Traveling Town Cozy Mystery Box Set

by Ami Diane

  “—but I wanna drink alone.”

  “Understandable. I’ll only be a minute.” Lou was Wink’s competition—in that he was also running for mayor. He posed little actual opposition to Wink. “The night of the party, how long were you at the bar?” Her eyes flitted over to Lucky who wove back and forth behind the bar, putting away glasses and wiping down the counter.

  Lou’s eyes squinted at the ceiling in recollection. His finger scratched at one of the many folds of skin under his chin. “I’d say most of it.”

  “And was Lucky behind the bar the whole night?”

  Lou was slow to answer. “Yes.”

  Ella deflated.

  “Oh, wait. He ducked out once to get more whiskey. I remember ‘cause I wanted a refill.”

  Ella held her breath, leaned in, and dropped her voice. “Do you remember what time that was?”

  The mechanic’s head bobbed slowly. “Yeah, around 7:20.”

  “You sure?”

  “Yep.” Lou took a swig then wiped his sleeve across his lips.

  Disappointed with another dead end in Charles’s murder, Ella thanked the mechanic and rose. She rejoined Flo who by now had finished her drink.

  Ella thought she’d finally caught the bartender in a lie. What she’d thought would be a simple case of catching the bad guy was becoming as convoluted and messy as a Presidential election.

  Like people, she thought, looking over at Flo.

  A couple of hours later, the room was half-filled from smokey wall to smokey wall, and Ella and Flo had made their rounds. The general consensus seemed to be that one of the fellow candidates had murdered Charles, but suspicion towards Wink was lowest amongst the other mayoral hopefuls. A few even accepted campaign buttons and pinned them either to lapels or furs or tunics.

  “It seems Wink’s main contender is Sal.” Ella jabbed her fork into the food she’d ordered, testing to see if it was edible. Grease and cheese congealed on the plate atop what was supposed to be fries. Her stomach hugged her spine with hunger, and she was forced to take a tentative bite despite the food’s questionable appearance.

  “Yeah, seemed divided evenly between the two.” Flo grimaced at Ella’s plate. “Why’re you eating that pile of dung?”

  “Because I want to run to the library before it closes, and I’m starving.” Her hopes that the amorphous blob would taste better than it appeared were dashed. “This tastes awful.” She took another bite.

  “Quit eating it then.” Flo dug through her car-sized purse and pulled out a sandwich.

  Leaning across the table, Ella stole a glance into the cavernous interior. “You wouldn’t happen to have another of those in there, would you?”

  Flo slammed the purse shut. “Get your own.”

  Ella stomached a few more bites of her mush before pushing her plate away and throwing some money on the table. “Settle my tab, will you? I have to get going.”

  Flo agreed, saying she’d stay longer and work the crowd a bit more.

  Outside, the temperature had dropped, hardening the pacts of snow that clung to the sidewalk. The afternoon temperature had warmed enough to melt more of the white stuff, producing wide, flowing creeks along the edges of the street. If the temperature fell during the night, the pavement and sidewalks would be an icy hazard come morning.

  Ella kept her steps careful as she picked her way two blocks north to the Keystone Library. Since discovering the hidden speakeasy two floors below her bedroom, she’d been hungry for more knowledge of that era. What she knew of that short period in U.S. history extended to a few old movies, riddled with gangsters and Tommy Guns, and… no, that was pretty much it.

  Inside the library, the warmth made her skin tingle, and she rubbed her hands together to get the feeling back into them. Since she hadn’t known that she’d be out canvassing in the afternoon, she’d neglected to grab gloves when leaving for work that morning.

  Gabby, the boisterous librarian, leaped from her reference desk when she spotted Ella, a pair of wire-rim glasses bobbling on the tip of her nose. Her copper-colored plait of hair snapped back and forth beneath her bonnet like a whip.

  Ella greeted the girl taking in the young woman’s outfit, from the head covering to her KISS band t-shirt. After listening to a gush of words from Gabby about the recent murder, the middle school play she was helping with, and the local radio show, Ella managed to slip away under the guise of needing a new fiction book to read after growing bored with the inn’s own expansive library.

