Calamity Jayne Rides Again (12 page)

"Just about my sanity," I told him. "But I gotta tell you, Frankie, I'm more than a little concerned about you. You've gone
way off the deep end here," I said, then added, "no pun intended. What do you hope to accomplish by this little game of hide
and seek—or maybe I should say 'trick or treat'—you're playing?"

"Do you think this is a game? I'm fighting for my good name! To convince everyone I'm not who they think I am. Seems to me
that's something you of all people should understand, Tressa," he said.

I sighed. Hard to argue with that kind of logic. I'd been on a campaign to gain some credibility since I figured out that
acting the dumb blonde isn't cute; it's just dumb.

"You're right, Fr—Garth," I said, feeling foolish but willing to play along because of my own history. "And I do understand.
I do. Not too long ago I was trying to convince folks I'd found a stiff in my trunk and was met with more than a little skepticism.
And I admit I resorted to some rattier creative means to accomplish my objective. But I hate seeing what this is doing to
your folks, Frankie—uh, Garth. They're really worried. If you're innocent, why not come out of hiding and say so?"

He shook his head, and a braid slapped against his cheek.

"You know why. No one will believe me unless I have hard evidence," he said. "And I'm learning some very interesting stuff,
like, did you know that Luther Daggett has already drawn up plans for the horseshoe-pitching renovations? Word is, they're
very pricey. You don't think he'd invest more than the minimum necessary if my dad's name is going to end up on that 'donated
by' plaque, do you? He's thinking he's got this competition locked up. You gotta wonder why. And from what I hear, the Lis
of Li's Asian Express are out to increase their presence here at the fair, and to get away from their present location near
the toilets."

"Are they planning to add lo mein to the menu?" I asked Frankie. He just looked at me. I shrugged and launched into an account
of my little misunderstanding with Mr. Li. "He called me a liar—right to my face! Can you believe that? And I was just being
polite when I ate those egg rolls," I added. "They were barely edible."

Frankie looked down at his hands and my eyes followed. Poor guy, I thought; he still bit his nails.

"So that leaves us Luther Daggett and Mr. Li as possible suspects," he said.

"Plus every other concessionaire on the fairgrounds," I pointed out. "Your dad has prime spots, which translates to big business.
Gotta be any number of folks who'd love to have him sell out to them."

"But who wants the real estate badly enough to go roach collecting?"

"And knows enough to frame you in the process?" I added.

"And how far will they go to get what they want?" Frankie asked.

I shivered. The roaches had been nasty and the meltdown at the mini-freeze a royal pain, but nothing had reached a level of
actually being harmful to anything but Uncle Frank's business. Just how far these bad guys would go to achieve their goal
was anyone's guess.

"So, what's your plan?" I asked Frankie, still a bit unclear on how he thought he could expose the evildoers while spouting
insults from a dunk tank.

"The way I figure it, we have to run surveillance on both ice cream locations. Then we're sure to nab the culprit the next
time he strikes."

I did a double take. "Uh, whatdya mean 'we,' paleface?" I asked, using the punchline from an old Lone Ranger joke.

"Well, I can't very well be two places at once," he said. "Can I?"

"Well, no."

"And I can't risk coming forward now, or we may never find out who's behind the treachery. The only way the bad guys can continue
to conduct their nefarious business as usual is if I remain missing. That way they can put the blame on me. If I show up,
the pranks will stop."

"Isn't that what we want, Frankie?" I asked. "For it to be over?"

He gave a long, loud sigh. "Yeah," he said finally. "And I could end it here and now. I could get off this Sky Ride, walk
over to the trooper headquarters, and turn myself in, and the pranks would probably end. And a lot of folks, probably including
my own parents, will think I was responsible for the mischief. And there'd be no way for me to prove I wasn't. Ever. I don't
know if I could handle that, Tressa," Frankie said. "Having people think I could do something that low to my own family...."

I thought about what Frankie said and realized he was right. I, more than most folks, should understand the dynamics at play
that drove Frankie to go underground in a clown costume and garb himself in hot, scratchy Levi's and heavy boots. I'd once
tailed a murder suspect to a marina in the dead of night with only an ancient amateur sleuth who harbored delusions of Chan-hood
as back-up to rehabilitate my rocky reputation. How, then, could I deny Frankie his opportunity to establish his innocence?

