Traveling Town Mystery Boxset

by Ami Diane

  Several dozen roofs of the town’s massive greenhouse collection dotted both sides of the road. Wink had Ella lean right with her, and they turned before they reached the border. Pines and firs rushed beneath them in a kaleidoscope of green hues.

  As Ella’s muscles began to unclench, she grew to appreciate their flight. Soaring over treetops like a giant bird, she got to see Keystone from a perspective few could, an observation she chose not to voice for fear Wink might think her game for future flights.

  The older woman pulled the front bar towards them, and Ella’s stomach lurched into her spine as they sped up. She only had a moment to swallow bile before a sight below caught her eye.

  “Whoah! Are they sword fighting down there?”

  In a small clearing amongst the evergreens, a fur-laden man Ella had seen about town a couple of times was wielding an ax against a man with a broadsword.

  “Probably. That’s Erik and Leif. Lean left.”

  Ella craned her head to keep them in her sight. “Norsemen? Are they Vikings? Not that all Norsemen are Vikings. I just mean—”

  “Ella! You’re throwing us off course! Lean left!”

  Ahead, a towering ponderosa pine stood directly in their flight path. Ella threw her body left, nearly colliding with Wink. The glider was sluggish to respond but slowly drifted, narrowly avoiding a collision with the tree. One of the pine’s branches brushed what Ella was calling the “wing” on the glider. Wink worked the bar below them, pushing it away, slowing their descent.

  “Hey, I thought you said we were supposed to be landing in the park?” They were currently on a flight path that would land them directly in the lake. “I didn’t wear my swimsuit.” The more concerning thought was what would happen to her diaper if she took a dip and if poor Pauline would wonder if Ella had been incontinent.

  “Quick, lean!”

  They both leaned in the opposite direction. The glassy water underneath was growing larger at an alarming rate.

  Wink shrieked, “Lean left!”

  “Well, you didn’t specify!”

  Off to their right, a familiar figure stood on the dock, hand shielding his eyes from the sun’s rays, watching their descent.

  “Hey, it’s Will. You think he sees us?”

  Wink was too busy trying to control their landing—or rather, controlled crash—directing Ella one way or another, and pushing the bar this way and that.

  Ella bit her lip, hoping the sun made them unrecognizable silhouettes. Never mind the fact that Wink was the only one in the entire town who owned a hang glider.

  He waved.

  “Yeah, I think he sees us.”

  The dark surface rushed up. Ella had just enough time to think of her last words, something wise and inspiring for her departure from this world.

  “I hate you. So much.”

  At the last moment, Wink managed to steer them towards the bank. Relief flooded Ella momentarily. She wasn’t sure the packed earth was much of an improvement, but at least she wouldn’t take on so much water she’d sink like an anchor.

  The relief proved to be short-lived as their new landing zone appeared to be a thick wall of arborvitae at least two shrubs deep behind Sal’s Barbershop.

  Wink jutted the bar as far as it would go. The glider’s nose tipped up, causing it to stall.

  “Oh crap!” Ella strangled out in a half-scream as they dropped like a rock.

  Branches clawed through her clothes and scratched her skin. But with each new injury, their momentum slowed. Both glider and women came to a final resting point in the thickest part of the hedge.

  Ella’s chest heaved for several seconds as it slowly dawned on her that she was still alive—or at least she thought she was, unless heaven was a tangle of branches and glider and screaming women.

  “Ow! Why did you pinch me?” Wink yelled.

  “Just making sure we weren’t dead.”

  “So, you decided to pinch me?”

  Ella’s shrug was entirely lost in the wan light of the shrub and her harness. “Figured it couldn’t hurt.”

  Her fingers fumbled with the zipper but eventually succeeded. She fell free of the restraint and dropped several inches, letting out another high-pitched scream.

  She rolled and kicked towards daylight. It was like being in quicksand or one of those ball pits for kids.

  When she reached the edge, she dropped to the damp grass, ending in an awkward somersault that had her teetering to her feet. Standing, she threw her hands up for a gymnast finish and said, “Ta-da!”

