by Ami Diane
Ella whacked a mosquito from her shirt. “I’ve been thinking about something.”
“Good for you,” Wink said behind her.
Ella turned to shoot her a withering glare and noticed Flo’s relaxed grip on her plasma cannon. The cylinder drifted from side to side with her swinging gait, meaning that every other step sent it straight at the back of Ella’s head.
Grabbing the front of Flo’s shirt, Ella dragged the woman forward and shoved her to the front. Then, Ella fell into step beside Wink.
“How did Peanut get out?” Her mind had been occupied on other matters in the past few days, so the mystery had slipped her thoughts. “He would’ve had to go through two doors, as well as a sliding brick wall. Call me crazy, but I think he had help.”
Wink nodded. “I’ve been thinking the same thing. Someone let him out.”
“Do you think they took pity on him and were freeing him?”
Rose came to mind, but if the innkeeper had discovered the reptile squatter, surely the trio would’ve heard an earful about it.
“That’s the only reason I can think of,” Wink answered. “But it begs the greater question.”
“How did they know?”
Wink tucked in her bottom lip, nodding slowly.
The shadows were stretching in from all sides as the remnants of the day faded. Flo stopped abruptly, resulting in Ella bonking her head on the back of the plasma cannon.
She massaged the tender spot. “Why’d you stop?” They were still a block from the sheriff’s office.
Just ahead, the dark windows of the library stared out like soulless eyes. Flo made a series of elaborate gestures.
“What? What is that? I don’t know what you’re doing.”
Flo spun, knocking Ella’s head again with the back of the cannon and Wink’s head with the front of the cannon. “It means, ‘look at the window’, genius.”
“Why didn’t you say that?” Ella scooted around the older woman, putting distance between her and the shoulder cannon which had turned her head into a piñata.
Unlike the library, the sheriff’s office’s front window glowed with a faint light. When she tiptoed closer, she noticed that the facade had been vandalized. Streaks of dried eggs decorated the front, alongside smears of what she hoped was dirt but knew from the stench that it was not.
The blinds were partially closed. A shadow moved across them, a familiar lithe frame with the outline of a holster on his hip.
Ella retreated and hissed, “Abort!”
She propelled herself back the way she’d come, smacking straight into Flo. The collision sent the boarder reeling.
There was a loud whoosh as the cannon fired. The end was inches from Ella’s head when it lit up like an electric blue sunrise.
Wind and heat scorched Ella’s cheek. Her hair stood on end, and thousands of tingles like pinpricks spread up and down her side.
A blue lightning ball, roughly the size of a beachball, fired from the end of the cannon and streaked up the street.
They stood rooted in horror, watching. The ball shattered an upstairs window.
“Maybe no one’ll notice,” Ella whispered.
A voice shrieked from inside. It took Ella a breath to realize why the voice sounded familiar. Below the broken window sat a barber pole.
Flo had shot out the window of Sal’s private residence.
“Crap! Run!”
As they ducked down the nearest alley, there came the crash of a door flying open from further up the street. The jingle of spurs echoed behind them, indicating the sheriff had heard the commotion.
Sal continued to holler up a storm. By the sound of it, he was still above his shop.
“He sounds mad,” Wink said.
“You think?”
Nearing the end of the alley, Ella looked back. Flo was falling behind, the weight of the cannon not doing her out of shape physique any favors.
When they rounded the backside of the library, Ella grabbed the shoulder cannon from Flo.
The jangle of spurs grew louder, heading in their direction.
“We’ll never make it back to the inn.” Ella searched their surroundings, but the nearest hedge of bushes was the back of Sal’s shop.
“There!” Wink sprinted for the boathouse.
Ella gave Flo a good shove in that direction before running past her. They had to slow when their shoes met the dock to keep them from slapping over the aged wood.
Wink was first to shoulder the boathouse door open. The inside was more of a dilapidated catch-all for locals to store their maritime junk, but Ella discovered a new appreciation of it as a hideout.
