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Life could never be simple, could it? I couldn’t deal with just one problem at a time, could I?
“What is it?” I pressed a hand to my other ear and listened.
“Your friend was right,” Cormac said. I almost corrected him, that Charles wasn’t my friend—but when he needed to talk, he’d called me. What did that make me? Cormac continued, “Harold Franklin was traveling in all those locations on those dates. I’m not sure it means anything—the post hoc ergo propter hoc fallacy—”
“Whoa—what was that you just said?”
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He paused before saying, “Never mind.”
“But—”
“Maybe Franklin had something to do with those storms, maybe he didn’t. But it’s interesting that he’s never been present for major earthquakes, mudslides, wildfires—just storms.”
So Franklin coincidentally shows up for major, historically significant storms, but not other natural disasters. It wasn’t much to base a defense on. “Like you said, that doesn’t necessarily mean anything. And I don’t think it’s admissible in court.”
“Probably not. But it’s a start. I’ve got some more checking to do.”
“Great. Cool. Whatever you can find. Do you need help?”
“You know—I might,” he said. “Let me talk to Ben a minute.”
Sure, he could connive with Ben but not with me . . . I held the phone out to Ben and raised my eyebrows at his curious expression. “I may not be guilty of libel after all.”
“Not about Speedy Mart, anyway,” he said.
“Hey!” I pouted.
Grinning, he took the phone and replaced me in the corner. I tried to listen in, but Ben’s side of the conversation mostly involved him saying, “Yeah . . . okay . . . okay . . .” Cormac was speaking low enough that I couldn’t hear his side.
“What’s that all about?” Tyler asked.
I sighed. How did I explain this in as few words as possible? “I spent part of my show last week talking about whether or not something supernatural is going on with Speedy Mart—the 24-hour convenience store chain, right?”
“Something supernatural—like vampires and werewolves?” he said.
“Kind of. Anything, really. Magical, supernatural—weird. Anyway, the president of Speedy Mart is suing me for libel. So now we want to prove that there really is something going on with him because then it isn’t libel.”
Tyler leaned forward a little. “If someone’s giving you trouble, Walters and I could maybe take care of it—”
“No,” I said. “That will definitely not be necessary. We’ve got it under control.”
Not that siccing a couple of Green Beret werewolves on Franklin wouldn’t be fun to watch . . .
Ben returned to the table, folding my phone and handing it back to me.
“Well?” I said.
“Later,” he said.
“You two lead interesting lives, don’t you?” Tyler said.
I shrugged. “For certain values of interesting.”
We finished the meal. The sodas were drunk, the skewers lay empty and bloody. I was feeling quite pleased with myself.
“Thanks,” Tyler said. “Been awhile since I’ve eaten that well.” Walters made a sound of agreement. Was he actually smiling?
