Traveling Town Cozy Mystery Box Set

by Ami Diane

  “Jesse!” she screamed his given name.

  Reaching him, she yanked him about to face her. Shadows and bags lined his eyes. Instead of his usual stubble, he sported a short beard, and his skin had a pallor to it beneath a sheen of perspiration. The man who stood before her wasn’t her friend but some facsimile, some ghost of the one she knew.

  “Jesse,” she whispered, “what are you doing?”

  He wrenched away, once again, staring down the T. rex again. Thankfully, it appeared to be taking its time, sniffing a brick here, a car there. From the deep recesses of her brain, she recalled that this particular species relied on its excellent vision to hunt, so she kept her movements to a minimum.

  Someone stepped up beside her.

  “Come back inside, Six,” Will said.

  “What’s the point?”

  “The point is,” Ella bit out, “is not to die.”

  “Wouldn’t be so bad.” The outlaw nodded at the encroaching creature. “Helluva way to go.”

  “Really?” she said. “I can think of at least ten other ways that would be better off the top of my head. Far less painful and bloody ones, I might add.”

  When he didn’t move, she clenched her jaw. “Fine. If you stay, then I stay.”

  “Uh, El,” Will protested, but she stopped him with a hand.

  “How does that make you feel?” she spat at the frontiersman. “Hmm, knowing you’re going to kill me?”

  He hesitated. “Your choice, darlin’.”

  She glared at his profile then said under her breath to Will, “You grab one arm. I’ll get the other.”

  By some unvoiced cue, they latched onto either side of the cowboy and dragged him towards the church. Six struggled, digging his heels into the pavement, his spurs sending sparks flying.

  They reached the yard of the church, and the grumbling of the earth was explosive.

  Ella stole a glance back. “Will, pick up the pace!”

  They double-timed it. Each step of the T. rex was a peal of thunder, and the vibrations jarred their bones.

  The reptile roared again, and she felt its breath like a hot breeze from a garbage dump. The stench of death and decay filled her nostrils.

  “Lemme go!” Six kicked and rolled, managing to shake an arm free.

  They were nearly at the steps. A strong pair of arms that belonged to Jimmy appeared and wrenched Six’s freehand behind his back, shoving him up the church steps. Ella bounded forward and wrenched open the door, so Will and Jimmy could shove Six inside.

  The Tyrannosaurs rex thundered past, picking up speed, and shattering the air with another roar. One of the windows cracked.

  As the claps of footsteps faded, Ella turned on Six. “What were you thinking, you selfish, narcissistic, egomaniac?” Without breaking eye contact, she held up her hand in Flo’s direction. “Yes, those are real words.”

  Anger continued to swell up in her like a bubble in her chest. It boiled over.

  Her fist flew out and connected with Six’s jaw.

  Gasps rippled around the room, and she became dimly aware that they had an audience. She didn’t care.

  Rubbing his face, Six stared, baffled. “What was that for?”

  Her mouth opened and closed with silent words before she coiled her arm for another strike at the man. Will grabbed her elbow, and Jimmy stepped between them.

  “Alright, everyone,” Will announced. “The show’s over. Go on home.”

  Jimmy directed the room with his hands. “Anybody unarmed or don’t feel safe walking out right now, gather over there.” The armed sentries from earlier awaited in the corner.

  The crowd shuffled about. Some shot Ella wary glances, but most seemed more concerned about the massive dinosaur that had just strolled down Main Street.

  “Did you see the size of that thing? Ugly sucker, huh?” a man said as he passed nearby.

  Wink coughed and spoke loudly. “Oh, I don’t know. Some of them seem cute.”

  “Did I hear right earlier?” Jimmy asked Wink. “You have a pet dinosaur?”

  “How’s that?”

  Flo grinned. “She sure does—” then louder “—keeps it in the inn’s basement.”

  Rose, who had just returned from collecting her food dish, stopped short. “You what? Are you telling me one of those things is in my house right now?” Her eyes threatened to pop out of her head, and her manicured eyebrows were in danger of disappearing into her hairline.

