by Elise Sax
“What can I do for you?” he asked smiling. “Are you coming for art supplies? I was just about to sit down to dinner. Come on in and join me.”
Jack and I exchanged looks. The smell of the dinner wafted toward us, and it smelled delicious.
“What’s for dinner?” Jack asked.
“Jack, that’s not good manners,” I said.
“Nonsense,” the resin guy assured us, still smiling. “Barbecue chicken, corn on the cob, and my mother’s secret recipe potato salad.”
Yum. My mouth was watering.
“Your mother is still alive?” Jack asked, and I elbowed him in the side. Sometimes, he really was fifteen years old.
The resin guy laughed. Despite our first meeting where he threatened to kill me, he was very good-natured. I liked him immediately. I guessed people were nicer if I went to their door instead of spying on them through their window.
“It sounds delicious, if it’s not too much of a bother,” I told him.
“Are you kidding? Artists have to stick together. I love when my customers hang out with me,” he said and opened the door wider so we could walk in.
“Is he a hippy?” Jack whispered in my ear. I nodded. The man was probably in his seventies. He was wearing shorts, a paint-splattered sweater, and he was barefoot. His house was small and tidy. We followed him into the kitchen, and I offered to help him with the dinner, but he declined my help.
A few minutes later, we were all sitting at his table, eating. The food and the break in the day hit the spot. It was nice to catch my breath while eating barbecue. Jack chowed down like he was preparing to grow a few more inches.
“Do you make your own resin?” I asked the resin guy.
“No, I’m a middleman for art supplies,” he said while he sipped iced tea. He was a thin man, and he didn’t have much of an appetite. Jack was on his third piece of chicken, I was almost done with my first, and the resin guy hadn’t even started to eat. “Santa Fe has a marvelous art community, you know, but for decades I’ve been trying to facilitate for artists in Goodnight. Would you like more chicken?”
“Sure,” I said, even though I hadn’t quite finished with what was on my plate. “How long had you been selling to Inga Mueller?”
“Not long. A few months.”
Jack yawned and rubbed his eyes. “Did she pick up the supplies or did you deliver to her?” he asked the resin guy.
“Both.”
A bubble of hope popped inside me. “Were you there that last day? Did you see anything out of the ordinary?” I asked.
“You mean the day she died?” the resin guy asked. “I have to tell you how upset I was that my resin was the cause of her death.”
“Your resin wasn’t the cause of her death. The killer was the cause of her death,” I corrected.
“Any idea who that is?” he asked.
“I have an idea. Did you see anybody that day? Did she have a visitor?” I asked.
I jumped in surprise when Jack’s head crashed onto his plate. I helped him lift his head up. “What’s wrong?” I asked him, concerned.
“I can’t stay awake,” he moaned. “Can’t keep my eyes open.”
“I’ll get you help.” Holding his head up with one hand, I dug my phone out of my purse with my other hand in order to call 911. But the moment I retrieved my phone, the resin guy slapped it out of my hand, sending it crashing against the wall.
I hopped up and stood between Jack and the resin guy. “What’s going on?” I demanded. Even though my heart was pounding, and my adrenaline was up, I felt a wave of fatigue that was hard to fight. I felt my eyelids droop, and I willed my eyes to stay open.
“I drugged your chicken,” the resin guy explained. “Dosed it pretty high. I’m surprised you can stand. Anyway, now I’m going to kill you and the kid.”
“No, you’re not. You’re not on my suspect list. Jeb is. He’s the killer.” I grabbed Jack under his arms and helped him stand. “C’mon, Jack. We’re getting out of here.”
“I’m so tired. I can’t open my eyes,” Jack moaned. I was feeling the same way. It was all I could do to stand on my own, let alone help Jack stay upright. But there was no way I was going to let him kill Jack. His mother would skin me alive. And besides, I liked Jack and didn’t want him to be murdered because of me. He had his whole life ahead of him. I would protect him with my life.
“You’re not getting out of here,” the resin guy said matter-of-factly. “This is your last stop.”
