Read The Blackham Mansion Haunting (The Downwinders Book 4) for Free Online Page B

a
lobster.”
    “It’s too hot out here not to have them on,” Winn replied.
“They’ll cool down in a minute.” He landed in a recliner.
    “What do you think Carma is up to?” Deem asked. “Sounded like
travel planning to me.”
    “Who knows,” Winn replied, closing his eyes and waiting for
the mist to cool.
    Carma burst onto the patio, a notepad in hand. “I don’t
understand! Perhaps one of you can explain it to me.”
    “Explain what?” Deem asked.
    Carma sat in a padded chair next to Winn and began fanning
herself with the pad. “Oh, those misters are way too hot!” she said, looking up
at the tubing and nozzles that encircled the awning. “Awful, annoying water!”
    “Give them a minute, they’ll cool down,” Winn said. “Ten
minutes from now it’ll be nice and comfortable out here.”
    “These travel agents!” Carma said, looking once again at her
pad. “They’re so lazy nowadays. They won’t run the tickets out to the house
like they used to. I say it’s damned inconvenient.”
    “You going somewhere?” Winn asked.
    “No, Winn, you are,” Carma replied. “You’re going to take
David to a specialist in Missoula. You have a flight out of St. George in three
hours. Unfortunately the travel agent is being very uncooperative, and you only
have e-tickets, whatever the hell those are.”
    “I didn’t know there was any other kind of airline ticket,”
Deem said. “What, they used to be made of paper?”
    “What else would they be made out of?” Carma replied,
exasperated. “It’s a ticket . It has to be made of paper,
otherwise, how would you use it? What’s an e-ticket made out of? Air?” Her eyes
widened as she looked at the two of them for an answer.
    “When’s the last time you booked a flight with your travel
agent?” Deem asked. “And they sent you paper tickets?”
    “Not that long ago,” Carma replied. “Ten, twenty years?”
    “Before I was born,” Deem muttered.
    Carma paused. “Don’t say that. It makes me feel old.”
    “No one’s used paper tickets for years now,” Winn said. “Your
travel agent can’t deliver them because they don’t even print them anymore.”
    “Well, that’s ridiculous,” Carma said, leaning back in her
chair and raising her face to the misters, which had finally begun to cool.
“How do they know whom to let on the plane?”
    “You show your ID and give them the confirmation number,”
Deem replied. “That’s all you need.”
    “Well, no wonder 9/11 happened!” Carma said, flabbergasted.
    “What time is the flight?” Winn asked.
    “6 PM,” Carma replied. “I couldn’t get you all the way
through to Missoula tonight, so you’ll stay in Salt Lake overnight, then take a
7 AM flight tomorrow morning. The appointment with the specialist is at 10, and
your flight back is at 4. You’ll be back in St. George round 9 PM tomorrow. It
would all be in an itinerary, but they refused to drive that out to the house,
either. They wanted to email it. I refused.”
    “Let me call the travel agent and give them my email
address,” Winn replied. “They can send it to me.”
    “Here’s their number,” Carma said, turning the pad to Winn.
As he plugged the number into his phone, he saw the notes Carma had made about
other parts of the trip — the car rentals, the hotel, and the prices. It added
up to quite a bit of money.
    Once he finished with the travel agent, Winn put his phone
away and turned to Carma. “They’re sending it to me.”
    “How?”
    “Email. On my phone.”
    “Oh, good heavens!” Carma said, irritated. “How will you
print it?”
    “I don’t need to print it, it’s on my phone,” Winn replied.
    “Well, that’s completely unacceptable!” Carma sputtered.
“What if your phone battery dies? Then what will you do?”
    “I’ll email a copy to David,” Winn said. “Our phones won’t
both die.”
    Carma threw up her hands and raised her face to the misters.
“This world, going straight to hell in a