by Elise Sax
“Maybe. I’m a day-to-day kind of reporter. They don’t keep me in the loop much.” Amos nodded, but I sensed he was judging me. I was the owner of the Gazette, but I was less in the loop than the fifteen-year-old paperboy.
He walked around the island and stirred a pan on the stove. “I’ve entered the Cook-off for the past thirty years, ever since I was old enough to hold a spoon. I’ve gotten the red ribbon every year. That’s second place. That bastard Morris from the diner always beats me and grabs the blue ribbon. Not this year. I have a secret weapon. Two. And that’s what I need to ask you. I need you to tell me which of my two secret weapons is the best to use against Morris.”
“That’s what you want to ask me?” I asked, sitting on a barstool. A wave of disappointment and relief hit me at the same time. Suddenly, I understood my feelings for Amos. I was attracted to him, but I didn’t really want him.
So, I was either really stupid or really smart.
Amos dunked a wooden spoon into the first dish and raised it to my lips. “Green chiles and Hatch chiles and red chiles. A little spicy but not too much. Let me know if it’s the best thing you’ve ever tasted.”
It was the best thing I ever tasted and so was the second dish. I ate a full meal, tasting each dish, one after the other, but I couldn’t decide which one he should enter in the Cook-off. With my belly full and the romance off the plate, I decided it was time to show Amos the letter from Leonard. I retrieved it from the bottom of my purse, and that’s when I remembered that I had stolen a bunch of papers from his nightstand. Shimmering in the depths of my purse, I spotted a second VIP Ticket to Heaven along with Leonard’s papers. Now I had two. One from Stella and one from Leonard. I gasped. It was a connection.
Handing the letter to Amos, I explained about the initials and that there was a T.E. somewhere out there who was in danger. Amos read the letter twice.
“I wonder if that’s Tony Eddy,” he said. “Retired washer-dryer repairman.”
I sucked in air. “There might be a crazy person killing old people in Goodnight.”
“I’ll give you a scoop on deep background.”
“What’s deep background?”
“Ask Silas. You ready? The labs just came back on Stella. She didn’t have the flu. She was poisoned. And guess what? She was poisoned with vaginal soap.”
“She drank vaginal soap?”
Amos blinked. “No, she used it down there. She was poisoned through her ying yang.”
Both Amos and I were going to the meeting at the rec center about the giraffe problem. Mabel had supposedly called in two experts to handle it. I was going to cover the story with Silas, while Amos was going to stand by in case the meeting got out of hand.
Amos locked up the house, and I followed him back into town. When I got to the rec center, I pulled Silas aside.
“What’s deep background?” I asked him.
“You can’t use the information, but you can use it to find the information elsewhere. What’cha got, boss?”
I told him about the vaginal soap. “Death by ying yang. That’s a good headline, right?”
He patted my back. “You’re learning. You know what else is interesting? Stella’s stepson hated her. She was spending his inheritance. He complained about it all the time, since he was counting on that money for his retirement.”
“Wait a minute. Isn’t the deputy sheriff Adam Beatman Stella’s stepson?”
Silas touched his nose and then pointed at me. “You catch on quick.”
“Holy crap. What a story.” I was practically drooling with anticipation at covering the story.
“Yeah, it’s a shame we have to waste our time on giraffes when it looks like we have a crazed killer out there. Oh, well. Sometimes you have to do the boring stuff so that you can do the exciting stuff.”
The rec center community room was crammed to the rafters. Every folding chair was occupied by a concerned townsperson, and there were plenty of people standing in the back and along the walls. At the front of the room, there were three chairs. Mabel was sitting on one of them. A petite, dainty lady about seventy years old, dressed in baggy khaki pants, a safari jacket, and a large brown hat sat next to her. The third chair was vacant. Next to it, Rocco stood, awash in shame as if he was sent to stand in the corner in the school in Little House on the Prairie.
I stood at the back of the room, but Silas motioned me to walk to the front. “Press!” he yelled at two unfortunates sitting there, and they got up for us, and we took their seats.
