Traveling Town Cozy Mystery Box Set

by Ami Diane

  Henry closed in on himself, his eyes shuttering. It was all Ella could do to keep from hugging him.

  “She said if I told anyone, she’d make me pay. Then she gave me a warning. The kind that leaves a mark.” His rag remained in the same circle on the glass, wiping and wiping, his eyes staring past the floor.

  “What kind of warning?” Ella asked. When he didn’t answer, she rested her hand on his arm, bringing his cleaning to a halt. She repeated her question.

  “The kind I wouldn’t forget.” The way he said it made it clear he would say no more. Whatever Mary had said or done to him would remain a secret, tucked in his scarred heart for now.

  Ella squeezed his arm. “I’m sorry. Did you tell Chapman?”

  “The sheriff?” The rag resumed its circular trip. “Nah, what can he do? His hands are always full. He’s got enough to keep him busy with murderers, Six, and other townsfolk.” The life began to return to his eyes, animating his countenance once again. “Why just the other day, I saw him riding after Bill Hopper on Horse. Looked about to lasso the man.”

  “Why?” Jimmy asked. “What was Bill doing?”

  “Riding a dinosaur. One of those small ones that’s eating all the crops around here.”

  “I’m sad I missed that,” Ella said. “I would’ve loved to have recorded that on my phone—for posterity’s sake, of course.”

  “Of course,” Jimmy said.

  Henry continued. “That man could really use a deputy.”

  As Jimmy nodded and drummed his fingers on the glass, Ella eyed the innkeeper closely, the rusty, sugared-up wheels in her mind turning while he spoke.

  “Do you know anyone who’d want Mary dead?”

  “Nobody springs to mind, but it’d be a shorter list if you asked if there was anyone who didn’t want her dead.”

  “Is there?”

  “I can’t think of a single person.”

  “Not even Brandon?” Ella asked.

  Henry faltered. “Oh, well, yeah. Sure, him.” His backpedaling was too late and said without conviction.

  “Are you two close?”

  “Me and Brandon?”

  Jimmy snorted. “Close. Those two have been joined at the hip since they were knee-high. Always running about, sneaking frogs into church or people’s mailboxes.”

  His comment opened a floodgate of memories between the two males. Quickly, the conversation devolved from interrogation to reminiscing.

  Leaning on the counter, Ella listened to stories of Henry and Brandon being kids and growing up in a small town. It made her ache for home and her childhood, while also envious that she hadn’t grown up during a simpler time as the boys had. Being female, her experience would’ve been different, of course.

  Ella had to pull Jimmy away. They began shuffling towards the door when she spotted the foam finger. “Hey, how much is that?”

  Henry examined the red foam as if it were a stinky diaper. “That ol’ thing? How about free? Mrs. Kirkland’s been trying for ages to unload the thing.”

  “Why not just throw it away?” Jimmy asked.

  Ella clutched the foam finger to her chest. “You can’t just throw away such a priceless piece of memorabilia.”

  “Really? Do they become valuable in your time?”

  Both he and Henry appraised the object with renewed interest.

  “Hmm? No, it’s absolutely worthless except for maybe cheering your favorite basketball team on.”

  She held the finger up displaying the number one status in a silent cheer for demonstration.

  “But it’s a good message we all need reminding of, am I right?” She added, “Except for Flo. Who’s a big old number two, if you know what I mean. You can tell her I said that, too.”

  Jimmy tugged Ella’s sleeve. Now it was his turn to drag her towards the door. “Thank you for your time, Henry.”

  Once she and Jimmy had stepped from the muggy confines of the store to the even muggier open air, she said, “I’m beginning to get the impression that Mary Kirkland was a piece of work.”

  If karma was real, it certainly seemed like it had found Mary.

  Chapter 15

  ELLA PARTED WITH Jimmy on the sidewalk in front of the inn, insisting she was only going three blocks to Stewart’s Market after he’d pressed to accompany her. She assured him she was armed and showed him the sonic slingshot before pointing at the weapon’s handiwork on the front of the inn.

