The Hysteria: Book 4, The Eddie McCloskey Paranormal Mystery Series (The Unearthed) by Evan Ronan Page B
Authors: Evan Ronan
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about her symptoms.”
“I didn’t claim to be a genius. I just played the only card I had to get out of the vomitorium. You would have done the same thing.”
“Let’s get another thing straight. We’re not following her. We’re not a team no matter what Pater says.”
“You’re absolutely right, actually. Because you’re going to follow her.”
She laughed incredulously. “This gets better and better. What exactly are you doing while I’m doing all the work?”
“Run down the names on that list you found on Witherspoon’s computer.”
“You’re not in charge here—”
“It’s not about me being in charge, Manetti. Melanie knows who I am, what I look like. She doesn’t know you. Ergo, you should be the one to follow her.”
She couldn’t argue with my logic but she didn’t like it either. “I’ll run it by Pater.”
“Good. You do that.”
I hung up and finally cracked my laptop. The thing was a dinosaur—already six months old. Turner had wireless so I punched in the password.
I searched the names on Witherspoon’s list. Three of them had graduated high school with Megan, four more were around her age, one was a teacher, another was a lawyer her father’s age. I pegged him as a friend of the family.
The last one was the oddity. Fifty-five year old widow by the name of Dorothy Young. Maybe another friend of the family but I didn’t see any obvious connections to the Turners. She had endured two tragedies. Her son had accidentally killed himself while playing with her husband’s hand gun. Two years later, her husband had taken his own life. Since then she’d become a staunch anti-gun proponent, leading the local political rallies against the Second Amendment.
I called Manetti. Riehl answered her phone.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you again tonight.”
“Feeling’s mutual. What can you tell me about the list of names?” I asked.
“All known friends and associates except one.”
“Dorothy Young?”
“Did you ask old man Turner about Dorothy? I hope not.”
His saying old man reminded me of the youth of Turner’s online picture compared to the man in the flesh I knew. It made me think about Chester Leonard too, and how he’d seemed to age exponentially compared to his online portrait. And then it made me think of Melanie, and how she looked older than her twenty-three years.
“I’m smarter than that.”
“So you can use Google.”
I’d been hoping Riehl would treat me differently than Manetti. But apparently I was going to get it coming and going from this team.
“You wanna go see her first thing?”
“You and me?”
“Yeah, it’ll be ebony and ivory.”
“Funny.” He gave me her address. “Meet you there.”
“What were you up to tonight?”
“Let’s meet at 9.”
“Eamon still in his little room?”
“He’s watching you right now, actually.”
I thought he was lying. But an iceberg slid down my spine and I couldn’t help but look around the room, as if that would help.
I held up my middle finger. “Ask him what I’m doing now.”
Riehl chuckled. “See you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be the good-looking Irish dude in the corvette.”
Thirteen
At 4:30 in the morning somebody knocked on my door. I was having a dry dream about a girl named Ana, whom I’d met not so long ago on a big job in northeastern Pennsylvania. She’d been interested in romance but I’d nobly turned her down because I was ten years her senior and she was a sweet, innocent young woman who didn’t need to deal with all my problems immediately after getting out of a bad relationship with a depressed deadbeat loser. It was the right call, but that didn’t mean I didn’t regret making it. I still thought of her often.
Ana and I were walking hand-in-hand along an icy lake shore, not talking but communicating plenty. She gave me a funny look at the sound of the knocking, like she couldn’t figure it out either.
“I didn’t claim to be a genius. I just played the only card I had to get out of the vomitorium. You would have done the same thing.”
“Let’s get another thing straight. We’re not following her. We’re not a team no matter what Pater says.”
“You’re absolutely right, actually. Because you’re going to follow her.”
She laughed incredulously. “This gets better and better. What exactly are you doing while I’m doing all the work?”
“Run down the names on that list you found on Witherspoon’s computer.”
“You’re not in charge here—”
“It’s not about me being in charge, Manetti. Melanie knows who I am, what I look like. She doesn’t know you. Ergo, you should be the one to follow her.”
She couldn’t argue with my logic but she didn’t like it either. “I’ll run it by Pater.”
“Good. You do that.”
I hung up and finally cracked my laptop. The thing was a dinosaur—already six months old. Turner had wireless so I punched in the password.
I searched the names on Witherspoon’s list. Three of them had graduated high school with Megan, four more were around her age, one was a teacher, another was a lawyer her father’s age. I pegged him as a friend of the family.
The last one was the oddity. Fifty-five year old widow by the name of Dorothy Young. Maybe another friend of the family but I didn’t see any obvious connections to the Turners. She had endured two tragedies. Her son had accidentally killed himself while playing with her husband’s hand gun. Two years later, her husband had taken his own life. Since then she’d become a staunch anti-gun proponent, leading the local political rallies against the Second Amendment.
I called Manetti. Riehl answered her phone.
“She doesn’t want to talk to you again tonight.”
“Feeling’s mutual. What can you tell me about the list of names?” I asked.
“All known friends and associates except one.”
“Dorothy Young?”
“Did you ask old man Turner about Dorothy? I hope not.”
His saying old man reminded me of the youth of Turner’s online picture compared to the man in the flesh I knew. It made me think about Chester Leonard too, and how he’d seemed to age exponentially compared to his online portrait. And then it made me think of Melanie, and how she looked older than her twenty-three years.
“I’m smarter than that.”
“So you can use Google.”
I’d been hoping Riehl would treat me differently than Manetti. But apparently I was going to get it coming and going from this team.
“You wanna go see her first thing?”
“You and me?”
“Yeah, it’ll be ebony and ivory.”
“Funny.” He gave me her address. “Meet you there.”
“What were you up to tonight?”
“Let’s meet at 9.”
“Eamon still in his little room?”
“He’s watching you right now, actually.”
I thought he was lying. But an iceberg slid down my spine and I couldn’t help but look around the room, as if that would help.
I held up my middle finger. “Ask him what I’m doing now.”
Riehl chuckled. “See you tomorrow.”
“I’ll be the good-looking Irish dude in the corvette.”
Thirteen
At 4:30 in the morning somebody knocked on my door. I was having a dry dream about a girl named Ana, whom I’d met not so long ago on a big job in northeastern Pennsylvania. She’d been interested in romance but I’d nobly turned her down because I was ten years her senior and she was a sweet, innocent young woman who didn’t need to deal with all my problems immediately after getting out of a bad relationship with a depressed deadbeat loser. It was the right call, but that didn’t mean I didn’t regret making it. I still thought of her often.
Ana and I were walking hand-in-hand along an icy lake shore, not talking but communicating plenty. She gave me a funny look at the sound of the knocking, like she couldn’t figure it out either.
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