Strange Encounters

by Jean Pamplin

  Strange

  ENCOUNTERS

  Jean Pamplin

  STRANGE ENCOUNTERS

  COPYRIGHT 2020

  JEAN PAMPLIN

  All rights reserved

  Cover Art by Heaven’s Touch Designs, Delia Latham

  This book is a work of fiction. Characters and events are the product of the author’s imagination and used fictitiously. Any resemblance to persons living or dead, places, events or locales is purely coincidental, with the following exceptions: The novella is set in Quitman, Texas—a real town; Speakeasy Coffeehouse is a business within that town; certain other businesses, including the hospital, UT Health Quitman, are actual businesses in Quitman.

  Warning: No part of this book may be copied, scanned, uploaded or distributed via the Internet or any other means without the express, written permission of the author. Unauthorized duplication and/or distribution is illegal. Please purchase only authorized editions and do not participate in the electronic piracy of copyrighted material. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

  Published by Heaven’s Touch Books

  First Edition, 2020

  Published in the United States of America

  Contact information:

  Jean Pamplin: http://www.jeanpamplin.com

  Unless otherwise indicated, all scripture is taken from THE HOLY BIBLE, NEW INTERNATIONAL VERSION® NIV® Copyright ©1973, 1978, 1984, 2011 by International Bible Society®. Used by permission. All rights reserved worldwide.

  Contents

  About the Book

  Dedication

  CHAPTER 1

  CHAPTER 2

  CHAPTER 3

  CHAPTER 4

  CHAPTER 5

  CHAPTER 6

  CHAPTER 7

  CHAPTER 8

  CHAPTER 9

  Sneak Peek

  About the Author

  More Titles by Jean Pamplin

  About the Book

  Dr. Sally Strange is too busy to marry. Bud Hubble, newspaper editor, likes his bachelor status. Caught in the mystery of time travel and a possible asteroid aimed at Earth, they come to realize hope is in God and each other—age is not a factor.

  Dedication

  Strange Encounters is dedicated to

  the creative power of God and friends,

  especially Speakeasy critique duo Delia and Janet.

  Also thanks to Bud Humble for his encouragement

  to stretch beyond the ordinary.

  CHAPTER 1

  “B-12.” A THROATY GROWL EDGED Bud Hubble’s bingo-calling voice. What’s she doing here? The woman’s sprinkling of gray came off looking more like platinum highlights on an aging model’s hairdo. Definitely not the look of a dismal, brain-picking shrink who dabbled in forensic psychiatry.

  Probably in her 40s or early 50s, not the normal age for the crowd at the Forever Young Senior Center. No one in the building fit the bill for forensic studies—yet. So why was she here?

  Is she watching me? Bud narrowed his gaze, trying to keep an eye on her and still catch the next bingo number popping up. “B-4.”

  “Before what?” Somebody wisecracked toward the rear of the room.

  Why do hecklers always sit at the back? Why’d I volunteer to do this anyway? Does she think I’m crazy? Bud stopped his groping mind, ran fingers through his own graying hair, and tried to remind himself this wasn’t about him. Besides, one dance did not a relationship make.

  “Bingo!” An excited feminine shout rang out.

  “Drat, I only needed B-2,”an old man grumbled.

  It’s her.

  Dr. Sally Strange balanced the beans marking her card and still managed to rush to the front, her every movement precise. In contrast, Bud’s unreasonable jerky motions irritated him until he could barely check her numbers.

  “I get to share the prize, Sally.” A tablemate’s voice followed her. “You were using my beans to mark your card.”

  “I can’t share if it’s chocolate.” Dr. Strange gave a husky laugh. “Been a hard day, I need all the chocolate I can get.”

  “Fine, I’d rather share a cash prize, anyway.” The curly white-haired matron sighed and turned to several peers whose appearance mirrored her own. “Don’t dump your beans, Mildred, she may have missed a number.”

  “Bingo!” Bud yelled out to confirm the win and moved to put Sally at a distance.

  She opened her hand for the prize.

