After the usual arguing and grumbling, Chelsea managed to herd the three girls off to the campsite facilities. When they returned, Chelsea said, “The bathrooms are disgusting. Next time, pick a better place to camp.”
Jason had the van set up for the night. “Okay, girls. Lizzy and Lilly, snuggle down into your nice warm, comfy sleeping bags. I’ll put Lucy into her crib thing, and we can all go to sleep.” He picked Lucy up and placed her in the converted crib. She was very active, and they thought that by converting a crib into a bed for their five-year-old, they would provide sidewalls that would keep her in place for the night. “Good night, Lucy. We love you.”
Jason and Chelsea got comfortable on the fold-down bed. The older girls were surprisingly quiet, tired from the hard work of painting their little sister blue. After some shuffling around in the converted crib, Lucy seemed to quiet down, too. Jason, lying on his back as usual, had just nodded off into a pleasant and sorely needed sleep when he felt a sharp pain in his groin, followed by pressure on his upper torso as Lucy crawled up his body, placed her face just above his, looked him in the eyes and said, “Hi, Daddy.”
Jason and Chelsea both laughed when they realized what had happened. He took her in his arms, placed her back in her crib. “Come on now, Lucy. It’s bedtime. Time to go to sleep. You need to stay in your cage . . . I mean bed.”
But Lucy wasn’t having any of that. She was wide awake, and time after time, all through the night, she kept escaping the crib, climbing up Jason’s body, never once missing the chance to plant a foot or knee in his groin, and then looking him square in the face and saying, “Hi, Daddy.” This went on until six in the morning, and Jason and Chelsea got no sleep at all.
Jason was exhausted. “Chelse, I wish we’d have thought to bring something to put over the top of that crib thing. Four walls just aren’t enough. We need a full-blown cage.”
With no sleep at all, Jason and Chelsea decided to get up and fix breakfast. When Jason looked out the window of the van, it was starting to get light outside, and he saw that heavy cloud-cover still hung over the campgrounds. Just as he started to open the side door of the van on his way to the bathroom, the sky opened up and it felt like someone was dumping bathtubs full of water on him. He was drenched the second he stepped foot out of the vehicle. To no one in particular he bellowed, “Damned camping! Damned rain! Whose stupid idea was this, anyhow? You gotta have a screw loose to leave the warm, dry comfort of your home for this!”
He heard Lilly say, “Daddy has to put a quarter in the cuss jar.”
The bathroom was damp and filthy; at least one toilet was clogged and the odor of human waste hung in the air. Jason looked around, and said to no one in particular, “This is nice. The showers look like they’ve never been cleaned, the green mold covering the shower curtains is most attractive, and the musty smell is almost as bad as the toilets.” Jason relieved himself, noticed there was no soap or paper towels and was afraid to wash his hands in the grimy sink. He gave up and fled back to the van.
When he got back from the bathroom, Chelsea was sitting on the bed with her hands over her ears. All three girls were yelling at once. Lucy was crying, wailing above the noise of the storm. Lizzy and Lilly were screaming that they were cold and hungry and wanted to go home. Chelsea looked like she was going to strangle him, then jump out of the van and run away. Jason, standing there, looking at his distraught family through the side door of the van, made a command decision. “Family. We’re getting the hell out of here. Chelsea, let’s pack up and head home.” He looked at Lucy. “I know, another quarter for the damned cuss jar.”
In the pouring and blowing rain, he walked to the back of the van, frantically yanked down the two large, soaking-wet tents, wadded them up and threw tents, stakes, clean and dirty kitchen equipment, the whole lot, into the back.
“Chelse, push the button to convert the bed back into a bench seat, buckle everyone in, and let’s get the hell out of Dodge.” For once, no one argued with him.
They made good time getting home, and the girls slept the entire trip, but it took those tents over a week to dry out hanging in the garage. That was that for family camping. The camper van appeared for sale on eBay the very next week.
