CHAPTER FORTY-SIX
It started innocently enough over a box of Red Hots the fire department flung into the crowd as they inched along in one of their engines. Two kids made a grab for it. And then all hell broke loose. Looking back on it, Donovan had felt the tension in the air as he walked the parade route, vigilant for mischief. It was only a matter of time before it imploded.
The kids scrapped on the sidewalk, and then the parents stepped in. It went downhill quickly from there.
Thanks to the “make love not war” mentality, not many citizens knew how to make a proper fist let alone plow that fist into someone else’s face. The fight was more slapping and hair-pulling with some biting thrown in for good measure.
Donovan waded in and dragged two middle-aged fathers apart. “You two need to keep your cool,” he ordered. “Now, separate and go on home, or I’m going to have to drag you into the station.”
It was right about that time that one of them bit him on the forearm.
“Goddammit,” Donovan muttered. “I’m gonna need backup,” he said into the radio. He grabbed the bigger of the dads in a headlock.
“Sheriff, we’ve got problems at the park,” Minnie announced from his radio.
“Shit.” The melee was spreading. The moms were now shouting insults at each other.
“Meat-eater!”
“Leather-wearer!”
And the kids were running amuck and stealing candy from other spectators. There was another shove down the line, another insulted bellow, and the entire block erupted.
With the man under his arm swinging wildly at the air around them, Donovan whipped out his phone and dialed.
“Mom, I need help. Bring every able-minded adult you can get and split ‘em between the park and the parade route.”
“On it,” Hazel responded before hanging up.
The head-locked dad got in a lucky elbow to Donovan’s gut, and the phone went flying into the storm drain.
“All right. You’re gonna pay for that one,” Donovan gritted out.
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By the time Donovan made it to the town square, all hell had broken loose and was barely being contained. He’d managed to break up two more fights, find a lost toddler who had climbed a goddamn tree, and put out an accidental fire that had started with a pile of leaves and a dropped bong on Bruce Oakleigh’s lawn.
Deputy Colby had caught up with him a block from the park, and together they’d caught two nursing home escapees as they tried to break into the farm supply store. Mrs. McCafferty had just turned the garden hose on them when Donovan and Colby came on the scene.
In the park, Hazel was showing off her law enforcement background by corralling suspects of full moon rage in the funnel cake stand. “You sit your ass down, Melvin, or I’ll kick it,” she threatened a middle-aged man dressed as Gandalf.
Donovan’s dad was attaching a hose to the fire hydrant to put out a bonfire lit by some enterprising junior high schoolers who were roasting marshmallows on the middle of the sidewalk.
Jax and Carter Pierce were busy breaking up a dance off between the high school football team and the marching band. The crowd parted as Charisma Champion jogged past shouting “Don’t worry! The end is near!”
Beckett was performing his mayoral duties by dragging looters out of OJs by Julia. Because Blue Moon was the type of town that stole fresh juice when they rioted.
Joey had confiscated Deputy Layla’s bullhorn and was shouting “Calm the fuck down” from the gazebo. He saw her narrow in on a reed-slim hippie working hard to overturn a park bench.
“Oh, shit,” Donovan muttered.
Joey dropped the bullhorn and jumped from the gazebo onto the hippie’s back. They went down in a tangle of limbs. Donovan reached Joey’s side just as she let her hand fly. He’d been hoping to save the guy from a broken nose.
Fortunately, Joey went with the bitch slap instead. “What the fuck is wrong with you, Winston? Go the hell home!” She slapped him again for good measure and then helped him to his feet.
“Hey, Sheriff!” Niko, a sleeve torn off his Frankenstein jacket, held two women by the scruff of their necks. “Funnel cake jail is at capacity. Where do you want these two?”
“Bring ‘em over here,” Summer called from the knitted sock stand. “I’ve got room for two more!”
Three buck naked Mooners sprinted past singing a rousing version of “Free Bird.”
“Hazel!” Donovan shouted.
“We need a bigger jail,” she called back.
He ducked as a woman darted around him wielding a pool noodle like it was a saber. She was chased by Enid the dog walker who held a pair of knitting needles.
Donovan grabbed the needles out of Enid’s hands and sent her on her way. He spotted Layla talking two Mooners out of a tree and borrowed her phone.
“Hello?”
“Eva?”
“Donovan, what the hell is going on?”
“I need help. We’re out of jail space. Can you find me a place big enough to hold at least fifty people?” A trombone player blasted the quarterback in the ear with a sharp note, and the quarterback retaliated with an epic wedgie. “Shit. Maybe more like sixty.”
“Absolutely. I’m on it. I’ll call you back at this number.”
“What’s that noise?” he asked.
“You don’t want to know.”
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Donovan’s call had caught Eva dragging a wailing Willa out of the Snip Shack. The woman had started proclaiming her need for a perm, and Eva had barely been able to wrestle her out of the stylist’s chair. It was definitely Uranus’s work that had the salon touting “FREE PERMS AND PIXIE CUTS” at ten o’clock at night on Halloween.