  Deep in the annals of shelves, surrounded by the heady scent of pages and late night study sessions, Ella ran her finger along the spines of several books related to the Prohibition era. She didn’t know why she’d been vague and evasive when Gabby had asked her what she was looking for. The librarian knew she liked to research.

  As she pulled out a couple of thicker hardbacks, she decided she’d wanted to avoid the slew of questions that would no doubt follow. Why was Ella looking into Prohibition? Did it have something to do with the party where a man had been murdered, a party themed around speakeasies, gangsters, and bootleggers?

  She set the books on a table near the back and pulled the desk lamp closer as she sat. Curiosity was driving her to know more, but another part of her wondered if learning more about this time period wouldn’t point her in the direction of the killer.

  The how, she couldn’t begin to guess at, but in her experience, knowledge liberated. And fools were fools because they did not suffer knowledge, and Ella was no fool.

  After several more trips to the shelves, replacing books and grabbing others, her arms ladened, she bumped into Gabby. It was then Ella noticed that most of the lights had been turned off.

  “Oh, I was going to lock up.” Gabby’s gaze flitted to the stack teetering in Ella’s arms. “You want to check those out?”

  “Um…” She really didn’t want to heft them back to the inn, and also, if she checked them out, it would spark that conversation with Gabby she’d been avoiding, then who knows how much longer they’d be there?

  The librarian dug into the pocket of her jacket and produced a key. “Here, lock up when you finish. Don’t forget to turn out the lights.”

  “That’s sweet, but you don’t have to.” Despite her words, a thrill traveled through Ella’s chest. Endless hours in a library? Of course, she could have that at the inn, but the selection of books here was wider and held more reference material.

  “Nonsense. Just return it in the morning. And don’t tell my aunt.” Gabby’s smile wavered, and Ella saw real fear in the woman’s eyes.

  After promising to return the key in the morning in time for Gabby to open, Ella thanked her profusely. The librarian set it on the pile of books in Ella’s arms then swept down the dark aisles. A moment later, Ella heard the door open then close.

  Alone in the dim light and hush of books, she wove back to her table and dropped the stack with a thud then massaged her arms. Who needed a gym when they had a library?

  She settled in once again to her research, quickly losing all sense of time as she immersed herself in a world of secret bars, rum runners, and gangsters. It was at some point, an hour after her stomach had begun protesting the scant fries she’d had hours earlier when she hit the jackpot: an exposé written up in Keystone Corner about Prohibition in Colorado, where Keystone Village was originally from. The featured piece spanned four pages—nearly the entire newspaper—and was a look back ten years after Prohibition had ended.

  Time had been unkind to the pages, yellowing the paper, despite it being protected in the binder. For the next half hour, Ella read and re-read the article, tasting the flavor of the 1920s and reliving a tumultuous time in Colorado’s history. Prohibition had spanned eighteen years in the state, beginning four years before the rest of the nation followed suit. The temperance movement had grown legs during the 1800s, championed by several women’s leagues and unions.

  She read about how bootleggers had been forced to become creative in their
endeavors at hiding their booze, including filling watermelons with whiskey. The article also touched on one of the more colorful women during this era who would march into taverns and saloons, destroying them with a hatchet.

  At this point in her reading, Ella paused, considering the likelihood of Patience owning a hatchet. Maybe it wasn’t so bad that Flo tended to carry a weapon in her purse.

  Reading further, Colorado’s mafia and their subsequent rum wars dripped from the pages, including a particularity brutal encounter in 1922 that involved eleven men, resulting in the deaths of two gangsters.

  The year 1929 saw the rise of a gangster known as Diamond Jack—a good stripper name, Ella thought, if there ever was one. The man sounded vicious, committing kidnapping, homicide, and burglary… because being a ruthless gangster alone wasn’t enough. He also attracted the likes of kingpin Al Capone to the state.

  Most nearly anything could be turned to liquor, it seemed, requiring little more than fruit, sugar, water, grain, and a large vat to cook it all in. Top it with a domed lid and a copper coil, and voila, giggle water to rot the insides.

