by Ami Diane
Squinting, her eyes adjusted to the dimness, and she could make out more details. The basement was cluttered with odds and ends, most of which she didn’t recognize due to her refusal to spend much time in the expansive room.
The phonograph appeared to be as ancient as it sounded, requiring a hand crank to be wound in order to play. Meaning that someone had cranked it and set the needle on the record. She turned a slow circle, calling out again, but getting no response. Perhaps, it had been a wayward partygoer who’d bolted back up the stairs before Ella had come investigating.
Her heart beat in her ears, and she wiped her clammy hands down her dress. Time to leave the basement of horrors.
As she turned to fly like a bat out of hell up the stairs, her eyes fell to the outskirts of the puddle of light. The form of a man cut through the shadows, sprawled on the floor.
Her shoulders dropped in relief, and she choked out a chuckle. So, that’s what this was. A second murder for the game. Too bad she’d discovered it and not one of the guests. She considered setting the phonograph to play again and letting another person happen upon the body.
She nudged the man’s shoe, letting the fellow actor know her plan.
“Sorry, man. I didn’t mean to spoil your fun. You’re just going to have to lay on that cold concrete a little longer. I’ll make sure someone else comes down soon. I don’t know, maybe lure them with the promise of candy or something.” She stopped. “Wait, that sounds creepy. Me luring someone to the basement with candy so they can discover a dead body.”
She laughed and stepped over his legs. “But, you know, good job looking dead.”
Her toe kicked something that went skittering across the floor. Ella bent to retrieve it, feeling cold steel in her grip. She angled the item towards the light but already knew what it was.
“Oh, so you were shot, were you? How very gangster-like.”
Someone opened the door wider at the top of the stairs, allowing more light to spill in. Ella squinted at the silhouette as the person clunked down the stairs.
“What are thou doing?” Patience slid to a halt. Her mouth dropped as her eyes fell on the gun in Ella’s hand then to the body. She let out a blood-curdling scream. Backing away, the Protestant pointed a trembling finger at Ella, her lips quivering with silent words.
“Easy, pilgrim. He’s fine.” Ella nudged the man’s boot again. “Aren’t you, pal?”
This seemed to ignite a spark in Patience who bolted back up the stairs, stumbling and screaming at the top of her lungs the entire time.
Ella’s mouth turned down. “Bit dramatic,” she said to the actor. “Don’t you think?”
The man didn’t respond, making Ella think he was taking his role quite seriously.
She turned the heavy weapon over in her palms, inspecting it in the wan light. It was real. She supposed there wasn’t a prop gun available for use given the town’s anemic theater resources.
As she returned the weapon to where she’d found it for the next player to find, her foot slid in something wet on the concrete just outside the purview of light.
Digging through her purse, she pulled out her phone and turned on the flashlight app.
A scream climbed her throat, and she leaped backward. Rose had taken the game to a whole other level. The man lay in a pool of blood, the edges of which were still expanding.
She angled the light to the man’s face and made out his features for the first time.
It was fellow mayoral candidate and Prohibition enthusiast, Charles Wilson. His glassy eyes stared at some point beyond this mortal world. He was definitely dead.
Chapter 3
ELLA PULLED A Patience and sprinted up the stairs, muttering, “Not again, not again…” the entire way.
She burst into the hallway and leaned over her knees, breathing deeply, bidding the memory not to take root.
It didn’t take long for Sheriff Chapman to appear on the heels of the hysterical councilwoman.
The Puritan pointed an accusing finger at Ella, crying “Murderer!”
Chapman brushed the woman’s comment aside and asked Ella one word. “Where?”
With a slightly trembling finger, she pointed at the open basement door. Chapman swept past her in long strides, his boots thumping over the cherry wood floor.
“Wait, you want a flashlight?” She turned on the small beam from her cell phone again and offered it up.
He paused, filling the doorway with his lean frame. Then, he grabbed the proffered mobile with a weathered hand and told her to stay put. The moment he disappeared, Patience pressed her back to the wall, staring at Ella with wide, unblinking eyes.