Mabel stood. “Quiet, everybody!” she yelled. “As you know, this giraffe thing has gotten way out of hand, and we’re the laughingstock of the country.”
“My cousin in Germany said we made it on the news there, too,” a man called from the audience.
“I heard we were on the front page of the Papua New Guinea Daily News,” a woman in the audience yelled.
Mabel shot Rocco the stink eye. “That’s just great. We’re international now. So, it’s even worse than I thought. The good news is that I’ve brought in two experts to help us with this problem and get our town out of this mess and turn it around. My tea party raves are putting Goodnight on the map, but they can’t do miracles when thirty giraffes were tossed out into the wilds of New Mexico. I mean, we hanged one of these creatures over a hundred years ago and to make up for it, we send giraffes out to freeze to death and get eaten by coyotes?” Her voice raised in pitch and volume, and she shot another stink eye at Rocco. “So finally, finally, finally, we’re going to get this taken care of. We’re going to gather those giraffes and send them to the place in Boise where they’re treated like Madonna at the Red Door. Okay? Okay? And remember that my tea party raves take place every Tuesday and Saturday after lunch at the Goodnight Senior Center and will be expanded through the community as popularity grows. Tea party raves are fun, fun, fun! Now, let me introduce you to Fifi Swan. She’s the director of the Giraffes are Love Society, and she’s going to use her expertise to find these giraffes.”
Fifi stood. “Giraffes are the noblest creatures,” she said, sounding like she represented the Lollipop Guild.
“Speak up!” someone from the audience yelled.
“I fell in love with giraffes when I was a little girl,” Fifi continued.
“Can’t hear you!” a few yelled, but Fifi persisted, sounding like she had sucked helium.
“Giraffes are loyal and tender and sweet and so smart. If you ever commune with a giraffe, you are transformed. Like astronauts who see the Earth from space are transformed, giraffes change the way you look at the world. They uplift your soul.”
“A giraffe ate my underpants when they were drying on the line in the backyard!” someone yelled. Fifi smiled and looked lost in her reverie about giraffes.
The door to the room flew open, and a large, grizzled man stomped in. He looked around with his eyes squinted into slits. He had a week’s worth of growth on his face, and his lips were chapped and pursed tight. He was wearing gray pants, a gray shirt, and boat shoes. As he walked in, the entire room gasped and then there was generalized murmuring.
“Holy crap, Mabel brought in Quint,” Silas whispered to me.
“Who’s Quint?”
“Picture Stalin and Captain Ahab having a baby and then give him gnarly sun damage and a really bad attitude. That’s Quint. I haven’t seen him in years. I thought he got killed in a fight with a meter maid in Albuquerque when she shot him, but he seems fine.”
Quint’s knees cracked and creaked as he walked. He ran his fingernails down the wall behind Mabel and then stood in front of Fifi and pointed a gnarled finger at the audience. “I’ll take care of your giraffe problem,” he said in his gravelly voice. “For a price. You need an expert, and I’m the only one here who’s taken on these demon creatures in the wild. You need an experienced hand at herding these vicious, sadistic, ruthless animals. And that’s me.”
Fifi stepped from behind him. “Actually, giraffes are gentle giants. Nature’s swee
test gift to the world.”
Quint growled at her. “Giraffes have lifeless eyes, black eyes, doll’s eyes.”
“Teddy bear eyes,” Fifi said.
“Why do I think I’ve seen this before?” I asked Silas. “I’ve got a huge case of déjà vu.”
“Giraffes are soulless, and you don’t take notice of them until they’re eating you,” Quint growled.
“Actually, giraffes are herbivores,” Fifi squeaked. Her happy, positive demeanor was waning, and it was getting replaced with a distinct amount of distress.
“I’ll never go back to the savanna,” Quint continued. “But I’ll get these thirty for you safe and sound. I’ll get their heads, tails, and everything in between, all alive and well and ready to be put in your zoo in Boise. But I want to be paid and paid well.”
“Maybe we’re on Candid Camera,” I whispered to Silas.
“Is that show still on the air?” he asked me.
