Traveling Town Cozy Mystery Box Set

by Ami Diane

  “Just don’t touch anything important.”

  “Who? Me?”

  He continued to stare until she agreed she wouldn’t.

  Exiting through the cellar’s double bulkhead doors, she wound around the outside of the house before entering the living room via the front door. She found the professor’s notes strewn out on a table in the dining room. It appeared that Will had attempted to catalog them, sorting them into piles, with the really important equations pasted onto the wall.

  She rifled through a stack of journals and picked one at random. Five sentences into fluctuation readings of the EM field in the town’s original location, she set the journal aside and wandered the rest of the house. In the kitchen, she opened the refrigerator to see if there was any food that needed consuming before it spoiled—for science, of course.

  She found it disappointingly empty. A few dishes lay in the sink, puddles of water sitting in them and the basin. Will must’ve beaten her to the fridge.

  Down the hall, she turned into the bathroom, unsure why her feet had led her there. The medicine cabinet lay open, its guts exposing pill bottles and partially squeezed toothpaste tubes. The magnetic hasp caught when she closed the door, and her eyes fell to the counter.

  This sink was wet, as well, and the toothbrush holder was empty. Frowning, she turned to the bathtub, following a hunch. A washcloth draped over the curtain rod, still damp. Unless Will was using the place as a second home, the house had a squatter.

  The professor had run off into the jungle once they’d confronted him about the time device, thereby risking getting stranded in the Jurassic period if the town jumped. Neither Ella nor the others believed he’d risk staying over the border, so they’d taken to combing the woods for any sign of the man, but thus far, he’d eluded them.

  Ella ran back to the basement. Will was still in front of a control panel, testing switches, and labeling them on a schematic he was drawing up in a notebook.

  “The professor, I think he’s been coming here.” She explained about the dirty dishes, missing toothbrush, and wet washcloth.

  “That certainly wasn’t me.” His pen tapped a rhythm on his notebook. “We should tell the sheriff. He’ll want to try to catch him returning.”

  Her eyes lit up. “Like a stakeout.”

  “A what?”

  “It’s a—ah, doesn’t matter. I’ll explain the word later. I don’t suppose there’s some sort of alarm you could rig up that’ll let you know when he returns?”

  The inventor’s brow furrowed, his eyes glazing over as he considered the question. “I suppose I could outfit a radio to send a signal if he activates a tripwire—”

  “Great. Do that. In the meantime, why don’t we make this date more exciting?”

  His face flushed as he fumbled with the notebook, tripping over his words. “W-what did you have in mind?”

  Her hand pointed at the outside wall. “It stormed last night, remember? If he came sometime during the night, as the washcloth would indicate, he may have left behind footprints.”

  A corner of Will’s mouth lilted up in a smirk, and he set aside the notebook. “Let’s ankle.”

  She blinked at him.

  “It means ‘let’s walk’.”

  “Right. I knew that.”

  “I’m sure you did.”

  As they strode between shelves spanning the length of the basement filled with parts, scientific equipment, and junk, he asked if she was armed.

  She nodded, partially hoping she’d have an excuse to try out the weapon while at the same time not. Together, they inspected the muddy ground, or at least the exposed earth they could see. The lawn of weeds was flourishing in their new environment and covered the ground almost completely.

  “Here.” Ella squatted beside a partial print just off the porch.

  The heel had sunk an inch into the muck. Standing, she waited for Will to look it over while she fanned her face and surveyed the surrounding trees that blocked a magnificent view of the town.

  Just up the hill, at the very top, stood Wink’s house. It had an unobstructed view, as well as an actual lawn.

  “Looks to be going this way,” Will said.

  “Lead the way, Watson. Or would I be Watson?”

  He tutted. “You’d most certainly be Watson.”

  “You think you’re a Sherlock?” She studied him. “I mean, you’re as smart as him, but I’m the one with the gumption who investigates—

  “By poking your nose into other people’s business.”

