With Ed Hollis out of the way, I began looking for a new way to spend my time. I returned to the digital camera with somewhat forced enthusiasm. I made pictures of fishing boats, mostly from the park. I could never capture the subtle movement of the boats. A trailing wake just didn't do it somehow.

I continued to ride the Ebike around town. The gasoline bike was kept in storage except for test runs or risky longer rides to Jacksonville. I never did get attached to the Ebike, as I had the Tomos but that was okay. I just kept on plugging away at life. Fortunately I never got complacent. I was just never quite satisfied with the status quo.

I began painting as an extension of the photography. I visiting an art exhibit with Lucy one Sunday afternoon. It was the traveling show for the winners of the state High School art student contestants. I fell in love with the oil paintings. I had never taken the time to really look at paintings before. There was something Hypnotic about them. The best one there grabbed me by the throat and dragged me inside it. I stayed there captivated as I tried to find every nuance inside the damn thing.

When I left the show I tried to get the picture out of my mind. At first I thought that it was just a great picture. After a few days, I began to realize that it was more. It was the idea, not the picture, I fell in love with.

Needless to say I went to work learning all I could from the internet about painting. I watched all pbs videos about painters and saw them create things on camera. I literally spent weeks reading and watching online shows about painting.

Finally I could stand it no more. I rushed out to buy paint and canvas. I tried my hand at painting and it was a total bust. No it wasn't on the first canvas that I gave it up. It was after I had completed a half dozen that I realized that all I had for talent was a technicians idea of art. I fell into a deep dark depression that lasted a whole day. It seems that I was not a dedicated cut off you ear kind of artist after all.

What I had done was to learn a few decent painting techniques. I had a feeling that I might might be able to improve my photographs with them. First I just used the techniques of a painter in seeing photographs. They did improve my photographs some but the real break through came when I had a poster print made from a photograph.

I was not at all happy with that print. In a fit of anger, I took the oils out to try to clean up a bit of background. When I saw the dimension that it added, I applied more and more paint. When I finally gave up almost a week later, I had what I thought was a decent mixed media print. Lucy thought so as well.

When I talked to Ed, it was in my apartment with the shotgun leaning against the wall within easy reach.

"Ed, I'm sure by now Becky has told you what I found. I am also sure you gave her some cock and bull story, so let's not even go there. Instead let me tell you what I think our situation is here."

"Okay," he didn't seem nearly nervous enough.

"I could go to the cops with what I know and what I think. I could even go to the DEA. From your demeanor I'm pretty sure you know I won't unless you force my hand. Just for the hell of it let me tell you how it would play out. The DEA would press for a seizure of all your assets as proceeds of a criminal enterprise. You wouldn't be able to pay Al Floyd's family and he would roll over on you. Then it would be real prison time." He still looked calm. "I'm not sure that Al didn't do the wet work on your wife. I'm pretty sure he at least helped you dispose of the body. If you want to try me then we are all going to know."

"Now you can prevent this by staying away from my friend Becky."

"So if I don't stay away from Becky, you make those wild accusations."

"That's petty much it," I agreed.

"And if I accuse you of setting up Becky's stalker, along with burglary ect?"

"Then I become a hero in town and do a little probation, while you go the federal prison in Atlanta. I'd say you get the worst end of that stick."

"Then I suppose I would have to think of something else." The threat was in his voice."

"Yeah I thought that might be on your mind. I'm not an easy man to kill. If anything happens to me then Lucy will send your package to the DEA, FBI and local cops. If you happen to try and miss, I will hunt you down and bust a cap in your ass. Now if you really want to go toe to toe with me, we can always do it right now." When I finished that statement, I immediately turned the table over on him. Then I grabbed the pump gun and stuck the barrel in his chest. "So what's it going to be." At that point he did look scared. "If I'm going to kill you, now is as good a time as any. By the way if you didn't come armed, I have a cold .22 I can lay on you." He really looked scared at that point. BS threats are one thing, but a shotgun in your chest and a careful explanation of how a murder will go, tends to get one's attention.

"Okay, I'm going to stay away from your friend."

"I would suggest you get out of the drug business, you don't really have the stomach for it." Ed left with his tail between his legs. Even so I watched him till he drove away. I also forced Lucy to spend a couple of days in my apartment.

She stayed just until Becky called and cussed me out. She is the one who told me Ed had decided to sell his club and move away. I had no idea if it would happen or not, but I did feel a little better.

Becky was barely out of the door when Lucy asked, "Now what?"


"I'm more than a little surprised by her attitude. The first thing that comes to mind is that she is going to demand that he explain it all. He will come up with some lame excuses and she will believe them. Why, because she wants to believe it. Then he is going to try to decide how to respond. It could get nasty quickly."

"Yeah I know. We need to talk to him before he does something stupid. You know like going to the cops."

"Oh I doubt that he will do that. If he rolls on us, we roll on him. The cops have the resources to chase down all the leads. They could piece it all together eventually."

"So what will he do?"

"He will most likely try to make absolutely sure that we don't roll him up. The surest way is to kill us all."

"Dear God, you are kidding."

"No I'm not kidding. He pays every month to hide his secret. He is most likely going to do something to keep it hidden."

"So what are we going to do?"

"Well just like him we have options."

"Like what?"

"Well Lucy love, we can kill him first." I smiled since I knew she would never agree to that. Even if she did, I doubted that I would. No, it wasn't my good nature, it was the fact that murder is very hard to get away with. That was the only thing that would stop me.

"Options mean there is something else we can do."

"Well this is my favorite. If we just tell him that we don't want to screw around with the cops, he won't buy it."

"Yeah like you had to blackmail Sheila to make her believe all was well."

"Just like that. We explain to him how fast Al Floyd will roll on him, when the payments stop. Then we explain that they will stop, if the DEA hits him with a RICO indictment."

"Nice, but we don't want to do that because?"

"If he loses everything, he will likely roll over on us to the cops. If he wasn't so slimy, just the fact that it's a Mexican standoff would hold him. He most likely thinks everyone wants something, so we need to convince him that we can be bought off."

"So what do we want?" Lucy asked.

"We want him to never see Becky again."

"So you think he will agree to that?"

"We can give it a try," I suggested.

I had hoped to call Becky and tell her what we had learned, then to move on to something else. Of course that would have been too easy.

"Becky wants to talk to us both tonight," Lucy informed me.

"Well come on in and lets figure out what to tell her."

"My vote is that we tell her the truth," Lucy said.

"I totally agree. Give her the facts and let her decide to throw the bum out."

"So how about you take me to dinner after Becky leaves. We can discuss what to do next."

"I know what I'm going to do next," I replied. "I'm going to waste my time on some kind of photography and then on long naps. I might give portraits a shot. You wanna' be my sample model?"

"I am not taking my clothes off for you. So is the offer still on the table."

"You know that I have seen you without your clothes?"

"Yes you have, but the whole world hasn't and I plan to keep it that way."

"You are just no fun at all," I replied.

"Hey you two," the words came from Becky who was standing on the landing outside my door.

"Well hello there stranger," I said it as a joke.

"I know I should visit more, but well I really have been busy."

"And then there is Ed Hollis," I said sharply.

"Jealousy does not become you Mike."

"Just proves I care," I said,

"Since you brought him up, what is this about paying off Al Floyd?"

"He is paying him off to keep quiet about something."

"You don't know that," Becky said.

"It's the only thing that makes sense. Becky you wanted to know and now you do."

"I asked about his missing wife not about some thug."

"Well obviously you aren't going to listen to us."

"I will when you can prove that helping a family make ends meet, while their father is in prison, is not just an act of christian charity but something sinister."

"Wow, how big is this guy?" Lucy asked.

I laughed but Becky didn't. "That was a cheap shot. You know me better than that."

"I thought I did, but now I'm not so sure." I was glad Lucy said that not me.

"Come on you two let's not fight about this."

"I agree, let's just call it finished. Lucy and I are satisfied with our findings. You don't want to accept them, so that's the end of it."

"I hope you aren't angry?" Becky said.

"I'm not angry, but I am a little worried. Either one of the scenarios could be make him a dangerous man."

"But you don't know either of them is true," Becky said positively.

"No, but I don't know the absolute truth in a lot of things. Some of them I would rather not try just to know for sure."

"Like?" Becky asked.

"Like dropping an electric heater in my bathwater will kill me."

"Everyone knows that is true," Becky said.

"And I thought anyone would recognize the truth in what we told you. Don't worry I'm not going to go on and on about it.

"So what are you thinking?" Lucy asked.

"I'm thinking we need to find out why Ed banned Al."

"I agree, but how?"

"First let's try to nail down that their was a connection. Let's assume for a minute that there is a connection. Either Ed paid to have Mattie killed, or he was Al's meth distributor. Either way Al had valuable juice but didn't use it, why?"

"He was afraid Ed would kill him?" Lucy asked.

"I don't think so. Once he rolled over on him, Ed couldn't have touched him without cops all over his ass."

"Then he was paying Al off," she suggested.

"That's only a little more likely. Money doesn't have a lot of use to a man doing time."

"Then what?"

"I don't know what. So let's try to find out."

"Again how?"

"Bank records."

"Surely the police checked them?" Lucy asked.

"They checked them looking for a payment for a murder. That was a couple of months before Al got busted. See if you can get his records since the arrest. They could wash the income from the drug business through the club, but if he was paying off Al, there has to be a record somewhere."

"I saw his Social Security number in the list of information he supplied to you."

"Will that be enough to get his bank statements?"

"No but it will be enough to get me to someone who can get them." I didn't ask her to explain. I really didn't want to know who could get Ed's records so easily.

She left my place so that she could get to her super computer. Well it was a super computer compared to my little netbook. Lucy was gone about an hour.

"Well I'm not sure what it means but here is what I found." She spent the next ten minutes explaining that in addition to the club's fixed overhead Ed made a payment every month to a Maxine Floyd. He pays her $600 a month and the note on the check says wages."

"Now there is a coincidence." I admitted.

"Not only that Maxine is Al's wife and the mother of his Son Al JR."

"So Ed is paying Al's child support?"

"And he writes a check for $100 to the canteen fund at the state prison where Al is doing his time."

"So ed is paying under ten grand a year to stay out of prison. Sounds like a cheap insurance payment to me."

"So is he paying to avoid the drug charge or the murder charge?"

"Does it matter?" I asked. "We were supposed to find out if there was any hankie pantie and there is, so we are finished."

"Don't you want to know why Ed is paying?"

"Not at all," I replied.

Lucy spent the night in her own bed and I spent it in my bed. I awoke feeling well rested but very hungry. I rode the ebike to the diner across from the marina. I had never tried their breakfast. I ordered pancakes and link sausage from a waitress that should have been in junior high school somewhere.

The pancakes were good but not any better than those in a hundred other places. I left the restaurant a little after 8am. Since nothing in St Marys opened before 9am, I rode the ebike to the park with only a morning paper to read. I parked the bike beside the lamp post with the outlet. I charged the battery pack while I read my copy of the local newspaper. The newspaper was almost non existent. All newspapers were shrinking in size and the St Mary paper was no exception. Twenty ledger sized pages published twice a week wasn't really very informative.

It was just after 10am when I rode the bike to the downtown thrift store. The thrift store had big shelf filled stacked high with old paperback books. The price of the books was like 20% of the cover price.

I was back at the park reading a five year old murder mystery, when Lucy called. Janet Wilkes had agreed to speak with us. Lucy had made the appointment for 7pm that evening. Instead of going home after the call as I might have done, I rode the ebike over to the Bench. The Bench was the night club and bar owned by Ed Hollis. The club had two very distinct parts. The night club side had a large dance floor, many small tables and a very well stocked bar. The space holding the open bar resembled nothing so much as a tumor attached to the larger building.

The bartender mentioned by the police detective wasn't working at the time of my visit. The bartender who was working had no problem at all telling me all about the missing bartender. According to the 40 pound over weight bartender who didn't mind talking, Rose was terrified that she would lose her job. I figured out for myself that she would have gone along with any story Ed wanted to come up with. I almost asked about meth, but decided that it was doubtful that I could get an honest answer, so I didn't bother.

I did get a pretty good idea of the clientele of the club and the bar from daytime bartender. Mostly locals but some kids from a private college in a town not too far away. If someone was dealing drugs in the club there would be a small market for them but not enough to make it worth the risk. So if there was a connection it had to be a wider distributorship that the club alone. In which case there was no smoking gun on Ed but also nothing to automatically clear him either.

I stopped by the Dog House on the way home. The Dog House claimed to make the best hot dogs in the south, but so did everyone else who put a dog on a bun. I carried two of their almost best in the south dogs home with me.

"You ready to go?" Lucy asked.

"Sure let's go see what is what," I replied.

St Marys is so small that you can get to almost any resident's home in less than ten minutes. Janet Wilkes lived inside the city limits, but not downtown as Lucy and I did. She was about half a mile inland from the river. Lucy followed me up the path to the small frame house on the corner. I rang the bell then stood waiting for Janet to answer.

"Hi are you Janet?" I asked of the very thin redhead.

"Who are you?"

"I'm Mike Abrams and this is Lucy Adams," I replied. "We would like to ask you a couple of questions about Al Floyd."

"Who?" she asked. It seemed that she really didn't know who I meant.

"Al Floyd, you were present at The Bench last year when he and Ed Hollis had a discussion. Ed banned Al. Do you remember that?"

"Oh that Al, yeah it was the strangest thing. Come on in," She suggested.

Once inside I listened to her version of the altercation. She said that Al bought her a drink before Ed came to the table and told Al to leave.

"You mean that the bartender served Al?"

"Yes he showed up at my table with two drinks."

"Then what was the dust up about?"

"Ed said something like, I told not to come here."

"Ed said something like, why shouldn't I come here? We are partners, or something like that."

"Are you sure?"

"I'm pretty sure."

We went over it a few more times and finally Lucy and I left.

"We need to take a look at Floyd," I suggested.

"I thought so to, but that is going to be damn hard."

"Why is that?"

"He is doing two years in state prison."

"When did that happen,"

"A couple of months ago. He got picked up when neighbors complained about the smell coming from his house. Turns out Floyd is a bit of a chemist. He was running a meth lab."

"How long after Mattie went missing?" I asked.

"Less than a month. The funny part was that the detective told me they offered him a deal to roll over on his boss. Floyd isn't smart enough to run a drug ring. Someone was pulling his strings. The cops wanted that person. but Floyd wouldn't give him up. They offered him a pretty good deal or so he said. The detective said that it was like he was more afraid of the boss, than doing the time."

"That is really strange. Most guys with a drug arrest can't wait to give up their friends and even family." I gave that some thought. The story on why Floyd got banned from Ed's club, do we have more than the bartender's version."

"No just her's and Ed's of course." She say my look of concern. We could talk to the girl who was with Floyd. The one he was trying to impress."

"Do we know who she is?"

"No but I will know in about ten minutes," Lucy said removing her cell phone from her oversize purse. "Janet Wilkes," she said after the call.

Then try to contact her. I want to know if the story the bartender told was tainted by her desire to keep her job."

"Well if there was a different reason, it would be convenient to have the only witness work for you." Lucy said.

It rained the next day, so I was home all morning. Sitting on my new sorta sofa, I tried to think the whole thing through, yet again. When I came up blank, I chalked it up to not enough pieces. I was waiting the results of Lucy's interview with the detective, who had originally handled the case. It was the last piece of information that was going to be handed to us. After that we had to be creative.

I didn't really believe Lucy could do as good a job with the cop as I would have, but I couldn't risk doing the interview. I did the next best thing. I made a questionnaire for Lucy. It was after five when she arrived at the apartment questionnaire in hand.

"So did you remember to have him expand on the answers?" I asked taking it from her.

"I'm not into this like you are, but I am not stupid either. By the way how do you know what to ask every time?"

"I read a lot of mystery novels last year." I said it smiling mysteriously.

"Right, You were either a cop or a criminal before you showed up here." Lucy wasn't smiling at all.

"And which would you prefer?"

"I would prefer cop, but I think criminal judging by how fast you decided to blackmail sheila."

"Either way, I was never violent so don't worry."

"Oh I'm not worried. You strike me more as a cat bugler than a serial killer."

"Good," I replied.

I learned very little from the questionnaire. There had only been one other person who got looked at. Ed had been involved in a confrontation at the club the week before Mattie went missing.

The argument had been about his bar's rules. There were just a few rules. Even so a fellow by the name of Al Floyd took issue with one of them. The rule was simply that you could not were any gang colors in the bar. Either you removed any jacket with writing on it or you didn't get served. If the shirt you wore had lettering on it, you didn't get served. No, not even if it was a company logo.

The tee shirt that Floyd wore had a tool company's inscription so he was told that he could not be served. He raised hell at the waitress, then the bartender. Finally Ed showed up and told him to leave and not come back. Al Floyd was not happy about that since Ed did it in front of a woman Al was trying to impress. Al never copped to anything but there was the thought in the cop's mind that he might have gone looking for ED and found Mattie. There was never any proof, so they were glad to adopt Ed's theory that she ran off with someone.

There was no explanation for the lack of cell phone or credit card use after she went missing. In other words they got no farther than a missing person's case. It was exactly what I had at that moment.

"So what do you think happened to Mattie?" I asked it of Lucy, who had watched me read very carefully.

"I think Ed killed her," she replied.

"Why do you think that?"

"I think he got a little too kinky one night and Mattie died. He disposed of the body and reported her missing."

"Well it certainly could have happened that way. Or even the way Ed says, she have4 just taken off."

"Why wouldn't she use the credit cards or the cell phone."

"She didn't want to be found." I answered. I didn't say I completely understood how it could happen.

"What reason could she have had?"

"There are lots of possible reasons. It would only take one no matter how unlikely."

After a dinner of beef stew, salad, and the best damn biscuit I had eaten in years, we went to see Sheryl Martindale. Sheryl lived in a small frame house with her husband and two children.

"Sheryl, I know you are busy so we will try to make this quick. Do you have any idea why Mattie went missing?" I asked.

"I have no idea at all," She said quietly. "She just didn't show up for work one day last year. We never heard anything from anyone about what happened. The police investigated and everything. They just didn't find anything at all. Then after a while people just seemed to forget about Mattie."

"Was she having a problem with anyone at work?"

"Not that I ever heard about. Everyone loved Mattie. Sure she was a bit of a flirt but she was harmless."

"So you think someone might have taken her flirting seriously?"

"Lord no, everyone knew that she was married. She seemed to be quite happy being married to Ed."

"Really, we had heard there might have been some spousal abuse. Something about bruises on her neck more than once," Lucy threw that in. It was her first entry into the conversation.

Sheryl just laughed, then said,"Lucy was adventurous. She and Ed played a lot of games. At least that is what she told me when I asked about the bruises."

"So she got the bruises during a role play game?" I asked that.

"I don't think it was role play. I think Ed just liked to play rough and Mattie loved it. At least that is what she told me." Nobody said it, I know I thought it, Things might have gone to far one night. I could tell that Lucy was thinking it as well. Still thinking it wasn't proof.

"I have to ask this even though I get the impression Mattie wasn't the type, but was she having an affair."

"Not that I know of, but she could have had anyone of a dozen men who worked for the county."

We asked and Sheryl answered a few more question but nothing of any importance was said by any of us. Lucy and I left about twenty minutes after we had arrived.

"I know you don't do policemen so I'll talk to the detective who investigated the case," Lucy stated. I was glad she didn't have to be asked. I nodded my agreement.

We stopped on the way home for an ice cream sundae. Neither of us needed the extra calories but what the hell, life is too short to always do the right thing.

"It looks like Ed might have done something to Mattie," Lucy said just as soon as she walked through the door.

"Well hello to you to," I said smiling.

"Sorry Mikes, I am just so pissed. Becky might be in danger and I want to help."

"So what makes you think Ed did something to make her disappear."

"Her supervisor with the county said she had come to work with bruises on her neck a couple of times."

"Ah well you are right that doesn't look good. Did she tell the cops that when they interviewed her?"

"She said that she told the detectives after Mattie had been gone for about ten days. She didn't tell them at first."

"When You talk to the cop who investigated the case mention it. See what they concluded."

"Should I warn Becky?"

"Not yet. Wait at least until you talk to the police. After that we might want to put a bug in her ear." I paused and thought about it a moment before I went on. "Funny the parents didn't mention any abuse. I'm sure they think Ed had something to do with Mattie leaving, but they never said a word about abuse. Mostly that the two of them didn't seem to get along all that well most of the time, but now and they they were all over each other. According to Mattie's mom, it was down right embarrassing some of the time."

"That is strange," she suggest. After a moment she went on, "I made an appointment to stop by one of Mattie's friends house tonight. We have time for dinner how bout JR's and I'll buy," Lucy suggested.

I chewed on a cover story all night instead of sleeping. Okay I slept a lot, but I somehow found time to work out a decent cover story. One that couldn't be contradicted and one that a person might easily buy.

"The cover story is you are writing a book, and I am a research assistant. The book is based on the disappearance of Mattie Hollis. It has to be big new in a town this small. The cops might tell us to stay out of their way, but nothing more, I assure you." I said all that over coffee that next morning.

"Damn, that is brilliant. No one can prove that it is a lie. I like it a lot. Hell I always wanted to write. Maybe when this is over I actually will write the story."

"In that case we really do need to find out what happened to Mattie."

"I'll call her former supervisor and get a list of her friends. How are you going to talk to her parents without a car."

"She was a local girl according to Ed's notes. I'll just ride the bike over to their house. A research assistant is allowed to be poor and a little out of step."

"True, so I will meet you back here right after school and maybe we can talk to a couple of her friends tonight."

"Why don't you see if you can set something up while you are at school. We can do as much as possible tonight. There is no real reason to rush though. She is still going to be gone even if it takes us a couple of extra days."

I spent the early part of the next day at the marina. M my mind was in limbo trying to turn the puzzle pieces around so that they fit. The biggest problem was that I didn't have many pieces. The first thing I wanted to look for was a reason for Ed to kill her or for her to just up and leave. Men just up and leave, women don't usually. They usually make sure everyone knows what a bastard the guy is and why she is leaving. Men tend to just disappear one day. They may or may not come back all sorry and begging for forgiveness. For a woman to just walk away, I figured there had to be a powerful reason.

It could be a man, or even a woman I suppose. Maybe Ed slapped her around some or she went looking for the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. She could also have been fish bait. Several people held part of the answer. It was simply a matter of convincing them to tell us what they knew. Then it was up to us to figure it out.

The pizza deliver gal made heroic effort to get the pizza to us while it was still hot. Lucy and I made a equally an equal effort to ignore the the pizza until it was cold. Lucy had taught me the joy of cold pizza with Tabasco sauce. It was a great way to eat pizza.

While the pizza got cold she and I discussed the disappearance of Mattie Hollis. "Did Mattie have a job?" I asked.

"Yes she worked for the county. She was some kind of worker in the social services office. Not a social worker but some kind of glorified clerk."

"So she at least had a working knowledge of how things work with government agencies."

"Is that important," Lucy asked.

"Probably not, but you never know what will be important. What you do is look at all the pieces of the puzzle, then move them around and hope that they fit somehow." I suggested.

