The Thing in the Alley (Anomaly Hunters, Book 3) Read online

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  “Tiffany and Emily?” Frowning with bafflement, Cynthia settled back onto the couch in Calvin’s parlor. “What’s the connection?”

  “I don’t know,” Calvin said.

  He had just finished telling her about his conversations with Tiffany and Andrew Fish. It was half an hour before the others were scheduled to show up for their trip to Kingwood. Calvin had called Cynthia over early to fill her in on his eventful afternoon and discuss these new surprise twists with her.

  He had debated long and hard whether or not to tell her at all. Though Andrew Fish had told Calvin only to refrain from telling Tiffany about their conversation, Calvin got the impression there was supposed to be a tacit understanding that the whole matter was confidential. Then again, although Fish didn’t know of the existence of most of the group, he knew about Cynthia, and it wasn’t a stretch to assume that Fish understood that Calvin would feel compelled to apprise his investigatory partner of the situation. In any case Calvin decided he couldn’t not tell her. It involved her murdered sister, after all. Nevertheless Calvin had been concerned that Cynthia might feel similarly compelled to tell Donovan, who would likely reveal it to Violet, who would likely megaphone it to the rush-hour crowds on Main Street, his ultimate fear being that word of it would reach Tiffany’s ears and make her pissed at him for sharing private information. With this in mind, Calvin had extracted a promise of the strictest confidentiality from Cynthia before he told her a word. He knew she was conscientious enough to keep it.

  “Could Tiffany be psychic like my Aunt Wendy?” Cynthia said. “That might explain her reaction to both the alley and what happened in the clearing that night. Maybe she has an abnormal sensitivity to paranormal events.”

  “Yeah, but the night Emily was murdered, Tiffany was seven or eight miles away. Given such a distance, psychic sensitivity in and of itself seems a bit of a stretch.”

  “What else is there, though?”

  “Much as I hate to suggest it,” Calvin said, “could there be a more direct connection?”

  “Are you suggesting what I think you’re suggesting?”

  “I’m just trying to look at all the possibilities. There are plenty of reports of long-distance psychic transmissions between family members, especially during traumatic events. Is there any chance at all Tiffany could be related to you guys? I mean, could your dad have—”

  “No.” Cynthia held up a hand. “Don’t even go there. My dad might not be, you know, Gandhi or something, but he wouldn’t cheat on my mom. He’s not that kind of person. Besides, Tiffany looks scarily like her mother, except for her nose, which clearly resembles her father’s: straight narrow bridge, with that kind of teardrop-shaped tip.”

  “It doesn’t have to be your dad. There could be a link a generation or two behind that. Maybe your grandpa, or something.”

  “Wouldn’t the gene pool be getting a little too shallow at that point for some kind of psychic link? The only psychic links between relatives that I’ve ever heard about were between primary relatives: parents and children, brothers and sisters, twins, stuff like that.”

  Calvin sighed. “There has to be something, though; some kind of link between Emily and Tiffany.”

  “But why? If Emily’s death created or strengthened or activated the anomaly in the clearing, then why couldn’t that be the main factor? Maybe Tiffany was responding solely to the anomaly. Maybe there was even some kind of obscure link between the anomaly and whatever happened in that alley in 2008.”

  “And Simon Bradley. He’s connected with all of this, too, somehow.”

  “Are you sure his suicide wasn’t just a coincidence? I mean, the strange effects that Tiffany and the Romeros experienced were connected more with whatever happened in the alley that night, not with Bradley’s suicide.”

  “No. What Andrew Fish told me convinced me that Simon Bradley’s suicide is part of it, too.”

  “What? Why?”

  “Think about the night Tiffany woke up her dad with the gunshots, the night that seemed to resolve whatever was gnawing at her mind in the wake of the alley incident, only think about it kind of…obliquely, I guess. What happened there in the Fish house that night?”

  “Sleepwalking? Gunfire?”

  “But what did Tiffany shoot?”

  “A mirror? Her reflection?” She stiffened with realization. “Herself! She shot herself in the mirror. Just like Simon Bradley, except…” She shrugged. “Well, obliquely, like you said.”

  “Yeah. It’s hardly a scientific proof, but it’s certainly suggestive, isn’t it?”

  “Echoes. Echoes and more echoes. But what does it mean? That Simon Bradley’s death was psychically affecting Tiffany somehow? Or that they were both being affected by some other incident, maybe what went on in the alley?”

  “I don’t know. I don’t think we know enough to know.”

  He fell silent and stared off into space, his elbow on the arm of his chair and his chin cupped in his hand.

  “To me, the biggest question is, why did Mr. May include Tiffany in the trust in 2008? That’s the thing I keep coming back to. It can’t be only because she experienced a strange phenomenon, because by then Mr. May must have known thousands of people who had experienced such things, and he didn’t leave anything to any of them. Just Tiffany. Why? And why include me? I had no connection to anyone or anything. And for that matter, why leave the Collection and all the land to Emily, a seven-year-old girl?”

  “Mr. May knew something.”

  “Yeah.” Calvin shook his head, for the first time feeling a stab of bitterness and hostility toward the old man he had considered a mentor and father figure. “Something he decided to take with him to the damn grave.”