“You bought the ghost that the woman auctioned off on eBay so he wouldn’t frighten her son?”
“Yes.”
“You bought Grandpa’s ghost?”
“Yes.”
“Then I’m not surprised the cane is gone.”
“What do you mean?”
“Aunt Sophie, the auction of the ghost and his cane are all over the Internet. It’s been on television and in every newspaper. If you weren’t always watching Jeopardy! at news time, you’d know that.”
“The news is depressing. Jeopardy! is educational.”
“You’re famous. Well, not you exactly. No one knows who the sucker . . . I mean, who the highest bidder was.”
“One man knows who the highest bidder was. He said he wanted to buy the cane for his collection of oddities. I wouldn’t sell it so he stole it. I want it back.”
“Who tried to buy it from you?”
“John Smith, but if that’s his name I’m Sophia Loren.”
“How much did he offer?”
“A hundred.”
“A hundred dollars?”
“A hundred thousand.”
“He offered you a hundred thousand dollars?”
Sophie was too upset to enjoy the effect this must be having on her nephew. First he learned that a hundred grand had almost been added to his inheritance. Then he heard that some bastard had stolen what, within a split second, he had come to think of as his own.
Skip’s ego was a black hole of self-interest. The light of altruism could not escape it. Sophie was counting on that to set him baying on Mr. Smith’s trail like a bloodhound after a pork chop on the lam.
“What’s Mr. Smith’s phone number?”
“He blocked it on caller ID, but I heard slot machines in the background.”
“I’ll bet he’s the owner of that new casino, the Milagro. He has a display case full of stupid stuff. He paid fifty-eight thousand for a pizza with the image of the Virgin Mary in the cheese. He even bought Napoleon’s penis, for chrissake. He keeps it in a pickle jar.”
The fact that Mr. Smith might have a sense of humor about Napoleon Bonaparte’s personal gherkin was lost on Sophie. The last thing she wanted was for her nephew to hear her cry, but the full impact of the theft finally hit her.
“I want him back.”
“What do you mean? Who’s ‘him’?”
“Gabe.”
“Gabe?”
“The boy’s grandfather.”
“Gramps came with the cane?”
“Yes.”
Technology for videophones had been around for decades, but there was a reason why they’d been slow to catch on. Sometimes a person doesn’t want to be seen, and not just because he’s taking the call in the john.
Sophie’s nephew wouldn’t have wanted her to see the grin on his face when he heard that she thought she had bought a real-dead ghost. Now he wouldn’t have to wait for her to die, which, given her tough-as-toenails constitution, could take another twenty years. He could have her declared mentally incompetent and seize control of her land and considerable savings, plus whatever sum he would wring from the owner of the Milagro.
When large amounts of money were involved, Skip was very good at bluff and persuasion. He would go to the Milagro and take a photo of the cane. It probably still had Aunt Sophie’s fingerprints all over it. In return for telling his aunt that some anonymous Atlantic City mogul had bought it, he would demand a cut of the hundred grand Mr. Smith had saved with his sticky-fingered discount.
He was confident that Mr. Smith would agree. Men like him had as much ego as money invested in whatever their particular obsession might be. What was the use of scoring the cane if he couldn’t display it without some old lady making a fuss and getting her picture in all the papers?
“I’ll look for Mr. Smith, Aunt Sophie, and I’ll call you in the next couple days.”
Sophie hardly slept that night and she spent the next day pacing. When her nephew didn’t get in touch the second day, she called his office. His secretary said no one had seen him and he wasn’t answering his pager.
Still wearing the clothes she had put on to clean the barn that morning, Sophie drove over the mountain pass to Vegas. Usually she steered her old Chevy into the slow lane and stayed there. Today she passed everything on the road, including the owner of a Cadillac convertible who was taking his ratty gray ponytail for a spin with the top down.
She arrived at the casino to find the entrance ringed by police cars, utility vehicles, and media vans with rooftop satellite dishes sprouting like mushrooms. A large crowd of spectators and casino employees had gathered in the parking lot. Most looked merely curious, but a few held signs advising the unsaved to prepare for the Apocalypse.
