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

second load for a museum, and the first one was packed to the nth degree. I expect this will be the same.”
    “Best access is around back. And there’s room back there for you to turn around, barely.”
    Karl’s face split into a tight grin. “I know all about barely. That’s why Ginger’s along — she does the tight spot maneuvering.”
    I glanced up at Ginger with new admiration. 
    Karl whistled for his dogs, and they responded with surprising alacrity. He scooped them up and plopped them on his seat before climbing in after them.
    I took the shortcut through the museum, making a dash up two stories to my office to grab the paperwork that I needed to match to Karl’s. On the way back down, breathing hard, I phoned Pete.
    “Hey, Babe,” I said. “Want a workout?”
    I could hear the grin in his voice. “What kind of workout?”
    “Sorry to disappoint you — it’s lifting heavy boxes.”
    “Will you kiss me when it’s over?” he asked.
    “Till you beg for mercy.”
    “I’m there.” Pete clicked off.
    I’m telling you, I picked a good one — husband I mean. I skipped down the last flight of stairs to the dark basement and flicked on a bank of light switches.
    The cavernous space slowly flickered into view, and the door at the far end swung open.
    “Missus Morehouse,” Ford shouted. He was silhouetted in the opening. “Truck’s here.”
    “Thanks, Ford,” I yelled back.
    Ford’s the caretaker for the Imogene’s property. He keeps the expansive lawn mowed and the shrubbery pruned. He’d also been helping me with the kitchen garden rejuvenation. But I think his favorite part of the job is unloading big deliveries. Ford’s happiest when he has something to do. He grew up in an age when those with learning disabilities weren’t diagnosed, just stereotyped and separated. No matter his IQ, he’s one of the most perceptive and empathetic people I’ve met.
    He knows Pete and I are married now — he’d been reminding me of the coming event with eager anticipation for the past couple weeks — but I’ll always be Missus Morehouse to him. In fact, Pete’s and my first date, if you can call it that, included Ford seated between us in my pickup on the way home from a high school football game. Good times.
    I hustled down the narrow aisle between piled boxes of items I still hadn’t documented for display and the leftover junk an old building accumulates but doesn’t readily dispose of through more than a century, first as a vacation residence and then as a museum. The Imogene’s basement is an archaeological dig in its own right.
    Nearer the basement door was an area I’d cleared, hoping it was sufficient floor space to hold the contents of the crates with a little room to spare for further unpacking, photographing, tagging and researching. Greg and I would be operating in close quarters for the foreseeable future.
    I stepped through the open door into the blinding sunlight. I trotted up the ramp in time to see the semi-truck and trailer backing steadily, and very neatly, into place.
    Karl and Ginger must have swapped seats because it was Ginger who stuck her head out the driver’s window and called, “Close enough?”
    “Yup,” Ford shouted back.
    Karl walked me through all the spots I needed to initial and sign on his paperwork, then he punched a code into the lockbox which was clamped around the handles on the trailer’s rear doors.
    “Handy new gadget,” he said. “This lock has a GPS mechanism that only allows me to open it when it’s within a specified geographic zone. Our dispatcher plugged the museum’s coordinates into the system. If we’d tried to open it a mile down the road, nothing would have happened. Prevents tampering and theft. Safest way to travel.” He heaved on the doors and pulled them open.
    “Whew. Somewhat anti-climactic, isn’t it, my dear?” Rupert wheezed as he shuffled up.
    He was right — as far as it went. Crates are nothing special. “It’s