I awoke with a jolt and checked my phone. Ten a.m. Not good. I needed to go see some people, and I'd wanted to start early. Popping some mint gum into my mouth as a sad substitute for brushing my teeth, I grabbed my bag and headed out of the room into the hallway.
The sound of footsteps overhead stopped me in my tracks. Normally, I would've thought it was just the kids, but then I remembered that two of them had a final today. It was a school day. Kayla and the others shouldn't be here.
Part of me wanted to defend the Chapel of Despair from invaders. I mean, I was part of the cult. But the other part of me wondered why anyone would break into a place like this. Had the police found me already?
The sounds of two or more people coming down the stairs had me diving into the kitchen. After a quick glance around, I opted for hiding behind the counter that divided the kitchen from the hall.
You probably think I should've picked a closet or cabinet. Both options would be wrong because there's no way out. At least from the counter, I could scoot one way or another around the long island in the center of the room. Having your back against the wall is a bad idea.
It was a lesson I'd learned the hard way in Paraguay. A government official who was in league with the Russians was having a party at his place in the country, and I'd followed a large group into the compound, breaking away by the time they asked for invitations.
I was in the office, rummaging through his desk, looking for concrete proof that he was helping the Russians target Americans, when I heard voices in the hallway. I ran over to the wardrobe with the intent of hiding inside.
Little did I know, the foreign pastor was in there waiting for his mistress to sneak in for a quickie. I also had no idea he would need the wardrobe until I realized it was full of sex toys. The wardrobe door flew open, and I thought fast enough to jump out and say I was his erotogram.
I began dancing, using dildos as batons, until I got to the door. Then I ran for my life. Later I found out that the foreign pastor was looking for me so that he could give me a big tip. Apparently, I did a good job. And Riley never let me live it down.
Footsteps sounded in the hallway, coming closer. I scanned the room, looking for all of my options. There was another way out to the hallway through the far corner of the room. It would take some serious sneaking to pull it off, but I should manage to get out.
"Where?" a man's voice demanded.
Were they looking for me or something else?
"I don't know," came the barked reply.
The voices sounded vaguely familiar. But it was the kind of vagueness that led me to wonder if it was someone in Bladdersly that I'd briefly met. Would I be able to hazard a glance without detection?
"We have to find it!" the first man growled. "Check the back stairs!"
There were back stairs? And "it"?
They ran off in two different directions. I decided to stay put in case they were going to meet up here again.
What was "it"? Was it connected with the murder? Were my druids in trouble? That was all I needed right now, for someone to be here snooping for something else. What if they found me? Would they try to overpower me to turn me in?
Footsteps ran across the ceiling and out the front door. Seconds later, a car pealed out of the parking lot. I waited a minute or two more before standing up. I had enough on my plate, but if the Cult of NicoDerm was in trouble, I had to do something. These kids were idiots.
But they were my idiots.
The Opera House was run-down looking outside and not much better inside. The lobby was badly lit, and the popcorn looked like it had been there for months. The front door was open, so I went looking for Harold.
"Breathe!" I heard him say. "Breathe from your diaphragm!"
The doors to the auditorium were open, and I slipped inside, keeping to the dark, shadowy corner until I knew who he was talking to.
Harold was standing in the middle of the stage, arms outstretched, wearing a Roman gladiator costume that looked like it would much rather be on anyone else. Flab oozed from every opening of the leather shirt he wore, and his extremely white and pasty legs gleamed through his sandals. At least the helmet covered his balding head.
"I am!" Stewie whined next to him, also dressed as a gladiator. They looked like two different sizes of the same guy, except for the bright red hair that stuck out under Stewie's helmet.
"You are not, or I would know," Harold said.
"Why are we dressed like gladiators? I'm a demon from hell!" Stewie's voice squeaked on the last word, erasing any hope of gravitas.
"We are warriors!" Harold intoned dramatically. "If you want to command millions, you need to look the part!"
"I just want to command maybe forty druids," Stewie complained.
"Just try the line again. The way I told you." Harold nudged the kid with a wooden sword.
"Fine!" he grumped. And then he held his sword aloft and announced in a wheeze, "Come at me, and find that death awaits!"
Well, at least there were no jazz fingers.
"That's better," Harold said, even though I was pretty sure it wasn't. "Now, a few more lessons and you'll be as good as I was back in my CIA days."
Stewie took off his helmet, his sweaty hair plastered to the sides of his head. "You were in the CIA? For real?" His voice had a hushed reverence that I couldn't stand.
I was in the CIA for years. Harold was in the CIA for, like, a minute. He screwed up his first assignment so badly that they fired him immediately. Only recently did I discover that he had moved to Bladdersly.
He nodded solemnly. "I was. A master of disguise too."
He had gone to a Central American dive to infiltrate a guerilla unit…dressed as an Arab. They saw through him immediately.
"Really?" Stewie gushed.
"You've heard of Merry Wrath Ferguson?"
"Bird Goddess!" Stewie whispered.
Harold placed a hand on his chest. "I taught her everything she knows."
That was it. I stood up and, in a better theater voice than he had, shouted, "Harold! Stop lying to Odious the demigod!"
Harold paled, but recovered quickly. "Merry! What a pleasure to see you here! I was just telling young Stewart here how well we worked together in the field."
