but part of me has to," said Qwilleran.

"Well, that's perfectly understandable seeing how the two of you were an item for years. Perfectly understandable. I'm finished with my work on her so the body is in the cooler. Listen, if you want to turn around and go back home sight unseen I wouldn't blame you. It will take some time for the lab I use to return the test results to me anyway but I can tell you this much: She was shot once in the gut, and from what I've been able to ascertain that alone could have killed her but I can't make my final determination on that till the test results come back to me."

He stared at Sara as an incredulous look overtook his face.and it seemed the earth would yield nothing of value, the shovel hit something. He began scraping away dirt from atop an object that seemed to be taking the shape of a very large box made of some type of metal. Several more minutes of digging and scraping revealed the box-like object to be much larger than originally thought. Qwilleran stood up and straightened his signature orange baseball cap and smoothed down his copious mustache, which had begun to tingle. He silently prayed that did not mean he was about to find a dead body, but such sensations emanating from the sizable cookie duster were actually notifications, and they were never good. As he removed more and more dirt from the object, he realized he'd need mechanical help