My head dropped forward, but I willed it to snap back. The front door opened, and Jeb walked in.
“It’s an ambush,” I breathed, looking from Jeb to the resin guy. Jack’s arm was draped around my shoulders, and my arm was around his waist, holding him up. I backed us up out of the kitchen, trying to find a way out. As we moved backward slowly down a hallway, I glanced at the photos hanging on the wall, and one told me all I needed to know. It was Jeb with the resin guy. If I had to guess, I would have said that they were related.
Jack’s head fell back, and he went boneless, slipping to the floor out of my grip. “Oh, please, Jack,” I cried. “I can’t lift you.” I tugged at him, but he was too heavy for me. I kneeled next to him on the floor and tried to revive him, slapping his face and pinching his arms.
Jeb appeared in the hallway. “Let it go. It’s over,” he said, sadly.
“You killed Inga,” I said, as I continued to try to revive Jack. “You left your tin of chewing tobacco in her apartment when you killed her. I saw you after, and you were messing with your mouth and searching for the tin in your pocket. It was then that you realized you had lost your tobacco.”
“That’s true. I lost it there, but I didn’t kill her,” Jeb said.
“I couldn’t figure it out for a long time,” I continued, pinching Jack. He moaned and moved a little. “But it wasn’t about Inga at all. She was blackmailing the mayor, but she didn’t do a damned thing to you.”
“She blackmailed the mayor?” Jeb asked, curious.
I tugged Jack up, and he managed to revive enough to stand. “It wasn’t about Inga,” I continued. “It was about what she was doing. She was digging in that mine. That confused me. Why would she be killed for digging in the mine? It was just a closed-down coal mine. Nothing special in it.”
“Right on the nose,” Jeb said. “Nothing special in it at all.”
My eyes kept closing, and it was hard to focus. I didn’t know what I had been drugged with, but it was potent. Somehow, I was managing to walk backward with Jack, away from Jeb. I didn’t know where the resin guy was. Maybe he was waiting in the other room for us to lose consciousness so that we would be easier to kill.
“And then I realized what was in the mine,” I continued to Jeb. “It was so simple. If I was more talented with research on the internet, I would have figured it out days ago. That would have saved me a lot of misery, I have to tell you.” We reached a door, and I tried the knob, but it was locked. We kept walking through the house. We had circled around to the den, and I was determined to get beyond Jeb to the front door and our freedom.
“It was your wife, of course,” I said. “She didn’t run off to California. You killed her and buried her in the mine. You took advantage of the closure, and to make sure no one would find her, you spread the lie about the mine being dangerous. I have to hand it to you. You were persistent. You spent decades telling anyone who would listen about the nonexistent collapses that closed the mine and made it life-threatening to enter. The lie caught on like a case of measles until everyone in Goodnight believed your version of history.”
“Until now,” Jeb said.
“Until Inga,” I said. “You tried to warn her off. Your son probably tried to warn her off too. But she liked the mine. She was selling jewelry in Santa Fe. She had a new life, and it revolved around the mine. The thing is that she never did find your murdered wife’s gravesite in the mine, and she might never have if you had left her alone.”
“I know,” Jeb s
aid, as Jack and I made it to the front door. I turned the knob behind my back. It was unlocked. I turned it slowly. I was only half-conscious. It took all my strength to stay upright. But I was determined to escape. No drug was going to prevent that.
“I couldn’t take the chance,” the resin guy said, appearing in the den and dashing my hopes. He was carrying a bow and arrow, and he raised it, aiming it at us. “I had to save my father. I couldn’t let anyone find my mother. There was no way I was going to let my dad go to prison. I wouldn’t let that happen.”
Ah, families. They’re so complicated.
I opened the door and dragged Jack with me. We half-fell down the stairs and stumbled over the lawn to Bruce Jenkins’ yard. I had left my purse in the house, so I couldn’t use my car. I was surprised that the resin guy hadn’t shot me with the arrow, but maybe our erratic path made us a difficult target.
“Help!” I yelled, but my voice came out weak and barely audible. “Help! Killers! Help!”