"Yeah. You were a total flop. You barely survived your first and only assignment. Stewie." I walked up to the stage, past rows of battered chairs. "What are you doing here?"
"I'm um…" The kid looked from Harold to me. "Taking lessons to be more menacing when we have hundreds of new recruits."
He sounded defensive, and my problem really wasn't with him.
"Good idea," I said, much to the kid's relief. "Can you give me a moment with Harold?"
"I'll go. Time was up anyway." He turned to Harold and reached into a pocket, pulling out a couple of one-hundred-dollar bills. "Here's your fee. Next week can we dress like demons?"
Harold plucked the money from the boy's hand and nodded. "I'll see what I can do."
Stewie fled. I assumed it was to the dressing rooms to change, but I couldn't be sure.
I joined Harold on the stage and snatched the money away. "You're charging a kid two hundred dollars an hour for lessons? And is he skipping school for this?"
Harold took the money back, stuffing it down the front of his gladiator skirt. Yeah, I wasn't going to go after it there. "Half an hour. And he really has made progress."
"That's wrong on so many levels."
"No, it's not. They got the Beetle Dork comics rights and made a fortune. I'm in the Beetle Dork comics and got nothing. It's like my cut."
If anyone should make money off of Beetle Dork, it was Beetle Dork, who happened to be me. But I didn't want the money, so I brushed it aside.
I gave him a menacing glare. "Fifty is all you'll charge from here on out, or I'll waterboard you."
He looked into my eyes and knew I was serious. "Fine. Why are you here, besides to ruin my life?"
I'd almost forgotten. "We need to talk someplace private. This isn't the right place."
Harold burst into spontaneous sweating. "So you can kill me? I'm only trying to make a living!"
That brought me up short. "What? No! Just to talk! That's all!"
Without a word, he walked backstage. I followed him to a dilapidated office, where he shut the door behind me. The room was covered with theatrical posters with some suspicious photo editing. I'm pretty sure he didn't star in Hamilton with Lin-Manuel Miranda, and yet there he was as Aaron Burr. His head was also superimposed on a young Hamlet, which premiered at The Old Vic in London. And most surprising, as the waif-like Maria in an LA production of West Side Story.
Harold eased his bulk into a squeaky chair behind a splintering desk, and then he asked me what I wanted.
He was still dressed as a gladiator. I did my best to block it from my mind.
"You've probably seen in The Bladdersly Beard that I've been wrongly accused of a murder that happened next door."
Harold scowled. "I never read the local rag! I have standards! I read The New York Times' Sunday Arts and Leisure section!"
"Good for you." I eyed an enormous stack of The National Enquirer tabloids. "Like I said, I was accused of murdering Tyson Pancratz in that shed next door."
"Tyson?" Harold was aghast. "Tyson Pancratz is dead? And you killed him?"
I closed my eyes and counted to ten before proclaiming my innocence for the fiftieth time since the murder happened. "No, I didn't. And yes, Tyson is dead. Did you know him?"
"Of course. He took a theater class I offered at the juvie detention center. He was a terrible actor." Harold sniffed. "Refused to breathe from his diaphragm."
"Seriously," I interrupted. "Is that the only advice you have for kids?"
"Of course not!" he snapped. "Sometimes I tell them to project from their diaphragm."
In a minute I'd remove his diaphragm just to keep him from mentioning the organ again. Could you lose your diaphragm and live? I'd have to look that up because it might come in handy in a matter of minutes.
"Tyson. You worked with him. Please continue." Could the diaphragm be removed using a rusty trophy that I was pretty sure Harold hadn't won? How did I know he hadn't won it? Because as far as I know, there was no such award as the obviously racist Best Depiction of Another Race or Gender at the Tony Awards.
"He was a troubled youth." Harold shook his head sadly. "His struggle was real. An orphan. No family. Bullied and beaten by his peers. He had nowhere to turn but to a life of crime."
"Is that true or are you making that up?" I asked.
"I'm making it up." He studied my face. "Did you buy it? I'm told I can be very persuasive."
"No." I was pretty sure he couldn't persuade a starving man to eat a sandwich. "So you think he was an innocent youth?"
"Not really." Harold seemed to deflate. "He was a bad egg. Frankly, I don't know why I tried. It's just that money was a bit tight since the high school refused to work with me."
"Why did they do that?" Besides the obvious reasons. "You got the money for this place contingent on working with kids!" Now that I'd said it, it did seem like a bit of a pipe dream.
Harold gave a martyrish sigh. "I wanted to put on an authentic staging of Oh! Calcutta!"
My mouth dropped open. "The show where everyone on stage is nude? The one where they sing about sex? What on earth made you think that would be okay?"
"It's art," he sniffed. "You wouldn't understand. And neither did those Luddites."
It may be one of the only things I'd ever heard of done right in Bladdersly. Maybe I should send my congratulations to Bladdersly High.
"So," he continued, "I offered my services to the juvenile detention center."
"And did you attempt to do Oh! Calcutta! there too?"
Harold looked shocked. "Of course not! We didn't have enough people to fill out the cast."
"Never ever, ever do that again." Yeesh! What was it with him and Stewie? Or maybe that was the problem. He was rubbing off on Stewie. Either that or Stewie was watching documentaries of cult leaders like Jim Jones.
