The Detective's Apprentices: Book 3 of the Ten Twenty One Mysteries Series by Uhio Shane

Author:Uhio, Shane
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2024-02-09T00:00:00+00:00

Chapter 15

Phillip and Jennifer waited until dark before heading back up to Sommerton. When they had been to the Townsend farm earlier, Phillip had dropped some GPS markers in the rental car’s map system so that it would be easier to find it, especially in the dark. Soon after turning onto the dirt road leading up to the farm, they pulled over and drove off the road, hiding the car behind some trees.

They were dressed in dark clothes, or at least Phillip was. He was wearing the same outfit he had worn when they had broken into the art dealer’s office with Anna. Jennifer was wearing all black, including a black turtleneck sweater and a black knit cap over her head. They didn’t need to speak a word between them, as they had already planned what they were going to do on the car ride up. They walked slowly and steadily up the road, taking nearly thirty minutes to make it to the clearing where the house and the storage building was located. When they got there, they stayed near the edges of the bushes and farm machinery bordering the area. The lights in the downstairs area of the house were still on, but upstairs everything was dark.

They waited for another twenty minutes. Phillip was thankful that the night wasn’t too cold, though his knees were starting to ache. When the final light turned off inside the house, they slowly made their way to the storage building.

The door was ajar, wide enough so that both Phillip and Jennifer could squeeze in without having to disturb the door. Inside were various pieces of machinery, including what looked like picking robots, large plastic-covered, spider-like machines that were the size of a human being, with four bent spider-like legs in a resting position, and what looked like large claws at its sides, and finally a basket-like mesh holder underneath the body, presumably where it would collect produce that was picked. There were a few other robots in the building as well that Phillip was not familiar with but he trusted had something to do with the farming process. When Phillip was a child, he remembered driving down the California coast with his parents, passing by the farms in Salinas where he would see rows of cars parked at the edges of strawberry fields, people in wide-brimmed hats moving methodically in a line down the rows of strawberry plants. It was hard to believe that now it was all done by machines.

Jennifer tapped Phillip’s shoulder and pointed at some machinery near the back wall and by the other side of the door of the building. They slowly and silently moved in that direction, and as they got close she got out her phone and started taking pictures of them. Phillip guessed that this was the machinery that Jennifer had glimpsed earlier, machinery which she identified as out of place on a farm.

As she finished taking pictures and put her phone away, Phillip heard the door of the house slam shut, and a male voice piercing the stillness of the night.

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