Shaking her head, Ella fought the urge to jump out at the woman to see her reaction, deeming it a bit too mean given the circumstances. A moment later, Wink, Flo, and Will barreled around the west corner of the U-shaped hallway.
“Are you alright?” the inventor asked, his blue-green gaze probing her for injury.
“I’m fine. But Mr. Wilson isn’t.” After taking a steadying breath, she quickly told them about the body in the basement.
As she finished, Chapman emerged from the shadowy doorway. “Wink, I believe Pauline’s here somewhere. Will you find her for me?”
Wink gave a curt nod and disappeared.
Chapman turned his steely eyes on Ella. The light from the ceiling cast his leathery skin in deep relief. “What did you touch this time?”
“Nothing. I’m offended you would even ask—oh, wait. I may have nudged his shoes.” Chapman’s expression remained etched in granite, but his eyebrows rose a fraction of an inch. “What? I thought he was part of the game. Also, if you didn’t notice, it’s dark down there, and I didn’t see the blood at first.”
“Just his shoes, huh? You didn’t touch anything else?”
Ella bit her lip, and her voice rose. “Well…”
“What, Miss Barton?”
“I may have also picked up the gun.”
“Murderer!” Patience lunged forward, no longer a wall decoration, thrusting a finger at Ella. “Thou killed him!”
“Easy there, Ms. Chilton.” Chapman took off his derby hat and ran a hand over his silver mane of hair before placing his hat atop once again.
His words went unheeded. Patience’s chest rose, and her fists clenched by her sides. “I saw it with mine own eyes. This one stood over that stricken soul with that weapon!”
“Hey, I have a name,” Ella cut in.
Will glanced sideways at her. “That’s what you took offense to in her accusation?”
“Well—” she shrugged “—if she’s going to accuse me of murder, the least she can do is get my name right.”
Will tipped his head back and forth in a see-saw motion that conveyed he didn’t disagree.
“What kind of gun was it?” Flo’s voice creaked out, speaking up for the first time.
The woman had been uncharacteristically silent during the entire discourse. The lines around her eyes and mouth deepened with strain and stress. Something was off, Ella realized.
“A Barker,” Chapman drawled. “Colt, model ten, .38 Special.”
He may as well have been speaking Greek for all Ella understood—actually, she understood more Greek than what he’d said—but it had meant something to Flo. The older woman’s mouth pressed into a thin line, and her body hunched slightly like she was turning inward.
Yes, Ella thought, something’s definitely up with her.
A plump figure rounded the corner, huffing and waddling. Ella had to do a double take before she recognized the coroner. Without her jacket made of pockets, Pauline appeared about fifty pounds slimmer.
“What’ve we got, John?”
“Body.” The sheriff’s tone added the word again.
“I’ll need my jacket.”
Wink pressed a gentle hand on the doctor’s arm. “I’ll get it.” She hustled off again, moving as spry as someone half her age.
Chapman pointed at both Ella and Patience. “Yo
u two, down there with us. You’re going to tell me exactly what happened.” His cool, steel eyes lingered on Ella. “You know how this works.”
She knew she had nothing to do with Charles’s death, yet, somehow, Ella felt a twinge of guilt, like she had somehow attracted the recent slew of murders in the town.
Patience’s head shook from side to side in a fit. “The devil is down there. I will not go with thee.” Her eyes flitted to Ella.
Chapman hooked his thumbs in his trousers. “Ms. Chilton, I will be escorting you. You will be perfectly safe, I assure you.”
This seemed to assuage the woman’s fear enough to follow, although, Ella noted with humor, the councilwoman made sure Chapman was between them as they descended the rickety stairs.
Plunging back into the darkness, Ella held back a shiver and wished Chapman had handed her phone back to her. Once they’d reached the bottom, she lingered outside the pool of light, not wanting to get any closer.
A moment later, Pauline emerged with her bulky coat and a propane lantern. The flame flickered behind the smokey glass, casting dancing shadows over the slain man and his blood like a macabre scene from a horror movie.