Harold promised. I made him pinky swear. If my girls have taught me anything, it's that the pinky swear is the hardest contract to ever break.
"Did you see anything that night? Anything unusual? Me?"
Harold seemed surprised. "Of course not. If I had, I would've told the police when they asked."
"The police were here? What did they say?"
"Well, that Vanderzee hates you with a passion," Harold said. "Like really, really, really hates you." He stared off into space. "Maybe he should try breathing from his diaphragm."
I took several calming, cleansing breaths before responding. "Besides hating me, which is weird since I've never met the man, what did he want from you?"
Harold continued. "He said that nice pastor, Malone, had seen you that night. Buddy really is a sweetheart. He's the one who got me the gig at the detention center."
That caught my attention. "And what did you say?"
He steepled his fingers. "I said that I knew you very well, that we had worked together, and that you probably did it, but no, I hadn't seen anything."
I blinked at him for a full two minutes before talking myself out of torturing him. And I did it all while breathing from my diaphragm.
I was leaving Harold alive and with his diaphragm intact when Rex called. I decided to take it.
"Merry," my husband said. "This is crazy. Even for you. Come home, and we can deal with this."
That was sweet. He wanted to help. But he couldn't. "I can't investigate from a jail cell. I need to be free to move around. Besides, I don't want this to affect you and your standing in the community."
"Oh?" Rex asked. "You don't think that having a wife who's a suspect in a murder investigation, who's giving the impression that she's on the run, isn't going to affect my reputation?"
"Does it?"
I could literally hear him running his hands through his short, dark hair. "I don't care about that. This is a mess. Vanderzee is furious with Carnack for not arresting you. And I've been getting some strange calls from some kid named Hobbs who disguises his voice every time he calls. And I mean a different voice every time. He doesn't seem to realize his number keeps coming up and it's the same one."
"That's Kurt. He's a bounty hunter." Why wasn't he calling my cell? Maybe I hadn't given it to him.
Rex kept his cool. "A bounty hunter? So now they think you've skipped bail. This seems dangerous."
"Only if my name is Kayla." I told him about young Kurt's aspirations.
Rex was quiet for a moment. "Riley and Jane can handle the investigation. You need to come in."
"Oh sure." I rolled my eyes. "That's what they want me to do!"
"That's what I want you to do."
Awww. That was sweet. "Well, I can't right now. I am safe. But you could give me some details. We know he was stabbed with a stiletto. Do they know anything else?"
There was a long sigh before he spoke again. "Vanderzee has asked if you have a stiletto."
"Yes, but it's missing," I reasoned. "So you can honestly say no."
"Vanderzee is convinced you killed Tyson and kidnapped Malone."
I bit my lip. "I'm sure he does, but you know I had nothing to do with that."
"Yes, I do. So does Soo Jin and Sheriff Carnack and most of the family, except for Ronni, who's turned those T-shirts into an empire. And Ron and Ivan have threatened anyone who says you did it."
"Well, that's nice," I said.
"You should come in and answer some questions. Malone's disappearance and you being at his house looks like you tried to eliminate the only witness who can place you at the scene."
I felt a stab of fear for the old man. I needed to find him. And not just because he knew I wasn't there that night, but because someone took him—because of me.
"I wonder what happened to him. Do you think the real killer kidnapped or killed him?"
Rex grew quiet. "Maybe he went on the run out of fear? Who knows? You need to go in and talk to the sheriff."
"Okay. I will," I lied.
"You will?" My husband sounded skeptical.
"Yes, tomorrow." And then I hung up. I hated lying to my husband, and I really wanted to do the right thing. Saying I was coming in tomorrow was all I could think of. And I didn't have a lot of confidence that I'd be able to solve this by then.
I was running out of clues. I needed to start from the beginning with waking up in the shed. It was time to find out what the deal was with Boats of the Midwest. I'd avoided it because it sounded dumb and boring. But it was showing up everywhere, including in bulk in the room where Tyson died.
I made my way back to the Chapel of Despair.
The waterbed was difficult to sit on without creating mini tsunamis every time I shifted. Pulling out my cell, I ordered a massaging recliner from Amazon. It would arrive the next day, and the kids would have something far more comfortable.
The author of the book wasn't listed on the cover. I opened it up and found the cover page, which listed the author as Anonymous.
The copyright indicated that it had come out this year. So it was a new, boring book. I opened up a can of pop and a bag of chips and turned to the first page.
Three hours later, I was finished and felt like I needed to wash my eyes out with soap. Far from being dull, Boats of the Midwest was either a badly written novel or a complete diary charting all of the scandals in a town called Intestinally, Iowa.
Was that a very badly disguised Bladdersly? Were these the town secrets? It would explain the pen name. This little, two-hundred-and-fifty page book charted the history of Bladdersly to present day. And the history was very different than the one we'd heard before back in Who's There.
Apparently, Bladdersly started off originally as Wanderwee. Hmmm…the name of the police chief. Was he a descendant?
Anyway…Wanderwee was founded by a gold prospector of the same name, who, on his way out West, got tired and decided he didn't want to go any farther. Obadiah tried panning for gold in Idiot Creek, a trickle just west of here, but didn't get more than a few leeches and some typhus from drinking out of it.
