Traveling Town Mystery Boxset

by Ami Diane

  The memory of their previous mayor popped up unbidden. She’d stranded him in the desert in some unknown year, but she took comfort in the fact that he’d killed his own daughter and had tried to kill Ella, too.

  “It’s usually pretty obvious,” Jimmy said.

  Rose gathered their empty plates. “I guess I’ve never really thought about it. We’re so used to knowing where the boundary is.”

  “No one’s mapped it out or anything?” Ella found that hard to believe.

  “Oh, I suppose Will probably did when he came to town. He tried so hard to get home, to stop the jumping, didn’t he, darling?

  Jimmy nodded. “He had the hardest time adjusting I think, compared to most of us.”

  Wink finally spoke up. “I get the feeling he left someone very important behind, even though he won’t talk about it.”

  As curious as Ella was about Will’s past, the mystery of the time and space traveling was more important. “What about the sheriff? Didn’t he map out the border?”

  “Ol’ Chapman?” Flo situated her tinfoil hat which had gone slightly askew during dinner. “That man’s had his hands full with Six ever since they strolled into town.”

  “I wouldn’t call riding in on horses, shooting at each other like the O.K. Corral, ‘strolling into town’,” Jimmy said.

  “Whatever. Point is, Chapman’s an old frontier lawman. He doesn’t concern himself with the minutia of the town or our… predicament.”

  “Doesn’t he want to go home?” Ella asked.

  “I’m sure he does,” Rose said. “But what can we do?”

  Jimmy stood, signaling an end to the conversation. “Everything that’s been thought of, we’ve tried, Ella. There’s no way to stop the traveling, and the sooner you accept it, the sooner you can build a life here.”

  He pushed his chair back into the table and mumbled something about needing to wash up. He strode out of the parlor, taking a candle with him and leaving the room just a bit dimmer.

  Rose turned to Ella. “Don’t you pay him any mind. He means well, but this subject always makes him grumpy. Honestly, I think he’s just scared of leaving.”

  Ella watched the flames of the nearest candle. It seemed to twitch and tremble in some secret rhythm with the rain pelting the glass. A gust hit the inn, and she shivered.

  With the table cleared, Edwin and Ella scooted it closer to the fire while Rose lit more candles. After Ella learned the basics of bridge, they played several hands. Rose opted to watch and keep score, but really, her unofficial title was peacekeeper between Flo and Wink.

  The game wore on into the deep hours of night as the storm raged on outside. The more Flo swigged from her flask, the more she talked about the supernatural and UFOs. Wink kept encouraging this behavior because it kept her and Edwin winning.

  When it was nearing midnight, Ella’s stomach ached from laughter, and she’d long since wiped away the last of her mascara.

  After a round of “goodnights,” Ella ascended the stairs, helping a staggering Flo with one arm, the other holding up her phone as a flashlight.

  After depositing the drowsy woman into a position that didn’t look like she’d choke in her sleep, Ella went to her room. She slipped into a t-shirt and sweats, then she stood at the window, watching the storm. The lamplights were out around the lake, but each flash of lightning lit the world outside.

  With one bolt, she noticed the torrid surface of the lake, pelted by the driving rain. On the next, she noticed a dark object on the water.

  Ella pressed her nose closer to the glass, her breath fogging her view. She swiped away the condensation and waited for the next flash of lightening.

  The sky lit up, clarifying the object. A rowboat. And there was a person inside.

  With the next flash, the figure had moved, but she was unable to make out what they were doing. It had almost looked like they were leaning over the side.

  A strange knot twisted in her gut as she tried to fall asleep. Meanwhile, the storm raged through most of the night, rolling right over Keystone Village. Ella listened to clap after clap of thunder and the hammering of the rain on the shingles overhead. If Thor was real, he certainly wasn’t happy. All the while, she couldn’t get the figure on the lake out of her mind.

  Who on earth would be out in the middle of the lake in a storm like this? At midnight?

