by Ami Diane
“Well,” she said, “if there’s food, then I’m there.”
The mayor beamed. “You’re in for a real treat. When I got to this town, you should’ve seen it. Everything was so disorganized. New people were getting stranded here all the time, and no one knew about it.”
Ella nodded politely, wondering what this had to do with the potluck.
“So, I decided to do something about it. Every two weeks, the townspeople gather to socialize, get to know each other better, and learn the new faces. It’s worked out better than I could’ve hoped.” He leaned in, a greasy smile spreading over his face. “Our people have been united ever since. Now, I don’t think I deserve all of the credit, mind you, but if it weren’t for our meetings and the potluck—”
“The potlucks have been going on long before you arrived in town, Earl.” Wink’s usually sweet tone had a bite to it.
“True. But they weren’t consistent. And there was still chaos—”
“Because we were just trying to figure out how to survive. There was no electricity. No food. If it weren’t for Twin Springs, we would’ve had to boil lake water.”
Mayor Bradford leaned back so far on his stool, Ella feared he’d fall over. His eyes darted back and forth as he searched for a response.
A customer approached the cash register, putting an end to the discussion. Ella eavesdropped for a moment as he tried to settle his bill with a dozen eggs as payment.
“Can I get you anything, sir?” she offered the mayor.
“Sure. Be a dear and top off my coffee, will you?”
Ella’s hackles raised at him calling her dear, but she gave him a pass since he was from a different era.
After obliging, she refilled the cream and sugar tray in front of him. Despite the facade, she knew he had to be hurting. His only child had been killed the week before.
Ella tried to make small talk as she wiped up the mess of spilled sugar she’d just made.
“I got to see Kay’s place yesterday. It’s really cute.”
“Why were you at her place?”
The rag in Ella’s hand froze halfway across the counter. “Will wanted to pick up a few things there. He’d said you were fine with it.”
He blinked before taking a long slurp from his coffee. “Right, right. That place was a dirty hole in the wall. She didn’t belong there.”
Ella stared at him. “I didn’t see the studio before the break-in, but I thought it looked pretty clean. And cute. There’s a great view of the forest—”
“What break-in?”
Her insides turned cold. He didn’t know? Of course, Kay wouldn’t have told him. They hadn’t been close. But Ella figured in such a small town, everyone would’ve known about it.
“Break-in? Did I say ‘break-in’? I meant, ‘Taken’.” As if that was somehow better.
Quickly, she screwed the metal lid back on the sugar, misaligning the threading. She’d fix it later.
“That still doesn’t make sense.”
“Hm? Doesn’t it? I’m sure it does.”
She took a step back to make a hasty retreat, but Mayor Bradford’s clammy hand shot out and curled around her forearm.
His genial demeanor slipped away. “What break-in?” His words turned stoney, grating her ears and filling her with fear. So, this was the man whom Kayline had known.
“I don’t know anything. Just that her house was broken into.” She wasn’t trying to protect Six so much as protect Kay’s privacy.
Something shifted behind his eyes, and the unctuous smile returned as he released her. “I see. I’ll have to pay Sheriff Chapman a visit then. See what he can tell me.”
He got up from his stool, situated his tie, and turned to leave without paying. He paused.
“Word of advice: you may want to keep out of other people’s affairs. Small town like this, no one likes a busybody, and there’s still a killer on the loose.”
The door jangled pleasantly as he stepped out onto the blistering sidewalk. Despite the wave of heat blasting through the open doorway, a chill crept up Ella’s spine.
CHAPTER 24
BY THE TIME Ella turned the sign for Grandma’s Kitchen to “closed,” she’d made a plan. She couldn’t tell the sheriff about Six’s possession of Kay’s journal and folders without revealing she’d trespassed on his property.
She could, perhaps, show him the button she’d found in Kay’s apartment, the one tying the outlaw to the break-in, but it wasn’t a very convincing piece of evidence. What she needed was something more solid. She needed Six to admit to it.
