Traveling Town Cozy Mystery Box Set

by Ami Diane

  Ella was close. She could feel it in the tingle that covered her skin then realized the sensation on her forearm was coming from a mosquito the size of a Volkswagen. Okay, maybe the tingle had been caused by an insect, but she was sure Diego had been digging nearby.

  She fell upon a grove of quaking aspen. A faint path marked by broken fronds of ferns led into twitching, silvery leaves. After parting them like a curtain, she tunneled through until she came upon fresh, overturned dirt.

  An attempt had been made to level it out, footprints atop to tamp it down, but it was still obvious that the earth had recently been broken, like a scab covering a wound.

  She gripped the shovel handle, grimacing at the dried blood, and plunged the pointy tip of the implement into the soft dirt. At least the sailor had broken the hard-packed earth before her.

  It didn’t take long for sweat to drip into her eyes. Perhaps the heat was making her delirious, but she began to envision towers of gold coins and wearing enough gold jewelry to make Mr. T green with envy.

  It took a moment for the noise to register as the shovel clinked loudly against something solid. Ella stabbed it again to be certain it wasn’t her imagination brought on by some sort of disease courtesy of that mosquito.

  She dropped to her knees and stuck her fingers into the dirt, feeling a hard surface. Scraping it away, she exposed wood, smooth and planed. A box of some sort had been buried. Further excavation revealed it to be rather large, and she took her time, finding its edges.

  Buried at the corners were four heavy gunny sacks. She lugged one out of the large, square pit she’d created and opened this first.

  The smell of dirt filled her nostrils, and she angled the opening to the sky flashing through the canopy above.

  She gasped. The bag was filled with gold coins.

  Jumping into the hole, she peeked into the other sacks, not bothering to drag them up. They were filled with more of the same.

  She whooped loud enough to send a bird fluttering away, but she didn’t care. Scrambling out of the pit, she laid on her stomach, not caring what happened to her clothes. Her fingers groped and probed until they found a hasp on the box.

  With a groan, she lifted the lid. It wasn’t like the treasure chests depicted in cartoons, but it had a certain old-world feel all the same. Inside, were mounds of gaudy gold bling in the form of necklaces and rings.

  “Hello, Mr. T.” Reaching down, she picked up a necklace. A large cross glimmered in the dim green light, looking oddly familiar.

  Replacing it, she folded back an ornate tapestry to discover a painting. The high contrast, the exquisite detail of Christ made her breath hitch. If she didn’t know any better, it looked like a Luis de Morales. Exactly like a Luis de Morales.

  This was the painting rumored to have gone missing. And she’d found it.

  Its lack of any finger guns depreciated its value in her eyes, but she was sure an art historian would go nuts for it.

  Her breath froze in her chest.

  Art historian.

  “Oh, crap.”

  A twig snapped behind her. Ella rolled over, her heart in her throat. Amongst the quivering leaves stood Maria, and she was pointing a gun at Ella.

  “Ella, wasn’t it?”

  She swallowed. “No. The name’s Flo. Florence Henderson, not of the Brady Bunch fame.”

  The art teacher’s eyes narrowed. “I thought Flo was the one with the booze and gun. The one with the disturbing paintings. She should really see a therapist.”

  “Oh, I know, right?” Ella waved a hand at the treasure chest. “I’m guessing you’re here for more jewelry? A twin to go with that current eyesore you’re wearing, perhaps?” She pointed at the gold cross dangling over the woman’s bosom.

  “Cut the act. I’m here for the painting. When Diego got carted off to the slammer, I finally had my chance to search without being discovered. That’s when I spotted you and followed you.”

  “I have that effect on people.”

  “I knew you’d been investigating and that the pirate—”

  “Not a pirate, actually.”

  Maria sneered and tightened her grip on the gun. “You really want to split hairs?”

  “I mean, it’s kind of a big detail. I don’t call you a sculptor, do I?”

  “I sculpt too.”

