Cradle Of Secrets Read Online Free Page A

as the year before. I had to kick two people out of the motel just this morning to make room for guests who’d booked last year.”
    Tammie forced herself to keep her disappointment from showing.
    â€œYou in town for the auctions?”
    â€œAh, yeah, I thought I’d check it out.” She didn’t know anything about any auction, but any information she could get about the town would help her decide where to start asking questions.
    He laughed, placing his hand on top of the paper. “Little lady, this isn’t a place people just wander into during auction week. This small town of three thousand is going to grow to about a hundred thousand, and stay that way until the auctions are over. People come from all over the country to this event. In a matter of days, this place is going to be crawling with people. The traffic on these roads will be horrendous, and only the locals know how to navigate their way around it.”
    The clerk pulled a map out of a container filled with pamphlets from area businesses and started circling spots in town. Motioning her closer to the counter, he stuck his finger on a map. “Now, here’s Jackson’s—they’re the biggest auction house, but they don’t open until three days into the week. Auction Acres is the first on the row, but these days Trudie Burdett is showing her goods with Jackson’s. She gets better exposure that way. Then these open fields are vendors in tents. Those fields go for about a half mile on both sides of the road. They’ve got everything from furniture to jewelry to antique lunch boxes for sale.”
    Tammie viewed the map with amazement. “Wow. This is huge.”
    The elderly clerk laughed and thrust the paper out to her. “No one ever gets through the whole thing in a day. It’s best to plan ahead. Make sure you take this map with you.”
    â€œBut what about hotels?” Tammie asked.
    The man shrugged. “If you don’t have a reservation locked in somewhere within a twenty-mile radius, I’m afraid you’re out of luck. About the only place around here with room is the campground. You might be able to rent a trailer there, if they aren’t all spoken for by now. Julius usually has a few on loan for people like yourself.”
    Tammie stifled a sigh, refusing to allow herself to be discouraged. Twenty miles wasn’t all that far to drive, if it meant getting information about her parents.
    The letter she’d found in her mother’s hatbox from someone named Dutch was the only thing she had to go on. It was dated a few months after she was born. The little scribbled note simply read that Dutch had taken care of everything—not to worry and to stay safe. What that meant, Tammie didn’t know. She had never heard her parents mention a person named Dutch. But that was the only thing she had to go on here in Eastmeadow.
    She’d avoided looking at the hatbox and its contents after her parents died. But when she discovered she wasn’t their biological daughter, she’d gone looking for something that could prove the DNA evidence wrong. That small piece of mail with an Eastmeadow, Massachusetts, postmark had made her cross the country in search of answers.
    â€œThank you for your help,” she said, turning toward the door.
    â€œGood luck finding a place to stay. And hang on to your wallet.”
    His comment made her stop and turn back. “Why is that?”
    â€œIf the fever for some good antiques don’t make you spend your life savings, thieves of another kind will take it from you. We get a lot of vagrants in town during auction week, trying to score, if you know what I mean. An event like this doesn’t always bring out the cream of the crop.”
    She smiled. “Thanks for the warning.”
    The hot June air hit her in the face as she walked out the door, but she refused to feel defeated. Twenty miles to the nearest hotel? Not a big