by Clark Graham
“I have really good lawyers. We’ll make bail in a couple of hours,” Barry replied.
“I’m sure you do, but I can’t turn you over to the police. They ask too many questions, and a trail would only bring unwanted attention to our operations. No, we’ve been compromised here. We’ll have to pull up stakes and move. Of course, we’ll change our name. You’ll never see us again. As for you, Anna, we don’t have your battery, so there is no more use looking for it.”
She turned pale and gasped.
A guard came in and whispered something in the man with the suit’s ear. He handed him a note, then pointed to one of the driver’s licenses.
“I see.” The man picked up the license to look at it more closely, then sighed. “This is where we part ways.”
In a flash, Anna pulled out the gun from her bra and grabbed the man in the suit, sticking the gun to his head. “Order your men to stand down.”
The man swallowed hard. “Drop your guns, men.”
When they did, Barry, Donald and Carney grabbed them.
“Make way, we’re coming through,” Anna demanded.
Barry and the guys grabbed their wallets off the table, then following Anna.
“I was going to let you go,” The man in the suit protested.
“I don’t believe you.”
“Charlie, show her the note.”
One of the guards handed over a piece of paper. She read it. “I still don’t believe you.”
The five of them and their hostage walked through the gate back to the van. They let the man go and then drove off.
Chapter 23
“What did the note say?” Barry asked as they were driving away.
“You don’t know?”
“No, that’s why I asked.”
“The note said to let you go because you owned the company. It didn’t say anything about the rest of us.”
“I own the company?”
“Well, I think you’d know if you own a company or not.” She glared at him.
“Not necessarily. I have a business manager who deals with all my assets.”
“What? You have so much money that someone has to spend it for you?”
“No, it’s not like that.” He was getting defensive.
“What is it like then?” If her stare could bore a hole through him, it would have.
He thought for a minute. “Okay, it’s like that. I get a report once a month.”
She didn’t say anything, but nodded, still glaring.
Meanwhile, Carney was making his way to a safer part of town. He pulled over and got out. “Help me with this,” he said to no one in particular. He then started peeling the utility logos off the van. The rest of them came out and helped. He took off his vest and threw it in a dumpster. Barry did the same.
“When does the plane arrive?” Carney asked.
“Should be here now.”
“I’ll drive you to get the car and we can turn them both in to the rental company as soon as they open. Then let’s get out of this town.”
“Do you think they will come after us, or phone the police?” Anna asked.
“No, at least I hope not. If I do own the company, they won’t bother.”
Anna rolled her eyes.
“What?” Barry shrugged.
Anna and Barry were dropped off at the motel. They collected all the luggage and checked out of the rooms. Piling everything in the car, they drove towards the airport.
“I’m sorry I yelled at you,” she said. “It’s just, well, I can’t imagine having so much money that you don’t even know what you own.”
“It’s not as easy as it seems, trust me.”
“If it weren’t for you owning the company, we might all be dead right now. I guess, in a way, you saved my life.”
“You shouldn’t have even gone down there. That was Donald’s assignment. All you had to do was cut the fence and come back.” Barry had suppressed it for so long that it came out more forcefully than he had hoped.
“You’re right. I got caught up in the moment. Why did that bother you, anyway?”
“It worried me. I like you, I mean, a lot.”
She smiled. “That’s nice,” then kissed him on the cheek.
They arrived at the airport, but the car rental place wasn’t open yet. Before they got out of the car, he turned to her. “Sorry we didn’t get the battery. I don’t know where they could have hidden it.”
“That was so sweet of you to try.” This time she put both hands around his neck and kissed him soundly on the lips.
There was a tapping on the glass. Carney was standing outside the car. “If you two are finished, you can return the car. They just opened. I want to get out of this town while I’m still alive.”
They opened the door and stepped out. Donald came up behind Anna and said, “Get a room.”
“Mind your own business,” she scolded.
