Traveling Town Mystery Boxset

by Ami Diane

  She had to ease to a power walk a couple of times, but by the time she rounded Lake Drive on the north side of town, a lot of her thoughts had retreated to their corners.

  Her focus was entirely on the steady flow of oxygen through her lungs, how fresh and very un-pepper-like the air tasted. It was quickly becoming her personal mission to locate Flo’s cache of weapons and confiscate every last one—for the safety of the entire town.

  Ella jogged over the grassy bank, up the backside of the sheriff’s office, the library, Sal’s—whose hedge now had a hole roughly the size and shape of a hang glider—and other nondescript buildings.

  She cut down an alley and hit Main Street, wanting to stop by Stewart’s market for fresh bananas.

  Ahead, a lean figure with a Stetson hat, spurs, and hoodie ambled up the sidewalk. She ducked back into the alley, her heart hammering in her chest from more than just the run.

  Six.

  Sweat poured down Ella’s face. Her chest heaved as she clutched the stitch in her side. He was heading in her direction, and if she didn’t move soon, he’d spot her cowering in the shadows.

  Ella forced her rubbery legs to move, and she sprinted back towards the lake. She cut across the grass again. Several yards ahead, she could make out the terrace for the inn.

  She was jogging around the gated patio of the local bar when the entire sky sizzled and crackled with purple and pink electricity. The hair on Ella’s arm stood on end.

  Her shoes slid to a stop, her eyes glued above. For as long as she was stuck in Keystone, she wasn’t sure she’d ever get used to the sight preceding a time jump.

  Overhead, more colors were added, blues and teals. They stretched and reached the horizon, obscuring the rainforest.

  There were few times in Ella’s life when she witnessed something so awe-inspiring that words failed her. The aurora borealis. A total solar eclipse. And now, the crackling, electric dome over Keystone Village.

  The light built until the lines coalesced into a dazzling white, brighter than the sun. She squeezed her eyes closed as the flash burnt through her lids. The after-image of the dome danced in her vision.

  When the light faded, she peeled them open. The entire jump, from the first crackle of color to the nuclear blast of light, had only lasted fifteen seconds at most.

  Once she could see properly again, she turned to what they referred to as south, past the wind farm, to see brown hills with a smattering of trees. A cool gust of air hit her skin, sending her shivering.

  The breeze brought her to, and she remembered why she’d been running across the grass in the first place. The threat of Six had been momentarily pushed from her thoughts.

  A minute later, she was bounding across the terrace for the inn. She slammed the back door shut behind her and turned the deadbolt with a click. Now, she had an entirely different reason to locate Flo’s stash of weapons.

  CHAPTER 8

  ELLA GRABBED HER morning coffee and walked through a set of French doors to her favorite room in the manor: the library.

  Picking up a book on the French War, she opened another door opposite the French ones and stepped into her second favorite room. Glass made up two of the four walls of the conservatory. They stuck out enough from the footprint of the mansion to require a partial roof of glass at the far end. All around her, hundreds of plants flourished under the natural light pouring in.

  Steam rose in lazy swirls from her mug as she settled in at the café table by a star jasmine that looked like it was fixing to take over the entire inn.

  Ella glanced at her watch. She had just enough time to drink her coffee before she needed to change for work.

  “Morning, Ella.” Jimmy stepped out from behind a tomato plant.

  Ella startled, some of her precious brew splashing onto the table. “Crap on a cracker. Why didn’t you let me know you were there?”

  His brows dipped. “I just did. Tomato?” He held out a container full of cherry tomatoes as red as Christmas or a face full of pepper spray.

  “I’m good. You’re gardening a bit early. Where’s Rosa?”

  “She’s coming in later. We have a lot to pick and more to plant. The whole town does. Mrs. Faraday’s having a heck of a time propagating more corn, so everyone’s pitching in, planting corn crops in their own greenhouses—those who have them, anyway. Gladys, Mrs. Faraday that is, said something about not enough genetic diversity. So, I’m going to see what I can do with what I have here. Maybe she could use my seeds.”