Sophie walked unchallenged past the barricade of yellow tape. Computer geeks, security guards, policemen, and executive suits swarmed inside. The geeks hovered among ranks of slot machines that were silent for the first time ever. The security personnel tried to look in charge of a situation that was clearly out of control. The police were interviewing a gaggle of hysterical women, slots players by the look of them. The suits stood in a worried clot, their cash-register brains calculating the losses from the unplugged one-armed bandits.
Sophie wondered if Mr. Smith was among them. She hoped so. Slot machines once had been gambling’s stepchildren. Now they accounted for 70 percent of casino profits. When slots players weren’t happy, nobody was happy. And Sophie could see that at least some of Milagro’s slots players were very unhappy indeed.
The casino’s main hall was as big as three football fields. Sophie walked to the far end where a glass display case spanned the wall from side to side and from floor to ceiling. It contained oddities alright. The Holy Mother of Pizza, a two-headed snake, and a stuffed, five-legged calf were only a few examples of the bizarre, the grotesque, and the downright screwball. There was even the pickle jar with what looked like a piece of blackened shoelace suspended in a vitreous substance. The label claimed it was Napoleon’s penis. If that was true, it explained a great deal about the man. Poor Josephine.
Sophie saw only the long mahogany case, lined in red velvet, propped upright with the lid open to reveal the cane inside. She stood with the palms of her hands pressed against glass that had to be bulletproof. She wanted to take a swing at it with one of the wrought iron bar stools, but she was sure that whatever hit it would bounce off. Also, she could not be of any use to Gabe if she was in a jail cell.
She decided to go in search of Mr. Smith’s office. Maybe security would mistake her for a cleaning woman. Maybe the key was in Mr. Smith’s desk drawer. Maybe the drawer was unlocked. Maybe everyone would be too busy with the defective slot machines to notice her take it.
She wouldn’t have wagered a plug nickel on the success of the plan, but it was the only one she had.
As she turned to go, her sweaty palm stuck to the glass. She felt it move sideways ever so slightly. The sliding glass panel was unlocked. What was it the old sage had said when an earnest pilgrim asked him for the key to the universe? “The bad news is, there is no key. The good news is, it isn’t locked.”
Sophie slid the panel open enough to reach in. She took what she had come for and closed the door again.
Pretending to lean on the cane for support, she headed for the front of the building. When anyone got in her way she gave the dragon a subtle wave and they moved aside without appearing to see her. She felt like Moses parting the Red Sea with his staff.
She stopped at the two slot machines that were preoccupying a dozen techies with gizmo belts slung low on their hips. The machines had levers for the nostalgic players to pull, but since the innards were computerized, a button served just as well. The repairmen had taken off the machines’ back panels and were poking at the circuitry, the reels, and the random-number generator inside each one.
From the front, the slot machines looked like all the others. Then Sophie took a closer at one of them. It had a pictur
e of a sprig of cherries in the left-hand window, but the watery blue eyes of Sophie’s nephew stared, terrified, from the other two.
Sophie stood transfixed. She didn’t know if Gabe had had anything to do with this, but she would have to figure out a way to ask him. Maybe she could persuade him to use his influence on the Other Side to spring the poor sap’s soul from slots hell.
She turned around to see what was wrong with the machine across from her nephew’s. It displayed one lemon and two eyes as dark and bitter as cold coffee grounds. They stared at her without fear or remorse. The Devil had better watch his back.
“Mr. Smith, I presume,” Sophie murmured. She lifted the cane in salute. “Arrivederci, wise guy.”
No one saw her leave and walk out into the crowded parking lot. Among the protesters, gawkers, ranters, and exhibitionists gathered there, no one thought it odd when a silver-haired woman in faded blue jeans, a flannel shirt, and manure-smeared sneakers began to dance a jig around her cane. No one noticed her pick it up and waltz away with it among the flashing blue and red strobes of the police cars’ lights.
