Caretakers (Tyler Cunningham) Read Online Free PDF Page B

correct her ) special on bats, and their use of echolocation. Is that what you mean?”
    “Somewhat. My experience has been that the act of looking for information sends out signals of various sorts, and when the signal interacts with a person or research resource of some sort, it echoes back at me, like the bat’s squeak bouncing back off a moth. The bat and I adjust our flight/research pattern, and sometimes get lucky.”
    Mrs. Crocker looked at me through a veil of confusion, with just a hint of understanding growing after a few seconds.
    “It’s not necessary that I understand your methods, is it young man?”
    “No, Ma’am ( my first Ma’am … ever, I think ). I don’t always understand what I’m doing, I just trust that my subconscious does, and that things will work out. I can’t promise you that I’ll be able to tell you what you want to know about your daughter, but if the information is out there, I will find it.”
    “This man, Pinchot, the detective we hired when Dee went missing, charged us so much per day plus expenses; can I assume that you operate in much the same way, Mr. Cunningham?”
    “You cannot, because I do not. I am not a licensed private investigator, as he likely was. I do favors for friends, and in return they do favors for me.”
    “Ah yes, this was the point at which that dear girl Dorothy got flustered and stammered her way out of the conversation in which she first menti oned you. Niceties of New York licensure aside, I would like to fairly compensate you for your time and effort. What favor could I possibly do for you? Dorothy mentioned something about vacations; we have houses in California, Florida, New Mexico, and Maine, if any of those would be of interest.”
    “Whose Porsche is that in the garage?” I asked.
    “My son’s,” Mrs. Crocker replied, with a hint of hesitancy creeping into her voice.
    I thought back to Niko, a boy that I’d been schooled with briefly as a child. He had loved, obsessively, cars, in particular Porsches, and even more particularly the model owned by his father, the 993, a variant of the 911 sold in the 1980s and 1990s. Niko and his father had taken me on a series of rides in lower Manhattan one October and November, and I could still remember the sounds and feel of the car running flat out, nimble and powerful, like a cheetah dashing among cows. I hadn’t had time to inspect the machine being worked on in the garage, but I was reasonably certain that it was a 993.
    “I would feel more than fairly compensated if I could borrow the Porsche during the course of my research … investigation,” I said, and then looked at her, waiting. I live a life with few wants, having, in general, everything that I need/want. Caught up in her nostalgia though, and seemingly indulging some of my own, I found myself wanting this, very much; it did not sit well with me, and I tried to bury the feeling, so that it would not spill out of my eyes or face, onto this old woman sitting in front of me.
    She leaned back and looked at the ceiling and seemed to weigh things for a long 17 seconds before smiling a bit, and responding. “Yes, by God, I like it. Mike will be upset, no, angry, with both of us, but he can do this for me; I gave him the car for his fiftieth birthday anyway. You must promise not to put the slightest scratch on his car, Tyler. He warehouses the thing up here, and only drives it a few weeks each year; he told me it has less than 10,000 miles on it, and is more than 20 years old. This will be difficult, but we’ve lived without thinking about her for too long, and he can give me this one thing before I go.”
    “We’ve kept Dorothy and the dog waiting long enough now. When you go out and send her in, tell Anthony that you’ll be staying for lunch, and to have a place for me at the table as well.” She looked past me, and through the door, towards Dorothy and the wet dog waiting to mess up this neat and tidy hospital-feeling room, in much the