Chapter the Fifth -- Wherein the Plot Thickens a Teensy Bit
The dust settles on my skin,
Making a crust I cannot move in
And I'm hovering like a fly,
waiting for the windshield on the freeway.
Genesis - Fly on the Windshield
Chapter 5 -- A Flicker of Darkness
Mara wasn't surprised when Kevin called her that afternoon. She had expected him to call yesterday, actually, just to make sure that Rafe had actually showed up and hadn't bolted in Sioux Falls to parts unknown.
"Hi, Kev, the thoroughbred is just fine."
"Uh, hi, Mara. Um. Huh?"
"Rafe arrived in one piece. He seemed to be settling in okay, though something he read in the news must have troubled him. He was awfully pale when I came in for lunch, and had a bit of that "deer in the headlights" look about him. Other than that, he's just fiiiine." Mara drawled out the last word, giving verbal notice that she was going to be picking Kevin's brain to find out what was going on.
"Great! I'm delighted to hear he's settled in well."
"Kev?"
"Yeah?"
"Cut the crap."
"Ummmm, exactly what crap am I supposed to be cutting?"
"Your Arabian was looking mighty white around the eyes, like he wanted to bolt. He hasn't even been exposed to the full glory of Pittsville yet, and I certainly haven't tried to interview him. So as far as *I* know there shouldn't be anything setting him off at this end."
"Mara, I'm sorry, I haven't the foggiest what he might have read that would, as you so delightfuly phrased it, 'be setting him off.'"
"So, he hasn't been in touch?"
"Well other than a vague email from him to let me know he was in Pittsville..."
"..."
"I heard that. He really didn't say much in the email, certainly nothing about what might be going on. He did have a question about a big picnic we're planning later this summer..."
"A picnic?? You're pulling my leg. So, any nasties from the Windy City looking to do some horse rustling that you know of?"
"Damn it, Mara. Stop with the livestock references," Kevin growled under his breath not so much at Mara, as at her blasted perspicaciousness. And, wondering what the hell was going on that Rafe had spotted in the news that would rattle him so much that he'd set off Mara's unerring news radar.
"Well? No more dog and pony show. I promise. But, what's going on??"
"Mara, I really don't know. How about if you tell Rafe to call me tonight when you go home..."
"I'll do you one better. Give me a couple minutes and I'll call Rafe and tell him to call you now."
"Welll..."
"Well what? You're stalling something here. Do I need to get out the shotgun and keep it loaded by my bed?"
"You don't have a shotgun. You are so anti-NRA liberal..."
"Do so have a gun, Dad's hunting rifle. I don't have any ammo for it, but I hear Wal-Mart's got a sale going for spring hunting season..."
"Mara. Full stop! This isn't anything that will send you to the extreme of shopping at your all-time favorite store. Yes, I'll talk to Rafe, but have him call me from your office."
"Anything special about my office you need to know about. Or, hey! Worst case scenario -- you're worried someone is tapping my home phone??" Mara was starting to steam a little herself. If there was something to worry about, she wanted to know.
She hadn't lived in Chicago for almost 8 years now. However, even the news covered in Pittsville got a little too exciting in a negative way every now and again. She didn't want to get blindsided like they had been a couple of years ago when there was a major federal bust on a meth lab 10 miles into the middle of nowhere outside of Pittsville.
Seems they had been supplying the five state area and then some, having set themselves up as a fictitious hardware store. The bust took out enough inventory for a nice sized hardware store, as well as most of the chemicals for the various 'recipes' for methamphetamines in existence. Danged slick front they had had, and, where they were located and how they picked up their supplies, no one noticed, the lab having been buried in about three layers of various addresses.
The FBI and the fed's hazardous waste cleanup bunch had been around for several weeks, cleaning up the mess and making sure there weren't chemicals stashed elsewhere for retrieval later. It had been a gawdawful mess in more ways than one.
Mara smirked. She had taken up skeet shooting after that debacle, and did keep the rifle in good shape. Not happy with owning a firearm, but compromising as it wasn't exactly an Uzi that she was packing. It was Dad's old deer hunting rifle for cripes' sake. She hated the taste of game so skeet shooting it was to keep up some semblance of knowledge of the gun.
She had ruefully shaken her head when she realized this was what the framers of the constitution had in mind for the right to bear arms. Pittsville was in the middle the southeastern plains of South Dakota. She supposed if a determined motorcycle gang, or whatever!, decided they wanted the town for their own, it would be easy enough to take, but she wasn't going to go down without a fight.
"Mara, you still there?" Kevin's voice called her back from her brief mental wandering.
