Free Infamous by Suzanne Brockmann Page B

his mind. “Can I ask you a question?” He didn’t wait for her to respond. “Did Gramps ever talk to you about Silas Quinn’s second wife? Agatha something.”
    “The one he thought must’ve poisoned Quinn?” she asked.
    “Yeah,” A.J. said. “Huh. He just told me about that. Just. And he wouldn’t’ve told me what he told me—that Agatha thought Quinn was on the verge of sexually abusing their daughter—back when I was ten.”
    “No,” his mother agreed, “but that doesn’t mean you didn’t overhear things that were too grown-up for you to understand when you were supposed to be in bed.”
    His mother had an explanation for everything.
    “Hey.”
    A.J. turned to see that Jamie was back. “She’s grabbing asandwich—turkey and Swiss on pumpernickel, she’s wearing a black blouse with those turquoise earrings that she loves, and—drumroll, please—Julie’s at the reception desk.”
    “If finding the oil tank didn’t convince her,” he told Jamie, “this won’t do it, either.”
    Right before they’d left Alaska, Rose had asked A.J. to please stop by the house. She still lived in Jamie’s house, where she and Bev and A.J. had eventually moved to quote unquote
take care of Gramps
. Of course, at first anyway, it had been Gramps who’d taken care of them.
    It was a smallish house, but one that was filled with good memories and laughter—Jamie and Melody had raised much of their family there.
    And buried somewhere in the big backyard, Rose had told A.J. the day before he’d headed south, was an old oil tank, long unused. It needed to be removed before the contents started leaking, but all the experts she’d hired to find the thing had come up empty-handed.
    She’d stood out on her back porch, arms folded regally across her chest as she told him this.
    And he’d realized what she wanted. She wanted him to ask Jamie’s ghost where that oil tank was buried.
    “He’s not sure he wants to tell you,” A.J. had informed her. “Seeing as how you don’t think he’s real.”
    “Don’t be a pill, kid.” Jamie had been far more relaxed about it. “I’m happy to tell her. Hell, maybe it’ll help convince her—and you—that I’m not a growth on your brain.”
    It didn’t convince her. Despite the fact that the tank had been precisely where Jamie, via A.J., told Rose it would be.
    His mother’s theory was that its location was something Jamie had told A.J. when he was small—a distant memory that had been awakened.
    A.J.’s sister, Bev, though, was happily convinced that their gramps was back. And because Bev knew that A.J. was being “visited,” which was what she called it, the entire rest of the town now knew it, too.
    Bev had left him a cheerful voicemail message, telling him that everyone made a point to ask about both of them.
How’s
A.J.? Tell him to say hey to Jamie for me
.… It didn’t seem to make too much of a difference whether A.J. was haunted or crazy. They all took it in stride. With the exception of A.J.’s mother.
    “Is he back?” she asked now, her voice tinny through the speaker of his cell phone. “What’s he telling you?”
    “That you’re wearing the earrings Jamie and I gave you for Christmas, you’re having lunch at your desk, and that Ariana’s AWOL, so cousin Julie’s filling in again.”
    His mother was silent.
    “Jamie says he can move from one place to another with no travel time,” A.J. explained. “He just thinks himself there, and … There he is.”
    “Convenient,” she said.
    “Very,” A.J. agreed.
    “Hang on,” Jamie said. “I’ll go and tell you which files she has in front of her, which page the book she’s reading is open to. We’re going to make her believe us this time, kid. I’ll be right back.” He popped out again.
    “A.J.,” his mother said, but then she stopped. He could tell that she’d covered the phone, but still could hear her saying, probably to Julie, “I’ll be right there.” The hand was