Time to Time: Ashton Ford, Psychic Detective (Ashton Ford Series) Read Free

direction. At that point, I know, my
graphics had turned off.
    I
took off my shirt and wrapped Penny in it, then I took her to my place.
    She
was a basket case, mentally. Didn't seem to know where she was or who I was or
even who she was. She'd become entirely docile, doing whatever I suggested
without argument or resistance of any kind.
    I
took her in the house and put her to bed, inspected her for physical hurts and
found none. She was asleep before I could get her tucked in good.
    I
went straight to the telephone and called Ted Bransen. He answered the second
ring with a sleepy voice that turned a bit nasty when I asked him if he knew
where his wife was.
    He
snarled, "I told you, dammit, that you're working this through me!"
    I
was too drained and confused to snarl back. I just replied in a very meek
voice, "Call me if you are curious about her," and hung up.
    He
called back about twenty seconds later and yelled, "She's not in her bed!
Do you know where she is?"
    "She's
in my bed, pal," I told him, and hung up again. This time I turned off the
ringer.
    It
was, I figured, about a twenty-minute drive at that time of night from his
house to mine.
    Meanwhile
I was tired as hell and fading fast. I felt curiously lethargic, drained,
spent. I don't get that way often, no matter how long the night.
    So
I went to the bar and splashed some bourbon onto an ice cube, took it to the
picture window overlooking the Pacific.
    It
was damned pretty out there, star-spangled above and phosphorescent below, just
enough wind to make some caps atop the surging waters.
    Gradually
I became aware that there was just a bit too much glow out there. I'd looked
out that window often enough in all kinds of weather to recognize a different
quality to this night.
    The
glow continued growing until finally it was suspended right out there in front
of me along the water line. It was oval-shaped and about twelve feet across. I
swear the damned thing waved at me; it sort of wobbled in the air, like a bowl
bouncing around when you set it down too hard. And then, maybe just to show me
where my graphics had originated, it sent me another golden triangle tumbling
gently through my head.
    Then,
instantly, it became an identical golden triangle, slowly inverted itself with
the point skyward, and shot straight up without a sound.
    I
was still staring at the place where it had been when another "shooting
star" whizzed across the horizon, far at sea.
    Some
things the thinking mind simply refuses to process. Mine was definitely
beginning to balk at the whole thing.
    Take
away the saucer, even, and there is too much to process.
    I
took my bourbon onto the open deck and stretched out with it on a chaise,
allowing my eyes to find their own way into those star-spangled depths
suspended above my head.
    Nothing
was real; that was my illumination of the moment.
    All
was illusion.
    But
still I was wondering what the hell I'd gotten myself into this time.

Chapter Four:   Etchings

    Either Penny Laker is
a master at disinformation or someone around her is. Published background
information on this superstar is a beautiful study in contradictions. She has
been variously reported as a native of Illinois, Scotland, Ireland, Australia,
Canada, and Iceland. Depending upon where she was born, her age might be
somewhere between thirty-three and thirty-nine. She got her start as an actress
either on Broadway, at Burt Reynolds's theater in Florida, on the London stage,
in an Italian movie, or in San Francisco in a porno film.
    She
appeared on the Hollywood scene ten years ago with a supporting role in a much
ballyhooed picture that was a box-office flop but nevertheless launched Penny
Laker with rave reviews, comparing her with the best in the business. She has
been one of the "hot properties" in a highly property-conscious town
ever since, but that is not the end of disinformation. Perhaps one of the most
written-about stars in the modern era, no two stories agree as to the details
of