A recent anonymous note sent to the offices of the Eureka! late last night has provided important information regarding the killer’s identity. A lost journal written by the late Ms. Penzance just before her death indicates—”
And that’s all she wrote.
It was a cheap journalistic shot, but it just might work. I faxed the new edition to the printing office in Whiskey Slide and had them substitute it for the frog fluff that was about to go to press. The paper would be ready at the crack of dawn and all over town by breakfast. There was nothing left to do but go home to bed, and hope I didn’t have any more unexpected company.
I thought about stopping by Dan’s office to see if he wanted to sleep on my couch for a change, but decided I was being paranoid. I wasn’t going to let the night stalker take over my life.
Then again, maybe that wasn’t it at all. Maybe it had more to do with Dan than any intruder. Still, I wasn’t ready for Dan’s further intrusion either. I was used to my life the way it was—alone. I didn’t want any entanglements. Attraction was nothing more than a hormonal imbalance—wasn’t that what someone had recently said?
But Dan, either reading my mind—or hearing my footsteps—caught me as I headed for the stairs and insisted on escorting me home.
“Look, Connor. You’ve had two break-ins, an attempt on your life. You’re either staying here with me tonight on the couch, or I’m going home with you to check the place out.”
I didn’t argue. In truth, I found myself surprisingly relieved. Dan drove me home in his Bronco. I unlocked the door to an exuberant Casper, who licked me and everything else she encountered in her excitement. I had been worried about her and was anxious to see if she was all right.
“Hi, girl!” I gave her the full welcome, letting her slurp the makeup, dirt, and sweat from my face. “You’re okay, huh? What did they do to you, Casper girl? Huh? What happened?”
Casper said a bunch of things I couldn’t understand. Her lips were extremely difficult to read. But I gathered from her body language that she was fine, damn glad to see me, and eager for a midnight snack.
While I searched the expansive short-order kitchen for something edible, Dan took a look around the diner and my living quarters in the back. “Find anything?” I called out, while locating my treasured but mismatched Fiesta bowls. I pulled down a rose, a yellow, and a turquoise.
“All clear,” Dan said, after reentering the kitchen. He slid into one of the newly upholstered vinyl seats and rested his arms on the back of the booth. Casper leapt up next to him. I signaled for her to get down and set a bowl of cereal on the floor for her. I set one on the table for Dan and joined him at the booth.
Dan didn’t comment on my unusual living quarters, just glanced at the decor between mouthfuls of Corn Pops. When we finished, he followed me into the back living space.
“Interesting place you have here,” he finally said, rifling through a half-dozen comics that lay on one of the blond wood end tables. “Crusader Rabbit. Heckle and Jeckle. Richie Rich. I remember him. Got any Green Hornet?”
“No, that’s a guy comic. I like girl comics. Lulu, Little Audrey, Little Lotta, Katy Keene, Betty and Veronica.”
“I used to read Archie, until I discovered Slime Monsters from Planet Zero, and Pond Scum Man, and It Came From the Frozen Tundra.”
“You’re joking, right? I never heard of them.”
He smiled.
I yawned.
“Sorry. Am I keeping you up?”
“No, no. It’s been a day, you know? I think it’s catching up with me.”
“Yeah, all right. I, uh, I better get going. I’ll see you tomorrow.” He looked at the couch then at me.
“Thanks for taking me home.”
I walked him to the door. He hesitated for a moment, looking at his shoes, then glanced up at me, reached out, and took my brushed and swollen hand for a brief moment. “You going to be all right? I don’t like leaving you alone.”
I hoped to distract him from the full blush that had enveloped my body. He started to lean in but I turned away. He stepped back.
“I—” What could I say? I wasn’t ready? I didn’t want to get involved? I didn’t know him well enough? What other excuses could I come up with?
He patted my hand. “I’ll see you tomorrow.”
I pressed my lips together as he stepped out. I closed the door behind him. My hands trembled as I reached out to bolt the new locks.
After securing the diner, I pulled off my rumpled clothes and lead-weight Doc Martens, slipped into silk boxers and my oversized T-shirt with a night sky that glowed in the dark, and tried to fall asleep. I tossed for over an hour before pirates—who all looked like Dan—carted me off to their island hideaway.
By eight A.M. the Eureka! was all over Flat Skunk and the rest of the Mother Lode chain like a bad odor. My lead story was the topic of conversation on everyone’s lips at the Nugget—at least the lips I could read. And everyone was complaining.