  Will looked from her to the thick, evergreen wall of shrubbery, his mouth hanging open. When he didn’t clap for her, her hands dropped to her sides, and she tried to hide her disappointment.

  “Wh-how?” he stammered. His eyes closed, and he pinched the bridge of his nose.

  Ella looked past him to the expansive scenery of the jungle beyond the tree line, sucking in a breath of air that had moved across the lake. “Beautiful day, huh?”

  The arborvitae behind her shook, followed by several mutterings of “drat” and “confound it.”

  “Yep,” Ella said a little louder to drown out Wink, keeping her back to the shrub. “Beautiful day, indeed.” Sweeping her hands over her curly-now-frizzed hair, she plucked out a twig.

  “Does she need help?”

  “Who? Wink? Naw, she’s fine. One of those independent types—”

  “I need help!” Wink’s mangled voice cried from somewhere in the shadows.

  Will rushed forward. Sighing, Ella plunged her hands into the monstrous plant and searched for her boss.

  “She deserves this, you know,” Ella muttered to Will. “Making me go up in that thing.”

  “I heard that!” the shrub said. “Just get me outta here, will you?”

  The branches had swallowed Will’s head all the way past his shoulders. His voice came out muffled from the bowels of the hedge. “I think I see her.”

  “Marco!” Ella called.

  Nobody responded, but that didn’t stop her from calling the explorer’s name a few more times.

  A strange vibration preceded an even stranger rattling sound. Ella turned towards the source of the noise, and her eyes bugged out.

  Flo rode atop a rickety wagon, holding the reins of a team of horses, and flying towards Ella and gang like one of the great horsemen of the apocalypse. As she crested the bank, her mountain of a beehive leaned with the wind then resettled in an upright position. She tugged on the reins, and the wagon jerked to a stop, rolling over several ferns as it did.

  “You told me to meet you over there.” Flo pointed a gnarled finger in the direction of the park.

  Wink, who’d just been successfully extricated from the arborvitae, huffed, “That was the plan but this scaredy-cat here messed up our landing.”

  Soon, Ella felt all three pairs of eyes on her. “What? I’m sorry, I wasn’t listening. I’m still trying to figure this—” she motioned at the wagon “—out. Was this supposed to be our ride back to Wink’s?”

  Flo’s chin jutted out. “What’s wrong with it? It’s the only thing I could find that the glider would fit in.”

  “Well, for starters, it looks like it would give my backside a good bruising.”

  “Your backside looks padded enough to me.”

  Ella showed Flo a rude hand gesture. “And secondly,” she emphasized the word, “I thought you didn’t know anything about horses.”

  “Who said that?” Flo looked at Wink. “I ever say that?”

  Wink shook her head, her hands working through her blue bob, retrieving parts of shrubbery.

  Ella opened her mouth, closed it, and shook her head. The more she hung around Flo, the more fitting her nickname, Crazy Flo, seemed to be.

  “As much as I’d love to experience this Little House on the Prairie moment with you, I promised Rose I’d help her with some things. Wink? You got this?”

  Her boss waved her away. “Go. Flo and I will get the glider back.”

&
nbsp; “I’ll help,” Will volunteered.

  “Why thank you, Will.” Flo batted some heavy, spidery lashes at him from behind her thick glasses. “Such a nice, handsome young man—”

  “He’s not your type, Flo.” Wink paused. “Actually, he’s breathing, so he’s exactly your type. Let me rephrase. You’re not his type.”

  Ella came to Will’s rescue from becoming husband number… actually, she couldn’t get a straight answer from Flo as to how many times she’d been hitched. Ella suspected the batty woman had lost track but was too embarrassed to admit it.

  She looked over at the glider, only a portion of the sail visible. “Is it broken?” Her tone was a mixture of both concern and hope.

  Wink’s gaze swept up the arborvitae to the bit of fabric poking out. “No. I think it’s fine.”

  “Oh.” Ella tried to hide her disappointment.

  Will murmured, “Subtle.”