  “Now, Rose,” Wink cautioned, splaying her hands out in a placating manner. “I was going to tell you. I’ve got a very good reason for—”

  “I’d love to hear it.”

  “I heard her reasoning,” Ella whispered loudly to the innkeeper. “It’s really not good enough, in my opinion.” She smiled broadly at Wink but kept it tight-lipped. Anger at Six still simmered just beneath the surface.

  “Let’s move this to the inn.” Jimmy herded them towards the door.

  Ella hung back. She stuck a finger in Six’s face, which, she noted with some pride, was already blooming red where she’d hit him.

  “You and I need to talk about what just happened. Not right now, obviously, but later.” She dropped her hand and squinted at the ceiling, thinking over her schedule. “Tomorrow, after breakfast.” Six lived at the north end of town, far off the main road, and his only means of transportation was a horse. “Hmm, that might be a bit risky for you. On second thought, better save it until we flash to a new location.”

  Much of her anger had lost steam.

  She shook her head. “Know what? Let’s just play it by ear.”

  “Lookin’ forward to it.”

  After Wink and Flo collected their dishes and scant leftovers which were actually just crumbs at this point, the troop set out. Outside, thunderheads loomed overhead, threatening to unleash its power at any moment, and enhanced the encroaching darkness of night.

  They stopped on the sidewalk. Ella lingered near Will’s pickup to say goodbye while the others stood aside, giving them privacy. All except for Flo, who hollered and made kissing noises with her mouth.

  “Well,” Ella said to the inventor while simultaneously flipping Flo the bird, “drive safe. If you don’t mind, can you phone me when you get home so I know you didn’t become a dino snack or something? Of course, you’ll have to wait about twenty minutes since we’ve got Methuselah over there.”

  When he grinned, it brought out his dimples. “I will.” His smile faltered, and he glanced at the others. “I was thinking…” He rubbed the back of his neck. “…can I call on you sometime?”

  “Seriously? You want to go out with me again?” She’d been in fine form on their first—and only—date, having accidentally gotten tipsy and sullied his pride by insinuating Einstein was a better physicist than him.

  “Well, yeah, if you want to, that is.”

  “Absolutely.” If he was a glutton for punishment, who was she to argue?

  After he drove off, she had to endure a lot of ribbing at her expense on the short walk home. The inn’s archway ushered them into the yard. Jimmy reached the stoop first, but as his hand reached for the door handle, a blood-curdling scream pierced the air.

  The cry mutated into hysteric sheiks originating somewhere beyond the back of the inn. Ella and Jimmy were first to bolt along the side of the manor, leaving the others to straggle behind due to age—or in Rose’s case, an unfortunate choice of footwear.

  Rounding around the back of the inn, Ella homed in on the disturbance. The screams issued from the south side of the park, amongst a copse of untrimmed privet shrubs.

  Rich evergreen colors blurred as she ran while her hand went for Flo’s slingshot still tucked into the elastic band at her waist.

  The grass was damp with humidity and made running as treacherous as a professional football team at a buffet, so Ella and Jimmy cut to the trail that bordered the lake. Two other townspeople had heard the cries and came running, one from Main Street, the other from Lake Drive.

&n
bsp; When Ella and Jimmy neared the bushes, they broke off from the path just as Sheriff Chapman came riding in on Horse, his Appaloosa.

  Ella and Jimmy were the first ones to reach the scene. The slingshot held ready, she parted the bushes, revealing Patience.

  The Protestant continued to let loose a volley of eardrum-shattering shrieks. Near the woman’s plain leather shoes lay the remains of a dead body, bloody and shredded.

  Chapter 6

  ELLA SWALLOWED THE bile rising in the back of her throat and looked away. Up until now, she had seen more than her fair share of dead bodies—too many, if she were being honest. But none of them had been in the mangled wreckage that this one was.

  Rose, Wink, and Flo arrived, shoving their way through the shrubbery. Ella stopped them from coming closer.

  “You really don’t want to see,” she warned them. The hue of her skin must’ve said it all because they backed away.

  A moment later, off to her right, Horse neighed on the other side of the foliage, and the jingle of spurs heralded Chapman sweeping into the small grove.

  He looked from the body to Ella.

