Pearl of Great Price Read Free

Or at least it used to be orange. Now it was mostly an icky shade of rust. “Side mirror on my truck’s loose. This’d just about do the trick, I’m thinkin’.” He turned it every which way and twisted the screw thingy a few times. “How much, Julie?”
    “Make me an offer.”
    “A buck-fifty?”
    “Sold.” I keyed in the consignment code for Tom’s Tools & More and rang up the sale. I wrapped the clamp in a plastic bag and slid the fishing lure catalogue in beside it, then handed Lester our outgoing mail.
    He tucked the envelopes into one of his mailbag pockets. “Oops, almost forgot your newspaper.”
    “Thanks, Lester. The whole world would go to pot if I missed the latest edition of the Caddo Pines Recorder .” Usually four thin pages—eight at the most—the weekly publication promised everything you ever wanted to know, plus a lot you probably wished you didn’t, about the goings-on around our homey little town.
    Lester headed on his way, and a few minutes later the rear door banged shut, followed by rustling sounds in the storeroom. Grandpa appeared with a broom and dustpan and joined me behind the counter. “Estate sale was a bust—already picked over. Anything important in the mail?”
    “Nothing worth keeping. Mostly ads and catalogues.” I opened the Recorder and smoothed out the creases. “And the paper.”
    “What’s newsworthy in Caddo Pines this week?” Grandpa’s voice had a funny edge to it, like his mind was a million miles away.
    “Let’s see, Lacy Jones won the Memorial Day chili cook-off, a deer wandered into the feed store and polished off half a bag of corn . . .” A headline at the lower right snagged my attention: 25 th anniversary: Lake Hamilton regulars recall tragic drowning. Gut clenching, I pushed the paper away. “How awful. Why would they rerun a story about a little girl who died?”
    “Sells papers, I guess.” Grandpa snatched up the Recorder and tossed it into the recycling bin beneath the counter, then swung his broom like he was beating out fires. “Time’s a-wastin’, Julie Pearl. Hadn’t you oughta get some work done around here?”
    Now I knew for certain something was up with Grandpa. He never got this riled up without good reason. I snagged his arm and made him look at me. “You haven’t been yourself all weekend. Want to tell me what’s going on?”
    “Must be the heat. Don’t bother your head about it.” Heaving a shrug, he shuffled back to the workroom to do who-knew-what.
    My gaze darted toward the recycle bin, and I shuddered. Just as well Grandpa had tossed the Recorder , because the way I felt about water, I sure didn’t care to read an article about a drowning victim. Instead, I got busy with the bookkeeping, then polished real and imaginary fingerprints off the display cases, inventoried cups and napkins in the snack bar, and refilled the Coke machine.
    By mid-afternoon I’d grown so antsy and out of sorts that I took to rearranging coins in the cash register by the year of their mint. As I paused to admire my neat little stacks, the brass bells on the front door announced another visitor. I jumped about three feet off my barstool and sent a pile of pennies clattering across the counter. While my heartbeat backed off from hyper-drive, I swept up the pennies with my forearm and beamed a nervous smile toward a woman I’d never seen before. “Come on in, ma’am. Welcome to the Swap & Shop.”
    The chic Jackie Onassis look-alike cast a bland smile my way and stepped inside. Maybe I was the only under-50 person on the planet who’d notice the resemblance, but just yesterday I’d sold a shrink-wrapped 1968 Time Magazine with Jackie and Ari on the cover. Slender, thirty-something, and wearing a pale-yellow sundress, our new customer looked as rich as the late Jackie-O and just as mysterious behind wide tortoise-shell sunglasses.
    I scooped up the pennies I’d been counting and dropped them into the cash drawer. “Looking for