  “Tomato, potato.”

  “Still incorrect.”

  “Point is,” Ella said, “I’m Sherlock.”

  “Whatever you say, Watson.”

  Together, they followed the tracks around the side of the house and through the trees, losing sight of them here and there when the undergrowth became too thick.

  Down the backside of the steep hill, they trekked until they reached the large collection of greenhouses. Past that, the footprints crossed over the boundary into the jungle.

  Ella paused at the edge of the Jurassic jungle. The near-constant buzz of insects was deafening. Trees towered over a forest of ferns, some of the green fronds of which were as big as her.

  “Clever man. He knows we won’t go out there.” Anger edged Will’s voice. “I’m going to see if he doubled back over the border.”

  With that, he traced the boundary, his back hunched, as he walked away from her.

  Ella dropped her eyes to the footprints in the mud. Dr. Kaufman relying on their fears. Not only that, but he was using them to their advantage. The thought enraged her.

  She rolled her shoulders back. After wiping sweat from her forehead, she took a tentative step into the jungle. She hadn’t left the town since Mayor Bradford had kidnapped her and tried to strand her in the desert. Killers she could face. This venturing over the line was tying her stomach into knots and causing her hands to tremble.

  Her knuckles turned white in their death grip on the slingshot. She was two steps into the dense foliage. Her eyes cast about for the smallest hint of movement, glancing every so often at the footprints Dr. Kaufman had left behind.

  She was breathing heavily when the footprints took a sharp turn to the right. It appeared that the prints ran parallel with the town, no doubt crossing back over the boundary at some point. Maybe Will had picked them up again. The break in the jungle that indicated the border was still visible over her shoulder, and she didn’t dare wander any farther.

  Something snapped in front of her, and she jumped. She sprinted for the boundary faster than she’d ever run in her life. Her feet slid through mud, losing purchase, and she fell hard. Rolling onto her back, she jerked back the rubber pull on Flo’s weapon, blindly aimed in the general direction of the noise, and released it.

  It snapped forward at the same moment that her stalker stepped out from behind a tree. A small dinosaur on fours legs crunched leaves and looked up at her with the large curious eyes of a Pixar animation.

  “Oops.”

  That was all that was heard before the large tree behind the creature exploded. The dinosaur bolted, braying with fear.

  A large chunk of the trunk had been taken out. The timber teetered and groaned. It toppled over, at first in slow motion but rapidly picked up speed on its way down.

  Ella curled into a ball as the tree crashed with a deafening noise, spraying dirt and leaves everywhere. When the earth settled, she stared at an exposed root system the size of Will’s pickup.

  “El!” Will slid to a stop beside her and gaped at the toppled tree. “What happened?”

  “There was a dinosaur and…” she held up the slingshot.

  “Flo?”

  “Flo.”

  He held out a hand and pulled her to her feet, his skin brushing hers. “Must’ve been a big dinosaur.”

  “Huge. As big as a house.”

  He didn’t react. “It was small, wasn’t it?”

  “About the size of Fluffy, yes.
But it had teeth. Not sharp ones, mind you. But it had them.”

  After doing her best to scrape off the thick mud covering over fifty percent of her waitress uniform, she said, “This is quite a weapon.”

  He inspected the slingshot in her hand closer. “I remember this.” Pride edged his tone. “It took a lot of rejiggering to get right. It uses a focused beam of ultrasonic sound waves to incapacitate victims.”

  “Like an LRAD?”

  He blinked at her.

  “A long-range acoustic device. The military and police sometimes use it in my time. It’s basically a sonic weapon.” Turning it over, she found recessed diodes where Flo most likely hooked up a charging cord.

  Looking back at the destroyed tree, his mouth turned down. “It looks like Flo adjusted the wave frequency.”

  Gingerly, she tucked the slingshot away and pointed at the ground. “The footprints veer off to the right.”

  “They cross back over beyond the greenhouses but get lost in our forest.”