"Okay, Kemosabe," I said. "Count me in."

We approached the departure point for the halfway portion of the Sky Ride.

"We could get off now, if you like," I told him.

He appeared to seriously consider for a moment, then took a shaky breath and flashed our return tickets at the operator.

"We'd better finalize our plans," he said.

"No prying eyes at a hundred feet up, right?" I said, and he drew a finger across a beaded upper lip.

"A hundred feet?" he repeated.

I nodded. "Thereabouts. But you're okay. No inner ear malady to make you dizzy today. Right?"

He nodded but, I noted, scrupulously avoided looking down.

First we agreed on a method of communication, deciding to leave notes for each other under a poster on the large bulletin
board in the horse barn. Then we set up our surveillance schedule, with Frankie taking the Emporium and me the mini-freeze.
Frankie figured he could sneak in and out the back door of the larger establishment without anyone seeing him, and could bunk
down on the floor behind the counter for some shut-eye. He reminded me to make sure I doubly disinfected the floor before
I left each night.

I would watch the mini-freeze from two to five a.m. each morning. Since everyone was pretty much in for the night after two
and folks were already starting to rouse at five, we figured those would most likely be the times the mischief-makers would
strike. I'd catch a few z's after five in the trailer and whenever I had a break throughout the day. Good thing I was the
type to sleep pretty much anywhere. (Hey now, don't take that the wrong way there, pilgrims. Bring that mind up outta the
gutter, ya hear?)

"So, what exactly am I supposed to do if I catch someone in the act?" I asked, recalling Townsend had inquired the same thing
when I'd been in hot pursuit of the clown. Having no plan wasn't as big a deal with hundreds of thousands of fair-goers milling
about. But at two a.m., help on the way would come with an indefinite time delay. Like, enough time for the bad guy to hurt
me. Bad.

"Well, I don't want you to make a citizen's arrest or anything that foolish," Frankie said. "By the way, you wouldn't do anything
that foolish, would you?"

I grabbed Frankie's nose and gave it a twist. "Don't tell me what you don't want me to do, tell me what you want me to do.
And remember, there may not be a trooper every hundred feet at that time of the night," I reminded him.

"You'll have your digital camera. It has a setting for night photos, right?"

I nodded.

"Then, snap a couple of pictures and run away. Scream 'Fire!' if you have to. Don't yell 'Help,' people are guaranteed to
ignore you. Yell 'Fire.'"

I shook my head. "How sad is that?"

He ignored me. "Remember, you have to be real careful not to be seen while letting yourself back into the mini-freeze," Frankie
advised. "Maybe you should wear a disguise, too."

I gave him a you've-got-to-be-kidding look. "I think I'll pass on that, Frankie," I said. "Besides, you've already taken all
the fun fair disguises."

He shook his head, unwilling to let me escape his plan. "You'll have to dress as someone who wouldn't seem out of place in
that area of the fairgrounds at that time of the morning," he said. "A clown or a cowboy would stick out like a sore thumb."

As if he himself didn't stick out like an extra digit.

"What did you have in mind?" I asked, not certain I wanted to find out.

He hesitated, and I knew it was going to be bad. "You'll have to be a sanitation worker," he said.

"Get outta here," I exclaimed. "A garbage man? No way!"

"A refuse technician," he politically corrected me. "They're the only people free to roam the fairgrounds that late who won't
draw undue suspicion. You'll have to be a sanitary worker. Do you have a short-sleeved khaki shirt?" he asked.

I gave him a get-real glance. "After wearing khaki at

Bargain City for two years, I've sworn off khaki," I informed him.

"Well, I'm sure you can scare something up," he said after a moment. "And buy a couple of fair patches and baste them to the
sleeves. They won't match, but no one will be able to tell in the dark."

"Baste? Baste? Isn't that something you do to a turkey?" I asked.

"Sew!" Frankie practically shrieked. "Basting is temporary hand-sewing with large stitches," he explained, way too much in
the know for my comfort level. "And many machines have a baste stitch on them."

I shook my head. "Frankie, ole man," I said, "we gotta talk."

"Oh, just Super Glue the damned things on," he said, and I took a closer look at him. He looked a bit green around the gills.

