waiting for the idling car and seeing nothing until Frankie came blasting out of the dark in her Mustang.
‘So, Mr. Stromsoe – are you a bodyguard or a snoop, or a little of both?’
‘You’re being stalked. I hear a vehicle idling near your house. Half an hour later, you leave your home on a code red. What would you have done?’
‘Followed me.’
Stromsoe nodded. ‘Who’s Ted?’
Stromsoe tracked the emotions as they marched across her face – embarrassment, then irritation, then confusion, then control.
‘Came right up and listened in, did you?’
‘Yep.’
‘I don’t like your attitude right now.’
‘It comes from thirteen years of being a cop.’
‘But you’re a private detective now. You have to act polite and charming.’ She smiled. It reversed the stern lines of her face and Stromsoe remembered a time when he actually had been polite and maybe even a little charming.
‘Ted’s my uncle,’ said Frankie. ‘He’s a retired NOAA guy. That’s National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. They study climate and report weather.’
‘I apologize for following you. I was slightly worried.’
‘I’m glad you were worried. That’s why I pay you. You were curious too.’
He nodded.
‘The towers are made of redwood and finished with a weather seal,’ she said. ‘They’re twenty-two feet high, and we anchor the legs in concrete on-site.’
‘Where do you put them?’
‘Mostly around the Bonsall property.’
‘You sit on the platforms to escape from yourself?’
She smiled and colored. ‘No. I told your boss the property was a place I went to be alone, because I didn’t want him asking the same questions you’re asking now.’
‘Who cares if you study weather?’ asked Stromsoe.
‘I was a lot more relaxed about it until I saw that guy on my fenced, posted property, inspecting one of my towers.’
Stromsoe wondered about that. ‘Are there commercial applications to what you’re studying?’
‘Possibly,’ said Frankie Hatfield.
‘You think the stalker is a competitor?’
‘I don’t believe so.’
Frankie explained the value of weather prediction. Its applications were endless – agriculture, water and energy allocation, public safety and security, transportation, development – you name it. When you studied climate you had long-term charts to go on, she said, and generalities became apparent. But predicting weather
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