"Yes."
"So will you have Rafe call me from your office?"
"How about I go get him right now? Give me 20 minutes and I'll have him back here and even dial your number for him. If THIS phone's tapped," she giggled, "good luck getting anything newsworthy to scoop on!!! At least at home, there's about one chance in a million that I'd call an interesting 900 number or something. Wouldn't want to do it on the paper's dime."
"Mara, you wild thing. You've got yourself a deal. Go get Rafe. I wanna know what's going on, as well."
"Kev, if we're making a mountain out of a mole hill, I'm charging that call back to you! Gotta save my dimes for my paycheck for those lascivious phone calls from my home phone."
-----------------------------
Rafe had made his way through Mara's most recent scrap book and then had grabbed his ratty copy of Chomsky's tome on media control. He was presently well into that short book, wondering if seeing a work by Noam Chomsky, that economic dissident cum theoretical linguist cum political activist would piss Mara off. Their conversational topics so far hadn't ventured into what her particular political / economical leanings might be. He presumed because she was editor and owner of the paper that she'd be rather conservative in her economics, but beyond that...
He heard the back door open and put down the book. Surprised to see Mara in the middle of what was supposedly a busy afternoon, he silently raised an eyebrow in query.
"Hi, there, sorry if I startled you again, but I just had a nice chat with your boss. He expressed an interest in speaking with you this afternoon. In my office no less," she raised her eyebrows back at him.
She smiled pleasantly at him, but there was an edge there, just a touch of a shark of some sort showing. He knew that look, and if the shark could speak it would be saying something like 'I'm going to get to the bottom of this, whether or not it goes into print.' He could see, even more plainly now, why a woman like her, growing up in the middle of the plains would be accepted into the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
He found that look...attractive. It brought her face to life and he knew a bit of what her thoughts might be at that moment.
He mentally shook his head to bring himself back to the present. No drooling unless it was Miss South Dakota, remember, Rafe? Certainly no saliva lost over his boss's best friend ex whatever.
"So did Kevin say what he wanted?"
"He told me some cockamamie story about your sending him an email about a picnic three or four months down the road."
Damn.
"Well, it is a very, very large picnic he throws every year for the crème de la crème of the Chicago nouveaux riches and news hounds."
"Hmmm," her smiled had moved a very small notch to show even more disbelief at the 'cockamamie story,' "I'll have to get on his case about that, he's never invited me. Maybe while you're talking picnic you can get me ***added to that guest list??***"
He smirked at her, to let her know he knew she wasn't talking picnic at that point.
"So, are you telling me I'm not enough of a... awww, what would it be, my French is SOOOO rusty. I'm not enough of a chienne de chasse de nouvelles."
"Ms. Pitts, I would NEVER call you a chienne," he quipped back with a straight face. "Not unless you gave me cause to..."
Mara gaped at him, delighted that he was able to return the thrust and parry of sarcasm, in two languages no less. Her mouth snapped shut and she shot back at him, "Darn straight! You had better not call me a bi..."
"So how about a ride back to work," he butted in smoothly.
"Yes, that works. Maybe you can ferret out just why YOUR boss..."
"Hey, I thought he was your friend!"
"As I was saying, YOUR BOSS? You know? Mr. Kuntzler? You wouldn't have to ferret too much, all I want to know is why he'd rather you call him from my office when I've got a perfectly good phone sitting on that end table right next to you," she said pleasantly and smiled sweetly at Rafe. And moved in for the kill, "and why you couldn't possibly call him from your cell phone that I'm sure you've got hidden away somewhere in your belongings. And don't say anything about being in a coverage-free zone, I'll have you know..."
Rafe jumped in again, "Mara. Let's go." He rose, a little stiffly, she noticed, from the sofa but he didn't seem to be anywhere near as lamed as he had seemed yesterday. Rafe grabbed his cane and saw Mara looking rather fixedly at his leg.
"What can I say, Ms. Pitts, you have a wonderful hot water tank that I took full advantage of this morning. That water must be from a healing artesian well somewhere, I sure as heck wouldn't drink it," he paused for a moment as he thought back a half hour earlier when he had poured himself a glass of tap water to quench his thirst. He had promptly spit the first mouthful out into the kitchen sink. "But I'm a new man. Have you thought about opening a spa in the area?"
Mara grinned, "I'll take that under advisement, Mr. Moretti. Shall we?" She gestured in the direction of the back door. "I keep bottled water in the refrigerator. Please accept my humble apologies for not having informed you of that fact."
Rafe grinned back, and they left to go to her office.
