by Elise Sax
Oh, God, please don’t let him ever be released from prison.
As for Boone, I didn’t even know where he went. Mr. Mysterious. Mr. Dusty, practically homeless, living in the rundown section of my house. Mr. Five-percent body fat, washboard abs, physical perfection, all kinds of crazy chemistry hottie. So, obviously, he was no good, and I had no idea why my body reacted every time I thought I heard his pickup truck drive up to the house. And I also had no idea why I was now walking to the window, pretending that I was stretching my legs so that I could spy on the parking area at the front of the house.
Outside, there was no sign of Boone. Instead, the senior reporter, Silas Miller, was walking from his Chevy Cavalier toward the office. Silas was nothing like Boone. He was in his fifties, with more than his share of body fat, and he seemed to own only one suit. And of course, he had a job, while as far as I could tell, Boone didn’t.
I skipped back to my chair as he walked in and flopped down at his desk. “What a goddamned day,” he complained. “There’s a maniac running around burgling houses, and you’ll never guess what he’s armed with.”
Klee shook a handful of notes in the air. “I’ve been getting calls all day. I heard it’s a zucchini, a rutabaga, and a baseball.”
Silas ripped off his tie and threw it on a stack of paper on his desk. Then, he lit up a cigar. “That’s close. A potato.”
“Oh my God. I think he tried to rob me down at the river,” I said. “I thought he was either holding a potato or a Taser Ball.”
“What’s a Taser Ball?”
I shrugged. “I’m not up on technology.”
“I knew you were down at the river,” Klee said, accusatorily. “Wasting valuable time on a dead story.”
Silas’s eyes twinkled under his thick, gray eyebrows. “Never say die when it comes to a story, Klee. Good girl, boss. I like your moxie. You’re bound and determined to find the truth about that girl’s murder. I like it. I like it a lot, boss.”
Silas called me “boss” because technically I was the boss. I owned the place. But there was no question that I was the lowest man on the totem pole. I was going to have to prove myself for a long time to come before I really was the boss.
“Did you find anything new, boss?”
“No. The potato guy showed up and then got run off by a giraffe and two bounty hunters.”
Klee snorted. “It’s getting dangerous out there. Every guy with a rope is out, trying to make two grand. Mark my words. This is going to end up in disaster.”
Silas gestured at me with his cigar. “So get ready, boss. It’s on us to report the facts, save democracy, and keep the people of Goodnight in the know. We’ve got the potato guy, the giraffes, the bounty hunters, and the Plaza repairs. That’ll keep us busy for a while. I love journalism!”
I didn’t want to break into Silas’s reverie, but I needed his input about the mysterious letter. I chose the third letter to the editor and sent the file to Klee. With that done, I printed out the mystery letter and showed it to Silas.
“What do you think?” I asked.
“What the hell is this? Is this from Leonard Shetland?” Silas asked.
“Who’s Leonard Shetland? It’s signed Leonard, but I don’t know his last name.”
“Leonard Shetland was found dead in his house about ten minutes ago after he called 911. I heard it on the police scanner as I was coming up the driveway.”
Chapter 2
Silas assigned me the Leonard Shetland story. “Who, what, where, why, and how, boss. Remember, that. This is probably a simple one for the obituary column. Leonard ate a lot of cheese. Got that?”
“Yep. Cheese,” I answered, even though I had the strong suspicion that any death that was preceded by a letter to the editor asking for help saying it was a matter of life and death, probably was a little more complicated than a straight obituary and it probably had more to do with something more nefarious than cheddar.
I stuck my reporter’s notebook into my purse and left in my Altima. Leonard lived only ten minutes away. By the time I got there, there were three Sheriff cars and an ambulance parked outside. Poor Leonard Shetland was definitely dead.
Getting out of my car, a long shadow fell over me, and I looked up into the gorgeous, manly face of Sheriff Amos Goodnight. Much to my horror, I giggled. Amos and I had shared a moment on his couch, which had been cut short by his memories of his dead wife. But there was still a doozy of a chemical reaction happening between us. It was like electrolysis but in a good way.