  Unfortunately, whether by creativity or lack of ingredients, some mixtures were dangerous and resulted in blindness or even death. One man had died from carbolic acid in his whiskey.

  Pre-national adoption of Prohibition, in the section of the state where Keystone had originally resided, Coloradoans received their booze from one of their wet neighbors.

  When Ella read this, she rose, located Keystone on the old state map on the wall, and traced the highway. Main Street had been part of a highway in the southwest corner of the state, amidst forestry. The highway ran into New Mexico, a wet state after Colorado became dry in 1916. This explained why such a small town would have a speakeasy filled with bootleggers. It was a thoroughfare for most on their way to larger towns.

  Back at the table, Ella finished her third pass of the article. One interesting outcome after the end of Prohibition in 1933 was that “saloons,” with their tainted stigma, had to be named something different in Colorado—and they were also required to serve food. At this, Ella nearly laughed. Lucky was playing it loose with the term “food.”

  After she reached the final word of the exposé, her eyes grazed over the ad at the bottom for Royal Crown Cola. Nowhere had it mentioned the speakeasy inside the inn. Had it been that well-kept of a secret? She found that surprising considering gossip spread faster than the Spanish Flu in Keystone.

  Yawning, she stretched and slowly began the laborious task of returning the binder and other reference materials to their proper places. Out on the sidewalk, as she turned the key in the lock, her mind turned over the information she’d learned, full of booze and gangsters, but no closer to learning about the hidden speakeasy nor to catching a killer.

  Chapter 14

  ELLA ROUNDED THE lake, passing the park. Bare branches from oaks and elms reached out through the fog like frail, arthritic fingers. She leaped over a pack of snow without breaking stride, her tennis shoes squishing through mud and gravel.

  Her legs burned with disuse from weeks of being housebound. A few minutes later, her nose dripping, she mounted the terrace at the back of the manor. She hunched over her knees as she gasped for air.

  If the town jumped into another snow-ridden terrain, she’d have to find some alternative form of exercise. Maybe jumping jacks or running up and down the stairs. Perhaps skiing or snowshoeing was a viable option.

  Inside the kitchen, she guzzled a glass of water then promptly exchanged the empty cup for coffee before dragging herself upstairs to change for work. Despite staying up until midnight, she had still awakened early, her mind swirling with too many thoughts and nerves over the upcoming “mission.”

  She left a few minutes early so she could meet Gabby in front of the library and relinquish the key. After ten minutes of listening to the lovely but overly garrulous librarian, Ella jogged for Grandma’s Kitchen five minutes late for work.

  As soon as she discarded her jacket in the kitchen, she hastily grabbed the carafe in the diner and made rounds pouring mud for the handful of breakfast goers.

  The next couple of hours ebbed and flowed with patrons and food. Around ten o’clock, Ella grabbed a cup of coffee, doused it with cream, and scooped up a maple bar. She took her break in the kitchen, surrounded by Horatio’s soft Italian curses.

  Soon, Wink strolled in and eyed Ella’s late breakfast with a disapproving glance before pursing her lips.

  “What? I ran this morning. Just eating back the calories I burned so I don’t get too thin.” Ella patted the growing paunch at her mid-section.

  On the counter were over two dozen blueberry muffins, cooling. They filled the kitchen with their fragrance. The moment Ella swallowed her last bite of donut, she reached out and grabbed a muffin.

  Wink leaned against the counter, taking a bite into one herself. “Hmm, I think I was a bit heavy-handed with the flour.”

  “What are you talking about?” Ella’s words were muffled as she chewed. “They’re berry delicious. Get it?”

  Judging by Wink’s expression, her boss was not impressed with the pun. They ate in silence a moment, listening to the chorus of noise behind them of the fryer sizzling and pancake batter being poured onto the griddle.

  “How did canvassing go yesterday?” Wink asked.

  “Oh, Flo didn’t tell you? I just assumed she would’ve called or something after she left the Half Penny.” Ella swallowed and filled her friend in on their evening the day before.

