Hey There Delilah

Jaydann and I trudged out of Linnwood Cemetery in the dark. 

"Well, that was interesting," she said.

I nodded. "A whole lot of activity. I thought checking out the grave of a murder victim would be a good idea."

"That really worked. A lot of EMFs."
"We'll have to come back sometime when it's not nineteen degrees out."

"So he was a murder victim?"

"He was killed with a spike maul in 1903. That's a sort of railroad hammer."

"Nice career you got."

We got in the car, and she started driving. It had been her idea to invite me out to do a little investigating on a Friday night, just for no reason. She and I had been talking a lot lately, and becoming friends; Jaydann and Alexis had rapidly been turning into "Jay" and "Lex" in my life.

She said,"I'll drop  by our next client and do the intake interview tomorrow."
"That sounds good. I've been predicting it's going to be busier lately---With the country in a time of crisis, and the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary of the country coming up, I'm thinking we may have an upswing in activity. And it seems to be beginning."
"Really?"

"Yeah, we have two investigations this month, and two more possibles next month. Normally we have three or four investigations per year."

"Oh my god."

"I didn't mean to kind of throw you new people into it like this, bringing you on board at a crazy time. It just seems to have worked out that way."
She grinned.

"We don't mind."

"So, I mean, the Flash didn't even get his own movie really. He wound up being an extra in Superman's movie, starring Batman."

I was sitting at the doughnut shop with Chloe before the investigation. We were having our monthly coffee and chatting, the way we did. I glanced out the window and grinned.

"Well, look who it is."

Lex and Jay came in. Chloe said,"Oh, hi, guys! What're you doing here?"

"Ashlin's not feeling well," said Lex. "We figured we'd come over and pick you two up. We don't want to make you walk."

"Well, appreciate that," I said. "Let's grab our stuff and get going. We've got a home on Main Street to check out tonight."

The family was gathered in the kitchen when we came in. Natasha and her daughter Ashlynn were there; they'd been there last time. I was a little surprised to see relatives Erin and her little daughter Allie there, too---I'd done a tour for them a couple of years ago. I adore Allie; she's a few years younger than Paul.

"Hi, guys," I said. "Didn't expect to see you here!"

"We were interested," said Erin.

"Is Paul here?" asked Allie.

"No, honey, he went out shopping," I said. "If I'd known you were going to be here, I'd have made sure he came. Jay, here's the intake form. You can run down the checklist."

Jay took the form and started questioning Natasha. Jay, to my relief, had offered to take over some of the paperwork end of the team. I pulled on my hood and my fingerless gloves, then the shoulder bag over my uniform. 

"Do you have any hot spots in the house? Anywhere the activity happens a lot?"

"Upstairs in the bedrooms," said Natasha.

"We'll start up there," I said.

"Are we going to see Delilah?" asked Allie.

"Well, maybe," I said. "Last time, I discovered that Delilah Masters is probably haunting the house. We're coming again to look into that. We may get a little evidence tonight."
"Is it scary?"

"No, honey, it's not. I know TV makes it look scary, but really it's kind of calm and quiet."

The dog came in. The family has this big blind Boxer named Dozer. He made the rounds and sniffed all of us, and I got down on my knees and petted him.

"Hi, Dozer, how you been? Good boy. Good boy."

He licked my face. I laughed; I love when dogs do that. "I love when there's a dog," I said. "I forgot to bring some treats for him."

"Oh, he can't have them," said Ashlynn. "He's diabetic."

"Oh, that makes me feel better."

I stood up.

"Suit up, guys," I said. "Let's get started."

"Recording," I said. "Seventy-thirty on January twenty-four, main bedroom. Lou."

"Jaydann."
"Alexis."

"Chloe."

We always go around the room, and everyone says their names for the recording. It's procedure. We had two recorders out, mine and Lex's. My EMF detector and Jay's. Chloe had her camera. I had my laser thermometer. And we'd place the bell and the cat ball in the hallway, within view.

"Is there anyone here?" I asked.

"Are we going to see Delilah?" asked Allie, sitting on the bed.

"Maybe," I said. "You never know."

"EMF up to yellow," said Jay.

"Getting activity," I said. "I'm going to thermometer." I got out my laser thermometer and aimed it out into the hallway.

Chloe giggled. "He holds that thing like a gun."