  CHAPTER 4

  THE ALARM ON the nightstand sent out a shrill cry far too early. Ella fumbled with the unfamiliar device, eventually gave up, and threw it against the wall. The effect was instantaneous in that the alarm stopped, but now she was wide awake, wondering why she was up so early.

  She rolled off her bed and checked her phone. Slowly, it all came back. The late night, the figure on the lake, the power off, thus forcing her to use the windup clock she’d just demolished. She was supposed to meet Will at the docks in ten minutes.

  She dressed in the dark with what she hoped were jeans and a sweatshirt then descended the stairs, yawning, nearly missing the bottom step. Without time to brew a new pot of coffee, being desperate, she dumped Monday’s contents into a mug and downed it room temperature, sans cream.

  Her face sorted through a dozen different expressions, ranging from a grimace to gagging to resignation. It was too soon for the caffeine to hit her system, but the bitter brew alone was enough to wake her.

  Shoving her near-dead phone into her pocket, she slipped out the back door. At some point, the power had come back on, but not enough to charge her battery. She’d have to charge it later.

  Outside, the humidity hit her like a wall. Mist rose from the lake, and the grass squeaked underfoot. Beyond the park, the horizon was yellow and turquoise from a rising sun.

  As she walked along the trail, she spotted remnants from last night’s storm, mostly in the form of downed branches, twigs, and mud. Despite the early hour, she was already considering discarding her sweatshirt. It seemed the weather couldn’t quite agree if it was the summer side of fall or the fall side of winter.

  Water lapped at the pylons as she reached the docks. Will hadn’t arrived yet, so she sat on the damp wood of the nearest dock and dangled her feet over the water, too tired to care about what was happening to her backside by doing so.

  The faint blush of the sun changed to fire then gold, spreading its amber across the water. Now that it was brighter, she could see across the lake.

  Her mouth dropped open. The boat still bobbed in the middle of the lake, probably anchored. But now, it lay empty.

  Before she had time to puzzle over the mystery, the sound of footsteps on the wood planks behind her pulled her attention.

  Will strolled down the dock, wearing a straw boater hat, looking as dapper as an inventor from the 1920s could look. His usual three-piece suit was conspicuously absent. “I hope you haven’t been waiting long.”

  “Nope. Just a couple of hours.” She stifled another yawn. “I can’t help but notice your lack of scuba equipment.”

  He motioned her to follow him to a small, weedy boathouse that surprisingly withstood last night’s storm.

  “This is like the beginning to every horror movie. Are you going to kill me? You’d tell me, right? No, wait. Why would you? That’d be silly.”

  “I am not going to kill you.”

  The door creaked not unlike the sound effects used in those terrible, made-for-TV movies.

  He stepped aside for her to go inside first. She looked from him to the dark space inside. “Chivalrous manners aside, Will, would you mind going first? Cobwebs and what-not.”

  He shrugged, and she followed on his heels.

  The structure was roughly fifteen feet by twenty feet, made of weathered wood and shingles that allowed light to seep through in several places.

  “Let me guess. Dance studio?” Her eyes widened. “Oh, Footloose! Are we going to dance? Wait, no. That was a warehouse. Never mind.”

  “I’ve no idea what any of that means. But this is a sort of community storage meets b
oathouse.”

  She looked around, inhaling the odor of dust and fish and other things with a big fat question mark. No, they definitely were not going to break out into dance.

  Most of the boathouse consisted of old rods and reels and tackle boxes, a few floatation devices, broken oars, several piles of ropes, and for some strange reason, a bowling pin.

  Will jumped over a dilapidated skiff with a busted keel and disappeared into the shadows. He returned a moment later with a dolly, toting his homemade scuba gear, complete with mask and fins.

  As he reeled it down the docks, it made a steady thump over each plank of wood. They passed two skiffs, an old rowboat, and a motorboat, before stopping in front of a rather nice speedboat.

  While Will and Ella unloaded the gear onto the dock, she noticed both his “regulator”—or some crude semblance of one—and mask were already wet.