  Her hands went up. “This wasn’t me. I didn’t touch it this time, either. Ask Jimmy.” Turning to get the innkeeper’s support, she discovered him absent.

  A couple of yards away, the bushes shook with the sounds of retching.

  “Hear that? He agrees.”

  Chapman’s boots pushed prints into the soft dirt as he drew near, then he dropped to his haunches beside the remains. With her gaze roaming everywhere but at the body, a brown splotch of fabric caught Ella’s eye. A leather purse lay half-hidden under one of the shrubs.

  Without touching it, she copied Chapman’s stance and crouched to inspect the object. She recognized the purse, but when she’d seen it, it hadn’t had claw marks in it. Three deep gashes sliced the fabric, giving her a horrible image of how the victim had died.

  Glancing back, she saw the sheriff was preoccupied with the body. Discreetly, she used a twig to lift open the mouth of the purse. All of the typical odds and ends of a woman’s handbag brimmed inside, but not the object she was looking for.

  Leaves rustled as Jimmy entered the clearing again, wiping his mouth. Most of the blood had drained from his face, giving it the color of ash.

  “Can you tell who it is?”

  “Body’s too torn up,” Chapman replied.

  To confirm her hunch, Ella glanced over just long enough to spy a pair of shredded jeans and a blood-soaked mullet.

  She swallowed. “It’s Mary Kirkland.”

  Chapman’s steel-gray eyes searched out hers. “You sure?”

  Nodding, she pointed at the purse. “I’m sure. I saw her this afternoon. I recognize her outfit—or what’s left of it—and her bag.”

  Patience still stood at the periphery of the small clearing. Ella had forgotten she was there. The Protestant had a far-off gaze that Ella, at first, mistook as shock before she followed the woman’s line of sight to a roaming stegosaurus munching on plants. The triangular plates along its back swayed with each lumbering step.

  “What did you see, Councilwoman?” Chapman turned his face up to the Puritan. “Did you see what did this?” He had to say her name to jolt her to her senses, and he repeated the questions.

  “I saw nothing. I was walking home.”

  “And you just happen to cut through here?”

  She nodded. It was hard to gauge the councilwoman’s expression at the moment, but if Ella were forced to label it, she’d say it was between boredom and indignation about being kept there.

  Returning his attention to the body, Chapman reached out a weathered hand and placed it above Mary. After a moment, his fingers gently touched exposed sinew.

  Ella swore under her breath. “Well, that’s just all kinds of wrong. Also, if you’re checking to see if she’s dead, I find it better to nudge the body rather than stick my fingers in them like a thermometer—oh, I see what you’re doing. Clever.”

  He pulled his hand away and wiped it on the ground. “She’s cool.”

  “With that mullet, I’d say she was anything but—” Ella stopped at the man’s confused expression. “Right, not the time to joke.” She cleared her throat. “Would her body temperature cool much in this weather? Kind of hard to tell, isn’t it?”

  His brows twitched with a hint of a frown. “Jimmy, would you mind ringing Pauline for me on the telephone?” The word “telephone” came out with extra syllables as one unaccustomed to saying the word might sound.

  Jimmy darted off. Meanwhile, Ella took to inspecting the ground. Chapman told Patience to retreat to the grass but to remain nearby because he had more questions. The woman seemed put out by the request to stick around, but she marched away without argument, not unless shoving aside branches like she was in a mosh pit counted as an objection.

  Once she left, he scoured the ground, as well. She feared that at any moment, he’d kick her out too.

  Both stood in their respective spots, turning in place so as not to disturb the scene any more than they already had. There were partial dinosaur prints here and there, with hints of claws, but mostly the ground was a mess of mud.

  Besides footprints—mostly reptile in origin—and disturbed foliage, Ella was searching for something else, something that wasn’t visible in the immediate vicinity. The sludge made sucking noises as she completed her rotation.

  As if on cue, the dark clouds overhead unleashed a torrent of rain. It pattered against the leaves, soaking her hair.

  Shielding her curls from becoming a frizzy clown wig, Ella shouted over the storm. “There’s a tarp at the inn in the basement.”

