Chương 105: Book Five, Chapter 8: Strange Collision

After a hearty breakfast of eggs, bacon, and other grease-covered foods, Kimberly, Nick, and I went back into town to continue our investigation. The first place on my list for the day was the general store. After all, the entire reason we were running the storyline was so that we could pillage it, and I had been wanting to know if Bobby's food trope had affected the selection at the store. I was pleased to find that it had. Eastern Carousel General Store was now packed to the gills with goodies.

They had even rearranged the furniture and aisles to create an actual produce section. Kimberly was ecstatic.

"Looks like this will have all been worth it," I said.

"Yep," Kimberly said.

"Feels nice when things go according to plan, you know?"

"Can I help you folks?" a voice from the front of the store called out. It was a repeat of my time with Dina. Same old Corduroy Patcher. Except he wasn't the same old Corduroy Patcher; he was younger. At least a decade younger than he was when I had last seen him.

"Say," he said, "you're the folks who are here with the news story about the missing girl, right?"

"That's us," Kimberly said.

"You have any leads on that?" he asked, wiping his hands on his apron, leaving visible sweat marks.

"We have some," Kimberly replied.

"We need to follow up some leads before we can air them, though." Corduroy swallowed hard and said, "Well, I hope you find that girl." He wiped more sweat on his apron.

"Can you tell me about this?" Kimberly asked, pointing to something I hadn't noticed, something that had not been there before when I was here with Dina. It was a shrine similar to the one at the church, except smaller. This one had a picture of Aurelius Patcher alone, but the saying was the same: "In family we find purpose."

"Well, that's my grandfather," Corduroy said.

"It's our way of keeping him alive. I like to think he looks after the store when I'm not here. He's my guardian angel."

"That's sweet," Kimberly said, although I didn't think she meant it. ~-~ After we left the general store, our next stop was the gas station down the road. At that point, we were just looking for NPCs to talk to and try to get some perspective on the things we've been seeing around town. It turned out that the owner of the gas station was Dina's character's uncle. Her out-of-town cousin trope had made her related to one of the NPCs in Eastern Carousel to help tie her to the story.

We just happened to stumble upon him. Small world. On-Screen. He was an older man bound to a wheelchair. His name on the red wallpaper was Barron Cano. His spirit was strong, and when he realized who Kimberly was, he asked loudly, "Is there any news? Have they found my grandniece?"

"I'm sorry," Kimberly said.

"We haven't found anything yet." The man looked down at the ground and suppressed tears.

"I don't know what I'm gonna do if that poor child isn't found. I don't know what Dina's gonna do." He wheeled himself around behind a bar with a flat-top grill and an assortment of foodstuffs. As we stood in the gas station, a man came in who I recognized as an employee from his uniform.

"Anything else you want me to do?" the NPC asked. His name was Woodrow "Woody" Patcher on the red wallpaper. He must have been in his mid to late 20s. He wore a permanent grin.

"Ain't you that news lady who's out here making a spectacle?" he asked.

"We're trying to help find a missing child," Kimberly said.

"You ask me, that kid is dead," he said.

"And what makes you say that?" Kimberly asked.

"It's been four days," he said.

"It's just common sense. If she was alive, she would have come hollering out of the woods by now. No, I think she's dead."

"Good Lord, Woody," Barron said.

"That's my grandniece you're talking about." As if just realizing how rude he was being, Woody said, "Well, well, you see that it's always possible that she's still alive." He wiped his nose with his thumb.

"You know, I bet what happened is that the father came and that this is just a domestic issue. I have friends in the city who had a similar thing happen. They say it's always the parents." He wiped his nose again with his thumb. He quickly found his way outside to pump gas for a car that pulled up. Barron looked devastated from the conversation.

"We're going to do our best to find her," Kimberly said.

"Everyone is out looking."

"Thank you, dear, but I fear he may be right. I fear Dina has already given up. I just don't know what I'm going to do." We stayed there for a while longer as Kimberly asked him what he knew about the girl and if she had any hiding spots that she liked to go to. He had plenty to say. Apparently, he suspected that she had a friend out in the direction of Harless Automotive that she liked to visit. She didn't talk about him, but he thought she was entitled to her secrets. He urged us to go seek out that friend.

Of course, we knew that she had a friend out there. Kimberly thanked him for his help, and we walked out of the store. As we did, Woody Patcher said, "You know, this town can't handle something like this. We got crops rotting in the fields while we're searching for some girl that's probably already dead. Ain't that something to think about?" Kimberly eyed him down as we walked away, but said nothing. Off-screen. We didn't have any leads.

What we did have was a large wooden sign posted near the gas station, telling people that the farmers' market would be closing early so that the workers could help with the search. It also helpfully included an arrow pointing us in the direction of the market. Taking that as a sign, we decided to follow it. That arrow led us to another arrow, which led us to a third arrow, which finally led us to the farmers' market. It was a large structure, a roof without walls, lined with booths.

