Doubled Up (Imogene Museum Mystery #2) Read Online Free Page B

flashing. Terry was definitely heading for the highway.
    Then I spotted bits of bright blue and yellow moving through the trees. I stepped out a few feet to get a better view. It was Ford in his raincoat, on the tractor he used for mowing. But instead of pulling the mower attachment, he was pulling a little trailer with the porta-potty strapped on it. The tractor and porta-potty plowed through the muddy lawn toward the access road.
    “Stop! Ford!” He was too far away to hear. I waved my good arm and jumped up and down. Ford kept looking back, checking his trailer, not watching ahead.
    The tractor chugged along at a poky pace while the semi shuddered with a gear change and charged even faster on the smooth pavement. Terry wasn ’t going to see a little tractor coming through the trees. My hand flew to my mouth, and I hunched my shoulders instinctively, bracing for impact.
    Ford reached the access road in front of the semi, but not by much. I couldn ’t tell from my angle, but surely there wasn’t enough distance separating the two vehicles for Terry to stop.
    For a split second everything moved in slow motion — Ford rolled fully onto the road, the lights on the patrol cars swooped across the dirty white semi trailer and the gray-barked tree trunks. Then the semi tractor skipped sideways with a horrible crunching noise as the trailer bore down on it, the brakes — or was it the gears — grinding, scraping, piercing, metal-on-metal screams.
    Ford swerved, and his action flung the porta-potty airborne. It popped off the trailer as if it was spring-loaded, the door flapping open in flight. A corner pogo-ed off the pavement, and the blue hut somersaulted a couple times before coming to a rest on its side.
    The semi shimmied in little hops, then stood still, heaving and steaming. Somehow Terry had whoaed that rocketing weight up and sideways, like a cowboy jerking the reins hard on a horse’s bridle, pulling the brute to a sitting stop.
    I sucked in a breath.
    Dale sprinted toward the cab, gun held stiff-armed, pointed down. When he came even with the door, he aimed at the driver’s window. His voice carried on the damp air. “Show me your hands. Now!”
    Terry ’s white face and two palms wobbled into view.
    Ford. Where was Ford?
    I charged the shortest distance, across the sucking mud, straight through lake-sized puddles. My nylon rain coat swished against tree trunks as I sideswiped them. Like a running back dodging lumbering linemen and free safeties, I swerved, stumbled, but kept my feet churning.
    My mud-caked boots felt like twenty-pound flippers by the time I reached the access road. I ran around the semi cab and stalled tractor, then tiptoed along the edge of neon blue chemical sludge that was oozing out of the damaged porta-potty. It reeked — a mixture of breath mints, orange peel and the kind of floor cleaner used in hospitals. Sicky-sweet and gross. Ford stood, arms akimbo, surveying the mess. He looked okay — no blood.
    I bent in half, panting.
    “Jim won’t like this,” Ford said.
    “ Jim?” I struggled for clean air.
    “ He told me to have the latrine out at the main road today. He’s goin’ to pick it up.”
    “ I don’t suppose it has to be right side up for him to pick it up.”
    Ford stepped back as the seepage crept toward the tips of his boots.
    “You alright?” I asked.
    “ Got nothin’ to complain about.”
    A giggle burbled up, and I couldn ’t hold it back. I patted Ford’s shoulder.
    Sheriff Marge power-walked up to us, huffing, accompanied by the crinkly rustle of her poncho. “Injuries?”
    Ford didn ’t answer, so I shook my head.
    “ Phew,” Sheriff Marge said.
    I glanced at her, but Sheriff Marge was staring off into the trees. The word could describe the odoriferous cloud emanating from the porta-potty or the entire morning ’s excitement or plain old relief at how a near-wreck hadn’t happened.
    “ How’s Terry?” I asked.
    “ Scared the hooey out of him.