  An awkward pause followed. “I feel like we’re getting off topic. You were saying you were stalking me…”

  “Following you. I thought maybe you’d gotten that selfish barnacle to talk finally, what with the threat of being charged with murder and all. Sure enough, you led me to the treasure.” Her eyes dropped to the bounty at Ella’s feet, and she seemed to struggle to tear her gaze away again.

  “Wait, you mean you watched me dig for the past nine hours? Do you realize how dehydrated I am?”

  “It’s only been two.”

  Ella glanced at her watch. “See? I’m delirious. Thanks for letting me do all the hard work, by the way.”

  Her only thought was to keep the mad woman talking. Not only did that play to Ella’s strength, talking someone to the point of slipping up, but it also bought her time to come up with a better strategy. Her current one was to run, but since she was still partially in the pit, guarded by a thick grove of aspen with a gun pointed at her, she didn’t like her chances of getting very far.

  “Hand over the painting.”

  So much for distracting her with small talk.

  “Sure, sure. First, do you mind if I ask you a question?”

  Air hissed between Maria’s teeth as she glared. “What?”

  “Did you kill Darren? Was it some kind of lovers’ quarrel over the treasure?”

  Maria made a disgusted face. “God, no. We’d both been after the treasure for years, ever since I laid eyes on it when the ship first wrecked. Only, I flew under the radar, unlike Darren, who let the entire town know he was hunting that pirate.”

  Ella opened her mouth then snapped it shut, eyeing the weapon. Probably not the best time to correct her again.

  “Well, one day, we ran into each other in the forest while searching for Diego. At first, we fought, then we realized that if we teamed up, our odds of finding the man or his treasure increased manyfold. So, we became partners.”

  “Then, why did you kill him?”

  “Who says I did?” Maria sneered, motioning with the handgun towards the painting. The movement drew Ella’s eye to the weapon.

  Living with a deranged gun nut right across the hall from her for the past few months had taught her a newfound respect for weapons, but it had also taught her far more than she’d ever wanted to know about them, including makes, models, and where the safety was for various designs.

  Ella found what she was looking for before dropping her head to the painting. “He didn’t want to share, was that it?” She made slow work of folding the tapestry over the masterpiece.

  “I overheard him talking with his wife, said he was just using me to get what he wanted. So, I arranged a meetup with him at the site of the wreck. Said I’d found a treasure map. Can you believe it?” She giggled, the sound foreign and strange. “A treasure map. And he bought that.”

  “That was the day you’d rescheduled the art class, right? But you went to your dentist appointment. I checked.”

  Confusion clouded Maria’s face a moment before she sneered. “No, my sister went to the appointment. After I dropped her off, I drove out to the shipwreck.”

  Crap, how had she missed that? Ella replayed the one-sided phone conversation between Wink and the dental receptionist. Wink had said “Ms. Heinzman” not “Maria.” And the receptionist had told Wink that “her sister dropped her off,” meaning Maria had dropped her sister off for the appointment, not the other way around.

  Double crap.

  The lines around Maria’s eyes faded. “Alright, enough stalling. Let’s have it.”

  “Sure thing.”

  Ella leaped into the air, bringing the painting up and smashin
g it against the woman’s head. Despite the thick tapestry wrapped around it, the canvas made a ripping sound, and Maria staggered back. Her hand flinched as she pulled the trigger.

  With her right foot, Ella kicked away the gun. It skittered into the ferns.

  “The safety’s on, doofus.”

  “What have you done!” Maria shrieked, tearing off the tapestry, exposing the torn painting and cradling it like a child. “Do you realize what you just did?” She collapsed to her knees.

  “To be honest, I kind of thought it’d knock you out. I didn’t really think it through. My bad.” Ella allowed herself a moment’s satisfaction at having foiled another killer.

  Rage boiled in Maria’s eyes, and she lunged at Ella, tackling her to the ground, right on top of the painting. All of the air left Ella’s lungs in a whoosh. She gasped for breath, partly from the fall and partly because the art teacher’s hands were now wrapped around her throat.

  “I can’t breathe,” she choked.

  “That’s the point, Flo!” Maria let out a guttural scream and doubled the pressure on Ella’s windpipe.

