"Oh shit!" Martha exclaimed the next morning as I came downstairs. She held up a newspaper. "Read this."
The story she pointed out was headlined, Psychic Help Finding Lost Children? The story went on to cite a half-dozen sources where our tips had led to successes. The author speculated that the tips bore an eerie similarity and law enforcement personnel questioned about the coincidences confessed an inability to understand how the tipster obtained his or her knowledge. Ethel Reagan, the writer, noted the tips were telephoned from various locations across the country and provided by both men and women. The article was somewhat tongue in cheek in its assessment of paranormal powers but insisted the tips defied coincidence. The final line of the article vowed to pursue the anomaly in coming additions.
"It was bound to happen," I said as I passed the Boston paper to the others as they joined us.
"Mr. Cooms hit the nail squarely when he cautioned us to be careful," my wife said. "Are we certain the tips this woman cited can't be traced back to us?"
Martha had continued to take copious notes on each and every case. She maintained her files on an old computer used exclusively for word processing. She made sure her computer was solely a word processor with no on line capabilities so no one could ever hack into it. She powered it up and began comparing her notes with the cases cited in the article.
"I don't see how these calls could be tagged back to us. The first call was from a pay phone in Lynn, Massachusetts. Betsy called in one tip from California on a business trip. Three calls were telephoned from Boston, New York and Connecticut while two were made on untraceable phones."
Howie was visibly upset. "What should we do?"
"Nothing," Quinn said, patting him on the back. "The article was a page five filler and hopefully will be forgotten in a couple of days."
"Even if it's not," I added, "it's only speculation. No one will believe a psychic is calling the shots. I know I wouldn't. Simply not knowing how the information is known doesn't assign the solution to the occult."
It wasn't a fruitful day. Our group conducted only three cases as we now called them and none were noteworthy. We spent the balance of our time formulating what I should say to Merrill Cooms and pouring over Internet maps. Each of us detailed our general desires about a potential location. Our chore held the aura of planning a vacation, not making a life changing decision.
Our location should be within a couple of hours at the most from a city; not in the country, per se, perhaps a small town. Only Betsy was raised outside of New England and she easily bowed to our collective desires to remain within its six state bounds. Our small city should have a college and hospital. We wanted a firm economy and reasonable real estate costs and a good school system.