The Jupiter Knife by D. J. Butler & Aaron Michael Ritchey

Author:D. J. Butler & Aaron Michael Ritchey [Butler, D. J. & Ritchey, Aaron Michael]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi
Tags: Fiction, fantasy, Historical, Action & Adventure, Fairy Tales; Folk Tales; Legends & Mythology
ISBN: 9781982125189
Google: rYyYzQEACAAJ
Amazon: 1982125187
Publisher: Baen
Published: 2021-02-02T05:00:00+00:00

Chapter Seventeen

Provo lay in darkness when Michael stopped the truck at the train station.

Hiram hopped down from the truck bed prepared to encourage Adelaide Tunstall, and offer to keep driving. He found her laughing and shaking her head.

“I’m sorry, Mrs. Tunstall,” he said, unable to stop himself from launching into the beginning of a rehearsed speech, “but there is evil in the world.”

She laughed and slapped his shoulder. “And there are silly, silly people, too!”

Was she drunk?

Michael stood up with his feet inside the cab, elbows spread wide on the truck’s roof. “I was telling her about my friend Porky Mullins.” Michael’s face was twitching.

“I don’t…I don’t remember Porky.”

Michael snorted. “Well, he remembers you! Porky is the one who got out of his mind on reefer and got into our barn?”

Hiram couldn’t for the life of him remember the incident. “Yeah?”

“And he was convinced he could get one of our roosters to fertilize our nanny goat, so he kept standing birds up on that old goat’s back, and every time he did, she complained louder, until finally you woke up and came out to the barn in your pajamas.”

Hiram raised his fedora to let the cool night air dry the sweat on his skull and allow Michael to finish telling the story.

“He tried to explain what he was doing. And you said to Porky, ‘Son, you got two basic problems here. One is that you’re an idiot.’ And Porky said, ‘I’m not an idiot, I’m stoned.’ And you said, ‘Two is that those birds are all hens.’”

Mrs. Tunstall laughed so hard she had to gasp for breath. “Thank you both,” she said when she had recovered. “Thank you for the ride, and I’m sorry some of those maniac debauchees of Helper tried to jump us. I hope the truck is all right.”

“The truck is fine.” Hiram untied Guy and helped him down. Would he tell his wife what he’d seen? What had he seen?

But Guy gave no indication he would say anything, and only hugged his wife, muttering, “Uh, yep. Yep. Thank you. Thank you.”

“You okay with us leaving you?” Michael asked Adelaide.

“I admit I was frightened.” The woman fanned her face. “But I don’t think a man’s going to run all the way across the mountains barefoot, even if he is smoking reefer.”

“Probably true.” Hiram untied the luggage and he and Michael unloaded it. The train schedule, tacked to the wooden wall of a little shelter squatting on the platform, showed the first departure at dawn, which was about three hours away. “You have money for the fare?”

Adelaide Tunstall nodded, then sighed. “Not as much as I’d hoped, but Dad did have a little spare cash in the cabin, and I collected that. And there’s the five hundred dollars I showed you.”

So she had gone to the cabin looking for the money.

He wished she had found it. The presence of a pile of money could only complicate his efforts to solve Lloyd Preece’s murder.

“What if the money shows up later?” he asked.

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