  She lingered a moment, watching him navigate the path to the stoop, a bounce in his step. As they’d walked home, words had poured out of him like a giddy girl on prom night. Taking him along had been the right call and seemed to have invigorated him.

  Clipping down the river of concrete at a fast pace, she prayed that Stewart’s was still open. When she reached the front of the market, she found the windows lit from within, made brighter by a darkening sky.

  Distant thunder rolled, and raindrops began to patter the sidewalk as she reached for the door. That’s when she realized she was still carrying the foam finger. It ended up serving as the perfect umbrella before she ducked inside.

  She threw a greeting at Stew who manned the ancient register, and she strode down the narrow aisles. The building had to have been built at the turn of the century—the 19th century, that is. The wooden gray floor creaked, and the whole place smelled like an aged fruit stand.

  Unlike in her time, Stewart’s selection of kinds of toothpaste was limited to powdered or not powdered. They came in one flavor: peppermint.

  She picked up a mason jar filled with the homemade stuff, shooting a wary eye at the powder. It had been the first one she’d tried after her travel-sized one from home had run out. Not only had her mouth felt like it could shoot flames, but it had burned several tastebuds off in the process.

  Her heel twisted as she turned and bumped into someone.

  “Gabby?”

  The librarian’s eyes crinkled behind her glasses as she smiled broadly. “Ella! Nice to see you. What are you doing here?” Her eyes flitted to the contents of Ella’s hands and did a double take at the foam finger. “What do you have there?”

  “Toothpaste.”

  “No, I mean—”

  “What brings you out in such dangerous conditions?”

  Gabby held up a wicker basket ladened with food. “Stocking up. We’re running low on everything.”

  The woman was roughly Ella’s age and lived with her aunt who was as warm as the Arctic.

  “Have you worked much this week?” Ella asked.

  Gabby shook her head, her copper plait of hair slipping over her shoulder. “We’ve been closed since Sunday.”

  The mention of Sunday gave Ella a start. “Hey, did you hear about Mary?”

  “Awful, isn’t it? She was just in the library that morning. Can you believe it? I guess we never know when we’re called home.”

  Ella said, feigned the memory of Mary in the library just occurring to her. “That’s right. I nearly ran into her as she was coming out of the building.” She kept her tone casual. “I saw she’d checked out a book—a green one. Do you remember what it was?”

  The librarian’s face scrunched in concentration. “It had something to do with the frontier… Wild West something…” She shook her head, giving up. “Sorry.”

  Ella thanked her, and they chatted a bit longer before Ella mentioned it would be dark soon. She breezed through the rest of her mental shopping list and approached the register.

  At the register, Stew jabbed an arthritic finger, punching one button at a time on the till. He stopped.

  “What’s that?” He pointed at the foam finger.

  “I’ll show you.”

  While he continued to add up her items at a snail’s pace, she cheered him on with the red foam finger, waving it in the air. The man was unflappable. Of course, he’d need to be to date Wink.

  He pulled a crank on the register to get her total. As he made note of her tab in a logbook, they discussed baseball, a topic of shared
interest, comparing rules between their respective eras.

  “Sounds like the game’s certainly changed.” His voice creaked, and he looked past her. “Time does that. It sneaks up on you, then one day, you’re looking back at a world you no longer recognize.”

  His words hit home and touched an ache in her heart she hadn’t been aware of. She thanked him and gathered her items.

  “Don’t forget your finger.”

  By the time she was mounting the steps to the inn, the storm had moved in, turning the sky shades of black and green. The world lit with a flash similar to when the town jumped but not nearly as bright.

  She got off a count of two Mississippis before thunder clapped and rolled overhead. Running inside, she shut the door as the sky loosed a torrent of rain.

  After a few minutes of unpacking her groceries, she sat in the conservatory with a cup of tea, listening to the patter of rain on the partial glass ceiling. The water rolled down the glass in rivers.

  She took a sip of peppermint tea and set the cup on the bistro table. The foam finger had a renewed purpose yet again and served as the perfect seat cushion on the hard chair.