"It's been mistaken for one," I admitted. "There's a reason I keep it tucked away in my bag, out of sight. Natasha, is there anything that could be putting off heat out there? I'm showing eighty degrees, and that doesn't sound right."

Natasha shook her head. "Nothing should be that hot."

"We're getting more activity this time than we did last time. Ashlynn, is there any reason we can't try your room? I remember we did last time."

Ashlynn nodded. "That's okay. We just have to leave the door closed so that cats don't escape."

"That's fine. Let's grab our stuff and transfer over."

One of the cats was in his cage, because, we were told, he'd bite. The other one, Lucifer, was at large. I petted him, which he tolerated for a moment, and then hissed at me.

"He doesn't get to meet too many men," said Ashlynn.

Lex immediately began to play with Lucifer, which he liked better. I set down my EMF detector and turned on the recorder.

"There's a set of servants stairs going into the other bedroom," commented Natasha. "Is it possible that we're being haunted by a servant?"

"It definitely is," I said. "I trace who lived in the house, but nobody keeps records of their servants. It's why psychics bring them up a lot, because you can't prove it either way. So, yeah, it may very well be that there's a servant haunting the place, and I didn't find a record of it."

"EMF to red!" Jay noted excitedly. "We may be getting a response when you bring up the servants. That could be it."

"It makes sense," I said. I got out the laser thermometer. I aimed it at the floor, and Lucifer jumped on the laser and tried to catch it for a moment until he realized who was holding it. He looked at me disdainfully and went back to Lex.

I looked around the room at the team. They all seemed to be developing theit own go-to outfits, the way I dd---Jay had her black backpack with the ghosts on it, and Lex was wearing her purple hoodie. Chloe had her LHPS shirt, just like mine, under a black jacket, and her camera hanging around her neck. I noticed she'd taken to wearing a black bandanna around one ankle, just like me. She was beginning to look like a smaller, younger version of myself.

"Are you a servant?" asked Jay. "Did you work here?"

The detector spiked to red again. I said,"That would explain a lot, actually. It's nearly impossible to track servants who lived here; they tended to be kept out of sight. So I'd never have found a record of them. A servant....That's a pretty good possibility."

In the end, we carried our equipment back out to Jay's car. It had gotten colder; a snowstorm was on the way. We climbed in, and Jay started for Mill Hall to drop off Chloe. I didn't particularly mind riding along; I was a bit happier knowing Chloe had gotten home safely.

"A lot more activity than last time," I commented. "That was a pretty good night."

"Different people," said Jay. "We brought different energy to it this time around."

"You guys did great," I said. "Proud of you."

Lex laughed. "You are like the ulrtimate dad figure. We were all talking about it earlier. You are the perfect bonus dad."

"Some of us need that," said Chloe.

"I lost my dad," said Jay. "So I'm really lucky that I found you."

"We're your daughters now," said Chloe. "You don't get a  choice,"

I looked at the team, riding in the dark car, and I smiled.

"I just have to say it," I said. "I love you guys."

Scars (1986-2026)

It had been a while since I'd been together with my whole family. But they were all gathered at my grandmother's house in Phoenixville, a whole crowd of them, even people I didn't really know.

I walked outside, onto the back steps. I looked around---It was night, and should have been darker than this. But I could see everything clearly; it was almost like daylight.

Then I looked up.

The moon was out. And then I saw it---Another moon. There were two. No---Four. I could see four moons rising in the sky.

What the hell?

Definitely something to be investigated. I went inside to find my outfit, but my pack wasn't anywhere. I started looking around, then asked one of my cousins. She hadn't seen it.

I went back outside. The four moons were still there. I needed to find my equipment, so I could figure out what was going on.

Then I opened my eyes. I rolled over in bed; it was almost seven. The sun was out; it was tomorrow.

"The world is a terrible place," said Paul.

"All I said was you had to get ready for school," I said.

He walked past me in the hallway and into his room, and I followed. "No, it's terrible, Dad," he said,

I said down on his bench. I wasn't sure I'd yet had enough coffee for this conversation. "Parts of it," I admitted. "How so?"

"I just saw a video online about a mother who drowned her daughter," he said. "They had her son in court about it."

"That is sad," I said. "But it's important to remember that the world is full of good people, too. The main thing is to make sure you're one of the good ones, trying to help and make things better. It's a good world worth working on. I'll always believe that."