He built a one-room cabin and set up a trading post. And even though it wasn't on any routes for any travellers, he kept things afloat and managed to lure a few others to settle there. Most of these people were down on their luck too and decided a second or third chance in the middle of nowhere couldn't be any worse.
When Who's There was founded, along with a lumber mill and tavern, Wanderwee had nothing but losers and a mysterious and endless cycle of cholera. Wanderwee attempted a sort of resurrection. His idea, mainly because they couldn't compete with the lumber mill or tavern, was to set up a brothel.
The idea backfired when they couldn't get any of the town's forty-seven women to even consider the world's oldest profession. In fact, the town drummed Wanderwee out of city limits and decided to rename the town Intestinally after the mayor's wife, Intesta.
Obadiah lived outside of town in a shack. He married some unfortunate woman who gave him twelve children before dying. And eventually those descendants returned to Bladdersly, or Intestinally, and have lived there ever since.
The badly edited book then jumped forward two hundred years to the year 2000. And that's when things got interesting. Whoever wrote this had insight into the secret lives of most of the town.
I knew it!
There were tales of inbreeding (which made a lot of sense to me), bizarre fetishes (did you know some men are actually turned on at the sight of a pretzel?), countless love affairs, and murder. It read like those tabloid rags in Howard's office.
None of this information was backed up with hard evidence. It all seemed to be hearsay. And yet, it was pretty damning. I could see someone killing to keep this book quiet. Which made me think of the books in the shed. Was that the entire print run?
Had someone killed to silence the author? And was that author Tyson Pancratz?
I jumped to my feet to do a little victory dance at the idea of having solved this, but the waterbed had other ideas and launched a wave worthy of a professional surfer that sent me tumbling to the floor.
I got to my feet and continued the dance because this was big. This was huge. This could break everything wide open!
Unfortunately, I spilled my pop and crushed my chips. So I headed to the church kitchen to get the bottle of wine I'd brought in. Fortunately, none of the kids had tapped into it yet, so I broke the seal, unscrewed the cap, and poured it into a glass.
Where were those kids anyway? School must've been out by now. And I was pretty sure these guys didn't have anywhere to go. I needed to talk to them about the break-in earlier and see if they knew what it was about.
I'd probably ban them from the building until I could guarantee their safety. A little pang hit my stomach. Sure, they could be annoying, but I had a soft spot for this little troop of druid wannabees. In fact, I should put in place some security measures that would keep it safe…at least while I was here.
I could run to my ranch house and get the various tools of my trade, which I'd stolen from my former employer and hidden in the basement. But if the police were surveilling the house, that was a no-go. I'd just have to use what I had here.
The kitchen cupboards didn't have much, but there were a couple of things I could work with. The tin of popcorn kernels would be especially useful. Although I had to wonder, who made popcorn the old-fashioned way anymore? Was that a thing? Or was I lazy in using those microwaveable bags that only popped half of the corn?
I found twine, scissors, thumbtacks, a staple gun, and plastic bags. This was going to be fun! Just like the time Riley and I holed up in an old office supply store in Budapest!
"What are you doing?" Heather startled me from the doorway. Her face was scrunched up as if something smelled bad. Mike walked in behind her and stared at the bottle of wine on the counter.
"You can't have any." I snatched it away and put it back in the fridge. Great. Now I was going to have to open the fridge to get it back out.
"I don't want to drink alcohol." Mike waved his hands in front of him. "My dad said it leads straight to juvie and, before you know it, adult diapers."
Maybe the kids weren't the weird ones. To be honest, I'd only ever met Stewie's dad, who labored under the delusion that Stewie was super smart and popular.
Heather shook her head. "My mom said that wine is medicinal, especially if you drink it out of a box."
"That's right," I said as I took a swig. "I'm taking my medicine."
Mike looked confused, so I added, "Of course, Mike's dad is right too."
"He is?" Mike's eyes grew wide. "I'll have to tell him Bird Goddess says so. He'll love that."
"You guys can call me Merry," I said. "Seriously. You call each other by your real names. I've even heard you call Stewie Stewbutt. Merry is fine."
"It's one less syllable." Heather seemed to agree.
"See? I'm making things easier on you already. Oh, and by the way, I ordered a massaging recliner for the relaxation room. You're welcome."
Mike and Heather high-fived each other. Kayla and Stewie pushed past them into the kitchen. I hadn't even known they were there.
"I need to talk to you guys." I clapped my hands to get their attention, something that sometimes worked with my troop. "Something strange happened today."
"Did you commune with demons?" Stewie burst into the center of the room eagerly. "Raise the dead? Contact aliens?"
Kayla put her hands on her hips. "That's our problem right there. We have no consistent message!"
"Kayla's right," Heather said. "I mean, are we into demons or zombies or aliens? You change it all the time, Stewie."
Mike shook his head. "I think we should keep all options open. I mean, what if we're having a meeting with demons and an alien walks in? Do we just kick him out?"
Stewie nodded his head and pointed at Mike. "He's right! We have to be open to all things strange and unusual."
"What if the demons are jerks?" Kayla folded her arms over her chest. "What if they're sexist?"
"Like you!" Heather pointed at Stewie.
"What are you talking about?" The diminutive redhead seemed genuinely confused.