I heard the resin guy behind me. Jack fell, and we slammed into Bruce’s tree. The Pooper Basket that was perched in it fell to the ground with a loud crash. Bruce came out of his house then, and I heard his chickens start to march toward us.
“What’s going on out here?” Bruce asked.
“Get back in your house!” the resin guy ordered.
“Help!” I croaked. I tried to drag Jack, but my strength was all but gone, and Jack had blacked out, and he wasn’t moving at all.
The resin guy approached. His arrow was threaded in the bow, and it was aimed right at my head.
Right before I was going to be murdered, a thought went through my drugged brain, and it went something like this: I could really go for a miracle right now. Too bad I’m possessed.
Chapter 16
I watched in horror as the resin guy pulled the bowstring back. With my last rational thought, I picked up the Pooper Basket and held it in front of me, just as the arrow flew through the air. It hit the Pooper Basket with a loud, metallic clang, saving my life. With the force of the arrow, I lost my hold and dropped the Pooper Basket on the ground.
The resin guy’s face transformed into something terrifying. Before, he wanted to kill me. Now, he wanted to hurt me. Jeb was standing behind him as he walked slowly toward me, a determined look on his face. I had no plan to defend myself. Bruce had run back into his house. Jack was unconscious. The Pooper Basket was lying on the ground, too heavy for me to lift in my drugged state. There was no way for me to escape, no way for me to fend him off. I tried to get up, but my legs wouldn’t work. My arms weren’t working very much, either.
So, this was the way my life was going to end. I was going to be killed by a murderous hippy and his very old father. And Jack was going to get killed too. Poor Jack. He only got to be an official, professional reporter for one day before his worthless boss got him killed.
I wondered if Jack’s mother could reverse haunt me once I was dead because I got her son killed. Probably. She would find a way. And I wouldn’t blame her for haunting me. I deserved it.
There was a loud noise behind me, a noise I recognized. It was Napoleon’s army, which could work for me or screw me even more than I was already screwed.
“What the hell is that?” Jeb asked, his voice wobbling with the fear of a man who has for the first time come face to face with an organized platoon of battle chickens. “Oh my God. It’s true. It’s the killer chickens. I thought it was a joke.”
It wasn’t a joke. The fat one made a terrible war cry, and her soldiers attacked. The chickens went after the resin guy like piranhas after a small mammal. He didn’t scream, probably because he was too shocked to scream. He went down fast, and the chickens swarmed him on the ground, pecking and clawing with definite murderous intent.
But I saw it differently. They weren’t bloodthirsty killer chickens. I saw them as my saviors, my Superman and his Justice League coming to my rescue.
I would never eat KFC again. I owed them at least that.
As the resin guy got mauled, his beloved father—who he had killed for—abandoned his son. Jeb ran for the hills, down the street as fast as his centenarian legs could take him.
Bruce Jenkins finally worked up the courage to come outside and help. He sat on the ground and cradled my head in his lap. “I called 911,” he told me. “How’s the kid?”
“Drugged. So am I. That guy is a killer. So is his father, Jeb.”
“Begone, devil!” I heard someone yell.
“Who is that?” I asked Bruce.
“A priest. He’s chasing Jeb with a baseball bat.”
“A priest? Am I dying?”
“I don’t think so,” Bruce said. “There’s a guy in full Navajo dress, too. He’s chasing Jeb with a burning branch.”
“That’s George. He’s a shaman,” I said. “They’re my exorcists. They say I’m possessed, and they’re probably right.”
“Begone, devil! Don’t worry, Matilda! We’ll save you!” George yelled.
“They’ve moved on to Jeb. Maybe they don’t think you’re possessed anymore,” Bruce told me. “They’re after him with a vengeance. Oh! The priest just tackled Jeb, and they both went down hard. Now, the shaman is waving his branch at them. You know, you think organized chickens are the weirdest thing you’re going to see in a day, and then a priest and a shaman tackle the oldest person in Goodnight like they’re playing for the Raiders, and that blows military chickens right out of the water.”