He nodded. "Thanks, Dad."
"Seven-thirty, buddy. Get yourself ready for school."

I was putting away the Christmas decorations when I discovered the trap door. This wasn't a completely unusual experience for me; I'd had things like it happen before. Taking decorations out of the front window, I looked up, and there it was, a trap door in the ceiling.

"Anybody realize there's a trap door up here?" I asked.

Kelli looked up from her desk. "I've noticed that before," she said. "Some kind of crawlspace, I think."

"Never noticed that before. It's one of the few crevices in the Hecht Building I haven't explored yet," I commented. "I'll have to check it out when I get the chance."

I took the boxes of decorations down to the basement, and spotted a stepladder propped in one alcove. I carried it upstairs.

"Screw it. I'm going up there now."

I climbed up the ladder and pushed open the trapdoor, looking in with a flashlight.

"Find any dead bodies?" asked Sarah.

"Tragically, no," I said. The whole thing was open across the whole front of the building, and empty. "It's a big space. I could stand up in here. And there's another crawlspace, above the crawlspace, going back over the office area. I never knew that before."

I climbed down and replaced the trapdoor. "Now I'm trying to think of what I can hide up there."

"Don't you already have a secret hideout?" asked Kelli.

"You can never have too many secret hideouts."

I went back into the back room and started printing another run of a rabbit-breeders magazine that we were going to be working on all day. As I noted down the date, I realized it was January 13th.

It was forty years since my suicide attempt. My first real adventure. My origin story.

Forty years ago, I'd made an attempt at suicide, explored what I'd thought was a haunted house, and wound up helping out an abused girl instead. I'd been sixteen years old. A lifetime ago.

I walked downstairs to my secret hideout. When I'd first started work, I'd explored the basement thoroughly, and discovered an alcove with a door and electricity in it. I'd moved in a desk, a chair, and then set up a computer, and now I had a fairly workable office down in the basement, where nobody else ever went.

It was haunted, too. The whole building was haunted by a ghost named Shirley, who'd been murdered in my basement during a robbery back in 1962. You get used to that.

I sat down at the computer. I often had messages from Jaydann or Chloe, and I took a few moments in my workday to teach them about historic research and paranormal investigation.

Jaydann was on. I'd been friends with her for like a month, and she'd become one of the people who kept me busy on slow days. There was a message from her.

I wonder if I can find anything on my uncle. He passed away when he was 12. His name was Jake Myers.

Ah, good. Something to keep me busy.

We can find this. Do you know if he's buried around here?

He's buried up at the cemetery by the high school.

Brown Cemetery? Or Sunnyside?

Like a three minute drive past the high school on the left.

That's Sunnyside. 

I’ve seen his grave one time in my life and I’ve never seen his obituary or like any newspaper thing. I don’t even know if my parents had any.

If it's there, we can find it.

Right there at the computer, I tried Findagrave. I came up with a couple of Jake Myers names in Sugar Valley, but nothing that matched what Jaydann was describing. Quite all right....That was only a beginning point.

I walked back upstairs and started another run of the rabbit magazine. The boss was walking across the floor, and he asked,"Everything going okay?"

"Found a trap door up above the display window."

He grinned. "It's probably been twenty years since I've been up there."

"Just checked it out. We can hide stuff up there."

"Well. Maybe not."

With fifty more copies of the rabbit magazine printing off, I started looking for more information. It;s nice having a boss who doesn't really care what I'm doing all day. The best place to begin looking for Graves in Clinton County is the Genealogical Society's Cemetery records. And guess who printed them, and therefore has extra copies? That's right, the print ship in the Hecht Building.

Those files were kept on a high shelf. I climbed up---I was doing a lot of climbing today---And retrieved the box for the Bald Eagle Township book. Procedure was to keep an extra copy for ourselves in case we needed to refer to it later, but it worked well for my historic research, too. I took out the extra book and looked in the index.

Twi possibles in Sunnyside. The first one was on page twenty-five, and I checked there. It paid off instantly; the times fit. It was him.

I walked back down to message Jaydann.

Found him. James W. Myers, Junior, Sunnyside Cemetery. 1988-2000. Section 1, Row 9, Plot 8. Born March 5, 1988, died February 23, 2000. Picture of a little dog on his grave.

Hmm interesting!!! I’ll have to go up there again sometime.

