Chapter 36
At 7:37 PM Cindy Santos was wrapping up some voice-overs and paperwork in her office at the Channel 8 TV studio. She was going over her recent notes regarding Dale Smite’s murder. She scrolled down the memo pad on her smartphone.
> Gerald Zowen in city jail; sullen – still not talking to anyone
> Police’s 2nd search of the house and shed yields nothing of interest
> Police’s 2nd search of both vehicles yields nothing of interest
> Police’s 3rd search of wrecked Ford Focus turns up some gold specks in trunk, under spare tire, during a wipedown.
> Autopsy of Dale Smite confirms three 38-caliber shots to the face from very close range
> No gold found on Dale or Gerald
> No ‘large wad of cash’ found at Dale’s house or in his vehicle
> Police plan on searching the back yard with a metal detector on Sunday morning
She started thinking about David, the great gold chaser. Well, if he doesn’t extract that gold from the property tonight, the police will find it tomorrow. It’ll end up in a museum display case somewhere in Wilmington, Raleigh or Charlotte. Should I tip him off? I don’t want to get implicated in this, though. Oh, I know how I’ll get the message to him.
Cindy grabbed her secondary, rarely used, personal cell phone. It was the one that she used for situations like this. The cell phone’s number was blocked from being displayed on a receiving phone; moreover, no one – not even her family in California – knew the number. The phone never rang. She had it set up so that it couldn’t receive calls or texts. It was a purely one-way, anonymous-sender, message-transmission device. Should I really do this? Sure, why not? He was a gentleman at the tearoom. He seems like a decent guy. I’ll let his gold-quest adventure continue – maybe to a fruitful end. Perhaps he’ll even compensate me for the tip. Wait, it’s not traceable to me. But, he’ll know it’s from me. Who else would send him such a tip? Gosh, I hope he doesn’t get arrested tonight. No, he seems pretty smart. A techie from the RTP. He will have thought it through.
Cindy opened her old flip-phone and typed:
I’m throwing you a bone, big dog.
Time is of the utmost essence. You
must unearth your treasure tonight.
She hit Send, waited five seconds, turned it off and snapped it shut. Mission accomplished. Good luck, sport!
She then checked her Facebook account. There was a friend request from David and from someone or group going under the alias of Psecret Psociety. She glanced at the featured pics. Sounds arcane and intriguing. I wonder if David is in this esoteric club, too. I wonder what it’s all about. Is anyone that I know in this group? She accepted both.
Cindy quickly perused David’s pics. All single. He must have gotten rid of all the ex-girlfriend pics. Good boy, David. He looks a shade Korean in this one.
She checked his relationships status. He listed himself as single. Well, he appears to be. (Neither David nor Chantelle had posted any pics of themselves together yet on Facebook.)
She then checked out the Psecret Psociety page. Definitely some surreal strangeness here. Then she viewed some of the agent folders. Weird. They’ve all been assigned agent numbers and they’re from all over America. There’s David – Agent 888. And, that girl lives in Vietnam. And, this guy lives in England. Heck, they’re from all over the world. How was this put together? Why was it put together? I’ll have to look into this more later. Then she got up to go home.
When Cindy reached the front lobby, she noticed a moth whirling around a floor lamp in the lobby. It had two light-bulb sockets, but one light bulb had been removed. The moth swung too wide while looping the bright 100-watt bulb. Poof!
There was a blue flash and a puff of gray smoke. The moth had landed right in the open socket and got a fatal 110-volt zap. Wow, what are the chances of witnessing such an odd occurrence? People only see such events in the crazy novels that I read.