by Nic Saint
“If he orders his Secret Service to take me out back for a neck shot tell my parents I love them, all right?”
“You’ll be just fine.”
She wasn’t too sure about that. She’d seen the way the President handled reporters. Chances were she wasn’t going to make it out of there alive.
Chase seemed to sense her apprehension, for he said, “If worse comes to worst, just tell them you’re with Fox News. The President loves Fox News. He’ll think you’re the best thing since sliced bread and he’ll probably try to make you ambassador to Finland or put you in charge of Homeland Security.”
She didn’t respond. Just then, her phone sang out Dua Lipa’s One Kiss. She saw it was that Otto Paunch guy again. Great timing.
“Hi, Mr. Paunch.”
“Hey, Miss Poole. Have you changed that rich list yet? I’m looking at the Hampton Cove Gazette website and President Wilcox’s name is still absent from the list.”
“I… have been a little busy, Mr. Paunch. But I’m on it.”
“That’s great. Oh, and while you’re at it, could you also change the President’s Wikipedia page? I see it says here that he was on the cover of Time Magazine twenty-one times. That’s incorrect. He’s been on the cover fifty times, more than any other president ever and certainly more than Richard Nixon, who was on the cover only forty-three times.”
“Um…”
“Can I count on you for that, Miss Poole?”
“Well, I don’t actually—”
“Thanks. You’re amazing. Talk to you soon!”
“I don’t actually work for Wikipedia,” she said, but Mr. Paunch had already disconnected. She stared at her phone. So weird.
“Who was that?” asked Chase.
“Otto Paunch. He’s one of President Wilcox’s best friends and he keeps calling me to change stuff online.”
“Like what?”
“Like the rich list we published, or now he was asking about his Wikipedia page.”
“I guess Presidents do that kind of thing all the time. They’re very sensitive when it comes to public perception.”
“But… I don’t work for Wikipedia.”
“No one does. They’ve got editors who write those pages.”
But then she forgot all about Otto Paunch and his strange requests. They’d arrived at the forecourt of Lago-a-Oceano and Odelia was duly impressed. It looked like something out of a fairytale, the porticoed entrance supported by columns, lending it a classical look. The mansion itself was huge, with dozens of windows looking out across the forecourt, the impressive building sporting a distinctly Spanish architectural style.
“It looks… amazing,” she gasped, then, “I’m underdressed, Chase. Grossly underdressed.”
“We’re here in an official capacity, Poole. Not as guests.”
And then a small army of Agent Smiths descended upon them and that was the end.
Chapter 15
Scarlett Canyon was filing her nails when the phone rang. Again. She sighed deeply, put down her nail file and picked up the phone. “Dr. Poole’s office. How can I help you?”
“Hi,” said a croaky voice. “My name is Ida LaBelle and I think I have a boil on my butt. Can you tell me what I have to do to get rid of it?”
“I’ll schedule an appointment with Dr. Poole.”
“No!” cried the voice. “I mean—I can’t. I’m a busy woman with a lot on my plate. But you sound like a clever person. And you work for a doctor so obviously you must know a lot about medicine. So please just tell me—advise me—what should I do?”
Scarlett studied her nails. She’d just gotten new gel nails down at the nail salon but she wasn’t convinced about the color. They were pink with little glittery ladybugs. She would have preferred the blue ones with the gold sparkly hearts. “I’m sorry, dear,” she now intoned. “I don’t know nothing about no butt boils.”
“But… you work for a doctor, don’t you?”
“Yah. So?”
“So you must be a licensed receptionist.”
“Look, honey. If you want to make an appointment, make an appointment already. Otherwise stop wasting my frickin’ time.”
“You are aware that you’re supposed to be a licensed receptionist to work for a medical professional, right? If not the inspectors might come in and arrest you for fraud.”
“What inspectors? What are you talking about?”
“You can’t just walk in from the street and start working for a doctor. You need to have the necessary paperwork. Didn’t nobody ever tell you that, Scarlett?”