"Are you all right, Frankie?" I asked, concerned.

He put a hand to his bandanna, untied it, and began to mop his face.

"Uh, Frankie?"

"I'll be fine," he snapped. "We've only got a few minutes left. Right?"

I nodded. "Sure, we're almost there." Which wasn't entirely correct, since we were only halfway up the hill and looking down
on the tops of trees.

"So, Frankie, how'd you come up with all those dumb-blonde jokes on the fly?" I asked, trying to keep his mind off the ground
far below for the remaining few minutes of the ride. "You rattled those suckers off faster than I rattle off Gram's and my
takeout orders from the China Buffet."

That got his attention. He turned to me. "Oh, yeah? Well, what about your clown jokes?" he asked. "Where'd you dig up all
those? I couldn't believe it when you started hurling them back at me. I mean,

who'd write such nasty jokes about clowns? Everyone loves clowns. Right?"

Keep telling yourself that, Garth, I thought, deciding that now was not the time to inform Frankie about the wehateclowns.com
website I'd discovered.

We'd reached the highest point on the ride back up the hill when all of a sudden the ride stopped. Just stopped. I saw Frankie
grab the bar in front of us like I used to hug the dashboard when my Grammy still had her driver's license and insisted on
driving me to town.

"Uh, what's going on?" he asked. "Why have we stopped?"

I turned around to check out how many other stranded travelers were behind us when Frankie grabbed my arm.

"Don't move! You're rocking the lift! Stay completely still." Frankie was an uglier green than the froggie toy I'd won the
night before, and his eyes were bigger than Nimrod's.

"I just want to take a look and see what's going on," I told him, twisting around to look back, "but I'm sure they'll have
us up and running in no time."

The ride bobbed up and down.

"Please! Don't move!" he repeated. "I'm not kidding, Tressa!"

"For heaven's sake, Frankie," I said. "What do you think is gonna happen? We'll dump out onto the concrete below, our heads
splitting like the pumpkins I squashed—uh, some pranksters squashed—at Townsend's house a year or so back?"

His face turned from avocado green to apple red. "I'm burning up," he said. "I need air."

"Well, if you weren't wearing that long-sleeved shirt and those hot denim pants, you wouldn't be so uncomfortable," I snapped.
"If s already practically ninety in the shade. You know, if our heads did hit that pavement below, our brains would be sizzling
in no time."

"You're not helping, Tressa!" Frankie told me, unbuttoning his fancy Western shirt to expose a white undershirt.

"Ye gods, Frankie. No wonder you're broiling! And I bet anything you're wearing hot, sticky briefs rather than cool, airy
boxers."

It didn't take a mind reader to come to this conclusion. The fully cooked frankfurter beside me was presently pulling at his
crotch and trying hard not to rock the boat—or the lift. Oh, you know.

"Oh, look! There's my grammy and Joe!" I said, spotting the twosome below us. "I bet they're on their way to church." I leaned
over the front of the ride's rail. "Hello, Joe! Hey, Gramma! I'm up here! On the Sky Ride!" I waved energetically, and the
ski lift shook and bounced. "Yoo-hoo! Gram! Joe! Up here!"

"Stop that bouncing!" Frankie said. "I'm gonna lose my boots."

I looked over at Frankie. "Your boots? Don't you mean your your lunch or breakfast?" I asked.

He shook his head. (Well, it wasn't actually his head he shook, it was more like his pupils.) "The boots are too big. I guess
I didn't think about that when I chose the Sky Ride as our meeting place."

"Too big? Where'd you get those boots, anyway?" I asked, knowing that the Little Mermaid would be far more likely to own a
pair of cowboy boots than Frankie.

He wiped his face again. "From the horse barn. I borrowed them from a napping cowboy," he said.

"You stole some sleeping cowpoke's boots?" I said. "Are you insane? That's a hangin' offense in these parts, mister." I hoped
my clueless cousin didn't run into the bootless cowboy before he returned the footwear.

"I was desperate!" he replied. "I needed a new disguise, and the shirt, pants, and hat were hanging there—"

"You took his clothes, too?" I made a quick sign of the cross, even though I'm not Catholic. "And his hat? Talk about taking
your life in your hands. I just hope you don't meet up with that naked, barefoot cowboy," I said.