Free The Dead Speak Ill Of The Living (The Dead Speak Paranormal Mysteries Book 1) by Robert Wilde Page B

Syria. It’s not Mars.”
      
“Right, so, are we in?”
      
“Yes, I can see why this might be interesting,” Joe replied, hoping to put his
machine to good use and really make the last few days’ worth it.
      
“I’m in,” Nazir nodded, “Anything but dealing with people who can’t operate a
printer.”
      
All eyes turned to Pohl, and she looked at each in turn. In recent years, since
her children left and failed to make much effort at communicating, Pohl had
come to realise she’d neglected them for her studies, and wondered what life
would be like in a family group. Now, as she looked at these four young from
the same generation as her children, she thought she had a chance at forging a
replacement family. “I accept.”
     

Two: Fluffy Bastards
     
      
“So does anyone have any ideas?” Dee said, looking down at a blank notepad.
      
She wasn’t alone in the room, and the targets of her question were sat around
her lounge: Joe having a coffee, Professor Pohl looking at the titles on the
bookshelf as she sipped an orange juice, and Nazir, relaxing into the comfiest
chair, joining Dee in a beer. But there was silence as brains ticked over.
      
It had soon become apparent that, after deciding their parlous work situations
would need remedying, using Joe’s machine to bring in cash wasn’t going to be
straightforward. On the one hand, having a device that allowed you to talk to
spirits without either dying yourself or messing about with a fraudulent medium
should have bought them billions. In practice they couldn’t really work out
how.
      
“We could take an advert out in the papers,” Joe suggested, “a sort of ‘can we
help?’ thing.”
      
Dee wrinkled her nose up at the thought of newspapers, for whom she’d recently
worked. “That might work, but we’d need the right paper. There’s a small number
of, err, let’s just esoteric magazines we could try.”
      
Nazir took a sip, and explained how he saw it. “Why don’t we find these
mysteries to be solved ourselves. Turn up at murder scenes, find out who did
it, solve it, bingo.”
      
“Like a detective agency?” Joe pondered.
      
“Yes, a bit like that.”
      
“We still wouldn’t be getting paid unless someone hired us,” but Dee wasn’t
throwing a huge spanner in the works. “Although, it is a good way to find cases
to work on. We just need to tighten up the money aspect.”
      
“A bit sick though,” Joe said, forgetting which room he was in.
      
“Says the man who carries his dead telephone around with him everywhere.”
      
Joe didn’t answer Dee, he just tapped the bag at his feet fondly.
      
Having been looking at books, Pohl tried something grander. “Maybe we solve a
few mysteries and write them up. We could shift a lot of books, the true crime
market is huge.”
      
“It is, I always planned to knock a Jack the Ripper book out if I had to
urgently raise some money,” Dee confessed.
      
“But we couldn’t prove any of it without admitting the machine was involved,”
and Joe looked sad. “We need to answer questions without giving anything away.”
      
Nazir summed up. “So, basically, unless we can find a ghost to lead us to
buried treasure, we’re having issues.”
      
“No one said this was going to be easy,” Dee shot back, “although we could at
least come up with a name we can use.”
      
“Now there’s something we really need to think about.” Everyone looked at Pohl.
“It doesn’t do to rush major decisions, our name will influence everything.”
      
“So you’re saving the Corpse Quartet isn’t going to cut it.”
      
Joe felt pleased with himself until Dee said “you just made that up didn’t
you.”
      
“Oh yes.”
      
“It shows. We’re agreed we’re going to mull on all this then?”
      
Three yeses.
      
      
The Estate Agent had been doing his job for twenty three years and seen just
about everything this part of Britain