  Like most Keystone residents, they kept an indoor greenhouse to supplement what they got from the dozens of large greenhouses north of town.

  He stretched to his full height, stretching a kink out of his lower back. Ella set her book aside, cradled her coffee, and walked over to the raised bed he was working in. It was under the canopy of glass and caught most of the sun.

  “Hey, look. There’s corn. I had no idea there was corn in here.” She looked down at the diminutive stalks, wondering how she’d missed them in the past week of her morning coffee routine.

  “Yeah. There’re not much now, but I can usually get several ears out of this little patch.” He brushed dirt off his hands then studied her. “I heard Six got released.”

  The now familiar knot in the pit of her stomach returned like an unwanted houseguest. Her eyes dropped to her coffee, noting a small chip in the rim of the mug.

  “Ella, if he comes near you, threatens you in any way, come get me. I don’t care where I am or what I’m doing, come find me.”

  She blinked and looked up at him. “Thank you, Jimmy. That means a lot.” After she took a slow sip, she said, “I saw him yesterday. I don’t think he saw me. He was walking down Main Street; it was just before the flash.”

  “You alright?”

  She nodded. “On an unrelated note, you wouldn’t happen to know where Flo keeps all her weapons, do you?”

  He grinned and looked back at his baby corn. “You think I’d keep something like that a secret? I’d tell every living soul I came across, especially the sheriff.”

  “Yeah, that’s what I figured.” She couldn’t hide the disappointment. “Do we know where we’ve jumped yet?”

  “No.” He bent back over the bed and began pulling weeds. “Probably won’t know.”

  “But what if it’s someone’s home? I mean, what if we’re near a time and place for someone trapped here? That would suck to be so close to returning home and never know it.” She couldn’t help but think of herself. What if she was back in her year, or one adjacent, but merely in a remote location.

  He sighed, pushing the soil. “Sometimes, we have volunteers who venture over the border to figure out that very thing. But when too many got stranded, not making it back in time before the next jump, the volunteers became more scarce.”

  Ella set her mug down, replacing it with a pair of gardening gloves. The dirt lay bare and turned. Using an old cup, she helped him spread fertilizer from a nearby bag. “How does one volunteer?”

  “Fills out a form at the sheriff’s office.” His movements stopped abruptly. “Don’t do it, Ella. It’s too dangerous.”

  “I was just curious.” But she was more than that. The thought had been gnawing at her since she’d found out she was stranded in the village. “How do the volunteers get left behind, anyway? I mean, can’t they make a trek in a day and be back the next?”

  He was quiet a long moment. He picked up a handheld trowel and marred the dirt. Fresh soil oozed out. “Sometimes it takes that long to find a town or a local to pull information from. Sometimes, it’s because the town jumped sooner than expected. I’ve seen two happen in a day, and two weeks in between.”

  She digested this new bit of information. “Has anyone kept a log? You know, to look for patterns?”

  “Will or the professor probably did a while back. If there was a pattern, they would’ve found it.”

  Ella fell silent, running through different theories. She itched to run upstairs to her phone
and add this new information to her investigation about the mystery of the traveling town.

  She helped Jimmy for another ten minutes before racing upstairs to change. She paused long enough to add to the Keystone note on her phone then ran down the stairs, skipping the last step.

  She reached for the door for Grandma’s Kitchen just as Wink flipped the sign over.

  “‘Morning, dear. Fresh blueberry pancakes in the kitchen.”

  Ella smiled, grateful she no longer had to ask for food. Wink had probably seen what Ella ate when meals weren’t being offered to her. Between her and Rose, Ella rarely had to search out food.

  When she walked into the kitchen with Wink, Horatio practically pounced on them. “Did you hear?”

  “Hear what?” Ella slipped on her apron.

  “Stan’s death wasn’t an accident.”

  Her hands froze on the strings. “W-where did you hear that?” She shot Wink a concerned look.

  “From Jenny, who heard it from Pauline when she went to get her hair done.”

  “Pauline gets her hair done?” Ella shook her head. “Sorry, not the point.”