Sophie’s nephew and Mr. Smith learned the hard way that they couldn’t beat the odds in a game of good and evil. Treachery and avarice don’t stand a ghost of a chance in the Twilight Zone.
Corporate employee Nick Penby is a workaholic in a modern, fast-paced world. Caught in his daily grind, he lives alone, a solitary, hardworking man cast adrift from friends and neighbors, and far too busy to slow down. Eager to streamline his life, he’s recently moved into a new, attractive community that promises every convenience and amenity. Yet, Nick Penby is about to discover that his dream of a quiet neighborhood may just turn out to be his worst nightmare when he moves into . . . the Twilight Zone.
I
f it hadn’t been for the dog, Nick Penby might not have noticed anything seriously wrong with his neighborhood.
It was dusk. He was driving home almost on autopilot after a long day at the office, his mind numb from hours of battling figures. A light, drizzling mist was falling, and there, glimpsed between sweeps of the wipers, sat the dog, hunkered down in his driveway, its eyes shining in the car headlights.
“Christ!” He slammed on the brakes.
Bedraggled and wet, of no particular breed, the dog didn’t run.
Wide awake now, Nick rolled down his window, letting the drizzle come in, and flapped his hand at the animal. “Shoo! Get out of the way!”
It didn’t move.
Grumbling to himself, he thrust open his car door and marched up to the dog. “Go home! You don’t belong here. Get out of the way, you stupid mutt!”
The dog stood up, took one limping step, and sat down again, holding up its front paw. Looking into its gentle eyes, Nick felt some of the day’s pressures ease from his tense shoulders. He blinked against the pelting rain, and crouched beside the dog to let it sniff his hand.
It didn’t seem to be afraid of him. With dignity, it gave his fingers a quick lick, then went back to staring at him with that same beseeching gaze.
Nick found himself petting the dog. “How’d you get hurt, huh?”
His fingers dug through the dog’s wet fur for a collar. None. He felt a spurt of irritation. “So what’s wrong with your owner, letting you go out on a night like this without your tags?”
Nuzzling his hand, the dog whined softly.
Nick went back to his car and raised the garage door. Then he ran his hands gently over the dog’s body, testing for any sore spots that might make the animal snap in pain, and gingerly picked it up. He was going to have dog hair all over his new suit. Again, he felt a spurt of irritation before dismissing it. Didn’t matter. Free pickup and delivery to the dry cleaner’s was just one of many conveniences in Haven Estates.
Carrying the dog into his utility room, he put it on top of the washer to look at its paw. The pad was badly cracked and bleeding a little. A sharp sandbur was stuck into it as well. It took a while to pick the burr out. The dog flinched a little and whined, but didn’t object, as though it realized he was trying to help it. By the time he finished, Nick had managed to stick the burr into his own finger, which meant some awkward work with the tweezers and a liberal dose of antiseptic for both of them.
Wagging its tail, the dog gave Nick a quick slurp on his chin.
“Hey!” he said in sharp protest, then smiled, enjoying the dog’s wiggling gratitude. “You’re welcome, old buddy. I guess that sticker was really hurting you.”
He hadn’t owned a dog since high school. In college, no time or money; since then, too busy with the fast-lane trajectory of his career. But tonight, he found himself enjoying the little chores of filling a bowl with water and spreading out a couple of towels and an old blanket on the floor. The dog drank thirstily before curling up, licking its paw, and resting while Nick parked his car in the near-empty garage that held only a dusty set of unused golf clubs and an equally unused toolbox. Normally he ate takeout, but he wasn’t sure the dog would like Chinese food. Earlier that week, he’d ordered groceries online, and his refrigerator was well stocked. Finding some hamburger meat, he hunted through his cupboards for a skillet to cook it in, and ended up scrambling enough for both of them.