  At this point, she was just rubbing the mud into the fabric, so she stopped. “You realize what this means, don’t you?”

  He nodded, hope glimmering in his eyes. “Dr. Kaufman is still in Keystone.”

  Maybe there was a chance they could fix the machine after all.

  Chapter 9

  ELLA LEANED BACK at the kitchen table after licking the last of the frosting off her fork from Will’s birthday cake.

  “Rose, you outdid yourself with that cake.”

  The innkeeper smiled as a chorus of compliments from the others rose around the table—except for Flo.

  “I’m not a big fan of carrot cake.”

  “That’s fine,” Ella said, “because it was a white cherry chip.”

  “What was?”

  “The cake we just ate.”

  Flo opened her mouth, but Wink cut her off. “Maybe I’ll take some to Peanut later.”

  Ella coughed to cover a laugh, earning a not-so-gentle nudge from Will. He flashed the diner owner a gracious smile that showed off his dimples.

  “That’s your pet dinosaur, right?”

  Wink nodded.

  Rose’s hands smoothed out her apron, her mouth turning down in disapproval. “The one she kept in our basement.”

  Swiping her finger across her plate to get all of the frosting, Ella added, “Who’s now doing hard time in Chapman’s jail cell.”

  “He’s an allosaurus,” Wink explained to Will, ignoring Ella. “I can’t believe Chapman has him confined in such a small cell. He looked so sad and lonely. It broke my heart.”

  The woman swept a lock of pink hair from her face, turning towards the picture window, before discreetly dabbing at her eyes.

  Ella’s finger paused mid-way to her mouth. “Sorry, but when did he look so sad? Dinosaur eggs, Wink. Did you go visit him in jail?”

  “Maybe. You should’ve seen how happy he was to see me.”

  “Be honest, how many times did he try to bite you?”

  Wink tilted her chin up and refused to answer. At the same time, she tucked her hands into her lap but not before Ella spotted her digits sporting several bandages.

  “Did you sing him his lullaby?” Flo asked before getting shushed by Wink.

  Ella nearly choked. “He has his own lullaby?”

  Grinning, she looked around to see if the others found this bit of news as humorous as she did. If anything, they seemed to pity Wink more—again, with the exception of Flo who was poking at the remains of her cake with her fork, muttering about seeing carrots in it.

  Ella pressed on. “What’s the lullaby? Rock-a-Bye-Baby? No, wait. Rock-a-Bye-Dino.”

  Wink coughed and petted Fluffy who was currently sniffing her feet, probably smelling the scent of his arch-nemesis.

  “Isn’t it time for presents?”

  Ella’s eyes narrowed, and she made a mental note to ask Flo later about the lullaby.

  “I don’t need gifts,” Will said. “Just having you all here is enough.”

  Flo rolled her eyes and made a gagging noise.

  “Yeah, yeah, old man. Friends are worth their weight in gold, yada, yada.” Ella rubbed her hands together. “Who’s first?”

  Several minutes and a pile of shredded newspaper later, Will eyed the small collection of presents on the table. They were mostly tools, except for the sawed-off shotgun Flo had gifted him.

  “My turn.” Ella jumped to her feet, nearly causing her chair to topple over. Her fingers made a creepy, come-hither motion that beckoned the inventor to follow her to the study. Surprisingly, this didn’t give him pause, which told her he was used to her behavior or had an alarming amount of trust in people.

  The study was dark and smelled faintly of soot and dust. She clicked on a banker’s lamp that sat on the desk, washing the mahogany walls in warm light.

  “Ta-da.”

  Her hand swept gameshow host style over the computer sitting on the desk. His smile remained fixed, although his eyes flickered with confusion.

  “A television. How jake!”

  She’d seen his workshop and the slew of deconstructed television sets he already owned which explained his lack of enthusiasm.

  “No, it’s a computer, silly. I told you about them, remember?”

  The smile lines around his eyes melted away as his mouth fell open. “This is a computer? No kidding?”