  “And how did you hear it from Jenny?” Wink raised a penciled eyebrow. “I didn’t realize you two gabbed with each other. Did she tell you that when you went to get a manicure?”

  He threw a very brown, very hard-looking fry at her. Without moving, Wink watched it soar past her head by five feet.

  “Wow,” Ella said, “you ever think about playing baseball?”

  Wink’s eyes danced. One of their newfound favorite pastimes had become ganging up on the cook.

  “I don’t gab. And I don’t go to a salon.” He crossed his arms, glancing down at his biceps and pushing them out.

  Ella couldn’t let the idea of him in Jenny’s salon go. “Did she tell you when you went in for your bikini wax?” She snickered at her own joke. Both of their heads turned, blank expressions on their faces. “Right. A bikini wax is… how can I put this—”

  The front entrance jingled.

  “Ah, saved by the bell.” Ella’s face lit up as she held up a finger. “Also the name of a great TV show, by the way.”

  The morning rushed past at the frenetic pace she’d grown accustomed to in the hours just after opening. During the lull before lunch, their only customer shuffled over to the register.

  Ella looked at his check, trying to decipher her own handwriting.

  “That’ll be $5.25… Mr. Jones, was it?”

  The man possibly named Mr. Jones hadn’t heard her through the tufts of ear hair sprouting out the sides of his head.

  She wrote down the total and pointed at it then waited patiently while he fished inside his trench coat for his wallet. His face was a map of laughter and years, with constellations of sunspots across his cheeks.

  His hand trembled slightly as he produced a brown chicken egg. Followed by another. And another until it looked like an entire henhouse had roosted on the counter. When he finished, he looked considerably thinner and less lumpy than when he’d first come in.

  Ella withheld a sigh. In a town that depended more on the trade of goods than currency, she was used to the odd payment here and there. Fish. Flour. Even bottles of whiskey that had mysteriously disappeared.

  “Excuse me. I need to see if Grandma Wink will accept these. We just got two dozen yesterday from a family.”

  “Huh?”

  Instead of repeating herself, she poked her head through the passthrough. “Wink, someone’s trying to settle their bill with eggs.”

  “Oh, that’s probably Harvey.” She looked up from rolling out dough for cinnamon rolls, her cheeks flushed from the exertion. “His chickens lay the best eggs. Count how many. He’ll try to skimp out on you. It’s forty cents an egg.”

  Ella blinked at her. “Uh, do you care that they came from his trench coat?”

  Wink’s blue head shook from side to side. Ella returned to the register and counted the eggs.

  “Harvey, you’re two eggs shy.”

  “More? I just gave you a dozen.”

  She counted again, aloud this time. He grumbled searching his pockets. He produced two more and mumbled something about Wink taking him to the cleaners as he shuffled out the door.

  Ella glanced from the eggs to him, watching him through the window. She was just about to search for a carton to put them in when she noticed he had stopped in the middle of the sidewalk, gaping at something out of her line of sight. Another couple walking past stopped and stared in the same direction.

  Frowning, Ella abandoned the eggs and walked to the door. Outside, a cool breeze swept curls of hair away from her forehead.

  A few passersby stood on the sidewalk, watching the street. She bobbed her head until she could see past them.

  A few blocks south, abreast of the park, a caravan of people, horses, and carts walked down the center of Main Street. If she didn’t know any better, she’d think it was a parade.

  However, they lacked the usual fanfare of candy, clowns, and floats. Also, their attire said they were definitely not from this century or the previous one. Their clothes were loose-fitting and shapeless, draped over dark skin, and a variety of headwear was seen on nearly everyone. Some wore strange hats that were neither one shape nor another, while others reminded Ella of rugby helmet sans any padding.

  The newcomers gawked at the buildings, at the cars, and especially at the people on the sidewalk.

  A large, shepherd-like dog that really needed to see a groomer split from the group, raced in circles, sniffing at every vehicle and pant leg it could find. Then ironically, it relieved itself on a fire hydrant.

