by Ami Diane
“It’s sitting on a pile of broken radio tubes right now.”
On a whim, she asked him to bring it to the diner after it closed.
The rest of the day went by fairly quickly, interrupted shortly when Flo dropped by with a pile of campaign buttons to pass out to voters. She scattered them across the counter, a few landing in a man’s scrambled eggs. Ella sent him an apologetic look and topped off his coffee before fishing out the buttons.
She separated them as she went. “Okay, some of these we can use, some we can’t.”
Flo’s beehive wobbled with indignation. “Whatcha mean?”
“Well, ‘Vote Wink’ and ‘Wink for Mayor’ are fine, but I don’t think we can pass out ‘A Vote for Wink is a Vote for Kink’.”
“It’s supposed to read, ‘Pink’, but the ‘P’ on my typewriter pooped out.”
“Fine, fine, but supposing it hadn’t, what would ‘A Vote for Wink is a Vote for Pink’ even mean?”
“Well,” Flo said, speaking slowly as if it were obvious, “her hair’s pink.”
Ella opened her mouth.
She closed her mouth.
Behind her, Horatio shouted through the pass through. “Order up. Bossy in a bowl. Extra breath.”
Ella broke her stare from the crazy woman. “I have to go deliver this beef stew.” She moved a few paces before retracing her steps. Her hand scooped up as many of the “Kink” buttons as possible and shoved them into her apron pocket before taking the plates of food to the corner booth.
Flo’s voice carried across the railcar. “Hey, I worked hard on those.”
Ella ignored her protests.
As the afternoon wore on, Flo, surprisingly, hung around the diner, passing out buttons and trying to retrieve the ones Ella had confiscated.
Around six, Wink stood behind the register, accepting a pair of shoes as payment for a meal, making a note in the leather-bound ledger.
“Kind of an expensive meal,” Ella noted as she slipped behind her boss to place the empty coffee carafe back in its spot. The early dinner rush had died to a lull, and Wink was preparing to close up early for the night.
“Mrs. Garrison was paying off December’s tab.”
Ella eyed the crocodile pumps. One step on those narrow heels and she’d be in Pauline’s office with a broken ankle. She leaned against the counter and scarfed down another donut.
With the diner nearly empty, Wink shoved a cheeseburger and fries in front of Ella, and together, they joined Flo who was busy spinning back and forth on a stool.
Wink picked up one of the buttons, seeing it for the first time, and complimented her friend on their quality. Ella shook her head and took a long, loud slurp of decaf coffee.
Wink’s retina-blinding pink bob fell forward as she leaned in and dropped her voice in deference to the two customers still in the railcar. “Sal stopped by earlier. Said Patience is fit to be tied, wandering the village, claiming Ella killed Charles.”
Ella nearly dropped her cup. “Is that what you and Sal were whispering about earlier? I wondered why he stopped by.”
Flo spun a button on the counter like a top until it slowed to a stop. “Wouldn’t be the first time Ella was suspected of killin’ somebody.”
Ella opened her mouth in protest then stopped herself when she realized it was true.
The customer on one of the other stools, a regular, sat frozen, her fork wobbling near her mouth as she tilted her head in a thinly veiled attempt to eavesdrop.
Ella spoke up for the woman’s benefit. “When will people learn? If they hide my lucky charms, they wind up dead.” She allowed herself a satisfied smirk at the woman’s reaction.
Both Wink and Flo stared at her in confusion.
“Anyway,” Wink said, pointedly, “I’m assuming we’re looking into Charles’s death, right?”
“You’d assume correctly.” Ella took another sip, letting the hot liquid slide down her throat and warm her insides. “Although, once Chapman compares everyone’s prints to the ones on the weapon, it’s going to be an open and shut case. Still, it might be good practice to hone our investigative skills. I guess we have until he matches the prints to the killer. That’s a pretty tight deadline.”
“And how do you propose we do that, Sherlock?” Flo asked.
Ella’s glanced between the two patrons. “Later. After the diner’s closed. Will’s stopping by with his notes from last night.”
