The Cane Mutiny Read Online Free Page A

king’s ransom. It feels practically empty, although you can hear something when you tip it. For all I know, there’s a human skeleton in there, and nothing else.”
    â€œWould you like me to pick it open?”
    â€œYou can do that?”
    She grinned lopsidedly. “Maybe you don’t know me that well after all. My daddy was a locksmith, remember?”
    â€œVaguely.”
    â€œWhen I was a little girl he was my hero. During school vacations I went with him on all his house calls. Believe me, Abby, I can pick any padlock with a paper clip, and as for combination locks, I once opened one with my toes.”
    Wynnell, bless her heart, is a bit on the hirsute side. Her eyebrows are like hedges—make that one long hedge—and joint trips to the beach have made me painfully aware that this is one woman who eschews waxing. Just the thought of her hairytoes picking at a lock made me want to poke out my mind’s eye. I dashed back into the showroom to grab a paper clip from my desk drawer.
    My friend was true to her word. It took her less time to open the lock than it took me to retrieve the paper clip.
    â€œWhat do you say to that, Abby?”
    â€œI say you’re a wizard, and that it’s a good thing you’re on the right side of the law.”
    She laughed happily. “Okay, Abby, go on and open it.”
    The truth be told, I would rather have opened the barrel when I was alone. Then I could have savored the thrill. But since Wynnell had just saved me a locksmith’s fee, I couldn’t very well exclude her from the event. But I’d be damned if she was going to get the first peek. I jokingly told her to stay back in case there was a live snake in there, and then, with hands trembling from excitement, released the metal band and pried off the lid with my fingertips.
    Wynnell, who was supposed to have stayed back, somehow managed to stick her head into the barrel before I could react. “It’s only a gym bag,” she bellowed, her voice thankfully muffled by the barrel.
    â€œLet me take it out.” If it sounded like an order, so be it.
    Wynnell stepped back obediently, but her prodigious brows puckered in the middle, displaying her true feelings. “I was only trying to be helpful.”
    â€œFor which I am eternally grateful.” I should have asked Wynnell, whose arms are nearly twice as long as mine, to hoist the bag out of the barrel. Instead I had to tip it, and unfortunately lost my grip. Fortunately, my Bob Ellis shoes were of the closed toe variety, or I might well have gone from a size four to a size two.
    At any rate, it was indeed a gym bag, cloth with plastic handles, probably dating from the sixties. Unless it was stuffed with cash, or jewels from a safe heist, it was hardly worth getting excited about. Of course that didn’t stop my heart from racing. We in the antiques business are, after all, treasure hunters.
    Just to torment Wynnell, I unzipped the bag as slowly as I dared while still having it look natural. I even pretended the zipper was stuck.
    â€œAbby, give it to me.”
    â€œNo, I’ve got it.” I yanked the bag open. When I saw what it contained, I dropped it immediately and sank to the floor in shock.
    â€œWhat is it?” Wynnell clambered over me to get the bag. “Abby, you’re acting really—oh my gosh, it’s a skull!”
    â€œIs it real?” Perhaps I’d jumped to the wrong conclusion.
    Despite her sometimes annoying habits, Wynnell is precisely the kind of woman I’d want as a companion on an Indiana Jones–style adventure. In a few seconds she overcame whatever squeamishness she was feeling, and reaching into the bag, withdrew the skull.
    â€œFeels real,” she said nonchalantly, as if she were a beauty pageant director assessing the mammary glands of a contested contestant. She hefted it and slid her fingers along the dome. “If it’s not real, then