Usually, by this time of night—almost eight—he was back on his laptop, putting in some extra work. That had been his routine since moving here: up at six, on the commute to the city by seven-fifteen, home by six or seven, dinner, a couple of beers, and back on the laptop until bedtime. Four months ago, he’d accepted a promotion and job transfer, moving into this quiet, spanking-new neighborhood that was close enough to the city to work but gave him a complete change. He’d done the hip urban scene: the downtown loft with an edgy vibe of cement and exposed pipe, lots of parties, even the trendy, live-in girlfriend. Now Whitney was gone, the loft was gone, and the parties didn’t matter anymore. All he wanted was peace and quiet so he could work. He’d found it here in Haven Estates, on a suburban street called Ladybrook Lane, and until tonight he’d been grateful for the numbness of his routine that gave him no reason to think or bother.
Now, however, he found himself restless, unwilling to settle down at the computer and bored with the thought of TV, even one as amazing as the superwide, superhigh-resolution flat panel hanging on his wall. Compliments of the builder when he moved in, it was calibrated for amazing picture quality and plugged into the latest, newest, highest-tech wiring currently available for the residential market. In fact, he lived in a so-called Clever Home. He could program the lights and the sealed, gas-log fireplace to come on, the oven to be preheating, and his preselected on-demand movie to be playing the moment he walked in the door.
When he’d first moved in, he’d loved all the gadgetry. Now he took it for granted and didn’t use half the features. After all, when he wasn’t working, he was sleeping.
Except tonight. He checked on the dog, now snoring. It hadn’t left the utility room to venture into the rest of his house, as though it sensed it might not be welcome.
Leaning against the doorjamb, Nick frowned at it. Now that its coat was dry, it had turned into a cute, gray-and-white fluffy dog with expressive eyebrows and a beard, all packed into a mediumsize package.
Wouldn’t cost much to feed, he found himself thinking.
Alarmed, he started figuring out how he was going to find the dog’s owner. Some little kid somewhere was probably crying for it right now.
Slipping on a jacket, he walked to the house next door. The lights were still on. He heard the muffled sounds of a television playing. During the four months he’d lived on this street, he’d yet to meet the couple. Until now, he hadn’t been interested in them. He’d probably transfer out next year anyway. Why get involved?
Nobody answered the doorbell beneath the small plaque that said ANDERSON. Shivering a little in the cool March night, Nick fidgeted on their porch before ringing the bell again. Then he knocked. No one came.
Muttering to himself about people who fell asleep with the
ir lights and TV going, he headed across the street. No one answered the door there, either. As for the two-story house on the other side of him, the one that must have little kids because now and then he saw small bicycles and scooters lying in the driveway, all the lights were out. Besides, he didn’t think the dog was theirs. He’d never noticed one barking in their backyard.
So he went home, and, instead of watching the late news, he made flyers to post in the neighborhood before he left for work in the morning.
A week later, Nick figured he now owned a dog. No one had called in response to his flyers. Maintenance had cleared them so quickly that he wasn’t sure anyone had seen them. No one had answered the Found ad he ran in the newspaper. No one had advertised for a lost, gray-and-white dog, either. He had carried the dog up and down Ladybrook, knocking on doors, but no one had answered, and he’d never seen any kids out playing whom he could ask.
“I’ve done my best,” he said as Buddy reared up on his knees and wiggled all over. “I guess you dropped in from outer space, because no one seems to think you’re missing.”
As strays went, Buddy was a gem. He was housebroken and well-mannered. He didn’t bark excessively, dig holes in Nick’s backyard, or steal food. As soon as his paw healed, however, he began to pester Nick every evening whenever Nick picked up the TV remote. He either brought Nick his squeaky toy for a game or he would bark and run to the front door, begging for a walk.
So Nick bought a leash and collar on his lunch hour, and left work promptly at five, instead of lingering an extra hour or two like usual. He turned through his neighborhood gates, smiling with anticipation, and saw a handful of people strolling the sidewalks. Cars were pouring home. Ladybrook Lane looked livelier than he’d ever seen it since he moved in. He rushed inside, greeted an ecstatic Buddy, fastened on the new collar, found his old sneakers, and headed out. He figured he could meet his neighbors, start learning his way around, maybe even make an acquaintance or two.
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