by Ami Diane
It felt heavy in her hands as she ripped off the packaging. Two eyes stared back at her from beneath a pointy red cap.
“You got me a gnome?” Ella laughed before she could temper the noise so the others didn’t overhear. “Is this Amicus?” she asked, referring to the lawn ornament he’d stolen from Dot’s house when she’d tried to shoot them.
“Nope. I figured Amicus needed a friend.”
She flitted her gaze up to his dark eyes, the meaning behind his words not going unnoticed. “I think so too. Everybody needs a friend.”
Ella avoided asking how he’d procured the gnome, figuring plausible deniability was best in case Chapman ever investigated the mysterious disappearances of the little statues all over town.
Instead, she arranged her expression into one of gratitude at the most-likely-stolen lawn ornament. “What’s its name?”
“Whatever you want. You’re the language expert.”
After another invitation inside, he shook his head and scratched at the scruff along his jawline.
“Another time?” she asked.
“Perhaps.”
“Whenever you’re ready, Six, you’re welcome here.”
After wishing him a Merry Christmas again, she closed the door, smiled at her gift, then took it to her room. It wasn’t until she was positioning the gnome on her dresser, testing out various names, that she realized she’d forgotten to give Chapman his present. She’d left at the diner again, forgotten in the chaos of the break-in and Wink getting injured.
Downstairs, she made a quick detour to the parlor to tell everyone she had to run next door, “run” being a stretch since it was most likely that she’d have to dig her way over.
“That’s fine,” Rose said from the card game going on by the couch. “After I change, I’m going to see if Will can’t hook the stove up to a propane tank, and we can make pancakes.”
“Mm, yes, waffles sound delicious.”
“Pancakes, dear. Can’t hook up the waffle iron.”
Before Ella slipped out of the room, both Flo and Wink called out to her.
“Grab donuts!” Wink said at the same time Flo yelled, “Keep your walking talking on so I can test this baby’s range.”
“Walkie-talkie,” Ella said, the correction lost on the woman who’d become too engrossed in fiddling with the device’s controls again to hear.
CHAPTER 23
BY THE TIME Ella was falling from the snow drift outside Grandma’s Kitchen through the front door, sweat dripped from beneath her beanie after digging and crawling her way over.
Throwing her hat onto the nearest table, she kicked aside the snow that had come in on her boots as best she could.
“Welp, that’s going to leave a puddle,” she muttered, staring at the doormat.
A crash rent the air behind her.
Ella spun. It took her a moment to locate the source of the noise. The tin Coca-Cola sign had fallen from its sentry over the hole.
The corners of Ella’s mouth tugged down as she moved to hang it back up. She’d just rounded the lunch counter when a figure in a brown jacket sprang up and threw her to the linoleum floor.
They slid several feet, the figure cutting off the air supply to Ella’s lungs.
A garbled cry escaped her mouth. Her hands clawed at the hooded figure. Groping, her fingers probed the hidden face until they felt eyes, and she dug her fingers in.
The assailant cried out, a high-pitched, feminine wail.
The pressure on Ella’s chest let up. She rolled over, shoving the figure off her. With trembling hands, she tugged out the walkie-talkie, grappling with the controls. Simultaneously, she scooted across the floor, putting space between herself and the assailant.
“Wink. Flo. There’s someone in the diner. Hurry!” Ella sputtered, unsure if the device even worked through the feet of snow and distance to the inn.
Setting aside Will’s invention, her hand gripped the first weapon it could find: the empty coffee pot.
She hit the carafe against the edge of the counter to break it like in the movies, using the sharp edges of glass for a weapon. It bounced in her hand and remained intact.
“What the—what’s this made out of?”
During the struggle, the assailant’s hood had fallen away.
Ella brandished the empty pot then halted. “Evelyn?”
The woman’s eyes were red-rimmed and weeping from Ella’s finger probing.
“You’re the vandal?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Evelyn spat.
Ella waved the pot around the room. “What are you doing, breaking in?”