CHAPTER 10
Captain Harold Jennings was a well-respected pilot for United Airlines, based out of Charlotte Douglas International Airport in Charlotte, North Carolina. He was in his early fifties, tall, slender and still in prime physical shape. Women considered him attractive, with his dark hair, graying at the temples, dark-brown eyes, dimpled chin and friendly smile. While he made a striking figure in his captain’s uniform, he was considered a little eccentric, as he had been seen dancing up the gangway toward the plane with a red rose in his teeth on at least two occasions. Some worried that drugs or alcohol might be involved, but he had always passed the requisite testing, and to date his safety record was impeccable. He was seldom home, volunteering for extra flight time with United and moonlighting as a cargo pilot.
His lonely wife had hooked up with a neighbor and got the house in Charlotte in the divorce. Jennings purchased a townhouse in Greensboro, not far from Raleigh-Durham International Airport, where he kept his private plane, a Cessna TTx.
On a beautiful sunny Saturday in June, Captain Jennings, exhausted from long hours at both jobs, decided to fly his Cessna to Tampa for a couple of days at the beach. He filed his flight plan and taxied his plane onto the runway. The air traffic controller said from the tower, “You’re cleared for takeoff, Captain Jennings. Have a good flight.” The controller was an old friend of the pilot and was aware of his destination and plans for the weekend.
Captain Jennings piloted a smooth takeoff, and responded to his friend, who heard, “Hello there. Who are you, and what are you doing in my cockpit? Damn, you’re a looker.” Then Jennings said, “Oh baby. We’re gonna have a blast at the beach. God, you are hot. You have the body of a goddess.”
“Captain Jennings . . . Harold?” the controller radioed. “What did you say? Please repeat. Is everything okay?”
Jennings said, “That’s it. Take off your blouse. Hell, let’s get naked right here, right now. We’ll do the mile-high thing, but instead of the bathroom we’ll do it right here in the cockpit. Bring that bodacious body over here!”
The controller was even more confused and more than a little alarmed when he saw the Cessna unexpectedly change course, heading due west instead of southwest. “Harold, what the hell are you doing? You are off course. You need to get that Cessna back on your scheduled flight plan or you are going to cause a major disaster!”
Jennings didn’t respond and instead said, “Oh baby, do that some more. Don’t stop! Yes, I want you bad, real bad. Damn, we need a bigger cockpit! Careful, don’t pull that, it controls the flaps. Oh yeah, do pull on that. That’s real nice.”
The Cessna continued to fly off course, and the controller became frantic, as he could see on his screen that a large passenger jet was headed for a collision with Jennings’s plane. “Harold, please respond! You are off course. Repeat, you are off course. Please return to your assigned flight plan, or you’re going to collide with a passenger jet. Repeat, return to your assigned course, immediately!”
The controller heard, “John, leave me the fuck alone. I’m setting a record for the mile-high cockpit club. Gina here is one hot babe, and we’re about to set this plane on fire. Oh baby!”
The controller checked the flight plan for the Cessna again, but as he already knew, Captain Harold Jennings was the only one scheduled to be on board the flight. He said, “Harold, who the hell are you talking to? There’s no one scheduled for your flight but you. Did you sneak a woman on board? What the fuck are you doing? This is highly irregular.”
Again, no response from Jennings, but he heard, “Oh God! Oh God! Gina, ooooh! Please don’t stop! I’m just about there! Oh yes, yes! Do that!”
Finally, after several more tense moments the controller heard, “Aaaah. Oh my God, so g
ood, I’m gonna explode!” And then, “Oh shit!”
The FAA discovered the remains of the plane in a field just southeast of Greensboro, North Carolina. Only one body was found in the debris, a male, presumably Captain Harold Jennings. When the FAA investigators interrogated the air traffic controller, he seemed completely befuddled. “Just after takeoff, I heard Harold . . . Captain Jennings talking to someone in the cockpit, although there was no one else scheduled to be on the flight. Captain Jennings described the other person as a hot blonde, and said they were going to set the record for the mile-high cockpit club. I’m not sure that’s even a thing. Anyhow, the rest of what he said sounded like the dialogue of a porno movie. It sounded like this other person, Jennings called her Gina, was doing things to him to bring him to . . . well . . . a happy ending. He seemed to get there right about the same time the Cessna hit the ground. Talk about your big time climaxes. This one ended in an actual explosion. I was kind of jealous of Harold, right up until the time his Cessna ate dirt.”