Making a crust I cannot move in
And I'm hovering like a fly,
waiting for the windshield on the freeway.
Genesis - Fly on the Windshield
Chapter 5 -- A Flicker of Darkness
Mara wasn't surprised when Kevin called her that afternoon. She had expected him to call yesterday, actually, just to make sure that Rafe had actually showed up and hadn't bolted in Sioux Falls to parts unknown.
"Hi, Kev, the thoroughbred is just fine."
"Uh, hi, Mara. Um. Huh?"
"Rafe arrived in one piece. He seemed to be settling in okay, though something he read in the news must have troubled him. He was awfully pale when I came in for lunch, and had a bit of that "deer in the headlights" look about him. Other than that, he's just fiiiine." Mara drawled out the last word, giving verbal notice that she was going to be picking Kevin's brain to find out what was going on.
"Great! I'm delighted to hear he's settled in well."
"Kev?"
"Yeah?"
"Cut the crap."
"Ummmm, exactly what crap am I supposed to be cutting?"
"Your Arabian was looking mighty white around the eyes, like he wanted to bolt. He hasn't even been exposed to the full glory of Pittsville yet, and I certainly haven't tried to interview him. So as far as *I* know there shouldn't be anything setting him off at this end."
"Mara, I'm sorry, I haven't the foggiest what he might have read that would, as you so delightfuly phrased it, 'be setting him off.'"
"So, he hasn't been in touch?"
"Well other than a vague email from him to let me know he was in Pittsville..."
"..."
"I heard that. He really didn't say much in the email, certainly nothing about what might be going on. He did have a question about a big picnic we're planning later this summer..."
"A picnic?? You're pulling my leg. So, any nasties from the Windy City looking to do some horse rustling that you know of?"
"Damn it, Mara. Stop with the livestock references," Kevin growled under his breath not so much at Mara, as at her blasted perspicaciousness. And, wondering what the hell was going on that Rafe had spotted in the news that would rattle him so much that he'd set off Mara's unerring news radar.
"Well? No more dog and pony show. I promise. But, what's going on??"
"Mara, I really don't know. How about if you tell Rafe to call me tonight when you go home..."
"I'll do you one better. Give me a couple minutes and I'll call Rafe and tell him to call you now."
"Welll..."
"Well what? You're stalling something here. Do I need to get out the shotgun and keep it loaded by my bed?"
"You don't have a shotgun. You are so anti-NRA liberal..."
"Do so have a gun, Dad's hunting rifle. I don't have any ammo for it, but I hear Wal-Mart's got a sale going for spring hunting season..."
"Mara. Full stop! This isn't anything that will send you to the extreme of shopping at your all-time favorite store. Yes, I'll talk to Rafe, but have him call me from your office."
"Anything special about my office you need to know about. Or, hey! Worst case scenario -- you're worried someone is tapping my home phone??" Mara was starting to steam a little herself. If there was something to worry about, she wanted to know.
She hadn't lived in Chicago for almost 8 years now. However, even the news covered in Pittsville got a little too exciting in a negative way every now and again. She didn't want to get blindsided like they had been a couple of years ago when there was a major federal bust on a meth lab 10 miles into the middle of nowhere outside of Pittsville.
Seems they had been supplying the five state area and then some, having set themselves up as a fictitious hardware store. The bust took out enough inventory for a nice sized hardware store, as well as most of the chemicals for the various 'recipes' for methamphetamines in existence. Danged slick front they had had, and, where they were located and how they picked up their supplies, no one noticed, the lab having been buried in about three layers of various addresses.
The FBI and the fed's hazardous waste cleanup bunch had been around for several weeks, cleaning up the mess and making sure there weren't chemicals stashed elsewhere for retrieval later. It had been a gawdawful mess in more ways than one.
Mara smirked. She had taken up skeet shooting after that debacle, and did keep the rifle in good shape. Not happy with owning a firearm, but compromising as it wasn't exactly an Uzi that she was packing. It was Dad's old deer hunting rifle for cripes' sake. She hated the taste of game so skeet shooting it was to keep up some semblance of knowledge of the gun.
She had ruefully shaken her head when she realized this was what the framers of the constitution had in mind for the right to bear arms. Pittsville was in the middle the southeastern plains of South Dakota. She supposed if a determined motorcycle gang, or whatever!, decided they wanted the town for their own, it would be easy enough to take, but she wasn't going to go down without a fight.
"Mara, you still there?" Kevin's voice called her back from her brief mental wandering.
"Yes."
"So will you have Rafe call me from your office?"