"Even if you have to take a hammer to them?"

"Even then," I agreed. I waited a couple of minutes then continued with a different thought. "We need a cover story before we start asking bureaucrats questions."

"What kind of questions can we ask?" Lucy wanted to know.

"We want to know who her friends were. After that it is one on one questioning on a more personal level."

"Why don't you let me do the initial interview with her supervisor. I can tell her a bit of the truth."

"Like what?"

"That my friend is interested in Mattie's husband. The Supervisor should be willing to tell me which of Mattie's coworkers might know things."

"Okay, you do that and I'll try to come up with some BS for her parents. I'm sure they have an opinion."

"Mine sure as hell would," Lucy suggested.

"Were there any hits on her credit cards or cell phone?" I asked.

"Nothing I could find."

"Did Ed cancel any of the cards or keep them open to see if she would use them?"

"As far as I could tell he didn't do anything with them, why?"

"Because If he closed them early on, it might indicate that he knew she wouldn't be needing them." I looked into Lucy's eyes and saw that she grasped the implication right away.

"You think she is dead." It was a statement of fact not a question.

"I think it is the most probable thing. It isn't the only possibility but it is the most likely at the moment."

"If she is dead, then Ed most likely killed her?" Lucy asked.

"Well statistically yeah," I admitted. "To prove me wrong we have to find some trace of Mattie after she went missing. So you think you could run that, friend of mine is dating the prick, number on the investigating officer? Just to see what he knows."

"Oh I think I can use my new found feminine wilds on him," She said with a huge smile. Even I noticed she was a lot more sexy since my return. She probably had been while I was gone as well. She had learned how to turn the few extra pounds into, if not an advantage, at least a neutral thing.

"I am sure you can bewitch him just fine," I suggested. Then I added,"Well, I need sleep. Are you staying or going?"

"We might need a blanket it's supposed to be chilly, do you have one or should we go to my place."

Rather than answer I pulled a wool blanket from the floor of the corner closet. "GI surplus," I informed her.

I had to admit that the new bed was more comfortable than the floor had been. Eveb so nothing much happened. Actually I think we were both a little embarrassed after the 'thank you' night at Becky's house. We did get reacquainted with each others body. More touchy, feely than anything else seemed to be in order.

"Lucy," I said even before she began telling me the results of her computer search. "I need to know how much Ed knows about us."

"What do you mean?" she asked.

"When Becky said she wanted me to look into this, he was bound to ask, 'just who the hell is Mike Abrams'." I looked at her a long minute then added. "I need to know what she told him."

"You know we broke a couple of laws getting rid of Becky's stalker. I don't want that coming back to bite us, if the news on Ed's wife is bad." I didn't tell her the real reason. The real reason was I needed to say off the police radar.

"I see what you mean. I guess we need to just ask Becky."

"Yes, if she wants to tell Ed after they are married that's fine. First we need to find out, if there is anything about his wife's disappearance he needs to make right."

"So do you want me to call her to get that settled before I tell you what I found."

"Did you find a smoking gun?"

"No, just more questions than answers," she replied.

"Then yeah, let's see if we really want to be involved in this after all."

Two hours later both women were in my apartment. I chose it because it was as close to an interrogation room as anything I had available. The idea of a room just for interrogations raises a suspects stress level. If you can't get him off guard, at last get him off balance. Becky had to at least know we were serious, since both of us sat across the toolbox table from her.

"So Becky how serious is this thing with ED?" I asked.

"Serious enough that I want to know what happened to his wife," she replied.

"What did you tell him about Me and Lucy?"

"What do you mean?"

"Sweetie, some of the things we did to get rid of Sheila and her girl friend were not exactly kosher. I don't want to go to jail, if I find something bad about Ed. So what does he know?"

"He knows I trust you and that you took care of a personal problem I had. He doesn't know what the problem was or what you did."

"This is too serious to screw around with Becky. If you did tell him anything you need to fess up to it," Lucy advised.

"Lucy I was serious, I told him nothing. I don't completely trust him yet. I know that breaking into their house and steeling their hard drive and then blackmailing them was illegal. I don't want to go to jail as an accessory either. I know that Ed might be capable of turning on all of us. I am being very careful with him. You have my word on it."

"Alright then we will take a look at it. Lucy will let you know what we find." I said it in a lighter voice. "You wanna stay for pizza?"

"No thanks Ed and I are going to a movie."

"Okay have fun." Lucy and Becky did the huggie thing before Becky left.

"Do you trust her?" Lucy asked.

"I do for now," I replied.

Upon arriving home, I found a note for Lucy. The note advised me that she had gone home to work on the Hollis file. Becky had sent her a electronic copy of the paper file I had in my hand.

I sat down to read it even though Lucy would give me her take on it as soon as I went to her apartment. I wanted to feel the tone of the file not just the facts. It was only ten pages of facts. It was more a series of statements than a narrative.

The first troubling thing I found was that Ed owned and operated a night club of sorts. Most likely it was a hole in the wall somewhere. I couldn't see St Marys being all that high on live entertainment. I made a mental note to have Lucy ask our other neighbor about Ed. He would surely at least know of him. Hell he probably had dealt with him at some time.

The troubling part was that club owners in general are an unsavory lot. Ed didn't strike me that way, but he was in contact with people who were. It would be easy for someone in need of a few bucks to volunteer to remove Ed's problem. I know innocent until proved guilty, but I wasn't interested in proving anything. I just wanted to know the truth. After that what happened was up to Becky.

Hollis' wife had disappeared eleven months before according to the statement. It was Ed's version that he returned from the club on a Wednesday night at 3AM to find his wife gone. He would usually find her in bed but on that particular night she was not to be found.

There was no sign of a struggle and nothing was out of place. He didn't call the police immediately because he thought she might be having an affair. It would do no good to make a lot of noise if she just showed up in the morning.

Again according to Ed's statement, he didn't sleep well that night. He was worried about her and angry that she would spend the night out without leaving him a message at least.

The next morning he began to worry when she wasn't home. He still thought she might have run off with a lover. He thought that until he found her purse with her diver's license and credit cards. Inside the purse nestled in the bottom he found her cell phone. Those things were the impetus for him to call the police.

At first they gave him a hard time about not having let enough time pass. However when he told them about her purse and cell phone, they came over to at least take a report. Since her car was in the drive, and it appeared that nothing but his wife was missing, the cops were baffled. There just did not seem to be any evidence of violence and without a robbery of any kind, they were at a loss.

As the days passed without any word from her and no use of her credit cards the case went cold. According to the statement, Ed had been polygraphed and passed it with flying colors. I had my doubts but had to believe his version for the moment. It hadn't matter to him that people had suspicions about him. Hell it probably helped his business to seem a little shady.

He had become interested in clearing his name only when Becky came into his life. At least that is how he put it in the statement.

Lucy stayed the night. I left her sleeping while I took the very quiet ebike to the burger burger, then to the marina to down the egg sandwich on a toasted hamburger bun. I sat for a couple of hours watching the weekend fishermen head out for a day on the water. I was always amazed at the difference in the dress of the weekend fishermen and the professionals.

Tee shirts with little symbols over long shorts were pretty impractical for a man to wear out in the sun and wind everyday. Plus most of the charter boats had someone to do the dirty work like bait the hook and land the fish. Since that was the case there was not much need for the day fishermen to dress in heavy duty work clothes. Still almost all the tourists had those captain's cap. They seemed to be almost part of a uniform.

The battery charger for the bike's three 12v batteries was plugged into the outlet at the base of the parking lot light. I doubt that anyone else even knew it was there. As a cop you see all kinds of things. I used to see a camper parked in the mall parking lot every year during a golf tournament. There was a thick power cord running from the base of a light to the vehicle. If you look at enough light poles you will eventually fine one with a plug. It is the place the maintenance workers plug in their power tools.

Ed found me sitting in the shade with the usual black coffee in my hand. Since it was almost empty I was happy that he brought a full one. He also brought his information booklet. I had no idea if he understood that I knew Becky had helped him prepare it.

"I brought coffee," he said quietly.

"Coffee is always a good thing," I replied.

"So when can you get started?"

"Well with a little luck we are already started. My partner should be doing computer checks this morning."

"Ah you mean Lucy?"

"Yes I mean Lucy."

"So you will keep me informed."

"You will be the third person to know if I find out anything at all."

"You mean Lucy and Becky will know before I do?"

"Most likely yes."

He just nodded. He seemed somehow disappointed that I didn't rush off to go to work on his problem. He didn't know that I had no idea what to do first. It's best if people like Ed didn't know too much.

When I arrive home on the Ebike, I put it away first, then went looking for Lucy. Since her car was in the drive I expected to find her at home. When there was no answer to my knock, I was confused. Finally I decided that she had gone somewhere with a friend.

"Well hello, its about time you got here." Lucy said from inside my apartment.

"I guess Becky spoke with you?" It was a question and we both knew it.

"Yes," was her only reply. Obviously she had known about Ed before I did.

"So, what is the deal?"

"Becky really likes him but there is this cloud hanging over him. Half the people who know him think he killed his wife. Of course all the people who just read about it think so as well."

"His story is she just took off. From having tried to talk to him for just a few minutes, I tend to believe him."

"Yes he is as dull as dishwater," she agreed.

"So can I count on you to help?"

"After what we all went through together, of course," she replied.

I was just as glad she didn't innumerate what we had been through. Some things are best left unsaid. "Well Mr. Personality is home writing us a book."

"I know Becky is helping and will email it to me when it is finished. I'll go ahead and check her credit cards and do a simple skip trace on her."

"Now how do you know about skip traces?"

"I wasn't always a librarian you know."

"I do not even want to know about your sorted past." I laughed out loud.

"This may be our last chance for real food, you wanna go out?" Lucy asked. She wnt on to answer her own question. "I do, and not to a diner. I want to go to 'The Rendezvous."

"Okay, dark, fancy restaurant serving foreign food it is."

The restaurant really was dark. I had a hard time with the menu so I let Lucy suggest until something that sounded harmless came up.

The food wasn't too bad so I was in a pretty good mood when we got home. "The same rules as before?" Lucy asked.

"We work when we work, we do what we can, we take expenses from Ed nothing more, I suggested.

"You and I share a bed again?"

"Somethings are best left unplanned."

I hadn't had anyone in my bed for the last few weeks. I finally understood why Becky hadn't been around. It looked as though Lucy had been waiting for an invitation or something. I hoped she understood that I was chasing girls young enough to be my kids. I wasn't about to run away either.

I accepted the coffee from Hollis without a word. I was determined he would speak first. After several long moments, I gave in. "What is it Becky that thinks I can do for you?"

"To be honest I'm not sure that you can do anything."

"Then why are you here?"

"Becky wanted me to talk to you. She said if I didn't she would stop going out with me."

"Good grief do you want my blessing?" I said it with a laugh.

"No nothing like that." He was dead serious. I began to wonder if he wasn't a little slow.

"Then what exactly?"

"I'm still married." He hung his head.

"Then you need a divorce lawyer and I don't know a single one here." I said it seriously. Something had a bug up Becky's ass. She knew what I was about and it wasn't lawyers.

"Yes I need one of those as well, but it won't solve the real issue between me and Becky."

"Oh what is the issue?"

"My wife left me a year ago. Just disappeared actually. I was questioned by the police and the whole town knows. Most of them think I had something to do with her disappearance."

"Did you?" Yes it was blunt but I needed to know before I even listened to any more from him.

"If I did, I would not be here."

"Sure you would. If you fooled the police, then you think you can easily fool me. Becky wants to be reassured and you think I will do that if I don't figure this out."

"I'm sorry to have wasted your time." He turned to leave and I let him go. I figured, if he wouldn't answer my questions screw him. Becky would just have to figure out how she felt about Ed without my help.

He reached the parking lot, then made a call on his cell phone. After a very short conversation he turned and walked back up the slight incline to the river bank. "I'm sorry Mr. Abrams. I guess I have been asked that kind of thing so many times that it makes me a little crazy. I know you have to ask and I should not have lost my temper."

"So that was you having a temper tantrum. I would guess that if that is the angriest you can manage, violence is not in your playbook."

"No sir not at all," he agreed.

"So you are going to answer the questions from now on?"

"Yes sir. I love Becky and I want to start a new life with her. She will only agree if you look into this."

"If you want me to look into it, you have to answer my question truthfully and more important fully. I need to know even the slightest details." He nodded his agreement. "Okay so, how were you getting along when she disappeared?"

"We had hit a rough patch in the marriage." He looked as though he hadn't wanted to admit that.

"Okay that makes it look suspicious. Tell me did the cops check her credit card and cell phone records?"

"Yes there was no activity on either. The records haven't been checked in several months though."

"I need the card numbers and her driver's license and social security numbers."

"I can get you those."

"Give them to Becky she knows how to reach me. I also want the names, addresses and phone numbers of all her family and friends. If she worked, I want to know where and how long. If she had any hobbies, I want to know that as well. I need to know the specifics of your problems, and be honest. If you lie to me one time, I'm out of here. I also need the most recent picture you have of her."

Odds were real good that I couldn't do anything but set Becky's mind at ease. If she took off like he said, I would never be able to find her. If something worse happened there might be a trail of some kind. It just all depended on what the situation was and I wouldn't know that until I began looking into it.

I was looking forward to the chase. I had been so bored since I went underground. I missed the struggle to accomplish things.

"Go home and get to work on that information. I want you to have Becky call Lucy tonight." I knew that I was going to need Lucy's help. She was the closest thing I had to a computer expert. She might not be an expert but she could sure do a lot more than me on the net.

Even with the new photo hobby I was becoming bored again. From my last experience with boredom I knew that I would need to be careful. I had a tendency to take unnecessary risks when I was bored.

I read the newspaper, such as it was, to try to find something to do. A twice weekly newspaper covering the small town and surrounding area almost never had an interesting story. Maybe if I had a kid in high school or had some interest in the local government, there would be something in it for me. Even though there was nothing of interest, I read it religiously. I had to wonder how many others read it, just in case.

I was sitting on a bench watching the river and the marina for something of photographic interest when I heard him. "Are you Mike Abrams?"

I turned to look at the man much younger than me. "That would depend on whether I owe you money?"

"No you don't owe me money," he replied.

He looked a little lost so I continued to bewilder him. "Then, do you owe me money?"

"No Sir, I don't think I do." He seemed to have finally caught on that it was just crap talk.

"Then I might be Mike," I replied with a smile.

There was a long pause then he said, "Becky over at the high school suggested I talk to you."

"Oh, you look kind of old to be a student and young to have a kid going there."

There was another long pause before he replied. "I'm thirty two so you are right."

Since he didn't seem to be ready to explain just yet, I asked. "How do you know Becky and why did she think you should talk to me."

She and I are dating, kinda."

Well that certainly explained why Becky had not been around. After another few seconds of dead air I asked, "What does kinda mean?"

It was a couple of seconds before he answered. "It means we are dating but nobody knows."

"Now look?" I left it open so he had to give me a name before I continued.

"Ed, Edward Hollis," he interjected.

"Ed, what you need to do is to get in your car and drive over to the diner across the street. Once you get inside you need to tell them you want a large coffee, to go. Then you need to bring that coffee back to me. I refuse to drag answers out of you without more coffee."

He looked at me a moment, then he nodded and walked toward his car. He could have saved himself a trip to the diner by just telling me what the hell he wanted.

Since I needed something more than watching the boats to keep me occupied, I retrieved the Panasonic Digital camera from Lucy. I wrapped it in a towel, then secured it inside the front basket of my new E bike. I spent that next day testing the bike for range and making pictures of things I saw along the way.

When I got home I worked the images with the software included with my camera. It allowed me to make the pictures a little more acceptable. When I had narrowed it down to half a dozen, I went in search of a photo forum. I found one where the members seemed to be both knowledgeable and friendly.

Their rule was that I could post only one image a day for critique and advice. I begged them to be brutally honest but also constructive. I allowed the member to edit the image without permission as well. That was as long as they posted both the edited version and the original for comparison.

I chose a wide angle shot of the marina. The members of the forum worked me over hard. It was what I expected and what I wanted. I knew from their remarks that I had a lot to learn. I also knew I could pass a lot of time learning and working with the images. I was tickled pink.

For a few days my images were getting a lot of, "It's a nice snapshot but just a snapshot." The first decent review I got was on a shot of the old man looking at the marina. I thought that it was a nice image and the forum agreed.

I passed a couple of weeks like that. During all that time I had no contact with Becky. She didn't call or stop by. I wasn't angry but I was a little surprised.

When Lucy arrived home I conned her into driving me to get my bike. The deal was dinner out in exchange for the ride almost to Jacksonville. The meal was good even if it was on one of those chrome and glass yuppie diners. Ordinarily I would not be caught dead in a place like it, but a deal was a deal. It seemed a bit harsh to force me there but Lucy thought it was funny. I didn't make a fuss, if I had she might have gone into hysterics.

By nine pm the bike was in the garage and I was kissing Lucy good night. I would have loved for it to have been a peck on the cheek, but she had other things in mind. After the heavy wet kiss, she did turn and walk away. Mixed signals again, I thought, but then I was doing the same thing. I think we both were a bit afraid of a commitment. Of course I had the better reason to avoid it. Lucy had no idea what I was saving her from. She evidently had issues of her own, since something had caused her to walk away as well.

I shook my head as I entered my studio apartment. I played around on the computer for a while, then I gave up and went to bed.

The next morning, after my cereal, I rode the Tomos to the park. The old man wasn't there so I called the old man's son-in-law. "Your motor is ready for pickup," the son in law informed me. "I am going to be out a while this afternoon so plan accordingly."

"How about I hop on the bike and come get it now."

"Sure, that would be fine."

"I need to go back home for the trailer so I'll be about twenty minutes of so, if that is okay?"

"Sure, I'm not leaving till noon."

I didn't take any chances I picked up the motor and wheel within a half hour of the call. When I got home, I mounted it quite easily following the old man's directions. I even got it wired and ready for the batteries. Those were on order but were coming from china so it would take a while.

I'm not kidding the only place I could buy the most modern battery technology was from china. When I think of China, I think of cheap. The batteries were anything but cheap. I paid almost 500 bucks for a 36volt high capacity battery pack.

Even with that expensive battery pack I couldn't get to Jacksonville and back. So I planned to keep the Tomos stored in the garage. I could always risk riding it in an emergency. An emergency like taking it on the lamb in a hurry.

After lunch I spent some time on the computer and also thinking. I even took a nap on the new sofa bed. The cube end tables made and excellent foot rest when equipped with a decorative pillow from the sofa. So I did find a use for the cube after all.

Either just before I fell asleep or sometime during the nap, I realized what last the night before had all been about. Becky had participated in what she thought was every man's fantasy as payback for ending her stalking problems. That and the decorating made sense.

Well it made sense in Becky's case. I was still in the dark as to Lucy's motive for going along. Like most things in life it would either move to it's own conclusion or it would just hang in the air forever. Somethings just became irrelevant as life moved on to its on conclusion.

On Monday I slipped back into my old habit of eating a bowl of cereal at home, then ride to the park to drink coffee and watch the boats. The old black man was there just like before. It was an uneventful day and I liked that just fine. Yes I knew I would become bored again, but for the moment the water and the boats were enough.

The first of my purchases to show up was the motor controller. The aluminum box not much larger than a pack of cigarettes cost me 35 bucks and change it showed up on Wednesday in a box with the throttle as well. I didn't even open the package. I just tossed it into the tall metal cabinet in the kitchen area. It had plenty of space since I had almost no dishes or food in the cabinet.

I had not seen Becky since Sunday when they showed off their decorating skills. I had a feeling that I wouldn't be seeing much of her. Lucy, I most likely would see because she lived next door.

On Friday the Motor and throttle arrived. I was trying to decide if I should borrow Lucy's car for a run to home depot, when I mentioned to the old man that I needed someone to do some welding for me.

"Call my son-in-law Lucus. He has a shop that does some metal work. Mostly he makes vents and things but he can weld I know."

"I need to run to home depot to buy the metal first," I replied.

"Go see Lucus first, he has all kinds of stuff layin' around. Just tell him what you want he can do it I bet." The old man gave me directions to his son-in-laws shop before I left.

It was Tuesday of the next week before I went to Lucus's shop. I had to wait for the wheel. After it arrived I had to have the diagrams printed out. I left for his shop with the trailer full of parts.

"You must be Lucus?" I said as a greeting to the middle-aged black man with the scruffy beard.

"Yes sir I am," he replied.

"Your father-in-law sent me over."

"So you must be the man from the park. I was expecting you last week."

"I had to wait for some parts to arrive." With that I put the box of parts down. I handed him the diagram and explained it all to him. There were drill holes to make and two of the four corners to weld. It wasn't a very big job but I didn't want to tackle it because I didn't have the tools or the skill to make the welds.

"So you want to get the angle iron or let me use what I got laying around?"

"Well what are you going to charge me to do the job. Give me a price with the materials included."

"Fifty bucks to build and I will supply the angle. I can make you that fancy hinge thing out of a piece of channel so it's no big deal."

"When can you have it done?"

"Well I got a roof vent to build this afternoon, how about you call me tomorrow after lunch?"

"Let's do it then." I didn't offer to leave a deposit since he had well over fifty bucks worth of my parts. The motor had been 45 bucks and the wheel 30 bucks. I expect that he knew I would be back for my parts if nothing else.

I rode the Tomos to the Walmart store near Jacksonville. I looked at bikes for a long time. I had narrowed it down to a bike the size of the Tomos and one a little larger. I bought a 24" woman's cruiser bicycle. The tires were a little small but it would do.

It was too far to ride it home, and I had the Tomos to deal with so I just paid and agreed to pick it up before Saturday.

Sunday morning, after a breakfast with the girls, I rode the Tomos to the park. I sat looking at either the marina or the river I wished there was somewhere I could use to piggyback with my wireless connection. It would have been nice to give ebay a look, just in case I saw something I could use.

I read the Sunday paper twice before Lucy showed up. "Mike, you want to take a look at your apartment now, or take us to lunch."

"Which would you rather do; eat while you can enjoy it, or wait to see if you are going to be embarrassed by the decorating job?"

Lucy laughed then said, "Let's go take a look first." She waited for me to leave the park before she drove off. It was a short ride to the apartment. I put the bike inside the garage before I climbed the stairs. Becky met me on the mini deck landing.

"Close your eyes," she said. When I balked she added. "Come on just like on TV play along."

Lucy pushed me into the apartment. I did close my eyes at the last second. "It's our welcome home gift to you," Becky stated enthusiastically.

I was pleasantly surprised. I tried to show more emotion but pleasantly surprised summed it up. They had a steel and wood workbench sitting on the right of the sink. It was supposed to be my counter. One of them had stained and poly coated the top of the workbench. It actually did look very nice. The gunmetal gray frame with the three cherry stained 2x8s on top make a nice cabinet with a sleek industrial feel to it. On the one shelf under the workbench they had placed my small tabletop appliances.

