Downtime by Tamara Allen Read Free Book Online Page B

him to the future to spend a little time in the can. I sighed in disgust and scooped up my useless cell phone. I was ready to blow this place.
     
    I made my way down to the kitchen, to find Ezra and I weren’t the only ones already out of bed. Henry was at the table, along with a bespectacled man he introduced as Dr. Silas Gilbride. Dr. Gilbride greeted me with the weary pronouncement that there were three new babies in the world as of two-fifteen this morning, then pushed himself out of his chair and left his half-eaten breakfast to apparently head up to bed. Three babies too many, I guessed. I looked around to see what was for breakfast. The ham was back on the table, along with a pitcher of milk, thick slices of lightly toasted bread, and some of the cinnamon rolls from last night. I started with the bread and butter, wondering if there was any coffee to be had.
     
    Derry joined us and Ezra followed shortly, but he didn’t seem to have much of an appetite. Maybe I’d gotten to him after all. If he’d suckered everyone in the house into believing he communed with the dead, he was one persuasive son of a bitch; but he couldn’t keep them on a string forever. It might be a naïve era, but these men weren’t stupid, nor was Kathleen. Maybe I could put the first glimmer of doubt in their minds. “By the way. How did it go last night with Mrs. Hastings? Reach out and touch anyone?”
     
    If Ezra had had a mouthful of food, he’d have choked on it. He fixed wide eyes on me with a silent plea, but I had no intention of letting him keep up the charade. “Bet you got paid all the same, didn’t you?”
     
    The clatter of a fork against a plate drew my attention across the table. Everyone sat silent and uneasy, but my revelation didn’t produce an explosion from Henry. Nothing more than a faint flush on his cheekbones gave away his wrath.
     
    Ezra shot me a reproachful look and tried to repair the damage. “She asked for me, Henry. I could hardly leave her down there in tears.”
     
    “I thought we’d reached an understanding.” Henry pushed his chair back and rose. “Apparently not.”
     
    “What was I supposed to do?”
     
    “You could have held your tongue—”
     
    “He was standing right in front of me, for God’s sake,” Ezra interrupted, rising. “She just wanted a word. You aren’t being fair.”
     
    “If you continue to go on this way, we shall neither of us be credible in this field. I have a reputation to protect. I will not have it brought down by a—” He stifled whatever he’d been about to say and the red in his cheeks heightened, though he was suddenly avoiding Ezra’s stare.
     
    “Go ahead,” Ezra told him in a flat tone. “You’ve been thinking it from the start.”
     
    The rivalry evidently wasn’t rancorous enough to push Henry into saying whatever he’d been thinking. Too damned bad, because I was really curious to hear it. Henry drew in a long measured breath and stalked out of the kitchen. Ezra sat, picked up his fork, poked at the food on the plate, then put the fork down.
     
    “Damn it,” he muttered.
     
    “We believe you,” Derry said quietly.
     
    I checked a sigh. It was tough to get through to people who needed to believe this kind of thing was real. They might catch on eventually that they were being taken advantage of by two men they called friend, but I wasn’t going to persuade them it was a con, not in the little time I had left here. They didn’t know me or trust me the way they trusted Ezra. What had led to the argument between Ezra and Henry, I didn’t know, but I suspected Ezra was the flashier one in their cons and Henry didn’t like it. Ezra’s charm no doubt drew more clients. People liked a good show.
     
    I left the table and wandered into what Ezra had called Kathleen’s sitting room. It was more cluttered than Derry’s bedroom, and that was saying something. The sofa with its high back and arms bore up under more than half a dozen