Chicory Up: The Pixie Chronicles (33 page)

C
HASE WATCHED HELPLESSLY as the townsfolk at the meeting swarmed over Dusty. He quickly lost sight of her diminutive form among the mass of humanity. On the dais, George Pepperidge banged his gavel helplessly for order.

If Chase had been in uniform, he’d have a whistle. Damned regulations kept him out of uniform and off the street. Not knowing what else to do, Chase put two fingers into his mouth and blew. The shrill sound cut through the noise.

“Give the lady room to breathe, and we’ll all get our questions answered,” he called. A few bodies moved backward, enough to let him see the top of Dusty’s head.

Resolutely, he stalked forward, elbowing people out of the way until he stood next to his fiancée. She looked up at him, bewildered and grateful and near panicked. “You okay?” he asked quietly.

“Better now that you’re here.” Her breathing sounded ragged, and sweat dotted her brow.

“How am I going to fit my whole diorama into the high school gym? I need three flatbed trucks,” someone asked from the other side of Dusty. Two other people pressed against Chase’s back.

“I said breathing room!” Without waiting for a reaction, he scooped Dusty up and sat her on the Council table facing the room. George Pepperidge peeked around her, still pounding his gavel.

“Chase, I…”

“Just close your eyes and visualize a white board with all your committees listed and tasks assigned to each. Draw arrows in your mind connecting things,” he said quietly.

“I need a board…”

“No, you don’t,” Phelma Jo snorted. “You’re the smartest person in the room. You can keep all of it in your head and still have space for historical anecdotes and Shakespearean quotes. Stop thinking about what you can’t do and do it!”

Chase nodded slightly in her direction. She tossed him a grimace, complete with rolled eyes, and flounced back to a chair in the center of the first row. Slowly the crowd joined her, putting a bit of order into the unruly group.

“Who has the phone number of the school board chair?” Dusty asked quietly.

“I do,” Digger Ledbetter said, pulling out his cell phone.

She closed her eyes. Chase watched her eyelids twitch as if in REM sleep, or reading the virtual white board printed on the inside.

“Digger, please call and politely request the use of the gym and the auditorium all day Saturday for our static parade. We’ll discuss fees later when we have time.”

“I’ll get him to waive the fees.” George Pepperidge held out his hand for Digger’s phone to complete that chore.

“Reverend Tilbury,” Dusty continued, eyes still closed. Damn, she remembered everyone in the room. “Is the basement of the Episcopal Church available for the craft fair? You’re right next to the school, so visitors can visit both without moving their cars from the downtown plaza to the high school. I’m sure we can arrange some kind of donation…”

“Any rental fees will be donated to the clinic fund,” the pastor said. “I’ll make sure the basement is available. The kitchen, too.”

“Impressive,” George said to Chase.

“Yes, she is. When we break through the habits of shyness. She combines her mother’s talent for organization with her own subtle, but diplomatically correct vulnerability, which makes people want to help.”

“No, I meant you, Sergeant Norton.”

“Huh?”

“You saw what needed to be done and did it. And you did it correctly because you know the people of this town and what is right for them.”

“Part of my job. Which I can’t do right now because of the administrative leave thing.”

“What would you say if I appointed you to the vacancy on the City Council that will occur when I move from this seat to the mayor’s place?”

“I’d say there are better candidates. I’m not ready.”

“What other candidates?”

Chase looked around the room where most of the town’s movers and shakers had gathered. “Digger Ledbetter. But he’ll probably turn you down. He prefers digging news out of the murk of city life. Phelma Jo comes to mind.”

“Hmphf,” George snorted. “She’ll run against me in four years.”

“She’ll run against you in four years anyway. Why not learn to work with her and let her learn that running a town is hard work, and compromises are more efficient than bulldozing her way through the issues. That she has to lead, not control.”

“Something to think about. Now, about your job…”

“A job I can’t do from a desk. Especially during the All Hallows Festival. We’ve got something vicious running around town stabbing innocents. I need to be out on patrol, protecting our people.”

“Yes, you do. I suggest you return to your desk and complete as much paperwork as possible today. Then report to the review committee at nine tomorrow morning. Be prepared to defend your actions.”

“Sir?” Hope filled Chase’s chest. He’d finished the monster report this morning. Dusty had given him release from his pain and energized his thoughts back into coherency.

“Phelma Jo has taught me that sometimes a bulldozer is the right tool for the job.”

“Yes, sir.”

“Oh, and have you heard the rumor that Lieutenant Ledbetter, Digger’s smarter older brother, has applied for a better paying job with the State Police?”

“Um…”

“Of course, you’ve heard. Nothing remains secret for long in this town.”

Chase smiled and nodded rather than admit to anything. There were secrets and then there were secrets.

“You will take the lieutenant’s exam on November second. That’s an order. I expect you to pass and be in line for promotion when the opportunity arises.”

“Yes, sir.”

“You’re going to need the pay raise. Dusty looks like a high maintenance kind of woman.”

“Not as much as her mother.”

“Got that right. I figured that out when she was sixteen and I mistakenly asked her to the senior prom.” He rose and left the room on a chuckle. He paused at the back door. “Oh, and for the next couple of hours your job is to make sure Dusty is safe, happy, and not overwhelmed with people so she can get her job of saving All Hallows done right.”

“On it, sir.” The best job in the world.

“Then catch up on your paperwork. Stay up all night if you have to. We’re going to need you on the street after that. I have a funny feeling something weird is going to happen.”

“Who ever heard of a static parade?” Phelma Jo complained, three seconds after Chase left Dusty at the empty high school gymnasium. Phelma Jo got there first, not having to deal with sixteen people trying to delay her with repetitive questions.

Dusty figured now that Chase had removed her from the press of the populace he’d completed his duty to protect her.