Beside the work bench a tall metal cabinet with full doors had been added. It was one of those steel storage things you might find in the workshop of a plant somewhere. I could tell it too well made to have been cheap. There was even a little unit made from a large metal toolbox on wheels. Someone had added a removable piece of plywood on top. Since the tool box was on wheels, I could roll it around to use as a kitchen bar or a dinette table. It was the most functional piece in the room I expected. They had even bought a couple of metal bar stools.

In what turned out to the be the living room/bedroom area I found the most changes. All my old junked out furniture was gone. Everything was new and matched. It was certainly a different look and feel to the place.

There was a sofa with a removable cover. The sofa was over four feet wide and it was three feet deep. The depth would have been a problem but for the big bolsters. It would be comfortable, I thought. What made it unique, was a second piece which pulled from under it. When it rolled out the sofa could be lowered to create a low bed which was four feet by six feet. The way it was set up the joint would run side to side not top to bottom. It would be much more comfortable for two people to sleep on it.

I had a new comfortable chair which was a nice height. I sat down to try it out. I suppose it was some kind of cue for Lucy. Because she instantly removed the top of the workbench table and rolled it to me. Once it was in front of me she opened one of the drawers. Some one have fitted a top inside the drawer so that it made a desk top. The tool box had become a small desk. Since the casters locked in place, it was a genius solution to a small space multipurpose piece of furniture.

There were a couple of cube tables with lamps beside the sofa. I had no idea what I would do with those. I suppose the overhead light was annoying to the girls. I liked it because it was bright. It wasn't just the lighting that caused the room to be a little less bright.

They had painted the white side walls a pearl color. Each end wall was painted with a flat charcoal colored paint. It was beautiful but a little dark for my taste. I did not say a word though.

"So what do you think," Lucy asked.

"It is beautiful. I am shocked but it's really wonderful. Thank you both." I went for a hug but wound up kissing them both. That whole kissing thing was going to be a problem I feared. I had to see Lucy every day. Becky would probably grow tired of the game and move on, but Lucy might turn out to be a problem.

Lucy handed me a wad of money. "Since Becky insisted you wanted a shop look to the place, the furniture was less expensive than I thought."

"Well you did great. So let's go celebrate. Lunch is on me anywhere you want to go. Anywhere I can wear jeans that is."

Saturday morning began with a real breakfast thanks to Maggie. Maggie was the only one of us who could actually cook. Lucy was pretty good at the basics but Maggie could really cook. Me,I could eat and pay the bill, that's about all I was good for.

After breakfast the two of them took off for Jacksonville and the furniture stores it held. I got on Becky's computer and made my final plans. I downloaded a copy of the e bike plans from an old man on one of the forums. He had tried about everything. He had also designed three different ebikes. I chose the one with the simplest design. It required the purchase of almost every component pre-made. He swore that the actual construction wasn't hard, but I didn't plan to do it anyway. What I did plan was to get all the parts in and then take it to someone to actually do the installation.

There was a parts list with the instructions. I ordered the parts that I could get on ebay first. Those would have to be shipped to me. I figured that in a week, I would have all the components. At that time I would be ready to find someone to assemble them.

I found a powerful motor first thing, then a drive assembly from a different kind of vehicle. I would just have to reconfigure it for use with a bicycle. I ordered a speed controller and throttle from an electric scooter dealer. I also bought a small amount of chain to turn the drive wheel. I still had a hardware store list, but it could wait.

The rest of the day was spent laying around the house watching movies on Becky's DVD system. I found out quickly that no matter what Becky said, she was a romantic. Since I also like romance, I was happy with the discovery.

I was napping on the sofa when the two of them arrived. They were all smiles and giggles. "So what's the verdict?" I asked.

"The verdict is, we are finished except for cleaning. There are a few little things that need doing so it will be tomorrow afternoon before you are ready to move back into your place."

"Oh I have to stay here with you two again," I said it with a huge smile on my face. I actually did like the idea of not sleeping on the floor again. I had been sleeping in beds for the last two months and was used to them again.

"Yep one more night in my bed." Becky said it with another giggle. I couldn't judge Lucy's reaction to that comment but they seemed to have worked everything out so I just kept my mouth shut.

Lucy took a shower in the guest bath while I started a shower in Becky's bathroom. I was pretty far along when the glass door opened and Becky stepped in. I had seen her almost naked but never completely naked. She looked better with her clothes on but it just wasn't the same. A naked woman even one with a body that isn't perfect is still arousing.

"I always knew I turned you on," Becky said with a smile after seeing the effect she had on me.

"I never said that you didn't."

"I know but you are so controlled that it was hard to tell. That is until I got you in here with no clothes to hide behind."

"So now you know for sure all the parts work."

"Okay, I admit that I had begun to worry."

We went right from the shower to the bed. Having a bathroom off the bedroom makes that kind of thing possible. I wasn't really surprised that Becky showed up naked in the shower. I wasn't surprised by how good her naked body had felt both in the shower and in the bed. I was surprised when Lucy joined us a few minutes after we were in bed.

"I'm your chaperon," she said.

"Okay, but you can't be dressed in my bed," Becky said. That immediately caused Lucy to remove her long tee shirt and slip into the bed beside me. It was a strange night. A night I will remember forever, but also never describe in detail.

It was right after 9pm when the two of them came dragging in. They were pretty clean to have been painting since five. "So how did it go?" I asked.

"Not too bad," Becky replied. Then she added, "We have about half of it done." We are going shopping tomorrow morning. The stores promised they would deliver tomorrow, if we had things purchased by noon. Then in the afternoon we will finish the painting. If they can't deliver it all, Lucy is taking a vacation day to be there to let them in on Monday."

"You don't have to do that, I can let them in," I offered.

"Would you promise not to look just to open the door for them?" Lucy asked.

"Of course I could do that."

"I don't trust him," Becky said with a huge smile.

"I know," Lucy agreed. "Let's see how tomorrow goes."

Both women were in Becky's kitchen eating take out pizza during the discussion. I had already had a dinner of hot dogs from the Quickie Mart. Two hot dogs all he way and a bag of barbecue chips worked just fine as a dinner but only once in a while. It was not a meal I wanted more than once a month or so.

After their pizza first Lucy showered, then Becky. I had already done my evening ritual before they arrived home. Even though I slept pretty well the night before, I was still exhausted from the trip.

"I'm sorry ladies but I am going to bed." I waited for a reply there was none. "I suppose it's the guest room for Lucy so I'll bunk on the floor in here."

"Actually you are sleeping with me," Becky said as if the subject was closed and of course it was. I really didn't mind the schedule of musical beds the two of them had somehow worked out.

Friday morning I rode the Tomos to Burger Burger for a breakfast sandwich and coffee which I immediately carried to the Riverview Park. I sat on one end of a bench eating and watching the boats come and go from the marina. It was mostly go that early in the morning.

The old black man just appeared on the other end of the bench without warning. "So where you been boy?" he asked.

"On vacation, got back last night."

"Well it's good to see you. I would have asked around, but I didn't want to make any noise. Never know these days, if you was sick or just layin' low."

"Good idea," I agreed. "So what you been up to old man?"

"Sittin' right here and visiting friends over a Meadowview."

"Oh what's Meadowview?"

"County home for us old folks. Lots of my friends seem to have ended up there."

"I'm sorry to hear that."

"Oh, I 'spect me and you will be there one day."

"Yes, I expect that is how I will end my days. Unless I get lucky and some 25 year old jealous husband shoots me." I laughed at my own joke.

"Well, I don't expect that to be a problem in my case," he suggested.

"Just wishful thinking on my part as well." We both got quiet and watched the water. "You know what old man? I need more coffee. I'm going to ride over to that little diner across from the marina that used to be yours. Can I bring you one?"

"No thanks Michael, if I drink more coffee, I will be spending the day walking back and forth to the bathroom." I nodded as I walked away.

I had the coffee and was about to climb on the bike when a police officer pulled up behind me. He had been headed into the diner no doubt, but he took a moment to say, "Hey you, hold on a minute."

"Yes sir," I replied. I did not want to stand out for attitude, so I was very respectful.

"Do you have a driver's license?"

"Sure," I replied digging for my old driver's license.

"That's okay, I don't need to see it. I just wanted to make sure that you knew that you needed one. It's not a DUI caddy." he informed me.

"No, it's nothing like that. I just decided to save a ton of money since I don't go anywhere alone anyway. I have close neighbors who invite me to ride along when they go to Jacksonville."

"Good, as long as you know." He nodded then walked into the diner.

When I first moved to Georgia, I sorta knew about that law. Then when I went on vacation, I forgot all about it. The reminder was all I needed to get serious about the Ebike. According to all I had read, the feds had determined that small ebikes were to be regulated as a bicycle. No special laws for them were allowed. That being the case, I planned to push it right to the limits, but to build an ebike just as soon as humanly possible.

Still in non compliance and defiance I rode to the park. I told the old man and we both laughed. Even though it was sort of funny, I still planned to build that bicycle. When I got to Becky's house, I spent the afternoon and evening reading all I could find on bicycles and electric bicycles. I had not ridden a real bicycle in thirty or more years. I had to relearn not only how to balance on one but what the parts of one were. Since I planned. to build it from scratch I needed to know all about the bicycle in general.

I found out what she meant a few minutes later when Lucy asked, "Do you have any of the pervert's money left?"

"Some sure, did you expect a cut?" I smiled since I was sure she didn't.

"Not exactly but Becky and I have been talking over the last two months."

"Oh really and what were you two talking about."

"Mostly about you and our relationship with each other. See here is the thing, we both enjoy hanging out with you, individually and all of us together. We think that we should remain good friends. You know just like we were when you left."

"I'm glad to hear that," I said in agreement.

"It was such a rush, when the news of their arrest came out." Becky added. "I felt like I had really made a difference in the world."

"That too," Lucy agreed. "But this is about us on a personal level."

"Okay, I get it but what has it to do with the money?"

"Well we have decided this place needs a make over. Making this place more girl friendly would be a good use of that money."

"Well I can go along with that but only if you remember it doesn't belong to me. When I leave, I can't take anything with me."

"And you remember it isn't really our money, so you shouldn't worry about taking anything with you."

I thought about it a minute and realized that she was right. It was how I tried to thing about the dope money as well. "Okay how much?"

"What do you want it to look like?" Becky asked. I had the feeling she was the one who cared what I thought. Left up to Lucy it would be her ideas period. Lucy was the more pushy of the two.

"I don't know kind of like a clean workshop." I said that smiling.

"Right," Lucy said sarcastically.

"No wait," Becky suggested. "I think he has something. We can do a lot of things with stuff from home depot in Jacksonville.

"You are kidding?" Lucy asked seriously. "I am not building anything."

"Not at all," Becky said with a smile. "We can talk about it tomorrow."

Lucy nodded then she said, "Let's finish with old business first." She turned her attention from Lucy to me. "You need to move out of here tomorrow." I tried to protest but she bullied me. "It's only for a few days. We want it to be a big surprise."

"I'm sure it will be." I agreed.

"Here," Lucy said handing me the key to her apartment. You can stay with me till it's done."

"Or with me," Becky said handing me her key as well.

"By the way, I had a copy of your apartment key made for Becky," Lucy said. "Don't look so shocked, we have come to an understanding. Someday I'll explain it to you."

I didn't ask. For the time being I didn't really want to know what the arrangement was exactly.

After the two of them left with $1500, I went to the storage area and re interred the dope money. While I was there I hid the shotgun under an old pair of curtains. It would never do to leave it in the apartment while delivery men were in and out all day. I had been warned that the girls planned to buy new furniture.

It was almost midnight when the light shined through my window warning me that I had company. I looked out the glass part of the door. I was not that surprised to see Lucy standing on my stairs.

"Well hello again," I said stepping back from the doorway to allow her entrance."

"I was too excited to sleep."

"I'm sorry Lucy but I rode that bike pretty hard the last couple of days and I'm exhausted. I really am not up to entertaining you."

"No need to entertain me," with that she let the housecoat slip from her shoulders. Under it she wore some kind of very see through short gown thing. I had never seen so much of her but I had felt her body pressed against mine. She had lost a few pounds even though she was still a few pounds over the perfect weight. Still she had a great body, built for comfort.

"Oh my," I said admiring her.

"This will be our last night sleeping on the floor so lets do it right."

There was no real sex but there was a lot of almost sex.

Halloween was a hot day in south Florida. I woke up in a motel well inland from Key West. I had seen the sun set in the gulf, and I had walked in the footprints of Earnie. I was glad I had that chance before I read the note on the blog. I was positioned to either head back to Mississippi gulf coast or back to St. Marys. It all depended on the blog message.

M come home all is forgiven. Those were the exact words I had giving Lucy to write on the blog. I was happy to be free to return to St. Marys. I missed the little town near the Ga. coast. I loaded up the trailer early the next morning and headed up the Florida east coast at a slightly more serious pace. One can not rush a moped, but I was starting earlier and planned to ride into the late afternoon. I seldom did that for any reason.

The trip was four hundred miles give or take. I managed over a hundred miles a day. The bike was slow and I had to stay on back roads all the way. It was slow going but I didn't mind at all.

In the late afternoon of the third day, I pulled into the riverside park in St. Marys. I could have made it home in ten more minutes but I wanted to see the park before anything else. I sat on a bench by the water and just relaxed. It had been a hard three days and I was glad to see the end of the highway.

For the last two months I had wandered around aimlessly. I spent over half of the blackmail money or as I preferred to call it my insurance settlement. I hadn't been able to keep up with the events surrounding the raid since the town was so small there was no daily newspaper. Still every now and then I caught a few words on one of the news services. The best I could tell the two women had copped a plea. It was a damn good thing that they did. I had made sure they were caught with their hands in the cookie jar, so to speak.

I spent more time at the park than I had planned. Before I knew it the light was failing. I rode the bike home by way of burger, burger. A bag of burgers in the front basket and then a six pack of canned coke added to the trailer and I was on the final two blocks of my vacation. It was back to the grind of doing nothing. I had to laugh thinking how many men would love to have my problems.

I guess it is true that the sound of a moped is like no other sound. Lucy was out the door before my feet touched the first step of my stairway. "Mike," she said wrapping me in what would have been a bear hug, if she had been a bit stronger. "It is so good to see you."

"It's good to see you too." I replied when I could get my balance.

"Have you talked to Becky?"

"Of course not I just got here. I haven't talked to anyone except the girl behind the counter at Burger Burger," I held up the bag for her to see.

"Damn it, you are having dinner with me," she said positively.

"Well bring yours on up then, cause I'm having there burgers and a diet coke."

Not only did she bring up a plate of some kind of pasta for herself she brought half a cake for me. "I was chewing the burger and lusting for the cake when she said, "Becky will be here in a few minutes. She was so excited when I told her you were home."

"Ah well that's nice. I hope the cops didn't bother you guys."

"We never heard a word from them. We had to listen to courthouse gossip to find out what happened. Both of your other girlfriends are waiting for sentencing. They both copped a plea."

"Good," I replied.

Becky and I did the greeting thing again almost word for word and hug for hug as Lucy and I had done it. "I haven't had a good nights sleep since you left," she said after all the hugs.

"Oh why is that?" I expected her to come up with all those nervous nelly things but she didn't.

"Because I miss being hugged and groped before I drift off to sleep." I looked at Lucy to gauge her reaction. She just smiled at me. I had no idea what that meant.

murder most foul.... book one

"Murder most foul, " the assistant district attorney shouted over and over during his closing arguments. It had to have been almost a year before I got fired. It wasn't until that last year that I lost interest in my cases. Obviously I had been a cop at the time.

The words were just theatrics to me until the night I witnessed a murder. I saw it up close and personal and it was pretty damned foul. The victim was sitting in the back seat of my cab. A year after leaving the police department, I was indeed driving a glorified cab. Glorified in that they called it an airport limo. In reality it was a black midsize Ford sedan. It would have been a compact car ten years earlier.

The fare smelled bad from the start. I picked him up at the overnight airport parking lot. One of those places where drivers leave their cars for a couple of days. Usually they take the shuttle to the airport but this one had other plans. "Take me to the overlook on highway 68."

"You mean the reservoir overlook?" I asked.

"Yeah I got a date," he replied. It was after 9 PM the place would be deserted. I figured he would be meeting a married woman there. I expected him to transfer himself and the small suitcase to her car and be gone. That would be the most likely scenario.

I expected that to happen right up until the man appeared from the woods. I saw him in the side mirror. At that point it took on the feeling of a drug deal, except the man walking toward my cab didn't have a bag of drugs. What he did have was something in his hand held close to his leg. He wasn't dressed in black but in dark clothing of some kind. At that point I knew that either my fare was gay or something was about to go terribly wrong.

What the man approaching didn't know, was that the glass isolating the rear seat of the cab from the drivers compartment was bullet proof. He also didn't know that shoved between the seat cushions of my cab was a .38 Colt three inch barreled wheel gun. He had no idea that he had been spotted by a man with a gun.

I could have rolled out of the cab at any time and confronted him, but I had a nice piece of bullet proof glass between us if I stayed in my seat. I could bend around and take a couple of shot at him from pretty close range.

Then he did the one things that changed the plan drastically. He approached from the passenger side of the car. He, by complete accident, had chosen to approach the cab in the worst place for me to get a shot off. In a stupid turn of fate the bullet proof glass was shielding him.

Before I could reposition myself he walked up and shot my passenger without saying a word. Then took a shot at me. I ducked of course even though the bullet bounced off the glass after cracking it. I rolled out of the cab on the driver's side leaving it between me and the assassin. I had only one advantage. He did not know I had a pistol.

He stood up to fire across the roof of the car. I was ready for him I shot first. I am no marksman by any means. Add to that the fact that I was terrified and it becomes a miracle that I shot him in the face. A 158 grain ball of burning hot metal entered his face just a little right of the nose. That is what the autopsy would say. He was dead before he realized his mistake.

I knew that I was going to be making the only phone calls from the overlook, so I wasn't in a great big hurry. I reached into the cab for the small piece of luggage. It wasn't even locked. Probably for an easy show and tell. I expected that a Drug deal had just turned into a rip off. It there were drugs in the bag they would be useless to me. I hoped for huge wads of cash.

It had been a long time since a fantasy came true for me. I guess I was due. The case contained a lot of cash. I didn't have time to count right then, but it was a lot. I knew that much.

Since I wasn't a cop anymore, I decided that I would apply an even older law than those I used to enforce. I decided that it was a clear cut case of 'finders keepers'.

My life was going to get complicated if I decided to keep the money. Oh what the hell, I thought, My life has always been complicated. Immediately my marital status came to mind. I had to laugh. I was standing over two dead men holding a bag of stolen money and my ex-wives came to mind. The bodies and the money paled in comparison to the trouble five ex wives can cause a man.

"Okay, if I am going to keep the money, I have to hide it." I knew for a fact that the area was going to be a crime scene real soon. I couldn't put off making that call much longer. I also could not disturb the crime scene anymore than I had already. I walked twenty five yards or so down a gravel path to the concrete overlook. When I arrive I stood in the spot where the front handrail and the side handrail came together. I knelt down, took a quick look around, then lowered the bag into the dark waters of the city reservoir.

I walked back to the car to make my report to the 911 operator. "911 emergency how my I help you?" the female voice asked.

"Dear God I think I killed him. Please send an ambulance and the police please."

"Is he breathing?" she asked calmly.

"No neither of them is breathing please send someone."

"Where are you sir?"

"I'm calling on a cell phone. I'm at the city reservoir overlook on 68. Please send someone."

"Just stay on the phone sir. I have an ambulance and police car on the way."

"Thank you." I said almost hysterically."

I hit the kill button on the phone. I put my gun on the hood of the Ford and waited for the ambulance and the cops.

"Burke what the hell happened here?" It was a woman much younger than my 48 years. Cops who have been on the department more than five years knew me. Even the younger ones knew of me. In my case it was not a good thing. I had been forced into retirement. They used my case at the academy to teach rookies what not to do.

Even though I was acquitted of criminal wrong doing, it was suggested that if I wanted to avoid a civil rights trial I should resign. One trial took all the money I had so resigning seemed like a good idea. I went out with twenty years service, not enough for a pension but I did get a nice big settlement. My retirement account and a few other things the department owed me. I would have wished for my good name restored but the department was playing politics with my life. I guess that is how I justified dropping the case full of money off the concrete walkway of the overlook.

"It's a hell of a mess is what it is," I replied.

"I can see that so what happened?"

I told her the story almost exactly as it happened. I did leave out the part about the bag being under water not 25 yards from where we stood.

"So the man on the ground just walked up and put a round into the head of the guy in the back seat. For no apparent reason."

"Yeah, I was surprised by the sound."

"Not so surprised that you couldn't manage to pull that nasty little .38 and pop the shooter."

"I had a pretty good idea that he was too cold to leave a witness. So yeah I busted a cap in his ass."

"Very poetic, but we call in homicide."

"Call it anything you want, it was a righteous shoot."

"Well that will be something new for you." She changed the subject after she saw the look on my face.

The female cop was joined by two detectives within minutes. They walked right up to me ignoring the patrolman. "So what happened Burke?"

I told the same story again. "I thought he was meeting some married woman to be honest," I said finally. I mean there was no luggage, no case of any kind. It just had 'cheating husband' written all over it

If the cops weren't buying my story they didn't let on. After the dead men were identified, they pretty much seemed happy to let the DA handle it. They were both known drug dealers so I guess my story sounded reasonable. I got cut loose after about three hours of interviews. One thing I learned while doing my time on the blue line was how to keep my mouth shut. Most suspects hang themselves because they think they need to fill the dead air. In other words they keep talking when they should just shut up. Lawyer up and you look guilty, shut up and you just look stupid.

The cab was a crime scene so I had no way home. I called the airport limo service. Eddie, one of the old timers, picked me up. I had to tell the story one more time. Again I left out the part about the money.

At 1AM I drove to the mall parking lot, a couple of miles from the overlook. I took a short cut through the woods behind the mall. The walk through the woods was only a mile and a half that way. I knew about the short cut because it was part of the bike trail. The trail started at a park about half a mile from the mall. It ran through the woods behind the mall, then on past the overlook. The trail ended in the next town about twenty miles away. I always swore that I would hike it all one day, but I usually walked no more than five miles. From the park then past the mall, past the overlook and on to the spot behind a local church. Then I turned around and went back.

That was not the plan that night. I walked from the mall parking lot because my car would not stand out there even at 1AM. Lots of out of town workers and college students parked their cars at the mall. Since the mall was experiencing hard times, they didn't mind the cars in the lot. It gave mall shoppers a false, but more favorable impression.

Even in the dark with no additional light, I was able to walk about three miles an hour. I was naked and in the water by 2:30 AM. I was back in my car, with only wet hair to make anyone suspicious, well before sunup. I transferred the wet money from the small piece of luggage into two pillow cases from my bed. I tied the tops closed with a piece of twine.

From the mall I drove out of the city. After about a fifteen minute drive. I stopped at a small shopping center in one of those rural bedroom communities. The shopping center had a 24 hour coin operated laundromat. I knew about it only because I had worked a few nights as a body guard for a lady whose husband liked to pound on her. I went with her to do her to do the laundry one night.

