Read Shift Burn (Imogene Museum Mystery #6) for Free Online

“That’s too close to ball and chain for my comfort.”
    Pete chuckled. “How about that breakfast?”
    How on earth can he talk about food in such a sexy voice? “The shower’s only big enough for one — unfortunately.” I grinned up at him. “So you get dibs on it while I whip up some waffle batter.”
    “We might have to fix that space problem,” Pete said as he reached over and opened the trailer door. And unleashed a wave of odor so noxious that we staggered backward, gagging.

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 5
     
    “What is that?” Pete gasped through the t-shirt fabric he’d pulled up over his nose and mouth.
    I shrugged, keeping my finger and thumb pinched on my nose and mouth clamped shut. I poked my head through the opening.
    Dim gloom. The thing that was missing was Tuppence greeting us at the door. The odor was almost, but not quite, the scent of death. Not to be too graphic about it, but there simply hadn’t been enough time for a carcass to reach this degree of ripeness, even if my dog had met her demise while we were gone.
    A wheezy groan sounded from the far end of the living room. I crawled farther up the steps until my shoulders were inside. That’s when I saw the clues.
    Mae Brock’s glass pan lay on the floor, empty. It had been licked completely clean. The tin foil cover had been discarded against the leg of a dining chair. About a foot from the empty dish was the first re-deposit of the pork sausage and stuffing casserole in the form of doggy barf.
    I stepped gingerly around the glops of vomit that created a trail across first the hardwood floor in the kitchen and then the carpet in the living room — connect the dots — to the most pitiful looking hound in the world. She’d made it to her big pillow bed, but from her bloated belly and stiff legs, I guessed more of Mae’s casserole was threatening to erupt from Tuppence’s other end.
    Tuppence rolled her eyes at me, the whites prominent, and shuddered a whimper.
    “Oh, man,” Pete muttered over my shoulder, his words muffled by the shirt fabric still covering the lower half of his face. He placed his hands on my hips and moved me out of the way. “I’ll probably end up squeezing her a bit when I pick her up. You might not want to be in here for that.”
    I retreated, snagging my purse and truck keys on the way out. I tied the trailer door open, potential thieves the least of my worries. In fact, I was pretty sure the odor inside would be a completely effective deterrent to anyone with either curious or criminal intent.
    I climbed into my pickup, propped the passenger door open and started the engine. A few minutes later, Pete gently placed Tuppence in the pickup’s bed. He’d used her pillow as a type of litter, just scooped up the whole seventy-pound-plus miserable package. She was wedged into the cushion, kind of like a hot dog in a bun. Her tail hung limply out one end and I could barely see her nose out the other end.
    Pete’s eyes were watering when he slid onto the bench seat and pulled his door closed. He immediately cranked down his window and cleared his throat a couple times.
    “I’m sorry,” I whispered as I pulled out of our campsite. “This isn’t exactly romantic.”
    He managed a wry smile. “If I recall correctly, I’m the one who left the casserole on the table. Seems I had other things on my mind at the time.”
    I flashed a grin at him. “I just might have encouraged those other things, so I guess I’m complicit. Poor dog,” I murmured. “She’s never done that before. Probably bored or anxious.”
    Pete laid a hand on my knee. “It’s never a dull moment with you, Babe.”
    I groaned and turned east on Highway 14 toward Lupine, squinting against the sun glaring through the dirty windshield. I pressed the accelerator hard, bringing the speedometer needle up to ten miles over the speed limit. I didn’t want my dog to explode before we reached the vet