“What happened to your newspaper?” French asked, as I entered the café. He held it up for me to see. “Printing problems?”
“What?” I asked, taking the paper from him. The lead story and slug looked great. But the story ended abruptly with a recipe for frog’s legs in pesto sauce.
“Oh, my God! They mixed up the stories! Where’s the rest of the article?”
I scanned the front page frantically, looking for answers to the horrendous mistake.
I should have gotten an Oscar for that performance.
“Goddammit! Idiots. Great. Now I’m going to have to run the story again tomorrow, with the right copy. The biggest story of my career. Shit!”
French chuckled as he retrieved his paper from my hands. I sat down in an empty seat and read over a copy that had been left by the previous diner, pretending to steam over the ineptitude of my printer.
But it had turned out perfectly.
In a few minutes Dan entered the café and joined me. He barely managed not to laugh at the newspaper error.
“Goofed, huh?” he said simply while Jilda poured his coffee. I gave him a flat smile. I was about to order a bagel when Mickey burst in looking excited and flushed. “Connor! There you are!”
He came over to our table and sat down next to me, opposite Dan. He turned to face me. “Great headline! It sounds like you got a lead on who killed Lacy Penzance. What happened to the rest of the story?”
“The printer screwed up. I can’t confirm it yet, but—” I leaned in toward Mickey. “Someone sent me an anonymous note about one of Lacy’s journals that’s been missing. I think it’s the key to everything. I’m going to have to redo the paper and print another issue tomorrow with the corrections. And the new information. But it’s going to cost me.”
“What does it say about the journal? Does the sheriff know?”
“Actually I don’t know. Not yet, anyway. I won’t be able to get it until tonight. At least, that’s what the note said. This was all supposed to be in the paper.” I hoped I sounded exasperated.
“Connor, if you’re withholding important evidence, you really need to turn it over to me or the sheriff.”
I looked around the café to see if anyone was paying attention to us. Unlike myself, everyone was minding their own business. I spoke what I hoped was softly.
“I honestly don’t have anything yet, Mickey. But I should, soon. The story was only a teaser. I was planning to do a follow-up tomorrow.”
“Trying to sell newspapers, eh? Sounds risky, Connor.” Mickey nodded slowly, putting the new pieces to the puzzle together while picking at the dried poison oak scab on his arm. It made me itch, and I rubbed at my own drying patch.
“So where did you get this latest information?” Mickey asked.
“Uh, it came in over the TTY. I don’t even know who made the call.”
“Damn!” he said.
Dan signaled Jilda for more coffee. I had almost forgotten he was there.
“Mickey, you know Dan Smith?”
Dan glanced at me, then back at Mickey, who said nothing more about Boone. Had Dan not notified the sheriff of his brother’s death as he said he had?
“You staying in town for a while?”
“Don’t know yet.”
The deputy narrowed his eyes. “Don’t suppose you knew that fellow who was killed over at the Mark Twain? Name of Russell?”
Dan shook his head.
“Funny. We found a fingerprint there on a piece of paper. Identification just came back. Can’t say much about it, but it might be a good idea if you didn’t leave town for while, Mr. Smith.” He emphasized the “Smith.”
Before I could sputter anything coherent, Mickey stood.
“Well, I gotta run. Things are coming to a head on our side, too. How about that raincheck, Connor? See you tonight? Maybe we can figure all this out over pizza and beer.”
I nodded vaguely. My mind had suddenly been distracted.
“I’ll call you,” he may have said before he left.
Dan and I were back at my office before we continued our conversation.
“Dan, I thought you told the sheriff about your brother,” I said accusingly. I was getting tired of Dan’s mystery.
“I said I called the sheriff. He already knew about Boone—at least, he knew about the floater in Rio Vista. I just didn’t mention I knew the ID.”
“Why in God’s name not?”
He shrugged that now irritating shrug of his. “I wanted to see what played out. I didn’t figure it would do any good at that point. Besides, I wanted to do some investigating on my own.” Dan sat down across from my desk. I remained standing, arms crossed, brows knitted. It was my toughest look.
“And what about those prints Mickey was referring to?”
He leaned back in the chair and folded his hands across his chest. “I have no idea. I was never there. I didn’t even know the guy.”
“That first day I met you, I had a napkin with my mystery notes on it. I went next door to see Boone, but you were there instead. Do you remember it?”