Deciding to take advantage of her era’s technology—and watching too many episodes of crime TV—she’d come up with an idea. It wasn’t her best, but definitely in the top five. Above straightening her hair but below dumping her last boyfriend.
Ella found Wink in the kitchen, her arms dusted in flour, lasagna noodles scattered about like a deck of cards. The diner owner’s brows were furrowed, and she muttered under her breath.
“You okay, Wink?”
“Fine, fine.” The older woman’s blue hair slid forward, her eyes trained on the knife in her hands. Her lips moved fervently, muttering, “She isn’t beating me again. I don’t care what she says.”
Ella backed through the swinging door on tiptoes, calling out, “Okay. I’ll just be heading out now. Night and good luck with… whatever this is.” If Wink had heard, she didn’t respond.
After changing back into her least fragrant clothes, Ella scooped up her phone from the dresser and left the inn. Outside, a lone cloud drifted across a pink sunset.
She swallowed the doubts rising in her chest and marched down Main Street, going over her plan. Her phone had nearly a full charge, and her voice recording app was open. All she had to do was press the big red symbol, and it would begin recording. Of course, Six would probably put a bullet between her eyes on sight, so getting the details right really didn’t matter.
She’d gone two blocks when screams and a hail of gunfire pulled her from her thoughts. She spun around. Her first thought was to look for Flo and her Tommy Gun.
A handful of people fled L Street, screaming and dispersing. In the chaos, a bicyclist slammed into a bush, popped up, and rabbited away.
A moment later, Six and Duke burst onto Main Street. The outlaw’s arm flailed back, pointing his six-shooter behind him. The air exploded with more gunfire.
All around, passersby dived for cover. Ella scrambled for the first thing she could find: a rust-covered, neglected post office drop box.
Nearby, Will’s friend Jenny ducked behind a blue Oldsmobile, her expression frozen in terror.
“Not again,” she cried.
Again?
“What’s happening?” Ella called over, but her words were drowned out by several more shots. The brick in the library behind her exploded, spraying red shrapnel over the sidewalk.
Jenny made eye contact with Ella before bolting from her cover, leaving Ella alone.
“Really?” Ella shrieked.
She shrunk further behind the drop box, wondering if she could make it to the line of parked cars. Back on the street, the thunder of hooves reached a crescendo, and Ella peeked around the side of her cover.
Sheriff Chapman rode his Appaloosa horse, gun drawn. “Stop right there, Six!”
By way of response, Six loosed another volley of rounds. He dismounted from Duke and dodged for the line of parked cars—right in front of Ella.
He slid over the hood of a jalopy, Dukes of Hazzard style, and crouched behind the wheel well five feet from Ella. He spilled the spent shells from his revolver all over the sidewalk.
“Where’d you go, Six?” Chapman’s voice sang from someplace down the street. “You can’t hide from me. I got you this time.”
Six pulled more ammo from his cartridge belt and scrambled to load his gun. He hadn’t spotted Ella yet. His attention elsewhere, she could end this before someone got hurt.
After sucking in air, she sprang from he
r hiding spot and leaped the distance to him, arms out for a tackle.
He moved, and she landed next to him in a heap.
“Howdy, Ella.” His tone was as casual as if talking about the weather. And then he did talk about the weather. “Nice day, huh?”
“Sure, if you like skin-melting temperatures,” she gasped, clutching a rib.
His cavalier attitude over the fact that she’d just tried to tackle him got under her skin. He clearly didn’t see her as a threat.
She rolled onto her knees, brushing gravel from her palms. “Jesse, what’re you doing?”
“Name’s Six, darlin’. And what’s it look like I’m doing?”
“Like you’re trying to get yourself killed.”
“That sorry excuse for a badge has messed with me for the last time. The jig is up. It ends today. They’ll be buryin’ one of us six feet under, and it ain’t gonna be me.” The gun now loaded, he slammed the cylinder home. “Say, you wouldn’t happen to have been on my property last night, were ya?” The muzzle pointed lazily in her direction.