With the geriatric twins agreeing to this, they waited for the two customers to finish their meals and pay.
After they left, Ella knelt on the floor, brushing bits of hamburger bun into a dustpan while Wink turned the “closed” sign on the door but didn’t turn the lock. She gathered up plates, forks, and a blackberry pie while Ella poured decaf coffee into four mugs.
“Have a good night, ladies,” Horatio called out, his accent stressing different syllables as he swept out the front door and plunged into the fog.
An apparition appeared a moment later, became corporeal, then slipped inside.
Will shook off the droplets on his jacket and fedora before hanging them up then plopped the notebook on the table next to the pie. “Wherever we are, I’m beginning to think it’s never seen the sun.”
Flo sauntered in from the kitchen, a fry dangling between her pruned lips. The weather was doing murder to her beehive. It tilted and melted like wax.
Ella looked away to keep herself from commenting on the state of the woman’s coiffure. “I’m beginning to think we flashed back to the beginning, you know, to when the earth was in its primordial stages.”
Flo sniffed and did her best to prop her hair back up. “Don’t be ridiculous. Primal stages.”
“Primordial—”
“Is that blackberry?” Flo asked, her one-track mind already derailing.
Wink was in the middle of serving out four, generous slices of pie.
“You know I don’t like blackberry.”
“Well, you’re going to eat it anyway,” Wink said. “I was going to have to throw it out tonight.”
“So, we’re just your garbage cans?”
The bench cushion sank beneath Ella as Will slipped in beside her. “I’m okay with that.” He grabbed a plate and plunged a fork through the crust.
Ella spoke around her second bite of the deliciously sweet and tart dessert. “Eating food before it expires is kind of in my wheelhouse.” She pointed her fork at Flo. “And don’t you mean ‘garbage disposal’?”
“How’s that? Oh, one of them InSinkErators? Yeah, I had one till the motor burnt out.”
Ella frowned. “A what? Is that like an N’Sync brand refrigerator?” Not for the first time did she feel something had been lost in translation through the decades-gap between them.
“Your motor burnt out on it, Flo,” Will said, “because you shoved an entire squash down the drain.”
Flo waved his comment aside as she waited for Wink to scoot in first on the side opposite Ella and Will. With her hands on her hips, Wink stared back, waiting for Flo to make the first move.
Will stabbed at his pie again, watching the showdown. “I’ve worked on a few of those sink disposal units, the General Electric ones. I don’t know if it’s because it was a different brand, but Flo’s was a lost cause. I think the thing saw death as the only reprieve.” He turned a curious eye Ella’s direction, choosing to ignore the staring contest happening across from them. “Are they common in your time?”
Though it often made her homesick to discuss such things, it also made her appreciative of what she’d had and of human ingenuity.
“Most kitchens had them. Oh, for heaven’s sake, you two,” she finally snapped at the two older women. “I babysat toddlers more mature than you. Sit down.”
Wink dropped to the seat, grumbling protests the entire scoot to the wall. Now that all four were seated and outfitted with pie and coffee—including an extra large slice of pie for Flo—Ella cleared her throat to start them off.
“What’s
this?” Flo spat her coffee back into her cup. “Is this decaf?”
“Yes,” Ella said through clenched teeth, “the evil, ugly cousin to caffeinated coffee. Why?” She fixed the woman across from her with a hard gaze, daring her to complain. “Last time you had caffeine after 5:00, you were up half the night, doing God knows what, keeping me up with your hammering, singing, and what sounded like explosions.”
“‘Cause they were.”
Ella closed her eyes, massaged her temples, and took a deep breath before opening her lids again.
Without so much as an attempt at discretion, Flo dug into her suitcase-sized purse and produced a flask. She then proceeded to dump a generous serving into her coffee.
“Coffee aside,” Ella said, reaching across and righting the flask, “Chapman will most likely match prints from one of the partygoers to the murder weapon any time now, but we thought—” she indicated Wink “—it would be good to practice our investigative skills and see if we couldn’t finger the murderer before Chapman finds them.” She reached onto the seat beside her, brushing her shoulder against Will’s as she pulled out her notebook. “We do that by running through everyone’s movements last night; well, the big players anyway.”
