by Ami Diane
The mansion had been built in the mid-1800s but had been splendidly kept up, with most of its original fixtures and decor still intact. Therefore, to have a retro bathroom from an era with the least appealing color palette in such a lovely home felt like a sin.
“Rose sent me to help you.” She sat crosslegged on the floor. “What’s wrong with the sink?”
“Got a leak where it connects, so I’m seeing if I can’t fix it with some plumber’s tape.” His face turned red as he strained, using pliers to disconnect the P-trap.
She grabbed a pair of tongue-and-groove pliers and handed them over. “Try using these.”
He switched out the pliers, and the P-trap connection gave after soon after. Grabbing a nearby bucket beside him, she slid it underneath as remnants of water trickled out of the disconnected pipe.
“So,” the innkeeper said casually, “how are you doing after seeing Mary like that?”
Ella shrugged. “Fine, I guess.”
“I suppose it wasn’t your first body.”
“I’d like to say that it’s hopefully my last but history is not on my side.” After a moment, she said, “I feel bad for Brandon.”
“Yeah. He’s a tough kid, but I’m sure this won’t be easy.”
“Does he have any family?”
Jimmy shook his head which looked strange given that he still lay on the floor. “It was just the two of them.” He exchanged the tongue-and-groove pliers for a roll of plumber’s tape.
“How are you doing after seeing Mary’s body?” she asked.
“It’s not something I’ll be forgetting anytime soon.” He sighed. “Death is so senseless.”
“Especially when it’s intentional.”
The tape stopped mid-loop around the pipe, and he twisted his head to look at her, no easy feat considering the pretzel formation his body was currently in. Taking a deep breath, she gave him the highlights of what Chapman had told them, as well as their belief that Peanut wasn’t behind the attack.
“So, looks like Wink’s stupid dinosaur might be innocent, after all,” she concluded.
“What is wrong with people? It makes me angry. I hope whoever’s responsible gets locked up.” He handed over the tape, and she passed the lock-and-groove pliers back.
Instead of reconnecting the P-trap, he wriggled out and sat up, looking serious. “What’s it feel like?”
“What?”
“Catching bad guys. Putting them away.”
“Well, Chapman puts them away.” She bit her lip. “At least I think he does. He arrests them, and they disappear. I really should find out what he does with them.” After considering her last statement a moment, she flicked her hand through the air. “On second thought, I don’t want to know.”
Jimmy fidgeted with the tool. Sweat glimmered where his scalp met his receding hairline. As he scooted towards the sink again, she stopped him.
“It feels really good. I’ve never talked about this, but ever since I was a young girl, I’ve had a strong sense of justice. When I know someone’s done wrong and they’re getting away with it, it kills me.”
Something behind his eyes flashed, a deep emotion that resonated within her. He didn’t have to say it, but she knew he understood, knew the feeling.
“It’s a core value, and following it feeds my soul. When I right a wrong, for a brief period of time, my world is right and makes sense—until some nut job goes and kills another person.”
He blinked and retreated under the safety of the sink again. “You’d make a good cop.”
“Ha, no. Not even a little. I’m not a big people person.”
“You don’t say?”
“And despite my bravado, I don’t handle stressful situations well.”
All sarcasm was absent this time when he spoke. “You could’ve fooled me.”
“Besides,” she said, pulling the bucket away, so he could maneuver around better now that the pipes were reconnected, “I like researching linguistics and interpreting.”
He finished tightening the connection, and the clamor of metal clanking metal forced a hiatus to their conversation. She turned the faucet and tested the leak. When nothing dripped out, he jockeyed back out from beneath the sink, finished.
He mopped his forehead, and together, they began replacing the tools in the toolbox between them.
“What about you?” she said.
“What about me?”
“Do you like running the inn?”
He considered the question, finally saying, “When we had guests moving through here, yes. I enjoyed it. But it’s become… tedious isn’t the right word. Aimless?”
His face flushed. “Don’t tell Rose, please. I don’t want her thinking I’m unhappy. ‘Cause I’m not. It’s just… I don’t feel like I have a purpose.” His last sentence rushed out, the words bleeding together with shame.
“I know this is easier said than done, but trust me on this, will you? Find something you love, and you will find your purpose.”
Will’s shop smelled of grease and steel and burned electrical wiring. Ella polished off the last of the cheesecake she’d brought then brushed the crumbs off the dress she’d borrowed from Rose. It was much tighter in the waist than was comfortable, but in a town with limited resources, she couldn’t be picky.
Besides, the restricting waistline resulted in her putting away less food, and she hated being on dates where she ate more than her male counterpart.
“That was delicious.” Will wadded up a cloth napkin and dropped it onto his plate. “You ready for the next screen?”
Ella licked her fork and nodded. They’d hauled the computer back to his place when he came to pick her up. Wink and the others had been disappointed that she wouldn’t be joining them for dinner, but that hadn’t stopped them from heckling her as she left.
Dinner was sandwiches, curtesy of what Ella had swiped from the fridge, and engrossing conversation about their favorite respective topics: linguistics and technology. Now, they were enjoying the pilfered dessert from the diner while reading The Knight and the Goblin Queen.