“No, seriously. This is a joke, right?” I asked Silas. “This doesn’t seem familiar to you?”
“What’re you talking about?”
“Does Steven Spielberg ring a bell?”
Mabel spoke up. “Rocco’s offering two thousand a head, but no harm can come to them,” she told Quint. Rocco held his head in shame.
“I’ll do my best, but if they want war, I’ll give them war,” Quint warned.
“Giraffes are noble and docile animals,” Fifi pleaded.
Mabel looked at her watch. “The meeting is now over. I have to go home and work on the Chile Pepper Cook-off. There’s a planning committee meeting tomorrow. I hope the giraffes will be taken care of by then,” she added to Fifi and Quint.
“Mabel made a chaotic situation into a clusterfuck,” Silas told me. “Bad for the town but not boring, right?”
Silas left to interview Fifi and Quint. I was in a hurry to get to my computer at the office to research the four victims and see what they had in common. I already knew two of them had bought VIP Tickets to Heaven. It was obviously a scam and the scammer was my number one suspect, but I didn’t know why he would have killed them. I also wanted to search the runaway database to find the dead girl I spoke to at the bottom of the canyon.
Following the crowd, I made it to my car when Adele stopped me. She looked worn out. Her hair was messed, and she rubbed her eye. “I’m glad I caught you,” she told me. “I tried to call Nora, but she’s not answering. She’s probably asleep already. I thought I should warn her.”
“What’s wrong?”
“It’s about those witches she’s working for. I heard that they cursed Leonard Shetland and then he dropped dead. And that’s not all. I heard that for a few bucks, they’ll curse anyone you want. Supposedly, their curses work. People have been dropping like flies.”
Chapter 6
It was a busy Wednesday morning. Two more people got poop-bombed from the sky, and the potato burglar held up Goodnight Liquor. The manager shot at him, but missed, taking down three street lights in the Plaza, which put the all-important Chile Pepper Cook-off in danger of being canceled because the lack of light was a health hazard, even though the Cook-off was going to take place during the day.
So, Jack skipped school, again and helped Silas burn through the stories like they were the Avengers of local news. Meanwhile, I was burning up Google with searches on the witches and sifting through thousands of pictures of runaway girls.
I was getting nowhere fast, while Jack was typing seventy-words-per-minute with two fingers, writing the juicy details about the liquor store manager’s brush with death by potato. I went outside for some fresh air, hoping to see Boone’s truck, but he still hadn’t come back from wherever he was.
“Fine. Then, I’m going to crowbar the shit out of his door and find out who this guy really is,” I said out loud. As soon as the words came out of my mouth, I heard the sound of a vehicle drive toward the house. I sucked air and sucked in my stomach. I fluffed my hair and wondered if I had enough time to change my clothes.
But it wasn’t Boone. It was Nora driving up in her Kia. I had called her last night, warning her not to get cursed. “I knew this job was too good to be true,” she grumbled.
Now, she skidded to a halt behind Klee’s Cadillac, turned off the motor and practically fell out of her car. “I told them I was going on errands,” she breathed, wild-eyed and panicked.
“Come in. I’ll give you milk,” I said. I was pretty much out of everything else.
We walked into the house through the living room, and Nora almost fell into the hole in the floor. I grabbed her arm and pulled her out of harm’s way just in time. “Are you digging to China?”
“Faye started a lot of work and then Jenny and Joyce took her away from me.”
“Oh my gosh. I forgot about Faye. What if they curse Faye?”
I had forgotten about Faye, too. But Faye was tough. “She has a hammer and a nail gun,” I pointed out, and Nora nodded.
I gave her a glass of milk and a peanut butter sandwich. The dogs gave me guilt, so I made them a sandwich, too. We sat down at the kitchen table.
“I knew they were witchy and weird, but I didn’t know about the curse. So, after we talked, I made some phone calls.” Nora took a big breath and drank down some milk. “It turns out that Jenny and Joyce branched out from reading tea leaves and Tarot cards to curses about a month ago. Nobody will admit to hiring them, so I don’t know who their clients are, but something bad is happening in that house, Matilda. Something bad.”