The inventor’s blue-green eyes sparked with understanding. “Like a chess board. We track all the moving pieces.”
“Sure. I was thinking more like the plays in a football game, but your analogy works too.” She snapped her fingers. “Oh, better yet. It’s like a really complicated jigsaw puzzle. Anyway, it’d be too much to account for everyone, but I figured we’d start with the most likely suspects and work our way down from there.” She scanned their faces, receiving a nod from both Wink and Will and a grunt from Flo.
Taking their reactions as encouragement to proceed, she flipped over to the first page, the paper rustling in the near quiet, mixing with Flo’s slurping.
Will also pulled out his notepad, and they leaned over the papers, diving into their notes. It didn’t take long before following the movements of the other mayoral candidates became a muddled mess, so Ella pulled out a fresh sheet of paper and sketched up a rough floor plan of the inn. Then she marked Sal, Patience, Lou, and Charles’s locations at 7:10 and began tracking their movements according to their accounts, starting with Lou.
“What’s that?” Flo tapped a finger on the drawing.
“Patience’s marker.” Ella had drawn a frowning face. Flo nodded her approval.
“So,” Ella said, “Lou was seen at the bar by Flo at 7:15 then again by Will at 7:20. That’s five minutes for him to run to the basement and shoot Charles. Two problems with that, though. One, I would’ve seen him. Two, that would take some hustling to get down to the basement, shoot Charles, then run back up. Is he capable of moving that quickly? A better question is, has anyone seen him move that quickly?”
Will shook his head. “The man has one speed and that’s molasses in winter.”
“I saw him run once,” Wink said. “Of course, at the time, an alligator was chasing him, and he barely managed to escape. However, he did run.”
A wicked smile crossed Flo’s face. “Heh, that’s right. Lost a chunk of his coveralls, if I remember right.” She turned to Ella. “His white undergarments weren’t so white if you catch my drift.”
Ella made a face and held up her hand. “Got it.”
“You see, because he’d soiled—”
“Nope, I got it, Flo. Thanks.”
“Is that why there’s a patch over his backside?” Will asked. “I never heard that story.”
Ella’s mouth twitched as she fought a smile. “What were you doing looking at his backside?” She earned a fiery expression from the inventor.
“Never the less,” Will said, still eyeing her, “last night, the man wasn’t in any state to be moving quickly. Seemed to be holding onto the bar top for support when last I saw him.”
Ella nodded. “Alright, so we can pretty much rule out Lou. Next up, Sal.” Her pencil hovered over the barber’s name.
Will hesitated as he consulted the scrawl in his notes. “I didn’t interview him.”
“Neither did I.” Silence descended as they stared around the table at each other. “Well, that’s not suspicious.” She made a note. “We’ll tell Chapman.”
“Now that you say it,” Wink said, “I don’t remember him leaving through the front with everyone else.”
“Neither do I.”
There was a chorus of murmurs in agreement that Sal demanded further questioning, with Flo blurting out, “He’s the killer. Hang ‘im by his toenails and be done with it.”
“Easy there, grim reaper,” Ella said, reaching across the table to pat the older woman’s veiny hand. “He’s at the top of my suspect list now, but, although clearly suspicious, let’s not go putting a red letter on his chest just yet.”
“Huh? Red letter?”
“Honestly, woman, don’t you read? It’s from The Scarlet Letter.” Ella shook her head. “Never mind. Okay, so Sal escaped questioning. Who else do we have?”
Wink’s brows drew together as she studied the map. “With the exception of the elusive Sal, all other candidates have alibis during that time frame.”
Ella tapped her pencil on the table. “Except Patience.”
She’d been anxious to get to the Puritan. Leaning in, she briefly recounted what she’d overheard and of her tailing the woman. While she spoke, she charted Patience’s movements on the paper. “Besides myself, she was closest to the basement at 7:15, and she was adamant, lying right to my face, that she was in the study during that time.”