She was currently on a particularly gritty passage about the goblin queen locking the knight in a basement when the story took an interesting turn.
Tonight, the goblin queen tried to lock me in the dungeon. My crime? Failing to have dinner prepared on time. I had no weapon with which to defend myself save my hands. I fought bravely, and though I did not vanquish her, I suspect she will think twice before putting her hands on me again.
“Why is a knight preparing dinner?” she asked.
Will shrugged. “It’s a story. Maybe the author was running out of things to write about.”
Straightening from her hunched position near the screen, Ella considered this. A tugging feeling came over her gut, one she’d had the first time reading the story entries.
Shoving the emotion aside, she continued to pore over the story with Will for the better part of an hour. All the while, an old fan blew on them to stave off the heat and humidity.
At one point, Will took the cheesecake back out from the battered fridge he kept in his shop and served them each a second slice. The fact that he hadn’t asked if she wanted second helpings caused her to hide a smile. The man certainly knew the way to her heart.
He tapped the keyboard to load the next page. “Did I do something wrong. Where’d it go?”
She focused her attention on the monitor and tapped an arrow key to return to the previous page, then she tapped another to move forward again. Her frown deepened with each stroke.
“Huh, that’s strange. That’s it. That’s the last entry. The story just stops.” She slumped back. “Just when it was getting good.”
The goblin queen and knight had accidentally slipped through a portal, into a new land, whereby, she took over an empire. Then she’d forced the knight to swear fealty to her and work in her new kingdom.
“I was really hoping he’d kick the stuffing out of her.” She glanced sideways at the inventor.
“Is that violent of me?”
He murmured distractedly that it was, indeed, violent while his fingers clacked on the keyboard. A horrible thought occurred to her.
“What if… what if the owner of the computer stopped writing because he or she… became no more? They passed on. Bit the dust, as it were.”
He paused long enough from the command he’d typed, comparing it to the notes he’d copied from her lesson, to look over.
“I hadn’t considered that. I suppose that would make sense. Do you know who owned this beforehand?”
“I was hoping you could tell me, actually. They’d be from the 1980s to 1990s, most likely.”
He ran a hand over his dark, deeply parted hair, thinking.
“When we jumped to that era, quite a few wandered into town. More than we tend to pick up other places. A volunteer runner at the time had ascertained that we’d flashed not far from a highway, which explained the influx. Not all were so lucky to leave before we jumped.”
“Is that when we got the Bradfords and Pauline?”
He nodded. “And a few others—”
In the distance, a feral, animalistic scream disrupted the evening peace.
“It’s getting dark. I think I should take you back home.”
She didn’t protest as she gathered her belongings, which wasn’t more than her cell phone and Flo’s slingshot. At the fridge, she lingered, considering the cheesecake.
Social etiquette dictated that she leave the dessert. However, since it was borrowed from the diner and was a food she loved, she carried it to the pickup.
They moved at a brisk pace, slamming the doors closed the moment their backsides touched the truck’s upholstery.
As he drove the few blocks to the inn, she sighed wistfully. “I can’t wait until you’re done with my jeep.”
Her vehicle was currently parked behind his shop, waiting to be retrofitted with an engine that could consume an alternative fuel source. What that source was, she couldn’t be sure and was too apprehensive at this point to ask, afraid it might be excrement or other equally horrible things.
“I won’t be able to work on it until we change locations.”
“Are you telling me you don’t want to risk being dino chow just so I can drive around town?”
“Not even for you, doll, sorry.” He tensed. “Sorry, I keep forgetting not to use that term.”
“No harm done, old man.”
He turned onto Main Street.
“Also,” she continued, “I don’t blame you for not wanting to be outside. Jimmy said that when he was shooing away some big herbivore from the yard, it left a nice-sized present on the lawn. It also happens to be directly under my window, and given these warm nights… well, you can imagine.”
“So, that’s what that smell is.”
The last remnants of daylight were a pink band across the western horizon. He pulled the truck to the curb in front of the inn.
She grabbed the door handle. “Okay, I’m going to make a run for it.” She paused. “I had a nice time.”
The way he was looking at her caused her stomach to do gymnastics. Her eyes dropped to his lips of their own accord before she snapped them back up.
“I’ll walk you to the door,” he offered, ever the gentleman.
They stepped onto the sidewalk. One of her hands held the precious cheesecake while the other gripped Flo’s sonic slingshot. Will gripped a revolver of which Flo had used the adjectives “boring” and “unimaginative” when he’d shown her.
Ella power walked up the path first, her head still in the clouds and her heart still back in the pickup. The azalea bushes beside the stoop shivered.
A scream climbed her throat like a scuttling spider. Without thinking, she dropped the cheesecake, stretched back the elastic band on the slingshot, and let loose. The flowering shrub exploded in a hail of violet blossoms and leaves—as did a portion of the brick facade below the windows on the inn.
She stretched the sling, gearing up for another invisible blast, when Will caught her arm. A frightened raccoon hissed at her then tore off between the inn and diner.
“Oops.”
Will had pointed his gun at the creature, too, which made her feel a bit better about the demolition to the inn, but he’d had the presence of mind to wait and see what the creature was before acting.
