“Oh, right. They said Wayne Vandershell’s vape pen exploded.”
“Holy cannoli.” Alden grimaced. “I guess that would explain what we saw. Hard to imagine something more ‘off’ than a vape pen exploding.”
“I can imagine a lot of things, but yeah, that seems odd to me, too. Hang on a sec.” She picked up her phone again and did a quick search. “Whoa. Apparently it’s not that odd—several hundred emergency room visits a year are linked to vape pen accidents, with injuries to the face, more to the hands, and most to the groin.”
“The groin!” Alden said it so loudly that people at nearby tables turned their heads to look.
Roz laughed. “I guess you shouldn’t carry them in your pocket.”
“I don’t intend to carry them at all. Ever.”
“I’m so relieved. You’re dangerous enough already.”
He leaned in, offered a mischievous smile and pitched his voice low. “Am I?”
She whispered back. “Yes, darling. You’re dangerous to my diet. I can’t believe I ate this whole sandwich.”
“Ha,” he scoffed, sitting up straight, though his eyes twinkled.
“All right, I guess we have to go get something to put in our story.” She waved over their server.
“I’ve got this.” He pulled out his wallet. “Or I should say, The Courier-Beacon does.”
“We can’t expense every meal.”
“Only the meals when we work through the story. At least until Webb calls me on it. And he won’t.”
“If I were in charge, reporters would pay for our own lunch.” She wondered what their well-heeled publisher thought of Alden’s expense reports. Not that Webb Howard, who also owned the tabloid where Alden used to work and now a network of online news sites, ever appeared in the office. She’d met him exactly once.
Alden handed a credit card to their server, who scurried away. “This is nothing compared with the bills I’d rack up at the National Eye. Travel, fancy restaurants, astronomical bar tabs, payoffs.” He sighed. “Those were the days.”
But she heard the sarcasm in his tone. “You don’t miss it, do you?”
“God, no. It was awful.”
She snickered.
“I’ll go see Mae at the bookstore, OK?” Alden asked.
“Perfect. I’ll try Nicole Esquivel first and see if she can get me an ‘in’ with the family. I’ll try the company office if I have to, but they could give me the runaround for days. And they might want to if the project is cloaked in that much secrecy.”
“If the movie studio is even their project,” Alden said, signing the receipt the server brought back. “Let me know what you find out.”
Chapter Nine
Downtown Comet Cove was busier today than it was on Saturday, but Big Bang Books was a lot quieter. Last time, Alden hadn’t noticed the tune that played when he opened the door, but then again, Mae had probably turned it off so it wouldn’t be whistling every other second. That’s what it was, a whistling tune of four notes—the call from The Hunger Games, he realized with amusement.
He’d donned his black sport coat so he’d look more professional, and the icy air in here made him glad of it. Light jazz filled the space. A few people browsed the shelves. The area in the back where Enolia had spoken was free of folding chairs, though a few big beanbags and armchairs now scattered there provided a comfy place to read. One beanbag had nearly swallowed a tiny lounging boy as he read AlphaOops! And an equally preoccupied woman—his mother?—curled up in an armchair next to him with an e-reader.
Curling up with an e-reader seemed unromantic to Alden, but he got it. He read books on his phone sometimes. Given fewer people read all the time and he was in the business of words, he was just thrilled to see someone with a bookish device in her hand.
A familiar young woman in red-framed eyeglasses read a book at the sales counter near the front, rapt. He was just wondering if he needed to ask for Mae when the owner emerged from the back hall with an armful of shiny new books and headed right for him.
“Good afternoon,” she said. “I can help you in just a minute.”
“No rush.”
She strode past him and aimed for a display table up front, which she topped off with copies of Enolia Honeywood’s The Murex Murder.