The girls brought up the language about manhoods and indoctrinating females. Stewie's face grew redder, and for a moment, I was worried he'd explode.
"Manhood means I'm a man," Stewie insisted. "And indoctrinating means giving a person a place to take a nap. Women need naps. My mom told me that."
I needed to meet Stewie's mom. "Besides the fact that I'll be buying you a dictionary soon, why do you think women need naps?"
"To rest their cosmic auras," Stewie said. "Duh!" He made a circular motion on the side of his head as if to imply that I was crazy.
I was starting to wonder if I was.
After I explained to the kids what those things actually meant, Stewie began to sputter.
"I didn't know that!" His face was flushed and his eyes wide. "How would I know that?"
"You should read more romance novels." Heather nodded. "Then you'd know what a manhood was."
"Okay." I held up my hands. "We need to talk about something else."
In truth, I was greatly relieved that Stewie was only inadvertently sexually harassing girls. I herded the kids to a table in the hall, and we all sat down. Then I told them about the men invading the Chapel of Despair.
"Recruits?" Stewie leaned forward eagerly.
"I don't think so. They seemed to be older guys."
The kids looked at me questioningly.
I sighed. "Like me."
"Ahhhhhh…" the girls said in unison.
I toyed with accusing them of ageism, but decided we didn't have time for that. "If I had to guess, I'd say they were professionals."
"Men in Black!" Mike slammed his hand on the table. "We've attracted the attention of the dudes from, like, Area 51!"
Stewie drooled a little. "We've done it! We've hit the big-time! Now a secret government organization is after us!"
"Cool!" Kayla said.
Should I ruin their excitement and tell them these were not Feds?
"These guys said they were looking for something they called 'it.' Any ideas what they want?"
"Do you think we have the Holy Grail or an alien egg here?" Stewie asked hopefully.
It was so tempting to say yes, but that would only encourage them. "No. I don't."
Kayla looked at Stewie. "Why would aliens have eggs?"
Mike nodded. "I think they have babies, like people."
"They could have eggs!" Stewie stormed. "They could be marsupials! Who knows?"
I raised my arms. "Guys. We are getting off track. Let's say for the sake of argument that you're all right…"
"We can't all be right." Kayla frowned.
"Yeah!" Mike added. "Which is it? Babies, eggs, or marsupials?"
"I don't care." My voice had an edge. "The real question is where could whatever 'it' is be?"
Heather spoke up. "I don't know. There was a lot of junk when we moved in. We tossed a lot of it. But I think we stashed some stuff in the old nursery."
Huh. So we were getting to babies. Albeit not alien babies. "Let's go," I said. "First, we need to lock the doors. And we need to keep locking the doors every time we leave here. I'm going to need a key."
The kids looked at each other and burst out laughing.
"What's so funny?"
"You! You actually think we have keys! That's so 2010!" Mike wiped away some tears.
I closed my eyes and pictured myself removing his diaphragm. It helped.
"What do you use instead?"
Stewie pulled out the latest version of the iPhone and tapped until an app came up. He showed it to me. The logo had a goat's skull on it with the words Security for Your Peace of Mind written in red, dripping letters.
"This guy at MIT invented it," Stewie explained. "We use the app to lock and unlock the doors."
"And you didn't understand what manhood meant?" I asked.
"Give me your phone." Heather held her hand out.
I handed it over.
"Uh, what is this?"
"It's my phone." I paused.
She handed it back to me. "Well, I can't put an app on that. You have an old phone. Last year's model can't handle this app."
"That's really primitive," Kayla said.
"My grandma has that phone," Stewie added. "And she's got dementia."
"Well." I took it back. "This is what I have to work with. I guess you'll have to give me a key."
"Don't worry," Mike said. "We have a failsafe. There's a keypad under the skull to the right of the door. Just enter the secret code."
"Which is?"
"666."
I blinked at them for a moment. "Guys, don't you think that's a little obvious?"
"Oh" was all Stewie could say. "I hadn't thought of that."
"How about 999?" Kayla offered.
"Yeah!" Mike said. "Good idea!"
Heather hesitated. "Maybe that's too obvious too. I mean, it's just 666 upside-down, right?"
I smiled at her to reward her for saying something intelligent.
"Well, I don't know if I can remember something harder than that," Stewie whined.
"How about…" I held up my arms. "Something like 1212?"
The kids started laughing again. I was really regretting staying here.
"Too obvious!"
"I know!" Stewie held up a finger. "0804!" He turned to me and explained, very slowly, "That means August fourth. That's the date the Beetle Dork comic came out!"
This was greeted by a roar of agreement and my sigh of let's-never-do-this-again. Mike changed it with his phone, which apparently sent the message to the keypad. These guys were smart enough to have an app that locked and unlocked doors but not smart enough to not use 666 for a demonic church.
I decided not to say anything about Stewie's tone, implying that I was too ignorant to know how a date was written. We didn't have any time to waste. If these guys were coming back, I wanted to find whatever "it" was before they could. So instead, I led the way to the nursery.
"Well, this shouldn't take too long," I said as I walked in. There was a pile of junk along the back wall.
"What are we looking for?" Mike asked as he picked up a doll with two fingers as if it were on fire.
"Should we wear our robes?" Stewie asked hopefully.
