Tinkerbell on Walkabout

By Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

She's 5'2", gamine, and weighs ninety-four pounds in a soggy trench coat. The nickname “Tinkerbell” has followed her from high school. It's hard to imagine her riding a Harley or packing a baby blue .357 Magnum. She does both. After a disastrous engagement and washing out of Police Academy, Gina Miyoko is on walkabout in Gold Rush country, looking for clues to her own future. What are the odds she’ll end up in the middle of a mystery deep in the heart of an obsessively neat junkyard?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff
• Release date: Jun 10, 2021
• ISBN: 9781611385489

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff is the award-winning author of short fiction whose work has appeared in publications such as Analog and Interzone. She has authored a number of Star Wars novels, including the New York Times bestseller The Last Jedi. She currently resides in San Jose, California.

Book preview

TINKERBELL ON WALKABOUT

Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

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www.bookviewcafe.com

Book View Café Edition

September 15, 2015

ISBN: 978-1-61138-548-9

Copyright © 2015 Maya Kaathryn Bohnhoff

Tinkerbell on Walkabout

Take varm clothes, Gina, Mom says. Is cold at night. She’s said the same thing in the same moose-and-squirrel accent since I was twelve and going off to summer camp.

Mom, I say, it’s May.

Sveater veather, she says, pulls the aforementioned garment out of my dresser, and lays it atop my duffel.

It’s the bulkiest sweater I own, bright red, and makes me look like a big, fuzzy chili pepper. It also takes up half the duffel, but it was her gift to me. Need I say more?

We have this conversation every time I leave home for more than a day and I always leave with extra sweaters, extra sox, vitamins of all kinds and—

"You have your obereg?"

This literally means protector in The Mother’s Tongue and, like the sweater and vitamins, is something Mom will not let me leave home without. Not that she’d admit to being superstitious. But with a PhD in Russian folklore, a fascination with arcana, and a vast collection of materia magica from all over the world, she views packing an amulet as a practical consideration. Better safe than sorry, after all.

I reach into my jeans pocket and retrieve the obereg du jour—the smallest of a set of nesting matryoshka dolls that have spent some time under the altar at Our Lady of Kazan.

"See? I’m all obereg-ed up."

Good, she says. Don’t vorget to say goodbye to Edmund.

I never forget to say goodbye to Dad, who never says word one about sweaters, vitamins, or amulets. My down-to-earth Japanese-American father only ever asks: Did you pack your sidearm?

I sometimes think people with dysfunctional families have it easy. Okay, not really. My odd but stubbornly functional family is what got me through my teens, my epic washout from the police academy, my broken engagement, my ex-fiancé’s trial for attempted murder, and my current meanders. They don’t seem to mind that at twenty-four I’m still trying to decide what I want to be when I grow up.

Now, as I speed my Harley northeast on Interstate 80 toward the picture postcard capitol of Northern California, I reflect that I have always and only wanted to be a cop. I still do, notwithstanding I’ve proven I’m not cop material.

I’ve toyed with the idea of becoming a P.I., but I have reservations. Not because the work is hard and dangerous—no problem, I have an obereg for every occasion—but I mean, honestly, how seriously would you take a detective who’s five-foot-one and weighs ninety pounds in a soggy trench coat?

Hence, I am heading upstate for a Gold Country walkabout, thanks to my high school buddy, July Petersen, who insists I come up and check out the California Forestry Department.

Gina Miyoko, Forest R-r-ranger. Right.

The drive takes three hours and I reach Grass Valley depressed and strung out on Starbucks. No fewer than three large men—also mounted on Harleys—observed that my hog is a lot of bike for a little girl. That’s one chauvinist pig-dog per hour.

July lives with her parents. This is not because she’s a deadbeat, but because she likes living with them. July’s parents are nearly as odd as my own. As evidence of this, I offer the fact that she has a brother named March and a sister named October. One wonders what would have happened if March had been a twin. Or had been born in May or June.

July is a cop—California Highway Patrol. She is also my hero, and has been since high school when she assumed the full time job of protecting our little quartet of social misfits. We were misfits for reasons of stature: Rose Martinez was too chubby; July was too tall and buff; Lee Preston and I were too small. We were the Spratts, Mutt ’n’ Jeff, Abbott and Costello, Laurel and Hardy—all rolled into one much-maligned group.

None of us dated much, including July, notwithstanding she was statuesque and blonde. In the years since, she hadn’t sprouted any significant others, so I am understandably floored when, over lunch, she asks casually: So, you want to help me plan my wedding?

Your what?

She smiles

Reviews for Tinkerbell on Walkabout

[carod_51 · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

Tinkerbell on Walkabout is a mystery novelette, by an author better known for her fantasy titles. Gina Miyoko is an unlikely sleuth. Although she wanted to follow her father’s footsteps as a police officer, at 5’2” and disliking to follow orders, she washes out of the police academy. She decides to visit her old home town and her best friends while she considers what she wants to do with her life. While she is there she stumbles across a mystery at an obsessively neat junk yard perhaps finds a clue to her own future. This short novelette is an introduction to the feisty, motorcycle driving “Tinkerbell”. We are also introduced to her eccentric mother, and her quirky friends. Gina is an interesting character: half rational Japanese and half mystical Russian. She has to fight chauvinism and stereotypes due to her tiny “china doll” looks. Although not a long book, the author takes the time to include humour and some interesting elements of racial relations in America. I enjoyed this start to what is hopefully a long mystery series.