“Good day, Miss Penny,” Diesel started. He was about to ask his question, but Miss Penny’s worried expression stopped him.
“What’s wrong, Miss Penny?” Aunt Dixie asked.
“Can you describe the rice paddy that was in disarray?” she asked in a soft voice. Diesel knew she was stronger than she sounded, but was tempted to whisper his response to be respectful.
He and Wyatt told her what they’d seen.
“And the stalks were left behind?”
“Yes. That’s what it looked like.”
“That’s worrisome.”
“Why?”
“I suspect it’s Indigo Smith.”
“What makes you say that?”
“Rice is a pretty good food substitute for nutrients that shifters like me and him typically live on. It is the only sustenance on Earth that helps restore our power to shift.”
“I told you rice was her favorite food. I knew she could help.” Aunt Dixie grinned as if she knew she’d given them good information. She had. Diesel might admit it to her later.
“Why would he desecrate a rice paddy?” Wyatt asked.
Aunt Dixie said, “Well, he’s on the run from everyone, right? So it’s not like he can stroll into the Supernova Supermarket and shop pretty as you please without someone recognizing him. He’s got to be undercover. He’s hiding out somewhere. Plowing through a rice paddy sounds like the perfect solution.”
“He didn’t ruin any rice paddies the last time he was here.”
“Maybe Daphne Charlene ordered rice for him from her restaurant,” Aunt Dixie said. “She probably had a jumbo bag in storage ready to cook up and serve with her stupid, award-winning chili recipe.”
Diesel looked at Wyatt. “What do you think?”
“I think it’s worth a trip over to Daphne Charlene’s to ensure she’s not harboring an infamous galactic escaped criminal. Again.”
“If Daphne Charlene was feeding him, he wouldn’t need to destroy a rice paddy,” Aunt Dixie said. Miss Penny nodded solemnly.
“What do you suggest?”
Miss Penny straightened. “He’s probably hiding in plain sight. But if he ate a big patch of rice, he probably was in his shifted form for a long time and had to have a big feed in order to restore his shifting abilities. The way it works for me is that if I remain in my shifted form for a length of time, my shifting stores wind down like battery power. Once I’m at zero, my shift fails and I have to eat lots of rice to restore myself to full power, so to speak.”
Aunt Dixie laughed. “Like when we took the trip on the luxury liner. You went through a forty-pound bag of jasmine rice the week we got back, didn’t you?”
Miss Penny cackled at the memory. “Yep. That’s about right. I was on empty after a two-week trip and jasmine rice is my favorite kind.”
“He probably came in on the transport last night in disguise,” Diesel said.
Wyatt narrowed his focus and asked Miss Penny, “Do you have any special skills or the ability to search him out?”
“No. I only know how to keep him from shift—” She stopped talking abruptly and a rueful expression shaped her face. She shook her head and pointed her gaze to the floor.
“You know how to keep him from shifting? That would be very useful knowledge for whatever gulag he ends up in. How?”
Miss Penny shook her head, gaze still on the floor. “Sorry. I can’t say. It’s a secret. I should never have revealed that. Curse my old age and running at the mouth.”
“A secret?” Diesel didn’t mean to sound obtuse, but he really wanted something in his arsenal to keep Indigo Smith from escaping so easily. “Can’t you tell me the secret?”
Miss Penny stiffened her spine and said, “No. I’m sorry. I can’t.”