"I don't know." I shrugged. "Anything that strikes you as very strange or very valuable. And no to the robes. They'll just get in the way."
Stewie removed his robe to reveal he was still in the gladiator costume.
The kids laughed for ten minutes while I started digging through the wreckage.
Searching any place can be tedious. You don't just open drawers and look through them. You pull them open and search for hidden panels and see if there's something taped to the bottom.
The life of a spy seems exciting, but a lot of time is spent looking for things. I've had to search everything from a very messy and cluttered office to an igloo. And the amazing thing was, I found more in the igloo than anywhere else. The Finnish general who'd hid out there had secret plans, two sticks of dynamite, and a disturbing stash of reindeer porn (images of mating reindeer—what did you think I meant?) stashed inside blocks of snow.
What he hadn't anticipated was an unseasonably warm front that came through and melted everything. Mother Nature had been my wingman.
After an hour, we had nothing. We'd waded through old toys, newsletters, hymnals, and boxes of golf pencils. There was nothing there that seemed valuable or even interesting.
"Is there another stash somewhere?" I set down the last case of golf pencils.
"We know what's in all the other places." Kayla scratched her chin.
"Just our stuff." Mike shrugged. "Nothing else."
Had I gotten this wrong? Maybe the men had. Maybe they were looking for something in the wrong place. If this was about the murder in Bladdersly, why would anyone look for something in an old church owned by four teen druids in Who's There? The only connection to them was Kurt. And that was only because he liked Kayla. But as far as I knew, they'd never really had any kind of relationship, and he'd never been here.
On the other hand, this could mean that Kurt was involved. I needed to give this some thought. My stomach rumbled.
"Oh well," Stewie said. "We need to clear out the altar. I have big plans for this place. Are you in, Bird Goddess?"
I fled to Bladdersly. I wanted some time to sit and think, and I was hungry, and I still hadn't been to the diners there. Three birds with one stone! Which was one better than the old saying.
Ella's Diner was half full in spite of the hour. Peering out the window at Ela's Diner across the street, I could see that place was half full too.
"What can I get ya?" A red-faced, heavyset woman with light brown hair pinned up in a bun smiled at me. She had to be in her fifties. Her nametag said Ella. This was the owner?
"What do you recommend?" I asked.
"The meatloaf. I make the best meatloaf in the state." Her pen hung in midair over her pad.
My stomach rumbled in agreement. "Ok, that sounds good. Is the food here better than Ela's?"
Ella scowled. "You're damn right it is! That idiot couldn't pour ketchup out of a bottle without burning it."
"It's kind of strange," I continued with no regard for my own safety. "That you have two competing restaurants with the same name."
The woman wrote on her notepad. "Yeah, well, that's what you get in this business. Just when you think things are going well—Bam!" She slammed her hand on my table, making me jump. "Some kid comes along and thinks they can do it better!"
I put on my most sympathetic face. "That sucks. So you've been here a long time?"
Ella stuffed the pen and pad in her apron. "Thirty-two years. And that fraud across the street has only been here five."
"You have my sympathies," I said.
The woman responded by sitting down across from me.
"That's nice of you since you aren't from around here. But I do know who you are. You're that woman they think killed Tyson."
I decided not to deny it. "That's right. But I didn't kill him. No matter what Pastor Malone says."
She cocked her head to the right. "Do you think, if you go to prison for the crime, you could give me an endorsement? That cow across the street would faint if she thought I had the endorsement of a murderer."
"I'm sorry to disappoint you," I said firmly. "But I didn't kill him."
Besides. I'd like to try the food first.
"Who do you think killed him?" I asked.
Ella's expression grew stormy. "Hell, I'd have done it if I could've gotten away with it. You did a service to this town by taking him out."
I fought the urge to insist on my innocence. "Why's that?"
"He was a bad seed. He robbed businesses, including his own store. He was rude and obnoxious. And I'm sure he would only have gotten worse if you hadn't killed him."
I sighed. "I didn't kill him."
Ella struggled to get to her feet. "Whatever. Your meatloaf will be up soon."
As she walked away, I looked across the street again. A much younger, thinner woman was waiting tables there. So that was Ela. Maybe I'd go there for dessert after interviewing Elrond.
In the meantime, I needed to think about the break-in at the church. I really should've confronted the men. Then I'd know who they were. However, if they'd had guns and I wasn't able to disarm them, well, I'd have died for nothing.
The big question was if Kurt was involved. The kid seemed to know everything about this town. And he was under my feet half the time. Could he be smarter than I'd given him credit for? Was he just following me around to stay one step ahead of the investigation?
The theory had some merit. The problem with it was that if it was correct, what did Kurt hide in the Chapel of Despair? It had to be something valuable. That didn't necessarily mean something physical. It could be information.
Argh! All of this was a stretch. Connecting him to the Chapel was tenuous. Was I going off the rails into crazy town just to dodge the rap? Yeesh. I was starting to think like Betty now. I filed this information away mentally and waited for my food.
Sure enough, I didn't have long before a plate with meatloaf and mashed potatoes appeared next to me. Ella lingered, so I took a bite.
"Oh wow! This is fantastic!" I said between mouthfuls.
It really was. Meatloaf is one of those Midwest staples. You'll find hundreds of different recipes in Iowa alone. And this one was possibly the best I'd ever had.