Ella swallowed and turned aside, wishing the scene really was a work of fiction. She listened to Patience’s hysterical ramblings first as she gave her account of events, hoping that once the woman finished, she would leave and Ella wouldn’t have to listen to her anymore. After a while, though, she tuned out the drivel and watched the town coroner and physician work.
Pauline retrieved a pair of gloves from one pocket and began inspecting the body, focusing on the chest first. After a once over, she grunted and rolled him a bit to view the exit wound. While she worked, she murmured to herself.
“Gunshot through the back. Close range. Time of death is very recent. Blood pooling inside… what’s outside hasn’t coagulated yet.”
After checking Charles’s eyes with a penlight, she fished into one of her plethora of pockets and pulled out something akin to a turkey thermometer. There was a sickeningly wet crunching sound as she plunged the object into the victim’s chest.
Ella swore under her breath, fighting her gag reflex, and turned away from the man’s blank expression. She didn’t know Charles beyond her brief encounter with him earlier at the bar and the anemic dossier she’d prepared.
He was a native resident and had had a son about her age. Unfortunately, a few years back, the son had volunteered to cross the border to get supplies and had been tragically left behind.
As she ruminated on a life snuffed out too soon, her eyes fell to a scrap of paper on the floor a few feet away. Given the state of the basement, a piece of litter wasn’t unusual. However, this one piqued her interest, as much for its close proximity to the body as for its state. It was crisp and lacked dust and age, like a lone snowflake on a pile of fall leaves.
Ella curled her fingers around it, squinting at the handprinted letters written so precisely they could’ve been typed.
Vaguely, she heard Pauline say to Chapman, “I’m guessing he was killed within the last half-hour. Probably could narrow that down based on eyewitnesses. You got a whole mess of them upstairs.”
“That was my plan.”
“I saw him around 7:10,” Ella said without looking up from the note. “Speaking with Patience.” At this, Patience made a sound like a fish sucking air. “My guess is he died between 7:15 and 7:20.”
“Oh, good. You’re doing my job again for me, I see.” Pauline sighed. The woman’s personality swung from amiable to hostile, depending on the time of day, how much coffee she’d had, or the position of the stars.
Chapman ignored the doctor’s comment. “What makes you say that, Miss Barton?”
“Well, for one, I came down at 7:20, but for another, this note.” She handed over the scrap of paper.
His thick, handlebar mustache turned down as he squinted at the note. “Meet in the basement at 7:15,” he read aloud. He turned it over. “It ain’t signed. You recognize this handwriting?”
Ella shook her head and showed him where she’d found it.
Chapman squatted, his knees creaking and popping in the thick air. “And neither of you saw anyone come or go?”
“I saw her,” Patience spat out.
Ella let out a long-suffering sigh. “No, no one.”
“That’s a very narrow window,” Pauline said as she turned Charles’s body over with a grunt to inspect his chest again.
“Will thou do nothing about her?” Patience’s hand trembled at Ella.
Something in Ella snapped. “That’s enough, First Thanksgiving. I didn’t kill him. Yes, you saw me holding the gun, but I didn’t shoot him.”
“If not thou, then whom?” Patience swept her arm about the vast room. “I saw no other.”
Neither had Ella. “Maybe the killer was hiding behind some boxes. It’s pretty dark down here.” As the words left her mouth, the realization sunk in that the killer could’ve been lurking a few feet away from her—not that she hadn’t been in the same room as a murderer before, but the feeling creeped her out.
“Wait,” she said as another terrifying thought occurred, “if the killer was hiding down here when I discovered the body, how did they escape?” She faced Chapman. “I stood at the top of the stairs until you came. Nobody followed me up.” Her eyes darted around the dark corners of the basement.
Chapman stooped and grabbed the lantern from the ground, drawing a protest from Pauline. He swept the room, his hand hovering over his holster. A few minutes later, he pronounced the room clear. The tension in Ella’s body eased, and she suddenly felt very tired.
