by Debra Dixon
“So, you’re saying if I go, I get to be the boss of you?”
“You are the boss of me. You sign my paycheck.”
The woman snorted, pulled a red jacket from the back of her chair and said, “Let’s go. But leave Louise and Peggy on their hunt just in case we’re wrong.”
I let her walk out the door in front of me before I grinned. I had no problem with Ida as an employer, but we really had yet to decide who was the boss in the relationship. That was going to be interesting.
On the way out to Pankie Road, Ida peppered me with questions. Had I checked with the Boosters to see if they’d taken anything out of the barn? Had they used anything they found in the exhibits? Did I have a key to get in?
Yes, I checked. No, they didn’t use anything. Didn’t need a key. They had a volunteer on site 24-7 because of the insurance policy.
She asked me about the FBI training course and then fell silent as she ran out of boss questions. She shifted nervously and then laid her head back against the head rest. “I’ll just be glad when Homecoming is done.”
“Tired?”
“I hope to shout.”
“Running this town is a hard job. You’ve done it a long time, but you don’t have to keep doing it. You can stop being Mayor, you know. It’s not a life sentence. You could do something else.”
“Really? What else would I do?”
“Focus on the vineyard.”
I didn’t turn my head to see her reaction. Memories of Jeb were mixed up in the vineyard plans, but that didn’t trouble me. I squeezed her knee. “It’s time you brought in a consultant if you’re serious.”
She straightened up. I didn’t take my hand off her knee.
“Unless you know something I don’t,” she said very softly, and without the hint of a joke this time, “you are not the boss of me.”
Before she could gingerly or not so gingerly remove my hand, I did it myself to shift the jeep. The turn for Pankie was just ahead. “I know that if you don’t decide, the town’s going to decide for you and use you up. You don’t owe them every waking moment. They could get along fine without you if they had to.”
She sucked in air so fast I had a brief flash of worry that she’d smack me while my attention was on making the turn. Instead she just loaded up a verbal double barrel. “Now that’s a rotten thing to say. You make it sound like I meddle or poke my nose in when people don’t need me. Worse, you make it sound like I’m too delicate to do my job and run a business. And to think I was glad you were home! Not anymore. No sir. Not if you’re going to keep trying to run me out of office. Or insinuate that I’m a one-trick pony. First you set up Dwight and ambush him with Win Allen and now you’re trying to move me out of my desk.”
“Wait just a damn minute. We need to get one thing straight.” I shot her my best pleading puppy dog eyes, “So…you are glad I’m home? You did miss me terribly?”
An odd strangled noise came out of Ida, and she cradled her head with her hands.
“Headache?”
She dropped her hands, drew herself up and looked at me. “No. The pain’s actually much lower. In my gluteus maximus to be precise.”
“I’m sorry to hear that.” I pulled the jeep to a stop in the field that doubled as a makeshift parking lot for the Haunt. “Will it help if I rub it?”
“No, but you can kiss my—”
“Hello!” The shout from the waiting volunteer cut off whatever she was about to suggest.
We piled out of the car and walked toward Foxer Atlas and the sprawling barn. Both the man and the barn were well-weathered but sturdy. Foxer had once thrown me out of a softball game without blinking an eye. He took his umpire duties seriously. I take great pride in the fact that I did not follow him around town the next day looking for an excuse to give him a ticket.
He held out a hand to shake. “You’re just in time. Lifesavers really! Dwight told me he’d send someone out before we opened tonight. But they’re not here yet. Chicken-and-dumplings is on the menu at Mama’s today, and they promised they’d put me some back. They always sell out. I need to get over there before they give away my portion.” He moved as he talked. “I figure it’s safe to leave if you’re here for a bit. You all right? The other volunteer will probably be here in thirty.”
“No problem,” I said. “You go on. We’re just going to—”
Ida leaned meaningfully into my hip to warn me off telling the truth of our visit.