  Bud held a giant dark chocolate bar toward the manicured...soft, kissable...fingers. Her thick hair smelled exotic. He’d wager a whole stack of bingo cards she didn’t pick that shampoo up at the local discount store.

  The doctor pulled the candy from Bud’s grasp. “You really are adorable, Bud, but that’s my chocolate.”

  Ever since that 1930s party at the Speakeasy Coffeehouse, the newspaper editor had fought to reclaim his contented-bachelor psyche. Asking the doctor to dance was a mistake. If he hadn’t been trying to eavesdrop on every conversation relating to a couple of girls he’d suspected were missing persons, he’d have left the party early—new doctor in town or not.

  Bud’s face reddened. “I thought doctors kept to their higher calling. Never seen one downgrade to old folks’ activity centers.”

  “Doctors like to talk about their brilliant medical deductions and latest saves. All that ego bouncing around can get a little boring. I find down-home conversations much more stimulating, don’t you?”

  “Where did you say you were from?” Bud remembered very well. He’d interviewed her when she first breezed into town, and wrote what he termed a darn good exposé...the woman had won thirty-something awards, everything from saving a pedestrian’s dog to a presidential commendation for her work with veterans suffering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder. Born and raised in Philadelphia. Not that he’d memorized every word.

  “How could you forget, Bud? You wrote such a nice article about me. I was raised near the old Philadelphia Navy Yard. My grandpa was a security guard in a warehouse there. That was after they closed most of the base down. Remember the wartime ‘Philadelphia Experiment’ gone bad?”

  “Can’t say as I do.”

  “Oh. I thought maybe you’d seen the movie they made a few years back.”

  The sound of crashing pots and pans in the kitchen kept him from admitting to his small-town Texas limitations.

  Sally raced toward the kitchen and the muffled screams. Bud followed close on her heels.

  Hands dripping dish water, Tillie-the-kitchen-help gasped and pointed. The girth blossoming from the sides of her apron testified to what might bring on a heart attack.

  Instantly in professional mode, Sally took the woman’s wrist to check her pulse. Bud breathed down the doctor’s neck until a further noise drew him toward a stand of shelves that hid a body laid out on the floor.

  An ashen, unresponsive face peeked from beneath a haystack of frizzy white hair. Fresh blood ran unchecked from a cut on the man’s forehead. Bud hated the sight of blood, more so his own, but he still felt bile rising and turned his head.

  By now, a crowd of elderly bingo players filled the room.

  Having confirmed the problem wasn’t with Tillie, Sally changed course. “Get me a clean towel.”

  Tillie rushed toward the laundered linens. “Wet or dry?”

  “Either.” Kneeling on the floor, Sally gently pulled a glistening sliver from the wound and cleaned the area, then handed the towel to Bud.

  He quickly passed it to Tillie. Red, black, purple—all horrific. If liquid poured from a cut it brought back horrid memories of almost losing a finger to an old printing press.

  “Anyone have a band aid?”

  Bud grabbed a roll of silver tape from a utility shelf. Tillie inter
cepted him with a box of band aids.

  “Bud.” Sally pounded her hand on his shin, then returned to placing pressure on the wound. “Call 911.” She propped the victim’s head back and straightened the limp figure as best she could. The stranger’s clothes were dingy, dusty and ripped.

  “This guy is barely breathing.” Sally looked around. “Nothing here looks like it might have contributed to that head wound.”

  Paramedics arrived in minutes and she moved away, her gaze still scanning the room, probably in search of what might have caused the cut and contributed to the patient’s unconscious state. Upon reaching Bud, she showed him the blood-covered shard before securing it in kitchen wrap and stowing it away in her purse.

  Bud looked only long enough to guess it was glass.

  “Unusual, huh?” Sally shook her head. “Doesn’t seem thick enough for normal glass…maybe a heat-resistant combination? The examining doctor may need to see it.”

  Bud started a slow circle of the room, eyes darting here and there. “Where’d the guy come from, Tillie?”