She stood just inside, silently cheering Flo on. The boarder’s breaths sounded like an asthmatic racehorse, a noise that carried over the placid water. Steam rose from the glassy surface, providing a light haze for cover. But it wasn’t enough.
Flo limped along the dock, each step dragging more and more. She was nearly within reach when, upon the bank, Chapman’s silhouette appeared in a swirl of haze and shadows.
He was stalking along the grassy ridge, scanning the surroundings, and hadn’t spotted Flo yet.
Ella’s eyes widened with urgency. The moment Flo staggered in, clearing the threshold, Ella closed the rickety door. Behind her, Flo collapsed in a wheezing heap on an overturned raft.
For a few minutes, Ella watched Chapman through one of the many cracks in the wall. The man eventually drifted in the other direction, towards Sal’s, his hand resting on his holster.
She sank to a crate and used the plasma cannon as a chin rest. With the sheriff on the hunt, they would have to wait him out.
“So, this is fun.”
When she failed to get them to play “I Spy,” she closed her eyes and thought about Mary’s death, the upcoming election, and how much she missed the Backstreet Boys. The only sound in the boathouse was that of Flo’s breathing and the murmur of water lapping against the boats outside.
Chapter 18
ELLA ROLLED OUT of bed a couple of hours past the time she normally did, feeling rested and ready to tackle Thursday. The evening before, after they’d escaped the boathouse undetected, Wink had informed her that she wouldn’t be opening the diner the next day.
In the kitchen, a rich brew sloshed around inside Ella’s cup as she poured. Bringing it to her face, she breathed in the rich aroma before adding cream. A lot of cream.
She missed specially flavored creamers. After dumping in a couple of spoonfuls of sugar, she settled in at the table. She was in the middle of scraping her burnt toast with a knife when the door swung in.
“Ready?” Flo asked without so much as a “Good morning.”
The knife in Ella’s hand froze as she gaped at the older woman, specifically, at her head. Usually, the boarder’s more eccentric headpieces were of the tinfoil variety. But this current affront to the eyes had two large metal springs rising out of a foil helmet like alien antennas, complete with what appeared to be bouncy balls on the ends. They bobbed hypnotically with the smallest of movements.
Flo swooped in and waved a wrinkled hand in Ella’s face. “D’you hear me?”
“Ready for what? Also, what in the Marvin the Martian monstrosity is that on your head? You look like you’re trying to contact your mother ship.”
Flo’s eyes rolled up and crossed as if trying to view the accessory. “Sour, right?”
“You mean sweet, but go on.”
“William loaned me an EM field detector, and I was seeing if I could manipulate it using my mind.”
Ella stared for several more seconds, flipping through a slew of follow-up questions before settling on, “And?”
“And I didn’t get a chance to test it ‘cause Wink came to get me. You ready?”
“For…?”
“To get that book you’re so hung up on.”
Ella straightened. “You know where it is? Does Sal have it?”
“We’re going to the barbershop to find out. Wink was on the phon
e with Betty this morning when Susan got on the party line and yapped on and on about how someone broke Sal’s window the night before, and how he’s being targeted.” Flo rolled her eyes.
“Well, she’s not wrong.”
“Hey, that wasn’t on purpose. You bumped into me.”
Ella took a bite of toast. It lodged on the way down her gullet, and she wished she wasn’t too lazy to go to the fridge for butter and jam. “He wasn’t hurt was he?”
“No.” Flo scowled.
“That’s good, I guess. Sure would’ve made things easier, though, if he had been. Of course, if he was laid up in the hospital, he’d probably earn sympathy votes.”
“Yeah…” Flo’s face brightened, and she repeated the word with more gusto. “Yeah.”
“No. Uh-uh. We’re not injuring Wink for sympathy votes.” She choked down the last bite of toast and chased it with a long swig of coffee. “But getting back to that library book, I fail to see how this is related to that phone call.”
