Perilously Fun Fiction: A Bundle by Pauline Jones (best fiction novels of all time .TXT) 📕

she felt she should know, but didn’t. Even offered to show the photo around. Her calm facade showed its first crack when Mickey broached the subject of Reggie.

“You surely don’t suspect Reggie? That would be ridiculous! He’s a businessman with interests in-”

“Cleveland,” Mickey interposed. “We’ve heard. No one’s been able to pinpoint the exact time he left, or when he’ll be returning. We were hoping you’d help.”

“If you’re going to involve Reggie in this, I’ll have to ask Hugo,” she informed them, her sensible face turning mulish.

“Hugo?”

“My channel. He’s my conduit to the space/time continuum. He’s a little upset by all the police cars and sirens because he was a criminal in a past life, but I’m sure he’d cough up something to help me. Though I won’t mention it’s for Reggie. He doesn’t like Reggie. Claims Reggie is a con artist. It’s absurd, of course. Reggie is a businessman with interests in—”

“Cleveland.” This time Delaney finished it. “That seems to be about the only thing we do know about Reggie. We’d really like to know more.”

“Why? So you can bully and brutalize him? He’s sensitive. Kind, caring. But why should you care about that? You just want someone to pin this murder on.”

Mickey and Delaney shifted uneasily. It was hard to summon a credible protest when they had been hoping to bring it home to Reggie. Pinning it on him would be unethical. And difficult. Though not impossible.

Mickey opened his mouth to say something soothing, but lost his train of thought when the lamp next to Velma began to spin in a slow circle. Next to him, Delaney stiffened as he, too, caught sight of the lamp.

With some difficulty, Mickey collected his thoughts, which wanted to spin faster than the lamp, and managed a question. “It’s helpful to get your...views of Seymour, Ms. Verlain. The others—”

“Oh, I know. They think he’s next to useless! They have no conception of the damage they do with their lowered expectations! Reggie has been marred, marred I tell you, by this ridiculous dysfunctional family thing! So, he finally manages to rise above it, and then the police come sniffing around. It’s an unjust world. An unjust world, indeed.” She tipped her head back, looking at them through lowered lids while the lamp began to spin faster.

“Yes, well.” Delaney cleared his throat, his eyes fixed with horrid fascination on the lamp. “We really need to ask him a few questions. When he calls—”

“He doesn’t call. Reggie and I are connected by something better. Something deeper than mere wires and signals. Our souls joined the moment our eyes met—”

With a vicious jerk, the lamp spun across the room and crashed into the opposite wall.

Velma shook her head, leaning forward to say, confidentially, “I’m afraid Hugo has descended to unbecoming jealousy.”

As soon as she came in, Luci could tell her aunts had searched her room. They had tried too hard to leave things as they were, so of course, they had failed. Luci had anticipated this move and hidden the photograph between the two mattresses. Even if the aunts had suspected this move, they wouldn’t have been able to lift it up. Luci had barely managed it.

With some difficulty, mostly caused by the sling and the elastic bandage on her left arm, Luci removed the photograph and held it up to the superior light by her bedside. The face still eluded her efforts, but she could see the medals in strict rows across his chest and the way his hand gripped Lila’s.

Not too surprising he’d gotten what he wanted, even from an elusive Seymour, Luci decided with a slight smile. Though he hadn’t gotten all he wanted. Lila had eluded him in the end, taking her secrets with her.

The frame was a heavy one, not really suitable for the photograph it housed.

“I wonder...” Luci turned it over, removed the back and freed the photograph from confinement. With rising excitement she realized there was faded writing on the bottom right hand corner. She held it up to the light—

“To love cheeks from your pooh bear?” She lowered the picture and stared at herself in the fading mirror. “I think I’m going to be sick.”

There was no middle ground in this investigation, Mickey decided morosely. The participants either had too much personality—or too little. His uncle’s fiancée came in on the too little side, possessing less animation than Velma’s lamp. This seemed symbolic somehow, but Mickey was too weary to figure out why.

Medium height, medium build, straight brown hair, blank brown eyes, late fifties to early sixties, with no distinguishing marks whatsoever. Sitting opposite them, she stared at the wall. The one with nothing on it.

Mickey had long ago decided his uncle was marrying Unabelle because he knew only the personality-less could put up with Eddie’s powerful personality. It still didn’t make much sense. Zero times zero was still zero. But if Eddie wanted to marry the equivalent of a slightly warm, inflatable person, that was his business. And if she kept Eddie from messing about in Mickey’s life, so much the better.

In an attempt to ease her non-existent unease, Mickey gave Unabelle a false smile. “I don’t know if you remember me, Miss Fraser? I’m Eddie’s nephew, Mickey Ross.”

Her blank gaze got, if anything, blanker. After what seemed like a long time, she asked, “Eddie?”

He looked at Delaney and saw the same desperation in his eyes that he felt in his own.

11

The humid air was slow to bring the soft sound of a blues-laden love song from the frat house across the street as Luci came out and perched on the porch railing, pondering her few options. If her aunts wouldn’t help her, it wasn’t going to be easy unraveling the mystery of her paternity. That Lila had called him her pooh bear was not something she wanted to admit to anyone.

She pushed her paternal thoughts to the back burner and let her mind home in on the distant hum of