“What’s your idea?” I asked him. “And how much will it cost?”
“Nothing.” He focused on me and grinned. “It’s already been implemented.”
“Irrevocably?”
Somehow Simon managed to shoot me a dirty look without losing the grin. “No. Do you remember those collars I made for your uncle this summer?”
“The GPS tracking collars for his hunting dogs? I mostly remember you cussing out Taos because you couldn’t find a decent electronics store.”
“Yes, I made that app and a few trial devices before I had two that were sturdy enough to stay on a pointer hurling itself around in the brush. I still have those prototypes in the van, or had rather.”
I glanced at Temi and lowered my voice. “You didn’t... put the collars on someone, did you?” I imagined some homeless fellow sleeping on a bench under a newspaper with a dog chain around his neck before it occurred to me to wonder why Simon wanted to track someone anyway.
“No, of course not. But I took the trackers off and taped them on something.”
“On what?” Temi asked, her chin propped in one hand. She seemed to find this admission of clandestine detective work amusing rather than alarming. If she started working with us, she’d learn better soon enough.
“It’s more of an in really.”
“Simon,” I whispered in exasperation.
“The tailpipes of a couple of Harleys.” He pulled out his phone and opened an app. A map of Prescott came up.
I leaned back in my chair, trying to decide if I was horrified or intrigued. Or both.
“Why do you want to track them?” Temi asked.
“Del said they’re trying to find some tool or weapon to kill that monster. If it’s something old that they’re prying out of the earth, I’m sure she’ll be interested. She also wants a sample of their language. If they don’t know we’re around, I’m sure they’ll speak freely.” He held up his phone, which happened to be opened to a voice recording application.
“You’re being awfully... considerate of my interests.” I squinted at him. “Why do I have a feeling you have ulterior motives?”
Simon smiled innocently. “I’m certain I don’t know.”
“Anyone been by our blog to read your story?”
His smile widened. “Oh, we’ve had oodles of visitors. I had to talk to our hosting provider a while ago, because we crashed on account of all the traffic using up our monthly bandwidth quota. In two hours.” He waved like some self-important Vegas prognosticator and proclaimed, “It all happened just like I thought it would. Wired and BoingBoing picked us up, and I don’t know how many lesser blogs.”
Temi’s mouth quirked, as if she didn’t know if she should be impressed or not.
“Uh huh, and did we get any orders?” I asked.
“No, but that’s not how it works,” Simon said. “It’s the links from these big sites that count. The traffic is cool, but you’re right in that it won’t be targeted to our business. It’ll all be people interested in the monster story. Although...” He drummed his fingers in his Star-Wars-Imperial-March pattern. “If I acted quickly, maybe I could put together some T-shirts or something. We wouldn’t make a ton, but merchandising could be good for a few bucks.”
“Merchandising?” I mouthed to Temi.
She shrugged back at me.
“I don’t have any artistic talent, but maybe I could do something with the pictures I got,” Simon went on. “I wish I had one of the monster. I mostly have mutilated bodies. That’s kind of garish for a T-shirt, right?”
“You think?” I asked.
Temi was more tactful than I, forgoing sarcasm to simply say, “Yes.”
“I did put some impression-based advertising on the site when I saw all the traffic,” Simon said. “We’ve already made thirty dollars today.”
I kept myself from rolling my eyes—barely. Money was money, I supposed, but I wanted to succeed doing something that added value to the world, or at least made someone happy. True, an antique steam shovel probably wouldn’t grant anyone eternal bliss, but that fellow had been pleased to find one for his collection.
Simon switched to another app. “They’re not doing anything.”
“Still parked outside the Vendome?” I asked.
“Yup.” Simon’s hamburger was delivered, so he stopped staring incessantly at the screen for a moment. He didn’t, however, stop plotting. “I wonder how much traffic we’d get to our site if we somehow slew the monster and saved the town, thus ushering in a period of peace and prosperity.”