“I will present you with a jail cell.”
“You wouldn’t!”
“I would. No mirrors allowed.”
She gasped. “Monster.”
“The box. The delivery. The contents.” I made a keep it rolling motion with my finger.
“It’s a trinket. Just some old junk.”
“Show me.”
“The box?”
“Everything. The trinket, the box, everything.”
“I burned it.”
“Then show me the ashes.”
She rolled her big horsey eyes. “Fine. Fine! I’ve done everything you’ve asked and still, not a single thank you. I don’t know why you haven’t been replaced with a much nicer, taller, and better-looking chief of police by now.”
She hopped off the fur cover and trotted across the room, trailing the scent of burned strawberries behind her. She made a quick right, then trotted down the hall to the back door, which she opened with a hoof. “There,” she minced to one side, not stepping out. “Happy?” She minced the other way.
The door opened onto the patio. I hadn’t been back here since Hogan had taken over the place, but what I remembered from the past owner was a blank concrete slab, a few rusted patio chairs, and a broken barbeque.
Hogan had swept that all away. Now a cobbled patio, with a pergola above it, looked out upon the long backyard.
Fairy lights twinkled up there in the vines that grew across the wooden roofing, and instead of rusted chairs, there were two small couches with bright, weather-proof upholstery, a baby-blue table in the center, and two wooden rocking chairs in red and yellow. The barbeque had been replaced with a shiny new one.
Also there were gnomes.
An awful lot of gnomes.
Like, more gnomes than I’d seen in one place in my life.
They were statues at the moment, but I knew under certain circumstances they would come to life. Last time had been on Halloween. Luckily, Hogan had figured out how to not only talk gnomish—a knack I’d never developed—he had also become their guardian.
Of course Headless Abner was a big part of that. His head was right there on a pedestal near the corner of the patio where he could keep an eye on the yard and all his fellow gnomes.
“Where are the ashes?” I asked.
“Out there.” Xtelle waved a hoof toward the grill but still didn’t step through the door.
“How about you come out here and show me?”
“How about you find it. You’re a detective.” Her gaze darted back and forth around the patio, as if the gnomes were going to come to unlife at any moment.
I smiled. “Sure are lots of gnomes out today.”
“Yes.” Her eyes flicked faster, as if she expected each statue to move a little while she wasn’t watching. “I suppose. Yes.”
“I bet more keep showing up every day now that Hogan is in charge of them.”
“They do?”
“Yep. Last time I was back here there were maybe two, three gnomes. Now it’s, what? A couple dozen? Three dozen?”
