Deadly Sanctuary Read Online Free PDF Page A

disheveled looking teen-ager clad in ragged jeans and tank top.
    “This ain’t a charity dining room. I’m sick to death of you free loaders jumping off the bus and coming in here to order up a meal you can’t pay for!” She hustled the girl out the door. “You want a free meal, get your butt to the shelter three blocks over.”
    The teen cast a spiteful glance at Lucinda before slinking away, and I couldn’t help but think of the pathetic young girl I’d picked up last week.
    For a few seconds, the room was bathed in silence, and then one grizzled customer drawled, “Aw, Lucy. Now what’d you go an’ do that for? She looked real pitiful, like a starved pup. You’re not gonna go broke sharin’ a sandwich with the kid.” That brought a hoot of laughter from the man’s companions.
    Lucinda fixed him with a formidable glare. “You mind your own business, Elwood. I wouldn’t care if it was just once in a while, but this is getting real old. It seems like every ragamuffin runaway in the country makes a beeline for my place. I can’t afford to feed all of them. Let that Phillips woman do her job.” With that she dusted her hands together and marched behind the counter.
    “Poor little things,” Ginger sighed, her expression troubled. “My sister Bonnie was showing me a magazine article just last week. They’re called throwaway kids.” Her voice got lower, more confidential. “As young as eleven or twelve they’re turning tricks for food and money. Ain’t that jest shameful?”
    “Awful. What shelter is Lucinda talking about?”
    In between bites of her sandwich, she told me about the Desert Harbor Shelter located in a “big ol’” house on Tumbleweed, and run by a woman named Claudia Phillips. “I heard tell the place operates on a shoestring. She can’t do a whole lot but give them kids some food and clothes and a place to stay a spell.” Then, with an ominous tone, she added, “Them are the lucky ones. Some of them little gals just plum vanish. Poof!”
    “Vanish?”
    “White slave traders.”
    “What are you talking about?”
    “It was in all the papers. This gang was taking blue-eyed blonde gals and selling ’em to them people over yonder for their harems or some such thing.”
    “Oh, Ginger, get real.”
    “I swear on my mama’s Bible! And then there was that bunch in Mexico snatching ’em up for human sacrifices.”
    Impatient to return to the previous subject, I steered the conversation back to John Dexter’s suspicions about Bradley.
    “Oh, yeah. Well, as I was sayin’…” She glanced at her watch and wailed, “Good Lord, it’s almost one o’clock. Tugg’s gonna have my fanny in a crack if I’m late again! I gotta scoot.”
    Twice now in two hours I’d let myself get sidetracked. “Wait a minute! You can’t just drop a bombshell like that and then leave me hanging.”
    “Sorry, sugar. Lookee here. Why don’t y’all come on over to supper tomorrow night? I’ll rustle up a pot of my famous Texas chili, some homemade cornbread, and fill in the rest.”
    “Okay.”
    She scribbled her address on a napkin and bolted out the door.
    Aware that I had twenty minutes to kill before covering another terminally boring meeting at City Hall, I stepped outside, squinting into the glaring sunlight. I’d walked only a few feet from the door when one of Ginger’s remarks struck me. Had I been so busy concentrating on what John Dexter had to do with Bradley’s wife that I’d missed something important? Plopping down on the nearby shaded bus bench I pulled out the note Tugg had given me and read it again, zeroing in on the phrase, “dead teens.”
    I flipped open my notepad. In the center of the page, I drew a circle, wrote John Dexter’s name in the middle, and then extended lines outward like bicycle spokes. On each line I placed one of the statements in the note, then leaned back against the hard wooden backrest to study it, only vaguely aware of people and traffic.
    Was I way