Ella softened. "Thanks."
I was so busy devouring my lunch that I didn't even notice she'd wandered away. I moaned with each mouthful, rolling my eyes. It was that good.
"Are you okay?" Kurt sat in the seat Ella had occupied earlier.
"What are you doing here?" I asked. And how strange that I'm thinking of the guy and he shows up right here, right now.
He looked at me curiously. "You're not very bright, are you? I told you…I'm sticking to you like glue so that I can bring you in when you run."
I thought about stabbing him with my fork. "Considering that I've told you repeatedly that I have zero interest in running, it seems like you're the not very bright one."
Kurt shrugged. "So what's next?"
Maybe he could be useful. "Tell me about Elrond."
"Oh, that's easy. He's this guy who's into comics and opened his own shop."
"I know that," I said through clenched teeth. "What else can you tell me about him?"
"Well." Kurt tapped his chin. "He's lived here all his life…like everybody else here. After he graduated from high school, someone died and left him money, and he opened up the shop."
"Is his name really Elrond?"
Kurt nodded. "He changed it a few years back. He doesn't use a last name, but it's Anderson if you need to know."
"Did he know Tyson?"
"I didn't know Tyson. But maybe? A lot of guys hang out in that shop. And Tyson was in the Nerd Herd at Best Bye."
I speared the last bite of meatloaf. "I'm going to Elrond's next—since you need to know where I am at every moment."
"I can go with you." Kurt brightened.
I thought about this as I polished off the potatoes. "Why not?" There wasn't really a reason not to. Besides, maybe if there were other people in there, Kurt could draw them off so that I could talk to Elrond alone.
"Alright, kid. Give me a few minutes to pay my bill, and then we're out of here."
Elrond's smelled like paper and dust. The shop was dimly lit and the shelves stocked with a dizzying array of comics and graphic novels.
A tall, skinny man, maybe in his midtwenties, stood behind the counter. He had long, thin, stringy hair hanging limply over his shoulders. The pale skin told me he didn't get out into the sun much. This kid might be a good recruit for the druids. Would Stewie give me $25 for recruiting him, or was the Bird Goddess exempt?
"Hi," I called out brightly. "You must be Elrond. Do you have any Wonder Woman comics?"
The kid froze, staring at me. He didn't respond.
"They don't get many women in here," Kurt whispered.
I could see that.
"Are you alright?" I approached the counter, and he backed up nervously.
Kurt stepped forward. "Dude! You're making a bad impression on my bail jumper."
It shows how magnanimous I was that I didn't immediately fashion a comic book into a shiv and impale him. I could've done that. You can make a lethal weapon out of just about anything. But I didn't. And I'm kind of proud of that.
Elrond snapped out of it. "Fine. You want Wonder Woman? I don't usually stock it."
Was this sexism? How could you be a comics shop and not have Wonder Woman? "Why not?"
He shrugged. "I don't get a lot of call for it here."
That's when I noticed his skinny bicep with a tattoo of Lance Armstrong as a Native American chief.
"Nice ink." I pointed at his arm.
Elrond frowned. "I didn't want that one. Bear insisted. Even gave it to me for free." He rolled up the sleeve of his other arm. "This is my favorite. It's Beetle Dork. You're probably too old to know who that is."
"You might be surprised," I mumbled as I looked closer. Sure enough, it was the entire cover of the first edition.
"It's pretty cool since it's all about Harold and all." Elrond gave a weak smile.
"Yeah." I narrowed my eyes. "I'm familiar."
"That's because she's Beetle Dork." Stewie and Mike emerged, hidden by the stacks, and pointed at me.
Elrond did not seem convinced. "That's not funny, guys. You're just saying that because you own the rights."
"It's the truth," Mike said. "That's Merry Wrath Ferguson. She's Beetle Dork."
For some reason, I felt I had to explain. "Not because I wanted to be, that's for sure."
"That's so cool!" Elrond's face opened up into an almost pleasant expression. "Wait." His face fell. "Did he say Wrath? You're the chick who murdered Tyson!"
"No." My hands curled into fists. "I didn't kill Tyson."
But Elrond continued as if I hadn't said anything. "He was one of my best customers!" He waved limply at Mike and Stewie. "Except for these guys."
"I didn't kill Tyson," I reiterated.
"Bird Goddess," Stewie sniffed authoritatively, "wouldn't kill anyone."
"Wait." Elrond did a cartoon doubletake. "You are Beetle Dork, you killed Tyson, and you are these guys' cult's Bird Goddess?"
"It's not a cult!" Stewie's voice went up about fifty decibels.
"Two of those three are correct," I said. "I did not kill Tyson Pancratz."
The four of us stared at each other. Stewie wiggled his eyebrows at me, intimating that we were somehow communicating with our minds—although what we were saying was a secret to me. Mike shrugged and went back to the stacks.
"Okay," Elrond said at last. "We don't have Wonder Woman though."
"Why not?" Betty shouted from the doorway, with Inez hot on her heels.
"Because no one buys it." Elrond rolled his eyes.
"What are you doing here?" I asked the girls as they walked over to me.
"Buying comics," Inez said. "Same as you."
"You know," Kurt said. "You've never had this many women in here at once."
Elrond's eyes shot daggers at him, but then he seemed to reconsider and finally nodded as a way of giving in.