“On a scale of one to ten,” she said, eyeing the damage to the inn, “how mad do you think Rose is going to be?”
“One—”
She let out a breath.
“—if she never sees it. If she does, you better be comfortable living with dinosaurs because the jungle’s your home now. I’ll think of you fondly.”
“I appreciate that, thanks. Maybe I can go live in the caves in the woods like Diego had.” The Spanish sailor (and definitely not a pirate) had gone undiscovered by treasure hunters for years while living in the woods.
“I think the bigger tragedy is the cheesecake.” Will nudged the fallen dessert with the tip of his black Oxford shoe.
Ella did her best to salvage the larger pieces, making note of the bits that hadn’t touched the ground. After watching Will drive off, she turned the lock on the front door, hovering in the entryway and listening to the tick of the grandfather clock count away the seconds of her life. Maybe no one would notice the damage to the inn.
“Did I just hear an explosion?” Jimmy stood in the entrance hall, clad in striped pajamas.
“Depends. How awake are you?”
After giving him her best, appeasing smile mixed with equal parts shame, she told him about the new state of his home. Then she plied him with cheesecake, pointing out a section that hadn’t been scraped from the concrete.
“Is there a way I can help you repair it without Rose knowing?”
He scratched the gray-flecked stubble covering his cheek. “We’ll figure something out. If she sees it, we’ll blame it on one of the reptiles roaming about. I saw one with a bunch of spikes on it just down by the lake earlier today.”
Relieved, she bid him goodnight and deposited the mangled dessert in the kitchen before slouching up the grand staircase. She flopped onto her bed and was joined a few moments later by Fluffy. He was as large as a medium-sized dog, accounting for his mass of fur, and weighed nearly as much. When he kneaded her legs, he made bruises.
She ran her hand down his silky fur absently, replaying the day’s events. Who wanted Mary Kirkland dead? And who was the previous owner of the C64 computer?
Pulling her neglected cell phone from her dress pocket, she began making a list in her memo app. Sal was involved in some way, but whether he’d done the deed himself, she couldn’t be sure. Also, no immediate motive for him killing her sprang to mind.
Still, she typed his name first. The screen glared at her, waiting for more.
What about Henry? She’d overheard Mary accusing him of skimming from the till. But how would he have slipped the meat into her purse?
That got her wondering at how long the raw meat had been in Mary’s bag. It couldn’t have been too long because she would’ve noticed it. What if it had been slipped in while she was at the library? She’d been toting her bag when Ella saw her leaving.
Whenever it was, it had to have been before her meeting with Sal. Unless… unless the barber had managed to sneak it in during their rendezvous, and she’d been attacked on her way back.
This idea grew legs, and Ella began to picture the acting mayor unfolding the raw meat from a bag that had been concealing its scent and slipping it into the victim’s purse. All so a predator would attack her and make it appear an accident.
Even though she hadn’t seen Henry go anywhere near Mary’s purse at the General Store, she added the boy’s name because he had a motive, albeit a weak one.
For once, Six wasn’t a suspect—at least, at the moment he wasn’t.
Thinking of the gunslinger brought back the memory of him facing off the Tyrannosaurus rex. He was in rough shape, the worst she’d seen
him.
It seemed that his ghosts were getting the better of him. She couldn’t let them win. She couldn’t continue to watch her friend spiral out. If daring a dinosaur the size of a two-story house wasn’t rock bottom and a cry for help, then she didn’t know what was.
She lay a moment, petting Fluffy and racking her brain for ideas on how to help Six. The feline head-butted her arm.
Since jumping to their new location, he’d been house-bound and was growing restless. If the town didn’t flash soon, she was going to have one cranky Maine coon on her hands.
Soon, she drifted off to sleep to the calls of prehistoric animals, the buzz of enough insects to qualify as a plague, and the stench of a sweltering town.
Chapter 13
POPS OF FLAVOR burst in Ella’s mouth as she chewed.
“Hmm, tastes like a jelly filling… strawberry would be my guess. And the topping is…” She licked the frosting on the donut in her hand. “Maple with bacon bits crumbled on top.”
Wink clapped, and Ella undid her blindfold.
“Five out of five,” her boss said. “I’m impressed. And also a little concerned.”
“Thanks for not saying it’s sad.”
“It’s that too.”
While Ella polished off the donut, the diner settled with a silence that underscored just how dead the town was at the moment.
“Want to mix soda flavors again?” she asked. “I liked our last Frankenstein mixture.”
“So much so that you added it to today’s special, I see.” Wink eyed the chalkboard and Ella’s hieroglyphic-like handwriting.
She’d creatively called it Jurassic Sludge. It didn’t matter since it was a good bet that nobody would be coming in.
“You’re welcome,” she said, even though Wink hadn’t thanked her. “I bet you’re wishing I’d been in charge of your campaign slogans.”
Wink didn’t respond.
After she licked her fingers, Ella said casually, “You know that computer I bought for Will? Well, I’ve been wondering about who it previously belonged to. Who in Keystone is from the 1980s to 1990s? I know Pauline and the Bradfords arrived during a jump to around that time.”