“—to do a routine, random safety check,” I finished. I pivoted as I said it to keep up with Foxer who’d blown past us and was on a missile trajectory for his car. Unnerved by his behavior, I scratched my head and told Ida, “I had no idea the dumplings were that good. I may have to do a taste test.”
She dragged me back around and toward the barn. “Dumplings? I don’t think so. I think this is probably more about the waitress who put the dumplings aside for him. Peggy told me an old pro was working the counter at Mama’s. I’m guessing that old pro must be Foxer’s age, single or widowed, and foxy in orthopedic, rubber-soled shoes.”
“O-oh. I see.”
“So does Foxer. Quite well. I doubt he’s going to pass up a silver fox. There’s a certain symmetry to that, don’t you think?”
“What I think is that we’re stuck here until his real reinforcements get here, and we need to get inside. My tip said the cellar was accessed from inside.”
“Right. We’ve got business.”
Unfinished business. I smiled and held the door. Poor Ida waltzed right into the empty, secluded building and never saw the danger coming. I closed my eyes for a few seconds before walking in behind her and shut the door.
“Hey! It’s dark in here.”
“Not a problem. I can see.” I leaned over to drop a kiss on her neck.
“Stop that!”
“Why?”
“Because I want you to.”
“No you don’t.” I proved it by turning her around and giving her the kiss I’d wanted to give her since locking the door in her office.
Ida stopped protesting.
The lip-lock would have been perfect except for the moan. Normally I like a woman to moan. Unfortunately the moan wasn’t coming from Ida. The scream came from Ida as a skeletal arm reached out and stroked her cheek and dragged fake cobwebs across it. She screamed, started batting at her head and then abruptly cut off the scream when she realized she’d been had by the haunted house and a mechanized skeleton. She closed her eyes. I assume she was counting to ten.
When she opened them, she said, “Seriously? You think that’s funny?”
I did. I’m just not stupid enough or brave enough to actually say so. I couldn’t do anything about the grin.
“Come on.” She grabbed my arm and dragged me farther into the barn.
Each of the stalls held a tableau of horror which we could finally see now that our eyes had adjusted and got some help from the many stabs of light leaking through the joints and joins of the barn. The main attractions were two scenes with Rams dismembering various Mossy Creek opponents’ mascots. It also featured Dracula, werewolves, an axe murderer and his unfortunate bride (she had a hatchet buried in her side and blood does not look good on a wedding dress), Frankenstein and the mummy were all lined up neatly on both sides of the aisle. Sweeney Todd’s innocent looking barber’s chair had pride of place in the center of the barn. Cobwebs with dangling spiders and spooky witches looked ready to dive bomb the unsuspecting below. I’m pretty sure the caldron in the corner had eyeballs floating in some kind of liquid. Straw was scattered everywhere.
Ida surveyed it all, hands on her hips as she spun slowly around. “Where do we start?”
“The kiss was a good start.” I dragged her back to me. “Let’s start again.”
“Let’s not and say we did.” Bu
t she half-smiled when she said it. Ida has an excellent poker face except when it comes to wanting me.
I was happy about that. I was happy about a lot lately. Which is probably why I agreed. “You’re right.” I settled her against me. Every curve. I tucked some hair behind her ear. “Let’s not start again. Let’s just say, ‘I do,’ and be done with all of this.”
Tension, thy name is Ida.
I dropped a kiss on her mouth. “Two little words. No more thinking. No more strategy. You catch me. I catch you. Let’s just do it.” I kissed her in earnest then.
Ida Hamilton Walker, Saturday
When Amos kisses me, I forget things. A lot of things. I forget how to think. I forget I’m older than he is. I forget that the Mayor has no business kissing her Chief of Police.
He broke the kiss and waited. I hated that about him. He was more comfortable in his skin than anyone I knew. More sure of what he wanted than most. Lord knows, I couldn’t shake him or make him go away. He saw right through me and it scared the hell out of me. No secrets with this one. He wouldn’t allow it. No holding back.
