Author: Amy Vansant
Category: Humorous
Go to read content：https://onlinereadfreenovel.com/amy-vansant/page,9,569513-pineapple_turtles.html
Twisting her wrist to wake up her watch, she stared at the glowing numbers signifying five o’clock in the morning.
Well, I certainly can’t complain about the bed.
It had been the first evening in a long time when Abby hadn’t pushed a paw into her nose, mouth or stomach. No wonder she’d slept so soundly.
Charlotte sat up and turned on the bedside table lamp to illuminate the room and the pile of postcards still strewn across the covers beside her.
Everything she’d discovered about those mysterious missives spilled back into her head.
It wasn’t much.
If there was a code hidden in them, she hadn’t cracked it. She’d put them in order of sending date and tried every combination she could think of to find a pattern. The first letter of every city from which they were sent. The first letter of every state. Letters turned to numbers, zip codes turned to letters. She’d scoured every nuance of every picture. The photos seemed entirely random, as if Siofra hadn’t taken any care in picking the images. Some were of the local attractions, some promotional postcards from restaurants where she’d probably eaten, some random animal shots with cutesy phrases on them. She particularly liked the one featuring a spotted, blue-ribbon porker with Happy as a Pig in Mud! scrawled across the front in a font that appeared as if it was fashioned out of hay. Siofra must have picked that one up at a 4-H Fair.
Charlotte picked up another card and stared at a picture of a lake full of ducks.
Why postcards at all? There were a million ways to send messages to people. Why wasn’t she emailing? Was she frightened someone would trace her IP address back to her? Were Angelina and her father so sophisticated? Or was it someone else she feared?
Charlotte shook her head and tried to approach the puzzle from a new angle. How about money? How did Siofra afford to eat at restaurants and visit these attractions? Was she independently wealthy? Did she search out employment in each town? And if she did, was it always the same sort of job? The food cards implied maybe she picked up waitressing jobs. Then again, maybe she was a tour guide.
Charlotte jotted down a reminder to ask Angelina about Siofra’s resources and then spent a few minutes solving the greater mystery of how the tiny coffee maker sitting on top of the bureau worked. When it finally bubbled to life, she grabbed her computer and set it on her lap in bed. She shuffled through the postcards to find where she’d left off and started once again plugging in the cities from which the cards had come.
Like the evening before, she found the locations had little in common with each other. Some were small towns, some large cities, and none seemed to share much, other than people, houses and postcards for sale.
Charlotte huffed.
There has to be a thread that connects these places.
Clearly, Siofra didn’t want to be found. Why did she send postcards at all? If her father was motivated to find her, wouldn’t he go to the place from which the cards were sent?
That would be too easy.
Charlotte sat up a little straighter.
Right. That would be too easy.
Siofra wouldn’t send the cards from somewhere she could be found. That left two options: she either sent them from somewhere she wasn’t—maybe towns she drove through—or she sent them from somewhere she had been. Past tense.
If she chose cards from towns situated between one place and another, random towns she drove through on her way to her next destination, then there had to be a reason she picked the cards she had. There had to be a pattern based on the towns’ names or zip codes or something other than the places themselves. But Charlotte felt she’d already exhausted every possibility when it came to patterns. If Siofra was using a code, like spelling out words using the first letter of the towns where she bought the cards, then it was in an alien language she didn’t speak.
Charlotte slipped out from beneath her laptop and poured a tiny creamer into her tiny paper coffee cup.
Maybe Angelina was wrong about Mick not understanding the cards. If Mick and his daughter had a secret language through which they communicated, she’d never crack the code. Maybe the various jumbles of letters she’d generated from the cards made sense if you had a key.
If Mick had a key, it was probably in his room. Maybe Angelina could help her look for it. She groaned thinking about having to ask her. Getting Angelina to share anything was a chore—getting her to ransack Mick’s room would be like pushing a boulder, wearing black tights and heels, up a hill.
Charlotte slipped back into bed, put the coffee on the nightstand and the computer back on her lap.
There was the other option—that the towns were places she had been in. But again, they didn’t seem to have anything in common—
Except the date she’d visited them. They all had a time when she’d been there. All different dates, of course, but why there and at that time?
Charlotte started typing cities and dates into her laptop.
She scrolled through the results for Decatur, Illinois three years previous in April.
A few newspaper articles popped up including one about a missing girl who’d been found alive and one about a local man who’d won a prize at a car show in Chicago.
Hm.
The car show prize didn’t seem important but the missing girl piqued her interest.
She tried Austin, Texas. A new library wing opening. Yawn. A woman sent to jail for killing her husband in an elaborate plot.
Double hm.
Laramie, Wyoming—another murderer captured.
Charlotte looked up.
This is it.
She hit back on the browser and tried to find more information about the missing girl found in Decatur. In an article the police thanked the public for their help in finding the girl. In Austin, the authorities again thanked anonymous tips for pointing them in the right direction.
Charlotte plugged in a few more dates and cities from the postcards. A couple didn’t seem to click but most did.
Charlotte shook, a giddy trill running through her body.