  “I don’t know. I was washing dishes, didn’t hear the door open, or nothin’ else...then bang!”

  Bud dialed Elliott and explained the call to Sally as he listened to the ringtone. “When he’s not irritating me, Elliott’s a first-class investigator.” He and the young man who once had annoyed him to no end had become cohorts.

  Elliott answered as he entered the room. “I’m here. I was chasing flashing lights and this is where they stopped.”

  Bud moved back to give the younger man room. “Tillie doesn’t know where the victim came from and we can’t find anything here that might have cut his head.”

  The paramedics had applied a pressure bandage that edged red, but otherwise there was no blood.

  Elliott pushed between the medics. “Let me chalk the floor before you put him on the gurney.”

  “Hurry it up, then.”

  “Bud, get everybody out of the kitchen. Tie this barricade tape across the door.” Elliott required mere minutes to mark the floor before pulling fingerprint tape from another pocket to get a quick inking of the victim’s finger.

  “I’m going with you.” Sally followed the medics. “Bud, can you pick me up later and bring me back to my car?”

  “Sure, what time?”

  “About five.” She hesitated and turned serious eyes on the editor. “And do not eat my chocolate. Bring it with you.”

  Bud let out a full laugh then choked it back. Now wasn’t the time. He nodded and found his sudden change in attitude warming. I could give up being a bachelor for a chocolate addict.

  “You can finish dishes tomorrow, Tillie. Elliott and I will be a bit. Chase everybody out and we’ll lock up after the police chief and sheriff get here and write their reports.”

  Bud grabbed his camera and took a quick shot of law enforcement and Elliott studying the yellow chalk outline. He couldn’t believe he hadn’t taken a photo earlier. Still, this would make a headline: Unknown Man Crashes Bingo Game.

  ***

  Sally waited for Bud in the lobby. She was early.

  The man who’d collapsed at the Senior Center was one of the few cases she’d studied that stymied her. The man’s clothes were not cotton, nor any mix of common material. The fabric felt more like the faux leather she’d seen in New York. Strong and durable, kombucha leather had a nice smell, unlike the odor often associated with the fermenting culture from which it developed. One of her favorite pair of dangling earrings were made from the unusual material.

  Always on the go, she regularly drank gut-healing kombucha drinks. The fermented sweet tea, yeast, and bacteria drink had high levels of probiotics, amino acids and enzymes. Great for digestion...but clothing? Had technology grown to such an extent that material was being made from it? How would a guy in a small East Texas town even have access to it?

  On an aside, the man’s hair badly needed a moisturizing treatment.

  She was slowly threading her fingers through her own luxurious tresses when Bud called. He was out front. Should he come in?

  “No, I’ll be right there.”

  No one could accuse the newspaper editor of being extravagant. The utility jeep shared every pothole bounce with its occupants. Sally hung on.

  “Well, what happened? How’s the guy doing?”

  “He seems okay, physically, but hasn’t regained consciousness. Kind of odd that he’d stay in that state. Besides the cut that bled so profusely at the center, there were some minor burns, but it seems unlikely they came from the kitchen, unless you found something out.”

  “The sheriff decided it wasn’t a crime scene. They’re treating it like an accidental injury for the time being. Elliott wasn’t so sure. He wants to run a scan on a piece of material from the man’s shirt he found at the scene, and he’d already taken a quick fingerprint before you guys rushed him off to the hospital.”

  “Clever of him. Wasn’t Elliott tied up somehow in the missing persons case you worked on?”

  “Yeah, for all the good it did me. The girls left. Elliott and Brother Joseph—you know him…the pastor down there at Victory Temple? Well, they both zipped their lips tighter’n a new drum, and I finally let it go.”

  “You don’t appear to be a give-up kind of guy.”

  “Probably need to stop wearing a necktie.” Bud wiggled his tie-knot loose.

  Sally smiled. Her brain formed a hypothesis on the poor guy next to her, eccentric, bark worse than bite, not such a confirmed hard guy after all.