I knew that about him. I knew he was an all or nothing guy, I just didn’t think he’d leap so quickly to “I do.” I thought I had time. I thought wrong.
One look at his face erased all hope that we’d could ignore his question and get back to looking for the time capsule. So I answered him as honestly as I could. “We’ve only been on two real dates. You haven’t seen all my crazy yet. You’re going in blind.”
“Too late to do anything about that now. I’m all in. So are you. Stop letting some idea of what your life was supposed to be without Jeb get in the way of us.”
“I’ve dealt with my Jeb issues.”
He let go of me. “I know. You just haven’t dealt with your issues. It’s time to redefine yourself, Ida. And it’s not just me. It’s your whole life. You didn’t plan for me to be here in the middle of your is-this-all-there-is crisis. But I am. As much as it pains me to admit it, I didn’t start this particular fire. I’m just the fuel for your flames.” He stopped himself, looked away and then looked back. “Mayor Ida, there is a motion on the table. I’d like to hear your thoughts.”
“No, you wouldn’t,” I snapped. “You’d like me to say yes to a question that really hasn’t been asked.”
If I could have called those testy words back, I would have. I didn’t even know I was mad until the words came out. They revealed far too much I didn’t want him to know. I’d just made it sound like I wanted skywriting or a proposal on the electronic score board at Yankee Stadium. Or a diamond ring in a glass of champagne. Somehow I wanted the kind of romance that was tied up in big goofy gestures. I thought I was better than that. But I wasn’t.
Amos had tossed a proposal out there like an afterthought. I didn’t like it. And now he knew I didn’t like it. That was my mistake. Amos looked like I’d hit him in the head with a two-by-four. If he’d had a caption, it would say, Amos gets a clue.
He said, “I’m an idiot.”
No argument from me.
He batted one of the spiders hanging from the ceiling in a frustrated gesture. “Wrong time. Wrong place. Except it’s the right time and the right place because it’s now and it’s here. Come on.” He dragged me over to small raised platform with Sweeney Todd’s barber chair. “Sit.” He scrounged a stool and sat down in front of me, elbows on his knees, hands clasped loosely as he studied me.
“I’m an idiot,” he repeated.
“You said that.”
“It bears repeating. Just listen. Ida, I am never going to be that guy. The one that says the right things at the right time. You need to be okay with that. I’m building a fence.”
I’m sure I blinked. I wasn’t sure what else to do other than call him an idiot. Instead I said, “Excuse me?”
“Rabbits ate every bit of your cabbage this year.”
And then the penny dropped. The ridiculous wonderful idiot in front of me just told me he loved me enough to build a fence to save my next year’s cabbage. He hated cabbage. Wouldn’t touch coleslaw. But cabbage was important to me. So he’d protect my cabbage. He’d protect me. Instead of telling me he loved me, he’d just love me. Building a fence was an excellent big goofy gesture. One I could understand and hug tight to myself.
I smiled. “You are not an idiot.”
“I am not an idiot.” He stood up, and asked the right question as he pulled me up, “Ida Hamilton Walker, will you marry me?”
Things would have gone a whole lot smoother if I’d known I was pushing on a lever instead of the arm of the chair. I heard a thunk and the ground disappeared beneath us as a trap door dropped away.
Amos grabbed for me, and missed. I shut my eyes and prepared for the worst. I screamed again. Amos swore. We probably didn’t drop more than eight feet. It felt like twice that.
When we hit bottom, I hoped mud was making the sound I heard. I didn’t want to think about what else would sound more “splat” than “thud.” Amos tried to steady us, but he fell a little faster than me and just about the time he got his feet under him, I kneed him in the groin. That rocked him back. He took me with him, and we both tumbled into something that smelled like dead things that got up and walked around in the night.