“Nope. Definitely not. I don’t even know where you live.”
Chapman’s voice broke through the air, closer this time. “I know you’re here, Six. Save me some time, will you? Surrender now, and I might not kill you.”
Ella rolled onto the balls of her feet, thinking of how best to get the sheriff’s attention without Six putting a bullet in her. The outlaw seemed to read her thoughts, and the barrel of the gun drifted in her direction again.
“Don’t even think about it.”
“You know, before I arrived in Keystone, I’d never had a gun pointed at me. Can you believe it? Not a single one.” She let out a dramatic sigh. “Now, hardly a day goes by I don’t.”
As she situated herself to a more comfortable position, it occurred to her that she had been on her way to Six’s to talk to him, and now, here he was. Maybe she could still get what she wanted while keeping him distracted at the same time so the sheriff could do his job.
“You want me to stay quiet so the sheriff doesn’t find you? Then I need something from you in return.” It took nearly every bit of grit she had to meet his gaze. It was getting to be dusk, and his coal eyes were almost lost in the shadows of his cowboy hat. “Why did you break into Kay’s place?”
A crease formed across his forehead. “How’d you know?”
“Just tell me, and I won’t scream for Chapman.”
He continued to glare, but a different emotion flickered across his features. “Maybe you ain’t so yellow after all.”
“Thank you. That’s very kind of you to say. Now, why were you there?”
“I was looking for something.” He paused to listen, inclining his head in the direction of Chapman’s spurs singing through the air only ten yards away.
Ella was running out of time. “What were you looking for?”
“A folder.”
“What was in the folder?”
“Needed dirt on the mayor. See, he’s the one on the council that won’t approve my still. So, I figured, if I get dirt on him, then…”
“Then you could use it to blackmail him?”
“Somethin’ like that.”
Ella processed the information. “Did you find anything?”
He chuckled. “Sure did. But I ain’t tellin’ you. What good’s a secret if everyone knows?”
She couldn’t argue with him on that point. “How come Chapman didn’t find your prints anywhere in Kay’s?”
“Don’t they have gloves where you’re from? I mostly wear ‘em for riding, but they come in handy when I go places I don’t want others to know about.”
Before Ella could school him about DNA, Chapman stepped out from behind the jalopy and cocked the hammer back on his gun.
“Come out with your hands up. Not you, Ella.”
“Oh. No, right. Of course, you didn’t mean me.” She dropped her hands into her lap.
Six’s finger quivered near his trigger.
Chapman raised his weapon higher. “I wouldn’t.”
Sneering, Six tossed his revolver aside.
“Come on. Back to jail.” The sheriff shoved Six in front of him, one hand holding the gun to his back, the other clutching Six’s sweatshirt, and marched him down the sidewalk.
Ella watched their retreating backs. Just when she thought she was getting used to this town, it revealed a new facet of crazy.
“Crazy Village, that’s what it should be called,” she muttered as she stretched her legs and tried to pump the adrenaline from her cramped muscles. It felt like she had ten cups of coffee coursing through her. It’d be a miracle if she could sleep tonight. But at least she’d gotten the information she wanted before Six was carted off.
Ella slapped her forehead then fished her phone out of her pocket. She’d been so focused on not dying that she hadn’t pressed record.
She ground her teeth. Maybe it wasn’t for nothing. She could tell the sheriff what Six had confessed, and he could finally have the right to search the cowboy’s cabin.
As she trudged back to the inn, her thoughts turned to the stolen papers and folders. What secrets lay within?
She couldn’t imagine collecting dirt on her own father, which made her shudder to think what the mayor could have done to drive Kay to that point.
Back at the inn, Ella dragged her feet up the stairs, taking extra care to step over Fluffy, as exhaustion set in. It had been a long twenty-four hours. Between work, snooping around Six’s place, and the wild West shootout, she felt she could sleep for days.
