Read Online Jane Austen Made Me Do It by Laurel Ann Nattress - Free Book Online Page A

tool), Fred scouted out locations and schmoozed up the owners, convincing the gullible to open their houses for the team’s dubious paranormal ministrations. His brother, Hal, lovely, kind Hal, with the M. Phil. in history from Oxford and a perpetually perplexed expression, was head researcher, cobbling together the historical bits and pieces that formed the ostensible background of their “reports.”
    The day Cate stopped using inverted commas to describe what they did would be the day that she knew she’d officially lost it.
    The rest of the team consisted of Lenny, tech geek extraordinaire, and Erin, the program’s femme fatale, whose primary qualification for the job appeared to have been spilling her Cosmo on Fred at a West End watering hole. And Cate? She was a lowly assistant investigator, which meant, generally, that she swished her hair in the right places and squealed on cue.
    This wasn’t the way it was meant to be. She had left Columbia J-School with all sorts of bright and shiny dreams about a career in investigative journalism. She was going to ask probing questions of prime ministers, parachute into Afghanistan, exchangeprofessional courtesies with Barbara Walters. Everyone had to put in an apprenticeship; she was okay with that. A few years with CNN in London or maybe one of the larger news networks in New York, and then, ten years down the road …
    Cate Cartwright Presents!
    Instead, two years out, it was
Cate Kartowsky Babbles Psycho-Rubbish
,
Cate Kartowsky Fetches Coffee
, or, on an exciting day,
Cate Kartowsky Trips over Stray Wires
because Lenny couldn’t be bothered to pick up his electromagnetic whatchamacallit. Fred was saving that one for the show’s annual bloopers tape. Just the thought of it made Cate want to slink beneath the van.
    â€œOkay, folks!” Fred clapped his hands together. “Inside! Chop chop! We have a Pictish poltergeist and a specter at Sainsbury’s tomorrow, so let’s get Northanger in the bag tonight, yeah?” He snapped his fingers under Cate’s nose. “Any year now, Cate!”
    Fred turned to Erin, gesturing to Lenny to follow them with the camera, then leaned solicitously forward. “What can you tell us about the abbey, Erin?”
    Erin swept her long red hair over one shoulder, hunching forward in the approved style, with the dual effect of creating dramatic tension and showing off the cleavage displayed by the deep vee of her shirt.
    Tits ’n ghouls, thought Cate glumly. That’s us.
    â€œWell, Fred, Northanger Abbey was once an abbey, you know, with monks and stuff. We’ve had reports that on stormy nights you can still hear the monks wandering around the place, chanting their monkish chants.” Erin consulted her clipboard, a prop that Fred fondly believed lent them a professional air. “There’s also a White Lady, believed to be the wife of a general who lived here in the late eighteenth century. Was it … murder?”
    â€œDark deeds will out,” said Fred sententiously. “What else do you have?”
    Erin rustled importantly through her papers. “There’s an unidentified female ghost who haunts one of the bedrooms. She’s associated with a roll of paper that reappears and disappears in a lacquered chest. Could it be the record of her untimely death?”
    â€œCut!” called Fred. He turned to Erin. “Love the White Lady, could do without the paper woman. Probably just a laundry list.”
    Waving Erin away, Fred beckoned to a man bundled into a shabby tweed jacket layered over a sweater vest, layered over a sweater, which, Cate suspected, was layered over yet more sweaters. During her two years with
Ghost Trekkers
, Cate had learned that the size and age of the house was generally inversely proportionate to the quality of the heating apparatus. This did not bode well for a cozy and comfortable night.
    On the other hand, at least she