The Case of the Missing Teeth
76
Slim’s phone doesn’t ring very often, so on the rare occasions that it does he’s usually in for an adventure! This time it's a search and rescue operation for Miss Viola’s father, Woodrow, who went missing while making his daily rounds of the pastures. Unfortunately, the mission led by Hank, Slim, and Deputy Kile comes to a screeching halt when an unexpected Texas downpour turns the ranch roads to mud and strands their vehicles in a ditch. Now, it’s up to Viola to save the day and get the search team back on track. But, when the rain finally lets up, they soon realize that the most bizarre part of this day wasn’t something any of them could have predicted!
Read a Chapter
AAAAAAA-CHOOOOOOO!!
The grass in the hay meadow was looking good. In July, the slews would dry up and he would call Rudolph, the hay man, to start swathing and baling. This year’s hay crop promised to be a dandy…if the meadow dried out.
It was then that he noticed the tide of white-capped clouds advancing from the north. They looked pretty threatening. He hadn’t listened to the weather. Were the weather wizards predicting rain? It didn’t matter. They were usually wrong anyway. He wondered why anyone bothered listening to a weather report that said “50% chance of rain.”
There was a 50% chance that pigs would start wearing lipstick. There was a 50% chance that nothing would ever happen, anywhere, ever.
He continued driving through the meadow and noticed a spot covered with red and orange flowers, Indian blankets. They had popped up overnight and were releasing a powerful smell—not bad but not exactly sweet either. It made his nose itch and he felt a sneeze coming on.
He exercised discipline and resisted the sneeze. This was his body and his nose, and he didn’t want to sneeze. Sneezing got his sinuses stirred up and made his nose run. He chased away several sneezes but one finally got him.
He felt it coming and stopped the pickup on the side of the road. He didn’t want to blow snot all over the windshield, so he pointed his face out the window. His eyes sagged shut and his breath quivered, then air rushed into his chest and he exploded. It was a boomer, three sneezes rolled into one.
AAAAAAA-CHOOOOOOO!!
It was one of the biggest sneezes he’d ever produced. He wiped his eyes on a blue polka dot bandana that he always carried in his left hip pocket, across from the wallet he always carried in his right hip pocket, and honked his nose. In fact, he honked it three times.
He had just stuffed the bandana back into his right hip pocket when he was seized by an uneasy feeling. Something wasn’t right. The violent sneeze seemed to have changed something important in his life.
Then it struck him. The sneeze had blown his false teeth out the window! It was a dental plate he wore to replace two upper incisors, knocked out years ago when he slammed a ballpeen hammer against a pickup tire and it came back and hit him in the mouth, one of the dumbest stunts he’d ever pulled.
He was horrified that he’d blown his teeth out the window. Not only had that dental plate cost him a tub of money, but he was very self-conscious about that gap in his mouth. He didn’t want anyone to see him looking like a Halloween pumpkin. He didn’t even want to see himself that way.
He HAD to find those teeth!