After getting the luggage out of the car, the four of them walked over to the airplane and boarded. It was a quiet flight home on the chartered plane. All of them fell asleep. When they landed, they dispersed to their own homes.
Eva was glad to see Barry. She had missed him terribly. “You poor thing, I’ll make you a cake roll to cheer you up,” she said, after she hugged him. Rosita hugged him too.
Barry walked up to his bedroom. It had been a long night full of stress and adventure. He made one phone call before going to bed.
After talking to John Adams, he went to sleep.
Chapter 24
Then next day, Barry woke up late. He couldn’t believe he had slept for twelve hours. Stiff and sore, he climbed out of bed. Was it a dream? I hope it was a dream. He knew it wasn’t.
He slipped on clothes and stumbled down to the living room. Smelling bacon, he turned to Eva and smiled. She waved back. He headed straight to the vase, turned the rotator and the light then watched it go round and round for a few minutes. Someone slipped their hand into his hand and held it. He turned to see Anna standing next to him.
“I came early to see you, but you weren’t up yet, so I talked to Eva until you came down. Thank you for all you did for me. Nobody’s ever tried that hard to make me happy before.” She kissed him on the cheek. Looking over she said, “That is a really beautiful urn.”
“Vase.”
“I’m going to go home over the break, and try to put Daddy’s notes together. I may be able to glean enough information to try again.”
He shook his head. “No need.”
“Do you think I should give up, then? You’re probably right. It almost cost us our lives. I just wanted to give my father a legacy.”
Barry smiled. “It’s right here. There is no need to build another one.” He opened the door to the cabinet under the vase. There on the shelf was the battery and the paperwork.
“What? It’s here? Barry, how did you get it? You’re a wonderful man. It’s amazing.” She touched the battery making sure it was real. “Where did you get it?”
“It was here the whole time.”
“What? What whole time?”
“The whole time we were trying to steal it, it was sitting on this shelf. I talked to John Adams, my company’s CEO, about Vdoom having a battery and me wanting it back. He went back to the office and researched the company. Their stock was trading low, so he bought the company and had them drive the battery over here. He missed me by an hour. Figuring I was on vacation and not wanting to be bothered, he put it on the shelf and then went home.”
Her jaw dropped open. “We did all of that for nothing?”
“I’m afraid so.”
She was laughing so hard she leaned against the cabinet.
“Careful, I can’t afford another urn, I mean vase.”
This only caused her to laugh harder, but she complied and took a couple of steps back.
Eva and Rosita came around the corner to see what was going on.
“Is breakfast ready?” he asked.
“Yes.”
> He grabbed Anna’s hand. “I’m hungry, let’s go eat.”
Anna finally stopped laughing and they all sat down at the table.
After breakfast, he volunteered to drive Anna home.
“I don’t like your car,” she admitted.
He was taken aback. “It’s a Ferrari.”
“I know. You’ve told me that over and over again. Let’s go car shopping.”
“But, it’s a Ferrari.”
“It’ll make a good trade in.”
Barry didn’t trade in the car. There was plenty of room in the five-car garage for another one. Four hours later, the couple came home with a Chevy SUV like the one they had rented in Spokane, except without the bullet holes. When they came back into the house, Eva and Rosita had gone home for the evening.
“What should we do now? Do you want to watch a movie? I have a killer home theater.”
She shook her head. “I’m starving. What about dinner and then maybe a movie?”
“Dinner? That’s such a great idea.”
“Yes, I have the same great idea about this time every day.”
He pulled out his phone and dialed. “Carney, do you have any food in that place of yours? Great, Anna and I will meet you down there.”
When he hung up she was staring at him. “You called Carney?”
“Absolutely, let’s go.”
“Really?”
“Come on.”
When they arrived down town, Barry knocked on the side door. It opened a minute later. “Hi, guys, welcome. Anna, I started a steak for you, but if you’re vegetarian I can whip up something else really fast.”
“No. a steak sounds great.” She sniffed as she walked in. “It smells great, too.”
