Free Shift Burn (Imogene Museum Mystery #6) by Jerusha Jones

mind.” A smile was starting to twitch at the corners of Rupert’s mouth, returning some of the normal cheerfulness to his demeanor.
    “We keep in touch. He’s followed Lindsay to Pullman while she finishes her degree. But I think he’d be willing to make the four-hour drive and spend a week or so helping me tag every cup, tile, shard and tool.” I matched Rupert’s grin.
    Rupert thunked his palm on the table. “Done. Do it. I’ll haggle with the board. They won’t be able to say no.”
    Rupert’s chairman of the board and the only remaining descendant of the Imogene’s founding Hagg family, so his wishes carry extra weight with the other members. I had every confidence I’d receive a reasonable, earmarked sum in the next few days.
    “Greg?” Frankie squealed and bounced on the edge of her seat.
    Greg had been my intern while he was in the anthropology doctoral program at Oregon State University, but then he graduated, and the museum didn’t have the funds to hire him. Besides, we don’t have quite the appeal as his fiancée (and my former gift shop manager) Lindsay does, so it was an easy decision for him to find work closer to her. But I was sure he’d be glad to spare us a week of mega-overtime as a temporary laborer since we had the enticement of a collection an anthropologist might only get to handle once in a lifetime, if that.
    Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse through the window of a huge, moving white panel gleaming in the sunlight — the side of an unmarked semi-truck and trailer combo rolling down the long parking lot shared by the museum, county park and marina, its hazard lights flashing.
    I checked my watch. “Guess who made extraordinarily good time today?”

     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
     
    CHAPTER 9
     
    I didn ’t want to leave Rupert in the dust, but as a portly gentleman, he just couldn’t cover ground as fast as I could. “I’ll direct them around back,” I hollered over my shoulder and picked up speed, leaving Frankie to accompany him.
    Four legs trump two every time, and Tuppence beat me to the semi-truck just as a middle-aged man of slender build jumped down from the driver’s seat.
    “Well, hello there.” He bent and tousled Tuppence’s ears as she inspected his jeans from the knees down.
    “Sorry about that,” I huffed, pulling up beside him. “She’s friendly, but nosy.”
    “Of course she is. Wouldn’t expect anything else. We always travel with our dogs too.” He reached up into the cab and returned with two brown fur balls in his hands. One had a pink ribbon tied in its hair, the other a blue ribbon. “Meet Hans and Franz. Hans is a girl, but she doesn’t care what we call her.” He released the Yorkies, and they tore around Tuppence’s legs, barking their heads off.
    I tried to smile politely. My poor dog. I think she’d rather encounter a skunk than a couple of foo-foo yappers of her own species. She sat on her haunches with a heavy sigh and fixed me with a pathetic, long-suffering look.
    “I hate to tell you this,” I said, “but we don’t have a loading dock. Wood crates?”
    “Yep.” The man reached back inside the cab, and a feminine hand passed him a clipboard with a thick stack of curled papers. “This here’s my wife, Ginger. I’m Karl DeVoss. Sure was a beautiful drive down the gorge. Got a big wildfire burning east a ways, though, that interfered with visibility for a while.”
    I stepped to the side and peeked in the cab, giving his wife a quick wave. She was pretty and petite, her wavy blonde hair pulled back with a blue ribbon. I wondered how she reached the pedals. My freight paperwork had listed them as both CDL holders.
    “So,” Karl continued, “we need to break open the crates?”
    “Yeah. I’m hoping there are inner cartons that we’ll be able to wheel inside with a hand truck or on dollies.”
    Karl clicked his pen and made a few notes on the top sheet. “Should be. This is our