She stared at the phone for a moment. That voice… “How do you know my name?”
“Because… I read it in the yellow pages just now.”
“I’m not in the yellow pages. Do people even still use the yellow pages?”
“Forget about the yellow pages and listen to me for a sec. I’m just trying to help you out here. If you don’t got no license you’re not even supposed to be in there, sitting at that desk and typing at that computer. Inspectors will come in and bust you if you don’t quit.”
“Vesta? Is that you?”
Silence. Then: “My name is Ida LaBelle. And I’m calling about my butt boil.”
“Oh, fiddlesticks, ‘Ida.’ And your butt boil! I’m telling Tex you’re harassing me!”
“You’re denying me medical treatment! That’s a federal crime! I could bust you for that, you booby bimbo!”
“Buzz off, Vesta,” said Scarlett, and thunked down the phone.
Just then, Tex walked in from the office, a smile on his face. “And how is my favorite receptionist doing? Was that a patient?”
“Nah. Just your mother-in-law trying to mess with me.”
The smile disappeared. “Vesta? What did she want?”
“I don’t know. Something about a butt boil and a license.” She waggled a nail. “She’s going to make trouble for you, Dr. Tex, I’m telling you. That woman is like a dog with a bone. She’ll keep coming back until you give her a kick in the bony rear end and be done with her.”
“I can’t kick my wife’s mother in the rear end,” said Tex, a little wistfully.
“Well, you should. I’ve known Vesta all my life. She’s a terror. I know she’s family and all, but sometimes you just have to draw a line in the sand, Dr. Tex. Take a stand.”
Tex didn’t look like he was prepared to take a stand. “If she calls again just tell her…” He hesitated, rooting around for a possible solution. “Just tell her not to call again,” he concluded lamely, then turned on his heel and disappeared into his office.
Scarlett smiled. “I’ll tell her just that and more,” she said to herself, then resumed the study of her nails. She needed more sparkle, she thought. Sparkle was the new pink.
The Agent Smiths that had converged upon Chase’s aged pickup now opened the door—both the passenger side and the driver’s side—then proceeded to escort the cop and his assistant out of the car. They all had those black sunglasses, making it impossible for Odelia to see their eyes, and for some reason they kept pressing their fingers into their ears.
But instead of taking them into the house, they escorted them right around it.
“Where are you taking us?” asked Odelia. The men assumed a dignified silence, though. She turned to Chase. “Where are they taking us?”
“To see the President. I hope.”
He didn’t seem worried, so Odelia tried to relax. If the hardened cop wasn’t worried, she probably shouldn’t be, either. But she couldn’t help it—she was worried.
“I think they found out I’m a reporter, Chase,” she said now. “They must have scanned my face or something and got a hit in their database and now the secret is out. It’s just like I told you: they’re taking us out back to give us neck shots and bury our mangled corpses in the woods!”
“And how would our corpses end up being mangled?” asked Chase, amused.
“They’ll torture us first! Try to find out what we know!”
“Know a
bout what?”
She flapped her arms. “I don’t know!”
He placed a reassuring hand on her lower back. “See? You don’t know. So there’s no need for them to torture you.”
“Okay, I’m taking back the mangled corpses thing. So they’ll just shoot us and bury us. Where we’ll never be found.” She took out her phone. “I need to tell my parents.”
“Tell them what?”
“Where we are! If they have a last known location maybe they can tell Uncle Alec to come and find us. Give us a proper Christian burial!”
“I think you’re overreacting, honey. The President of the United States doesn’t kill people in his backyard. At least not as far I know.”
At this point, the Men in Black—or Agent Smiths—seemed to have entered the final straight, for they were talking into their wrists again, muttering incomprehensible jargon under their breaths. And then she saw it—or rather, she saw him: the POTUS.
They’d arrived at what looked like an animal enclosure. It was a circular area, cordoned off by a three-foot-high fence, and offered the weirdest sight Odelia had ever encountered, and in her days as a reporter she’d encountered many weird sights.