Was it so bad that I might have had a crush on Amos’s brother after our moment on the couch? Was that considered incest? Was I going to be arrested?
I shook my head, trying to clear my mind, and I reminded myself that I was off men. Totally off them. Like way off.
Amos’s brown eyes twinkled in the sunlight, and I giggled again. This time, his face turned a light shade of red. That’s the thing about chemical reactions. They go both ways.
“What’re you doing here?” he asked, helping me out of my car.
“Covering Leonard Shetland’s death,” I said in my best Lois Lane voice. That’s right, Matilda. Be professional. I took my reporter’s notebook out of my purse and slapped at it to prove I was on the story.
Amos’s face cleared of any residual blush, and he studied me for a second. “Wait a minute. I know that look.”
“What look?” I asked innocently, trying to focus on a fingernail.
“The look where you get into enormous amounts of trouble, and I have to save you.”
“Name one time when that happened.”
“Well…” he started, counting on his fingers. “There was the time you were zip-tied, and then there was the whole getting shot at while dressed as an alien time, and then…”
I waved my hands at him. “Oh, forget it. You win. I might get into trouble from time to time, but I can assure you that I’ll never ever get into trouble, again, and I will certainly never need you to save me again.”
“Oh, yeah?” he asked, softly, his eyebrow arching.
We locked eyes, and my throat closed, making me cough. My body temperature climbed a couple degrees. Danger, Will Robinson, I thought to myself. Man still in love with his dead wife! But my body refused to listen to my brain.
“You know, there’s a reason why I call you Trouble,” he continued, and I could feel my ovaries shoot into action, lobbing a couple eggs down my Fallopian tubes, ready for some Amos action. I needed to put the brakes on fast. I needed to cool things down. I needed to come up with something unattractive about Amos.
Here was one: His right earlobe was ever so slightly bigger than his left earlobe. I found that out when I sucked on it. That was right after he had kissed me, and my head exploded. Oh, geez. Even his unattractive qualities made me horny.
“It looks like Mr. Shetland had a heart attack,” Amos said. “Would you like to talk to the paramedics? They should be coming out soon.”
Paramedics were okay, but I wanted to give Leonard’s house a good snooping. “Are they sure it’s a heart attack?”
“Yes. Don’t go searching for a story where there is none. With every lunatic in a five-hundred-mile radius chasing after giraffes, I don’t think you need to make up any stories about poor Leonard Shetland.”
The coroner’s car drove up, and Amos went to meet him. While he was distracted, I snuck behind the house and walked in through the back door. Leonard lived in a small, two-story mid-century house. It looked like the carpet was original to the home, as well as the avocado-colored appliances.
I scanned the dining room for clues and then opened all of the drawers in the kitchen. I had no idea what I was looking for, but I wanted to get as much snooping done before the paramedics were finished with Leonard in his bedroom. Finding nothing out of the ordinary, except for an impressive As Seen On TV collection of gadgets, I tiptoed upstairs to Leonard’s bedroom. It wasn’t hard to find since there were only two bedrooms. There was his and another room d
edicated to even more gadgets. I never knew there were so many gizmos devoted to “abs of steel.”
I found Leonard dead on his bed. The paramedics were done with him and were putting away their gear. “Are you related to the deceased?” one of the paramedics asked me, as I hovered in the doorway. Gnawing on the inside of my cheek, I decided on what to say. Silas wouldn’t have liked me to lie about my identity. And Amos wouldn’t even want me anywhere near poor dead Leonard.
“Yes,” I told the paramedic, deciding to lie, anyway. Sure, I was officially there as a journalist, but I had ulterior motives, too. Even if I wasn’t entirely sure what they were, yet.
“I’m sorry for your loss,” the paramedic said. “It seems that Mr. Shetland died of a coronary, but the coroner will give the official cause of death in about a week or so. Do you want to say goodbye?”
“I can do that?”
“Sure. Frank, let’s give the loved one a moment of privacy.”
