“So you had a good time?” I asked, pleased.

“Wonderful, yes,” Reggie replied. “I like your neighbors. Mrs. Conners has a master’s degree in literature. Her analysis of ‘Willow Weeps’ made me see a deeper meaning in the plot that had gone completely over my head. Thanks for sending me.”

“No problem,” I demurred, spilling crumbs down my shirt from the breakfast pastry I was nibbling on.

While away in Australia, I received a group message from the neighborhood book club announcing that ‘Willow Weeps’ was the novel we would be discussing next. I assigned the job of reading it to Reggie, expecting him to prepare me a synopsis.

When the morning of the book club meeting arrived, I was too tired to attend, so I sent Reggie in my place, with instructions to bring me home one of the delicious, catered pastries which would almost assuredly be provided.

Reggie had been accepted by the literary mob and had delivered my snack. It had been a job well done.

“Job well done,” I praised Reggie. He seemed pleased.

“I heard some interesting gossip about your neighbors, Dave and Bitsy Elmer,” Reggie reported dutifully. “I’m not sure I should share what I heard…”

“Spill it,” I instructed.

“Very well,” Reggie replied. “The ladies told me that Dave and Bitsy are having a major disagreement over whether or not to accept an offer they received on their house.”

I nodded. It wasn’t news to me.

“I heard about that. It happened before we left. Dave wants to accept a lowball offer and Bitsy doesn’t.”

“This is a newer bid. It came in while we were in Australia. It is for the full asking price.”

“Why on earth would Dave want to turn down an offer like that? I thought he was trying to get away from me as quickly as possible?”

“It was made by a corporate entity. Dave has concerns about their plans for the house.”

Now I was getting concerned myself.

What ‘plans’ did these potential buyers have? More importantly, how would those plans impact my life? In my experience, construction crews start making lots of annoying noise soon after the time I usually fall asleep, around six in the morning.

“Did you find out what the buyers want to do to the place?”

“Well, I preface what I’m about to say by pointing out that even Mrs. Gupta wasn’t sure of its truth. She heard it from her landscaper who heard it from Dave and Bitsy’s landscaper.”

“Mrs. Gupta’s a very nice lady, by the way. She told me to tell you they missed you at the meeting.”

“Anyway, what she heard is that the buyer wants to bill it as the ugliest house in Los Angeles and treat it as a tourist attraction. Needless to say, nobody in the club was very pleased about that.”

I was horrified.

“I’m with them! You mean, some company wants to run tours down our street?”

“Yes, because it is next to this house, too,” Reggie clarified. “Your livestream is gaining a lot of followers. People are interested in seeing where it streams from.”

I was aghast. Loads of people were going to drive past and peer in the windows at me. Absolutely not! It had to be stopped.

“I’ve already talked to Reggie,” I complained to Emily, after she answered my phone call by saying, “Talk to Reggie.”

“Fine,” Emily sighed. “What now?”

“Some company wants to run tours on my street to peer in at me.”

“Well, the streets are public, Terrence. What do you want me to…”

“And they’re buying Dave’s house too, to make it a double-billing on one street.”

“What? What company — especially a small tourism company — can afford to buy an enormously expensive mansion? That makes absolutely no sense. Did you think those words made sense when they were coming out of your mouth?”

Stolen from its original source, this story is not meant to be on Amazon; report any sightings.

I was offended.

“I’m just passing on what Reggie learned from an impeccable source, Mrs. Gupta at the book club. She knows everything happening in this neighborhood. I can vouch for her.”

“O.k. On the one in one thousand shot that your information is correct, you need to find out what this buyer is up to because the tourism story sounds like an angle. Where is the money behind the offer truly coming from?”

I tried to respond, but Emily had already ended the call.

I began my investigation by asking Reggie to 'work' his book club contacts for information on the offer. Within hours, I learned it had been extended by a company named Cloutbus.

The Cloutbus website was exactly the sort of hideous phone-friendly mess you would expect from such a business. The purpose of their operation was to monetize the invasion of people’s privacy, disguising the crime as a fun outing with friends and family.

There was not much information to go on. I clicked on “About Us” hoping to find something more useful.

If I had read the names on the “About Us” page just six months earlier, they would have meant nothing to me. Instead, one name jumped out immediately after living with it plastered on every wall of my house.

McDunn.

To be specific, a person named James McDunn was the president of Cloutbus. Was he of the infamous whiskey-distilling McDunn family my father was involved with?

