Ed Lynskey - Isabel and Alma Trumbo 01 - Quiet Anchorage by Ed Lynskey Page B

from next door had cranked up the V-8 engine to his monster truck, leaving for his day job.
    Alma made a mental note to ask Sheriff Fox about what mufflers were legal to install on trucks. She remembered with a start she’d more pressing business to take care of today. Imagine Megan enduring a night alone behind bars for a crime she didn’t commit. Charged with murder, the most heinous offense, doubled the horror. Alma heard a ringtone, and her hand slipping under the pillows retrieved her cell phone. She flipped it open, her first words saying, “Hallo, Isabel.”
    “Did Young Thor’s hammer jar you awake, too? Doesn’t it make you want to stamp next door and throttle him?” asked Isabel in her cotton-mouthed irritation.
    Alma replied with her own question, “Did you sleep well before the thunder struck?”
    “Fair to middling. How about you?”
    “A bit better, thanks. Do we first discuss the topic of motives for murder with Dwight?”
    “I already did no more than five minutes ago. He listened as any tactful lawyer does and thanked me for my valuable inputs. No doubt his legal bill will reflect our chat time.”
    Alma stretched her arms and legs in bed. “He isn’t a morning person, so we better go see him later today. What else is on our post-breakfast agenda?”
    “We’ll want to meet with Rosie McLeod and Lotus Wang.”
    “See you in a bit then.”
    Thumbing off their connection, Alma marveled at the convenience to chat on a cell phone. Hadn’t telephone science, or whatever it was called, advanced by leaps and bounds since the telephone party lines relied on back in the Middle Ages? She abhorred their indolence to lounge in bed and speak rather than walking down the hallway to hold a normal face-to-face conversation. She let out a sigh, thinking, well, that was progress for you.
    Their hasty breakfast was hot grits, a wedge of honeydew melon, and skim milk. Alma sipped her cranberry juice, but Isabel abstained before they piled into the sedan gleaming navy blue under its coat of morning dew.
    “I hope the prison serves hearty meals,” said Isabel.
    Nodding, Alma twirled the key in the ignition. “That topped my list of Megan worries, too.” The engine, recently tuned up by Jake Robbins, hummed in its smooth idle.
    “We should pick up a few items,” said Isabel. “But first, where do we catch up with Rosie and Lotus this morning?”
    “You must know they practically live at Clean Vito’s.”
    “Different strokes. I hate musty laundromats and almost never go inside one.”
    “The commercial detergent odors irritate my sinuses.”
    Within minutes, they found Clean Vito’s Laundromat, a colorful, boxy structure shingled in plum red with double-hung windows painted lemon yellow. A shopping cart blocked the last vacant parking space. After an annoyed Isabel climbed out to move the shopping cart to the cart stall in the grocery store’s lot, Alma nosed the sedan into the free space. Before joining Isabel, she re-centered the Bible—it’d extricated her from more than one traffic ticket—on the dashboard.
    “We stick out with no baskets of laundry,” said Isabel.
    Alma dropped the key ring into her purse. “Don’t act sneaky about the reason we came here. Megan is behind bars falsely accused, and we intend to clear her name. If folks like to lend us a hand, we’re grateful and if not, who has the time for them anyway?”
    They navigated their path over the chunky stones mingled with the gravel without wrenching an ankle. Alma spotted a praying mantis perched on the step—a sign that autumn lurked around the corner, and Megan couldn’t be left in her chilly prison cell. A columnar ashtray stand propped open the laundromat door. Their smelling the clean laundry detergent coincided with hearing the whir to the dryers and the slosh to the washers.
    First in, Alma scanned the knots of chattering ladies to key on Rosie and Lotus, the only other ladies not armed with a clothesbasket, making