She’s solving crimes anonymously.
My aunt is some kind of vigilante detective.
What were the chances they’d be in the same line of work?
Charlotte reached over to grab her cooling coffee and take a sip. She grimaced. It tasted sour. She was pretty sure coffee wasn’t supposed to taste sour.
Didn’t matter. The coffee wasn’t going to sour her mood.
Ha!
She missed having Declan and Abby around to abuse with her puns.
Charlotte moved the laptop and swung her legs over the bed.
I have to tell Angelina.
She looked at her watch. It was only six.
Too early. Grr.
But that’s okay. She’d found the pattern. Now all they had to do was figure out what crime Siofra would be solving next.
Her shoulders slumped.
How the heck are we going to do that?
Chapter Eighteen
“Did you see this?”
Hunter glanced over at the police officer lying in her motel bed. He held aloft a newspaper; the one she’d bought for herself. She’d turned away for one second and he’d grabbed it and now she sat at the peeling, laminated table drinking coffee and staring out the window at the parking lot, mulling on her oh-so glamorous life.
She looked at him. “No, I didn’t see it, because you stole my paper.”
Hunter smiled to show she didn’t really mind and studied the line of Officer Kevin’s manly nose and the curl of his lips to create a last mental picture of him. Kevin was a nice guy. She’d been lucky to work with him over the past few months. She’d miss him a little.
“Some chick swapped a baby,” he said, still staring at the paper, unaware she was cataloging him.
Hunter laughed. “What?”
“Some chick’s kid was taken and the cops thought they got it back, but it turns out it was a different baby.”
“That’s crazy.”
>
“Totally.”
Hunter lifted her phone and tried to read the newsfeed, but found her mind returning to the kidnapped baby.
“Where was this?” she asked.
“Hm?” Kevin had moved on to the sports page.
“The baby swap. Where did it happen? Here?”
He shook his head. “Oh, no. I forget.”
She continued to stare at him until he glanced up and noticed. “You want me to check?”
“Yes, please.”
He picked up another piece of paper and opened it to skim the page.
“Florida. Jupiter Beach, Florida.”
Hunter heard herself release a tiny gasp. It felt as though someone had flipped a switch in her body and charged her veins with a low buzz of electricity. Her hands and face went tingly.
It can’t be.
She leaned forward, her hand outstretched.
“Give me that.”
He handed her the paper and she folded it to the page he’d been reading. She could feel the ink coming off on her fingers and thought no wonder so many people read their news online. Still, she liked the feel of holding a book when she read. Sometimes it was nice to have something not glowing in her eyeballs.
Kevin sniffed. “Hey, you know, I was thinking. I mean, now that we solved the case, maybe you don’t need to live in a motel—”
“Nope. Not a good idea.” She answered without really hearing him, but she could tell by the sniff he was about to say something he feared she wouldn’t like. Add that to his softened tone, and she knew where the conversation headed.
He peppered his soft tone with a hint of irritation. “Whaddya mean? You don’t even know what I was going to say.”
She lowered the paper.
“You were going to ask me if I wanted to move in. We were going to spend a few months finding out we don’t actually have anything in common except finding that little girl. We’ll start fighting about how you put the toilet paper on the roll backwards—”
“But I don’t put it on backwards—”
“—and how I leave my socks on the floor. Then I’ll move out and we will have wasted what good years we have left on a pipedream.”
He stared at her, his eyebrows raised and hopes dashed. Maybe. She didn’t think he was as invested in her as maybe he was kidding himself to believe. Kevin was a lovely, honest man, but they’d never had that thing. She suspected he knew that too, somewhere in that ruggedly handsome head of his.
He scratched at his graying stubble. “Jeeze. Tell me what you really think.”
“That’s one thing you’d never have to wonder about,” she said, returning to the paper.
“You’re getting kind of old to be alone,” he added after a measured pause.
She looked up. Ouch.
“Don’t lash out. It’s not sexy,” she scolded.
He grunted and she stood.
“Anyway, it’s not you, it’s me. I have to go.”
“Go where?”
“Away. Leave Concord.”
“You’re leaving leaving?”
She nodded and stuffed the few things she hadn’t packed while he was sleeping into the overnight bag that served as her world.
“Where?” he asked. The soft tone had returned.
She shrugged, thinking she truly didn’t know, but she’d already slipped the paper with the story about the baby swap into her bag. She knew what that meant.
He tried again. “When were you going to tell me this?”
“I just did. Anyway, that girl at the coffee shop has been dying to go out with you.”
He scowled as if he was offended she thought he’d be interested in another woman, but the corners of his mouth couldn’t help but curl up. “Who? Janice?”
She chuckled. Kevin would be just fine without her.
“Yes, Janice.”
“Why would you say that?”
She rolled her eyes. “Don’t be stupid. You know.”
“Yeah, but, I mean, she’s not you—”
She leaned forward and tussled his hair. “Oh stop. I’m not me either. You’ve only seen me at my best, both of us in the heat of a case. Day-to-day I’m a pain in the neck.”