CHAPTER 11
Jason’s life was more hectic than ever, what with his job at the FDA and his first case as a private detective. When they met at home on Friday night, about a month after their ill-fated camping trip, Chelsea informed him, “Jason, you need to spend more time with the girls, especially our little one, Lucy. You’ve been working on that stupid case for the past couple of weekends, and the girls have missed you. Tomorrow I’m taking the older girls shopping for some new clothes. Lucy’s a handful, and if we take her with us to the mall, we’ll spend the whole time chasing her and won’t get anything done. She likes to ride the escalators. Remember the leash?”
Jason groaned. “How could I ever forget that? We tried the leash after she decided to get on the crowded mall elevator by herself and ride to the third floor. I had to sprint up two down escalators to get to her before she got off and lost in the crowd. That was scary as hell.”
“I still can’t believe you actually found a leash designed for a small child. I’ll never forget that large woman screaming at you for treating your daughter like a dog, and then beating you about the head and shoulders with her folded umbrella, until a mall cop finally pulled her off of you.”
Jason sighed. “Yeah. That was painful. We threw the leash away and gave up. If we ever take Lucy to the mall again, one of us has to hang onto her at all times while the others shop. You’ll definitely get more done if I stay home with her. We can play in the basement. You know me, I like to spend time with the girls. I’m just a big kid myself.”
Chelsea rolled her eyes. “No argument from me. Like the time you bought Lizzy a radio-controlled car when she was six? I’m still convinced you bought that thing for a much larger kid. And then you took her into the garage to play with it, yelled at her when she kept crashing it into the walls, and took the controller away from her so you could demonstrate how to use it. If memory serves, you never gave her back the controller.”
“Yeah. I remember. And you had no right to take the car away from me . . . us. You did that eye-roll thing that you always do, and confiscated the car. That was mean, and not fair to Lizzy, or me.”
“And I still stand by my statement that it’s a pain raising four children,” Chelsea said.
Jason knew he didn’t have a chance with this argument, so he gave up.
The next morning Chelsea, Lizzy and Lilly headed off to the mall, and Jason stayed home with little Lucy. He told Lucy, “So, how about a healthy breakfast of chocolate-covered cake donuts?” Both he and Lucy were quite fond of this wholesome choice. Jason thought it must be a genetic thing. He continued, “Mommy forbade me to give you girls donuts for breakfast. But Mommy’s at the mall, now isn’t she?”
After breakfast, Jason asked Lucy what she would like to do. “Daddy, I want to go down to the basement and play dress up.” These were not words that Jason ever liked to hear from any of his daughters. He’d been there before with the other two, and he knew how this story ended. Lucy saw Jason’s reluctance, immediately gave him the face, and said, “Come on, Daddy, please, oh please.”
Jason saw the sad puppy face and said, “Lucy, not the face. I’m onto you. Your sisters used that on me, and I’ve learned my lesson.”
Lucy’s lower lip quivered, and her puppy face got even cuter and sadder. “Pretty please, Daddy, just for a little while.”
Jason’s really hated playing dress up, and his resolve was strong as she took him by the hand and led him to the basement, where the makeup kit was already set up. “Take it easy on me, Lucy. Last time it took me three days to wash off all the makeup.”
Chelsea had made the mistake of allowing Jason to furnish the large finished basement of their home. Instead of regular furniture, he had chosen to construct a large plastic castle-type jungle gym, complete with slide, in the middle of the room. In one corner he placed a couch facing a TV cabinet with a flat-screen TV and not one but three different video-game consoles and a DVD player. There was even a small, electric-powered car for Lucy to drive around the large room, and there were nerf swords, a gun that launched nerf balls, and a small trampoline. When Lucy was still a baby, Jason and the two older girls had spent many hours on weekends staging nerf wars as the troll, a.k.a. Jason, attacked the jungle gym castle with the damsels inside, while baby Lucy crawled around on the carpeted floor.