  Ella caught a whiff of something unpleasant and quickly found the source. A caged cart rolled past, full of fat pigs, their snouts wiggling back and forth.

  The front of the caravan was directly across from the inn now. The sound of hooves clopping on the street from the north drowned out the bleats of goats and the creak of wagon wheels.

  Sheriff Chapman rode his Appaloosa horse straight at the caravan, pulling up short and forcing the group of fifty or so travelers to a halt. Kicking a leg over, he dropped to the road.

  Ella elbowed her way through the growing crowd of onlookers that now congested the sidewalk, trying to get close enough to hear.

  As Chapman brushed his finger over his hat, he said, “Afternoon. Where’re you folks from?”

  Not a single visitor spoke up. They shifted on their feet, looking at each other with perplexed expressions.

  Chapman’s thick, handlebar mustache turned down. “Do any of you understand me?”

  At this point, they’d grown bored with the funny-looking man, speaking the funny-sounding language. One approached Ella’s jeep parked outside the inn. His eyes were bigger than her headlights, and he poked the hood once before jumping back.

  The backdrop of comrades spoke rapidly. Ella leaned forward and strained to catch a few syllables and also to be ready to step in if he decided to do any more inspecting of her vehicle.

  Chapman turned a circle, surveying the bystanders. “Miss Barton here?”

  “I’m here, Sheriff,” she said, stepping onto the pavement.

  “Aren’t you a linguist or something.”

  She considered being smart and responding with “or something,” but thought better of it. “I am.”

  “Well?”

  She looked back and forth between him and the nearest visitor, the one who had been brave enough to take on a parked car. “Well, what? You are ever the elegant conversationalist. Anyone ever tell you, you have a way with words?”

  Chapman’s eyes narrowed, and she strode over to the man before he could respond. The man who’d approached her car had keen eyes and skin like leather. He wore a faded robe type thing with something like a rope tied around his waist. His hat was triangular-ish, made of a material that looked rather malleable. One good dip in the lake, and she was sure the “hat” would be a ball of cheap cloth.

  When she was six feet
from him, the sheriff’s large hand rested on her shoulder and gently brought her to a stop. “That’s close enough.”

  She dipped her chin in greeting at the older man, mentally appointing him as the leader. Her eyes flitted over their clothes, the animals, and carts, trying to guesstimate what period they hailed from.

  She began extending greetings in multiple languages, beginning with Spanish, Urdu, and Hindi. The old man stirred slightly at the latter, but for all she knew, it could’ve been due to an itch.

  She expanded, trying several Hindi dialects. Her repertoire was limited, even more so by the fact that every word she knew was contemporary.

  When she tried Marwari, the man’s eyes clicked with familiarity.

  He spat out several words. Ella cocked her head, and this signaled him to continue. Some of his vocabulary words were similar to Marwari—yet not. It was some sort of hybrid.

  “Fascinating,” she said.

  Chapman shuffled closer. “You understand him?”

  “What? Oh, no. Not at all.”

  When he looked like he was about to have a stroke, she added, “I’m just messing with you. I think they might be Romani. It’s actually really interesting. In the linguistic community, it’s been long suspected that the Romani originated from India because—

  “Not really pertinent to what’s happening here, is it?”

  She blinked at Chapman then at the old man. “No, I guess not. But the point I was getting to is that the Romani spread throughout several regions and countries. I need to hear him speak more to know if his language has been heavily influenced by any European languages yet. I mean, we’re talking about several different dialects and a divergence of language here.”

  Chapman’s jaw twitched, but he nodded for her to continue. To her surprise, the old man spoke first, this time in a language she recognized.

  “Salutari.” The word came out halting as if he wasn’t used to speaking it.

  Now she was getting somewhere. “Buna. De unde esti?”

  He tilted his head, eyebrows lowered.

  “No? So, not your first language or it’s changed so much you don’t recognize it,” she muttered to herself. She tried a few more phrases, producing the same quizzical look. She glanced sideways at Chapman. “I think they’re Romani, not sure of their recent origin, but I suspect they recently migrated to Romania.”