Goosebumps sprouted on my arms. “They can’t be real witches,” I said, hoping Nora would confirm that.
“Of course not,” she said, but we locked eyes and all kinds of unspoken words passed between us: I had spoken to two dead girls, so what kind of leap do you need to take to believe in curses?
“The initials were on that letter,” Nora said after a moment. “How did he know those people were going to drop dead?”
“Either they’re really doing curses, it was a coincidence that the old people dropped dead, or Jenny and Joyce sealed the deal and bumped them off to make it seem like they could really do curses. You know, they could probably charge a fortune for curses once they prove they work. They could bring in money from all over the world for that.”
“Oh, you’re good, Matilda,” Nora said, impressed. “You’re like Jessica Fletcher.”
I felt myself blush. “You think so?”
“Or Matlock. You could be Matlock, too.”
“Wow, a lawyer. That would be something.” I pictured myself in court in a nice suit for a moment, and then I remembered that Stella was murdered. “Vaginal soap.”
“Excuse me?”
“Stella was poisoned with vaginal soap.”
“She drank vaginal soap?”
“No, she was poisoned through her ying yang.”
Nora crossed her legs. “That’s possible? Killer ying yangs?”
“I guess so.”
“Ying yangs cause a lot of problems, Matilda,” Nora said. “My ying yang has a mind of its own.”
I thought about that for a moment. “We need more information about Jenny and Joyce. We need to spy on them. I can’t find information about them, and even with your network and Adele, the intelligence is slim. So, we need a man on the inside.”
“You’re right. Who should we get?” I stared at her, and she leaned back, as if she could escape my eyes. “No,” she said, shaking her head.
“You’re already there.”
“No.”
“You spend your days with them.”
“No.”
“You have access to their private records.”
“No. No. No, Matilda. I don’t want to be cursed. I don’t want my ying yang to kill me. I don’t like witches. No offense.”
“None taken. I think. Look, they’re probably not witches. They probably just murdered those old people to look like they’re witches.”
Nora stood and began to pace the kitchen floor. “That’s your
argument? They’re only killers, not magical killers?”
“I didn’t have a lot of time to think up a good argument. But Faye will be there. She’s strong. She can bonk them with a hammer if they try to kill you.”
“Faye! Faye can spy on them, and I’ll go back to the bank.” Her face dropped, and she sat back down. “That stupid bank wasn’t paying me enough. I really like this job, and it pays enough so that we can live. Do you know how expensive thirteen kids are?”
“I can’t imagine. I’m on a peanut butter and jelly sandwich diet because I can’t afford ham.”
“Maybe they’re innocent. Maybe they’re nice ladies who’ve gotten a bad rap.”
No way. There was something rotten in Witch Manor. “That’s possible,” I said.
“Okay. I’ll do it. I’ll be your rodent.”
“You mean, mole.”
“Isn’t a mole a rodent?”
Nora left to spy on Jenny and Joyce, and I got the crowbar I kept next to my bed in order to break into Boone’s place. Just as I had it positioned in his doorframe, Klee walked out of the Gazette office. She froze for a second when she saw me ready to do damage to Boone’s door, but Klee was always put together and sophisticated, so she didn’t bat an eye.
“Silas wants you. It’s urgent,” she told me.
I put the crowbar down on the ground and followed her back into the office. Silas was on the phone, talking animatedly. He waved me over to his desk.
“That’s right. That’s right. Okay. Fine,” he said into the phone and hung up. “Boss, I need you to get a quote from Sheriff Goodnight.”
“Okay,” I said, picking up my phone. Silas took the receiver from me and slammed it down.
“No. Listen. You need to get a quote from Amos. But he’s not reachable by phone. Otherwise, I would have called him. He’s out fly fishing up where Snake River meets Yellow River. You got that?”
I had no idea where Snake River met Yellow River. I had never heard of Yellow River. “Yes. Got it.”
“Good. Listen, carefully. Deputy Sheriff Adam Beatman was arrested and charged with the murder of his stepmother, Stella Hernandez.”