This one took the cake, though: the President of the United States was… wrestling with a very large hog, both of them down and dirty in two inches of mud, and they were really going at it, the President holding the hog in a death grip, and the hog kicking its legs and desperately trying to escape.
Both man and beast were covered in mud from top to toe, but that didn’t seem to bother either. And then Odelia saw that a second hog had entered the fray, and was now jumping on top of the President, presumably to open a second front and save its buddy.
“What’s going on here?” Odelia asked as she watched the proceedings, wide-eyed.
“The President is wrestling a hog,” said Chase, who seemed more amused than surprised. “Two hogs, in fact. Oh, look, there’s number three. Raising the stakes.”
About a dozen Secret Service agents guarded the hog enclosure’s perimeter, their expressions inscrutable, and their stance vigilant and alert. If those hogs tried any funny business they’d be on them in a heartbeat, that stance seemed to indicate.
The leader of the free world, meanwhile, still had the upper hand, but with three hogs against one human, he was having to fight hard to maintain his advantage. The hog he was holding onto slipped out of his grip, perhaps due to the slippery conditions, and the President now rose to his feet and assumed a wrestler’s pose, the hogs circling him warily. And then one of them moved in for the kill, squealing like… a pig, and went on the attack!
The President simply stepped aside and then landed a crushing blow to the hog’s back! Hog and man went down in a splash of mud, and now the other pigs joined in.
“I can’t watch this,” said Odelia, who’d never been a big fan of wrestling.
“My money is on the President,” said Chase, who seemed to enjoy the show tremendously. But then suddenly it was all over.
From the house, a woman came hurrying over. Odelia recognized her as Rima, President Wilcox’s wife of five years. She was a former model and looked absolutely stunning. Tall and willowy, with raven hair, a dark complexion and one of those hourglass figures you read so much about but rarely see in real life, she came teetering over on high heels, dressed in a skintight sparkly number that revealed some stunning décolletage.
“Van!” she was yelling, her voice plaintive. “Oh, Van!”
Van, who by now was holding the three hogs by the necks, looked up at the sound of his wife’s voice. “I’m a little busy here, honey!” he yelled.
“Ooh, not with the piggies again, Van,” she said as she surveyed the scene with a look of distaste. “How many times have I told you not to fight the piggies. You get dirty.”
“And I love it!” her husband yelled, and got up, allowing the hogs a little break.
One of the Secret Service agents handed him a towel, and the President wiped the mud from his face.
“It’s the President of France, Van,” said his wife. “He wants to talk to you.”
“Tell him I’ll call him back,” said the President.
“But he’s called three times already. He wants your advice on a very important matter.”
The President rolled his eyes. “What is it this time? The war in the Middle East? Russia? North Korea? A NATO emergency?”
“He wants to paint the Elysées Palace white. And he wants to know what paint he should use. He wants to make it look just like our White House.”
“Ooh! I know that!” said the President, snapping his fingers. “He should use Whisper White exterior paint. Yup, that’s it. It’s manufactured by Duron. Tell him to look for Duron Exterior Alkyd Oil Gloss Whisper 248 paint. That should do the trick. Oh, and tell him this information is gonna cost him.”
“I’ll send him the bill,” said the First Lady, then happily tripped away again.
“He who works for free is a dumbass,” said the President with a wide grin, handing back the towel to the Secret Service agent. “Now how can I help you folks?”
Chapter 16
“We’re investigating the murder of Dick Dickerson,” said Chase.
The President, a large man with a square face and a blond mane, stepped out of the enclosure and straight into a large kiddie pool that had been set up right next to the hog enclosure. Steam rose from the pool surface. He submerged himself into the warm water and sighed happily. “Aaaah,” he said, luxuriating. “This is the life. Who are you, by the way?”
“Oh, I’m sorry. My name is Chase Kingsley, and I’m a detective with the Hampton Cove Police Department. And this is Odelia Poole, our civilian consultant.”