  At her feet, Fluffy curled around her legs, propped his front paws on her knees, and sniffed in the direction of the finger. His whiskers twitched before dropping to all fours once again.

  With the combined beating of rain against the glass overhead, the warm tea, and the heady fragrance of star jasmine, her head swam dreamily. She closed her eyes to concentrate on Mary’s murder.

  It was nearly the perfect crime, whereby the killer had utilized a real-life predator. Even if Pauline didn’t lack the proper forensics equipment, Ella doubted there would be much to gather. The bloody deed had been done by a dinosaur, and the storm had washed away whatever clues might have been on the ground.

  With such little evidence, she had to shift her attention elsewhere. She needed to find a motive for the murder.

  Her brain scraped and struggled to collate the details she knew thus far, but they just wouldn’t piece together. Pulling out her phone, she stared at the note she’d created. It was sorely lacking in evidence, supposition, and, well, everything.

  Maybe it was the thundering storm or the tea, but it was all just a jumble of details, like dumping the contents of a puzzle straight from the box, the pieces half-turned. What she needed was a macroscopic view.

  Her eyes wandered to the glass, to its smooth surface and the water meandering down in streams. A thought formed.

  She popped to her feet and downed the last of her tea, which turned out to be more than she’d expected and the temperature still surprisingly hot.

  Fluffy followed curiously as Ella wound through the house and ascended to the second story. She paused at the top of the grand staircase. Both hers and Flo’s rooms were located in the north wing off to the left.

  Ella turned right. Several doors dotted the passageway, the rooms beyond held only a mix of early American and antique English furnishings. It was an inn without guests, and it was just what she needed.

  She strode down, picked a door at random, and peeked inside. It was more or less the same as hers, moderate in size and tastefully posh in decor, if not slightly overzealous with the floral wallpaper and bedspread.

  For comparison, she poked her head into the other rooms. She’d seen them all on her first tour of the mansion, but she hadn’t visited them since. They turned out to be nearly identical, so she picked the one at the far end, partly because it was far from prying eyes and had more windows, but mostly because an antique vanity mirror the size of a door was tacked to the interior wall.

  Back in her room, after reverently depositing the foam finger on her dresser, it took her a few minutes to flit about, gathering the supplies she needed before returning to the room at the end of the hall. She uncapped one of the dry erase markers she’d had in her backpack thanks to being a teacher’s assistant and began writing on the mirror.

  The air was filled by both the marker’s noise as it traveled over the smooth surface and its noxious odor. It was a bit disconcerting to see her reflection while writing, but she eventually grew accustomed to it, although she paused from time to time to fix a curl.

  Fluffy jumped onto the guest bed and curled into a furry ball, nearly getting lost in the plush comforter. His ears twitched at a crack of thunder.

  Ella finished and stood back to admire her work. Her face fell slightly at the nearly indecipherable handwriting, but it didn’t quell her enthusiasm. Now, scrawled on an expansive surface larger than her small cell phone screen were all her thoughts. She could erase and rearrange them how she liked.

  “It’s a murder board,” she explained to Fluffy.

  Other than a swish of his tail at her voice, he didn’t so much as open his eyes. She remained undeterred.

  “I saw it on a show, which would make this a murder room, I suppose.” She turned a slow circle and took in the garish decor. “On second thought, that’s a horrible title. Room with Murder Board? Murder Board Room?

  “Hmm, doesn’t quite roll off the tongue. Better stick with Murder Room.”

  Now came the fun part of showing it to Wink and Flo. Keystone Gators unite!

  Chapter 16

  A HALF-HOUR later, armed with snacks in the form of Rose’s freshly baked sugar cookies, Ella stood in the murder room and proudly gestured at the mirror. Wink and Flo stood before her, mostly looking harassed after having been dragged upstairs.

  Wink had been in the kitchen, fine-tuning her recipe for rosemary chicken, while Flo had been in her bunker, adding a clear substance she’d called “liquid dynamite” to a mason jar.