He had to be. I sat deep in thought, wondering how I could have been so foolish.

There was a soft knock on my bedroom door. I called out, and Pamela came in, shutting the door behind her. We stared at each other in silence for a moment.

“I have some things to tell you, Terrence,” Pamela spoke softly. “There are some things I haven’t been completely honest about.”

She paused and took a deep breath, building her confidence.

“I’m not sure how to begin,” she began. “I guess I’ll start by asking…have you noticed that I do an awful lot of ‘free’ advertising for McDunn’s Single Malt Whiskey on your livestream?”

“I have,” Terrence acknowledged. “And I’ve been worried about you. Do you think you might be developing a problem with alcohol?”

“Wait, what? No! That’s not where I was going with the conversation, at all. Why would you even…I mean…you’ve been ‘worried’ about me? How dare…”

Pamela managed to overcome her irritation and get back on point.

“What I mean is, did you ever think there might be a reason I do those…”

“Oh, is this about my father bankrolling your movie? Yeah, I know.”

Pamela’s jaw dropped. She stared in shock as I continued.

“That’s another thing I’ve been worried about. I need to warn you about my father. Have you ever heard the story about Robert Johnson and the crossroads, by any chance?”

She shook her head.

“How did you find out?” Pamela asked.

“I was there with Dave when he called you, and you told him,” I explained.

She seemed astonished.

“So you and my father were, like, hanging out together?”

“That’s not quite how I would describe the situation, but yes. I was there.”

“Wow. So…first of all, I’m sorry. I should have told you, myself, that your father had offered to invest in my project.”

“But there’s more.”

She took a deep breath.

“Something else I’ve kept from you is that your father is trying to buy my parents’ house to use it to promote McDunn’s whiskey. He wants to make it a party house for another livestream. The house will get destroyed. My father is extremely upset about it.”

“Oh, I knew most of that already, too.”

Pamela stared at me in amazement.

“How? How do you know these things? I mean, you never leave your bedroom.”

“I have my sources,” I replied, sounding smug.

(Thank you, Mrs. Gupta!)

“O.k. Then do you also know that my uncle designed my parents’ house?”

“Yes.”

She gave me a suspicious look.

“You’re lying. How would you know that?”

“Your father told me at a Grensfeld reception I would rather not talk about. It was part of how our rift began.”

“Yeah, I kind of forget that you have a life outside of locking yourself in here, hiding from the livestream. When we all leave in the evening, that’s when the web goblin must prowl.”

I was stunned by what I had just heard her call me.

“Where did you get that?” I demanded angrily. “That ‘web goblin’ thing. Did you hear it from the Eastern Europeans?”

Pamela cringed.

“I guess I should come clean about that too.”

“There is a mixed drink called the ‘web goblin’ being nationally promoted by McDunn’s Single Malt Whiskey. Part of the promotion is that web goblins are sold at half price, for five minutes, whenever you make one of your infrequent appearances on the livestream. A lot of bars show the stream on one of their TVs all day. Every time you leave this room and sneak down the hall to the bathroom you sell a whole lot of web goblins.”

“Who came up with that name?” I interrogated her, seething inside.

She was silent. I had my suspicions.

“Was it you?” I demanded to know.

She nodded sheepishly, reluctant to share the information.

“Terrence, look. I’m so, so sorry about all of this. And I can understand if you are angry with me. But I’m in an awful position, and I’m hoping you can forgive me enough to help me out.”

“The web goblin is listening,” I replied sarcastically, giving Pamela an unkind look, but willing to at least listen to her. She seemed genuinely distressed.

Tears started to well up in her eyes.

“Terrence, my parents are talking about getting divorced over this, and I’m working for the person who is causing all the trouble. I feel horrible.”

A tear escaped Pamela’s eye and rolled down half her cheek, leaving a trail of mascara in its wake. She brushed it away with the palm of her hand.

I wanted to continue to be mean to her for a while, as I felt she deserved it, but only a jerk would be a jerk to a woman who was already crying. It is like kicking someone when they’re down. It’s simply not done.

“I’m sorry to hear that,” I lied, but in a much gentler tone of voice. I saw her head lift hopefully.

“Yeah, it is a bad situation,” she spoke between sniffles.

“So what are you going to do?” I asked.

She looked into my eyes as if sizing up the moment.

“Well, that’s the thing. I was sort of hoping that you could call your father and explain…”

I didn’t catch the rest because I had burst out laughing.