Crime Time

"The good news is this rag of a newspaper doesn't seem to buy Mr. Youngblood as a certifiable clairvoyant. In fact, he's gone missing," Quinn held a super market tabloid as we shared coffee before starting our day. For some unknown reason, he frequently purchased the paper thought all he did was make fun of the content.

"I thought Youngblood was the star attraction of the psychic world," Martha said as she tried to get comfortable. The birth of her child was imminent, if not past due.

"No one has seen the guy for several days," her husband answered. "It seems the police are looking into the situation."

"Good riddance," Howie said. I breathed a sigh of relief. Maybe now Youngblood would stay out of the news and Howie would back off insisting we take action to stop him.

Quinn thumped his finger on the paper. "The paper is still touting its silly million dollar offer. They say fifty thousand people have hit their web site!"

Betsy shivered. "The bad news is we'd better double up on our level of caution if every greedy fortune hunter is bird dogging Howie."

While we kidded about selling Howie out for a million buck reward, the increased outside interest in our activities was a serious matter. We held closed door meetings cautioning one another against the slightest slip that might cause someone to develop the slimmest suspicion about our true activities. New local acquaintances never questioned us about work and we displayed no interest in anything pertaining to crime or mayhem. We were regular working stiffs to the rest of the world. However, we knew a careless word overheard could spell our doom. We each understood the drop-dead importance of absolute privacy.

All in all, we were getting along admirably well considering how much time we spent in each other's company. While personality differences abounded, we'd learned to accommodate one another's quirks with no more than a raised eyebrow or occasional huff. The women worked smoothly together in spite of Betsy's organized disdain for Martha's disorganized clutter.

Howie and Quinn remained the oil and water of our association although there was no mention of Martha's teenage indiscretion that had caused so much early turmoil. And, to Martha's disdain, Quinn was drinking more than a social amount of alcohol. I know Quinn continued to disdain the underutilization of Howie's abilities. While I sympathized in concept, the very nature of Howie's capabilities were so awesome to me, I couldn't conceive the ramifications of broadening them. The scientist in Quinn yearned for answers and it was killing him that Howie was obdurate about limiting his gift. But Howie's abilities were wholly dependent on Quinn and his apparatus. No one had learned to duplicate his settings nor did any of us want to be so educated. Quinn, absent Howie, was just another low level scientist.