  “I thought you were waiting for me to take your tank on her maiden voyage?”

  Beneath the brim of his hat, his face scrunched in confusion. “I did.”

  Ella dropped the subject, figuring the old boathouse probably had a leak or two or twenty.

  Will straightened. “Alright. Let’s get—” He turned around. “Where’s my boat?”

  “What? This isn’t yours?” She pointed at the speedboat, trying to hide her disappointment.

  “No. It’s a green rowboat.” He turned another full circle, scanning up and down the dock. Ella squinted to the middle of the lake.

  “That it?”

  He followed her finger, his hat shielding his eyes from the morning glare off the lake. “What on earth is it doing out there?”

  “Uh, I think it was commandeered.” She told him what she’d seen during the night.

  Will stepped into another boat and grabbed the oars.

  “Oh, good. Now it’s our turn to steal one.” After a dubious look at the small craft, she stepped in, wheeled her arms around to maintain her balance, then dropped to a squat like a sumo wrestler.

  “Very graceful,” Will said as he undid the mooring lines.

  “Thanks, I thought so. So, who’s is this?”

  “Stewart’s. The owner of the market.”

  “The old guy with the war stories?” she asked. Will nodded. “I love that guy.”

  He’d been kind to her, letting her take apples, oatmeal, and soap for free when she hadn’t had any cash her first couple of weeks. She’d tried to trade something of hers in exchange as most of the locals did, but he’d refused. Or maybe he’d had no use for a hair straightener.

  Will’s shoulders rolled as he tugged at the oars, his face taught with indignation. If there was an aquatic version of road rage, he had it. Boat rage.

  “You don’t just go and steal another man’s boat,” he said as if continuing a conversation.

  “What about a woman’s boat?”

  “Phonus balonus. Honestly, what kind of bushwa is that?”

  “The bad kind?” Ella guessed.

  “When I find out who it was, I’ll give them a piece of my mind.”

  His grip on the oars tightened, and she didn’t wonder if a “piece of his mind” involved a piece of his fist.

  After scooting her backside around on the hard seat to keep blood flow to her lower extremities, Ella decided to take his mind off his boat. “So, why did you want to test your gear at the crack of dawn?”

  “‘Cause no one comes out this time—”

  “There’s someone.” She pointed across the lake at the row of cottages sitting at the edge of the forest. A lone fisherman stood in waders casting out a line.

  “Okay. No one besides Jonas. I didn’t want any curious eyes seeing what we were doing. I get enough people poking around, asking about my inventions as it is.”

  “Jonas? Like, the angry farmer with the leased wind farm Jonas?”

  “The very one.”

  Ella studied the distant fisherman before letting out a large yawn. She’d already burned through her morning caffeine. “The least you could’ve done was bring coffee.”

  “The least you could’ve done was bring breakfast.”

  She arched her eyebrow at him. “Touché. I think you forget, I don’t bake.”

  “I’m well aware. I’m still digesting your attempt at pumpkin pie.” He laughed when she splashed him, and some of the tension in his face melted. “What I meant was, you could’ve brought Grandma Wink’s banana bread. It goes great with coffee.”

  “It goes great with anything.” She grinned. “Next time.”

  He nodded, his gaze lingering on her a half-second longer than usual. “Next time.”

  Ella stared into the deep waters again as her stomach fluttered. A bird called from deep in the forest, the sound carrying across the cool water as Jonas reeled in a healthy-looking fish.

  “What’s in this lake, anyway? I keep meaning to ask.” Her feet searched for more space in front of her.

  “Oh, a few rainbow trouts, largemouth bass, a couple other kinds of bass… some catfish. Fortunately, it had just been re-stocked before the first flash. It became a great source of food during those rough, beginning months.”

  She watched him row, his muscles pulling at his trench coat, his straw hat dipping with each bend of his head. Most of the townspeople assimilated to different clothing from different eras, swapping with each other when their tastes or waistlines changed. It wasn’t uncommon to see a woman in a prairie dress and bonnet with a hoodie added to the ensemble. But she had yet to see him branch out in the fashion department in the two and a half weeks she’d known him.