I fed two bucks worth of quarters into a commercial dryer and let the pillow cases tumble for almost an hour. They were hot as hell when I removed them. I was pretty sure the money would be dry enough to repackage by that time.

I knew two things for sure. The cops didn't know about the money yet, but the two dead men did. Not only did they know, but some of their friends most likely knew did as well. Just as soon as the cops gave all the details to the press, someone would notice that there was no mention of a bag full of money. About that time there would be a lot more interest in the old cab driver.

I wouldn't be hard to find at all. I wouldn't be for sure if I stayed put. I had no intention of staying put. I planned to get the hell out of town and to get so lost daylight would have a hard time finding me.

Number one thing to do, was something not to do. Forget about closing down the my present life. The thing for me to do was to just close the door to the apartment and walk away. The cops might figure out that I was on the run, or maybe not. They might think I was in the wind or they might think some one killed me and hidden the body. It had been known to happen to drug war witnesses. They might not suspect me of skipping with the money. If I was the cop working the case, I would sure as hell look at that possibility.

So I had to leave the money in my bank account alone. I had to toss the credit cards as well. I had a small balance on the only card I ever used. "After 12 years with never a late fee, they can take the bite on three hundred bucks," I said aloud. I couldn't owe more than that since I paid it off every month.

I needed to walk away from my car as well. I couldn't take anything from the apartment, I was going to need clothes and everything. Clothes could wait, the first thing I needed was transportation out of town. I could walk to the regional bus terminal from my downtown apartment. I figured to ride the commuter bus as far as the next town. Nobody kept records on those buses since it was public transportation. The only person who would see me who might be available later to interrogate would be the driver . He most likely was tired and would pay no attention to one more homeless man headed to a shelter somewhere."

If I bumped into anyone I knew, which was very unlikely, I could just go home and do it again tomorrow, I thought.

"Will that be all?" The young blond cashier at Wal-mart asked as he placed the large black backpack onto the counter.

"Could you put that in a bag for me please?" I asked it because I didn't want my neighbors to mention seeing me with a backpack. When I put it in the wind I wanted as little information as possible floating around about me.

Later that evening I stuffed the money into the backpack along with the receipt for the backpacks purchase. I took a deep breath and turned over a couple of chairs, then walked out the door. When I closed it my present life was over, a new one would be beginning. What kind of life was a mystery even to me.

I never wear a hat, but on the bus ride into the next town I wore one. I also wore glasses from the drugstore. I used them to read the newspaper at home. I was so vain that I never wore them when anyone else was around. I know a man my age should wear glasses to read the morning paper, but I look like a dork in glasses.

I looked like a balding dork when I climbed on the bus. Neither of those things fit me at all. I have all my own hair, and I am anything but a geek or a dork. Don't get me wrong if I were a geek I might not have needed to steal the money.

The bus stopped at the regional airport but I stayed in the rear with my nose buried in a book. I think I might have read the same page a hundred times before the bus stopped for the last time.

"Folks this is the end of the line. After this stop I turn the bus in for the night so everyone has to exit here."

Of the three towns that made up the regional transport area, it was the slightly larger one. Even so the terminal building was only slightly larger than the other terminals. The bus service went between the three towns stopping only in a few other places. Mostly parking lots and other mass transit sites were the only stops. The terminal where I left the buss that night was directly across the street from the larger town's train station.

There was a local train coming from Washington DC and headed to New Orleans with a thousand stops in between. It left an hour after I arrived at the bus terminal.

I used the hour to stop in a small diner two blocks from the bus station. It was even called the Greyhound Grill. It was one of those places where the burgers where filled with artery clogging grease and the tea was cold and sweet.

"What ya gonna have?" the over the hill waitress asked.

"Make it a burger with cole slaw and tomato please."

"How about fries?"

"Sure why not, and iced tea." The food took a while to make the short trip from the grill to my table. It was almost worth the wait but not quite. When it did arrive I almost did my usual to the burger but I caught myself at the last minute. Until I left town, I didn't want to call attention to myself in any way. I was close enough so that there might be questions asked of these folks by my hometown cops. So instead of taking the sandwich apart and eating everything but 3/4 of the bread, I ate it all as a sandwich. It was a good burger grease and all.

I was back at the train station ten minutes before the train arrived. I made a point of avoiding the other half dozen people waiting for the train. I chose that train because the station's ticket counter was closed before it arrived. On trains which arrive after the ticket window closes, the conductor takes the payments. Odds were very good that he would not remember a half naked coed let alone me.

Just my luck the conductor was not an old man but rather a man even younger than me. I paid my fare while keeping my nose in the book but not so much as to make the conductor remember me. On that night it was all about being completely forgettable. It was a night not to make a favorable impression or a negative one either. It was a night to be just plain boring as hell.

The train made terrible time. It stopped every thirty or forty miles it seemed, which made the ride seem to last forever. I got off the train in the middle of the night in a small Georgia town. Since my ticket was all the way to New Orleans, there was no record of me leaving the train.

I sat alone on the train platform waiting for morning. I still hadn't counted the money but I knew it was a lot. I was nervous waiting for the station to open. When it did open at 6AM, it was just for freight pickup by some local delivery service. I probably could have talked the station master into allowing me to put my back pack into a locker but I chose not to be noticed. I waited another hour until he opened the station to everyone.

The first thing I did was to find a locker for the backpack. After that I went in search of food. I was so hungry my stomach was rolling. I didn't bother to ask the station master for a recommendation. At the moment he was the weakest link in my escape plan.

I found my way to a diner about two blocks away. If I had known where it was, I could have reached it in half the time. The only indication that it was a restaurant was what appeared to be a very unprofessionally ,hand painted sign on the window. The place did not start life as a diner for sure. It had the big windows of a jewelry store or maybe a ladies ready to wear store. It had been a diner long enough to have a dingy coat of grease on the walls. I found a table in a corner. I knew no one was looking for me yet, but it was good practice.

"Would you like the special?" the teenage black girl asked.

"What is the special?"

"Two eggs, bacon or sausage and grits for three dollars." Her diction was too good for a waitress. But I didn't want to know who she was bad enough to risk standing out.

"Sure with coffee and toast."

"Wouldn't you rather have biscuits. The price is the same and mama makes great biscuits."

"Okay then biscuits it is." I found out who she was without asking.

While I ate, I considered my next move. The town would have been fine for me to settle in for a while, except it was on the train route that I had used. It would be better for me to move on to another town. Somewhere having no ties to the railroad at all.

One of the good things about getting lost these days is that businesses have made it easy. It is good business to sell to illegal aliens. It is even better business to make it possible for them to do all the things a citizen does. He can't do them the same way, but he can do them.

No questions asked prepaid cell phones and credit cards make it possible to work on a cash basis leaving no trail behind. Lots of criminals have been doing it for years. It was time for one only slightly soiled old guy to give it a shot.

The food was very good just as the youngster had promised. I left the restaurant after paying my bill with a twenty, not one of the stolen hundreds. It was still not the time to be noticed. I began to wander around aimlessly. I considered buying a bus ticket or renting a car but both would leave a paper trail. I wanted the trail to end in the small Georgia town, even though it was unlikely that anyone could have followed me that far.

While I was walking around trying to decide on my next move, I noticed an old railroad hotel that had been converted to a downtown bed and breakfast. I would love to have stayed there to celebrate my new life, but alas they would want identification. I could come up with some given a little time but I was not willing to show anyone identification at the moment. It appeared that life on the run was going to be difficult for a while at least.

It was about nine in the morning when I stumbled onto something interesting. I saw a few motor scooters in the showroom window of what had once been a Chevrolet dealer. I could see the word Chevrolet even though the faded paint, which was meant to cover it. What caught my attention was not the bikes, it was more the sign.

50cc moped...150mpg,... no insurance.... no driver's license... no registration. Prices start at $599... Now that was an interesting option. I could buy one and slip out of town leaving no trail behind me. No bus station ticket agent to ID me. I doubted seriously that any investigator would think that a man with a suitcase full of money would even consider a moped.

"Hi there you interested in that beauty?" the salesman asked. He was what is the stereotype of a used car salesman. He was even worse, he was one who had fallen on hard times.

"To be honest I was reading your sign outside. The idea of a hundred plus miles per gallon interest me for sure."

"To be honest Mr?" He waited for me to speak. I could have ignored him but I didn't want to stand out, remember.

"Abrams, Mike Abrams," I replied. I didn't think the real Mike would mind me borrowing his name. I had arrested him for murder a few years before. He was doing life without parole back in North Carolina. Yes, I had his social security number just in case.

"Well Mike to be honest those little things are toys. You have to have a license but the 150cc is about minimum to run with the traffic."

"Well to be honest it's the no license thing that appeals to me right now."

"Oh I see. In that case let's at least fix you up with a quality scooter."

"Actually, I kind of like the one over there that looks like a bicycle," I suggested.

"Ah you do have an eye for quality. That's to Tomos It's not cheap though. Not $599 for sure."

"Well how much is it?"

"1200 and a bargain at that." He replied in his best used car salesman voice. "But it is the most reliable and easiest to use of any moped we have. It's a four stroke no gas to mix and none of that weed eater sound."

"Well I like it but not that much," I replied.

"Would you take that one? It's been on the floor for a while. I can have the mechanic check it out and service it for you."

"When can you have it ready?"

"It will take a couple of hours to clear your check, so we can have it ready by say noon."

"So how much are you talking about?"

"How about a thousand plus tax, and the service?"

"How about a thousand including the tax and service. For that price I'll go to the bank and get cash."

"Okay leave me a deposit, so the boss will have Greg do the service and it will be ready to go by noon."

I handed him a hundred dollar bill. "I'll be back but let me tell you something. If the bike is not ready, I will walk away AFTER I get my hundred bucks back." I have him my best bad man stare. "Now it will be ready?"

"Yes it will be ready," he replied seriously.

"Make sure your man rides it, I don't want any surprises."

Two hours later, I entered the shop with the black backpack in my hands. "You must be Greg," I said to the man in the greasy blue uniform. He was standing under a huge fan. I quickly determined that there was no air conditioning in the shop of the old Chevy dealership.

"Yeah, you must be the man who bought the Tomos."

"Not quite yet, but I will be if you tell it won't blow up on me." I smiled at him as I spoke.

"It's good to go. At least as far as I can tell. It's about a year old but it hadn't ever been cranked till I started it a few minutes ago."

Greg wasn't a young man. He wasn't as old as me, but he still wasn't young. "Did you ride it?"

"Yeah I made a few adjustments to the running gear and greased everything good. You shouldn't have any trouble with it at all. The one year warranty starts today even if you find a problem."

"Will they honor that warranty, if I take it to my sister's place?"

"Get Eddie to give you a dealers list. Any dealer in the country will honor the warranty."

"Well I appreciate it. I guess I need to go pay for it."

"Yeah, I'm sure Eddie is biting his nails." He chuckled at the thought.

I had stopped in the men's room of the train station after I retrieved my bag. I took out fifteen one hundred dollar bills from the backpack. I thought surely that would be enough for the purchase.

"Hey there Mr. Abrams. I just need your address for the bill of sale."

"To be honest I'm just passing through. I used to live up in Virginia."

"It's just a formality. I can put your old address down if you like."

I made up an address in Arlington Va. I wasn't sure but it might have been an address from my murky memory. It could even have been the CIA or FBI street address. It took him about ten minutes to process the sale and collect his 1100 bucks. Yes they came up with something called a paper processing fee to charge me a hundred dollars. I really didn't mind, since I had expected something like it.

I rode the bike off into the afternoon sun. I rode around for a few minutes to get the feel for it. I had not been on a bicycle, or motorcycle in over ten years. It took me a while to pick it up again. In less than half and hour I was tooling along in a semi business area. I rode past the older family style motel before I decided to turn around and go back.

I checked into a room on the back of the motel. If anyone saw me arrive on a moped they sure as hell wouldn't be expecting me to have any cash at all, let alone a bag full. I paid the Middle Eastern clerk in cash, I paid for only one night and told her I would probably be leaving early the next morning. I used the same phony address as before. I did not give her a credit card number since I didn't have one to give.

I had six hundred bucks left from the bike and the walking around money in my pocket. I didn't bother to get more before I left the motel. I left the backpack behind the bathroom door. By that time the back pack had an old padlock lock on it. I didn't really expect it to be any deterrent at all. I guess even the useless lock made me feel better just like everyone else would. If I had known I would be staying in town, I would have kept the locker at the train station.

I got direction to the town's only discount store. It wasn't Wal-mart which was a bit of a shock. It was some homegrown version of it. I expected the prices to be a bit higher and they were by at least ten percent.

I had some specific things in mind. Clothes, a computer, a prepaid cell phone, and a prepaid credit card. I got the clothes and the prepaid phone and credit card but the little store did not carry computers. My purchases fit in the small storage compartment on the rear of the bike. Just those few items completely filled the small storage box.

On the way back to the motel I passed of all things an internet cafe of sorts. It was actually a coffee shop that offered rental of a computer along with a great cup of coffee. At least that was what the sign promised. I went inside the way too clean coffee shop.

The coffee was forgettable but they did have an old laptop they rented to me. I pulled up the map on yahoo without signing in. My old account was dead to me. I would need to setup a new one but not at that moment. I copied down directions for a fifty-five mile ride I planned to make the next day. The route kept me off the Interstate highways. I made my plans along older two lane roads. I hoped that I could do more, but I didn't plan to push it that first day.

I almost activated the cell phone but decided against it. I had no idea when I would need the phone, so I decided to wait until I settled somewhere. The next town would probably be only temporary, but I decided I would do an activation there. I did activate the credit card though. I used the new name and the phony address.

I left most of the coffee as I couldn't figure out how to carry it back to the motel. I stopped at a burger joint on the way and took the bag of burgers to the room. I was sure that they had a coke machine there so I decided not to try to deal with the burger shack coke.

After dinner I turned in for the night. I had used the lock the dealer included with the Tomos to chain it to a post. Being on the back side I didn't really expect anyone to notice it.

Before I left the next morning, I walked across the parking lot to a fast food restaurant that served breakfast. I tried to get enough calories in me so that I could skip lunch. It was my usual eating habit. The food wasn't bad for one of those plastic and cardboard places.

I left the motel for the last time around eight. My plan was to be at my next stop by two and then to find a place to spend the night. My final destination was a little over a hundred miles away, but I was in no hurry to get there. If I saw something I liked along the way I might even stay there. There was no real plan. I tried to keep the getaway just a series of random choices.

I double checked to make sure the bike was full of gasoline before I left. The gas tank was a bit over a gallon in capacity so I could easily make my next stop. At least that was the plan.

At twenty miles an hour it was really slow going even on fairly flat ground. Not to mention that motorist on even uncrowded highways get pissed very easily. I managed to avoid most of the medium to large sized towns that day. I couldn't avoid them all. Actually I counted on not being able to avoid them. I still needed a computer of some kind.

Since I had skipped lunch, I made it to my next stop around 3PM. "Is that gonna be all," the slightly more than a teenage boy asked.

"Well the gas, the hot dog and some information should do." I replied.

"Well the gas and the hot dog come to $5,12 The information is free."

"Fair enough," I replied placing cash on the counter. Since he didn't speak I asked. "Is there a Wal-mart anywhere close?"

Out on the highway about ten miles south," he replied.

"Is there anyway to get there without going on the highway?"

"Sure but it's really a pain." He shook his head as he gave me detailed directions.

I ate the dog and drank the canned coke on a picnic table outside the convenience store. I found a motel on the way to the Wal-mart store. At Wal-mart I bought a very small net book computer. It was similar to a laptop only smaller and with a lot less power. I could have got a cheap laptop for a hundred bucks more, but I was buying size not features.


The new day started early again. I took a quick shower, then put on clean underwear. I tossed the linen, which I had worn the day before. First I put it into an empty Wal-mart bag, then into the dumpster in the parking lot. I doubted seriously that the maid saved all the underwear for dna tests but it seemed a safer move anyway.

I never did get an internet connection even though I had a wireless card. Nobody seemed to have an unprotected wireless network in the area. Most businesses and even home computers with wireless connections were encrypted making them useless to anyone else. I had the wireless connector as part of the computer so I figured I would at least check.

One of the applications that made the net book appeal to me was a built in GPS program. I had used it the night before in the motel room so I knew how to start my day. I had decided to skip breakfast and start heading toward the coast. I could get within twenty miles of the ocean by lunch, I thought.

A cup of coffee and much less than a gallon of gas got me started. I rode the bike a couple of hours then stopped for a bathroom break and more coffee. I was about thirty or so miles from my day's goal. It figured that it was time to start asking about places to live. GPS and maps could tell one just so much. If I wanted to know more it was time to interrogate the locals.

"So, I'm headed to the beach, do you have any suggestions," I asked it of the guy behind the counter. I asked him because he looked as though he spoke English as a native language.

"Well there are three or four beach towns along the Georgia coast. None of them as famous as the Florida or even the South Carolina ones."

"I'm planning to stay a while so I'm not looking for the tourist experience. I guess a small town close to the beaches would be nice. Something close enough to maybe work there but far enough away so that I could afford to rent a place."

"Lots of those just look around." he suggested.

"I plan to do that but I need a place to start."

"Why don't you get off the Interstate here and just ride down highway 17 till you come to a place that suits you."

His advice wasn't really all that good, but it was encouraging. I pushed on another twenty miles when I saw a sign for St. Marys Ga. It had a nice sound, and my GPS had it as a pretty easy find, so I made the left turn toward the town. Leaving one old highway for another didn't really change the flat landscape much at all. There was more of a water feel and smell as I pushed along. That was a good sign, I thought.

I was road weary when I pulled into Saint Marys. It was a pretty little river town just a few miles from the coast. I was too tired to do any exploring so I kept an eye open for a hotel or motel which wouldn't ask too many questions.

I could always use the Mike Abrams ID. He sure as hell wasn't going to need it for a while. Just in case you wonder how I happened to have all his information. It's really pretty simple. His was the biggest case I ever worked. So I copied all the documents in his arrest file to keep as a souvenir. Everybody has something they obsess over. Mike Abrams was mine. When I decided to take off on the spur of the moment, his was the only identity that I had handy. His arrest record had everything I would ever need to do most simple things. As long as I didn't push it, I could be Mike forever.

I found a cafe near the river so I stopped for a cup of coffee and a piece of pie. "Hi there," the cute little waitress said in greeting. "What are you having today."

She was way too perky for my taste. "Coffee and whatever pie you have that is good."

"I like the pecan but a lot of folks like the chocolate better."

"Make it pecan then," I suggested.

After only a short wait she was back. "So if I was looking for a cheap place to stay in St. Marys where should I look."

"Most of the contractors stay at the Paki Palace." she answered.

"Oh where is that?"

"Go back toward the highway and turn right on church street. You can't miss it." She thought a minute then added, "That ain't the real name you know. The sign will say, St. Marys Inn. Us locals call it the Paki Palace cause of the owners?"

"Yeah, I got it."I replied smiling.

"You gonna be working here?"

"Probably just stay the night, but I'm looking for a good place to settle in this area."

"Well St. Marys is kinda small. If you like nothing going on around you, this is the place for you."

"I think I might like nothing going on around me. At least I think I would like it for a while."

I checked into the motel where I left the bag in the bathtub again. I stopped at the first gas station I saw. Filling up the tank was less than three dollars every time I did it. That might have been the only good thing about the little bike. I mean it had no space for carrying things and it was way too slow to be an effective means of transportation but still it was filling a need I had at that moment.

I took a slow tour of the town. With a population of under 20,000 it wasn't hard to see it all in an afternoon. Since I wanted cookies all of a sudden and since the cokes from the motel machine were well over a dollar, I decided to stop at a grocery store. I had spotted the smaller mom and pop grocery store earlier in my tour. I passed a big chain grocery store on my way to the smaller store.

Things at the mom and pop grocery cost a little more, but you can't get a feel for a place by going into a business that looks the same in every town. What you need is to visit diners and hometown businesses. I wasn't at all surprised to see the big bulletin board with thing for sale posted all over it. I had hoped and almost expected it to be there.

I went back to the bulletin board with a plastic bag containing a package of generic cookies, which were a knock off of chocolate covered Oreos, and a 6 pack of coke in small bottles.

Since I didn't need any fishing equipment or a car, the advertisements didn't seem to be of much help. There were a couple of apartments for rent but I didn't hold out much hope. It would be very unlikely for me to find something so easily. Still it was worth pulling the bit of paper with the landlords phone numbers. In both cases they were hand written.

Since my cell phone wasn't activated, I returned to the motel before I made the call. "Hello," I said once the woman on the other end spoke. "I am calling about the apartment. Is it still for rent?"

"Why yes it is, would you like to see it?"

"That depends, do you require a lease?"

"If you do not wish a lease, I would ask for three months rent in advance. The first month's rent, one month's rent as a security deposit and the last months rent as well."

"So it's a three month lease?"

"I suppose you could say that."

"I picked up your ad at the grocery store. It didn't give a lot of details. Frankly I don't remember what you wrote."

"Well the apartment is $275 which includes the electric. It really is just one room over a garage."

"Would I get to use the garage."

"I use it for storage so there isn't room for a car, but you could store things in there if you can find room."

"Is the apartment furnished?"

"Not really, but the things in the garage were left by tenants over the years. You are welcome to use any of that furniture you wish."

"Then yes, I would like to take a look at the place." I said that with pencil in hand so that I could write the address down. The GPS system in the netbook would route me there.

As we had arranged the night before, I met the slum lord at nine the next morning. The house in front of the garage had been converted to a duplex. From the three units on the property she must have been getting close to a grand and a half per month. I guessed that the apartments in the house were pretty large, since it was a big old house. The garage as well as the house was painted gray with a rich looking burgundy trim. The paint looked reasonable new.

The garage was a little wider than a one car garage which was a good sign, since the upstairs apartment was a not a full two story area. It was more like a 1 1/2 story with dormers.

When the woman who owned the house showed up she was driving a black corvette. She was able to exit the low slung vette only because she was trim and wearing jeans and a knit top. The first things I noticed was that she had really good cleavage. I had a feeling she showed it off to everyone, not just prospective tenants. I did hope she wasn't trying to distract me.

She was about fifty so it didn't hold my attention all that long. I had to admit that she had held up pretty darn well. She had a kind of comfortable look. Part of it was that the jeans she wore which likely cost more than I would have paid for ten pairs. She also was about twenty pounds overweight which helped to make her seem more comfortable than beautiful. Yes comfortable looking was the best description for her.

"You must me Mike," she suggested as I approached.

"That's me. I didn't get your name last night."

"My name is Caroline. So lets go take a look." I followed her to the outside wooden stairs. They were nice and solid. That was also a good sign, I thought. When she opened the door, I walked into the reasonably bright room. The walls had obviously been painted after the last tenant left. I was sure it was a half assed job. Those paint jobs always were.

The floor was black and white squares of vinyl tile. It was set up like a checker board. There were windows everywhere. Two large ones on each end, and smaller ones in dormers on each side. I had a feeling the place had been meant for storage originally and that the windows were the only light at some point.