As she stopped in front of her door, her right shoe stepped on a folded piece of paper. Her name was scrawled in lazy letters on the front.
Who would write her a note? Her heart fluttered at the thought that maybe it was Will’s handwriting.
She flipped on the light in her room and clicked the door shut. Sinking to her soft mattress, she unfolded the scrap of paper.
There was only one sentence:
Stop poking around, or you’ll be stranded in the desert forever.
CHAPTER 25
ELLA SIPPED HER coffee in the cool morning breeze. The large oak leaves overhead whispered as she watched the ripples in the lake lap over the rocks.
Try as she might, she couldn’t forget the note she’d found at her door the previous night. Someone knew she was snooping around. But who? Had Six suspected she’d sneaked onto his property and written it before the shootout?
Her mind drifted back to Kay’s notes on her father. With Six secured behind bars, maybe she could chance a second peek through his window to see if she could read them. Or maybe…
She swallowed the smooth roast, leaning forward. Will and Kay had been close, even after their breakup. Maybe she’d confided in him about the dirt she was collecting on her father. He had alluded to the fact they didn’t have a good relationship, but maybe he knew more than he let on. Chances were good he’d be at the potluck that evening, but Ella didn’t want to wait until then.
She hurried through the rest of her coffee before going upstairs to get ready for the day. Her pile of dirty laundry taunted her from the corner of her room. It was next on the list of things to do after visiting Will.
As she closed her door behind her, she realized she didn’t know where Will lived. She teetered at the top of the grand staircase, weighing her options.
She could ask Crazy Flo, but she worried that conversation would devolve quickly. Rose was still locked up, and Wink lived too far away. She considered taking her car to Twin Hills but thought it ridiculous to drive out there unannounced, just to ask where someone else lived.
She wished she knew the local phone numbers so she could make a call on the landline.
A loud crash echoed downstairs from the direction of one of the hallways. Flo’s raspy voice spilled profanities that made Ella want to wash out her ears.
Scrambling down the steps, Ella hooked a hard right down the hall and glanced through each doorway she passed. Fi
nally, she swung open the kitchen door and gasped.
“Flo! What happened?”
“That damn cat, that’s what happened!”
As she spoke, the cloud of fur that was Fluffy blurred past Ella’s feet before the door had a chance to swing shut.
Ella’s hand covered her mouth, her eyes taking in the carnage. Glass shards glistened from all over the waxed linoleum floor. However, what drew her attention and she found more disconcerting was the smears of red.
“Is—is that blood?”
“Don’t be silly. Tomato paste.”
“Oh.” As if that explained everything.
Her gaze finally tore away from the destruction on the floor to the counters. Measuring cups, mixing bowls, and spatulas littered the top. What little surface was visible was covered in what Ella approximated to be an entire bag of flour.
“Did Fluffy do that, too?” She pointed at the blizzard.
“Huh?” Flo followed her gaze. “Oh. No, I did that. It’s part of my process.”
“It looks like an entire season of Chopped in here.”
“I don’t know what that means.”
For the first time since Rose had been arrested, Ella hoped the innkeeper didn’t come home soon.
She cleared her throat and tried to avert her gaze from the kitchen fray—which left her staring at the ceiling.
“What are you making, anyway?”
“Making my famous lasagna for the potluck. It’s always the first thing gone, and everybody raves about it.”
“Oh, Wink’s making lasagna too.”
Flo’s voice turned to a growl. “I know. Mine’s better.”
The old woman bent and began gathering the largest chunks of glass. After a few deep breaths, Ella looked down, groaned, then helped.
“I see. Well, one could never have too much lasagna, as my grandma would say. Actually, no that’s a lie. She never said that. But still… lasagna.” Ella patted her stomach.
Flo sniffed as she dumped the glass into the trash. “She thinks hers is so great. Then why does she always have leftovers, hm?”
Ella gave a small, noncommittal shrug, not wanting to get in the middle of a feud over a pasta dish. “I’m sure they’re both great.”