  She listed her head, trying to picture him in an outfit contemporary to her.

  “What are you smiling at?”

  “Nothing.” She burrowed herself further into her own pullover sweatshirt, more to hide her cheeks than to actually warm her face.

  They’d nearly reached Will’s boat.

  After drawing in a breath, she said lightly, “Hey, Will, did you ever map out the town’s boundary?”

  His expression clouded as he dipped his head, hiding underneath his hat. “Probably not in the sense you’re thinking. In my first year here, I took some of the professor’s equipment and sensors and walked around taking readings. I recorded them in some notebooks.”

  “Could I see them sometime?”

  “Sure, I guess. They won’t tell you much. I’ve been over and over the data.”

  Ella nodded her thanks, opting to drop the topic for now. It obviously pained him. Discreetly, she slipped her phone out of the kangaroo pocket on her sweatshirt and added, make boundary map, to her memo app.

  Will brought Stewart’s boat into a gentle glide that nudged into Will’s rowboat. As he positioned them alongside the anchored boat, Ella leaned over the side and gasped.

  Three inches of water lined the bottom of the boat. Crumpled between the two benches, Stan’s glassy eyes stared at the sky, mouth agape as if caught in an eternal silent scream. He was dead.

  CHAPTER 5

  “TELL ME AGAIN what you did when you discovered the body?” Sheriff Chapman’s steady gaze bore holes through Ella.

  “I touched it. Well, not really touched so much as poked.”

  Beside her, Will held up two fingers.

  “Twice,” she added. “I poked it twice.” It had been hard to tear her gaze away from Stan’s purple, bloated body. Now, all she wanted to do was pour bleach over her eyes.

  “And why did you touch it?”

  “Not touched, poked. To be sure he was dead.”

  The sheriff glanced at the ground as if searching for something, patience probably. “Didn’t you say he was blue and purple and, what was it?”

  “Inflated like a Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade float. Yes. But that doesn’t always mean a person’s dead.”

  “It don’t? They change the way of death where you come from? You know a single person who’s looked like that and still been alive?”

  Ella made noises with her mouth and searched the dusty
recesses of her memory. “Well, there was that girl from Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory. Or is it Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? I always get them confused. One’s the movie. One’s the book. Then, of course, the remake of the movie was named after the book—for clarity’s sake—so I guess it could be both?”

  Chapman stared at her so long she thought he’d had a stroke.

  “Stan was dead,” Will said, coming to her rescue.

  “Probably,” Ella added.

  “You shouted at him, asking if he was dead, El.”

  She snapped her fingers. “Babies! Aren’t babies born all purple or blue? Shriveled like little raisins? Or am I thinking of kittens?”

  As opposed to a minute ago, the sheriff didn’t look at her when he said, “What time did you see the boat in the middle of the lake last night?”

  “It was definitely babies,” Ella muttered under her breath. Louder, she said, “Again. It was around midnight. Might help if you took notes. That’s what most cops do.”

  Sheriff Chapman sighed so hard his handlebar mustache quivered.

  They stood on the dock. The sun danced jewels of light across the lake in sharp contrast to the disturbing scene somewhere in the center. Pauline, the town doctor turned coroner, had used a skiff to putter out to Will’s rowboat.

  Ella watched the small, round speck that was Pauline, made larger by her coat of pockets packed full of odds and ends, lean over the side of the skiff to inspect Stan’s body. The skiff teetered, threatening to throw the woman overboard at any moment.

  With Kay’s death, it had seared Ella’s heart. She’d watched the woman die in front of her. Also, Kay had been kind and was close to Will. With Stan, Ella found herself detached as if watching the scene unfold from afar.

  “I find it strange that this is the second body you’ve come across in less than a month of being here.” The frontier lawman studied her from beneath his cowboy hat. His skin was a map, a testament of hard years chasing outlaws, sun, and dust.

  “So do I. And just between you and me, I’m not really fond of it.”