Wrong Question by Edita A. Petrick

Author:Edita A. Petrick
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Edita A. Petrick
Published: 2016-05-18T00:00:00+00:00

Ben didn’t just bring his loaner-SUV to our camp, he brought the local sheriff.

“I’m Sheriff Burkhart. Pleased to meet you, Miss Carver; wish it was under better circumstances,” the lawman said and touched two fingers to his forehead in a greeting and flipped out his iPhone. He tapped the screen so quickly that I made an involuntary sound of appreciation. The sheriff had his feet firmly planted in the twenty-first century. Even I couldn’t scroll as fast as he did. When he found what he was looking for he turned the cell phone and pointed its screen at me. “Is this your vehicle, Miss Carver?”

A moan escaped me. Ben’s email was insanely optimistic. My car didn’t need repairs. It needed to be buried with honors in a scrap yard. My Sentra looked as if someone shrank it down to toy-size and then kicked it around for a while before stomping it to the ground. Involuntarily, I looked to a side where I’d last seen my car, a little dusty but otherwise in great condition, in the gravel clearing.

“What happened, Sheriff?” I asked, not really curious because all I wanted to do was run inside my trailer and cry.

“I was hoping you might be able to shed the light on the mystery of how your car came to be on the bottom of the Salamander Ravine,” he said.

“I’ve no idea where that is, Sheriff.”

“About a mile past Frankie’s Diner, there’s a left fork in the road that’s not traveled that often. It’s a bit of a local lover’s lane but hasn’t been used that much since the county put up a gate about half-a-mile in. Whoever drove your car crashed through the gate as well, and then the car just headed where its nose pointed. Ben’s road crew came with a tow truck and a decent winch and rolled her up.”

I looked at Ben who seemed to be content to hover on the periphery of the conversation. “Thank you. You said something about repairs but if what Sheriff showed me is what’s left of my car, I don’t think I’m going to have it repaired. Just have it delivered to the local scrapyard. I’d appreciate if you took a few more pictures of it, for my insurance company,” I said but the sheriff was shaking his head.

“Can’t let it go to the scrapyard, Miss; not yet anyway. We don’t have the lab here or the staff to do forensic work so the samples were sent to Boise. We have to wait until the results come in,” the sheriff said.

“Results of what?” The whole situation felt unreal.

“The blood we found in the trunk of your car.”

“Blood?” I must have looked witless because the sheriff scrolled through his cell phone again until he found what he was searching for and showed it to me.

“Some people put roadkill in their trunk, particularly if it’s worthwhile to be taken to the taxidermist, to make into a trophy, but I wouldn’t have thought you’d be the type,” he said.

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