In the rear on one side was a small refrigerator and stove. Between them was a large sink. Since it didn't have a cabinet, it looked more like an old fashioned janitor's sink. In the other rear corner were two bank type partitions. Those and the outside walls made the walls of the bathroom. There was no door on the bathroom. Not a lot of privacy but the place definitely was not made for entertaining.

The bathroom was tiny but it did have a shower stall, toilet and small sink. All of them were side by side on the back wall. The one room had more space that it appeared from the outside.

"How large is this place?" I asked after the three minute tour.

"It's 22 feet long and 15 feet wide."

"That's small but it does seem a little larger." I admitted

"That's the dormers with the window seats. Those seats open for some additional storage."

"So that little corner cabinet looking thing in front is the closet?"

"Yes it's small but it's probably enough for a guy."

"Probably," I agreed.

There only heat was from a natural gas wall heater vented through the wall near the floor. It reminded me that the apartment was mostly under the roof.

Well I like it but not $275 a month worth. I see it more as a $250 a month place. I guess I'll have to keep looking."

"I can't lower the rent, I'm sorry." she said.

"No problem, I understand. I'm sure the right person will come along one day." Just about that time a car went by with the radio blaring music in Spanish. I just smiled at Caroline.

"How about a compromise Mike. Six months at $250 with the understanding that at the end of six months I will raise the rent to $275."

"Well I suppose that is fair." I peeled off the 750 dollars from the money clip in my front pocket. She didn't seem surprised that I used cash instead of a check.

"So when do you want to move in?"

"I was thinking right now," I replied.

"The power and water stays on, but you will need to have anything thing else you want turned on. Here is a list of the numbers," with that she handed me a new resident brochure prepared by the chamber of commerce. It did have the addresses and numbers of the utilities as well as the cable company, but not much else of interest to me.

I did find from the brouchure that St. Marys was a small town but it was also the county seat. A private company supplied the gas fortunately they had an office right in town. The phone company didn't get my money, since I planned to activated my prepaid cell phone. It was on my list of things to do just as soon as I had a reliable internet connection. It was still warm so I wouldn't have bothered to turn on the gas, except the water heater was gas. The cook stove was also gas but it was less important than a hot shower at the end of the day. After I arrange for the gas to be turned on and the water heater lit, I was more or less moved into the garage.

My furniture all came from the storage area below the apartment. I found a sofa with no cushions and two over stuffed chains that looked like hell. The chairs were in really bad shape, however the cushions from them almost fit the small light weight sofa. I figured that I would pick up a sheet or something like that to just throw over it all. There was no bed of any kind in the garage. It looked as thought it would be an air mattress for me.

I went looking for the air mattress while I was out for lunch. I didn't find one, but I did find a sleeping mat and very light weight sleeping bag. The sleeping bag opened to make a comforter should I ever get a real bed. The store was close enough so that I could very carefully carry my purchases home on the bike. Neither of them was heavy, I just had to tie them carefully to various parts of the bike. I also rode home at a dead crawl.

While searching the storage room for what I thought would be the last time, I found a couple of those really cheap, uncomfortable wooden bar stools. Since there was no table of any kind, I decided to use an old metal ironing board I saw in the corner as an eat on bar. I was sure it had not been used for anything at all in the last ten years.

It turned out to be one of my better ideas. It was stable enough to be a temporary computer desk as well. I found that I could piggy back on the wireless connection of someone in the neighborhood. I had no idea who they were. I doubted that it was a computer that could track me down. Most likely it was just some internet novice like me.

I awoke early the first morning in my one room apartment. I didn't jump up and take off for the day, instead I lay on my sleeping pad thinking. I did that because I wasn't sure I could get up from the floor without a crane or at least a forklift. I supposed that I could, if I took a little time to get my brain out of its sleep fogged condition.

I spent some of the time by comparing my life at that moment with the life I had lived only a week before. Back before I became a thief, I lived in a fairly nice one bedroom apartment. I drove a ten year old Ford and had a job. Today I lived in a one room apartment, rode a Tomos moped, and had a bag full of stolen money. I wasn't exactly living it up on my ill gotten gains but then again, I didn't plan on 'hitting a lick at a snake' for the rest of my life either.

My first real life thought of the day was, I don't have a coffee pot and I need coffee badly. The short term fix was to be found at the burger burger restaurant a few blocks away. Burger burger was a knock off of Dairy Queen. It was a locally owned burger joint anyway. In the mornings they served a breakfast of sorts. I skipped the sausage and egg sandwich on a hamburger bun and just went for the large coffee served in a paper cup.

I got it from the drive through so that I could take it a block over to sit in the river front park. I love water of any kind. I would have preferred the ocean, but the river front would do in a pinch. The coffee and the smell of the water, combined with the bustle of the amateur fishermen headed out for a few hours of fun on the river, or out in the sound, brought me back to life.

The Tomos had very little carry capacity but it did have enough for a coffee maker. Since there was no Wallymart in town, I rode to the local a dollar store. I really didn't see much for a dollar, but it did have discount and discontinued merchandise. The coffee maker was ten bucks and the coffee was eight more. It was a really large plastic container of coffee so I knew that it was going to be a problem.

I could get the pot tied to the back of the bike but I had no room for the coffee. I was wondering how hard it would be to hold a plastic bag with a container of coffee while I rode, when I saw a wire egg basket. It looked as though it might work so I bought it. It was one of the few things that really was a dollar. I conned the lady behind the counter into giving me a coat hanger so that I could attach the basket to the Tomos.

The egg basket was much to small and too light to hold much of anything. I needed a real bicycle basket. One of those big ones like the old time paper boys used would have been ideal. The only way for me to get one was ebay. The problem was most of the ebay sellers have gone to only accepting pay pal and I had no way to pay. The answer lay in a round about money scheme. I loaded two hundred bucks to my prepaid credit card at a local convenience store. Then I went on line that same afternoon to make a deposit with paypal. I used the credit card to pay for the deposit.

After the transaction cleared I went to ebay and bought a real bicycle basket. the larger basket would cut down on the number of trips I had to make, but it still wasn't enough transport space. At least it hadn't been too expensive, under thirty bucks including shipping.

What I really needed was to do laundry to keep from buys a zillion dollars worth of clothes. Not to mention that it had rained over night and I knew that I would sure as hell not enjoy a bike ride in the rain to get to a restaurant.

I needed to buy groceries, and more than would fit in even the new basket of the Tomos. St. Marys is so small there was no place to buy a bike trailer but it turned out that it did have what I needed. I went on line looking for bike trailer ideas. The best idea was to either build one or adapt something else. I chose to adapt something I could find in St. Marys.

I went to the downtown hardware store, yes it was the kind of town that still had a place in the downtown for stores. It was far from a town with wall to wall lawyer's offices. Since it was the county seat there were a couple but they were across from the courthouse. Even I kind of expected that to be the case.

From the hardware store I bought a battery powered drill, which came with a cheap set of bits. I also bought an assortment of nuts bolts and washers.

After I managed to get all that home, I went back to the dollar store and bought a child's red wagon. I bought the smallest one so that I could get it home tied onto the rear of the Tomos. Even so I had to stop three times in as many miles to reposition it. One of those times it fell off completely. In the end I did get it home. I spent a full hour on the ten minute assembly job. Even then I did not attach the pull tongue. Instead I found an electrician who would sell me some conduit and even bend it for me. I used the pictures of real trailers to guess at the angles. After the electrician cut the tongue off so that the wagon wouldn't trail too far behind, I slid the conduit into the pull tongue of the wagon and bolted it in place.

When I was ready for a test run, I gave it a real life test. On its first run the trailer was filled with canned cokes and frozen pizza. I figured I needed those things most of all. Just in case of rain. The little red wagon was quite a hit with the people I passed on the street.

I decided, after having it swing side to side now and then, that it would never go more than to the store or to the laundromat. If I went slow enough it seemed to be pretty stable. I knew that it would work but just barely. I would surely need to build a better one someday soon. Nothing would ever be as eye catching but that was fine as well.

I didn't have any entertainment except the computer, so I spent a couple of hours watching the news and old TV shows on line. It wasn't a bad day I decided, just before I put my body back onto the one inch dense foam sleeping pad.

On day two I went back to the Dollar store. I wandered down the aisle picking up small tools. I had picked up a three vise grip set the day before. I had used that to build the wagon/trailer. I knew that those things did a number on nuts and bolt heads so I wanted a real wrench set. At ten bucks a set, I bought two metric and two sae sets. I also bought a socket set with both metric and sae sockets.

Those along with a few household items made their way into my little red wagon. I rode very carefully until I got it all home. The tailer did better with the larger load. There was a threat of showers so I rushed out again. I made it to the grocery store and back just before the rain shower dumped a half inch of rain on everything around me.

My lease agreement forbid the use of window air conditioners and microwave ovens. Both would have cost Caroline, aka the slumlord, extra money. Also most likely the wiring was way under code to be safe with that kind of load. It was a very old building. Probably as old as the house in front, which had to be close to a hundred years old.

The box fan and toaster oven came from the dollar store on a quick trip after the rain ended. I hoped that those would be my last purchases of the day.

It was well after lunch, when I rode the Tomos out for fast food. I took a bag of cheap burgers and a canned coke to the park. I ate as I watched the workers along the docks. I had never really given any thought to what goes on around a marina. There were people loading and unloading boats all day long. Most of them were pleasure boats to be sure, but now and then a commercial fishing boat would come through. If the fishermen were headed in that time of the day, I expected them to be full. There were a several more hours of daylight left for those who didn't fill the hole early.

"Hey old man," the teenager called to me.

"Yeah?" I replied.

"Gimme five bucks," The demand was clear enough.

"If I had five dollars to spare, I would be driving a car instead of that moped." I thought it sounded reasonable.

"I don't care whether you can spare it or not. Give me the five or I'll hurt you."

I had a quick debate with myself. I could give him the money and draw no attention to myself, or I could put him in the hospital. If I put him in the hospital, I would come to the attention of the police. I really didn't need that, but it galled my ass to even contemplate paying for safety. Extortion is like herpes it never really goes away.

"Tell you what kid, you walk away and I won't hurt you." I gave him my best bad man smile. He wasn't buying it. I could tell by the look in his eyes. He didn't recognize that old men don't really subscribe to the movie version of a fair fight.

The kid smiled and pulled a knife from his pocket. He flicked it to the open position. "Now you gonna give me my money?"

"No, but you just moved from a simple ass whopping' to a beat down."

He made a few classic mistakes. First of all, a knife is a close up and personal killing appliance. The kid stood back and tried to do a real life version of the movie rebel without a cause.

When he swung the knife horizontally in front of me, I did what he wouldn't do. I closed on him in a hurry. The knife was still in the wrong place for him, when I reached him. The first thing I did was to get hold of his arm to prevent him from bringing the knife back at me. Then I simply kneed him in the groin to end the fight. A little pain pisses a guy off, but a lot of pain to someone who isn't used to it, will disable him completely. The kid was in a lot of pain for sure.

I had to hold him up as I turned his back to me. I wrapped him in a choke hold then whispered in his ear. "Drop the knife and I might let you live. Hold on to it and I'm going to snap your neck." He made the right choice.

I was thankful, since I certainly did not want to kill him. I had already bagged my limit of humans for the season. That is not to say that I wouldn't have, I just didn't want to. The next question was what to do with him. I did not want to call the cops, but I knew that I might not have a choice.

I was about to put him to sleep with the choke hold, when a man came running across the street from one of the stores. "What the hell are you doing with my son?"

"Right now I'm trying to decide whether I should call the cops or kill him." I looked hard at the red faced man. "If you take one more step, you will make up my mind for me."

"Why are you doing this?" he asked more in control.

"He tried to rob me at the point of that knife. Someone forgot to teach him that things are not always what they seem." I said with a nasty smiled.

"Robbie is that true?" the man asked with the color draining from his face.

"Tell him Robbie and remember where you are."

"Yeah Daddy," he replied. Then he turned his attention to me. "Did you have to kick me in the balls."

"Actually, I did that just for fun Robbie." I turned my attention to his father. "If I release this thug wannabe, can you handle him?"

"You bet your ass I can handle him," was the man's reply.

I pushed Robbie hard toward his father. He collapsed. It seemed that it took him that long to understand the full extent of his injury. He was going to be sitting carefully for a day or two.

"Who are you Mister?" the boy's father asked.

"I'm just a new resident. I hope this isn't how everyone gets welcomed."

"It isn't, and this one," he said pointing to the kid, "Won't be doing this again ever."

"I'm gonna hold you to that," I said.

I had come way too close to being part of a police investigation. I had to be smarter not tougher from now on. I knew it and I promised myself to work on it.

I drove home worried again about the money. Not only could it be found by some petty thief like Robbie, but also by the cops if they tossed the place. I had to concentrate on where to hide the money next.

I finally got around to counting the money. I had a feeling it was over half a million dollars and I was right. It was 547,000 dollars and change. I had spent over two grand it seemed. I expected that the hemorrhage of hundred dollar bills had ended, but I couldn't be sure.

At the end of day two, I still hadn't decided on a place to hide the money. I went to bed on the floor with it still hanging over my head.

Day three in the apartment was a Saturday. I knew that because everyone kept telling me how glad they were that the day before had been Friday. I had no expectations that Saturday would be any different from any other day for me.

As I lay in bed the idea to hide the money began to work itself out. First thing I did was a threat assessment. Then decide I had to determine how best to counter the reasonable threats. Some of the threats were pretty remote. Enough so that even considering them was a waste of time and resources. For instance there could be a nuclear attack by terrorists. That did not mean I planned to build a bomb shelter in which to hide the money.

The most likely things to cause the loss of the money were: burglary by persons with no prior knowledge of the money, burglary by person knowing I had the money, cops finding me and searching the apartment, cops searching the apartment for other reasons, and of course there was fire or wind loss.

I had taken them all into consideration and devised a way to hide the money that might thwart all of them except a concentrated search not likely to happen. I mean, they wouldn't be searching for a body. Since it was just money, I didn't expect them to use ground penetrating radar. Yes, it was a lot of money but still just money.

Like most solutions it had taken time for the proper number of facts and circumstances to interact. First of all banks, even safety deposit boxes, were out of the question. There would be too many questions and paperwork requirements for me to even consider them. Storage buildings were not really an option either. They had video surveillance, and they reserved the right to examine the contents of the stored items for safety purposes. That most often happened if you missed your payment. Even if they never looking inside, they too were subject to fires. There were no meat lockers close by so that those wasn't an option either.

The facts that came together were simple. I had accumulated enough tools to need a toolbox. So why not buy an extra one for the money. It needed a better container than the black backpack regardless. The toolbox would give it very little protection from prying eyes unless it were hidden away from them. So where to hide the box was the next question. The box alone wasn't even a step closer to securing the money.

However the metal tool box would protect the money from insects and the like. I couldn't hide it inside the tiny apartments there were just no places to hide something that large. I did have access to the storage garage below. I used it to store the Tomos between uses, so it wouldn't be odd to see me going in and out of there.

I remembered the legs of the sofa which I had removed from the storage room. I had to wash them because the garage had a dirt floor. The dirt floor was almost the final element. I would simply bury the metal tool box, with most of the money tucked safely inside under the dirt floor of the storage area. I was pretty much the only one to go in and out of the garage. Caroline might go in it a couple of times a year but no more.

The trick was to do it so that no one would notice. Someone surely would notice a light on in the middle of the night. Even though there were no window the light would show through the cracks around the doors. The problem came together the same morning I worked out the other details.

"Hi there," the greeting came from a young woman I had seen getting in and out of a car which was parked evenings in the drive. She was obviously one of the neighbors. When I walked toward her she continued. "I'm your neighbor Lucy Evans."

She stood waiting for me to speak so I did. "Hi, I'm Mike. I live over the garage." I realized how stupid that sounded. "Of course you knew that."

She laughed then said, "Yes Caroline told me to say hi when I saw you. This is the first time I have seen you outside."

"Well, I'm in and out all day."

"Oh well, I work most of the day. I work for the school system."

"Ah a teacher?"

"No, I'm am the librarian at southwest middle school." She paused a moment then asked, "Do you work?"

"You mean Caroline didn't fill you in." I went on quickly so as not to let her get offended. "I'm disabled. Too many heart attacks and a little brain damage." It was as good a lie as any. It sounded reasonable. It should, I had been rehearsing it for a few days.

"Oh I'm sorry," she said.

"So how about the other neighbors."

"The other neighbor is Jeff. Jeff plays in a band of some kind. They work mostly local but do a couple of tours a year. He is out on one now, which explains why you didn't know."

"Sorry, I don't understand."

"When Jeff is in town, he practices every day between 2 and 4. If he was here and you were around during the day, you would have heard him."

"Ah I see. When is he due back?"

"Monday I believe." We had run out of small talk so she waited a decent amount of time before saying, "I was headed to the grocery store so I guess I need to go."

"Yes I suppose so. I'm headed to the hardware store myself."

Actually I had breakfast by the marina before going to the dollar store then the hardware store. That afternoon, I packed the money into plastic freezer bags, then into one of the tool boxes I had bought that same morning. I put $540,000 thousand dollar into freezer bags, then the bags into the gunmetal gray toolbox.

Since there were no windows in the garage part of the building, I didn't worry about being seen while I dug the hole. I used the civilian version of the GI entrenching tool, which I had purchased at the hardware store. I bought it at the same time I bought the two tool boxes.

I marked a spot on the wall of the concrete block garage, then dug a hole. Fortunately the soil was easy to dig. I didn't have to go down to the hard pan as I might if I were to dig a foundation. I just needed to get about a foot down. The hole was about a foot deep and eight inches wide. It was about a foot and a half long.

Once I had the hole dug, and the box inside it, I covered it and then spread out the excess dirt. It might take a while for the dirt I had spread to mix with the existing soil. I hoped that it would blend in sooner than later. I placed a chair over the spot to hide it while the dig marks healed. I had about a 99.9% positive feeling about the hiding place.

Just for continuity I placed the bag containing slightly over five grand in the bottom of the second tool box. It had been a good afternoon's work. I had just enough time for a shower before the knock on my door came.

"Hi again, I don't want to be a pest, but since we have met I thought I might ask a favor of you. You can say no I won't be upset."

"What's the favor?" I expected something major.

"I have a window that is stuck. In the six months I have lived here I have only had it open once and I really would like it open." She was babbling but I didn't mind. Young women were attractive when they babbled. Lucy was in her late twenties and reasonably attractive. She would have been a knock out if she shed about thirty pounds or so. Her hips were just wide enough to be distracting.

"Well I can give it a try for you. Do you have any Vaseline?"

"I think so why?"

"If you get it for me I can probably fix it so that you can open the window anytime you want."

"Wow that would be great. If Caroline would let me have an air conditioner, I wouldn't need to run so many fans. You know it isn't the heat so much, it's the humidity."

"So I've heard."

My windows were crank out, but the ones in the house were typical double hung windows with a dozen coats of paint on them. The first thing I did was to cut into the window seams with my pocket knife. Then I went to the garage and found some short pieces of scrap 1x2 that had been left over from repairs to the house no doubt. I used them to pry on the window. There was a small piece of lift hardware that was useless for anything else.

When the window gave way, I used Vaseline liberally on the window track. It only opened a few inches the first time. I closed it and forced it open again. Each time it went a few inches higher. I did the Vaseline thing again. It took greasing it three times but it finally went all the way up.

"Wow it works so well now. I might have you do that to all my windows." It looked as though I had a fan. I wasn't sure how I felt about that. I didn't need a daughter type and she certainly wasn't looking for a man my age to get involved with. Even I could tell that.

Sunday was a quiet day in the apartment. I would have done more but most local stores were closed or at least open only half a day. I spent my time between the park overlooking the marina and cleaning the apartment. A fairly boring day.

"Hello again," Lucy said standing on my stairs.

"More stuck windows?" I smiled to soften the words.

"No, I came to see if you have had dinner yet."

"No, I was about to head out to pick up something."

"I do that most week nights but I try to cook on the weekends. I am making pasta with meat sauce. If you would like, you could join me." She actually looked down as she asked. See looked like a teenager caught passing notes in school. She was embarrassed and I couldn't blame her. She had invited a man to dinner, who was probably as old as her father.

"Well if it isn't any trouble sure," I replied. I usually don't care for pasta, but if it had a good homemade sauce I would give it a try. Besides it was the Christian thing to do. Obviously she had to work up the nerve to ask, so it would be in poor taste for me to refuse. It would really be a blow to her ego, I thought.

She left and I sat drinking coffee for an hour while she worked on dinner. It was seven when I went to her apartment. Her apartment was on the far side of the house. The man she called Jeff had the apartment between us.

The pasta and salad were both excellent. Lucy loved cheese and so did I. It was a treat to eat the pasta that reminded me of baked spaghetti. Over dinner she filled me in on her family first, then on Caroline. There was a lot for her to tell but none of it seemed real. Neither her family, nor the fact that Caroline was a practicing witch.

After dinner I helped her with the dishes then tried to leave. "Well thanks for dinner, since you have to work tomorrow, I'll leave now." It sounded better than you bore the hell out of me.

"Oh stay and visit a bit. I am really enjoying the conversation. I don't talk to many adults."

"Well if you are sure I won't be intruding," I suggested. She didn't bite.

"Oh course not."

After another hour of inane conversation I decided hurt feelings or not I was leaving. "Well it's almost my bedtime and I have a few things I need to do."

"Oh okay, but please come back anytime." She said that to my back as I walked to the door.

I turned to say something pleasant and found her in my face. It was obvious she was expecting me to kiss her. I took a deep breath and did it. I hoped that I hadn't misread her.

I obviously hadn't misread her. She tried hard to press her body inside me. I broke the embrace then took a deep breath. "Wow, I need to go take a cold shower," I said lightly.

"Or stay a while longer," she suggested.

I was more than a little afraid to do that. She seemed about half a bubble out of plumb. "Honey, I'm old enough to be your dad."

"My dad doesn't kiss me like that," she said smiling.

"Let's give this some serious thought before we do something that we might regret." I was serious She was just a little too close to home for me. And like I said, she didn't seem quite right.

I didn't sleep well Sunday night. When I awoke Monday morning, I felt like I had a hangover. I lay on my sleeping pad even longer than usual. Not just to get my wits about me, but also to decide what to do about my neighbor. Even though my plans were few and hastily developed they did not include romance. Even if they had, it would not be with someone half my age or so close to home. If I planned to stay put a while, and I did, then I had to make a decision about Lucy. Whatever I decided I needed to keep her from being too curious about me.

By the time I made it to a standing position, I had decided for sure to avoid Lucy. I decided to go out of my way to avoid her but I would be pleasant, when I did meet her. As long as she didn't pursue me, it should work. If she continued showing up at my door, I would have to formulate a plan "B".

After my morning shower and three cups of coffee I was ready for the day. I rode the Tomos to the Burger Burger and bought an egg sandwich which I carried to the park overlooking the marina.

"You come here almost as much as me," the old black man said.

"I'm new here so you probably have a few more visits than me."

"Yep I been comin' here since I retired. Nothing much to do at home now that the wife was gone to a better place."

"Oh I'm sorry to hear that?" I really was.

"Yep moved to Florida with one of our daughters." He grinned at me because he had known what my reaction was going to be. I smiled back since it was a harmless jest.