"Why don't you have comic books written about girl superheroes?" Betty stepped forward.
"Yeah!" Inez crossed her arms over her chest.
"I guess I could order some…" he offered, hoping no one would ask.
"No! It's too late," Betty snapped. "What we really want to know is, why did you kill Tyson Pancratz?"
I stared at her. "This guy did it?"
A responsible adult would've dismissed the child's ranting. But I wanted someone else to take the heat, so I was interested.
"I didn't do it!" Elrond's hooded eyes opened wide. "What makes you think I did it?"
Betty leaned back. "I have my reasons."
"And they are?" Kurt asked curiously.
Betty stuck her tongue out. "I don't have to tell you."
"I didn't do it!" Elrond blustered. "Sure, I was here that night, and sure, it happened not far from here, but it wasn't me!"
That caught my attention. "Did you see anything?"
He shook his head so hard that he became dizzy and stumbled a bit. "No! I told Vanderzee that!"
"Do you have video footage of that area?" Inez asked.
We all gasped and looked at her. It hadn't occurred to anyone else to ask.
"Um." He looked up and to the left. "Only of the alley. But The Opera House blocks my view of the Pump & Pawn."
"You do?" I turned to him. "You have footage?"
Elrond didn't seem to know how to answer. "Yeah. Probably. Maybe?"
"Did you hand it over to the cops?" Stewie asked.
"No. They didn't ask when they interviewed me. But remember, I can only see the alley out back. I can't see the shed."
We were already coming behind the counter. Elrond had no choice but to allow us into his back room, where we stopped cold.
"No Wonder Woman! You're a dirty, rotten fink!" Betty stomped. "I should plug you, but I gassed my heater. Your lucky day, bub!"
The noir speak was back.
It was true. The office was papered, floor to ceiling, with images of Wonder Woman.
"Don't touch that!" Elrond ran over to Betty, who had picked up a coffee mug that said, Wonder Woman's BFF. There were figurines of the superheroine scattered across every surface.
"I think this is my favorite." Kurt winked and gestured to a picture.
On the desk was an 8"x10" framed photo of Elrond in Wonder Woman drag. The costume hung limply on his skinny frame, but he made up for it with enthusiasm as he smiled broadly with both thumbs up.
"Forget about that." I brushed it all off. "Show us the footage from the night of the murder."
"What time did it occur?" Inez asked.
"The coppers squealed," Betty said. "Pops Malone said this dame dusted the lug in the shed around two in the morning."
With a heavy sigh, Elrond sat in his Wonder Woman upholstered desk chair and turned on his Wonder Woman laptop. He clicked on an icon labelled The Secret Diaries of Diana Prince and pulled up the footage for the night of the murder at two in the morning.
"Back it up to 1:30," I insisted. "And run it through three a.m."
Betty pushed the man out of the chair. "Scram, ya rube. I'll be the gumshoe."
She found the right time stamp and fast-forwarded. There was no traffic.
"If you came in through the front parking lot or exited out the other end of the alley," Elrond said, "we wouldn't see you. It's a one in three chance that I caught you on camera."
"I. Didn't. Do. It," I said through clenched teeth.
At 2:05 a.m., a car raced down the alley in the direction we were looking for.
"Back it up!" Inez insisted.
But Betty was already on it. She found the vehicle, froze the frame, and blew it up.
"What's he doing there?" Kurt wondered.
Bryce Vanderzee was in a black sedan driving down the alley. In the front seat next to him was a shadowy figure we couldn't make out.
Stewie squeaked, "That puts the police chief at the scene of the crime at the right time."
"Yes, but we don't know if that's just a coincidence. Maybe he was driving around town. Malone said he saw me at two. This is a few minutes later."
Kurt leaned closer to the monitor. "If Vanderzee did it, he could've scared Malone into falsely accusing you."
I pointed at the screen. "Who's in the front seat? Is that Tyson?"
The image was too dark and murky. It was impossible to tell. "That's why the chief didn't ask you for your footage. He knew he was in it."
Inez nodded. "And hoped you were too stupid to even think of it."
"Vanderzee is scary," Elrond said with a shudder.
"He's just loud and obnoxious," I dismissed.
"No, he's, like, really scary," Elrond insisted. "There's rumors about him and stuff."
That was interesting. "Like what?"
Kurt spoke up. "There have been rumors for years that he's tried to shake down people."
"Blackmail?" I asked. Oooh! That was a great motive!
"I don't know." Kurt seemed doubtful. "That's just it. I've heard of this vaguely, but never any specifics."
It was possible that these were just normal rumors in a small town. Last year, there was a rumor that Officer Kevin Dooley ate the evidence from the theft of a Cheetos truck. But I didn't believe it. Mostly.
My mind reeled back to Boats of the Midwest. I needed to do a deeper reading of that later.
"I've emailed you a copy of the footage, complete with time stamp," Betty said as she slipped a DVD into the computer. "And I'm making a copy of the whole evening, just in case Wonder Woman here screws up and erases it." The noir was gone, but it made sense. They didn't have any of this technology in the early twentieth century.
"You know," Inez said. "I'll never look at Wonder Woman the same way again."
Glancing at Elrond as Wonder Woman in the picture, I had to agree.