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

7

  “It would have been nice if we’d discussed that first,” Cynthia said as they drove back to May. They were heading west on Livermore, which offered a more direct path to Route 214 than going back up to Train.

  Calvin didn’t need to ask to know what she was talking about.

  “Sorry,” he said. “There just wasn’t time. I could tell by then that Fish was eager to get rid of us, and I wasn’t sure if we’d ever get another chance to talk to them again, so I thought it would be best to be upfront about everything. The truth can’t come out if everyone’s keeping secrets. And given Fish’s reaction when I told him Mr. May investigated strange phenomena, I got the distinct impression he was indeed keeping something secret, probably some kind of unusual event experienced by either himself or Tiffany. Or both.”

  “Or maybe even the dead wife.”

  “Ooh, I hadn’t thought of that. But, yeah, I just wanted to make sure they understood our real interests and intentions and that they were free to talk to us without fear of condemnation or ridicule.”

  She gave him a sidelong look, one eyebrow cocked, a faint smile on her lips. “‘They’ or ‘Tiffany’?”

  He shrugged, trying to look innocent. “Either one.”

  “Mm-hmm,” she said.

  “What?”

  Her cocked eyebrow rose higher. He couldn’t help smiling in response.

  “She was…interesting,” he said.

  “Interesting?”

  “Okay, she was cute.” He looked at her. “Didn’t you think she was cute?”

  “She was okay,” Cynthia said. Frankly her feeling of repulsion toward Tiffany had only deepened with the girl’s bursts of haughtiness toward the end of the meeting, but she saw no sense admitting that to Calvin. “Not really my type, though.”

  “Oh.” Calvin seemed disappointed.

  “But attraction is totally subjective. And, hey, she was clearly attracted to you.”

  He grinned like a schoolboy. “You think?”

  Cynthia rolled her eyes. Did he really not see it, or was he just fishing for confirmation?

  “Let’s just say it was clear to all present that there was major chemistry there,” she said.

  “Chemistry.” He said it slowly, as if he had just discovered this wonderful new word and was savoring the feel of it in his mouth. He nodded, then said it again: “Chemistry.”

  Cynthia chuckled. “I’d say it’s just a matter of time before you’re writing her name in the margins of your notebooks. Tiffany Beckerman. It’s got a cute ring to it, I have to admit.”

  “Oh, stop it.” His grin was bigger than ever. Then a thought struck him and the grin faded. “I get the impression her dad might not approve.”

  “So what? Who cares what her dad thinks? Tiffany’s eighteen. She’s an adult. She can do what she likes.”

  “I don’t think it’s that simple.”

  “No,” she conceded with a sigh. “Things rarely are.”

  They turned off Livermore and onto Route 214. The Prius accelerated to sixty.

  “So what’s our next step vis-à-vis the Fishes?” Cynthia asked. “If there is one.”

  “I don’t know. I guess just wait and see if one of them calls. And when I have the time, I’ll keep looking through Mr. May’s papers and see if I can find anything else that might help explain the rationale behind the inheritances.”

  “Are you sure there is a rationale? How do we know he didn’t pick a bunch of names just because he liked the sound of them? Maybe he picked Tiffany Fish simply because it was an animal name, like Crow and Coyote. In fact, hey, we have three major animal kingdoms covered: the mammals, the birds, and now the fish. Maybe he was just, I don’t know, goofing around.”

  “I don’t believe that. It doesn’t explain why my name’s on there. Or Anna West’s.”

  “No. But I can’t help but wonder: How certain are we that there is in fact a meaning to be found here?”

  “Oh, come on.” His tone was acerbic enough to make him pause a moment before going on in a softer, more controlled voice. “You knew him as well as I did. You read the same files I did. He might have been eccentric, but always in a very sane and organized way. He wasn’t prone to reckless whims.”

  “Hey, I’m just playing devil’s advocate here, that’s all. I agree he wasn’t the whimmish type. I just thought somebody should at least raise the possibility that all of this is meaningless, that we’re striving to find an answer where none exists.”

  “No,” Calvin said firmly. “I don’t believe that. There’s a meaning here. There has to be.”

  He looked out the window. They were passing a former industrial area that had fallen victim to Kingwood’s—and the country’s—changing economy. Large abandoned buildings sat amid empty parking lots spiderwebbed with weeds, their doors locked, their windows dark, their facades sporting dusty signs for long-defunct companies: Gecko Industries; The Kingwood Box Company; Schott Tool & Die. There was something depressing about all these barren, useless buildings, monuments to dead aspirations, concrete reflections of Cynthia’s devilishly advocated meaninglessness.

  But some innate instinct within Calvin recoiled at such pessimism, and like a psychological antibody, Betty Romero’s comment recurred to him once again.

  “It all converges,” he stated, then gave a single curt nod, as if nothing more needed to be said.