“As it turns out, we spooked Sal. He tucked tail and ran. He’s hiding out at the Peterman’s place until things die down.” Flo’s mouth twitched as she fought a smile. “He thinks it’s got something to do with the election.”
Ella stood. “So, he’s not at the barbershop right now?”
“That’s what I’m saying.”
“And it’s closed?”
At Flo’s nod, Ella deposited her plate in the sink with a loud clatter, chugged down the rest of her piping hot coffee with a grimace, and said, “Then what are we waiting for? Oh, and I’m not going out in public with you wearing that.” She pointed at the antennas bouncing around above the woman’s head.
By the time they’d marched across the swath of grass that ran between the backside of the inn and the lake on the way to Sal’s place, Ella’s back was slick with sweat. The dark water off to the right looked inviting.
As cool as it was to be in a time and place with dinosaurs, hunkered inside and fearing for their lives, the biggest drawback, as it turned out, was the amount of excrement the reptiles made. That mixed with the humidity and oppressive temperatures brewed a stench the town over.
The odor hovered like a poisonous fog, not dissipating or blowing away because there simply wasn’t a breeze to carry it off. To add insult to injury was the dankness of the lake which had its own seasoning on the best of days.
Ella found herself pinching her nose and wondering how long it would take for the swamp that was now Keystone to not smell like sewage. It was going to take dump trucks, manpower, and an act of God to relocate the hills of excrement. At least the crops would benefit from the free fertilizer.
Across the lake, a large stegosaurus moved at the edge of the Keystone forest, eating foliage along the way. She watched it until they reached the thick hedge of arborvitae that bordered the back of the barbershop.
The sight of the hedge brought back some fond and not-so-fond memories.
“Hey, Wink. Remember when you got stuck in these bushes after we crashed your hang glider?”
“I remember Will helping me while you cracked jokes.”
“Really? That doesn’t sound like me. Are you sure that wasn’t Flo?”
Wink ducked behind the arborvitae first, followed by Ella, then lastly Flo—who was still pouting about not being able to bring her plasma cannon. Ella turned to say something encouraging like, “Suck it up, buttercup,” when she noticed Flo’s eyebrows. They’d been partially singed off the day before due to God knows what, and it appeared that she’d tried to draw them in with a crayon.
“What’s going on there?” Ella pointed at the eyebrows.
“What?” Flo brushed her fingers over them self-consciously, smudging them. “Some of us make sacrifices for our passions.”
“Okay, but were you drunk when you drew them in?”
She sniffed. “No. I just didn’t have a magnifying mirror.”
“It’s just, I can’t tell if you’re happy, sad, angry… Like, right now, you look surprised. Are you surprised?”
Flo scowled and didn’t respond.
They stood at the back door of the barbershop, largely protected from prying eyes in the houses across the lake.
“What now?”
Wink picked up a large rock.
“Whoa,” Ella protested. “Let’s not go breaking any more windows.”
The town only had a finite supply, and Jerry’s glass-making skills left much to be desired unless people liked their window panes extra smokey.
“Relax. I’m not breaking any windows.” The diner owner’s hand fished out a key from under the rock.
“Well, that seems safe. If I did that where I used to live, I’d come home to no furniture.”
“Are homes not safe in your time?” Wink unlocked the door before replacing the key in its not-so-secret hiding spot.
“Not like here. Of course, considering how many dead bodies I’ve seen, the shootouts, and the break-ins—largely by us—I’d say it’s safer back in Oregon.”
Flo nudged Ella’s back until they stepped into the dark, narrow hallway at the back of the barbershop.
They didn’t want to flip on any lights that might alert a passerby to their presence, although the chances of someone noticing was as slim as winning the lottery.
Sal’s office was tucked into the back of the dark hallway, and Ella slipped inside. She felt safe turning on the light in the cramped room.