Holy cow, some folks were really trusting. A wave of guilt washed over me, and I did my best to ignore it. After all, I wasn’t there to mess things up. I was just there to find out why Leonard wrote the letter and if he was murdered or not and if so, who did it. Was that so bad? I didn’t think it was, but still, I needed to do it fast before Amos returned with the coroner.
With the room quiet, it finally hit me that I was alone with a dead man. In the past, I had touched a dead woman and she came back to life. I wasn’t totally convinced I had something to do with it, but I figured I owed it to Leonard to give it a shot and touch him. Also, it would be a lot easier to find out why he sent the letter if he just told me.
“Mr. Shetland? I’m Matilda Dare. I’m sorry you’re dead. Would you mind if I touched you?” I sounded like a lunatic, but I also had experience talking to a dead person, so it wasn’t totally out of the realm of possibility that he would reply.
But nope. Leonard stayed quiet, his mouth slightly ajar, his lips white, and his eyes open and staring at the ceiling. He was bald, and he had eczema on his scalp. He was still in his pajamas, but his shirt was open and the covers pulled off, probably because the paramedics had attempted to do CPR on him.
“Here I come,” I warned him. I laid my hand on his arm and waited. Nothing. I watched his chest for a rise and fall, but Leonard Shetland was deader than a doornail. The sound of the front door opening downstairs traveled back to me, along with men talking. I didn’t have a lot of time. Opening the nightstand drawer, I gathered a stack of papers and a small book and stuffed them into my purse. It was way more than snooping. It was definitely tampering, and both Silas and Amos would be furious with me if they found out. But I didn’t return the papers.
I had graduated from a snooper to a tamperer. It was only a hop, skip, and a jump to robbing banks and kidnapping celebrities. I was so going to hell.
The door to the bedroom opened, and the coroner and his assistant walked in, pushing a gurney. Unfortunately, Amos was right behind them. He shot me a look that confirmed that I was a bad person. I shrugged.
“Are you related to the deceased?” the coroner asked. “I’m sorry for your loss.”
“She’s not related,” Amos said. “She’s with the press.”
The coroner’s expression changed from kindly old man to angry old man. “You’re not allowed in here. What were you doing to the body?”
“Nothing!” I said and crossed my fingers behind my back. People weren’t real receptive to the bringing dead people back to life narrative.
“She’s looking for clues,” Amos supplied. He still wasn’t smiling. That was pretty typical of Amos. No talking. No smiling. Just a big pile of testosterone topped with a cowboy hat.
“My report will be public in about a week,” the coroner said and shooed me out of the room.
Amos walked me to my car. “I didn’t do anything to him, and he didn’t talk to me,” I told him. Amos arched an eyebrow. “Well, it’s not unheard of for a dead person to talk to me, you know. Anyway, can you answer some questions for my article?” Silas would kill me if I didn’t return with the what, where, when, who, how, and why.
Amos tilted his cowboy hat back on his head, and he leaned forward, making me take a step backward until my back was up against my Nissan. “Are you free tomorrow night?” he asked, startling me.
“Am I what?”
“Can you make it to my house at around five tomorrow? I have to ask you something.”
I had so many questions. First of all, I wanted to know what he had to ask me that had to wait until I was alone with him at night in his beautiful house, nestled in a million acres of romantic wilderness.
Second of all, what did he want to ask me? Did he want to ask me to be his? To bear his children and let him adore me for the rest of my life like he did with his wife? What? What? What did he want to ask me?
“I think I have an opening tomorrow,” I said and blushed at the sexual innuendo.
“Thank you. It’s important.” He tipped his hat back low over his eyes and opened my car door for me. It wasn’t until I had turned onto the next street that I realized I hadn’t actually interviewed anybody, and I didn’t have the start or end or middle of the story about Leonard’s death.
“I’m so not Carl Bernstein,” I complained to my reflection in the rearview mirror. “I need fried chicken. I can’t eat one more peanut butter and jelly sandwich. I don’t care if it’s eleven dollars.”
