John Charles Miller

The Listener John Charles Miller

Milo Herskovitz, a computer geek, escapes his dominating family in Fort Lauderdale, Florida to start a new life in the small town of Dorado, on Florida's west-central coast. He teaches computer classes at senior retirement centers, as well as starting a small computer business. At the Clucking Chicken Restaurant, Milo overhears a conversation. A small, skinny, older man gets furious when friends believe what the Mann County sheriff and local newspaper concluded, that a man fishing on a nearby lake drowned when an anchor rope wrapped around his leg, dragging him into the water. He says that he was murdered, not an accident. Milo finds it interesting but passes it off as impossible. Murders do not happen in Dorado, maybe Miami or elsewhere in Florida, but not here. One day, Missus Gurley, an elderly woman, contacts him for personal assistance with her new computer, as she is technologically incompetent. Unknown to Milo is her secret background. A year after Missus Gurley dies, Milo, who had been her only friend for years, regrets that he has not visited her gravesite. Encouraged by Oscar, the owner of the Mexican restaurant next to his store, he decides to visit her, to pay his respects, and bring flowers. Oscar told Milo that his mother often goes to the cemetery in Mexico to talk to her parents and beloved husband, putting her forehead on the tombstone to listen. Milo finds this strange, but intriguing. Missing Missus Gurley, he relents to what he perceives as being nonsense. When Milo puts his ear flat on her granite tombstone, he hears a buzzing. Obsessed with trying to find out what the buzzing is, he enters into unexpected situations in which he is both astonished and uncomfortable.