"You ride that little red motor bike don't you?" he asked.

"Yes I do. It's a toy but seems to be a good one. I have only had a it a couple of weeks."

"I seen lots of them little scooter things, but that's the first one like that I seen."

"Well it seems to be a little quieter than those. Some of them sounds like a weed eater."

"Yep, don't see how those guy and gals stand the noise."

"You said you were retired, what did you do?"

"I ran a cafe. Ran it right over there on main street across from the marina. Had a lot of fishermen and even some tourist come in now and then. 'Raised me six kids from that place. Everyone one of them worked in there, and couldn't wait to get away. Said they hated the smell of fish." He smiled to himself at the memory.

"Yeah well kids are a trip. I got a daughter that don't speak to me."

"Oh, she got a reason or what?"

"She thinks she has a reason, but God only knows what it is. I sure as hell don't."

"So you are new to St. Marys, What you planning to do here?"

"Just about what I'm doing right now. Eat breakfast looking at the boats going out, then go home and clean house. Probably come back and have dinner watching the boats come in."

"You gonna get tired of that after a while."

"Yeah, I probably will but maybe not for a long while. What happened to your cafe?"

"I sold it when my wife left for Florida. Didn't see much reason to keep going. All the kids were gone and I didn't need the money no more."

"I'm called Ezra by the way."

"I'm Mike," I replied.

"Well Mike, I 'spect I'll be a seein' you."

"I would think so. It's a small town and a smaller park."

"True enough."

I got home in time to do nothing worth noting for two hours before I made a peanut butter sandwich for lunch. I decided that I would do that for lunch for a while. I was eating too much greasy food. I didn't want to get so fat that I couldn't ride the bike.

After the peanut butter sandwich I checked the mail. I wasn't expecting the bike basket till Wednesday, but I wanted to keep on eye out for it anyway.

I tried to watch last weeks TV shows on the computer but I got too sleepy. I took a nap, something I seldom did in my old life. I woke up mid afternoon without feeling any guilt at all. It took me a minute to realize that I had been awaken by the sound of a saxophone. It seemed my neighbor Jeff had made it back from touring with his band.

I gave up after twenty minutes and fired up the bike. I filled it up with gas at the convenience store. As usual it took much less than a gallon of gasoline to fill it. That was the upside of owning the toy. The down side was that it had beaten me to death during the ride to St. Marys.

I remembered that Lucy had said that Jeff would be at it till 4pm, so I decided to take a ride on the bike. A ride just for fun would be a first for me. I just wandered around the streets of St Marys first, then out into the country side. I rode for an hour and a half and checked the odometer. I had gone twenty five miles. That was even with the stop and go of the city streets for a good part of it. I knew then that I could ride into Jacksonville Florida, should I really need something I couldn't find in St. Marys or on line.

I stopped for a pizza at a convenience store on the way home. I heated it in their microwave before I carried it and two canned diet cokes to the park. I watched the boats come in while I had my early dinner.

When I got home at five thirty there was a note on my door. Come down if you get bored, Lucy...

Instead I watched those week old TV shows on my computer. I went to bed thinking I would probably get no further invitations from Lucy. It was for the best, but I still felt a sense of loss.

Over the next couple of days I slipped into a habit of eating twice a day at the park and hanging around on the internet in the middle of the day and again at night. I felt like I was keeping busy until it rained in the middle of the week.

I had time to think about my life since my fall from grace. It wasn't interesting and it was barely fun, but I was at least surviving without kissing anyone's ass. Even so I realized that it wasn't enough. I needed to do more. I had no idea what more would be, but I needed to do something different.

During the second rainy day in a row, Lucy showed up to invite me out to dinner. Even though I had promised myself not to go out with her, I was more than ready. We went to a home style restaurant which suited me just fine. Lucy drove her jap car of course.

I never was much for fancy food. Not to mention I felt blind in a restaurant with ambiance. They kept the lights low so you couldn't see what the hell you were ordering or eating. Lucy had shrimp and I had a steak. The steak was good, but hell it's really hard to mess up a chunk of beef. They even served a decent salad.

I don't usually eat green but Lucy convinced me to try it. I was glad that I did. It had a hint of fruit in the dressing. I like fruit, to be honest I like sweets of any kind. I seldom eat them because I love them too much. I'm like an alcoholic with sugar. One bite of ice cream leads to the whole half gallon.

Somewhere during the conversation Lucy mentioned that she had a friend from school who was being stalked. The police wouldn't really do anything because the stalker was a woman. Well it wasn't just because was a woman, but because she never did anything that left a trail.

According to Lucy, the friend's stalker only spoke to her in person. She never left messages or even called her on the phone at all. She was just around places she should not have been. She was verbally abusive most of the time. Even threatening violence but there was no proof for the cops to act on.

"So why is the woman stalking her?" I couldn't quite get a handle on it. Lucy hadn't given a reason just the facts.

"Best Becky can tell the woman is a Lesbian."

"Ah, the fatal attraction thing?" I asked.

"That's part of it. The other part is Becky told her she thought Lesbians were sick and going to hell."

"So the stalker took that personal." I chuckled under my breath.

"It seems so. Now she threatens Becky any time she sees her. She goes out of her way to be around Becky so that she can upset her I think."

It really sounded interesting to me. It was something I felt like I could handle without involving the cops at all. Still there was a slight risk that it could 'out' me. Even that seemed like a challenge I would relish.

"Would you like for me to talk to your friend and see if I can help?"

"Would you? She feels so all alone and cut off from everyone here. She is from Maine. I think I might be her only friend."

"Sure give her my cell number." I suggested as I wrote it on a napkin. Lucy changed the subject, but my mind stayed with Becky and her problem."

I picked up the tab for dinner. Lucy put up a token resistance then said, "Thank you."

"Tell you what," she said once we were in the car. "How about I pick up some donuts and make coffee. We both spend too much time alone."

I knew better but I was bored silly. "Sure but where can you get a decent donut in St. Marys."

"At the police station of course." She kept her eyes on the road or she would have seen me go pale.

"Only in St. Marys would the cops have a donut shop in the police station." I suggested.

"It isn't in the station silly. It's in a convenience store across the street. It's kind of a joke here. There is a donut delivery truck that comes from Jacksonville every morning. The 'pack and tote', has a special storage thing for them. Anyway, what kind do you want? They have plain, chocolate, jelly, and glazed. Some kind of fruit things probably but you never know what kind."

"Chocolate I guess," I replied.

The donuts were good, but the coffee was great. She made much better coffee than I did. Not only that she had a real TV.

Somewhere in the evening I got tired and Lucy got romantic. We did some kissing since I was too tired to muster an effective defense. I did manage to leave around midnight with my virtue still intact.

I kicked around town for a couple of more days. I also avoided Lucy as best I could. I think she realized that I wasn't interested in a relationship, but I still wanted to be her friend. Most mornings I spoke to the black man who had run the cafe across from the marina . He told me some of the history of the town. Well the more modern history anyway. St. Marys was one of the few towns left from the very beginning of the colonization of America. The old man's history was mostly post WWII. Still it was interesting.

According to him the town had been a big commercial fishing and shrimping town before and during the war. Later sport fishing found St. Marys and charter fishing took up a big share of the dock space. Small boats still ran deliveries to the outer islands nearby. In the last few years it had become more a scenic tourist town. The seeds had even been planted to grow a bedroom community for the ever expanding Jacksonville Florida area. Twenty miles from Jacksonville it was ideally set to be a future growth region.

I was interested but just in passing. It wasn't as though I planned to live the rest of my life in St. Marys. I could move on in an hour, if I chose to do so. I had no real ties to the town.

Lucy's friend Becky never called. The two of them just showed up Friday night. When Lucy suggested we discuss Becky's problem over dinner, I agreed since I hadn't eaten since breakfast.

Becky rode in the back seat of Lucy's Japanese revenge car, while we all tried to make small talk. We were all saving the discussion of the 500lb gorilla in the car for later.

Later came after we finished the seafood combination plates at The Marina Restaurant. The atmosphere was very fish camp, and I liked it. The food was delicious and the service was excellent. I would have enjoyed the meal more had I not been in suspense about Becky and her stalker. I really was looking forward to the challenge.

I was about to open the conversation when Lucy suggested we return to her apartment for coffee. "We won't be interrupted there," she suggested.

"That's just fine with me," I agreed.

"Oh crap," Becky said. "See that woman by the door. That is Sheila."

"Can I assume that Sheila is your stalker?"

"Yes that's her." Sheila was a reasonably attractive if somewhat skinny blond woman. She wasn't short and she wasn't tall she was just skinny as a garden hose. She was wearing jeans and a top that showed her bony chest. She had a tattoo on her shoulder. It was a black spider in a web. I expected on closer inspection it would turn out to be a black widow.

"Okay follow my lead ladies. Let's drop the first bomb."

It had to be subtle. I held Becky's chair, then Lucy's as we stood to leave. I held Becky's hand as we walked out. "Do not look at her," I whispered.

To anyone looking at us we were just three people who had dinner out. To Sheila we would look like lovers. That's how stalkers see things. Nothing is harmless to an obsessed person. Everything has meaning and it is always sinister. That is what effects the person being stalked as well. It is maddening for a sane person to enter a world of continual high drama.

What we had just done was to stick a needle in Sheila's eye. How she reacted would be interesting. She could do nothing and wait for a better time, she could shoot me in the back a few times, or she could crank up the heat on Becky. I would prefer she did nothing and just decide it wasn't worth the effort and moved on, but that was unlikely.

We were seated at Lucy's kitchen table when I began. "Now you are going to have an angry stalker on your hands. She may or may not turn violent. We need for her to be so upset that she makes a mistake. A mistake is anything that you can show to the cops to get her arrested. A note, a phone call, or an aggressive act where there are witnesses. What we don't want is her to harm you physically."

"This is already harming me physically. I have a hard time concentrating and I can't sleep nights. Isn't there something you could do to end it all at once. Why do we have to wait."

"Do you suggest I kill her, that is the only thing that will stop her instantly. What we have to do is to hope she will do something that will land her in jail or at least onto a shrink's sofa."

"I guess you are right. I just want this over."

It got quiet around the table. Everyone was lost in thought. I was wondering why Becky. She had to be close to forty pounds overweight. Her breasts were small for a woman carrying that many extra pounds. Her hips had most of it, but she somehow didn't seem to be too far out of proportion. Her hair was thin and shapeless.

"Tell me Becky how did Sheila get fixated on you."

"I have no idea, I certainly didn't encourage it."

"Okay, how did you meet her?"

"It was a teacher's award ceremony. I didn't win anything but I went to the banquet anyway. After the ceremony ended Lucy and I went to the lounge along with a few others. I got a little drunk and flirty."

"Did you flirt with Sheila?"

"Absolutely not," she replied.

"Sheila was the bartender in the lounge. Everyone talked to her as well as each other."

"You probably said or did something that in her twisted mind convinced her that you would be receptive."

"I can't imagine what," Becky said.

"Oh something like my last boyfriend was a jerk. I so wish I could meet someone nice. Probably something as harmless as that."

"I might have said something like that since my last boyfriend was worse than a jerk."

"Lucy said you told Sheila that you felt Lesbians were sick and were going to hell."

"I didn't mean that. I said it when she hit on me the first time I was so shocked I didn't know what I was saying."

"Where did it happen and how long after your first meeting."

"She ran into me at the market. After she reminded me who she was, she asked if I would like to go for coffee. I was bored and it seemed harmless. I had no idea she was gay."

"So did she proposition you at that time?"

"No, I had dinner with her another time she bumped into me at the gym. I have been trying to lose a few pounds. She didn't proposition me, she just kissed me. I mean she kissed me like a man." She looked at the table for a long few seconds then went on. "She swears I kissed her back. I was shocked and reacted poorly I guess.

"Since the kiss she has been following you around?"

"I can't prove it but like tonight she just shows up places I am. She usually says something to me. She has even threatened me."

"Where are you when she makes the threats?"

"I'm in a parking lot or some other public place, but we are alone."

"Has she ever been to your house?"

"She showed up there last week and I freaked out. I threatened to call the police and she said that if I did, she would make sure I didn't enjoy our next encounter." She looked down again took a deep breath and continued. "Then she grabbed my breast and kissed me again."

I looked at Lucy and she looked shocked. She obviously didn't know all there was to know. "What did you do?"

"I ran into the house and locked the door. I was terrified."

"That's why you were so upset?" Lucy asked.

"Yes, That's when I called the police. They said they couldn't do anything without proof. The detective said he would talk to her but I said please don't. I was afraid she would hurt me."

"At that point the cop most likely thought it was a falling out between lovers." Becky looked horrified. Lucy looked a little disappointed in me.

"Okay here is what is going to happen, if you want my help. Drive into Jacksonville to a radio shack. Buy yourself a digital recorder with a telephone hookup. Keep the batteries charged and keep it by the phone. Stop at a drugstore and get a box of vinyl gloves. If you get any strange mail or notes on the car put them on before you handle them. If she approaches you in public and anything happens that people would notice, get their names. When you call the police next time, you want evidence."

"What are you going to do?" Becky asked

"I'm going to help you get the evidence. She will make mistakes, if she is upset. We are going to upset her. Stalkers have a fantasy they play over an over. Then they adapt it to real life. She obviously sees you as becoming a couple somewhere along the line. She probably thinks this is some kind of game that she is going to win." Becky looking a little bewildered but Lucy seemed to understand.

"I am going to be her rival. She will either transfer her aggression to me, or she will step up her contacts with you. Her choices are to either win you over, or to get me out of the way."

"Will this work?" Becky asked.

"It probably will, but I have a few things to warn you about going in. It could turn nasty. She might get really violent. The other is that I can't be a witness to anything. I absolutely will not testify to anything. I want you both to understand that going in."

"I don't understand," Becky said.

"I have a couple of old warrants out on me. Nothing serious but it would be inconvenient, if they ran a records check on me."

"I see," Becky said. "I'm not sure I want to get involved if I have to do it alone."

"Fair enough, I assume you won't send the cops to my door?"

"No, neither of us will do that," Lucy said giving Becky a nasty look.

"If I do go along, what do I have to do."

"I would just move into your house and act as your boyfriend. Hopefully in a few days we would have her crazy enough to start making mistakes. We could meet in public places like a date, but it would take much longer to set her on fire. This has to be subtle. To be subtle we just do it and don't make a big deal of it. Not to mention if I move in with you, I can try to take care of you.

I decided to leave and let the to women talk it over. I wasn't sure I had done the right thing telling her that I would never testify no matter what. I wanted to be honest so she would know what was happening at all times. Okay I didn't try to be totally honest.

I was watching a two year old TV show when Lucy knocked. "Hello again ladies," I said standing back so they could enter my little one room apartment. "So what did you decide?"

"First what did you do to get a warrant against you." Lucy asked.

"I wrote my ex-wife a bad check. Our kids are grown so I figured the alimony ended at the same time as the child support. She raised hell so like and idiot I sent her a check. Then I thought better of it and stopped payment. The lawyer said that it didn't matter why I stopped payment, it was still a legal debt and I would need to make the check good. I said like hell, so here I am."

"Oh I sorta wished it was something like beating hell out of a man." Becky said with a smile.

"No nothing like that." I wasn't even tempted to tell her about the man I killed before I left home. That she didn't need to know.

"So when do we start?"

"How far do you live from here?"

"Five or six miles no more." she replied.

"Tomorrow is Saturday, I guess that is as good a time as any. Also we can keep an eye out for Sheila. If she took the bait, she will be really curious to see if you are really dating.

One thing though, if she shows up somewhere before I move in, do not talk to her at all. Close the door in her face. If you see her out somewhere, turn and walk away. If she wants to communicate with you, it has to be on the phone or by note."

"I'll try," she said.

"Don't try do it. Otherwise you are feeding her fantasy. You do want her to stop this don't you?"

"Of course I do," she said indignantly.

"Then do exactly as I say and it will happen."

It was shortly after noon or Saturday when I showed up at her condo. I had stopped along the way to do my laundry such as it was. A couple of pairs of jeans and some underwear. I wore Tee shirts mostly but also a button shirt to cover them now and then. I had bought and saved three button up shirts and half a dozen tee shirts. Other than that I had nothing but my computer to pack.

After I looked the place over I had her open the outside patio gate so that I could bring the Tomos under the patio awning. I don't think she liked that much but I didn't really care.

"Well Lucy have you heard from your stalker today?"

"No, I haven't seen or heard from her."

"Then so far so good." I said it just to make her feel better. Nothing would change until Sheila was in jail. She might decide on her own to give it up, but I wasn't counting on it.

"So are you hungry?" Becky asked.

"No thanks, I had a bite on the way over."

"I should have mentioned this last night. We never discussed money. Teachers don't make a lot of money you know."

"Didn't you know, I work for food." I smiled. Becky smiled back.

The guest room is right this way," Becky said as she turned into Hannah the Hostess.

"I'm going to sleep on the floor of the living room," I suggested.

"But you will be much more comfortable in the guest room."

"Yes I probably would be, but I would also have a light on in there when we should be in bed together. Sweetie stalkers are a little mental, but not necessarily stupid."

"I see," was her only reply. "What would you like for dinner?" she asked after a short pause to regroup.

"Oh we need to go out to dinner. Somewhere nice and public. Somewhere you have seen Sheila, but not where she works."

"The waffle and Egg on highway 17 but that was after a night out with Lucy," she informed me. "It was late."

"So being seen by her at the restaurant last night was a fluke?"

"I don't think so. I though I saw her at other restaurants but was never sure before. She has only spoken to me at the Waffle and Egg."

"So where else have you run into her?" I had slipped into a interrogation mode without realizing it.

"The grocery store on Saturday mornings. I'm sure I have seen her at the school as I was leaving."

"Well we need to go out to eat and see if she shows up, so pick a place that isn't too fancy."

"Eddie's Family Steakhouse," she suggested.

"Okay that's where we will go later. For now let me take a look around." I walked around her condo for about half an hour. I sat in each of her rooms for a few minutes and just studied it.

"The main thing you need is one of those motion detector light packages. It just screws into your outside light. You need that in the rear yard. It wouldn't do much good in the front since people might be walking their dogs. If there is trouble it will most likely come from the rear anyway."

"We can pick one of those up at the Home Depot in Jacksonville," I informed her. "It wouldn't hurt to have a video surveillance system. We can rig something up with a webcam I'm sure. I'll go on line and research it."

"If you want, we can drive to Jacksonville now," she suggested,

"Let's do that. I want that light up as soon as possible. "Do you have a weapon in the house?"

"No, I'm afraid of guns."

"Then you need a tazer or pepper stray. You need some kind of equalizer."

We didn't actually go into Jacksonville. The home depot was on a busy road but it was still a few miles from Jacksonville. I made a point to pay attention to the way she went to town. If I ever needed anything I could ride the bike over in less than an hour.

Becky found an army & navy plus gun store that sold tazers. She bought one and a can of pepper gas. I felt like she was as ready as she was likely to get without being trained in combat techniques. I didn't expect it to come to violence, but you just never knew when dealing with stalkers.

After all the shopping, including a trip to the cheapest electronics warehouse in Jacksonville, I knew because the sign said so, we headed back to St. Marys. I insisted that we go to her condo before dinner. I wanted that light in place. I would need a lot more time to work on the webcam surveillance system.

I gave Sheila plenty of time to find us before we left for dinner. It was a nice restaurant and I enjoyed the meal. Real southern style pork chops are hard to find. Almost nobody can fry them as they should be except your own mother. Eddie must have spent time in mom's kitchen because they were perfect. So were the sweet potato fries and the coleslaw. The ice tea was only so, so but it was cold and the waitress kept refilling the glass before it got to half empty.

I paid the check while Becky waited by the door. When I joined her she said, "That's her car over there."

I looked around the dinning room. "I don't see her do you?"

"No but she is here somewhere."

"Are you sure it isn't just a car like hers?"

"I'm sure there is a bumper sticker on the rear. Something about global warming."

"You go to the ladies room, make sure she isn't in there if she is turn around immediately and walk away."

It took her five minutes but she came back empty handed. "She wasn't there."

"What took you so long."

"I used the bathroom since I was there already."

Women, I thought. I went back to looking for skinny Sheila. I had no more success than I had earlier. "Well let's go home. She has seen what she needed to see, I guess.

I kissed her in the parking lot, before she slipped behind the wheel of her car. I went around, then opened the door. I glanced in the back seat to make sure skinny Sheila hadn't decided to ambush us.

As Becky drove by Sheila's car I saw the bumper sticker. It read, strike a blow at foreign oil, support global warming. It was amusing but I had seen better.

"What do you think that was all about?" Becky asked.

"I have no idea except maybe to keep you confused. My guess is someone else drove her car but it is really strange. I never knew simple stalkers to work together. Do you know anyone that might be in partnership with Sheila?"

"I have no idea. I think she is pretty much a loner."

"Well it's a curious turn of events, but let's not worry about it yet." I had felt better when I thought I knew who was after Becky. This, maybe other person, was a concern I did not share with her.

Becky drove us directly back to her house. She was a careful driver but not a slow one. She seemed to know I didn't like being out of control even as little as riding in a car someone else drove.

I questioned her off and on all evening. She really did know almost nothing about Sheila. That fact pretty much assured her that the cops would not take her seriously. They most likely thought she was just a lonely unstable young woman. God knows I had met a few like that, when I was a cop. I might have even thought so myself until the car with no driver showed up.

I slept on my sleeping pad in the living room. Even though it had carpet and a carpet pad, the floor was no more comfortable than my own. Even so I slept pretty well. I have always been one of those people who can sleep anywhere.

I awoke early on Sunday morning. I needed to use the bathroom, and not for a bath. Old men suffer from all kinds of urinary tract problems. The only one I knew of in my case was a weak bladder. If I drank anything after ten pm, I was awake in a few hours with an urgent need.

When I returned to the pad, my mind would not shut down. I kept going over the car with no driver. Like it or not the answer kept coming up conspiracy. What kind of conspiracy, I had no idea. Since I couldn't see two sexually motivated stalkers at the same time, I had to rethink the motive. If I rethought the motive, I had to be open to Sheila not being the person in charge of the conspiracy.

So if it wasn't sex, or at least not just sex, what did they want from Becky. What did she have? I made a mental note to ask her a lot more questions. Before I got past that thought, or had time to compose the questions in my mind, Becky walked into the room.

She was wearing a very pretty gown that managed to cover her more intimate parts while giving the illusion that it did not. Now that was a neat trick and I'm sure it cost a bunch to purchase that illusion. I was absolutely sure she did not wear that every night. Even though I was old enough to be her father, I had a strange feeling. I wondered if she and Lucy would compared notes. Since I had to live beside Lucy, who might easily stumble onto my secret I chose not to let her get too close, I tried to avoid Lucy. Not avoid as much as tread lightly. I didn't have that necessity with Becky. Becky was a little less attractive than Lucy. Neither of them was likely to be in the running for the next super model. Still both of them were young. That in and of itself had a certain appeal.

"What would you like for breakfast?" she asked.

"Just coffee for me, but thanks for the offer."

