Ruby, her lovely face a mask of concern, sprinted into the melee from the opposite direction and headed straight for him and Bubba. She carried a prettily decorated sack from Delany’s Delectables in one hand.
“What happened? Was that a fire?” she asked, at the same time he asked, “What do you have? Is that chocolate?”
Again, they both started talking at once. “Yes. It’s today’s chocolate of the day, pumpkin spice truffle.” He said over her words, “Something exploded and there was a column of fire.” He stopped short of telling her it was likely the explosion and subsequent fire was made using Alienn bauxite fuel.
Bubba gave him a silent look that he took to mean he shouldn’t offer any further accounting of what happened. Understandable if this was brought on by some crazed Alpha. He just hoped no one pointed a finger at him. He was jumpy about such things these days.
“Hey!” said the guy who’d brought the souvenir bucket. He was young and skinny, maybe twenty years old and fairly nondescript with the exception of his red-orange hair. Max kept seeing red-haired folks. Maybe there was a family of redheads here in Nocturne Falls. The kid pointed accusingly at Max. “Wasn’t thatyourpaper sack by the fountain that blew up?”
Max took a step backward right into Bubba. “No. I didn’t leave any bag here. I wasn’t even in the area until right now.” He shook his head as if that would help convince this stranger he was innocent.
“No way. I saw you, dude!” the kid said in a louder voice. “Hey, this guy did it! He left the paper sack that exploded.”
“I did not!” Max could see how this was shaping up. A crowd was forming as the inquisitive people who had initially fled the explosion started edging back onto the scene to find out what happened.
“Max,” Ruby said. “Did you do this? Did you blow up the fountain?”
He turned to her. “No. Of course not. I didn’t do it. I swear to you, Ruby. It wasn’t me.”
She put a comforting hand on his arm. “I believe you.” She turned to his redheaded accuser. “Well, there you go. He’s telling the truth.”
The guy dropped his accusing finger and tilted his head to one side.
“How do you figure that?”
“Because he has to tell me the truth.”
“What? Why does he have to do that?”
“Because.”Crap. I’m not supposed to mention paranormal stuff in public.“He just always does. It’s like our thing.” She turned to Max and saw his understanding expression and a little smile. The guy made an incredulous face as Sheriff Merrow stepped into their small circle.
“Sheriff!” the young man said. “This guy, here.” He pointed to Max again. “He left the paper sack that blew up.”
Bubba stood up straight. “That’s not true!”
“It is so!”
“How do you know that?” Sheriff Merrow asked the guy.
“I saw him. He did it.” The guy put his forefinger up to the center of his upper lip as if checking to see if he still had a scraggly, barely visible patch of hair there. He did.
“And who are you?” The Sheriff took a small spiral notebook out of his pocket.
The redhead dropped his hand from his face. “Why do you need to know? He did it. Not me.”
“That remains to be seen. You are publicly accusing someone of a crime, sir. That is very serious.”
The young man frowned as if he couldn’t figure out why he wasn’t lifted onto the shoulders of the crowd as a hero.
“Tell me what you saw, exactly.” Sheriff Merrow stared at him, pen poised to take notes.
The redhead crossed his arms and frowned. “I saw that guy right there walk into the fountain area and drop the paper sack over there.” He nodded once in the direction of the scorched sidewalk next to the fountain. “He looked around, all suspicious like, and then walked away.”
“When was this?”
The guy shrugged. “An hour or so?”
Space potatoes. An hour?That was when Max sat at work lost in a stupor because Howard sprayed something in his face.
