"Miss Arizona, who is in fact Trina's great,greatgrandma, just celebrated her one hundredth birthday," I told Jack, who was laughing his fool head off.
"And, anyway," Shelley continued. "Jack is way older than you."
Suddenly I was the one laughing. Jack feigned being stabbed in the heart.
"But anyway, I was just calling to see if Aunt Lorraine is okay." Her voice turned somber. "I feel kinda bad having fun while she's in trouble."
"She's going to be okay, sweetheart. That's good of you to worry about her, but you have fun with your friends. Jack and I are going to take care of Lorraine."
"I knew you would!" I was glad to hear in her voice that she'd cheered up a bit. "Hey, do you want to talk to Aunt Ruby? She's right here."
"Sure," I said automatically.
For several moments, I heard Shelley and Aunt Ruby carrying on a conversation, but the fair noise muffled the sound. Finally, Shelley came back on the phone.
"Um, she says… She says she'll talk to you later, Tess."
My heart sank into my stomach, and I wanted to argue, but I would not put Shelley in the middle of this. "Okay, honey. Tell her I'll call her tomorrow. Love you!"
Jack leaned closer to the phone. "No puking, okay, short stuff?"
"No worries!! Love you, Tess! Love you, Jack!"
And then she was gone.
I swallowed. Hard.
My Aunt Ruby had never, ever, in all the years since I'd first come to live with her and Uncle Mike as a small child, refused to take my call. I'd spent a little time, especially in my teen years, trying to avoidhercalls—massive overprotectiveness wrapped in love—but she'd never refused to talk to me.
Suddenly I wasn't hungry, and my eyes were stinging. Jack put his hand on mine.
"Tess, it's going to be okay. We're going to figure out what they're hiding and—more important—why."
I squeezed his hand, took a deep, shuddering breath, and nodded. No time to sit around and feel sorry for myself. We had a really, really old mystery to solve.
"That's the problem," I told Jack. "What clues will be left after fifty years? And, really, how does Susan know it's Earl? I mean, they wouldn't have had his DNA on file to compare, right? They didn't even do DNA back then. More to the point, why would she think, even if it is Earl, that Lorraine killed him? With enough certainty to arrest her?"
"It's a good question." Jack looked grim. "I think we need to know that first. And whatever else Susan will tell us. We should have some goodwill built up after nailing Vern the serial killer for her and saving Mellie."
"Not to mention any of his other future victims."
We put my leftovers (tigers didn't have the word 'leftover' in their vocabularies) away and then my phone rang again. Jack glanced over at the table and then frowned and picked up my phone, holding it out so I could see the caller ID on the screen:
Hottie McP-Ops
"'Hottie McP-Ops'? Is there something you want to tell me, Tess?"
I covered my face with my hands and groaned. "So that's what Shelley was giggling about when I thought she was playing games on my phone last week. I'm afraid to look at what she put for you in my contacts."
He laughed and handed me my phone just as his own started ringing. He pulled it out of his pocket and showed me the screen andhiscaller ID:
Agent Annoying
I grinned and accepted Alejandro's call. "Hey, Jack's here, so you can hang up the call you have going to his phone. Also, how are you calling us both at once?"
FBI Paranormal Operations division's best agent, Alejandro Vasquez, laughed. "That's classified. How was the festival? Catch any new serial killers today?"
I sighed. "That feels like so long ago."