“I hope they exorcise the hell out of him,” I said, and then the drug took over, and I lost consciousness.
When I finally came to in the hospital the next morning, a whole lot of people had been arrested. I knew because Deputy Sheriff Adam Beatman came into my hospital room to tell me all about it.
The resin guy, otherwise known as Jeb’s son, otherwise known as Michael Nash, had been arrested for the murder of Inga Mueller and the attempted murders of Jack and me. Jeb Nash had been arrested for the murder of his wife in the forties. The mayor had been arrested for breaking and entering and threatening my life, in addition to embezzlement, which had helped pay Inga’s blackmail. And the two biddies from the HPA had been arrested for conspiracy.
It turned out that Jeb Nash confessed and ratted out his son. As for the mayor and the HPA, Silas gave them the rundown of what they did to me and of Inga’s blackmail. Everything was tied up in a nice bow while I was unconscious.
“Is there anybody left in town who wasn’t arrested?” I asked Adam.
“Wendy, Clinger, and I have been writing up reports nonstop. This is the busiest we’ve ever been.”
“What about Amos? What’s he been doing?”
“He’s on an extended personal leave,” Adam said but wouldn’t give me any more information than that. It didn’t matter because I knew Amos’s leave had something to do with the box that his sister had given him. I wondered what was in the box that Amos’s wife left with Susan the day she died and how hard it was for Amos to go through it.
“How’s Jack?” I asked Adam.
“He’s fine. He’s been up for hours, eating Jell-O.”
“Is his mother mad at me?” I asked.
“Are you kidding? You’re her new favorite person. The HPA is kaput because of you, and Susan was having problems with them. And Jack told her how you saved him. He credits you for breathing. You’re kind of a hero. Prepare yourself to get a bunch of casseroles.”
“I like casseroles,” I said.
He left, and I dozed off, still under the influence of the drug. When I opened my eyes again a few hours later, Faye, Nora, and Adele were visiting in my hospital room. They had brought me flowers and chocolate, which Nora started to eat.
“So much has happened since you almost got killed,” Adele told me, sitting on the edge of my bed.
“The HPA is done. That’s such a relief,” Faye said.
“Tilly’s running for mayor,” Nora blurted out.
“She’s what?” I asked.
�
�She says that if that creep could be mayor, so can she,” Nora explained.
“And with Jeb in prison, she’s back to being the oldest person in Goodnight. She says that will give her a big boost,” Adele said.
We all laughed, thinking about Tilly as mayor. But stranger things had happened, and the way things had been going in Goodnight, I wouldn’t be totally surprised if she won.
“Mimi’s been asking about you,” Adele said.
“Oh no,” I moaned.
“She asked if your pillow shipment had arrived yet. Don’t worry. I set her straight,” Adele said. “I got the impression that the sex club is over, just like the HPA, anyway. I think Mimi is the only one trying to keep it going.”
“Boone was here all night. Did you know that?” Faye asked me.
“He was? In my room?” I was touched that he had stayed with me through the night, but what if I drooled or snored in my sleep? I slept so seldom that I didn’t know if I did either.
“I’ve never seen a man so concerned about a woman,” Faye said.
“It’s called love,” Nora said. “The storybook kind. The happily ever after kind.”
“We made him go home this morning to get some rest,” Faye explained. “But he’ll be back soon.”
“Love?” I asked. “The real kind? The kind where he doesn’t put me in an institution or try to kill me?” I tried to settle the idea in my heart for a moment and see how I felt about it. Could I believe that Boone felt that way? Could I believe that he was the one?
As if he had heard me thinking about him, Boone walked into the room. My friends made excuses to leave us alone. Nora giggled as she left, and Adele winked at me.
Boone looked like he had gotten very little sleep. His hair was wild and uncombed. He was wearing jeans, a t-shirt, work boots, and a jean jacket. He was sexy as hell. Crazy sexy. After giving my friends a perfunctory hello and goodbye, he brought my hand to his lips. I scooted over in bed. Boone got in next to me, and I rested my head on his arm and nestled my body against his side.