The whole thing was made from large pieces of timber. It smelled like earth, flowers, and overripe tomatoes. There were a few main entrances into the structure. Each booth was along a wall, and the person running the booth usually had a car, truck, or even tractor pulled up to the backside of their booth that they had used to bring their things to the market that day. Unauthorized tale usage: if you spot this story on Amazon, report the violation. As we walked through the market, we went On-Screen.

"Well, I just don't know what I'm supposed to be doing," a woman who was called Darla Patcher on the red wallpaper said.

"My berries are going to go bad. Produce does not wait just because tragedy strikes." In different circumstances, this market would have been quite a fun trip. There were lots of neat booths and all kinds of local veggies and fruits. Next to Darla Patcher's booth was Anita Patcher's booth, but she didn't sell fruits and veggies. She sold necklaces and bracelets and, most relevantly, candles and small glass ornaments and pictures of Aurelius and Mavis Patcher.

"That is so neat," Kimberly said, pointing to the supplies that were clearly meant for people to be able to build their own shrine.

"How much do these cost?" Anita looked at Kimberly as if she were the biggest fool and said, "Oh, these aren't for you, dear."

"Why not?" Kimberly asked.

"Is this a religious item?" Anita looked down at her supplies and then back at Kimberly and said, "This is a family thing, dear. You needn't worry about it." Kimberly thanked her anyway, and we continued to walk on while Kimberly gave me a weird look and I returned it. Were there really so many Patchers that a person could make money selling knickknacks for their family shrines? Eventually, we saw a familiar face. It was Rose Harless. She had a booth of her own.

Behind it was a blue car that looked like someone had combined a Volkswagen Beetle with a Jigglypuff. The little car was hauling a very little trailer that Rose must have used to bring her stuff to the market.

"Any luck on the search?" Rose asked us as soon as she saw us.

"I'm afraid not," Kimberly said. Kimberly looked down at the wares that Rose was peddling. She had jellies of all kinds, from blueberries to rose petals. She had sunflower seeds and little sprigs of herbs bundled with twine. There was a bottle labeled "Healing Ointment" that was most certainly not approved by the FDA. Herbs hung from a string over the top of the booth. I had noticed that she was kind of a hippie when I met her, but I didn't realize exactly how far she had gone into it.

There were trinkets and potions (though they were not labeled that way) and all sorts of natural remedies. Rose was in the process of packing up all her things.

"I had to surrender my booth," she explained.

"I needed to go help with the search, but Darla over there said I needed to clear up my booth if I wasn't going to be running it. It's like she doesn't even care what's going on right now." We all looked back at the two elderly Patchers.

"She's not the only one," Kimberly said.

"There are some people in town that really aren't a fan of the search efforts."

"To some people, if it isn't about them or their family, they could care less," Rose explained.

"But most of the people in this town have good hearts, I promise you." She looked over at Darla and Anita and said, "You just need to be able to pick out which ones." ~-~ Back in the car, wandering aimlessly for some sign of what scene we were supposed to go to next, Kimberly wondered aloud about Antoine. We drove around for at least an hour looking for a sign of what to do next. First Blood was approaching rapidly, and we were intensely worried that something was going to come our way.

Kimberly didn't like that we didn't know where Antoine was.

"I just hope he's doing okay," she said.

"You think he would tell me if he was having trouble?" she asked. I shrugged my shoulders.

"I don't think he would tell anyone," I said. From the look on her face, that was not the right answer. But before Kimberly could respond, an announcement came over the police scanner. First Blood struck on the red wallpaper. Whatever happened had done so without any concern for us. The scanner blared.

"I need all available units at Harless Automotive. There's been an incident," the dispatcher called out. Kimberly and I looked at each other.

"Go now," I said to Nick. He made a rapid course correction in the direction of Harless Automotive.

"He's going to be fine, Kimberly," I said.

"His problems are just another problem to solve. We're gonna do it." I had hoped that this might soothe her worries, but I didn't think I succeeded. ~-~ As we arrived, the sounds of sirens gave way to the sounds of Rose Harless crying hysterically on the porch of her house. Her blue car was parked next to the house. Police cars, an ambulance, and even a fire truck were crowded around the Harless Automotive parking lot. Wherever Rustle was, I couldn't say.

There was a crowd of people, and from what we knew about him, he was probably hiding from them. Antoine was in the midst of everything, directing people around and trying to bring order to the chaos. There was a tow truck in front of Benny's garage, and hanging from its hook, being towed up onto the bed of the truck, was Benny's Imperial Phantom, the car he loved but that was a hopeless repair case. The front end was dented, and there was an ugly red stain across it.