  Ella clawed at the woman’s face, searching for hair to pull, then she took to throwing her fists. She landed a good wallop in the woman’s nose, causing blood to gush out like a faucet.

  Shocked, Maria’s grip loosened, and her hands flew to her nose. The reprieve was like water to Ella’s parched throat as she sucked in breath after breath. Coughing, she rolled the woman off of her.

  Where was the gun?

  Scrambling over the ground on her stomach, her brain registered the dull pain of something digging into her, much lower than her bruised throat, right around her ribs.

  She still had Flo’s exotic, snub-nosed gun in her pocket from her unnecessary ambush of Diego.

  As she whipped it out, she rolled onto her back, pointing the alarmingly short barrel at Maria. She had no idea what the weapon did or if it even worked. More importantly, if there was a safety, its location wasn’t obvious. One of the glowing LED’s maybe?

  “Don’t move.” Her finger searched for the trigger only to discover that there was none. “Son of a—” her words were cut short when instead of a trigger, her finger pressed a button.

  Rings of bright green light shot out of the barrel and expanded, laying both Maria and Ella flat on their backs.

  The weapon slipped from her grip, and her eyes slid closed as she caught her breath. That didn’t hurt so bad. Opening her eyes, she groped her body, searching for obvious holes. Not bad at all.

  “Huh, how about that?” She sat the rest of the way up, and that’s when she noticed something was very, very wrong.

  Chapter 29

  ELLA SWORE AND squeezed her eyes closed. Her stomach roiled with motion sickness. From someplace a few feet away, Maria screamed. Ella heard her stumbling around, trying to get to her feet before she fell again.

  “What did you do to me?!”

  Ignoring her, Ella peeled one eye open. Her world was upside down. The tops of the trees were at her feet, but small, still adhering to their forced perspective. It was like looking into a glass sphere.

  Rolling over, the contents of her stomach became outside contents, including the three donuts she’d had for breakfast. She kept her eyes closed, cursing Flo, Flo’s ancestors, and the Brady Bunch for good measure.

  Footsteps crackled over the carpet of dirt and twigs, shoving aside underbrush. The sound was accompanied by the jangle of spurs.

  “Sheriff?” She feared opening her eyes again. Two more donuts were holding strong in her stomach, and she wanted it to remain that way.

  “Sorry, darlin’. Just me.”

  She’d never felt more relieved to hear the outlaw’s voice. “Is Maria still here?”

  “Yeah.”

  “She killed Darren.”

  “That so?” Six’s voice was calm, bored.

  “So, can you… I don’t know, detain her or something?”

  “Why would I do that?”

  A sudden cold sweat hit her. His footsteps moved behind her, near where she thought the pit lay. “Six. Don’t.” She groped across the dirt, turning to face the song of his boots. “She killed a man. She tried to kill me.” His steps faltered at this last part.

  Ella chanced opening her eyes to slits and discovered her world was right-side up once again, only blurry. Daylight burned, but she managed to squint up at the outlaw. He sported a fat, bloody lip, a trickle of blood seeping into his thick stubble.

  He caught her staring at the wound. “Was following ya two when that mountain man attacked me for being on his property.”

  “Leif?” Ella hadn’t noticed she’d strayed near his cabin.

  Six’s eyes were once again on the treasure, a deep hunger burning in them.

  She called his name again. When this failed to catch his attention, she said in a softer voice, “Jesse.” His eyes snapped up. “Don’t do this. That stuff’s useless in this town. You’re better than this.”

  “Am I?”

  “Yes.”

  Slowly, she climbed to her feet, unsteady. The ground still felt like it rolled beneath her, a ship in a violent storm. Behind her came the rustle of Maria stirring.

  “You want to quiet your demons? Start making the right decisions. Keep moving forward.”

  His eyes held hers for a long moment, the shadows beneath them pronounced. Finally, dropping to a crouch, he stretched into the pit, dug into a burlap sack, and retrieved a single coin. It hummed when he flipped it in the air. Catching it, he stuffed it into his pocket, exchanging it for a rolled cigarette. A match hissed as he struck it against a nearby tree. “It was always just the hunt for me, darlin’. Now that I found it—”

  “I found it.”