Lucy was determined to play dress up, Jason’s least favorite thing in the world—with the possible exception of reading Dr. Seuss’s Hop-on-Pop for the eight millionth time. Jason tried to distract her, “Hey, Lucy. How about a game of troll? Or a ride in your car? You can chase me around the basement in your car. Wouldn’t that be fun?”
But she wouldn’t be deterred. She led him over to the makeup table against the back wall of the room and said, “Daddy, sit. I’ll make me pretty first, and then it’s your turn.”
Jason groaned as he struggled to sit on the floor, leaning against the wall. His large behind just wouldn’t fit in the child-sized beauty parlor chair. “Go easy, Lucy. Mommy will be mad at me if we make a big mess, or if it takes hours to clean you up.”
At age five, Lucy had become quite sophisticated at the art of applying makeup. First, she got all dolled up in one of her sequined pink party dresses, complete with feathered hat. Jason said, “Well, don’t you look beautiful.”
“Thanks, Daddy. Now, one for you.” Then she got out a larger pink hat, also sporting several large feathers and covered in multicolored sequins, and put it on Jason’s head.
From there, she got out the makeup, applying eyeliner and rouge first to her face, and then to Jason’s face. “Go easy. I have to go to work Monday morning, and if I can’t wash this off I’ll get all kinds of funny looks.”
Then, it was time for the lipstick. Lucy looked around for it and said, “Daddy, I can’t find my red lipstick. Do you see it?”
Jason looked around the room and shook his head; toy debris was everywhere. “Lucy, I’m afraid you’re going to have to pick another color. I doubt we could find anything that small in this mess.”
Lucy said, “I’ll bet it went under the couch to hide.” Jason wondered how Lucy was going to search under the sofa, since it had short legs and was not very far off the floor. He was impressed when she used one of her makeup mirrors to search under it for the lipstick. She held the mirror near the bottom of the couch at an angle so she could see underneath in the reflection. She squealed with joy, and said, “There it is, Daddy. There’s my red lipstick.” She reached her small hand under the couch and pulled out the lipstick tube. He was impressed with her ingenuity but also sad that she found it because he knew what came next; he was in store for a set of bright-red lips.
Lucy took the lipstick, opened it, and said, “Okay, Daddy. Pucker up so I can put on your lipstick. You’ll be so pretty with bright red lips.”
When Chelsea, Lizzy, and Lilly returned from the mall, they searched the house for Dad and Lucy. Lizzy found them in the basement, snuggled up on the sofa with the final credits fo
r 101 Dalmatians rolling on the TV screen. There was Dad in a pink feathered hat, pink shawl, and full makeup, sitting on the couch asleep with his head slumped forward, and Lucy, also asleep with her head resting on his arm. Lizzy, a firm believer in social media, called softly to Dad, and when he opened his eyes and looked up she snapped several photos with her iPhone, which she immediately posted to Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. As Jason slowly woke up, he realized what had happened and he began to panic.
“Lizzy, what did you do?” he said loudly. “You can’t post those photos on social media. I’ll be a laughingstock. What about my job . . . my jobs! The government will think that I’m dressing in drag! And no self-respecting hard-boiled private eye would be caught dead like this. Where did you post those pictures? Give me your damned phone! Take down those posts. Recall those pictures! Someone help me!”
Chelsea heard all the commotion and went downstairs to see what was going on. When she saw Jason sitting there in his pink garb, she laughed hysterically. The other two daughters had tried a similar treatment on him when they were younger, but neither of them had gotten him this good.
“You look like something between a drag queen and a hooker from hell. How on earth did Lucy get away with dressing you up like this? She must have given you an extra special puppy face.”
Then she noticed the iPhone in Lizzy’s hand, and she said to her daughter, “No you didn’t! Your poor father is going to lose his job . . . both jobs, although I wouldn’t mind if he lost the PI thing. I want you to take down whatever posts you put on social media and call back whatever photos you sent to whomever. It’s not that your father didn’t deserve this, after what he let Lucy do to him. But we can’t really afford for him to lose one or both of his jobs. God forbid the government fires him because then all we would have is good old PI Longfellow, and I’m not sure I could live with that.”
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