  “A very old one, and by that, I mean one of the older models made affordable to the public. The thing itself looks to be no more than ten years old.” She rested her hand on the monitor, realizing she was rambling. “Anywho, I can show you how it works.”

  The Commodore 64 took a long time to boot up, and when it did, it opened to a bluish-purple screen. It had been ages since she’d used the antiquated operating system. Fortunately, her father had been an early adopter of the C64, and he’d shown her how to use it to play games.

  After several faulty commands, she clunked away at the keyboard, the sequences slowly coming back to her. She shoved a disk into the attachable drive. Several miscues later, she managed to call up a list of games, pointing at each one and explaining what they did based on her hazy memory.

  “Will? You okay?”

  His eyes were globes, reflecting the screen.

  She worried her lip. “You… do you like it?”

  “It is the most magnificent present I’ve ever received.”

  Sliding around the side of the desk to the back of the monitor, his eyes raked over the hardware while his fingers probed the surfaces.

  “I strongly recommend you don’t take it apart,” she cautioned, knowing that hungry gaze of his.

  The last time she’d seen that look, he’d practically dismantled Flo’s wall to her bunker just to figure out how the mechanism for the wall worked in relation to the phonograph. The old kook had threatened him with a gun, and he’d threatened to no longer supply her with inventions to integrate into her experimental armaments.

  “Why not?”

  “Because…” She searched for a reason for him not to take the computer apart before realizing that he might be the most qualified person in Keystone to look at the guts of the technology, including herself.

  “Huh. I got nothing,” she finished weakly.

  He came around right next to her and stared at the screen again.

  “And you just type on the typewriter, and it shows you what you want?”

  “Well, first, it’s a keyboard, and second, there’s specific syntax to the commands. But essentially, yes.”

  Pecking at the keys, she typed out a series of commands that took her back to the list of games.

  “This is more berries than that phone of yours.”

  She snorted before realizing he was serious. “This is a more primitive version of what I have.” Realizing she was knocking his present, she added, “But happy birthday and all that.”

  “What’s that?” His finger tapped the monitor, and she had to tell him not to touch the screen.

 
“It’s a game.”

  The game Paperboy launched, and she taught him how to play for several minutes before trying a different game called Ghost ’n Goblins.

  Will shifted on his feet, his fingers twitching with eagerness.

  “Yes, yes. I see,” he kept saying.

  The moment she relinquished the desk chair, he hip-checked her out of the way. Rolling her eyes, she stood behind him, coaching him through a particularly nasty goblin encounter. After three bouts of death, he called up the list of games and selected the next one, titled, The Knight and the Goblin Queen.

  “I’ve never heard of that one before.” Ella leaned forward as the game loaded. Instead of colored pixels as she’d been expecting, text filled the screen.

  “Looks like a book,” she said after scanning the screen.

  “This device keeps that much data?”

  “Well, on these floppy disks it does.” She pointed at the disk drive.

  Will muttered about the marvels of technology and was about to back out of the screen, but she stopped him.

  “Look, there are dates listed every few paragraphs.”

  They weren’t time stamps, so much as, journal entry headings, beginning with 9/10/93.

  Will fidgeted, his fingers hovering over the keyboard like a concert pianist. “If this is someone’s private journal, then we shouldn’t be reading it.”

  “Mm-hmm… you’re right. Definitely an invasion of privacy.”

  “You’re reading it, aren’t you?”

  “How’s that?”

  Her eyes had been scanning the screen while her mouth had been moving with silent words. Upon further inspection, her first assumption that the text was a book seemed to have been more accurate, an amateur book, written in a semi-daily log format. All of the entries had a running theme of a knight at odds with a goblin queen.

  “This goblin sounds like bad news.” His eyes had begun scanning the old CRT monitor along with her. “Locking up the knight, denying him food, attacking him.”

  The stories were strange, fantastical at times, yet rooted in contemporary reality. It was as if the writer couldn’t decide what period the story took place.