At least Chase hadn’t mentioned that Odelia was a reporter, she thought with a silent sigh of relief. Her fear of being shot had lessened somewhat but was still at the back of her mind. “We understand Mr. Dickerson was a good friend of yours, Mr. President?”
“Just call me Van,” said the President. “So you’re Miss Poole, huh? I know about you. You work for the Hampton Cove Gazette.”
Shoot!
“You wrote that article about the ten richest people in Hampton Cove.”
“Guilty as charged,” she said meekly, nervously glancing around at the Secret Service people and hoping they wouldn’t go for their guns.
“I loved your article, Miss Poole, but I don’t understand why you didn’t give me top billing. I am the richest man in Hampton Cove, after all.”
“Yes, that has been brought to my attention, Mr. Pre—Van.”
He wagged a finger. “Don’t tell me. Otto Paunch, huh?”
“He has been calling me,” Odelia admitted.
“Good old Otto. He looks out for me.”
“So what’s up with the… hogs?” asked Chase.
The President laughed. “Have you ever been President of the United States, Detective Kingsley? Don’t answer that. It’s a rhetorical question. But if you had, you’d know that Washington is a tough town. Really tough. Those monkeys on the Hill fight dirty. So to be prepared I’ve been wrestling hogs. It’s working, too. I think I got those politicians licked.”
A Secret Service man had walked up. “Mr. President, sir,” he said. “Will you be needing the hogs or can we return them to the pen?”
The President waved a hand. “You can put them back in the pen. Oh, and give them a nice treat, will you? They played a great game.” He turned back to his guests. “I love those hogs. I even named them. Crazy Chuck, Nutty Nancy, Horrible Hillary and Bonky Obama.”
“There’s four of them?” asked Odelia.
“Yeah, Bonky Obama didn’t want to come out today. Sulking as usual. Anyhoo!” He splashed his hands in the water and a plastic yellow duck popped up. He grabbed it and dunked it down again. “Dick Dickerson. Yes, he was a friend of mine. A dear, dear friend.”
“Any idea who might have done this to him?” asked Chase.
“Well, Dickie
had a lot of enemies,” said the President, thoughtful. “In fact I think you should probably talk to Damon Galpin.”
“The actor?”
“Yeah.” The President’s smile died away. “He likes to think he’s me but he’s not.”
Damon Galpin had become famous for imitating the President on Saturday Night Live, and it was obvious the real President was not a fan.
“Why would Galpin have a grudge against Dick Dickerson?” asked Odelia.
“Well, Miss Poole, you’ll have to ask him that. The only thing Dick ever told me was that Galpin hated his guts. He once even attacked him.”
“Attacked him?”
“In an underground parking lot in New York. Became physical. He got in a couple punches before someone dragged him off Dick. Dick never pressed charges, even though I told him to. He was a softie, Dick was.” The President’s features softened at the memory of his dear friend. “Heart of gold. I’ll miss him.”
“There is a rumor that the two of you had fallen out. Is there any truth to that?”
The President gave Odelia a dirty look. “Now who put that idea into your head? Dick and I were like brothers. Never a bad word between us. I loved that guy. Loved him!”
“It’s just… a rumor… Van,” said Odelia uncertainly.
“That’s Mr. President to you, Miss Poole,” said the President coldly. He then hollered to his Secret Service people, “Can you get these bozos out of here? I don’t have time for this nonsense. And someone get me President Macron on the phone!”
And with these words, their interview was terminated. The Secret Service people ushered Odelia and Chase out, first escorting them back to their car, and then watching as they drove off and left the premises.
At least nobody had shot her, Odelia thought, and thrown her body to be fed on by the hogs.
Chapter 17
Brutus watched as Harriet watched Max who was watching Dooley study a brownish smear on the wall. Next to him, Milo suddenly emerged, like a genie from a lamp, and tsk-tsked mildly.