It's funny how, in every young boy friendship, there seems to always be one smart kid and one daredevil idiot. Mine is the smart one, When I got home, Paul had his little friend Nathan over when I got home from work, and they were playing in his room when I checked in.

"Oh, hi, Dad. How was your day?"

"Pretty good. I printed up a rabbit magazine."
"Rabbit magazine?!"
"It's about rabbits; they don't read it."

"Oh. Cool. We were just throwing stuff out my window. It makes a hard knock when it lands."
I decided I didn't want more details. "As you were," I said, and walked down to my office. he two of them reminded me of myself and my best friend Kline when I was a kid. We'd come up with stuff like that. Like Paul, I'd been the smart one.

I got on my laptop and messaged Jaydann.

Today was the forthieth anniversary of the day I tried to commit suicide as a teenager. You kept me busy and gave me something to work on, so thanks for that.

Oh my goodness .. 💔💔💔I’m so happy I gave you something to distract yourself. I’m so sorry you had to go through something that painful … 😓

Suicide is always hard on everyone. I’m glad you’re still here ❤️ you are valued !

"Goodnight, little man. I'll see you in the morning."

I kissed Paul on the forehead and left the bedroom. With everyone in bed, I got my KII meter out and took it downstairs. Just like work, my house is haunted. Seventeen-year-old Ida Yost had killed herself on the back porch in 1905. Even for a paranormal investigator, I spent an unbelievable amount of time hanging around haunted places.

I walked around the house a bit, getting nothing. In my place, the haunting tends to come in waves. Sometimes it will be active as hell, and then a couple of weeks ago by without my remembering that there's a ghost here. I sat down on the couch, and it spiked to red. I was interested for a moment, until I realized it was reading the nearby space heater. I'd have to tell the team about that.

I moved it over to the other side of the couch, where it calmed down.

"Hey, Ida," I said softly. Sometimes I do this, when everyone else is in bed. "How you doing? It's my anniversary. Forty years ago today, I tried to commit suicide."

Nothing on the KII. Well, hell. It was my anniversary, not hers.

"I think about it sometimes. You and I have a lot in common. I was sixteen when I tried, just one year younger than you. And mine was 1986; we were eighty-one years apart."

Butters came and settled down on the couch beside me.

"Hope you're doing well, Ida. Hope you're okay."

Just a little flicker on the meter. And then it stopped.

I went and got a snack, then sat back down to relax a bit before I went to sleep. You know what they say. It's the little things that make a haunted house into a haunted home.

Dead Reckoning

Ashlin was playing Bingo. Ashlin will attend any Bingo game she can get into. So she spent the time before the investigation marking off numbers and winning some prizes.

Chloe was working on the new Instagram. She'd volunteered to make a page for LHPS, so when she wasn't studying for school, she was working on the page.

Jaydann and Alexis, the new two, were looking into some of the old cemeteries. They'd taken an interest in some of the local spots, and had discovered a burial vault very near where they lived.

And me? I have no life. I spent the week leading up to the investigation digging into the history, looking up the building, and packing my equipment. My outfit was washed, my files were copied and packed. Batteries charged.

Ready for action.

"I'm so excited," said Jaydann.

I was with Jaydann and Alexis in the doughnut shop, which appeared to be becoming a regular thing. We were talking about the investigation that night, upcoming.

"I am, too," I admitted. "This is going to be good. It brings back memories for me....Eighteen years ago, when LHPS first formed, the first investigation where we really came together was a funeral home in Cameron County. Now, with our new team members, we have an investigation in an abandoned funeral home in Renovo."
"Full circle." commented Alexis.

Jaydann looked at her phone. "Oh my god, my spirit box arrived! Do you mind....."

I grinned. "Go get it. I know you've been dying for this."
She ran out to her car while I talked with Alexis for a while. Jaydann was back in ten minutes with her package, and I helped her open it with my Swiss Army knife.

She pulled out a compact electronic box with an antenna.

"It came with batteries, too!"

"Let's take a look," I said.

We spent a few minutes testing it out, checking to see what we could do with the box. I said,"Okay, looks like it has a lot of features---Temperature, EMFs, radio reception. Looks as if the thermometer takes a while to warm up---Which is okay; I got a few like that. If you get too close to it---" I held my finger over the device, and a red light came on. "It can detect both infrared and electromagnetic."

