“And the park board is letting you do this?”
“Yeah. They’re letting us. Not stopping us at any rate. Though that Bill dude definitely had a tent pole up his ass.”
“I’m pretty sure they’ve been approached by TV shows before…all that ghosthunting crap. Sorry. I just don’t believe in it.”
“You don’t believe in ghosts?” I asked. Even though it seemed like most people didn’t, it was still fascinating to me to find out why.
“Oh, no, I believe in ghosts. Very much so. But I think those TV shows are crap. That’s probably why they said yes to you guys. What I think anyway.”
“Cuz we aren’t crap?” I asked, carefully slurping on my coffee.
“No, because there’s really no chance of being exploited through…you know, the internet. What I mean is, it’s not on the A&E channel. There’s no moron leading the charge.”
He paused and gave Dex a funny look. “Well, except for this guy of course.”
“Actually I’m the moron of the show,” I offered with a smile.
Dex grinned at me. “Can we get that on tape?”
Zach carefully watched the exchange between us before saying asking, “You still with Jennifer, Dex?”
The coffee cup rattled loudly in Dex’s hands. They were shaking again, albeit for just a quick moment. He swallowed hard and put it down.
“Yes, of course,” he said matter–of–factly.
Damn it. Obviously I had been hoping that the phone call meant they’d broken up. Guess not. I tried not to look annoyed, especially since Zach was looking at me now. I don’t know why it was but I always got the feeling that people were tiptoeing around the relationship question with him. It was like they couldn’t quite believe that Dex and I were just partners. I flashed him a bright smile, anyway. Didn’t want to let on how I was feeling or what I was thinking.
“Gotta love Wine Babes,” Zach remarked rather awkwardly.
“Oh, yes. Who doesn’t?” I added. I could tell Dex eyed me suspiciously but I didn’t want to acknowledge it.
“Indeed,” Zach mused with a smile and got out of his armchair. He took his and Dex’s empty cups into the kitchen. I looked around the room, at the expansive library of books and the hominess of the place and decided that whatever happened between him and his ex–wife (which I was not supposed to mention) left him pretty well off. I think I’d be happy with a house like this albeit probably not with a daughter.
At that, I turned my head and saw Amanda standing in the doorway to the front hall, peering at us with her large eyes. She smiled shyly but didn’t move. It was like her need to know overcame her instincts to run away from strange company. I knew that feeling all too well.
“Hey Amanda,” Dex said, his voice animated. “When was the last time I saw you?”
Amanda smiled broadly at him in a girlish way and put her finger to her mouth, pondering.
“I don’t know. It wasn’t this year because you never got me a birthday present,” she said teasingly.
“That’s true. But what if I said I had your present right here?” he said, his voice raised along with his eyebrows. I watched him, more fascinated than I should have been.
She eyed him like he was the Easter Bunny. “What is it?”
“You’ll have to come over here and see.”
I briefly wondered if children her age were taught to fear the ra**st moustache because that’s one thing that would have had me running the other way (that and a white Chevy Astro van with no windows). But she skid towards us on the hardwood floors, using her socks in a Risky Business type manner.
She stopped in front of Dex and looked at him expectantly.
“Where is the present? What is it?” she demanded.
I wanted to know too. I looked at him with as much expectancy, hoping he wasn’t so cruel and stupid as to actually fool a child with promises of gifts. That shit never worked on me.
He didn’t miss a beat. He reached down into his cargo pants pocket and paused. He leaned forward to Amanda and whispered.
“Close your eyes.”
Amanda stood up straight, hands clasped behind her back and closed her wide eyes with a silly grin splashed across her face.
“Open your hands.”
She displayed her hands forward, palms up. I watched Dex fish a few rubber bands out of his pocket and place them in hers. They were in the shape of a boat, a rose and a heart. They were Silly Bandz, a trend that was slowly taking even adults by storm, though I didn’t have the foggiest idea why. I mean, I liked the look and music of the ‘90s but something like Silly Bandz was way beyond my appeal.
But Amanda liked them and as soon as she opened her eyes, she was exclaiming loudly and dancing around the house in some frantic child boogie. Zach came back out of the kitchen with another cup of coffee and a couple of books under his arm, shaking his head at his daughter who was running upstairs to put the other bands she already had on. I figured a Silly Bandz fashion show was in order.
As much as I didn’t hate the idea of humoring a child, I just wanted to get to the island and get the whole project going. Zach must have too, because the books he brought in were about D’Arcy Island. He plopped them on Dex’s lap and handed him the coffee.
“Thanks, bud,” Dex said, taking the cup in his hand, “but the books are for her.”
He jerked his head in my direction, spilling a drop of coffee at the same time.
“Ah,” said Zach, and handed me the books instead. There were only two and both were thin and un–scholarly.
“Is this it?” I asked.
“Yeah that’s it. Afraid there’s just not much written about the place.”
“Why?”
He shrugged. “There just isn’t much to go on. The island was kind of run below the surface. Those books report everything that is traceable but a lot of it is just speculation. There’s really not a lot of records about it.”
“But…Dex told me people had died there.”
“Oh, yeah. At least 40–something people died there. But they were lepers. And Chinese lepers at that, so you have to understand they weren’t really considered people. If it was a white man’s leper colony, there’d be tons of books about it. But those are the breaks.”
I looked down at the books in my hand. They seemed to be poor consolation for what happened.