A Dime a Dozen by Mindy Starns Clark

Author:Mindy Starns Clark [Clark, Mindy Starns]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Fiction, Suspense, General, Romance, Christian, Religious
ISBN: 9780736929585
Publisher: Thorndike Press
Published: 2003-01-01T05:00:00+00:00

Twenty-One

My conversation with Lowell Tinsdale ended up being fairly brief, since the police retrieved him for questioning as soon as they saw him standing there. But from our short exchange, I learned that the orchard had been in his family for generations and that he grew up, as he put it, “living, breathing, and sleeping apples,” though he’d never seen anything like this. He seemed like a nice enough fellow if you looked past the gruffness, but I felt certain he was in very poor health. He had the sunken cheeks and dark eyes of a man struggling with a serious illness.

I hung around the scene a bit longer, but the place was becoming a circus, packed with curious townspeople, reporters, and soon to arrive, according to rumor, a news crew out of Charlotte. June Sweetwater interviewed me briefly as a matter of course, just getting on record how it was that I happened to be here for all of this. Once the coroner began issuing instructions to remove the body from the bin, however, I decided to leave. While I had managed to keep a sort of professional detachment about the whole mummy thing, I didn’t know if I could handle seeing the body in its entirety.

I was just pulling out of the parking lot when yet another car came speeding up the driveway. When I realized who was inside, however, I pulled back into my parking place, turned off the car and climbed out.

It was Karen and Luisa. They jumped from their vehicle, but I had to stop them before they could get around the corner and see the horrible sight of the mummy being removed from the apples. If it was indeed Enrique, I knew Luisa would never be able to erase that image from her mind.

“Stop!” I called, and both women hesitated, looking at me. “Please, don’t go over there yet!”

To my surprise, they both waited as I ran toward them. I took Luisa’s ice-cold hand in mind and looked into her face.

“Is it him?” she whispered, her body trembling with fear and dread.

“What was he wearing the day he disappeared?” I asked.

“Jeans. A gray T-shirt.”

“Tell me what the T-shirt looked like,” I said.

A sob caught in her throat.

“It was…it was torn a bit, at the collar, here. I think it had a face of a bull on it, but the picture was faded…”

My heart sank. That was the shirt, all right.

“It may be him,” I said finally, tightening my grip on her hand. “But you don’t want to see him like this. Trust me, Luisa. You don’t.”

She tried to pull away from me, but then Karen grabbed her other arm and held on as well.

“Luisa, wait,” Karen said. “Callie’s right. Not here. Not like this.”

“I have to know!” Luisa yelled, jerking free.

She turned and ran. A moment later we heard her bloodcurdling scream.

“NO!”

“No,” Karen echoed, whispering, her face white, her hands to her mouth. She began sobbing, and then she closed her eyes and shook her head back and forth.

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