AUTHOR NOTE:   Two chapters added today, in hope you'll forgive me for messing up last week.  Just found out on Wednesday morning that last Friday's chapter didn't get published like I thought it did! Sorry!  So, today, enjoy chapters 15 and 16 of The Mammoth Murders.  Happy reading!

Thursday morning.

The next day, Carlo slept in.

Shepard made his own breakfast of dry cereal. He called the cat's name several times but got no answer. He kicked the empty cat-food bowl on his way to the back door.

A few minutes later, Shep woke Carlo by shoving Carlo's bedroom door open with enough force to whack the knob into the wall.

"Ask me why I now have a really bad bruise on my sternum!" Shepard bellowed.

Carlo rolled up onto one elbow and rested his thoroughly tousled head on his hand. His voice was raspy with sleep. "You say you have a bruise?"

"Yes! And it really hurts. I'm going to have to put ice on it. I'll probably need to go for x-rays. Now, ask me why!"

"I suppose you would get x-rays because you think something is broken or—"

"Not why the x-rays, you clown! Why I have a really bad bruise in the middle of my chest!"

Carlo yawned and mumbled, "Why do you have a really bad bruise in the middle of your chest." He didn't even raise his tone at the end to indicate a question. He probably didn't care about the answer. Or maybe he already knew it.

"I have a really painful bruise in the middle of my chest because somebody blockaded the back door with a very heavy, very hard, automobile with a very nasty protrusion aimed exactly at my breastbone!"

"Yeah," Carlo said after another yawn. "That would be the Go 'Gators flag the signorina mounted on the side window, you know, back when Signorina Miranda was driving that car. ... Why did you not go out the front door?"

"Why didn't I—? Because last night when I went to bed, the car was parked at the front door, and you know it. You moved it!"

Carlo finally pushed himself to a sitting position. "I moved the front door? That is very funny, signor."

"Not the door! The car! Admit it, you moved the car from the front door to the back door—"

"Si, I did."

"—because you knew I would go out the back door this morning—"

"Si, you did."

"—and you made sure that silly flag would smack me like a Mack truck."

"Well, technically, you smacked it. The flag did not attack."

Shep took several deep breaths, pressing a hand against his chest, and then took two steps forward and sat down on the edge of Carlo's bed.

After three more calming breaths, the time for shouting was over. Both men now spoke in normal voices.

"And you can stop calling me 'signor.' We both know you're only pretending to show respect."

"That was not 'pretending,' it was sarcasm. Maybe blind people just do not understand irony."

"Not true. And not fair. Let's not insult all blind people just because you're mad at me."

"Si, I am."

"And, I'm guessing you think you're teaching me a lesson."

"Si, I am. I am showing you how it feels when someone hurts you. When someone hurts your heart."

Carlo poked Shep's sternum with his index finger.

Shep flinched and slid a few inches away on the bed, out of Carlo's reach.

They sat quietly together. Shep moved his hand in massaging circles on his chest.

A dove coo-cooed in the crepe myrtle tree outside. The central air conditioning unit, beneath Carlo's bedroom window, ca-thunked to life and began its cooling hmmm.

Finally, Shepard stood and walked toward the bedroom door. "I'll make you breakfast while you shower. After we eat, we need to meet in the office and go over the reports on the search for David Zhang."

"Okay."

"After I put an ice pack on my new bruise."

"Right. See you later."

Farmer Tom Rigby did not know that David Zhang had gone missing. The farmer went about his daily chores in a relaxed, backwoods-Florida way, without big-city angst or stress. Once in a while he stopped by the sinkhole and studied its walls, mentally measuring the mammoth fossil he saw partially exposed there.

About a week after David's disappearance, Rigby's sinkhole seemed to have stopped growing — at least until the next colossal rainstorm. He began making plans to get serious about exploring his new natural asset.

That was what Tom was doing, using a legal pad, at his kitchen table, when someone knocked at the farmhouse front door.

"Come around to the back!" Tom shouted, knowing the house was small enough, and so little insulated, that someone standing on the front porch would easily hear Tom call out from the kitchen.

Sure enough, moments later footfalls thumped on the rickety wooden stoop, and someone rattled the kitchen door with their rapping.

Tom left the table and answered the door. "Well, come on in the house! Good mornin' to ya. What are you doing way out here?"

The visitor entered, smiling. "Surprise! Good morning, Tom."

"Take a seat, take a seat. I got coffee on the stove. Milk or sugar for you?"

"Both, thanks." The visitor sat at the kitchen table and glanced at the notes on Tom's legal pad. "If you've got a few minutes, I want to talk about that mammoth in your sinkhole. I think it could be worth a good bit of money to you."

Tom looked over his shoulder from where he was taking a mug out of a cabinet. "I thought you, of all people, would want me to donate it to the university. That was my plan, anyway."

"That is a good plan," the visitor said, "but hear me out before you sign any papers."

Tom set two mugs on the table between them and sat down.

"I ain't against a little extra cash. Plenty of fixin'-up to do around this place, doncha know. So, if yer talkin', I'm listenin'."

Back in Minokee, Shepard and Carlo had finished breakfast and settled into Shep's little office with fresh cups of coffee. Carlo brought his laptop and opened it on the desk between them.

While Carlo was reading aloud three overnight e-mail messages from his street team, Shep's cellphone played the five-note motif from "Close Encounters of the Third Kind."

"It's Rocket Man," both men said in unison. Shep answered the phone and put it on speaker. After exchanging quick greetings, Rocket reported eagerly.

"Do you know a guy named Rigby?"

"Tom Rigby?" Shep asked.

"Got a farm and some woodland on the Pig River."

"That's Tom. We know him, but he had no connection to David Zhang."

"He does now. Guess who's in his house with him right this very minute!"

AUTHOR NOTE:  Thanks for reading chapter 15. I hope it was fun.  Now, click your voting star below and hurry on to chapter 16 without delay!  Au revoir.

P.S. The Mammoth Murders e-book price goes up 33% starting Nov. 7 (tomorrow) on all book sellers' websites. You can save a buck if you get yours today. mybook.to/MammothMurders is the worldwide Amazon link.  (Just saying. TMM will still be on Wattpad for you.)