  Bud pulled in besides the doctor’s glistening, black Mitsubishi Eclipse Cross. “You like the car?”

  “Rated good in the safety charts.”

  “Smart.” Bud looked straight ahead and read a fading sign, once prominent on the brick facade. “A.G. A...something-something ...surance Co. Apparently, there used to be an insurance company in this building. Hope you’re covered—just in case.”

  Sally cocked her head. “I try not to leave anything to chance. Still, I keep prayed up.”

  “Prayed up, huh?”

  “Which church do you attend?”

  “I’m an event-and-holiday type of pew-sitter. Better that way. Then I don’t owe any church in town special news coverage.”

  Before she could dissect that, she caught Bud staring at her hair and pushed the bothersome locks behind her ear.

  “How about coffee and a chocolate muffin at the Speakeasy before work in the morning?” Bud blurted the words as if they’d been forcefully ejected from his vocal chords.

  “Chocolate muffin? I’m interested.”

  “Yeah, and before I forget—here’s your bingo prize.”

  “Oh, you’re a sweetheart.”

  The light compliment seemed to catch the man off guard. Sally, too, felt a tug.

  “Why haven’t you ever married?” She tilted her head, curious.

  “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  The words were sharp, but Sally didn’t pull back. Instead, she laughed. “Everybody in town knows the almighty news editor. Ask the right questions—get the right answers.”

  Flustered, Bud erupted. “Why didn’t you ever marry?”

  “What makes you think I didn’t?”

  “Touché.”

  His soft stare elicited a quick reaction. “I guess I was just too busy.” Breaking the connection proved difficult—unusual for her. Finally, she managed to tuck the chocolate bar in her bag and jump out.

  “Thanks, Bud. What time?”

  “Huh?”

  “The Speakeasy?” She liked his attention.

  He smiled. “Definitely. I mean, 7 a.m. is good for me.”

  CHAPTER 2

  SALLY SHONE LIKE A BEACON in the crowd. She’s timely, I’ll give her that. Bud groped for the chair beside her, not willing to avert his eyes for a minute. “Elliott says he couldn’t find a matching fingerprint. That piece of material wasn’t familiar to him either.”

  “Tell him to look up kombucha leather.”


  “I’m not into this modern material. Say it again, slower.”

  She said it over. “Kom...bu...cha. It’s a wild, fizzy, fermented drink, very popular right now. Some enterprising person discovered the scoby—that’s like an apple cider vinegar mother—can be dried and made into a durable material.”

  “I never go near places that sell that kind of stuff, too healthy.”

  Sally shook her head and gave a light laugh. “You couldn’t buy kombucha leather in a health food store anyway. In fact, I didn’t know they made it in volume. But I swear the visitor who dropped into the Senior Center was wearing a shirt made from the dried cellulose and other polymers the drink produces. When treated with coconut oil and beeswax, the stuff transforms into a material similar to leather. Amazing.”

  Bud carefully pronounced the word. “So, you think this…kombucha…is being manufactured in the clothing industry and the guy’s shirt was made from it?”

  “I tell you what. If he’s awake when I get to the hospital, I’ll ask him.”

  “Hmm. You think he will be?”

  “Dr. Bowdon examined him and couldn’t find any physical problem. In fact, he commented that the patient’s muscle tone is unusually good for a white-haired man of undetermined age.”

  “I’m young in body and mature in mind.”

  Bud’s stoic remark solicited a reaction from Sally. Her mouth formed the perfect smile.

  “Does that mean I’m robbing the cradle, or you’re jerking my chain?”

  “You decide.”

  She lifted her eyebrows. “Lucky for you, I happen to believe humor boosts the immune system and lowers stress, mine included.”

  “Here’s your coffee and muffin, Sally. Did you want anything, Mr. Hubble?”

  “Fix me a Greta Garbo, heavy on the honey—and one of those chocolate muffins.” He handed the girl a twenty.

  The Speakeasy hummed like a beehive—busier than usual. Part of an old clothing store, the name of the coffee shop came from second-floor activity during the Prohibition era.