Jaydann's eyes shone. "I can't wait to try it out."
"You'll get your chance tonight," I said. "Investigation in a few hours."

Ashlin and I pulled up in the parking lot and got out of the car. Chloe had already arrived, and I gave her a hug, She was talking with Jaydann and Alexis. We gathered together....Me, Ashlin, and the three newest members.

LHPS. Together again....For the first time.

"Is that a Captain America backpack?" I asked Chloe as we got out of the car. "Are you using that for Ghost hunting?"

"Oh, no," she said. "I found it at the thrift store just before the investigation."

"Because that would be really cool."

We had arrived right on time, and we went into the building and met with some representatives of the Renovo Heritage Foundation, and Chris and Kate. The building was owned by Renovo Heritage, and in two halves. One half was their museum and headquarters, and the other half was abandoned Maxwell Funeral Home.

"Let's start with a walk-through," I said. "Everyone suit up."

I tossed Chloe her new LHPS t-shirt. It was just like mine, except with her name on it. She pulled it on over her turtleneck. Jaydann pulled on her ghost backpack. And I got on my hood and gloves, then the bandolier. And Chris led us over.

I heard the others gasp as we walked in the back door. The place was a big, old building, and it was filled with antique items and display stuff from Renovo Heritage. Alexis said,"Wasn't there some old embalming equipment in here?"

"Oh, that's up on the fourth floor," said Chris.

"Fourth floor? How big is this place?"

"This way to the stairs."

Jaydann's EMF detector immediately began going off when we hit the stairs, and we weren't even all the way up yet. Taking photos and readings, we walked up to the fourth floor, which had barely been touched over the years. Alexis gasped as we walked into the room with the undertaking stuff.

"Knew you'd like this," I said.

She looked it over. There were old, dusty needles and tubes, a facal reconstruction kit, and an autopsy table shoved against one wall. Slowly, taking it all in, she said,"Look....At....This."

"I want everyone to get photos, and a baseline on EMF and temperature," I said. Chloe, to her credit, already had her camera out and was snapping photos of everything she could. "Once we get all that, we'll sit down for an EVP session. I'm thinking we split into two rooms. Alexis and Jaydann, you guys can take this one, and I'll go with Ashlin and Chloe to the room down the hall."

We settled in, and I turned on my digital recorder. I sat down on the dusty floor, and we started our session. We were in the middle of asking questions when Jaydann called down,"Lou? We have a lot of EMFs going over here!"

We moved back over into the autopsy room, where Jaydann had her EMF detector on the table. It was flickering, spiking to red intermittently. Chloe laid hers down beside it, and it started doing the same thing.

"Alexis," I said,"You wanted to try laying down on this table. Now's your chance."

Alexis grinned and climbed up on the table, lying down with the EMF detectors. I watched her---It was just like what had happened eighteen years ago, up in Cameron County, except now I was the team leader, and back then it had been me on the table.

2008: I jumped up and lay down on the autopsy table. Everyone kind of choked except for Ailish, who took my picture. "Come on," I said, as I climbed off. "You're all going to see me like that sooner or later anyway. You may as well get used to the idea."

"You have a hard time being a grown-up, don't you, Lou?" asked Theresa.

"I don't know," I said. "I've never tried."

"You know, way back when, I said that if I was team leader, I'd let me do this," I commented. "A haunted autopsy table makes sense. Think of all the tragedies this thing saw over the years. Murders, suicides, accidents...They all ended up here. Have fun, Lex."

I was headed down the stairs with Chloe when Chris came back in below.

"Hey, Lou," he said. "We have some pizza over there, if you guys would like any."

"We can stop over and take a moment," I said. I hit my comlink. "Lex? You there?"

A moment passed. "I hear you."

"They got pizza in the Main building. We're gonna head over for a moment. You're welcome to join us if you like."

We walked over for a break. Chloe sat down on the floor with a bottle of water. Ashlin had a slice of pizza. A moment later, Alexis and Jaydann came in.

"We were getting more EMF activity up on four, Lou," said Jaydann.

"We'll go back over in a minute, and take a walk through the basement," I said. "I'd forgotten about the basement. Want some pizza?"

Chloe had gotten up and was standing beside the photocopier. I walked over the stand next to her.

"Thanks for joining the team," I said. "I'm proud of you."

She smiled.

"Thanks for inviting me."

I smiled back. 

"Hey. You're my sidekick."