"How about I go get him right now? Give me 20 minutes and I'll have him back here and even dial your number for him. If THIS phone's tapped," she giggled, "good luck getting anything newsworthy to scoop on!!! At least at home, there's about one chance in a million that I'd call an interesting 900 number or something. Wouldn't want to do it on the paper's dime."
"Mara, you wild thing. You've got yourself a deal. Go get Rafe. I wanna know what's going on, as well."
"Kev, if we're making a mountain out of a mole hill, I'm charging that call back to you! Gotta save my dimes for my paycheck for those lascivious phone calls from my home phone."
-----------------------------
Rafe had made his way through Mara's most recent scrap book and then had grabbed his ratty copy of Chomsky's tome on media control. He was presently well into that short book, wondering if seeing a work by Noam Chomsky, that economic dissident cum theoretical linguist cum political activist would piss Mara off. Their conversational topics so far hadn't ventured into what her particular political / economical leanings might be. He presumed because she was editor and owner of the paper that she'd be rather conservative in her economics, but beyond that...
He heard the back door open and put down the book. Surprised to see Mara in the middle of what was supposedly a busy afternoon, he silently raised an eyebrow in query.
"Hi, there, sorry if I startled you again, but I just had a nice chat with your boss. He expressed an interest in speaking with you this afternoon. In my office no less," she raised her eyebrows back at him.
She smiled pleasantly at him, but there was an edge there, just a touch of a shark of some sort showing. He knew that look, and if the shark could speak it would be saying something like 'I'm going to get to the bottom of this, whether or not it goes into print.' He could see, even more plainly now, why a woman like her, growing up in the middle of the plains would be accepted into the prestigious Medill School of Journalism at Northwestern University.
He found that look...attractive. It brought her face to life and he knew a bit of what her thoughts might be at that moment.
He mentally shook his head to bring himself back to the present. No drooling unless it was Miss South Dakota, remember, Rafe? Certainly no saliva lost over his boss's best friend ex whatever.
"So did Kevin say what he wanted?"
"He told me some cockamamie story about your sending him an email about a picnic three or four months down the road."
Damn.
"Well, it is a very, very large picnic he throws every year for the crème de la crème of the Chicago nouveaux riches and news hounds."
"Hmmm," her smiled had moved a very small notch to show even more disbelief at the 'cockamamie story,' "I'll have to get on his case about that, he's never invited me. Maybe while you're talking picnic you can get me ***added to that guest list??***"
He smirked at her, to let her know he knew she wasn't talking picnic at that point.
"So, are you telling me I'm not enough of a... awww, what would it be, my French is SOOOO rusty. I'm not enough of a chienne de chasse de nouvelles."
"Ms. Pitts, I would NEVER call you a chienne," he quipped back with a straight face. "Not unless you gave me cause to..."
Mara gaped at him, delighted that he was able to return the thrust and parry of sarcasm, in two languages no less. Her mouth snapped shut and she shot back at him, "Darn straight! You had better not call me a bi..."
"So how about a ride back to work," he butted in smoothly.
"Yes, that works. Maybe you can ferret out just why YOUR boss..."
"Hey, I thought he was your friend!"
"As I was saying, YOUR BOSS? You know? Mr. Kuntzler? You wouldn't have to ferret too much, all I want to know is why he'd rather you call him from my office when I've got a perfectly good phone sitting on that end table right next to you," she said pleasantly and smiled sweetly at Rafe. And moved in for the kill, "and why you couldn't possibly call him from your cell phone that I'm sure you've got hidden away somewhere in your belongings. And don't say anything about being in a coverage-free zone, I'll have you know..."
Rafe jumped in again, "Mara. Let's go." He rose, a little stiffly, she noticed, from the sofa but he didn't seem to be anywhere near as lamed as he had seemed yesterday. Rafe grabbed his cane and saw Mara looking rather fixedly at his leg.
"What can I say, Ms. Pitts, you have a wonderful hot water tank that I took full advantage of this morning. That water must be from a healing artesian well somewhere, I sure as heck wouldn't drink it," he paused for a moment as he thought back a half hour earlier when he had poured himself a glass of tap water to quench his thirst. He had promptly spit the first mouthful out into the kitchen sink. "But I'm a new man. Have you thought about opening a spa in the area?"
Mara grinned, "I'll take that under advisement, Mr. Moretti. Shall we?" She gestured in the direction of the back door. "I keep bottled water in the refrigerator. Please accept my humble apologies for not having informed you of that fact."
Rafe grinned back, and they left to go to her office.
posted by Dace @ 12:08 AM
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