Free Mail Order Mayhem (Mail Order Romance Book 2 - Benjamin and Annie) by Kate Whitsby Page B

now. If I’m wrong about all this, then I’m better off dead without her.”
    “Well, I understand the last part,” Sheriff Christopher told him. “As for the rest of it, I’ll leave that to you. I won’t say I don’t understand what you’re talking about. I may have had some experience like that myself at some time in my life. I’m the last man in the world to come between any person and his God. If you want to follow God, then I won’t try to stop you.”
    “That’s good,” Benjamin replied evenly, “because I won’t be turned back. As long as I’m alive, and I know Annie’s alive, I’ll keep tryin’ to get to her.”
    “Well, you’ll dig your own grave, doin’ that,” the sheriff warned. He swung down from his saddle and shook the kinks out of his legs. He tossed his reins to his nearest deputy and jerked his thumb toward the homestead.“I’ll have to take a look inside the house. Have you been inside?”
    “No, I haven’t,” Benjamin responded. “I hate to think what they’ve done in there.”
    “Come with me,” the sheriff invited him. “You knew Tom and Maureen better than I did. I never went inside while they were aliv e. You can tell me if anything’s out of place.”
    “From what they did to my place,” Benjamin replied. “I imagine they wrecked it, the same as they did everything else. I guess they’re havin’ fun, goin’ from place to place, smashing everything in sight. That’s the only thing I can figure out about them.”
    “Well, come on and let’s have a look,” the sheriff ascended the step and threw the latch.
    The two men peeked through the open door into the main room of the farmhouse. The scene closely inside resembled the one presented to Annie when she first arrived at the Iverson Ranch, with the exception of the cleanliness of the kitchen. The main sitting room remained virtually untouched. “Looks alright to me,” the sheriff pointed out. “Nothin’ broken.”
    “Well, I’ll be jiggered,” Benjamin marveled. “I wonder why they left this place alone, when they’ve done so much damage to other people’s places.”
    “Looks like a woman has been here,” the sheriff remarked.
    Benjamin nodded, finding it difficult to answer. “You remember what it looked like when we buried Tom and Maureen? There were cinders and kindling underneath the stove, and ashes on the hearth.”
“I remember,” the sheriff confirmed. “Someone’s cleaned it up, and wiped the dust off. Look at the difference between the dust on the shelves in the sitting room and the shelves in the kitchen.”
    They ventured into the kitchen, but hesitated to proceed beyond the boundary of dust at the edge of it. “The table’s been scrubbed and the dishes washed and stacked,” the sheriff observed.
    “I don’t like disturbing this place,” Benjamin commented. “It feels like walking on someone’s grave.”
    “ Too bad those rascals didn’t feel the same way. Looks to me like they made a special effort to keep the place nice and tidy,” the sheriff continued his perusal of the kitchen, until he finally migrated into the sitting room. Like Carl, he kept his hands tucked into his belt, touching nothing, while he inspected every detail of the room. “Come over here and have a look and tell me if you see anything missing.”
    Together, they scanned the shelves and cabinets, until Benjamin stopped in front of the fireplace. “Here,” he called the sheriff over. “Have a look.” Martin Christopher joined him, and Benjamin pointed to a small , dust-free square in the carpet of powder on the mantelpiece. “There.”
    “Do you remember what used to be there?” Christopher asked reverently.
    Benjamin surveyed the other trinkets and knickknacks on the mantle. “As I remember, they had a photograph of themselves here. That’s the only thing I can see missing.”
    “I wonder why they took it,” the sheriff mused to himself.
    Benjamin remembered something. “Come to think of