We walked down into the basement, EMF detectors going. I had my laser thermometer out. "I'm getting a baseline in the fifties. Much warmer here than the rest of the building." I glanced over at Chloe. "You okay?"

"I'm fine."
"Be careful. I'm expendable. I don't want you hurt." I was a little surprised to realize how intensely protective I felt toward Chloe.

"I can be expendable," added Alexis. "I have to work tomorrow."

Hanging from the ceiling was a white shape that I assumed to be a glow-in-the-dark plastic Halloween spider, until I looked more closely. It was an actual spider, covered in bright white mold and hanging from the ceiling.

"Hunh. A moldy spider. You guys see this?"

"Oh, hell no," said Alexis.

"There's a few over here, too," said Chloe.

"What the hell is killng all these spiders down here?"

"You guys often see dead animals?" asked Chris.

"I had a bat fly at me once." I glanced at Ashlin. "Were you there for the bat?"

She grinned. "No, but I've heard the story. I love that."

I felt something dragging on my foot, and looked down. I had a piece of lathe board stuck to my boot with a nail, shoved up into the heel. I pulled it free and set it aside. "Careful, guys. I just stepped on a nail. Watch where you step."
"Are you okay?" asked Chloe.

"I'm fine. I'm glad I wore the steel-toed boots instead of my light sneakers, or I'd be headed for the hospital to get a tetanus shot now."

Everyone split off when we went back up to two. Jaydann and Alexis started checking the center area with the EMF detectors, and Ashlin and Chloe went looking at some of the artifacts in storage. Ashlin held up an old newspaper. From across the room, I could read the headline,"WE WIN."
"World War Two?" I called over.

She grinned. "Yeah."

Alexis was looking into a closet in the corner. She came out with a box of small cards, and a look of delight. "Look what I found! Are these....Toe tags???"

I walked midway up the stairs, to the landing. And I took a moment to look everything over.

Ashlin, one of the best friends I've ever had. Chloe, who was sweet enough to look up to me, in spite of my being the world's worst possible role model. And Jaydann and Alexis, who were rapidly working their way into my heart.

I watched, from the steps, looking at my team at work. The new LHPS team. And we were off to a really good start.

"Ghosting" someone means something entirely different in LHPS.

We finished back up on three.

We gathered in a circle, with a couple of EMF detectors on the floor. Jaydann set down her electronic bell and her new spirit box. She handed out a couple of small cat balls, little round toys that lit up.

"You guys can keep a couple of those," she said. "We have a bunch of them."

"I'll keep one," volunteered Chloe.

"I might hang onto one," I said. "They seem to work. You press the button and roll it in. It's like a ghost grenade."

I heard Chloe giggle beside me. Around the circle, everyone began asking questions, giving some space in between. I walked over to look out the big front window.

Eighteen years of this team. I was the only person who still remained from the beginning. And now we'd come all the way back around, with new members teaming up to investigate a haunted funeral home.

"Jesus christ, Lou!" said Alexis. "You scared me to death! I saw your image on the thermal and didn't know what it was at the window!"

"Thought I'd look out the window a moment," I said. "I know I look good that way."
One of the cat balls, the one nearest me, flickered brightly. Jaydann, standing next to me, looked over. "That wasn't you---"
"No," I agreed. "I was standing too far away." I stepped a little closer and tapped my foot on the floor to test it. Nothing happened. "That wasn't me."

"See how the EMF is staying consistently on two greens? That's weird."
"Usually they flicker. I don't see them doing that very much."

"Can you ring the bell?" Aexis asked. "Just go near it, and it should ring."

"That one might be a bit harder than the EMFs," I commented. "It takes more energy to do the bell than the lights."
"They both work off EMFs."
"Yeah, but---And this is called 'What Lou Thinks He Remembers His Dad Saying'----The lights just operate on electrical energy. For the bell to ring, that has to be turned into kinetic energy, which takes more of it. It's harder, on a physics level."

"Well, yeah, true."

I looked at my watch. "We should probably get packed up and ready to go. This thing has already gone on way longer than I'd expected."

"It's been great!" said Jaydann.

"Yeah, great investigation. But we have a drive home, and it's already nine-fifteen."

She gasped. "I didn't realize that much time had passed."

I grinned. "Does tend to sneak up on you, doesn't it?"

And then he bell went off.

Ding.