She stuffed Willa in the passenger seat of her Mini and ran around to the driver’s side.
“Willa, what place in town could hold sixty or so people?”
“Why won’t you let me get beautiful curls?” Willa howled.
“Because you would hate your beautiful curls in the morning. Trust me. Now, focus. Where can we imprison a large chunk of the town’s population?”
“The movie theater or the high school, I suppose?”
“Good thinking. Where does the principal or guidance counselor live?”
Willa pointed the way and Eva swung the wheel of the car in the direction. “If you behave yourself, we’ll stop and get you hot rollers somewhere.”
“So, I can have curls?” Willa asked holding up her curtain of stick-straight hair.
“Yes, the temporary kind that won’t make you cry in the morning.”
“Okay, turn here.”
They found Huckleberry Cullen, dressed as a vampire chasing off a troop of costumed adults who were toilet papering his house and giggling like children.
Eva ordered Willa to stay in the car and jumped out of the car.
“Go home!” she said, shooing the cackling neighbors out of the yard.
“It’s the sheriff’s girlfriend,” one of them giggled.
“5-0! 5-0!”
“Let’s go!”
A man who looked to be in his fifties looped a strip of toilet paper around Eva’s shoulders before scampering off behind his friends.
“Are you Huckleberry?” Eva asked, crumpling the toilet paper into a ball.
“Huck,” he said, scraping a hand through his thick hair. “Thanks for the assist. Usually they’re not all insane at the same time.”
“Huck, I need access to the school.”
His eyes narrowed as he studied her. “Ah, hell. Are you crazy, too? Are you planning to hack the planetarium’s computer to phone home?”
Eva rolled her eyes. “No time to convince you of my sanity. I need your keys to the high school.”
“Why?”
“I need a bigger jail.”
“Maybe I’d better come with you.”
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“Little Red Riding Hood, a rubber chicken, and a vampire are in a Mini Cooper,” Huck muttered as they pulled into the high school parking lot.
“I know we sound—and look—like a rolling joke, but if we don’t get all the temporary crazies in a safe place, there may not be a Blue Moon standing tomorrow morning,” Eva said, yanking the parking brake.
Willa maneuvered herself out of the passenger seat, her rubber chicken head getting stuck on the sun visor. Huck followed, unfolding his long legs and cape from the backseat. He was right around thirty and very good-looking with his angular face, broad shoulders, and friendly smile. “Oh, I get it. Cullen. Vampire,” Eva said, pointing at his fake teeth.
He sighed. “When you work with middle schoolers, there’s a lot of Twilight references. And when your last name is the same as these beloved vampires, you get a lot of attention, especially when they find out that it annoys you. Word of advice, never make a bet with a class of eighth graders. It’s not going to work out in your favor.” He tapped a finger to the Team Edward badge he wore on his vest.
Huck led them to a side door near the parking lot and fished the keys out of his vampire pants. “This is probably your best bet space-wise,” he said, letting them into the gymnasium. “But I don’t know how you’re going to keep all your inmates separated.
Eva surveyed the cavernous room. It was a typical gym in the shiny floor and bleachers way, but the walls were decked out in a psychedelic rainbow mural. The wall under the digital scoreboard was painted with a depiction of the meeting of the Blue Moon farming community and the wandering hippies that arrived in 1969 after getting lost leaving Woodstock.
“Okay. I think we can make this work. Edward—I mean, Huck—can you get us some tape? And Willa, do you know where the art studio is?”
“Of course, I do. I spent many a happy day molding vegan clay and painting unicorn figurines there.”
“Uh, great? Can you go make some signs? Something that will enhance the prison experience?”
“I’d love to!” Willa skipped away, her hair flowing out behind her as her costume made rubber squeak noises.
“Signs to enhance the prison experience?” Huck asked.
“Anything to keep her out of trouble and out of the hair salon,” Eva sighed.
“Right, the free perms. I was thinking maybe I should try a new look,” he said, shoving his hand through his heart-throb hair.
“Huck—”
“Kidding. Sorry. It’s been a long month. Hard not to just give up and join the insanity.”
“I know the feeling. Now, go find some colored tape. A lot of it.” She pointed toward the door. Huck swirled off in his cape.
Eva was busy dragging a six-foot folding table in front of the bleachers when her phone rang.
“Hey,” she said, breathlessly.
“Please tell me you’re safe and have a jail,” Donovan said wearily on the other end.
Eva looked up as Huck returned wielding a dozen rolls of painters tape. Willa was behind him holding an oversized poster painted with flowers and butterflies.
Welcome to Blue Moon Jail
We’re Happy to Have You
“The new expanded Blue Moon County Jail is ready to accept its first residents. I’m at the high school. Just follow the butterflies and flowers.”
“Butterflies?”
“Trust me. You can’t miss it,” she promised.
“Eva?”
“Yes, sheriff?”
“Thank you.”
“It’s nice to be needed. Now, get your sexy ass over here so I can help you lock up half the town’s population.”