Deadly Reunion

by Mary Bowers

  “Is that why you were after me, always interviewing me? You thought I needed protection?”

  “Not exactly.”

  “Then why, exactly?”

  He looked at me from beneath hooded eyes for a moment. “I believe in luck. I won’t go so far as to say I believe in the paranormal, but you’ve got a shine to you. Call it luck, call it karma. I don’t mind taking advantage of luck, karma, whatever, even if it’s somebody else’s. When I first met you, I figured you were, um, eccentric? Maybe even weird, but harmless. I’ve changed my mind. Not completely, you understand,” he added, seeing my face get smug. “Just a little. These days, I don’t think you’re harmless. Well, I think I’ll be moving on. Time to get to work. Come on down to the office later and let me get some of this down officially.”

  He threw that out as an afterthought, and I knew it wasn’t. Damn. I thought I was through with the man.

  I started to stir, figuring it was about time to get in and shower, but before I could get myself set, I saw Edson Darby-Deaver walking around the corner of the house toward us. I wondered how long he’d had to wait for Bruno to leave. And I didn’t have to ask him why he hadn’t come through the house; Myrtle was there, and he’d probably heard our voices and realized that we were outside anyway.

  “Congratulations,” he said to me after nodding at Michael. For some reason, Michael makes him nervous. Come to think of it, most people make Ed nervous. Unless they’re dead. Then he won’t leave them alone. He sat down in the vacant rocker next to me and said, “A very efficient investigation, from what I’ve heard. Well done. Yes.” He switched gears, moving on to what really interested him. “Now. We never went back over the notes from the sweep of Fred Rambo’s condo.”

  “Ed, I explained all that. That was just misdirection, to keep Terri off her guard, and give us a chance to snoop for anything obvious that might be laying around. Fred lived alone. I figured if he was investigating something, it would be right out in the open.”

  “Yes, yes, I understood all that, but I have results anyway.”

  “You do?” Michael and I said it at the same time.

  He shuffled around in his messenger bag and came out with some papers. “Ah, here they are. Yes. Results: negative. No haunting that I can detect, although I usually like to take another crack at it before I make a final determination. I gather that that won’t be possible in this case?”

  “You gather right,” I told him.

  “Ah, well. If there are further disturbances, we’re bound to hear about them.”

  “We’ll be sure to let you know.”

  “And Taylor?”

  “Yes?”

  “I advise you strongly to have no further contact with Victor Smith, or Victor Pacetti, or whatever he’s calling himself these days.”

  “How did you know I was in contact with him?”

  He shrugged. “He’s a resource. You could only get so far with what was in Mr. Rambo’s notes. To go farther, you needed an inside man.” I was startled, but didn’t mention that Bruno had used the same term. “But he is a – how shall I say this? – an unsavory resource, no matter how clever. Consider him a last resort, and avoid him if at all possible.”

  I nodded, and rocked gently for a while. “I put a sticky note over the computer’s camera today.”

  I thought I was being inscrutable, but they got it.

  “Ah. Good. Glad to hear it,” Ed said. He looked away. “Is that a manatee?”

  “Probably not,” I said, looking at the place in the river that he lifting his chin at. “They don’t come this far up the river very often. But why don’t we go over and see, anyway.”

  “Agreed.”

  Michael smiled at my quirky friend, and we all got up lazily and walked over to the seawall to see what we could see.

  THE END