Squish was added to the symphony of sounds I really didn’t want to think about. I refused to open my eyes. That was Amos’s job. If he wanted to marry me, he could darn well kill the bugs and survey nasty trap door surprises. “Where are we?”
He shifted, lifting off me and pressing me a little deeper into the muck on his way up. “I’d say we found the root cellar. They rigged the door and moved the ladder to make the Sweeny set up look more real. I bet it scares the crap out of most people when that trap door gives way.”
“Is that why it smells down here?”
I’m not sure which one of us lost it first, but it took a while to stop laughing. By then I’d opened my eyes. The root cellar was spectacularly empty. Just us. Some really nasty mud and a box in the corner. “Do you see what I see?”
“I’m on it.” Amos had to bend over to get that far in the corner. The floor above apparently sloped. He dragged the box over to right under the trap door. “You want to do the honors?”
“No. You do it. The quicker the better.”
The box was more a foot locker than time capsule. Empty except for an old trumpet, one shoe and a pillbox hat. Not our capsule.
Amos flipped the lid shut a little harder than he had to. “Let’s hope Louise and Peggy have better luck.”
I motioned to the stink-mud plastered to him and the mud pie I’d become. “How could their luck be any worse?”
“Good point. Let’s get out of here.” He stood on the box, grabbed the edge of the opening and hauled himself out of the root cellar in one easy motion. Three seconds later he was hanging through the opening. Arm extended. “Your turn. Let’s go.”
When I hesitated, he added, “You are not fat. I can lift you and I promise not to make groaning noises while I do it.”
“Yes.”
He didn’t say anything for a long time. “You sure?”
I stepped up on the box. “Yes. You had me at the fence, but not groaning cinched the deal.”
Ida looked like three kinds of hell. Some of the mud was drying on her cheek where she must have swiped her hand. Her hair had miraculously escaped the mud for the most part but it was…interesting. The part was screwed up, but I didn’t blame her for not running a hand through it. She’d managed to stick her hands in the mud to brace for impact.
There ought to be a law. You can’t marry a woman unless you can slather her in sticky mud and still want to kiss her.
“Well, come on, woman. I have some plans for you. The first of which...” I paused long enough to snatch her out of the cellar and deposit her on the
edge of the opening. “...is getting you out of those clothes.”
The look on her face was priceless. At least for a few seconds until she realized I meant for hygenic and not nefarious reasons. She rolled her eyes. “Let’s head back. We’re already going to be late for the dance because we have to change. Capsule or no capsule, we still have to go.”
I rolled up and stood. “You are not getting in my jeep like that. It’s city property. If I ruin it, it’s coming out of my paycheck.”
“Put the upholstery cleaning bill on your expense report. I’ll approve it.”
My cell phone rang. When I got off, I looked at Ida. She wasn’t going to like this. “That was Peggy. They found it. They’re closer than we are. If we don’t hurry, they’ll open that thing without us there. That can’t happen.”
“I’m open for suggestions, but we can’t go like this.”
“You really aren’t going to like my solution.” I took her by the shoulders and turned her around to face the axe murdering groom in a tux and the unfortunate bride.
“No.”
“Where’s your sense of adventure? It’ll be fine. It’ll be good practice.”
“I’m not wearing white at our wedding.”
“That isn’t white. It’s red and white.”
“I’m not wearing a hatchet at our wedding.”
“Maybe the hatchet will come off.”
“I hate you.”
“I’m building you a fence.”
We washed up in the caldron of eyeballs. Turns out they were floating in water. Ida made me turn my back. Technically, I still hadn’t gotten my hands on Ida. But now, it was only a matter of time.
PART ELEVEN
The Great Time Capsule Caper
Louise & Peggy, Saturday evening
Peggy wrenched the time capsule open in one twist. I made a mental note to call her the next time I needed a tire changed. As she raised the lid, the air filled with dust particles from the outside. I’d been expecting nothing but dry rot, but the contents looked pristine.