The two women circled each other like predators, Evelyn’s wild eyes darting for the door. Ella moved between the woman and her means of escape. It was a safe bet that the back entrance was snowed in.
Puzzle pieces fell into place. The missing eggs. The stolen food from the greenhouses. Sarah nabbing bits of stale fries.
“You’re stealing food? Is that why you’ve been breaking in?”
Evelyn blinked at her in confusion a moment. Something clicked behind her eyes, and her expression morphed from feral ferocity to shame. “I-I thought that with the power out, I might gather food before it went to waste.”
Ella wasn’t fooled by the sudden change. “It’s fifteen degrees Fahrenheit outside and not much warmer in here. Food’s not going to waste. Try again, Evelyn.”
“I needed it,” Evelyn whispered. “Ever since Paul—my husband—passed, we’re down to a single income. I-I can’t provide for my daughter. She’s only getting one meal a day.”
“What about the food bank?”
“It helps, but it’s still not enough.”
Ella bit her lip a moment, fighting the empathy that threatened to well up, imagining Sarah going to bed hungry every night.
She shook her head. “I’m not buying it.”
Like a veil, Evelyn dropped the act and sneered. “I had to try.”
Her feet stilled from pacing as she lifted her chin. “You don’t know what it’s like in this rotten town. My good-for-nothing husband left us without a penny to our name.”
“If you’d just asked, I’m sure Wink would’ve helped out.”
Evelyn spat on the ground by way of response. The dejected, mild-mannered woman Ella had met at the pie bake had been replaced with a feral, bitter woman.
Evelyn’s hands worked over her clothes, smoothing out wrinkles before they rubbed at a water stain on her jacket from their tussle.
Another question mark clicked for Ella. Erik’s body. Something about the way it lay had seemed off, and she now realized what it was. It had been posed, pristinely arranged. His limbs placed alongside him in a way that was unnatural for a man just shot in the head. And his clothes. Granted the snow would’ve affected them, but his tunic had pulled taut and spread, nary a wrinkle in the fabric.
“Is that why you killed him? Did you kill Erik because he caught you stealing?”
Evelyn sneered. “You think you’re so clever, don’t you?”
“Really? A human life for some food?”
“You try living here for a few years, see if you don’t change your tune.”
“You’re not originally from Keystone?” Ella shook away the question, realizing that wasn’t the point. “How did you get the drop on a Viking?”
“I grew up on a farm. My Pa taught me how to hunt. I just hunted the oaf of a man like I did deer. Wasn’t too hard.”
A shiver traveled up Ella’s spine at the calloused confession. “The gun?”
“Was my husband’s.” Evelyn let out a snort. “How ‘bout that? I guess he was good for something after all.”
The front door swung in, and the bell tore off the wall, rolling across the floor.
Flo and Wink stood in the doorway, panting.
“Chapman’s on his way.” Wink held up a snow shovel like a bat.
In Flo’s sun-spotted hands was the box she’d hidden behind her back, her Se
cret Santa present to Wink. She ripped open the packaging and pulled out something oblong with lights and metal protrusions.
Trapped, Evelyn crouched like a cat, her head swiveling between the two older women on one side and Ella on the other.
She pounced and bowled Ella to the ground. Ella’s hip jarred into the floor as Evelyn leaped for the kitchen door. She was going to take her chances out the back.
Wink threw the shovel. It traveled end over end and hit the kitchen door with a bone-rattling thud, sending several splinters flying.
Evelyn had ducked just in time. As Ella rolled to her feet, Flo lobbed the device in her hands. It rolled across the linoleum in slow motion, reaching Evelyn’s feet at the same moment her hand shoved open the kitchen door.
Ella, who was approximately three feet away and knowing Flo and her weapons, tried to dive for cover behind the counter. But she was too late.
The air exploded with a concussive force that threw her into the cabinets and shattering a couple windows. Light and smoke blinded her a moment before a shrill shriek filled the air, nearly blowing out her eardrums.
Covering her head, she rolled on the floor, sure it was the second coming, as acrid smoke continued to issue from the device, burning her nostrils with its sulphuric smell. Her tear ducts streamed.