"It's no trouble, I will be cooking for myself are you sure?"

"Yes I'm sure."

"Okay in that case I'm going to take a shower and dress before I cook,"

It sounded like an excellent idea to me. I would be a lot more comfortable with her in something other than the illusionistic outfit.

Even while taking a DIY crash course on how to stream a web cam, I tried to work out just what the hell was going an with Sheila and what she really wanted. I decided that I needed to know a lot more about Sheila. I had no idea how to go about it on my own. Without the Police department resources, I was pretty much lost. Well not completely lost, I knew someone who did know how to find things on the net. At least she said she was proficient at searches on the internet.

I called Lucy on the phone to explain what I needed done. "Since you got me into this, it is the least you can do." I smiled and hoped she could tell from my voice.

"Oh all right but you have to ask specific things not just find out everything. I have no idea what everything is."

"Neither do I, so can you find out if she has a criminal record."

"Yes, I can find that out. I want your credit card number. It might cost a few dollars and I'm not putting it on my card."

"Okay but keep track, I use one of those prepaid things so I might need to add some to it. Right now it will go up to about five hundred dollars." I didn't tell her that I bought the refills in hundred dollar increments at a different convenience store each time. I could probably buy three or four of those cards a day if push came to shove. Any more might raise a flag with someone, in a cubicle somewhere.

I worked on the web cam as I waited for Lucy to get me answers. As she finished one task I found another for her. It was like that in any investigation. One answer led to more questions. Sometimes the last answer is the only one that made any sense. It was kind of like working your way through a maze.

So at the end of the day, I knew where Sheila lived, where she worked, her last known employer and the names of her family members. All her family lived out of town, so it wasn't going to be much help. I knew where she did time and the charge.

I had written down the license number of the car she drove so Lucy got me a rundown on that as well. Sheila was indeed the owner of the car. We got her driver's license number and her home address from that.

"Lucy tomorrow I want you to call her landlord and verify her address. Then see if she is living with anyone. I also want you to speak with a couple of her neighbors on the phone."

"These people are not going to talk to me."

"Sure they are, tell them you are verifying information on a job application. Give them the name of a fancy club in Jacksonville. Call yourself by some name she won't recognize. Look the neighbors up so that you know their names." I knew that would work, I had done it at least a hundred times. "If they don't answer your questions, try to remember what they said in refusing. Even that can help when you know nothing at all."

When dinner time arrived we stayed home. Becky was an excellent cook, so I didn't mind at all. She made something she called fried mac and cheese. It was delicious with the salad she made. She made fresh rolls as well. I think those came from a mix but it was a good one.

The phone rang a couple of times with hang up calls. I began answering it just for the hell of it. I answer with Becky's full name while informing the called that it was her residence. The calls stopped after two more attempts.

"Seems your admirer doesn't want to talk to me."

"Do you see now how crazy that kind of thing can make someone?"

"I understood that all along. It's why I agreed to help." By bedtime I had a lot of information and Becky had a web based surveillance system.

Becky didn't run around half dressed Sunday night as she had the night before. She wore flannel shorts and a tee shirt which to me was just as sexy as the almost see through gown. Even so I didn't think of her as anything more than a young woman in trouble. It never crossed my mind to take advantage of the situation. Okay it crossed my mind or I wouldn't have mentioned it. I certainly didn't act on it.

Monday morning Becky fixed breakfast for me. She really was a good cook. Since she make bacon and eggs, I had no need to ride into town for my breakfast by the marina.

"So what are you going to do while I'm at work?" Becky asked over her second cup of coffee.

"I'm going to sit here and wait for Lucy to call. Not much I can do without the information she is getting for us."

"Lucy really is a sweet girl," Becky commented. She was studying me closely to gauge my reaction.

"Yes, she does seem to be," I agreed. I was trying to show no emotion whatsoever.

Lucy called about ten A.M. "Mike, I am not going to have a chance to get all that information until later. I will try to talk to everyone before I leave school today. We should meet to discuss it."

"Okay, why don't you stop by here on your way home?"

"Good idea. Becky won't mind will she?"

"I don't see why she would. We are trying to help her after all."

"Good, then I'll be there around five."

After the call I got bored quickly. I decided to ride into town for my marina fix. Instead of breakfast at the park, I would do lunch there."

The Tomos and I were well out of her neighborhood when it happened. I had been passed by a couple of hundred cars since I bought the Tomos. Some cut me a wide birth, some cut it close, but the sinister black SUV was the first to actually get close enough to touch me.

The car did not belong to Sheila, at least I didn't think so. I swerved to avoid adding the car's paint to that already on the Tomos. In doing so I ran off the road onto the shoulder. The shoulders were very soft and the Tomos flipped over on me. Litterally it landed on top of me still running.

The weight of the bike was pretty oppressive on my chest. The hot muffler did a number on the flesh of my lower leg. I was happy that I bought the long jeans. I had debated buying shorts instead. I was most happy to still be alive. However over all I was not a happy camper.

The SUV sped away leaving me for dead, I supposed. I had a pretty good idea that the incident was connected to my involvement with Becky. It looked as though someone seriously wanted her alone for some reason.

If just reinforced my thinking that it wasn't about only sex . I wasn't sure that it was about sex at all. That might be the bait but the game might be about something else.

Even while I was thinking that, I was assessing my damages. I wasn't bleeding from anything more serious than a scrape here and there. I didn't have any body parts dangling so no broken bones. The burn on my leg could have been much worse had I not been wearing those jeans. The pain from that hot muffler had given me the strength to instantly toss the bike off me which also helped.

I was laying in the grass on the side of the road when the voice asked, "Are you alright?"

"I think so."

"You want me to call you an ambulance?"

"No thanks, I think that I'll be fine. I think what I need is a tow truck. Do you happen to know someone who could haul the bike to my house and let me ride along."

"I have a pick up there on the road. I'll be happy to take you and your bike home, if you want and if it isn't too far."

"I really would appreciate that." I said it but I wasn't sure that the good Samaritan wasn't a setup. I kept a close eye on him until he dropped me at the garage. "So what do I owe you?" I asked it after the bike was unloaded.

"You don't owe me anything," he replied

"Come on I would have had to pay a tow truck. With the price of gasoline and your time, it wouldn't be right not to pay you something."

"Just do a good deed for someone this week," he said climbing into his truck. That whole exchange made me a little nervous.

Since Lucy was easier to reach, I called and explained it to her. She tried to pressure me into a trip to the emergency room, but I refused. I figured I was going to be sore as hell. I knew I had survived and was damn lucky to have done so. I figured I could handle the rest.

"So would you find Becky and tell her I'm going to be at my place for a while. At least till I feel better and get some wheels. Also stop by the drugstore and get me something for a big burn and a few scrapes. And a couple of different over the counter pain meds."

I left the door open for Lucy. I was having a hard time moving with the burn and the scraped knees. I was in a lot of pain, with very little in the way of pain killers. I had a bottle of low dose aspirin, I took now and then for muscle aches. It seemed to have no effect at all on the pain from the burn. The burn was so painful that I didn't even feel the other pains until I tried to move.

Lucy walked in with a big bag from the Rite Aid drugstore. She took a look at me in my cutoff jeans, which had been full length when I left Becky's house that morning.

"What the hell happened to you?"

"Like I told you on the phone someone ran me off the road."

"Was it an accident?"

"It could have been, but I don't think so. It was broad daylight and there were no other cars on sight. The driver just clipped me. He had to know I was there."

"You said he, did you get a look."

"No, it could just as easily have been a woman, but it wasn't Sheila's car. The car that clipped me was a big black SUV."

"That's a nasty looking burn, don't you want to go to the hospital?"



"No, it looks worse than it is. In general burns hurt like hell, so did you bring me anything for pain?"

"As you instructed, I got Tylenol and that 12 hour sodium thing."

"Good, please bring them both here." She brought a glass of water and both bottles. I swallowed three of each. Not something I would recommend to anyone else but I didn't much care if they killed me.

I did note that it was right at 6pm. I would try to hold off until ten before I re dosed myself. Lucy tried to refuse to take money for the drugs and ointment but I insisted. Lucy was covering the burn with antibiotic creme when Becky knocked on the door which Lucy had closed.

"Are you alright?" She asked with real concern in her voice.

"I'm not alright, but I will survive." I replied. I was still in pain and the two women weren't helping at all.

"I am so sorry," Becky said.

"This isn't your fault." I let her off the hook for a few seconds then I went after her. "I want you to tell me everything this bitch ever said to you. I mean every damn word."

I turned my attention to Lucy. "You pay attention, I might miss something. You can remind me later, since you should know more than I do by now."

Becky started to tell me about her first encounter with Sheila at the bar. Sheila had flirted with her. Becky didn't realize it at the time, but in thinking back she realized that it was flirting. She also realized that she had encouraged it.

Lucy said, "I remember wondering if you knew she was gay, or if you might be a little gay as well."

"You what?"

"I wondered if you might be a bit bisexual. I mean you seemed to be loving the attention."

"I guess I was a little. Not gay, I mean loving the attention, I was just off a bad affair, remember?"

"I remember but it sure looked to me like you were a knowing participant."

"Why didn't you say something before."

"It seemed pretty harmless until now. Take a look at Mike, this is getting a little too real."

"We should call the cops, they can't ignore this."

"Sure they can," I replied. "To them it will be just a traffic accident. Besides like I told you, I don't do cops."

"So you are just going to let them get away with this?" Becky asked.

"In a pigs ass I am. For right now they are going to think I am though. Lucy you need to finish collecting information on our little friend Sheila."

"What about me?" Becky asked.

"With you it is business as usual. What you really need to do, is to stay with Lucy for a few days."


"I will be okay. I can stay home." she suggested.

"It's up to you, but my advice is to bunk in with Lucy for a while. If you won't do that, then I suggest that when they show up for you, remember your cover story and just play along."

"What do you mean they?"

"It wasn't Sheila who ran me off the road. It wasn't sheila who drove her Honda to the restaurant the other night. So yes I mean they."

"What the hell is going on?" she asked.

"I have just been at this a couple of days. Give me a chance and I just might find out."

Becky changed her mind about bunking in with Lucy. Since they needed to pick up food, as well as Lucy and my things I added more to the list. I gave Lucy a detailed list of things I needed, along with four one hundred dollar bills.

"I can't let you keep spending your money trying to keep me safe," Becky said.

"I'm going to give Sheila and her friends the bill, don't worry." I replied seriously.

I had two different pain killers and a couple of allergy tabs in me, so sleep was within reach. Actually I fell asleep before Lucy and Becky returned. Since I gave Lucy my key, she was able to look in and leave my packages on the floor. I was asleep on the sofa. The sofa was way to short, but I didn't wake up until the morning.

Once I did wake up, I couldn't get the pain killers down fast enough. That burn was the only pain I felt. It overwhelmed any other pains. I tried to keep a cold wet cloth on it while I waited for Lucy or Becky to at least call.

"Hey are you okay?" the voice on the phone was Lucy's.

"Yeah, just peachy." I replied.

"Are you awake?"

"A damn site more than I want to be."


"How is the burn and the scrapes?"

"The scrapes seems to be doing okay, the burn hurts like hell."

"So are you ready to hear what I have learned so far."

"Sure, go for it."

"You already know I got Sheila's phone number then back traced it to her address. Today I called her neighbors like you said. I told them that I was with a Myrtle Beach resort."

"Wonderful, so what did you learn?"

"She lives with another woman."

"Now there is a shock." I suggested.

"Yes it is, I suppose."

"Did you get the other woman's name?"

"Yes and I ran her as well. She has a black Ford Explorer."

"Well hello lady, we are going to do a little dance," I said with a smile in my voice.

"She and Sheila have a lot of parties it seems. They have one almost every weekend."

"So anything significant in that?"

"The guest come in Saturday afternoon late and don't leave until Sunday."

"So they don't drive drunk. That is admirable."

"Yes it is." she replied sarcastically. "Most of the guests are men. Only a few are women."

"Well, we know Sheila isn't the entertainment don't we?"

"I would think not. First of all the cars are from all over. Sheila just isn't that attractive."

"No offense, but neither is Becky. I just don't get the connection still. But they are up to something which they want Becky involved in. Sheila is trying to lure her into it. When the straight up sex thing didn't work, she began stalking her. She is trying to scare her."

"So you think the sex thing is a smoke screen?"

"No, I think that is real, but only a part of picture. Find out what you can about the roommate. I would be willing to bet the roommate has the money."

"Well Sheila has a record. Wanna' know what for?"

"Of course," I admitted.

"Assault and battery, she did six months for beating up a man."

I couldn't help but laugh. "Who was the man?"

"He was the husband of a friend. I think that he was probably the husband of a girlfriend."

"That sounds reasonable. You keep tracking her and her roommate."

"What are you going to do?"

"Heal," I replied.

"Good plan, what do you want for dinner tonight."

"Surprise me," I suggested.

I spent the day on the phone, First I was trying to find someone to fix the Tomos. I called half a dozen guys who sold scooters in Jacksonville. Everyone who was willing to work on it told me it would be cheaper to buy a scooter instead. Nobody really wanted to fix the two week old moped.

I called around to the three local garages. I found one who would come get the Tomos and try to repair it. He said he would give me an estimate before he went to work on it. I agreed to call him when I felt better.

I called up the streaming web cam from Becky's place on my computer while I did other research on the net. I researched scooter and mopeds. If the Tomos was going to so much trouble to repair, I thought I might want to look at something else.

It was while I was on a motorized bicycle forum that I learned in Georgia a driver's license was required to operate a Moped. It was not a good sign. I had bought the Tomos to avoid the driver's license thing all together. It appeared that the only motorized vehicle which universally did not require a drivers license was an electric bicycle. So I began to research those while from time to time I scanned Becky's web cam. Nothing happened on the web cam but I learned a lot on the forums.

There was an old man who experimented with Ebikes. He had tried about everything to speed one up. The easiest thing to do was to buy an ebike from Wal-mart. Then buy a bigger motor from an online E bike parts company. One could buy a motor with double the power of the stock motor for less than hundred dollars. It would bolt right up to the bike once the stock motor was removed. The next step to souping up the bike was to toss the battery pack and use one with more volts. He assured everyone that he had done it with no significant danger to the bike but almost double the performance. The two improvements would almost double the 12 mph speed and the range would be at least as good as that promised but never delivered by the bike manufacturer.

It sounded like a doable project. I decided not to bother with the local shop after all. I had pretty much paid a grand to get a few hundred miles, but it got me off the grid for a while. I had been damn lucky that no cop had stopped me once I got to Georgia.

After my research projects were finished, I went to work on one of the purchases Lucy had made for me. She had bought me a Mossburg pump shotgun. It wasn't the cop model but a cheap sportsman version. Actually there was probably no difference except for the length of the barrel.

I used the tube cutter she also bought for me to shorten the barrel to 18.5 inches. Just enough to be legal. I used a straightened coat hanger down the barrel to be sure before I cut the barrel.

I loaded the shotgun with #4 duck shot before I set it carefully in the corner. With that done, I felt a lot better. I had it all done before Lucy got home from work.

"Becky went by her house for clothes. She is going to be here soon."

"You really shouldn't let her go near her place alone."

I set the computer for her streaming web site. I got a view of her in bra and panties changing clothes in a corner reflection in the window. She dressed before she left. She left the house safely so I felt some better. Since it was early in the afternoon, she would probably be okay. I could go back to her house in a day or so. At that point I planned to go on the offensive.

When I awoke the next morning, I tried to think what needed to be done. Lucy should be doing a background check on Andrea Lewis, the roommate. I had an idea about what the next big step would be, it was the small steps that needed to be planned first. I just couldn't make my mind work that morning. It was probably the result of all the pills. Even though they weren't prescription I was taking them at dangerous levels. It had only been two days since the SUV decided to swap paint with my bike. I figured I would be much better by the next day. That is if the three day rule held true for accidents as well as illnesses.

I hung around the apartment eating everything in sight until Lucy called. "Andrea Lewis did time at the same prison as Sheila." Lucy sounded proud of herself and she had every right to be. It was a pivotal piece of information.

"Why the hell would two prison buddies want to share Becky?"

"I have no idea Lucy replied." I didn't explain that I hadn't really asked her, but was thinking out loud.

"I suppose they could be into sharing, but my money is on something more involved."

"How so," Lucy asked.

"They are going through a lot of trouble just to have a threesome with Becky. That was where my original plan came in. I was supposed to make it obvious that Becky was more trouble than she was worth. When Andrea ran me off the road, it became obvious that Becky was worth killing for. I could easily have died out there. I just can't figure out what makes her worth all this."

"What the hell is going on here?" Lucy asked again.

"Find out all you can about Andrea Lewis. She is probably the key." After I hung up, I began wondering if the bad gals knew where I lived. It would have made sense to come for me immediately after the attempt on my life. Waiting made no sense at all, unless they didn't know where I went, or they expected me to back off if I lived.

They could be following Becky. If so they would know pretty soon where I was holed up. If nothing happened in the next couple of days, I would be on offense. It should be interesting, if not fun.

When Lucy and Becky arrived home that night, it was obvious that they were spending too much time together. They were getting snippy. It didn't slop over to me, so I wasn't all that concerned.

"I think we have about all the information I can find," Lucy informed me over a plate of pasta. I had managed to make it down to her place with only minor pain. I was indeed on the mend.

Lucy and Becky hardly spoke during dinner. It wasn't a matter of being angry. I think it was more a case of just having talked themselves out. I wasn't in much of a mood to talk myself, so there were long periods of silence.

I didn't stay long after dinner. I was tired and wanted to lay down. I slipped into a light sleep shortly after returning to my place. I woke up to light streaming through the window by my only door. I had twisted the motion detector flood light so that it shined in my window instead of onto the steps. It was the only security system I had.

I moved to a corner of the room with the shotgun handy but not in my hands. The knock on the door was timid. "Yes." I said.

"It's me Becky. I need to talk to you."

I opened the door for her. She came in and sat on the sofa before she spoke. "What's going to happen to us?" She really did seem upset.

I sat down beside her then said, "We are going to figure this out and then take care of it."

"How are we going to do that?" she asked.

"You have to have patience and trust me. I think I can figure this out, if everyone helps."

"You mean if Lucy helps. I haven't been much help at all."

"Oh you will be trust me. There is no way we can end this without your help."

She softened then. The change was noticeable and a little concerning. "Can I stay here tonight. I am tired of "Lucy's couch."

"I don't have a bed or couch for you," I said with a smile.

"But I have a mat like yours in the trunk of my car. I can unroll it beside you. I honestly would feel better."

"I don't know. What would Lucy say? I mean we need her help."

"When I asked if anything was going on between you two, she said. 'of course not, he is old enough to be my father.' That is hardly the sound of a woman who would object to you having a friend sleep over." I couldn't have agreed more.

I was a little surprised by Becky's body. The fancy gown she had worn that first night managed to hide her small tummy and even make her breasts look larger. In truth she had small breasts and a slightly pronounced tummy. Her butt was a bit soft and droopy. She was better looking than all that sounds. In her case the whole was better than the sum of her parts.

While the women went off to work that next morning, I tried to do more and more things for myself. I tried walking around the block. The biggest problem was the burn rubbed against my long pants, so I had to wear the cut off jeans. I had made those from the ones I wore during the accident. Lucy had tossed them into her washer, when she did her wash. They had one layer less dirt when they were returned to me the night before.

I managed to fix lunch for myself. Becky had done my shopping while on her way home from school. I had been eating most of my meals with Lucy. I had not really turned the small stove on all week. I made Lucy's fried mac and cheese with one of those Kraft box things, for lunch. It wasn't too bad but a heck of a mess to clean the pan afterward.

The day passed slowly but it did pass. Friday was a repeat of Thursday except I walked father and with much less pain. It was slow going but I was getting there. During both days I had worn a pair of hiking boots that Lucy bought at the same store where she had bought the Mossburg.

Becky and I slept late on Saturday. Even though nothing was happening under the sheet, it made sleeping much easier for us both. Something about the closeness of another human being made sleep seem safer. Becky drove Lucy and me to breakfast an hour later. It was nice to have breakfast with the two of them, even if they did hardly speak to one another.

Since Becky promised me that there was no jealousy, I figured they were just tired of each other. Saturday afternoon around five Becky dropped me a block from Sheila and her friend's house. I was armed with a good pair of binoculars courtesy of Lucy's shopping trip. Also from that trip a couple of cheap but large steak knives. I had six in all. but I only brought two. I was no knife expert, so I figured if two weren't enough all six wouldn't be either. I made scabbards from folded cardboard and scotch tape, then slid them down inside my boots.

I walked down a small creek that led behind the houses. I got a really good look around. I found a good spot less than thirty yards from the back door of the target house. I didn't really care if they saw me since a war with them was inevitable. They really should have killed me. I had a feeling that it was not from lack of trying. Why they didn't try again, I had no idea. All I knew was that they should have.

When I started watching the house, there were two cars in the back yard. It took an hour before I made the first cell phone call to Lucy. I gave her the first of the license plate numbers. She was waiting at home to run background checks on the owners of the cars. With a little luck I would know who and what the visitors were soon after their arrival.

I lost track of the number of cars but the yard was full by 9pm. Lucy stopped calling back after a while and just saved the information. Before she stopped reporting, she had logged in the mayor of a city a hundred miles away and several community leaders from surrounding towns. There were even a couple of clergy with rather shaky credentials.

She would have to wait until later to run the complete search patterns for more details. Those results were from google type searches only. I waited and kept watch but I couldn't get a clue as to what was going on inside the house. It had to be at least one of the ten commandments being shattered for sure, which ones I didn't know. The most harmless thing would be a high stakes poker game. If that were the extent of it, then I had very little leverage. Something just told me that it was more. What could Becky do for a bootleg casino operation? The answer was simple nothing. The answer had to be that Sheila had something in mind for Becky that had nothing to do with gambling.

I expected that the deep background checks of the people in attendance would tell the tale. I sat out in the cool night air until midnight, then walked quietly out to the road where Lucy picked me up.

"So, do you have any ideas?" Lucy asked.

"Nothing at all comes to mind. They are a mixed bag of customers for sure, I just have no idea what they are buying."

"It has to be something they can't get at home. Some of those guys drove a long way."

"Or something better purchased a long way from home."

"Drugs?" she asked.

"I don't think the girls are running an opium den. I also can't see it as a high class crack house." I replied.

"Well what's the next move?"

"We hope something shows up in the background checks you are going to do tomorrow."

We sat in silence a few minutes then she asked, "Are you screwing Becky?"

Even though it took me by surprise, I answered right away. "No, she is sleeping on the floor with me, but nothing like that is going on."

"Don't give me semantics are you having any kind of sexual contract with her."

"I have kissed her a couple of times, just like I have kissed you. Nothing else is going on."

"Okay, that's what she said as well."

"So why are you asking?"

"Just curious," was her reply. She waited until we pulled into the driveway before speaking again. "Becky fell asleep in my bed. She isn't really the patient type."

"I see," I didn't really but it sounded good.

"I guess, I'll have to move in with you for the night."

"That means sleeping on the floor."

