Conspiracies and Stuff: A Dreamland Junction Mystery by Kendra Ashe Page A

been having a lot of bad dreams over the last week. Of course he insisted they weren’t dreams, but they had to be. I was pretty sure that if there were some kind of mother ship hovering over Spencer’s place, beaming him up in the middle of the night, I would probably notice. This was especially true since he was my next-door neighbor.
    With Spencer you never could tell what was up. He smoked more weed than my grandfather did during the sixties free love era, which brought to mind the idea that I probably had several aunts and uncles running around that I didn’t even know existed.
    “It wasn’t a bad dream,” he grumbled, moving his hand away from his nose so that I would get the full effect of his glare.
    “They really did it. I woke up right in the middle.”
    Now that he’d moved his hand away from his face, I could see that there really was blood dripping from one of his nostrils.
    “You know … the heat could have given you a bloody nose,” I offered.
    Spencer shook his head. “I know the difference Kat. With what you do … I can’t understand why you still won’t believe me.”
    Placing one hand on my hip, I stared at Spencer for a long time.
    Not only was Spencer my next-door neighbor, but he’d also been one of my best friends since kindergarten. He might have been an odd fish with his longish hair and piercings, but I’d never known him to make up stories.
    “Okay,” I sighed. “Let me take a look.”
    My bottom kitchen drawer was my junk drawer, which also happened to be where I kept my flashlight. It took a minute, but I managed to find it hiding beneath several old phonebooks.
    “You’ll have to sit down and tilt your head back,” I instructed.
    Spencer pulled one of the kitchen chairs to the middle of the floor and sat down.
    As gross as it was, I forced myself to shine the flashlight up both of Spencer’s nostrils.
    “I don’t see a thing, except a trace of blood. Like I said … you probably had a bloody nose because of the heat. It is July you know.”
    Spencer drew his brows together and fixed me with a scathing look. “With you being psychic, you should already know what happened.”
    “I’m a little psychic,” I corrected, holding my thumb and index finger about an inch apart to demonstrate just how little psychic I was. “I get hunches, and my hunch is … you had one too many beers down at the Green Man last night, and have probably been smoking way too much dope.”
    “But you are a paranormal investigator,” he pointed out, ignoring my reference to his night of merry making.
    “No,” I shook my head. “I’m a part time private investigator, who just happens to like exposing those dirty dogs running black projects in the government. That doesn’t make me a ghost hunter.”
    “What about that ghost you saw last year. You telling me you really didn’t see it?”
    Damn. I just knew he was going to bring that up. It was true. I did see a ghost in the Ladies Restroom at the Landing. I thought it was a ghost anyway. She’d been wearing clothes from my great grandmother’s time, and she disappeared when I tried to talk to her. In my book, that probably qualified as a ghost.
    “Still … I don’t see anything up your nose.”
    Since I was determined not to take another gander up Spencer’s nose, I returned the flashlight to the junk drawer and pulled a glass from the cupboard. I needed a drink, even if the water from the tap was lukewarm at best. Living in the desert had its disadvantages, and not getting cold water out of the kitchen tap was a big one.
    “I can still feel something up there,” Spencer continued the argument, but I wasn’t listening.
    Static erupted from the police scanner that sat on my kitchen counter between a roll of paper towels, and my Bigfoot cookie jar. If there was static, someone was keying their mic, which also meant someone was getting ready to say something.
    Sure enough, the voice that came on the radio was one I knew well. Officer,