  “—it’s lost its appeal.”

  He sucked in a long breath, held it, then released it. Smoke expanded, obscuring the curtain of leaves. Without another word, he slipped past her, stopping beside Maria who’d been reaching for her gun amongst the ferns. He dug the heel of his cowboy boot into the woman’s wrist, drawing a sharp cry from her.

  “That’s for trying to kill my friend.” He stooped over and picked up the gun. His eyebrows drew together, unsure of how to clear the modern weapon. Shrugging, he tossed it to Ella. Having played more outfield than infield in softball, the gun hit her palms and fell to the ground.

  “See ya around.” And with that, Six left her.

  Ella sat in the kitchen, sipping coffee and scavenging over the remains of a scone. After hearing what had happened, Wink told her not to come into the diner, but Ella had insisted on finishing her shift. It wasn’t like a brush with death was rare for her, right?

  It had taken at least half of an hour to hike out of the woods with Maria held at gunpoint—well, two gunpoints really since Ella pointed both Flo’s weapon and Maria’s at the art teacher’s back. She’d marched the woman down Main Street, drawing more than a few strange glances, but, disturbingly, no one stopped her. She supposed their procession wasn’t that uncommon of a sight in Keystone Village.

  The expression on Chapman’s face when they’d burst into his office had been… pretty much as she’d predicted. Blank. Stoic. She was now convinced the man was some iteration of a statue. The moment had given her a newfound mission in life: she was determined to crack that granite veneer.

  After extensive questioning and a little reenacting on Ella’s part despite Chapman’s protests, the sheriff had locked Maria in a holding cell next to Diego. Then he told Ella to scram, that he’d stop by the inn later that night if he managed to get the full story from the two suspects.

  “Don’t you need me to interpret?” Ella jutted her chin at Diego.

  Chapman shook his head. “Turns out, he knows more English than he let on. I’ll explain later.”

  So now, Ella sat in the kitchen with her friends surrounding her in what had come to be their tradition after a harrowing incident involving a killer.

  Across from her, Flo filed a fingernail on a w
ell-used emery board. “I thought the ol’ law dog called?”

  “He did,” Rose answered. “He should be here any minute.”

  Will dropped into the seat next to Ella, the aroma of a strong brew wafting up from his coffee cup. “Never mind that. Tell us what happened, El.”

  “Before I do that, I have a question for Flo.” Ella reached into her pocket, retrieving the non-lethal-but-certainly-not-harmless gun. “What in the Blazing Saddles is this?”

  “Hey, I was looking for that.” Flo scooped it up and gave it a quick peck on its purple chrome surface before narrowing her eyes. “You pinched one of my guns, Poodle Head?”

  “No.”

  Flo continued to stare.

  “Maybe. Okay, yes. But only because I needed the means to defend myself.”

  A smug smile created deep divots in the old coot’s cheeks. “Finally coming around, I see.”

  “Just be grateful I left that part out when giving Chapman my statement. I figured I owe you that much, despite the fact that I couldn’t see right for several minutes after. Thank you for that, by the way.”

  “Interesting. What happened?”

  After sucking in a tired breath, Ella explained how everything had appeared upside down.

  “Ha, so it worked. I’d been searching for a subject to try it on, but couldn’t find a brave enough volunteer.” She shot Wink a glare.

  The diner owner threw her hands in the air. “I told you, I’d be happy to shoot you with it.”

  “So, it was intended to do that? Make everything all—” Ella crossed her eyes “—topsy-turvy?”

  “‘Course it is. Right, Will?”

  The inventor, who’d been picking at a scratch on the table, ducked his head. “How’s that?”

  Ella gasped. “William Jade Whitehall—”

  “Wrong guess again. That’s not my middle name.”

  “—you owe me breakfast.” After taking a moment to revel in his discomfort, she pointed at the weapon. “How’s it work?”

  He looked up, seemingly relieved at the change of subject. “Our eyes actually see images upside down, and the rods and cones encode what we see into messages that get sent along the optic nerve where the brain interprets them, hereby flipping the image right-side up once again.”