“They must’ve run off before you came down,” he suggested.
After nodding her agreement, she sank onto a nearby crate. The wood felt cool beneath her, and she was certain it was dirty, yet its sturdiness brought comfort, something solid beneath her.
Soon, she got her wish in that the sheriff dismissed Patience to wait for him upstairs, a request the woman more than willingly to obliged to.
“Alright, Miss Barton.” Chapman sank with an exhale and straddled a crate beside her. “Tell me everything.”
She let out a matching breath, then she recounted all that had occurred from the moment she entered the kitchen and the eery phonograph music to running up the stairs after Patience.
All the while, Chapman listened. Shadows hid part of his face, his expression obscured by the brim of his hat and the meager light.
She couldn’t tell if he was upset by the fact that she had discovered yet another body—even she was losing track of how many—or if the slight downturn of his mustache was a result of the pickled trout not agreeing with him. Knowing him, it could be either one.
Someone whistled behind them, breaking up their conversation.
“Woo-hee, that’s a lot of blood.” Flo stood at the foot of the stairs with Wink a few steps above her.
Instead of yelling at them for coming down, Chapman closed his eyes, and his chest moved in and out. Ella suspected he was fighting to control his anger before speaking.
“Ms. Henderson, you can’t be down here.”
“I tried to stop her,” Wink said.
Ella raised an eyebrow and said, “And by ‘stop her’, you mean… ?”
“Told her to walk softly, of course.”
“Of course.”
Chapman shook his head.
Meanwhile, Flo had shuffled nearer the body, causing Pauline to complain about her light being blocked.
As usual, Flo ignored any comment not directly addressed to her. “That the gun?”
“No,” Ella said. “It’s a fluffy bunny.”
Instead of biting out a quick quip, Flo frowned. “I mean, is that what killed him?” Her voice came out soft and somber, matching their surroundings but at odds with the woman Ella knew.
“Yes,” Chapman said. “I’ll take it back to the station, dust it for fingerprints.”
“What? Why?” Flo’s voice rose
nearly a full octave.
Ella blinked at her. “To find the killer.” She turned to Wink. “Has no one ever explained to her how investigating works?” She turned back in time to catch Flo chewing her bottom lip. She glanced sideways at Wink who seemed just as perplexed.
Trying to lighten the mood, Ella jabbed her elbow into Flo’s side. “At least that’s one less person pushing for a dry town, am I right?”
Every face except for the victim’s turned toward her with varying degrees of horror in their expressions.
“What? Too soon?” She cleared her throat. “Yeah, it’s too soon.” Her fingers fiddled with the fringe dangling from her dress until she could no longer feel their stares.
“If you find any prints,” Wink said, breaking the awkward silence, “how are you going to match them to someone? When you get a suspect?”
The sheriff nodded.
“Well, at least the suspect pool is narrowed to about a hundred people.” Ella pointed towards the ceiling, indicating the partygoers. “So, that’s something.”
Chapman rubbed a weathered hand along his jaw. “That’s not a bad idea, Miss Barton.”
“Thanks. Sometimes, I have them.” Once Chapman was out of earshot, Ella leaned closer to Wink. “What’s not a bad idea?”
Her boss lifted her bony shoulders in a shrug.
It took nearly twenty minutes for Ella to find out what her good idea had been. It involved locking down the inn—with Flo, Wink, and Jimmy covering all exits—to ensure nobody escaped.
Chapman made the guests stand in a line that wound and snaked throughout the ground floor of the manor. He then proceeded to inspect each and every person in attendance for blood spatter and gunshot residue.
Ella had thought the latter required swabbing and some fancy CSI equipment, but what the sheriff lacked in the forensics department, he made up for with his olfactory senses, sniffing everybody’s hands like Ella smelling lotion bottles at a Bath and Body Works Black Friday sale.
Once he finished inspecting someone, he fingerprinted them at the check-in desk-turned-bar before sending them to either Ella or Will to get their statements. One-by-one, the trio whittled down the line.