I parked in front of Goodnight Diner in the Plaza. The Plaza had been dinged up two weeks ago from the visiting crowds who had expected an alien invasion, the parade of giraffes, and a firefight. Rocco said he had volunteered to fix the damage with some spackle and a coat of paint, but I heard that the mayor had twisted his arm and threatened to rat him out to the IRS about his precious gem collection if he didn’t fix the damage. Three workers had been going at the repairs for the past two weeks.
Goodnight Diner was doing bang-up business. Since New Sun Petroleum had closed, most of its employees had left the state in search of other work. I had assumed that the diner would have been more or less deserted because of it, but inside, it was packed to the rafters. Gone were the usual hard hats and uniforms, and in their place were the everyday folk of about half of the town. They were all there to eat lunch, and I didn’t blame them. The diner served delicious family-style meals.
The owner of the diner was one of my new friends, Adele. She greeted me at the door. Her hair was escaping from her ponytail, and her eyes were wild and bloodshot. “Hello!” she croaked, loudly. “Find a seat, if you can. It’s bedlam. Total bedlam. They just eat and eat and eat and eat. They’re like cows with multiple stomachs or horses with a feedbag attached to their faces. They don’t stop. It’s a steady stream of never-ending eaters in here. It’s like the Post Office except with dirty dishes and sticky tables. I’m about ready to kill each and every one of these good for nothing binge-eaters. Don’t they ever stop eating?”
I thought about pointing out that eaters were good for diner business, but Adele didn’t seem to be in the mood for logic. She was overwhelmed, and even though she was bringing in a fortune, she was fed up and needed a lot of sleep. And in her state, I wouldn’t put it past her to stab me in the eye with a fork. So, I shut up and nodded a lot when she talked to me.
“Will one of you good-for-nothings stop chewing for two seconds and push over so that Matilda can sit down?” Adele called out. “I see you, Rocco Humphrey, over there taking a big booth all by yourself!”
Rocco did his best to ignore her and not make eye contact with me. It was no secret that Rocco blamed me for the giraffe fiasco. He was convinced that if I had only agreed to ride a giraffe in the parade and not have started a shootout, then the giraffes would be safe, Goodnight’s reputation would be saved, and he wouldn’t be on the hook for two-thousand a giraffe and labeled the pariah of the town.
“Come over here,” my friend Nora called from the corner of the diner. She was at a small table for two, sitting with three m
en, one of whom was standing. She punched one of the seated men in the arm. “Get up! Don’t you see a lady needs to sit?” She yanked the chair out of from under him, and he fell to the floor. He took his plate off the table and continued eating on the floor. “Come on, Matilda. I have something to tell you.”
I weaved between tables and sat down across from Nora. “I’m sorry,” I told the man, whose chair I had taken.
“No problem,” he said with his mouth full. “I’m just glad I got to eat something.”
“What’s happening? What’s going on? Why is everybody here?” I asked Nora.
“It’s been like this since the tamale lady left. She was feeding most of the town with her burritos and tamales. Now she’s gone, and folks are hungry. Her cousin Tito was taking up the slack with his carnitas truck, but it was too much for him, so he moved on to a town up north.”
“What’ll you have?” Adele asked me, showing up at the table. She swiped some sweaty hair off her face with the back of her hand.
“Fried chicken,” I said.
“That sounds good,” the man on the floor said.
“We’re out of fried chicken,” Adele said.
“Okay. I’ll have the enchiladas,” I said.
“That sounds good, too,” the man on the floor said.
“Nope. We haven’t seen a tortilla in three hours,” Adele grumbled.
“Meatloaf?” Adele shook her head no. “A hamburger? Chef salad? BLT?” Nope. Nope. Nope. They were out of everything.
“I’m eating a pimento omelet,” the man standing next to me said and showed me his plate. Blech.
“How about French fries? You got any of that?” I asked Adele.
“I’ll try to find you some. My cook Morris is having a nervous breakdown. I’m going to have to give him a raise at this rate.”
“I have a Xanax in my purse you could give him,” Nora offered. Adele put her hand out, and Nora dropped a little white pill in it.
“If he doesn’t want it, I’ll take it,” Adele said and stomped back to the kitchen.
