Read A Finder's Fee for Free Online

sand feel like wasted energy. That was the only real doubt I had about my relationship with Maggie Madison.
    Why hadn’t I thought about getting help? Why hadn’t I thought about Kevin’s excavator?
    I’d labored out there—for however long it was—when I could’ve been done very quickly. I might even have had time to tell the historical society so they could help. The town would have been sympathetic, if approached through proper channels.
    Was it because Maggie was thinking for me? Or had I still been mentally lost in the past where excavators and town regulations didn’t exist?
    It was as though when I woke up at the site I remembered there were better tools to work with. Maggie had lived hundreds of years in the past. She wouldn’t have thought there was anything better than a shovel. Was that why I was out here digging with one?
    I didn’t say anything. I didn’t dare let anyone know I had any doubts about what had happened. The group around me felt like tigers waiting to pounce on any weakness that might lead them to the
witch
.
    I watched as Kevin plied the hard, sandy ground with the metal equipment. The pile of sand grew steadily around him. It wasn’t long before he’d reached something.
    “What’s that?” Shayla squinted down into the dark hole.
    “It doesn’t sound like witch’s bones to me.” Gramps stood beside her.
    Whatever it was had red paint on it. Bright red paint. I could only see about three feet of it, but nothing like it would have been here four hundred years ago.
    “Let me take one more swipe at it,” Kevin yelled over the noise of the machine.
    I watched the bucket go down and come back with another load of dirty sand. The color was different this far down—more burnt orange than the pale sand on top. I knew that was because of sand washing away and the town replacing it every year. It usually wasn’t even local sand. Archaeologists of the future were going to have a headache someday when they tried to figure that out.
    As the bucket came up and moved away, something else of what lay beneath us became visible. There was more bright red paint and the number twelve.
    “It’s the top of an old car.” Ann sounded almost excited. “Are we going to have to go through a car to reach the witch’s hovel? Did she mention a car was resting on her, Dae?”
    Gramps peered hard into the hole. I held his arm as he almost got too close to the edge. “What is it?” I asked as he drew back.
    “Kevin,” he yelled. “Take one more swipe—to the left side a little. I think I know what this is.”
    “Sure, Horace. Stand back.”
    The excavator bucket went down again and came back. We all waited impatiently to see what more was revealed, standing as close as we could without falling in or getting hit.
    There was a crashing sound—like shattering glass. The bucket seemed to be caught on something. Kevin couldn’t get it to come back up. He had to play with it for a few minutes.
    Finally, it broke free and came back to the surface. Attached to one of the tines on the excavator’s bucket was a damaged car door that had been ripped from the vehicle. A partial, skeletal arm appeared to be waving at someone out the window.
    “Old number twelve.” Gramps chuckled when he saw the door. “That’s Mad Dog’s old race car. I wondered where that thing got to.”

Chapter 3

    “A car?” Disbelief showed in Ann’s flat face. “Why would a car be buried down there?”
    “And what does this have to do with the witch?” Shayla demanded.
    “Maybe that’s one of her bones there.” Flourine pointed to the car door and the arm bone.
    Kevin shut down the digger and joined them. “I think this is probably someone else. It looks to me like someone was buried in the race car.”
    No sooner were the words out of his mouth than Duck police officer Scott Randall pushed aside the yellow tent flap. He stopped when he saw all of us there. “Mayor? Sheriff? Mr. Brickman?” He appeared a little