  Before joining the two women excavating the glider from the branches, he cautioned Ella about hanging out with the two of them. “You’ve no idea the kind of trouble they get into.”

  “I think I’m beginning to get it. See you tonight?”

  Keystone’s town hall meeting was set for that evening. Ordinarily, she wasn’t into local politics, but the first and only meeting she’d attended had been as entertaining as prime time television.

  “I hope so. It depends on how much work I get done.”

  She squinted at the dock behind him. “What are you working on?”

  His eyes glinted. “A secret project. If it works, I’ll show you.”

  “Deal. Be careful with those two.”

  She gave one last lingering look at the women who were quickly becoming two of her closest friends. Between Wink’s addiction to adventure and Flo’s preponderance for weapons, Ella would have to keep on her toes if she wanted to stay alive in Keystone.

  CHAPTER 2

  MAIN STREET WAS buzzing with groups of people migrating towards the white-steepled church for December’s first town hall meeting. The small group of inhabitants from Keystone Inn scooted over the sidewalk together.

  Ella hissed out a breath, watching a toddler and mother pass them, and glared over her shoulder. “Cheeseburgers, Flo. Could you walk any slower? I know you’re capable of it. I’ve seen you run.”

  Jimmy, one-half of the innkeepers, whipped his head in Ella’s direction. “You’ve seen her run?”

  Ella turned her hand side to side in a weighing motion. “‘Run’ maybe isn’t the best word for it. It was more like a drunk turtle crawling over quicksand.”

  “Yeah, yeah,” a cranky voice floated up to them.

  Flo was as slow as summer and as feisty as a yellow jacket—which was probably why Ella got along with her so well.

  “What’s with your hair, anyhow?” the old woman continued. “Looks like a rat’s nesting in it.”

  “Get your head stuck in a cotton candy machine?” Ella retorted.

  “If you ask her to walk faster,” Jimmy muttered under his breath, “she’ll just go slower.”

  Rose nodded, hooking her arm around her husband’s. “Once, she took a solid twenty minutes to get from the inn to the church.”

  “What? Those five blocks? Twenty minutes? Did she stop in China first?”

  Rose’s ruby lips turned down. “We weren’t in China at the time.”

  “No, I mean—never mind. Hey, how come Edwin didn’t come with us?” Ella asked, referring to the other boarder.

  Rose shook her head then was forced to adjust a pin curl that had broken loose. “Doesn’t feel well.”

  By the time they finally stepped into the church, it was a struggle to locate enough seats together to accommodate their group. Ella leaned to the side to see over a rather tall, gaudy hat that probably came from the Elizabethan era. While Rose negotiated with a man in coattails for his extra seat, Ella scanned the room in search of Will.

  Through the windows, the sky had shifted to a greenish gray. The scent of a coming storm rode on the breeze each time the doors opened. Ella didn’t mind accumulation in the form of snow, loved it, actually, but being from the Willamette Valley, she’d seen enough rain to last her a lifetime. She also worried any accumulation might deepen her ache of homesickness.

  As they settled into their chairs, Rose nudged Ella’s ribs. “Will’s right there.”

  The inventor strolled through one of the side doors. His eyes locked on Ella’s, and his mouth quirked to the side.

  While he approached, Rose managed to finagle another seat. Rather than let Will slip into the now-vacated seat next to Jimmy, the innkeeper hissed for her husband to scoot down. She made everyone shift awkwardly in a fanfare of noise and grunting that attracted many stares until there was an empty space next to Ella.

  For her part, Ella did her best to stare at the ceiling and pretend she didn’t know any of them.

  “Swell,” Will said, sinking to the chair, “a seat just so happened to open up next to you. I wonder how that happened.” His voice dripped with uncharacteristic sarcasm, and they both shot Rose daggers.

  “Yeah, sorry. Cupid there isn’t exactly discreet. Glad you made it, though. How’s the project coming?”

  “I’m almost finished.” He slipped off his fedora and slid the brim through his fingers, a nervous habit she’d noticed. “I got caught up fixing a heater for Horatio, though.”

  Being the town’s only inventor also made him the town’s go-to handyman.