It was as cluttered as she remembered—possibly more so. The top of his desk was a mess of charts, notebook paper, stale food, and meteorological instruments. The contents spilled over onto the cabinets and floor. Stacks of papers that appeared to be as aged and dusty as the building itself ran the perimeter of the room.
The wide-planked wooden floor, full of scars and character, creaked beneath her feet. If she had to hazard a guess, she’d say the building was a holdover from Six and Chapman’s glory days and was surely one of the first buildings in Keystone.
She had to squeeze around his desk to make room for Wink and Flo to enter.
“Oh my stars and garters,” Wink breathed.
“You’ve never been in here before?” Ella looked up from the desk where she’d begun to nudge aside mountains of papers in search of the library book.
“You have?”
“I like it,” Flo blurted out, nodding at the room in approval.
“This is going to take a while.” Wink picked up a barometer, her nose crinkling before she set it aside. She wiped her fingers down her rhinestoned blouse, leaving streaks of dust behind like tiger stripes.
When Ella had finished excavating the desk, she took to looking in drawers. The grime infiltrated her nose, sending her allergies, which hadn’t existed before she stepped into the building, into overdrive.
Seven sneezes later, she closed the last drawer and searched for the next mess to tackle. Wink had set up camp in the corner behind Ella, bumping into her so often she’d stopped apologizing.
Near the door, Flo was shoving aside old editions of Keystone Corner and broken rain gauges when she let out an irritated growl. She proceeded to fling the papers about, sending them swirling like a paper cyclone.
“What are you doing?” Ella shrieked.
“This is taking too long.”
“It hasn’t even been ten minutes. I’m supposed to be the impatient one, remember?”
Wink clicked her tongue which stopped Flo in her tracks. “He’ll know we’ve been here.”
“Maybe not us, per se,” Ella added. “But he’ll know someone ransacked his office.”
Flo waved a hand at the disarray around them. “You think he’ll notice?”
Ella’s eyes roamed the towers of papers, the brass weather instruments, and the dust bunnies in every nook and cranny. The old bag had a point.
Flo returned her attention to the top of the filing cabinet she’d just exposed. “Well, it worked. This the book?”
She held up the green hardback Ella had spotted that f
atal day.
Ella sent the desk chair reeling back and danced around the side of the desk. “That’s it!”
“Great,” Wink said. “Let’s get out of here.”
They gathered near the door, practically standing on top of each other. Ella flipped the switch, plunging them into darkness.
“Ready?” she asked, pulling the door.
Wink’s hand flew to her arm, stopping her.
“You hear that?” she whispered.
Someone jiggled the handle for the back door.
Chapter 19
“HURRY! SOMEONE’S COMING.” Ella turned to hide, but there was nowhere in the office that would conceal all three of them.
Without giving it a second thought, she tore open the door and raced down the hallway into the shop proper. By the cursing at her back, the others weren’t far behind.
“Quiet,” she hissed.
The hallway brightened as the back door let in in daylight. It was widening, slowly, as if the person were struggling with something heavy.
Their only exit was the front of the shop. The problem was, the front door was directly in sight of the back door.
Ella dove to the side, hunching behind an old barber chair from a bygone era.
Wink and Flo followed suit on the other side of the room. The ancient floorboards protested with each movement, even the flutter of breath, but thankfully whoever was now inside was making enough noise to cover theirs.
From her vantage point, all Ella could see was a portion of the hallway wall. A moment later, the light in Sal’s office flicked on, casting a glowing rectangle onto the wood.
The distant shuffle of feet stilled, and the shadow of whomever, presumably Sal, paused in the rectangle of light. Had he noticed Flo’s redecorating?
Ella’s muscles coiled, ready to spring into action if need be. Across the narrow room, Flo dug into her literal handbag of tricks. Her hand brought out a familiar device, recognizable at first glance. It was one of her supposedly nonlethal, crowd dispersion flashbangs. However, when Ella had experienced it, it had caused temporary deafness.