Total pages in book: 131
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 131387 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 657(@200wpm)___ 526(@250wpm)___ 438(@300wpm)
This went on awhile.
Hutch, who seemed to have become invisible, sat back and stretched an arm on the booth behind his woman, not caring a bit.
“That it?” Kimmy prompted.
“That’s it,” Mabel replied.
“I’m confused, girl. What do you get out of it?”
“A store that doesn’t look like it’s half-stocked? Cool holiday stuff that gives a vibe that makes people want to hang and look around longer? Good relations with my fellow shopkeepers?”
“Can I guess you’re running out of Halloween stuff?” Kimmy deduced.
Mabel copped to it. “Yes.”
“Come over tomorrow. Have a look around. We’ll get you sorted out,” Kimmy said.
“Awesome,” Mabel replied.
“Now, about those religious bozos,” Kimmy started, remembering Hutch was there because she looked at him. “You see anything?”
“A lot of red and blue light illuminating the air above that compound,” Hutch replied, hoping Mabel would catch how they were going to play this by the vagueness of his answer.
“That it?” Kimmy pushed.
“Harry being closed-lipped?” Hutch asked instead of lying.
Kimmy scrunched her face.
She’d harangued him for info, as was the way of Kimmy, and Harry was being closed-lipped.
Mabel, fortunately, stayed quiet.
“I know it was a mess,” Hutch said when Kimmy’s stare didn’t go away. “I know Harry and his crew have a lot to clean up. I think Lacey Diever is going to get her family’s land back. And I think Harry’s been worried about that group for a long time, so after he wades through all the shit, it’s at least one thing he doesn’t have to worry about anymore.”
This did not appease Kimmy, who wasn’t only their local holiday store owner, Christmas freak and colorful character, she was also their conspiracy theorist.
“I hear some of them are still on the run,” she pushed.
“I hear that too,” Hutch said.
Kimmy gave him a hard stare. She transferred that to Mabel.
She then declared, “You two both know more than you’re letting on.”
“I’m just glad it’s getting sorted out,” Mabel said.
“Right,” Kimmy mumbled. Then, “So, I gotta know who I’m doing business with. Who do you think shot Kennedy?” she asked Mabel.
For fuck’s sake.
“Obviously, it was the mafia,” Mabel replied blithely.
Startled, Hutch looked to her.
Kimmy, having fresh meat who would actually talk to her about this shit, practically stretched across the table to get in her face. “Not Castro?”
Mabel leaned into the table too. “Okay, I can see why you think that. Because, you know, all that tension. And Fidel was…”
She waggled her eyebrows, something that could mean anything, so Hutch had no idea what it meant.
And then she did the worst thing she could do when Kimmy was around.
She said, “But see, I don’t think Marilyn Monroe committed suicide either. There are gaps in the official timeline. Her body disappeared for a while. No pill residue in her stomach. Found with a phone in her hand like she was calling for help. All of that is fishy. There’s the mafia connection and the Kennedy connection, and I think it’s all a big, tangled web that Marilyn got caught up in, then JFK did too.”
Kimmy fell back to the booth like someone pushed her, chuffing out, “Whoa!” as if Mabel just rocked her world.
“I know, right?” Mabel said, shoving a straw in her Shirley Temple and then leaning forward like a little kid to sip at it.
“All right, do you think Paul McCartney is the real Paul McCartney?” Kimmy asked.
Mabel kept sipping while her eyeballs moved left to right like she was actually considering this lunatic question.
She stopped sipping and sat up. “I mean, if it’s his twin, how does he sound just like him singing? Do twins have twin voices?”
Oh Christ.
They launched in.
Heidi eventually served their food, and they ate it as the two women talked about Paul McCartney (Kimmy: twin, Mabel: no), the moon landing (both of them believed it happened and really could not understand those knuckleheads who didn’t, and it was Mabel who used the word “knuckleheads”), Area 51 (they both totally believed they had alien technology hidden there, and that there had been abductions), and they ended on where they thought the wife of the head of Scientology was (Kimmy: suspected she was dead, Mabel: they had her at their religious compound).
After finishing her malt while Mabel was eating her pie, Kimmy started to go for her wallet.
“Don’t even think about it,” Hutch said low.
Kimmy assessed him then made the proper decision and stopped going for her wallet.
But she did slide out of the booth, point at him, and say, “You got a live one there, Hutch Hutchison. Finally.” She then trundled out of the diner without words of farewell to the people she horned in to have dinner with, shouting at Heidi, “Later, Splits!”
“Later, Kimmy.”
And she was gone.
“I think I have her approval,” Mabel said.
Hutch turned to her. “Do you really think there’s alien technology at Area 51?”