Through the screams and haze, she made out Evelyn, lying unconscious on the ground.
“Make it stop!” Ella yelled. Fear gripped her when she realized she couldn’t hear her own words.
Boots appeared a few inches from her face, parting the smoke in swirls. A leathery hand reached down, grabbed the device, and carried it away. A few breaths later, the world fell silent.
Rolling onto her back, Ella coughed. She yawned and massaged her ears, certain there was permanent damage.
“Anybody hurt?” Sheriff Chapman drawled. He sounded far away and like he spoke through several feet of water. To Ella’s horror, as she climbed to her feet, she saw he was within arm’s length.
He brushed snow off his hands. Outside, smoke curled from a dark spot in a drift, and she had her answer as to what happened to Flo’s grenade.
“I think she’s hurt,” Ella hollered, pointing down at the form on the ground.
“Ouch, don’t yell,” Wink said. “My ears are ringing enough as it is. We can hear you just fine.”
“Well, I can’t.” Ella glared at Flo. “What in all that’s holy was that?”
“Stun grenade.”
“What?”
“STUN GRENADE.”
“You couldn’t have waited a moment to throw it?”
“She was getting away.”
“What?”
Wink patted Ella’s shoulders then indicated for her to massage her ears. It helped, and she found her hearing slowly returning.
While Wink and Flo swept the glass from the broken windows, Ella told Chapman about Evelyn breaking in and her confession that she’d killed Erik.
His eyes sunk, and the wrinkles grew around his mouth. After that, Ella helped her friends tape garbage bags over the naked window frames until they could nail boards over them. When they were on the last one, Evelyn came around but refused to talk.
Chapman searched the woman for weapons. From her right pocket, his hand pulled out a leather case which, he discovered after opening, held tools for picking locks.
“Nobody tells Will he was right,” Ella said to Flo and Wink.
Meanwhile, Chapman gathered Evelyn’s hands and cuffed them in his antique manacles.
In a loud whisper, Ella said, “We have got to get him new handcuffs. I mean, the tetanus concern alone… .”
Hands on her hips, Wink stepped into the woman’s line-of-sight. “I would’ve helped you, you know. If you’d just asked. I just gotta know, why the pies? They would’ve gone to others struggling like yourself.”
Evelyn’s vacant eyes rose and seemed to look through Wink. “I didn’t touch your stupid pies.”
Ella exchanged a confused glance with Wink, but before either could ask further questions, Chapman hauled Evelyn to her feet and dragged her towards the door.
“I hope you like a nice, cold cell.” He looked back at the trio standing by the counter. “Tell Jimmy and Rose I’ll need to borrow some of their wood to heat the station. Wouldn’t be good to let this one freeze to death before being properly processed.” He paused and seemed to reconsider this notion.
As he reached for the door, Sarah burst inside.
“Mom?” Her voice was shrill, and her eyes shot wildly from her detained mother to the sheriff then around the smoke-hazed room. “What’s going on?”
When no one immediately answered, Ella cleared her throat. “It seems your mother’s been breaking in.” She left out the part about stealing food and killing a man.
Sarah turned on her mother. “Is that why you’ve been acting funny?” Not only did the girl seem unfazed by the revelation, but also some of the confusion in her expression cleared. She dropped a burlap sack on the nearest table. “I thought you were coming to drop off Rose’s flour and had forgotten it. So, I grabbed it and chased you down.” She stared at the floor.
Chapman shifted uncomfortably, uncertainty in his eyes. Ella mouthed for him to go and that they’d take care of the girl. He nodded. Their boots scuffing across the floor, he dragged Evelyn outside.
Sarah’s hand swiped at her face, and she sniffled. Draping her arm across the girl’s shoulders, Ella said, “Sorry about your mom. I’m sure Chapman’ll let you visit her.”
Sarah shrugged. “I’m glad she’s gone. Won’t make a difference to me.” Yet, her eyes held pain.
