“Good morning,” Victor greeted, smiling at Tom and dropping the newspapers onto the table. He glanced around the room and asked, “All quiet?”
Tom looked up at the various glass-fronted cases, each one sealed with salt and leaded glass. Each a pleasant little prison for some ghost and their item.
“I sure as hell hope so,” Tom replied cheerfully.
Victor shook his head as he walked to the kitchen area. “Language, please, Tom.”
“Come on, it’s not that bad,” Tom responded with a grin.
“Bad enough,” Victor sighed.
Tom chuckled and turned his attention back to the computer. He had dozens of links to odd and obscure websites, blogs, and YouTube channels. All dealt with the dead, the appearances of ghosts in the world. More than a few were run by absolute lunatics, Tom knew, but even among them was the occasional nugget of information, a curious little truth.
Every day, between his studies and his work with Victor as they assisted Moran and Moran, Tom mined the sites. What was more, he had access to the impressive catalog of items sold by Moran and Moran. Each morning, Tom checked the results of a program that searched for any haunted objects listed by Moran and Moran.
Occasionally, the haunted objects did show up. For the most part, they remained with their owners or vanished from sight. Tom had documented nearly a dozen explosions, all of which had been blamed on faulty gas lines or installed breaker boxes but were easily explained when cross-referenced against a list of known buyers of haunted objects.
Victor returned to the table with his own cup of coffee and a chocolate chip muffin.
“You’re going to get fat, old man,” Tom warned.
Victor shook his head. “Unlike you, I don’t care. And I won’t. You know this is my one sweet.”
“It’s almost five hundred calories,” Tom informed him without looking away from the computer screen.
“You put cream and sugar in your coffee,” Victor countered.
“And I work out for two hours a day,” Tom replied.
“Touché,” Victor chuckled. “Anything new?”
“Yeah,” Tom nodded, frowning. “There was a killing at a frat house. Nine guys were killed.”
“Oh.”
“Yup,” Tom sighed. He clicked on another tab. “And here’s another, from Texas. Three people in a 24-hour laundromat were killed. One lived long enough to give a description of the killer.”
Victor raised an eyebrow and waited.
“And, I quote,” Tom began, “‘The guy was an Arab, like that old Lawrence of Arabia movie.’”
Victor shook his head. “Why is that familiar?”
Tom was about to say he didn’t know, but then, he stopped and stated, “Detroit.”
“Detroit?”
Tom nodded, brought up the list of objects from Moran and Moran, typed “Detroit” into the search bar, and had dozens of objects identified. Grumbling, he typed in “Arab” and found only three.
“‘Possessed knife.’” Tom read. “‘Ghost is a Bedouin. Last known location was Detroit, Michigan. Shane Ryan.’”
Victor frowned. “Why is Shane listed?”
Tom knew, as did Victor, that anything concerning Shane was almost guaranteed to be difficult. And Tom loved it. “He was in Detroit recently, right?”
“Yes. Well, we can ask him some questions about it later, if necessary,” Victor finally said. “He is still coming down today, isn’t he?”
Tom nodded. “He’s supposed to.”
“Good. Now,” Victor said, a professorial tone slipping into his voice, “you need to finish your coffee and get to work on your Algebra II. You still have that competency test to take.”
Tom groaned, but he picked up his coffee and drank it. He knew trying to get out of the test would be pointless.
Victor would just make him take it first thing the following day.
Without the benefit of coffee.
Chapter 17: Traveling Plans
Thursday, 10:30 AM
Zeke sat in the darkness of his home office.
Only small slits of light streamed in through the narrow openings of the blinds. His half-eaten breakfast was on the desk. His computer was off, as was his cellphone. There was a bank statement on his keyboard, showing the totality of his liquid assets.
Plenty, he thought with a half-smile. I just need to know where she wants to travel.
At the thought of Miriam Shaw, Zeke opened the middle drawer of his desk and took her sunglasses out. They were abnormally cold to the touch, and he set them atop the bank statement with a wince.
A moment later, the temperature in the room sank, and he shivered, not only from the cold but with delight. She was there.
“Hey, Zeke,” Miriam greeted, her voice low and smooth. Her tone reminded him of the femme fatales in the film noir movies his mother had watched when he was a boy.
“Hello, Miriam.” He smiled. She stood, barely visible, off to one side, and he trembled with excitement.
“What have you been up to?” she asked. Then, with a little bit of a pout to her tone, she murmured, “I missed you last night.”
Zeke smiled. “I missed you, too. Where do you want to go?”
“What do you mean?” she asked, her lips forming a small “o” of surprise.
“You told me you were never able to travel,” Zeke said. “I thought, well, I have lots of money. I can take it out and take you wherever you want.”
“What about your job?” Miriam asked. “What about your family?”
He shook his head. “I do legal research for my firm; I can work from anywhere. The only reason I ever went to work in the office was so I could get away from my family. Linda, my wife, she trapped me into marriage. She told me she was on the pill and got pregnant. I had to marry her. I never wanted kids; I don’t like them. Not even my own boy. Sometimes, sometimes, I think that someone else is the father.”
Miriam nodded in understanding. “I’m so sorry, Zeke,” she whispered. “I wish I could help you.”
“You already have,” he smiled. “I have a purpose now. We’re going to travel. Wherever you want to go. Europe? Mexico? Canada? Australia? You name it, we’ll go. I have a passport and a lot of money.”
“Anywhere?” Miriam asked in a whisper.
“Anywhere,” he answered.
***
Linda knew Zeke didn’t love her. She even knew he didn’t believe Jeff was their son, even though the boy was. She had never been with anyone other than Zeke.
Never wanted anyone other than Zeke, she thought. Standing in the hallway, trembling, Linda could hear her husband talking with another woman. She wasn’t on speakerphone, no, he had the temerity, the audacity, to have another woman in their house.
He must have smuggled her in when I brought Jeff to school, she thought, her anger rising. I wasn’t supposed to be home. He knows I do the shopping on Thursdays.
It was the shopping that had brought her home. She had forgotten her grocery list. That, and her paranoia had brought her back.
Linda had checked the bank account, and she had seen that Zeke had logged in and withdrawn all but a few hundred from their joint accounts. The two checking, the savings, the deferred account for Jeff’s college fund, and the one for his own retirement.