  After a single nod from Chapman, she sprinted back to Keystone Inn. By the time she bounded up the terrace to the back door, her clothes were drenched through to the skin. She kicked open the back door which, surprisingly, was already ajar.

  She sopped puddles of water in the kitchen as she darted for the hallway, flew down the basement steps, and retrieved the old tarp. It wasn’t until she bolted back up the steps that she remembered Peanut. Her mouth went dry at the brush with death. Flo’s speakeasy door had been open, meaning that the allosaurus could’ve been anywhere downstairs.

  At the top, she made sure to close the basement door with a resounding click, and she returned to the park in record time.

  Once there, she enlisted the help of Rose and the Wonder Twins who were huddled under the scant shelter of a towering cottonwood. Along with Chapman, they managed to drape the fabric over the bushes, relatively protecting the scene. But as Ella’s shoes skated through the thick mud, it appeared that most of the damage had already been done.

  In the grim silence that followed while they continued to await Pauline alongside a surly Patience, Chapman tried to send Ella, Wink, and Flo home. When that failed, he leaned against the trunk of the tree, tipped his hat forward, and proceeded to snooze.

  Lightning flashed and a clap of thunder followed on its heels. Flo pulled out a knife and got two notches carved in the tree before Ella stopped her. Meanwhile, Wink had a compact in her hand and was checking her makeup.

  Ella hummed a Backstreet Boys song, her eyes settling on the tarp. She wondered at the wisdom of calling the coroner instead of, say, medics or a funeral director. Whoever was in charge of picking up bodies in the town. It was pretty obvious the woman had died at the claws of a dinosaur.

  “She must’ve been attacked just before the meeting.”

  Chapman tipped his derby hat back up and turned his cool eyes on her. “Why do you say that?”

  “Well, like I said. I saw her this afternoon at the General Store just before the debate. She left at the same time I did.” Ella tucked in closer to the trunk of the tree for shelter. The rain, if anything, had turned up a notch. “Then at the debate, Sal was looking for her just before it started, and I didn’t see her come in afterward.”

  “That so? Any of you others see her at the debate?”

  They all shoo
k their heads, including Patience. His eyes traveled to the tarp shielding the corpse before a breath bristled his mustache. “This is the third mauling and second death since we flashed here. Jerry’s still in the hospital, but it’s looking like he might survive. Might not be a bad idea to instill a curfew.”

  Flo perked up. “You could just declare martial law and keep everyone indoors on lockdown.”

  Ella pleaded with the sheriff. “Please don’t force me to stay under the same roof as Flo for an indefinite period of time because I’m telling you right now, you’ll have another murder on your hands before it’s over.”

  Flo snorted. “I’d like to see you try.”

  “Let’s go, Cotton Candy.” Ella held up her fists. “Just say when.”

  “Cotton candy?”

  “Yeah. Your hair. It looks like cotton candy. Do you not know? Do you not own a mirror?” It dawned on her that maybe the old bag’s coif might not be intentionally puffy. Sure, Ella had had the misfortune of going to the beauty parlor with Flo and had listened to her order that her hair be a tower that climbed to the heavens, but the frizzy, cotton-like texture might be an accident.

  Around the far side of the hedge, the leaves shivered, the sound drowned out by the rain. Ella braced herself for whatever creature was about to emerge by hiding behind Flo, saying, “Take her. She tastes better.”

  Pebbled-texture in hues of green and yellow emerged, revealing a familiar-looking dinosaur. Peanut snapped his jaws, displaying an alarming amount of incisors, and bucked his small head.

  Crap. Had she let the dinosaur out? Her brain scrambled, thinking back to when she’d grabbed the tarp. No, she’d definitely shut the door.

  Maybe it was the better lighting outside or because she wasn’t actively shooting the animal with one of Flo’s death rays, but she noticed he had two small red ridges on his head. They would probably turn into horns as he aged which only reinforced her belief that the animal was dangerous—if the sharp teeth currently covered in blood weren’t already enough.

  “Peanut?” Wink strode forward. “How did you get out?”

  “That’s her new animal?” Chapman drawled, his eyes glued to the reptile. “It looks as if…”