Ella wanted to say more, tell her everything would be okay, but she knew life wasn’t always so kind. In the end, she settled on squeezing the girl’s shoulder.
Wink and Flo escorted Sarah to the inn while Ella trailed behind after grabbing the sack of flour, Chapman’s present, and locking the front door. It was probably moot since the intruder had been caught and anyone really wanting inside could just penetrate the garbage bag windows. But it made her feel better.
Only Will and Jimmy were in the parlor, Rose and Edwin having gone to get dressed for the day. Ella poured Sarah a cup of tea and sat beside her while they watched the two older women reenact the scene from the diner for the two men.
Ella winced when they got to the bit about the stun grenade, her ears still smarting. Beside her, Sarah stared at the dancing flames, her eyes a million miles away.
Leaning over, Ella nudged her with her elbow. “It’s going to be okay, kid.”
“She killed that Erik guy, didn’t she?”
Ella swallowed, dipping her head in a slow nod.
The pre-teen sighed. “Why?”
Ella considered lying, considered softening the blow. If her mother was stealing to feed them, she didn’t want Sarah taking any blame for her mother’s actions.
In the end, she chose what she would’ve preferred. The truth. “Because Erik caught her stealing food.”
The untouched tea in Sarah’s cup sloshed as she turned. “Stealing food? You sure?”
Ella nodded.
“Why would she steal food? We’re doing fine. Sure, we go to the food bank once in a while, but her job is more than enough to cover the bills and feed us.”
Ella studied her. “Parents are good at hiding things. If you didn’t notice, it’s because she hid it well.”
“I’m telling you, she didn’t need to steal. I’ll show you our cupboards. We’ve got more than enough. Heck, I threw out a loaf of bread and a block of cheese yesterday because they were moldy.”
“Strange,” was all Ella could think to say. Why would Evelyn steal food they didn’t need?
CHAPTER 24
IT WASN’T ADDING up. Ella was missing something, and the squirming in her gut told her there was a larger part of the picture she wasn’t seeing yet.
If Evelyn didn’t need food, why go to the food bank? Unless… unless she knew who was volunteering at the food ba
nk. Maybe she’d asked Pauline questions about the investigation, much like Ella had, feeling out what the doctor knew.
Rose swept into the room, her curls a little worse for wear, but sporting her signature makeup and pearls.
“Oh, Sarah. How wonderful to see you.”
“She’ll be hanging with us today,” Ella said, hoping the innkeeper picked up on her tone.
“Certainly.”
“How come you’re not wearing the sweater I made you?” Flo asked.
“Yeah, Rose,” Ella chimed in. “How come?”
Rose’s delicate finger pushed her glasses up her nose as she said tactfully, “I didn’t want to muss it up. I came in to recruit help for breakfast. It’s already nearing lunchtime.”
“That’s what aprons are for.” Ella’s mouth slammed shut after Rose shot her a nasty look.
Everyone gravitated toward the kitchen. As they passed through the entrance hall, she lingered back then darted into the foyer.
She was in the middle of zipping up her jacket when Will joined her.
“Going somewhere?”
Ella caught her bottom lip between teeth, debating on how much to tell him. “Something’s not right. Evelyn confessing like that, it was too easy. And why steal? Sarah said they didn’t need to.”
“Kleptomania’s a real thing.”
“I agree, but I don’t think that’s it.” She leaned her head into the entrance hall, dropping her voice even more. “Will you cover for me? I’ll only be gone a few minutes. I have a hunch—more like an inkling of a hunch—and I just want to check it out.”
“I should come with you.” He began to grab his trench coat from its hook, but she stopped him.
“I’ll be safe. I promise.” She pulled out the walkie-talkie. “This already saved me once. I’ll keep it on, just in case.” When he didn’t move, she pressed him deeper into the inn and assured him again. “Look, the killer’s been caught. I’ll be fine. I’ll be right back.”
Ella stood in the chilly diner, the light from her phone sweeping the room. Despite her assurances to Will, her teeth were on edge, the slightest sound causing her to jolt.