Mercury Rises by Robert Kroese

Author:Robert Kroese
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Humorous, Fantasy, Contemporary, Fiction
ISBN: 9781612180861
Publisher: AmazonEncore
Published: 2011-10-18T04:00:00+00:00

TWENTY-TWO

Eddie's meeting with the lovely but demanding Wanda Kwan went better than he expected, which wasn't saying much. He assured her that the manuscript was coming along perfectly well, but when pressed for details, all he could muster were some vague promises about water rights and incest. Wanda seemed a bit troubled by this dark turn in what was ostensibly a series of adolescent fantasy books, but she brightened when he promised her six explosions, seven outfit changes, three chapters taking place at the Charlie Nyx Travel Plaza and Family Fun Place, and no mention of the setting of the six previous books.

The fact was that Eddie would have promised to write the entire book in Pig Latin to get out from under the piercing gaze of Ms. Kwan. At this point he was fairly certain he wasn't going to be able to deliver anything, so why not promise them the moon? Actually, that wasn't a bad idea, he thought. Maybe I'll tell them the climax of the book takes place on the moon. They'll love that.

Driving back to the hotel from the Beacon building, he spotted the Buena Vista Mall just off the freeway and, on a whim, exited and pulled into the parking lot of the massive shopping complex. If there had once been a cemetery here, there was no indication of it now. Had Cody been screwing with him?

Wandering around the mall parking lot, he questioned several shoppers before finding an elderly woman who remembered the cemetery. Her husband had died of a stroke some twenty years earlier and rested in peace for over a decade before being moved to Fullerton to make room for a Burger Giant. Eddie thanked her, offered his condolences, and headed toward the Burger Giant, which was adjacent to Bed, Bath & Beyond. If Cody was telling the truth, then her father's grave was around here, somewhere.

There was no indication of any grave marker, just acres of concrete and bland stucco-and-concrete-block buildings. The complex housing Bed, Bath & Beyond and Burger Giant was a long, narrow stretch of stores. Eddie walked around the entire structure and found nothing indicating the presence of a gravesite. He circumnavigated the structure once more, this time looking for any subtle markings on the pavement, thinking that perhaps they had simply paved over top of the grave. But if there really was a human being buried under the parking lot, somebody would have left a marker of some kind, wouldn't they? And Cody had definitely said that her father had a tombstone. Of course, she didn't say whether her father's tombstone had been removed along with the rest of them. He found nothing.

Standing at the rear of the structure near the service entrances, he appraised it once more and noticed something a bit odd. Most of the building was covered by a flat roof, with eaves that extended some three feet past the stucco walls. But near the center of the structure was a section, maybe fifty feet long, that appeared to have no roof.

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