  “To sum it up,” she concluded lightly, “looks like you’re suspected of offing Charles, but not before Patience or even Lou, really. So, there’s that. Although, I can’t imagine Lou seeing straight enough to hit the broadside of a barn, let alone center mass in a dark basement. But whatever. Point is—” she patted Wink’s back—“go you. You’re only real competition, at this point, is Sal.”

  Horatio snorted from his position behind the griddle. “Who would want that man as mayor, eh?”

  “He hasn’t done a horrible job so far,” Ella said, then quickly added, “but Wink would do much better, of course.” She grabbed another muffin and tilted her head, surveying the diner owner. “Why did you decide to run against him, anyway?”

  “He wants to get the town away from money entirely as currency. Also, he didn’t say this in the meeting, but I overheard him at a potluck a few months back, he’d like to see the town grow.”

  “How would that work?”

  “Meaning, when someone comes through, we should do everything to make them feel welcome.”

  Ella stopped mid-chew, considering the ramifications of this. If an outsider visited the town and was welcomed by the friendly folk, they would be far less likely to leave hastily, increasing their chances of getting stranded. Not only would that be unfortunate for said person, but the town couldn’t sustain a larger population.

  She shuddered. “That’s diabolical.”

  “I agree.” Wink’s heavily-lined eyes flitted sideways to the cook before she lowered her voice. “So, any new developments I should know about?”

  “About what?”

  “You know…” Wink pantomimed shooting a gun. “The murder.”

  “First, that’s creepy. Second…” She tried to remember what information she’d last given Wink.

  Were there any new developments to report? Ella had learned much over the last couple of days, bits and pieces, but nothing really pertaining to the murder.

  “I thought I was on to something with Lucky, but Lou shot that theory down. Told me Lucky didn’t leave the bar until after the murder.”

  Wink considered this. “Seems the scuttlebutt has gone stale. Might be time to put our ear to the ground and see if there’s anything fresh.”

  “Meaning…?” Ella caught Wink’s expression. “Oh, no. Absolutely not.”

  “Yes.”

  “I was just there, gathering intelligence for those dossiers you had no use for.”

&nb
sp; “It’s the best place to hear gossip.”

  Ella let out an involuntary whimper. “Please don’t make me go.”

  “You want to solve this, don’t you?”

  “I’m not so sure now.” Ella met Wink’s gaze, finally conceding after an uncomfortable amount of staring. “Fine, but not today. After we finish our you-know-what tonight.”

  Behind them, Horatio scraped the griddle clean, a stack of pancakes beside him, still oblivious to their conversation.

  Ella added, “And I’m not getting my hair cut.”

  She could probably get her nails touched up at the salon, though. The manicure she’d received was a gorgeous, deep burgundy.

  Wink stared at Ella’s curly hair. “You ever think of dyeing your hair?”

  “You know what? I heard the bell. I better go greet our customers.”

  As she swung the kitchen door outward, she heard Wink holler after her, “Green would look great on you, dear. Promise me you’ll consider it!”

  “I can’t hear you!”

  Ella shook her head, cursing her friend under her breath. She’d rather shave her head than look like a walking shamrock.

  As she looked up, her feet stuttered over the vinyl floor. Will stood on the floor mat, fedora in hands, a tentative smile on his lips. Their last conversation hung heavy between them.

  Throwing her shoulders back, she strode forward. “What’re you doing standing there like you’ve never been here before? Have a seat.”

  His smile widened, producing dimples and causing her stomach to drop to her knees.

  “May I suggest the lunch counter? I haven’t had a chance to wipe down tables. We just had two families in the booths, and I’m pretty sure I saw the kids hiding boogers under the table.”

  He grimaced as he shrugged out of his trench coat, then he picked out a stool, spinning to face the soda fountain. When his back was to her, her hand flew to her hair and tamed it before she skirted the counter.

  Steam rose in tendrils towards her face as she poured him a cup of coffee. “Here’s mud in your eye. You say that, right? That’s a thing?”