Damned if watching the movie didn’t help.
Maggie Henderson wasn’t the mayor of Frostvale Pines. That was an old guy named Bob. She wasn’t the fire or police chief, either. No, Mrs. Henderson owned the local coffee shop, which made her the person running the town. Timmy could get his head around that. He’d seen lots of people run things from behind the scenes.
What got Timmy was the way Mrs. Henderson talked. Nobody was that nice all the time and meant it. And her smile! It reached her eyes! That was way crazy, too.
“We first noticed something was wrong a week ago, Tim.” (He was apparently too old for ‘Timmy,’ and too young for ‘Timothy.’ It’d been weird for a second when she’d asked what his name was, too.) “Little things, like a garbage can knocked down, or a light left on. We weren’t sure what was going on until food started going missing. Then we knew.” Mrs. Henderson’s smile went worried. Really worried. “Somebody from Out Of Town had shown up.”
Timmy could hear the capitals in the words. “You mean, somebody like me. Not somebody from, um…”
“The Big City?” Timmy noted those capitals, too. “Oh, no, definitely not like one of those folks. They’re always welcome to visit our little town! In fact, they come here all the time, especially around the turn of the year. But they’re not the sort who’d just hide and steal food. That’s a… well, that’s a problem.”