"I can handle it. I have done worse."

"Okay, then come on upstairs."

Women who in the hell can figure them out. Sunday morning the two of them were back to being thick as thieves. They shared strange smiles when they thought I wasn't looking. I had no idea what to do so I did nothing.

"So what's today's plan?" Lucy asked.

"You are going to start the background checks on our visitors. Becky and I are going to go shopping. Anything you want while we are out?"

"It's Sunday in St. Marys, nothing is open."

"Yes I know, but it's business as usual in Jacksonville." I said that as I guided Becky out of the door. What I really wanted was a chance to talk to Becky alone. I wanted to try again to figure out what the two female thugs wanted from her.

"So Becky," I began once we were in the car. "What is it exactly that you do at the school."

"I teach American History at the middle school."

"Is that all?" I asked it because I still didn't know what the hell it had to do with anything.

"Well, I also mentor at risk kids. I have four that come in last period for special help."

"What is that about?"

"Kids that are at risk of dropping out of school."

"So what they are 16 years old?"

"No we have determined that if they get behind in the 5th grade, they lose interest in education. We are trying to engage them at an early age."

"Why are the kids at risk?" Something about her mentoring was causing flags to wave inside my head.

"Usually it is some kind of problem at home. None of them are low IQ kids just unmotivated."

"Are they also at high risk to run away from home?"

"Why yes, it goes along with their emotional problems."

Things were a little less foggy. I had a feeling that something profoundly evil was going on at Sheila's house. I had felt even before my talk with Becky.

We did our shopping in Jacksonville, then went back to St. Marys. Lucy was waiting for us with lots of information. She could hardly contain herself.

"I have lots more things to check but so far I found that two of the visitors are registered sex offenders." She looked at me for a minute then said, "Why don't you look surprised."

"Well honey drugs, booze, and gambling made no sense so there wasn't a lot left.

"So what is going on, prostitution?"

"At the very least. I have a fear that it is even more sinister than that."

"Dear God, not kiddie porn?" she asked.

"Yeah, I'm thinking that and maybe worse even. I'm told one can get kiddie porn on the net. There has to be more to bring these guys this far."

"Please tell me you aren't thinking they are doing things with kids in that house?"

"I don't know. We will have to do more checking."

"Then what are you going to do?" Lucy asked.

"If I can refrain from killing them myself, I'm going to see them in jail."

"How? you can't go to the police," Becky said.

"I'll take care of it." I knew exactly how to take care of it. I just didn't tell her.

"Lucy dropped me at the creek I had walked in on Saturday night. She left me there on her way to school. It wasn't dark but not many people were stirring about that early in the morning.

I walked down the creek to the spot where I had sat previously. I made myself as comfortable as possible. I watched the back of the house and waited for the two women to leave. It didn't happen till nearly lunch. I saw them both get into the black SUV and then drive away.

I could have used a lookout but since I didn't have one, I concentrated on the basement. All of the activity Saturday night seemed to have centered around the basement. The lights were still on in the basement when I left, so I was pretty sure that it was a good place to start.

Breaking into a basement is really easy, if there is no alarm system. Sheila and Andrea did not have an alarm. It couldn't have been easier unless they had left the door open. It was so easy that I thought maybe it was a trap. Trap or not, it had to be done. I crawled in through an unlocked bathroom window.

I found six cubicles with just a small cot type bed in each, Twenty odd people and six beds equaled people turning tricks. It could be the owners and a few friends, I thought. I just couldn't see people driving a couple of hundred miles and staying all night just to get laid by a pro. There had to be more. In a locked room, with a piss poor house type lock, I found the cameras. There was one high end video camera and a few low end digital cameras.

The still cameras were much lower in price and quality than the Panasonic, almost top of the line, camera I had bought the day before in Jacksonville. It was their best Panasonic camera, short of the Digital Single Lens Reflex that Panasonic had recently brought out. The one I had did a fine job on the pictures I shot of the basement.

I had been inside almost long enough for the girls to have finished lunch, so I decided to leave before they came home. I expected that I had the pictures which I would need for phase two anyway. I did take time to remove the hard drive from their downstairs computer. Hell it had been easy enough for a 12 year old to remove.

I went out as I had come in through the window in the basement bathroom. It had been unlocked when I came in so I left it unlocked on my way out. Except for the hard drive I had taken nothing. Unless you were to count the two dozen or so photographs I made. I felt that I knew the use of everything there except the stage. It was only slightly higher than the milk crates it rested upon above the concrete floor.

I hoped that the hard drive would tell Lucy something. I knew it would never tell me anything. I had no computer in which to fit it. Whether it did or not, I had it in my pocket as I walked to the pickup point. During the walk out I also wondered if the girls would call the cops. I doubted it since whatever they were doing was dead wrong. I was pretty sure that a good vacuuming of the carpets down there would pick up traces of cocaine or some such thing.

I used my prepaid cell phone to call the only taxi in St. Marys. By the time he arrived I was in the parking lot behind a church at least a mile from the target house. I had him drop me at the park beside the marina. From there it was a little over a mile to the garage apartment.

When the girls got back from work, I got the full briefing from Lucy. She had completed the background checks and found a couple of more sex offenders. By that time everyone had a pretty good idea what was going on in Sheila's basement.

"So which one has the most to lose?" I asked Lucy.

"I expect it would be the preacher. He has a wife and two kids not to mention a reasonably affluent congregation." she answered.

"Then we need to pay him a visit. Can either of you get off one day this week."

"Not me," Lucy replied. She didn't elaborate and I didn't ask.

"I guess I can call in sick one day. I have a huge number of sick days."

"Well pick a day and we will drive over to see the Reverend."

"Okay tomorrow will do. Can I go home yet. I'm tired of living out of a paper bag."

"It might take a while longer. I'm sorry but I want you where I can watch you."

"Well you can watch me at home."

I knew she was right. If I was healed enough to be a cat burglar, then I was healed enough to watch her at her house. "Okay but load the shotgun into the trunk of your car. I refuse to leave home without it." I turned my attention to Lucy. "You wanna'' come with us. There is a chance they know where I live. If we aren't here, they might pay you a visit."

"Do you really think so?" she asked.

"I don't know, but it is possible."

"Then I will pack a bag and follow you."

"Good," Becky commented. She appeared to mean it.

It was not a short drive to the town just outside Charlotte NC, but the time passed pretty quickly. Becky actually was a very intelligent and outgoing woman. It was obvious from our conversation that she loved children. If she was to be believed, she could establish rapport with almost any child within minutes.

"For some reason kids just seem to trust me. They seem to know that I have their best interest at heart," she said.

"Maybe that's what our ladies need. They would sure as hell scare the B'jesus out of anyone." I said it with a smile, but I had a feeling that there might be something like it in the plan for Becky.


When we pulled into the church parking lot, I was happy to see the fancy German touring car in the pastor's space. It would be much easier to break him in the church than it would be in his home.

Becky and I went through an interrogation by the church secretary before we were allowed to speak with the pastor. "Reverend Sims," I said taking his hand. The handshake was for the benefit of the church secretary.

"Yes Mr. Abrams what can I do for you?" It was obvious that the secretary had filled him in enough so that he had my name.

"Actually it's more what I can do for you." I said that as I tossed the stack of pictures onto his desk. They were mostly of the empty basement but also had a few from the hard drive of Andrea and Sheila's computer. Lucy had recovered some things but was still working on it. The ones I had were of men in mask on stage with what could have been a minor. I expected more as Lucy dug farther into the drive. Also I hoped to have more from the preacher in a matter of minutes.

"Where did you get these?" he asked.

"I am a reporter with the Jacksonville Florida Times, I just did what I do." As Lucy had predicted I could see the sense of loss come over his demeanor. He actually seemed to shrink a couple of inches. "I'm here to make you a one time offer. Listen carefully because when I leave you will either be the source I protect or the pervert I throw to the wolves."

I explained that someone would roll on the two women. The person who did got his name deleted from the guest list. If not the Reverend Sims, then it would be someone else. He was the first to be offered the deal.

"What is it you want from me?"

"I want you to tell me all you know, and all you suspect about Andrea and Sheila. I expect it to all be true. I am a great interviewer. I will know if you lie and if you do, I leave and you lose your source status. So start with how you heard of them." I wanted him to begin slow.

"I met Sheila on line. In an internet chat room. It was one of those adult things. We sort of shared an interest you might say."

"How long did it take before she invited you to her house." I let the shared interest thing slide for a while at least.

"I put her on the IM so that we could chat outside the site. After a couple of weeks she suggested that I come see her."

"Did you know what to expect when you went there?" It was my first test as to whether he would lie to me or not.

"I knew some things but not all. I knew it was a kind of party and that there would be a stage show. I didn't know the details.

"So what was the admission price?" I asked.

"Three hundred and fifty dollars. It wasn't exorbitant so I paid cash at the door when I got there. I thought I was being so careful." He didn't laugh but he saw the irony, if not the humor in it.

"So I assume you had a couple of drinks?"

"Yes the drinking began early and went on late into the night. I'm not a drinker but I did have a couple while I was there. I paid extra for them. I am pretty sure there were drugs for sale as well."

"So what happened when the show started. We sat in folding chairs and watched the girls up on that stage in your picture. It was pretty much typical things you could see in a porn film. Some of the audience members got up on stage. I can see why they had masks on now. I knew she sold DVDs of the shows it never occurred to me that she might be saving them."

"Didn't it occur to you that she might blackmail you?"

"Not really, she didn't really seem like a criminal." I was about to say something but I let it slide.

"So when did the younger girls start?"

"It wasn't too long. The younger ones were the draw." The prick actually smiled at the memory. "They took their clothes off it was very exciting."

"How old would you guess they were?"

"She had them all made up and dressed up but I would think one was a young teen doing it for money. Then there was the child who was barely into puberty. She was the star. The two of them performed. You have the images so you know."

I didn't want him to know that I didn't really have the images so I changed the subject. "Did you have sex with either of them?"

"No there were a few teenaged hookers there. I expect those were older teens who were doing a pretty good business."

"How about the younger girls? Could you have had sex with them?"

"There was a price list for the young ones but it was pretty steep so I didn't have sex with them. I could explain three or four hundred dollars for a weekend retreat to my wife, but not a thousand dollars."

"So what would you get for that kind of money?"

"Not much," he replied.

On the drive home Becky wanted to talk but I begged off. I needed to think. I ran it over in my mind several times and it kept coming up trouble for me anyway I looked at it.

I had intentionally left out any warning for the preacher not to warn the girls. I didn't care if he told them a reporter was asking questions. Sheila might believe I was a reporter but I had a feeling anyone cold enough to run a bike off the road would see the worst in everyone. I mulled over all the facts and just couldn't come up with any scenario that had me coming out a winner. In the end I just gave up and drifted off to sleep. One good thing about sleeping on the floor was that it taught me to sleep almost anywhere. Sleeping in the car was a piece of cake.

"Mike, we are home," Becky said not so gently.

"Ah how long did I sleep?"

"A couple of hours. I let you sleep since you have been looking tired the last few days."

"I haven't slept well since the accident. I bit of post traumatic stress I suppose."

Lucy met us at the door of Becky's house. The two of them really were good friends. Lucy had the key to Becky's house and I assume Becky had the key to her apartment. "Mike there is a message on the machine. It was on there when I got here."

"Becky tell your friend I want my hard drive back. I want it right now and before he copies it. You tell him he has no idea who he is messin' with. Somebody better call me tonight."

"She sounds pissed," I said smiling. I had rattled her cage. Obvious she had tried to use her computer for the first time since the break in.

"Let's have dinner and talk this over." I suggested. "How about we get pizza?"

We were sitting around munching on pizza and drinking diet cola when the subject came up again. "So what are we going to do?" Lucy asked.

"Why hell, I am going to blackmail them."

"Why are you going to do that?" Becky asked.

"Well someone owes me for the bike and for the pain and suffering. Don't worry it won't sound like blackmail."

"I don't get it," Becky admitted.

"If we don't pretend to be as crooked as they are, they will put it in the wind. Which wouldn't be an all bad thing. You wanted me to make them stop stalking you. Well that would do it. If they are still here this weekend, they are going to have their little party as usual. If they do that, they are going to have a couple of unexpected drop ins."

"I don't get it." Lucy said,

"I hope they don't either."

"Did you check the rest of the hard drive."

"No, but I copied almost all the files to a dozen dvds. There were some big files on there."

"Then lets give them the hard drive back. It needs to be in her computer." I reached for the land line phone. I dialed the number Sheila left on the message.

"Good evening who am I speaking with?" I asked.

"Who the hell am I speaking with?"

"Why love, I'm the guy you tried to kill."

"If I had been trying to kill you, you would be dead."

"Not a good way to open negotiations, but it is reassuring to know homicide was not your intent."

"I didn't say I might not want to kill you now, just that I didn't when I sent you the message."

"So I assume you want to pay the damages out of pocket rather than go the insurance route."

"Are you out of your mind?"

"Seems to be a lot of people questioning that. But I think we are discussing my damage claim."

"No, we are discussing my hard drive."

"It's the same discussion. You pay for your carelessness and I might find a hard drive laying about my place."

"Have you copied it?"

"Haven't had a chance but I have checked out some of the files. Interesting video but your technique leaves a bit to be desired. I could give you some lighting tips if you like."

"What I would like right now is to kill you."

"If you do that, the dead man switch kicks in. The hard drive goes to the FBI. It won't get you convicted by itself, but it will give the feds a place to start looking."

"Then it's blackmail?"

"Of course not that's illegal. It is you buying an insurance policy. One pays retroactively for your stupidity."

"How much?"

"I think Ten grand in cash should pay the damages. You should get that back in one weekend from what I have seen."

"I'm going to have to think about it."

"That's up to you. I will be at the marina park tomorrow about 10AM. It might be a good time to sign you up for that policy."

"How do I know this is the end of it?"

"The same as me, we don't know but we do know that we are at stalemate for now."

"If you come back for more, I will kill you and your girl friend."

"If I ever see you or your roommate within 50ft of either of them, your threat will be a moot point."

"Are you threatening me."

"Did it sound like a threat. I do hope not. It was a simple statement. I will take out an order of protection." She knew what the threat was I didn't need to spell it out. She had figured out that I would fight back. She might not know what I was, but she knew I was not a school teacher.

Even though Becky and I had picked up the parts for my Tomos, I hadn't taken the time to make the needed repairs. So I sent the two of them off in Becky's car while I drove Lucy's car to the marina park. I chose it and the time because I knew there would be people in the park. There would be an old man or two for sure, and probably a young mother reading a book.

When I arrive at the park, there were a few unexpected retired ladies as well as the usual park visitors. Since they all wore pink hats, I figured they were some kind of organized group. That was good for me. The more normal witnesses the better. They would either see nothing or someone would see it all. It just depended on what the women brought with them to the park.

I was still working on the 'breakfast on a bun' from burger burger, when I spotted her walking toward me. It was possible that she carried a weapon in her purse, but that was about the only place she could have carried one.

Sheila was dressed in a spandex bike rider's outfit. I took a quick look but didn't see a bicycle. I supposed that some people liked to cast a healthy athletic appearance. She was skinny enough to have been a serious bike rider. I removed the cell phone from my pocket and made a fake phone call. I put the phone down just as she arrived. I did allow her to hear the last couple of words. "You need to hurry."

"What was that all about?" she asked.

"I just called the cops. The park should be flooded with them in a few minutes."

"Why would you do that?"

"To keep you from getting any ideas about another hit and run."

"They are going to see everything."

"If you keep talking and not acting, yeah they most likely will." I pulled the clear plastic bag with the hard drive from the large pocket of my new shorts. "Okay I showed you mine?"

She handed me an envelope with a stack of bills inside. "Here you go, I said handing her the baggie."

"How do I know this is the right one?"

"The same way I know the money is all here and not marked. We have to go on faith."

"I will kill you, if it isn't."

"If you want to play it that way just give me the hard drive back and I'll take it to the cops. It is you that has the problem, not me. If I didn't want to deal, I could have done that and walked away. I took the drive for the bread to fix my bike and pay the doctor."

"And with a few bucks left over," she suggested.

"Screwing the insurance company is the acceptable way to do business in this country, dear. Surely you know that." She just turned and walked away. If Andrea was watching, and I'm sure that she was, she might have been expecting a different outcome. I expect that when they got home, they might compare notes and wonder. They would probably figure that, the cops are on the way, was just a bluff. It was a bluff and I counted on them figuring out that it was.

After an hour of looking at the sport fishing boats go out, I drove Lucy's car back to my apartment. I spent the rest of the day working on the Tomos. I worked with the bike in the open doorway of the garage area. Just inside of the building sat the loaded Mossburg shotgun. I fully expected that things would be calm for the moment, but one never quite knew with women.

Becky arrived with Lucy in tow. The decision was made for us all to caravan back to Becky's house. Since the bike was working and I wanted to test it, I agreed. It would be nice to have one of them in front of me, and one behind. If there was another accident, then someone I knew would be around to help out.

There was no accident. As a matter of fact the rest of the week passed with me watching the approaches to the house on the web cams, or doing more work on the bike and trailer. It was a pretty uneventful three days to be truthful.

On Friday night we went out to dinner. We were celebrating the nearing end of our problems. None of us had seen or heard from the two women, so it was possible that they had left St. Marys. That would be an acceptable ending for me. I think Lucy and Becky expected something more dramatic, but I didn't expect it to happen. Most things will just end with nothing at all to mark their passing. At the very most it might end with just a fizzle, not a bang.

I had not let the two women in on my plan. I had been working on parts of it all week in secret. Before our celebration dinner on Friday night, I had made most of the arrangements. To make the 'Kiss Off' as I had begun to think of it, work I had to plan carefully. I needed to make a stop on the way home from dinner to start the operation. Lucy dropped me at the creek yet again. I walked to a spot behind Sheila and Andrea's house. I watched the dark basement for a short time then I put on drug store vinyl gloves. I slipped up to the house then removed a fake pipe bomb which I had constructed while the girls were at work.

I was absolutely certain that there was not one bit of evidence on the fake bomb. I bought the pipe nipple and end caps along with several other bits of plumbing supplies from home depot during one of the shopping trips to Jacksonville. All other purchases wound up in a dumpster.

When I got home from the depot, I put on the gloves before cleaning the pipe with gun solvent. After it air dried, I cut a number four shotgun shell in half and dumped everything into the pipe. After the open shotgun shell was inside, I packed it with sand from the craft store. When the fake pipe bomb was complete, I dropped it into a larger baggie. I thought, any self respecting police dog should be able to find that.

After the fake bomb was planted I replaced the baggie in my pocket, then slipped back into the woods. I had left my calling card but no one would ever know who the card belonged to. At least that was the plan.

The girls swung by the creek again and found me waiting. I had been waiting in the dark woods about five minutes.

"Alright Mike what is the plan. I am dying to know." Lucy asked.

"Okay if the cars show up tomorrow night, there will be a bomb tip to the local cops and the FBI."

"The cops rush in to save them, but instead catch them in the act," Lucy said with a laugh. "I truly love it."

"Well everything has to work just right for them to get caught in the act At the very least the cops will have a very good excuse to look around. I plan to give them a heads up, if they are smart enough to understand it. I want to be subtle so that I don't need to testify. I want them to find everything on their own."

"So the cops catch them, then what?" Becky asked.

"With a little luck they will plead out and everyone walks away a winner. Well not quite everyone. Lots of reputations are gonna get ruined and some folks will likely do a little time. All things considered it should be over for you."

"Is there a chance they could catch us?"

"There is always the chance but I have done all that I can to minimize that possibility." I could have outlined more of the after action plans, but I chose to keep those to myself. I insisted that they spend Friday night at Lucy's place. I had the bike there and I needed to do some more things to finish up the plan.

Lucy and I parked her car in a church parking lot with a view of Andrea and Sheila's driveway entrance. Sure enough the cars started to arrive around 6pm. After about ten cars I had Lucy drive me home. I climbed on the Tomos and rode into the country.

I was about five miles out when I turned on the cell phone. It was not the one I had been using. I had a new phone which I had purchased at the Jacksonville Wal-mart. It was already activated, I had done that in the parking lot of the store just before I removed the battery.

I was sitting on top of a small concrete bridge over a deep looking creek. It was pretty dark so I couldn't tell just how deep it was, but the banks were steep which made me think it was four or five feet deep. I checked my watch to make sure it was after 9pm, then I dialed 911 and waited.

"911 what is your emergency?" the female voice asked.

"The police wouldn't do anything about those evil women so we have. We have planted three bombs at 467 Sycamore Lane. The driveway is long and the house is in the woods. One bomb is outside against the basement wall, one is in the basement and one in the upstairs." I closed with, "Do not call to warn them the trigger is the phone. Save the children Allah Akbar."

I placed a call to the FBI and said pretty much exactly the same thing to their operator. I was through for a while at least. I had done all I could do for Becky.

I broke the connection, removed the battery, and threw both items into the creek. I removed the vinyl gloves and put them in my pocket. I resisted the urge to ride by the house.

The ride in the dark even with the small headlight had been unnerving. I was a wreck when I arrived at my garage apartment. It was dark in Lucy's apartment so I slipped into the storage room. I disinterred up my money from the dirt floor.

I actually slept pretty well that night. I made coffee the next morning and waited for Lucy to come over. She had promised to bring bagels.

She had Becky in tow when I saw them coming up the outside stairs. "It's about time." I said smiling.

"You are a genius Michael Abrams." Becky said that as she hugged me.

"So, you do understand but why I am a genius today?" I knew but I wanted someone to tell me the status of the operation.

"The best we can figure the cops arrived at their house last night on the bomb call. When the cops knocked on the door there was general panic. People running all over the place. The cops had expected a hoax but were surprised by the response so they called backup. Before it was under control every cop in town and most of the country cops were out there."

"What the FBI didn't make it to the show?"

"Oh they are all over town this morning. They took the computer. The one that had the hard drive back in it, I'm sure. That was just brilliant."

"So what do we do now?" Lucy asked.

"Well I'm going to eat my bagel, then I'm going on a long vacation. You two do what you have to do to survive. If the cops come, just do what you need to do to avoid trouble. Don't worry about me. Here is what I want you to do. Put a message on the internet." I handed her a web address written on a piece the envelope of a utility bill. "Put it on this blog if you are not contacted by the police in two months. Make it Halloween night. If it is before or after I will assume you are compromised and I will keep going. If there is no message I will just keep going so do what you need to do."

"So you are leaving?" Becky asked.

"A couple of months of vacation with Sheila's money actually."

"I wish I could have seen the raid," I said smiling.

I left two months rent money with Lucy so that she could keep the place going. I also left enough for her to pay the utilities. I left on the Tomos with the homemade trailer in tow. It wasn't great but I was able to easily do a hundred or so miles a day. I planned to spend no more than a couple of days in any one place. I didn't expect the cops would be looking for me, but one never knew about such things until it was too late.

Oh yeah I did get to see the police raid on video. It hit the local news, then the national news, and finally it went viral on the net. It was too compelling a story to stay quiet. Plus there was the mystery of who planted to pipe bomb. They never did get around to explaining that it was harmless.