  “That’s nice, dear.” Wink nodded encouragingly. “You’ve used some kind of ink on the mirror. Very clever.”

  “What? No, it’s a dry erase marker. But that’s not why I’m showing you.”

  “What’s a dry erase marker?”

  Sighing, Ella used her finger to wipe off the top and bottom of a capital “I,” making “Information” look like it began with an “L.”

  “I see,” Wink said, clearly still not getting the purpose of the mirror-turned-murder-board.

  Flo’s arms were crossed, still upset with having been dragged from her workshop. Smoke rose from her bouffant, and part of her eyebrows had been singed off.

  “Can I go back to mixing my glycerine now?”

  “I’m sorry what? Glycerine? As in the stuff used in explosives?” Horrified, Ella glanced at Wink in hopes she’d heard wrong. But her boss appeared unconcerned, having moved closer to the mirror, erasing bits of marker here and there with her fingers.

  Flo rolled her eyes to the ceiling, the movement magnified behind her Coke-bottle lenses. She spoke in a patronizing tone. “It’s only explosive when mixed with nitrating acid.”

  “Ah,” Ella said, feeling her intestines and other places unclench. “So, what are you using it for?”

  “Explosives. I just haven’t gotten to the nitrating acid yet.”

  Over by the mirror, Wink pointed at a spot. “Why does this say ‘Dirty-jeans Guy’?”

  Apparently, she’d finally gotten around to reading the words she was wiping away.

  “Because I can’t remember the rancher’s name. You know, that guy at the meeting who got all upset about Mary not selling electrical fencing to him.” Ella uncapped a marker, crossed out the nickname, then renamed him “Angry Rancher.” Staring at it, she felt it was too judgmental, so she reverted back to the previous moniker.

  As she was finishing, Flo’s reflection glanced up in a surprising show of interest. Granted it was marginal, her eyes dropping back to her nails just as quickly, but it was something.

  “What is all that for, anyway?”

  “It’s a murder board.” Ella straightened and cleared her throat, happy be getting back on track. “I needed a place to organize all—”

  “A what?” Flo’s eyebrows scrunched together to the point of threatening to touch.

  “A what, what?�
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  “What’d you say it was called?”

  “A murder board.”

  “That’s a bit morbid, El,” Wink said, her mouth turning down in disapproval.

  “Seriously? Do I need to remind you about your Steak-asaurus special?”

  “Ha, clever.” Flo nodded in approval.

  “Anyway,” Ella began, emphasizing the word, “as I was saying—”

  “Wouldn’t it be better to call it Detective Board? Or Sleuth Board?” Flo asked.

  “No. It’s called a murder board. I didn’t come up with the name. I’d also like to emphasize that it’s a mirror.” Her eyes traveled deliberately from Flo’s face to the woman’s skyscraper hair that was still smoldering. “In case any of us haven’t checked our reflections in a mirror recently.”

  Wink blurted out, “Sherlock Board.”

  Flo’s head tilted back and forth—which must’ve strained her neck muscles under the weight of her hair—in a way that suggested it wasn’t the best name.

  Ella pinched the bridge of her nose. “I’m already regretting this.” Then louder, “I thought we could have a Keystone Gators meeting about Mary’s death.”

  Flo pointed at her. “I still never agreed to that title. We need something more menacing, like Keystone Assassins.”

  “But we don’t kill people. At least some of us. I wouldn’t be surprised if you had a literal skeleton or two in your closet.” Ella waved her hand wildly at the mirror. “But naming conventions aside, I’m stuck and need your help, please. Then you two can go back to whatever lawbreaking, nightmarish stuff you were doing.”

  “I was cooking.” Wink had already settled onto the large queen-sized bed and was tentatively petting Fluffy. The cat opened one eye and sniffed the woman’s hand, most likely picking up on Chester’s scent. “Tell us what you’ve got so far.”

  Flo scooped up a cookie from the plate on the nightstand, raining crumbs everywhere. Ella grimaced but grabbed a cookie instead of chastising her friend, just happy to have the conversation veering in the right direction.

  “Alright, here are the events of that day.”