She took four rolls of black-and-orange crepe paper streamers from Phelma Jo. “You heard about my static parade back in the town meeting when I introduced the idea.”

“This town doesn’t do well with new ideas.”

“Tradition is good. It binds us as a community. But there are times when we have to adapt to a changing world around us.”

“I suppose. You’re the expert on tradition and history.”

“How many times in the last twenty years, because of rain, has the All Hallows Parade been delayed or so poorly attended it was barely worth the fuel for the trucks. No rain in the gym.
Voila
, we have the parade and guarantee you won’t need an umbrella to view it.” Dusty swept her arms to include the big room.

“Unless the roof springs a leak,” Phelma Jo reminded her. “A new roof is on the budget for next year.”

“I won’t let it leak this weekend,” Dusty said firmly. She wondered if Pixie magic could hold off the rain as easily as they tickled clouds to release some when the town badly needed it to help quench the fire Phelma Jo had started in The Ten Acre Wood.

A chill breeze erupted from the back doors of the gym as the janitor came in with a rolling cart piled high with tarps. Dusty remembered that the Pixies were heading indoors, getting ready to hibernate, not play pranks with the weather.

Phelma Jo giggled. “I don’t think you have much to say about whether it rains or not.”

“The principal assured me the tarps are to protect the floor from the displays and thousands of tromping feet, not from a leaking roof.” Dusty flounced deeper into the room, assessing dimensions.

“If you say so,” Phelma Jo grumbled. “How’d I get roped into helping you?”

“George Pepperidge volunteered you.” Dusty studied the echoing space. With the bleachers rolled back and the basketball hoops retracted, she had a lot of room to work with. “Do you think there’s enough room for all the floats if we organize it like a maze and people wander up and down aisles like streets marked with paper ghost cutouts?”

“Or yellow bricks. How am I supposed to know?” Phelma Jo looked at the four rolls of streamers left in her hands. “I haven’t the foggiest idea about how to do this. You’d be better off with Thistle. Or your mother.”

“But you are good at keeping people on topic and delegating chores.” Dusty decided she needed a map. She liked maps, especially old ones. Maps contained a lot of information if you knew how to dig them out.

“So are you, if you can do it all by email. We haven’t time to wait for email and responses and endless ‘thank yous’ and ‘will dos’ before people finally sign off and do the job.” A tiny smile touched the corners of Phelma Jo’s lips. A little moment of agreement. Maybe they wouldn’t make it all the way back to friendship, but they traveled toward companionship.

“So, Phelma Jo, find someone with a measuring tape. A big industrial-sized one. I need to know the precise dimensions of this place and the size of every display that would have been on a flatbed truck but will now be on the floor.”

“That I can do.” Phelma Jo whipped out her phone and flipped through the touch screen. “I don’t want to work with him. Hell, I don’t even want to talk to him. But he’s the person you need right now.” Then she spoke into the phone. “Ian, you wanted to get more involved in the community. I have the job for you. High school, now. Bring your tape measure, graph paper, and a hard hat. Report to Dusty.” She hung up abruptly.

“Phelma Jo, I appreciate your help, but why are you being so cooperative?”

“I’m not sure. But it feels like the right thing to do.”

An hour later Dusty blinked at the efficient map she and Ian had pieced together. Sixteen pieces of graph paper taped together spread across the floor. “It’s beautiful and efficient, but we cannot, as in
ever
, put the first missionaries next to the brothel,” she said, stepping away from the map and the man who had come to her rescue.

Phelma Jo had introduced him and then carefully backed off to the side, making phone calls and keeping tabs on the people coming and going, and what they dumped here in preparation for the setup tomorrow afternoon. Not once did she look at the handsome redhead. He very carefully avoided looking at Phelma Jo’s station by the exterior door. She said she had a better signal there. He feigned disinterest with anything but the map and his measurements.

Dusty appreciated his precision in measurement and ability to reduce numbers to diagrams on the graph paper. He didn’t have a lot of imagination and tended to see things
in black and white with no shades of gray, but he was bright and witty and knew the town.

“The brothel was here first,” Phelma Jo called as she slid her phone shut once more. “Madame Bethany’s was well established as a place of entertainment, fence for stolen goods, and a Shanghai holding cell three years before the first missionary set foot in town. Seems to me the leader of the missionaries was her best customer.”

“That may be true. But we can’t put them next to each other in a public parade. This town doesn’t do very well with subtle,” Dusty said.

“But that is the most efficient use of space!” Ian protested. “And chronologically…”

“Ever hear of political correctness?” Dusty asked sarcastically.

“He lives by political correctness, even when it’s hypocritical,” Phelma Jo spat.

“Political correctness tries to soothe clashing opinions. As such, I see your point, Dusty. But there is no other logical place to put the missionaries. Their exhibit is small, just the right size to tuck in here beside the saloon and its sprawling annex.” He blushed at the reference to the illegal portions of the bar’s trade.

“How about if we trade the Boy Scouts with the brothel?” Dusty mused, looking for smaller exhibits—the ones designed for pickups instead of flatbeds.

“Now
that
is funny,” Phelma Jo said, finally deigning to wander over and actually look at the map. “Next you’ll want to include a tribe of Pixies in the parade.”

“Pixies, if I dared include them, would fit better flying around from exhibit to exhibit rearranging the decorations and untying aprons and shoelaces,” Dusty said. But that was an idea. She could get the elementary school children involved. Thistle could organize the pranks. She was good with children…

But Thistle was missing. And Dusty didn’t have time to entice her home.

Ian carefully averted his eyes away from Phelma Jo.

Dusty took another step back and looked at her two
companions. She didn’t need Thistle’s magic to see how the two sparked off each other. Their energy was definitely trying to connect, but something kept the sparks from jumping the gaps.