Raked Over

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  That evening, I did research on ThaunderX so maybe I could put some of my thoughts in order before heading out to Carol and Marjo’s for an early breakfast the next morning. Since I had caught up with all pressing tasks at Vines, I could take the morning off, and lay in some stores, canning with Marjo, too. They were concerned after the two episodes of intrusion, and interested in Bernice and Nephew’s tales. But they didn’t know what had happened that afternoon yet, so I knew we were going to talk for hours about it the next day. Maybe some ThaunderX research would turn up something that would put some of the pieces together.

  There was a lot on ThaunderX—site after site, page after page. Seemed she was really popular in the 1980s, and marketed to the typical preteen demographic. I guess there were mini-books, more like comic books, with stories where ThaunderX would escape from the villain and outfox/outrun/outshoot the evil minions via secret caches of weapons or a super computer or something she needed just at that time, and the cache would have it. I guessed she had to stash things off body since there wasn’t much room in that tight body suit. It was amazing how much interest some people maintained in a fictional character. None of it made sense in the context of the Shannon’s trunk, though. By now my brain was too tired to think about much of anything, so I stopped and went to bed.

  I woke up in the middle of the night with a thought. I don’t know where it came from because when I woke up, it was there—secret caches, secret hiding places! The trunk had a secret hiding place! I’d solved it! I put on some shoes and started turning on lights on my way down the hall, through the studio, and to the shop. Pecos came with me, and by this time Patsy was awake, too, so she wanted to come along on the adventure, whatever it was. She yawned and stretched, and then pushed between me and the gentle Chow, wanting to be in the alpha dog spot no matter what time it was.

  All the outdoor security lights flipped on as we crossed the gravel yard to the shop, where Liz and I had unloaded the trunk once again. For the next hour, I checked out everything inside—every item, every inch of the inside of the trunk. My elation soon turned to disappointment, and I was glad there was no one around to whom I had boasted my midnight epiphany. No secret hiding places. The outside didn’t show any secret drawers or slides or false bottoms, either. As a last, rueful effort, I tried bumping it with the hammer to see if I would get lucky, as I had with the lock. No luck.

  By this time, Pecos had given up and was asleep on the shop floor, stretched out on the cool concrete. But he jumped awake when I started to gather things up and go out the door. Come on, Shorty Dog, I thought, it’s way past time to go to bed.

  I locked up, and the two of us went into the house to find that the bored Patsy had wandered back inside, knocked over the kitchen garbage can, and strewn the contents all over the floor—the coffee grounds mixed in with slimy, unidentifiable slippery objects were particularly enjoyable to clean up. She looked so innocent when we walked in, too. So I had to get that squared away before I finally made it off to bed once again. I had only a couple of hours before I had to get up. The joys of dog ownership.

  CHAPTER SEVEN