Joyland

That silenced him, at least for the time being.

"Lane Hardy said that Roz only thinks Horror House is haunted, because she won't go inside and find out for sure. She won't even go near it, if she can help it. Lane thinks that's ironic, because he says it really is haunted."

Erin made her eyes big and round and scooted a little closer to the fire-partly for effect, mostly I think so that Tom would put his arm around her. "He's seen-?"

"I don't know. He said to ask Mrs. Shoplaw, and she gave me the whole story." I ran it down for them. It was a good story to tell at night, under the stars, with the surf rolling and a beachfire just starting to burn down to coals. Even Tom seemed fascinated.

"Does she claim to have seen Linda Gray?" he asked when I finally ran down. "La Shoplaw?"

I mentally replayed her story as told to me on the day I rented the room on the second floor. "I don't think so. She would have said."

He nodded, satisfied. "A perfect lesson in how these things work. Everyone knows someone who's seen a UFO, and everyone knows someone who's seen a ghost. Hearsay evidence, inadmissible in court. Me, I'm a Doubting Thomas. Geddit?

Tom Kennedy, Doubting Thomas?"

Erin threw him a much sharper elbow. 'We get it." She looked thoughtfully into the fire. "You know what? Summer's two-thirds gone, and I've never been in the Joyland scream-shy a single time, not even the baby part up front. It's a no-photo zone.

Brenda Rafferty told us it's because lots of couples go in there to make out." She peered at me. 'What are you grinning about?"

"Nothing." I was thinking of La Shoplaw's late husband going through the place after Late Gate and picking up cast-off panties.

"Have either of you guys been in?"

We both shook our heads. "HH is Dobie Team's job," Tom said.

"Let's do it tomorrow. All three of us in one car. Maybe we'll see her."

"Go to Joyland on our day off when we could spend it on the beach?" Tom asked. "That's masochism at its very finest."

This time in spite of giving him an elbow, she poked him in the ribs. I didn't know if they were sleeping together yet, but it seemed likely; the relationship had certainly become very physical. "Poop on that! As employees we get in free, and what does the ride take? Five minutes?"

"I think a little longer," I said. "Nine or ten. Plus some time in the baby part. Say fifteen minutes, all told."

Tom put his chin on her head and looked at me through the fine cloud of her hair. "Poop on that, she says. You can tell that here is a young woman with a fine college education. Before she started hanging out with sorority girls, she would have said shitsky and left it at that."

"The day I start hanging out with that bunch of half-starved mix-n-match sluts will be the day I crawl up my own ass and die! " For some reason, this vulgarity pleased me to no end.

Possibly because Wendy was a veteran mix-n-matcher. "You,

Thomas Patrick Kennedy, are just afraid we will see her, and you'll have to take back all those things you said about Madame Fortuna and ghosts and UFOs and-"

Tom raised his hands. "I give up. We'll get in the line with the rest of the rubes-the conies, I mean-and take the Horror House tour. I only insist it be in the afternoon. I need my beauty rest."

"You certainly do," I said.

"Coming from someone who looks like you, that's pretty funny. Give me a beer, Jonesy."

I gave him a beer.

"Tell us how it went with the Stansfields," Erin said. "Did they blubber all over you and call you their hero?"

That was pretty close, but I didn't want to say so. "The parents were okay. The kid sat in the corner, reading Screen Time and saying she spied Dean Martin with her little eye."

"Forget the local color and cut to the chase," Tom said. "Did you get any money out of it?"

I was preoccupied with thoughts of how the little girl announcing the celebrities with such reverence could have been in a flatline coma instead. Or in a casket. Thus distracted, I answered honestly. "The guy offered me five hundred dollars, but I wouldn't take it."

Tom goggled. "Say what?"

I looked down at the remains of the s'more I was holding.

Marshmallow was drooling onto my fingers, so I tossed it into the fire. I was full, anyway. I was also embarrassed, and pissed off to be feeling that way. "The man's trying to get a little business up and running, and based on the way he talked about it, it's at the point where it could go either way. He's also got a wife and a kid and another kid coming soon. I didn't think he could afford to be giving money away."

"He couldn't? What about you?"

I blinked. "What about me?"

To this day I don't know if Tom was genuinely angry or faking it. I think he might have started out faking, then gathered steam as full understanding of what I'd done struck him. I have no idea exactly what his home situation was, but I know he was 1 13 living from paycheck to paycheck, and had no car. When he wanted to take Erin out, he borrowed mine.. and was careful — punctilious, I should say-about paying for the gas he used.