6
Jack stood outside the screen door and watched Lyle's cautious approach.
"Can I help you?"
"Lyle, it's me. Jack."
Lyle stepped closer, his expression saying, Who is this fool kidding? Then he grinned.
"Well, I'll be damned. It is you. Come on in."
Jack stepped inside. "Didn't have time to change my clothes." He started to peel off his wig. "Man, this thing is hot."
"And beat ugly too."
He turned to see Charlie popping in through the front door behind him.
"So you're back," Lyle said to his brother. He glanced at his watch, thinking. "Finished your good works for the day?"
Good works? Had he been to church?
"Yowzah." Charlie turned to Jack. "Yo, G. How'd it go down?"
He hated reporting less than complete success, but they had a right to know.
"Well, the good news is the remote light switch worked perfectly..."
They all had a good laugh as he described exposing Carl in the act of waving fake ectoplasm through the air, then...
"But the rest didn't pan out. The lady cooked up some lame story about setting all this up in advance to demonstrate how other fake mediums will try to fool them."
"And they bought it?" Lyle said.
Jack nodded. "She's pretty glib."
"Aw, maaaan," Charlie said.
Lyle's voice took on a bitter edge. "So last night was all for nothing then?"
"Not quite. I've got an afternoon appointment Tuesday, and there's a lot I need to do between now and then if I'm going to bring them down."
"More electronics?" Charlie said, his eyes lighting.
"Not this time. This is going to be all manual-sleight of hand stuff. But I need your help with the setup. Do you subscribe to the Blue Directory?"
Lyle's expression was blank. "Blue...?"
"The medium I worked for used to subscribe to a book that had all sorts of information on hundreds of sitters."