This was July fifteenth, which meant I had five days left to solve the case.
My next move needed to be evening the playing field with Silas. The only way I knew for certain he had an advantage over me was that he had met with Cornelius Kurnbottom and I had not. That meant I needed to head to the museum.
Even if I was comfortable wearing arson victim chic, which was in no way the look I preferred, I’d been stuck wearing the same clothes for days.
I pulled my phone from my bag and went through the steps Imogen had instructed me to take to order a car. I tapped the car square, but there was still no green button. If I couldn’t reach Noah, there was no chance of me retrieving my luggage at this time.
Perhaps someone else in town could help me figure out what I was doing wrong. Or, if not, they could instruct me in how else I might procure transportation. My best bet for help was likely a child, as they seemed to be the most proficient at navigating technology.
In the meantime, I stopped in the general store for a few snack cakes and the only option they had for attire. The shorts looked more like undergarments, but the tag and the cashier both assured me they were intended as outerwear. The t-shirt was plain white, with a large pink pig riding a motorcycle on it, and the wordsRode a Hog in Inorog.
I had yet to see any pigs in town, nor any motorcycles. I didn’t particularly care for the implication that I was a swine,either. But the outfit did not have any burn holes in it, so I would suffer it and come out stronger on the other side, as I always did.
With a fudge-topped cake roll in my belly and my new outfit barely covering my body, I held my head high and continued my search for a technologically savvy child. In this outfit, if I were a cartoon character, I would be Betty Boop.
I walked down the street attempting to identify where the youths gathered in this town, when I stumbled upon an altogether more fortuitous sight. With his hands cupped together, peering into the window of the bakery on the corner, stood the one and only Cornelius Kurnbottom.
CHAPTER 14
The three locks of hair poorly combed over the man’s otherwise bald head were like a nametag, uniquely identifying this man as Cornelius Kurnbottom.
Still, I called out to him to be certain. “Cornelius.”
When he turned, I flashed him a smile and a friendly wave. He watched me approach with a peculiar expression on his face. If I had to guess the reason, he likely had questions about my shirt. Which, for the record, I did as well.
“Do I know you?” he asked as I reached him.
“Lily Fernsby.” I offered him my hand.
He looked at it, then up at me, and accepted my gesture. We shook. If he recognized my last name, he showed no reaction to hearing it.
“You know me now,” I said. “I’m with the library. I’m so happy to see you here in town. It saves me a trip through the roving sheep mob to find you.”
“Oh,” he chuckled. “Yes, the town does have an abundance of animals roaming about. None of the farmers can claim the band though, as they all seem to have wandered off from their herds and found each other.”
“A found family—can’t fault them for that,” I said. “We should all be so lucky.”
He grinned widely at me, flashing a mouth of corn-yellow teeth. He smelled sweet, too, like I’d remembered. Up close, I was surer than ever that I had seen this man at my mother’s home.
“Have you ever been to the states?” I asked him.
“Which states?”
“The United States of America, the rather large country across the ocean.”
“No, never.” He scratched his hooked nose and looked off to the left.
Lie.
“Wait.” He tapped his chin. “Does Hawaii count?”
“Sure.”
“I like the dolphins.”
“How about the continental United States?”
He shrugged. “I used to travel more in my youth, but my memory isn’t what it used to be.”