Maybe he was trying to channel his creativity. Or maybe he was trying to channel … well … spirits.
After Edison’s death, no prototypes or papers were found that suggested he’d started work on his machine to talk to the dead. I suppose that means the folks in charge of his estate were embarrassed by his Spiritualist leanings, or they didn’t want that to be the memory left behind of a great scientist.
Seems to me, though, that Thomas Edison got the last laugh. Because at his home in Fort Myers, Florida, there’s a life-size statue of him in the parking lot. And in his hand, he’s holding that ball bearing.
I am having the sense of a male presence.
Although, if I’m going to be honest, that might just be a sinus headache coming on.
“Of course you’re sensing a guy,” Virgil says, balling up the aluminum foil that housed his chili dog. I have never seen a human being eat the way this man eats. The terms that come to mind are giant squid and wet vac. “Who else would give a chick a necklace?”
“Are you always this rude?”
He picks off one of my French fries. “For you, I’m making a special exception.”
“You still hungry?” I ask. “How about I serve up a steaming platter of I told you so?”
Virgil scowls. “Why? Because you tripped over a piece of jewelry?”
“Well, what did you find?” The pimply boy in the corrugated metal trailer who served up our hot dogs is watching this exchange. “What?” I bark at him. “Have you never seen people argue?”
“He’s probably never seen someone with pink hair,” Virgil murmurs.
“At least I still have hair,” I point out.
That, at least, hits him where it hurts. He runs a hand over his nearly buzzed cut. “This is badass,” he says.
“You just keep telling yourself that.” I glimpse the teen hot dog vendor from the corner of my eye again, staring. Part of me wants to believe that he’s drawn to the spectacle of the Human Hoover polishing off the rest of my lunch, but there’s a niggling thought in my head that maybe he recognizes me as the celebrity I used to be. “Don’t you have some ketchup bottles to fill?” I snap, and he shrinks back from the window.
We are sitting outside in a park, eating the hot dogs I bought after Virgil realized he didn’t have a dime on him.
“It’s my father,” Jenna says, over a mouthful of her tofu dog. She is wearing the necklace now. It dangles over her T-shirt. “That’s who gave it to my mother. I was there. I remember.”
“Great. You remember your mother getting a rock on a chain, but not what happened the night she vanished,” Virgil says.
“Try holding it, Jenna,” I suggest. “When I used to get called in for kidnappings, the way I got my best leads was to touch something that had belonged to the missing child.”
“Spoken like a bitch,” Virgil says.
“I beg your pardon?”
He looks up, all innocence. “Female dog, right? Isn’t that how bloodhounds track, too?”
Ignoring him, I watch Jenna curl the necklace into her fist, squeeze her eyes shut. “Nothing,” she says after a moment.
“It’ll come,” I promise. “When you least expect it. You’ve got a lot of natural ability, I can tell. I bet you’ll remember something important when you’re brushing your teeth tonight.”
This is not necessarily true, of course. I’ve been waiting for years now, and I’m as dry as a bar in Salt Lake City.
“She’s not the only one who could use that to jog a memory,” Virgil says, thinking out loud. “Maybe the guy who gave it to Alice could tell us something.”
Jenna’s head snaps up. “My father? He can’t even remember my name half the time.”
I pat her arm. “No need to be embarrassed about the sins of the fathers. My daddy was a drag queen.”
“What’s wrong with that?” Jenna asks.
“Nothing. But he happened to be a very bad drag queen.”
“Well, my father’s in an institution,” Jenna says.
I look at Virgil over her head. “Ah.”
“Far as I know,” Virgil says, “no one ever went back to talk to your father, after your mom disappeared. Maybe it’s worth a try.”
I’ve done enough cold reading to be able to tell when a person is not being transparent. And right now, Virgil Stanhope is lying like a rug. I don’t know what his game is, or what he hopes to get out of Thomas Metcalf, but I’m not letting Jenna go with him alone.
Even if I swore I’d never go back into a psychiatric facility.
After the incident with the senator, I had a run of dark days. There was a lot of vodka involved, and some prescription medication. My manager at the time was the one who suggested I take a vacation, and by vacation, she meant a little sojourn at a psych ward. It was incredibly discreet—the kind of place that celebrities go to to refresh, which is Hollywoodspeak for get your stomach pumped, dry out, or have ECT. I was there for thirty days, long enough to know I would never let myself get that low again if it meant returning.