Conspiracies and Stuff: A Dreamland Junction Mystery Read Free Page B

unnerving, and made my heart flutter.
    “I don’t know … do you?”
    “Are you from around here?” I asked, trying to ignore the butterflies in my stomach.
    He shook his head. “No, but I come through here sometimes.”
    There was something odd about the way he talked, like he had an accent, though I couldn’t place it for the life of me.
    “Well maybe I saw you one of those times you were coming through,” I offered, though I didn’t believe it for a minute. If I’d seen him before, I wouldn’t have forgotten.
    Lavern walked by and poked me in the arm. “Table five needs a coffee warm up.”
    Pretending like I hadn’t heard her, I turned to the stranger. “Well I’ll be back to give you a warm up. Enjoy your coffee.”
    A few minutes later I managed a little time to slip away to the ladies room.
    While washing my hands, I glanced in the mirror and felt the blood rush to my cheeks. I was a mess.
    By brown hair was pulled back in a ponytail, but there were stray hairs flying everywhere. My lack of sleep showed by way of the dark shadows beneath my blue green eyes, and my shirt was full of wrinkles. That was kind of my own fault for letting it sit in the clothes basket for two days, instead of hanging it up.
    The Landing’s waitress uniforms were quirky at best, but mostly I thought they were downright ridiculous. The short skirt was neon green, which was only somewhat bad, but when you added the t-shirt with the little green alien standing outside a circular spaceship, that upped the ante a little. Wearing it made me feel a little childish.
    I was really wishing I’d taken the time to put some mascara and lip-gloss on before coming to work. It was all Spencer’s fault. If he hadn’t have woke me with his silly alien abduction nightmare, I wouldn’t have been tempted to chase that homicide call, and if I hadn’t have gone out to the ET Highway, I wouldn’t have been so tired when I got up for work.
    Yup, that worked. I’d just blame Spencer.
    Smoothing my hair out as much as possible, I rewashed my hands and mentally prepared to get back to the grind, and face Mister Awesome Perfect.
    Imagine my disappointment when I looked at his table and he was gone.
    “Did the guy in table ten leave already?” I asked Lavern, though it was obvious he had.
    “Yeah. He walked out about three minutes ago. Left you a hell of a tip though.” Lavern winked.
    Lavern was right. When I went to clean his table, there was a twenty-dollar bill sitting there. That had to be the largest tip I’d ever gotten at the Landing, especially for someone who’d only ordered coffee.”
    When I picked up the money, I saw that there was a paper napkin beneath it with some writing on it.
    Not extremely unusual. Some people tended to doodle on anything. Didn’t happen all the time, but it did happen.
    This was different. There were actual words on the napkin.
    Meet me at the crossroads by the alien statue at ten. I have information on something you are investigating.
    Hell yes! I was going to see him again.
    That was my first thought, but then visions of serial killers began to intrude on my newly discovered, happy place. I started to have some doubts.
    How did he know I was investigating anything, especially when I hadn’t really started investigating yet? That wouldn’t really begin until I was off work, and had a chance to talk with Uncle Sonny.
    If he really did have information, why hadn’t he shared it with the police?
    Well I had until ten to decide if I’d take the guy up on his offer. Just the chance of seeing him again was tempting enough, but what if he really did have information about Molly Peterson and her missing son?
    What if he was the one responsible for Molly’s death?
    The one thing I did know was that I sure the heck wasn’t going out there to meet him alone.
     

Chapter Three
     
    The Dreamland Junction police station was small, and located in the basement of the city building, along with the jail.
    When I