He grinned and grabbed her wrist to pull her towards him. “I never doubted that.”
She pecked him on the lips and cupped his jaw with her palm to stare into his eyes.
“You’re a good guy, Kevin.” She kissed her finger and pressed it into the middle of his forehead.
He took a deep breath and then blew it out through puffed cheeks as she pulled away. He let her hand slip through his.
“Man, you’ve got it all figured out.”
She laughed. “Oh sure. That’s me.”
Hunter scooped up her bag and then paused with her hand on the door knob. She returned to the nightstand and lifted Kevin’s gun belt. Underneath it lay a postcard she’d bought on her first day in town featuring a picture of maple trees being tapped. It was already filled out with a mailing address and a stamp she’d stolen from Kevin’s desk drawer at the police station.
Kevin watched her.
“I thought for a second there you’d changed your mind.”
She shook her head. “Tell Janice I said good-bye. Tell her she was the best damn barista I’ve ever known.”
He snorted a laugh. “Yeah, yeah.”
Bag in one hand and postcard in the other, Hunter left. She walked to the motel office and dropped the postcard in the outgoing mail before hopping in her car and pointing south.
Chapter Nineteen
Seven a.m. came and went as Frank watched restless protesters rise, wave and crouch their way through mock march-ins and sit-downs. By eight, a full party had broken out. Children played tag, Clubsoda touched up his posters, militia men marched and Foliage demonstrated how to squat in such a way you couldn’t be moved.
At first, no one noticed the single bulldozer, silhouetted by the morning sun, rising into view like a mechanical dinosaur. It crept closer to the field, belching smoke, until a child running too far from the group spotted the cigar-chomping driver and a suited man hanging from the cabin. She ran back to alert the group, screaming as if she’d spotted a killer clown.
Frank stretched his back, heard his spine crack with the effort, and made a mental note to never, never, ever sleep anywhere but in his own bed again. He watched the child running toward the group, waving her hands above her head and screaming words he couldn’t make out.
“Here we go.”
A bulldozer chugged over the horizon and stopped short of the bomb fence surrounding the tomato field. A man wearing a suit raised his bullhorn, one newer and shinier than Foliage’s.
“You, people! Disperse! This is private land!”
Frisbee and paddleball games ceased as the party’s attention swiveled to the mechanical yellow monster lurking at the far edge of the field.
“Raise your posters!” screamed Foliage.
The crowd scrambled for their protesting accoutrements. Someone starting singing ‘My Country ‘tis of Thee.’
Mac, Frank, Bob, Tommy and Declan made their way to the far bomb fence, Tommy filming the entire scene from behind his iPhone.
“This is all a little dramatic for one of your films, isn’t it?” Bob asked him. “And doesn’t everyone have to be naked?”
Tommy shrugged. “I’m growing as an artist.”
Declan scowled. “Did you say naked?”
Mac cleared his throat and called out over the steady rumble of the bulldozer. “You move another inch and you’ll go up in a cloud of fine powder, buddy!”
Frank recognized the suited man as the one who’d visited them in the bar the night before. He cupped his hands around his mouth to make himself a homemade bullhorn.
“I’ve put in a call to a judge. You’re going to have to cease and desist,” he yelled over the din of the machine.
“You have papers?” asked the suited man through his much louder bullhorn.
Fr
ank frowned and dropped his hands from his mouth.
Showoff.
Tommy lowered his camera and motioned at the bulldozer. “Can you turn off that thing? It’s messing with the dialogue.”
The man said something to his driver and the bulldozer’s engine cut. He dropped off the cabin and walked toward the men, pointing at Tommy.
“Your chin is still red,” he said.
Tommy raised his phone to cover his chin.
Frank cleared his throat. “Look. The injunction isn’t here yet but—”
Foliage appeared at Frank’s elbow with his own ancient bullhorn pointed at the suited man.
“Hell no, we won’t go! Hell no, we won’t—”
Wincing, Frank snatched the bullhorn from him.
“Are you out of your mind?”
He pushed it against Foliage’s chest and readdressed the suited man.
“Look, mister, this is the Tomato King’s land. He hasn’t even been dead a month. His widow is still in shock. Let’s work something out.”
Behind him, ‘Give Peace a Chance’ surged forth from the crowd camped in T.K.’s back yard.
The suited man strolled to one of the dummy bombs lining the field. He ran his hand over their yellow-grey surface and rapped them with his knuckle. He looked at Frank with a smug smile.
“I’m afraid you don’t know who you’re dealing with here, gentlemen.” He stepped back and upgraded his smug smirk to an evil grin. “My name’s Andrew Hepper, and my father was a Major on this base. I know dummy bombs when I see one.”
The jaws of all four Gophers fell slack.
“Little Andy?” said Mac holding out a flat hand, hip-high, to show Andrew Hepper’s height the last time he’d seen him.
“A little jerk, just like your father,” grumbled Bob.
Andrew Hepper straightened. “My father was a great man.”
The Gophers burst into laughter.
“I’ve seen your dad naked more times than I’ve seen my mailman naked,” said Tommy.