Flo paused amid picking at a hangnail to look up. “You overheard her arguing with that Dry around 7:05, then she was near the body when he croaked? What’re we doing sitting here gabbing about it? She obviously shot him.”
“Thank you, Columbo, but that’s only circumstantial evidence,” Ella said.
“You can’t just make up words to sound fancy.”
“Again. If you picked up a book once in a while—wait, you can read, right?” She’d feel awful for ribbing Flo if the woman couldn’t read.
In response, Flo stuck out her tongue.
“No need to get nasty; it was a sincere question. And just a moment ago, you wanted to hang Sal. Now it’s Patience.”
Flo shrugged. “I’m fickle like that.”
Will reined them back on track. “We’re speculating as if the candidates did the deed themselves. What if the guilty party hired someone? Or two people working together?”
It was a worthy consideration but certainly complicated things.
“Then we’re back to motive. Who had the strongest motive to kill Charles?” Ella looked up from the scribbled mess of a Picasso drawing to the people who’d lived in the town longer than she had, who knew the victim as more than just a dossier. “Because the only motive I can come up with is his push for a dry town. I mean, that would upset a few people.” She slid her eyes to Flo who had fixated on her fingernails again.
“That would put Lou back in the running,” Wink said.
“Can any of you think of another motive in wanting Charles dead?” Ella asked, almost desperate. That motive seemed so simple, so human.
Will and Wink shook their heads. Ella stared at Flo, waiting. After a not so subtle jab from Wink, Flo’s head shot up.
“What? Oh, motive. No, I can’t think of another reason.”
Beside Ella, Will shifted in his seat, craning his head around, and she caught a manly whiff of grease and sandalwood. “How was Charles doing in the race? Have you done any polling yet?”
“A little.” Ella earned a confirming nod from Wink. “Just some cold calling around town. Flo, you did more the last few days. What was the temperature on the man?”
Flo blinked bloodshot eyes. “How’s that?”
Stretching across the table, Ella pulled away the remnants of the spiked coffee then repeated the question.
Flo spread her palms out in a shrug. “He had some su
pport but wasn’t leadin’ by any means. Most didn’t like his budget cut proposals.”
While they’d been talking, the swirling gray world outside had turned black. A tall shadow moved against a street lamp then blocked the door.
The bell chimed, and Chapman strolled in, his badge glinting in the diner’s bright lights.
“Rose said I’d find y’all here.” He touched the brim of his derby hat in greeting but didn’t take it off, a sign he wouldn’t be staying long. The image of him as Wyatt Earp was so intertwined in Ella’s brain, she wondered if she would ever untangle it.
“Coffee, John?” Wink made a move to shove Flo out of the booth so she could pour the sheriff a cup, but he declined.
He perched himself on a stool at the lunch counter. Something about his stiff posture and the chasm between himself and the group twisted Ella’s stomach into knots.
Chapman leaned an elbow onto the countertop, brushing aside a few raisins.
“Oh, sorry. Chester was up there earlier,” Wink said. “I’ll wipe it down.”
The sheriff did a double take at the raisin-looking objects, realization in his eyes, and sat forward again.
Ella rounded on her boss. “Cheezits, Wink. That’s so gross. We have got to discuss health codes.”
Will’s elbow nudged her side gently, and he inclined his head at Chapman’s stern expression. Ella took the hint and clamped her mouth shut.
The sheriff’s spindly, calloused fingers twisted the ends of his handlebar mustache as he waited for them to be silent. “Dusted the gun for prints and compared ‘em to those from the party. Found three sets.”
“Three?” Ella asked before she could stop herself.
He nodded. “Yep. One set matched yours, as expected. Another didn’t match anyone at the party.” His steel-colored sharp eyes homed in on Flo. “The third, matched yours, Ms. Henderson. Mind telling me how that’s possible?”
The only sound in Grandma’s Kitchen was the rustling of heads turning to stare at Flo. She chewed her lip like a cow chewing its cud. A war brewed across her face. It finally broke as if she’d settled a matter she’d been debating.
