Free Good Lord, Deliver Us by John Stockmyer Page B

that looked like a box of salt, the kind with a
metal, pullout pouring spout near the top -- the box going on the
floor beside the mattress.
    After that, she took a fat, wide roll
of masking tape from a smaller carton; put the tape on the
floor.
    Another container
contributed look-alike, electronic devices -- microphones and
foot-square speakers. Three sets of them. Equipment that definitely deserved the
mattress.
    Still squatted down, the ghost hunter
swivelled to look up at Z, knees rotating in Z's direction. "Want
to help?"
    "OK."
    "Here's what we'll do first." She
pivoted away from Z again to point to the electronics. "These are
nursery monitors. Battery-powered. In normal use, you put the mike
in the baby's room and the speaker in the mother's room. When the
baby makes a sound, it registers on the mother's speaker." The girl
pointed again at the mike-speaker gear. "I want to put the
transmitters in three places. Two, up here. One in the
basement.
    "OK."
    "The corresponding speakers go in
here."
    "Yeah."
    "I'll want to know which
speaker is coming from which microphone, of course. So we do them
one at a time, labeling the speakers as we go. We can use a piece
of tape. After we get the mike set, write its location on the tape,
then stick the tape to the proper speaker." She pointed to the roll
of masking tape at her feet. "The point is that, if there's a noise
anywhere in the house, I want to hear it on one of the
speakers, which speaker telling me the room the noise comes from." She paused
to think, dragging the fingers of one hand through her hair
standing up at last. "Let's say, for now, that we set them up in
the living room, back bedroom, and basement.
    "It's also a good idea to put the
mikes somewhere out of the way where they won't be noticed." She
hesitated once more. "And that may take some doing, given the lack
of furniture." She looked at Z, frowning prettily. "I could use
another one or two of these units, but they cost fifty bucks
apiece." She frowned even more, her blue eyes cloudy; then,
relaxed. "Though three should do it in a house this
small."
    It took half an hour to place the
microphones and speakers. (They tucked the basement mike into a
split on the last riser of the stairs, and to hell with
it!)
    Simple to do if you didn't mind
breaking your back.
    Not that Miss Stewart didn't do her
part. She did -- in a way.
    As it turned out, the girl's
contribution was to bounce back and forth between the latest
microphone placement and the bedroom where she listened to the
speaker as Z made a variety of soft sounds: breathing, walking,
humming. She would then return to order Z to move the mike to
another spot where she hoped it would do a better job.
    "This is really helpful, having you
along," she enthused as the "project" continued. "Alone, I have to
arrange for something to make a noise. I've got a kitchen, wind-up
timer with me for that purpose, but having you make just the right
sound is great!"
    "Great," Z said, back aching but
trying to fake a matching enthusiasm
    "The next installation's a little
tricky," Miss Stewart said on their last trip to the bedroom, the
three mikes in place to her satisfaction, the corresponding
receivers labeled and placed at intervals along the inside bedroom
wall. "I wish I had a camera for each room. But I don't. Being --
what did you call it, a ghost hunter? -- doesn't pay all that much.
Neither does teaching in a girl's school, believe me." Again, the
adorable pout. Though Z hadn't liked her much as a man, she was so
cute as a girl she was practically irresistible.
    About her pay, Z believed her.
Everyone seemed upset that teacher's salaries were so low.
(Unfortunately, no one was at all concerned about a detective's
wages. To Z's knowledge, no politician had ever made a promise to
raise a P.I.s. hourly rate.)
    Kicking empty boxes out of the way,
the girl crouched over a square, wood container, taking out parcels
wrapped in bubble-wrap, laying the protected items carefully