  “I really didn’t want to miss tonight’s discussion. They’re supposed to be addressing the town’s energy crisis. Where’s Wink?”

  Ella caught a whiff of his aftershave as he craned his head around. It smelled of cedar and something earthy and heady, reminding her of the forest.

  “Probably still picking arborvitae from her clothes.” Ella let out a long-suffering sigh. “Hey, have you noticed anything strange with her?”

  “Could you be more specific?”

  “Good point. It’s just, she’s been acting funny all week. Very… preoccupied. She ruined two loaves of bread on Friday, and yesterday, she almost dusted lye over the powdered donuts. It made me wary to fly with her this morning. I mean, other than the whole, dangling several hundred feet in the air by a thin piece of fabric thing.”

  Beside her, Flo grunted, apparently eavesdropping on the conversation. “Well, she’s over there. Ask her yourself.” She tipped her tower of hair towards the front.

  Ella spotted Grandma Wink’s blue coif in the front row. Her head was bent in what appeared to be a heated conversation with the professor. Her pet squirrel, Chester, sat on her shoulder, wearing hand-knit lederhosen. His nose twitched in the air, most likely sniffing out the varieties of perfumes and dinner crumbs on the townspeople.

  Ella’s eyebrows pinched together as she wondered what her boss was doing up front—and sitting beside the professor.

  Sal—incidentally, the owner of Sal’s Barbershop, the unofficial Keystone weatherman, and now, acting mayor—stepped up to the microphone.

  The room filled with several heavy thuds followed by a screech of feedback as he tapped the mic. “Hello? We ready to start?”

  He tilted his gaze around to the council members sitting on the short stage behind him. The seven members faced the audience and wore tight expressions that could only look more sour if they sucked on actual lemons.

  Sal faced the audience again and cracked a smile that reminded Ella of a deranged clown. His voice was as greasy as his slicked-back hair. He called the meeting to order.

  Her mind and eyes wandered as the council conducted old business. Someone had dumped their garbage in the alley on F street, and it had attracted the local wildlife. A local trapper-turned-butcher from the 1800s had been out with a 20-gauge shotgun, target practicing on the critters. As disturbing as the mental image was, Ella made a mental note to ask Wink where the diner’s meat came from.

  Once the name-calling began, she tuned them out and scanned the crowd. Sheri
ff Chapman lingered in the back, leaning against the wall, his face void of any emotion. He caught her gaze and dipped his chin in a greeting. Ella pressed a small smile in return and turned her attention back to the stage.

  A moment later, Sal settled the microphone into the stand and opened the floor to discuss new business.

  In the audience, a man with long hair and fur stood. Ella recognized him as one of the Norsemen-possible-Vikings she’d spotted in the forest earlier.

  She leaned forward, her eyes widening. The guy was massive, with very little fat to speak of, and reminded her of a professional wrestler from her time who’d transitioned into a rather successful acting career.

  The man’s muscles ripped. If there was a town gym nearby, she hadn’t seen it. She wondered what he did for a workout.

  “Here we go.” Flo bounced in her seat like a giddy three-year-old.

  The room stilled. Ella could scarcely breathe, not wanting to miss a single syllable.

  And syllables they were.

  The man released a diatribe that went on for several minutes in a language that piqued her linguistic ear. It was reminiscent of Icelandic, but the first syllable of each word was stressed. Occasionally, he punctuated a word with a stab of his finger directed at a council member while the other hand caressed the sword at his hip.

  At one point, Ella looked over at Will, her eyebrows rising towards her hair.

  He shook his head, whispering, “He does this sometimes, and no one ever knows what he’s saying.”

  Flo teetered on the edge of her chair. “Would you look at that sword? Where do you think he got it?”

  “Oh, no. You do not need one. Besides, do you know how much those things weigh?” Her experience around Flo with a weapon was limited to a single incident involving a Tommy Gun, but that had been enough for Ella to realize the older woman should never be around anything even remotely resembling a weapon.

  The man in fur ended his rant with a grunt and sat back down. People shuffled in their chairs, glancing at their neighbors.