We got out of the car as Nick rushed to set up the camera.

"You are the last thing we need!" someone yelled from the distance. It was Deputy Tommy Patcher.

"We have no need for you sensationalizing an accident like this."

"We're only here for the story," Kimberly said.

"There is no story," he said.

"If you take that camera out, I'm going to smash it in the road." Nick looked at us, and we nodded. He started putting the camera back in its case. Tommy Patcher left us after that. We quickly found our way over to Antoine. He waved us over. On-Screen.

"Deputy Stone," Kimberly said.

"Can you tell us what's happening here?" Antoine looked over at her; this was the first time their characters had met. He nodded and said, "There's been an accident. It looks like the lift malfunctioned, and the car Mr. Harless was working on fell down and crushed him."

"It just fell and crushed him?" I asked.

"From the looks of things," Antoine said, "his poor wife was the one that found him and called it in."

"Can we take a look?" Kimberly asked. We were On-Screen, so Antoine actually had a tough time answering. He wasn't sure what his character would do.

"Look," I said, "we're here to help. We just spoke to this man. We'd like to see what happened. This is completely off the record. There's no one in there; just let us have a quick look around."

"Please," Kimberly said.

"Something is going on here. Doesn't this feel like an awful big coincidence to you? A girl goes missing from here, and now a mysterious death?" Antoine looked at us and then looked back at the other deputies and said, "Make it quick. Follow me." He waved us through some police tape and into Benny's garage. A white sheet covered what had once been Benny Harless. It was a mess, and everything was soaked in red.

"We just saw him yesterday," Kimberly said.

"This is so strange."

"It appears to have been a case of bad luck," Antoine said.

"The only wounds that we can find from a preliminary search were those inflicted by the car. I don't know what kind of story you're thinking is here, but by all accounts, this looks like an accident."

"Can we look around?" I asked.

"Be my guest," Antoine said, "but be quick. Don't touch anything." Given our time constraints, my mind immediately went to finding clues in the form of text. In a garage, the only text-based clues were the row of tickets pinned to a corkboard near the entrance to the office. They looked very conspicuous. I walked over there immediately, and Kimberly followed. There was a row of them, seven in all. The first six had the word "complete" written on them in pencil.

They had their cost totals already added up, ready for the customer to come get their car. The final ticket was for a car called a Comstock Foray, which must have been the make and model, but I didn't recognize it. It was the only ticket that had not been completed or totaled. The name on the ticket was Margaret Petty. I examined the ticket, though I was unsure whether it was a clue or just an oddity. It stuck out, the only one different from the others.

"Do you really think he could have been killed by accident?" Kimberly asked me.

"Right now, I'm not feeling like it was an accident, but I couldn't say why he would be killed," I said.

"But didn't he say he was about to junk that car, that he had given up on fixing it? What's it doing back on the lift?"

"He did," Kimberly said, "but that's not going to convince anyone of anything. They'll just think that he decided to tinker with it again."

"He may have," I said.

"Let's check out the lift." We quickly walked back to the area where Benny's body lay covered. The lift was composed of two upright beams with a hydraulic motor. Each beam had two arms designed to go under the vehicle.

"There's hydraulic fluid all over the floor," I said.

"Some of this red stuff isn't blood." In fact, most of the red stuff wasn't blood. Either the hydraulics failed rapidly, or someone tampered with it to cause an accident or fake one. But why? ~-~ We investigated as much as we could, but we were not the right archetypes to be able to find much in a crime scene like that. Kimberly was designed to talk to people, and I was designed to talk about movies, neither of which was helpful in that instance. Outside, an NPC named Tugg Montgomery was operating the tow truck.

He was just finishing up when we came out of the garage. Tugg was an odd-looking man. He was balding, but his hair was still long. He wore overalls and a jean jacket but no shirt. He had a red handkerchief tied around his neck and another sticking out of his pocket that he regularly grabbed and wiped his forehead with. His hair was gray, and his face looked like it had been around to see the dawn of the earth.

"It's a damn shame," Tugg said as he wiped sweat off his forehead.

"He loved this car. He would hate to see it ruined like this. At least he's not alive to see it scrapped," he added, but he looked unsure whether that was an inappropriate sentiment to say. Kimberly didn't seem prepared to respond, and before I could, we were distracted by the sound of Rose Harless calling into the distance, "Rustle! Rustle, come home, baby. Rustle!" It was a haunting cry. She was filled with desperation. I felt for her. Everyone stopped and listened as she screamed for her child to come to her.

If he heard her, he didn't come. Rustle was still hiding, it would seem. As I looked around for signs of the boy, instead, I saw the garden in the back. The sunflowers were different. They were drooping, as if they, too, were in mourning. They drooped so low that even from the front of the garage near the road, I could see the scarecrow, hanging from its perch, watching us all.