Carney turned to Barry. “I’ve ordered everything I’ll need for the place. I’ll send you the bill. Should be open in two months or so.”
“I’m looking forward to it.”
“Wait, you bought a restaurant?”
“No, it’s Carney’s restaurant. I’m just helping him get it going again.”
“Oh.”
Carney went into the kitchen and came out with three hot rib eyes.
Anna tried hers. “Man, this is amazing.”
“Thanks.”
Months later, after the grand opening of Carney’s Cattle Company Steakhouse, the four co-conspirators, Barry, Donald, Anna, and Carney sat around talking.
“Well, what’s new with you, Anna?” Donald asked.
“I have a new rock.” She held up her engagement ring. “Barry finally popped the question.”
Both Donald and Carney congratulated them.
Donald cleared his throat. “I have a new job. Carney has been working around my school schedule instead of me having to schedule my school around my hours at the Country Club.”
“Excellent,” Barry replied.
Carney turned to Anna. “What ever happened to that battery of yours?”
She grimaced. “I had an independent lab do the testing. It takes twenty Rex batteries to power a car. They predicted the cost of each at around five hundred to a thousand dollars. The car ran like a champ for six months without a recharge.”
“Wow, that’s amazing.” Carney said.
“The problem is, once the battery is drained, there is no way to recharge it. They tried everything. It didn’t work.”
“So you have to put between ten and twenty thousand dollars back into your car every six months?”
“It’s not cost effective, so it’s back to the drawing board.”
“Sorry to hear it.”
Donald was all smiles. “So the internal combustion engine lives to fight another day?”
“I’m afraid so.”
He stood up and extended his glass. “Here’s to good friends, a good job and really good news. Long live the muscle car.”
Books by Clark Graham
Science Fiction
Fantasy
Mystery
Other
Sample Chapter
Moon Over Mykonos
Chapter 1
He woke up with a start. Something clanked downstairs, or at least he thought so. Jim Wilson sat up in bed and listened. There was that sound again; someone was definitely in his house. His heart started racing. What to do? what to do?
He got up and put some pants on. Then he rummaged through the cluttered bedroom closet, but there wasn’t anything that he could use as a weapon. He worried that he was making too much noise and would alert the prowler to his whereabouts.
Jim suddenly remembered that his son still had his baseball gear in his old bedroom closet, so he crept in there to look.
A baseball bat, he thought, perfect. Now armed, he started down the hall.
As Jim tiptoed down the stairs, he smelled bacon cooking. Bacon? Who breaks into someone’s house to cook bacon?
He came down the last steps and listened. All the kitchen lights were on. The noises seemed to be coming from there. All at once he leaped around the corner and yelled, “Aha, I caught you!”
His daughter Susan nearly jumped out of her skin. “Dad, what are you doing? You scared me!”
“Um...” No words were coming.
“What are you doing with that baseball bat?”
“I was, ah, I was going to, at least thinking about going to do some batting practice today.”
She got that ‘I don’t believe you’ look on her face. “You're doing batting practice? That would be a first. With a toy bat, too.”
“Well, I, um…”
She looked him over. It was then he realized how clown-like he must have appeared. He glanced at his reflection in the hall mirror. He wasn’t wearing a shirt, revealing his chest hair. It wasn’t the manly chest hair that you see in the movies, but thin and grey. His salt and pepper hair was sticking out in all directions. It wasn’t the perfectly groomed mop top he normally wore. He had no shoes, but he did have pants on. They weren’t zipped, however. He still clung to the silly looking souvenir toy bat with the Red Socks logo painted on it, more useful for killing flies than fighting off intruders.
“You forgot I was coming today, didn’t you?”
He sighed then hung his head momentarily. “Sorry,’ then he smiled, “but it’s good to see you.”
“It’s good to see you, too, Dad.” She hugged him. “Now go get dressed, breakfast is almost ready. We have a long day ahead of us.”
He had no idea what she was talking about, but he liked the idea of breakfast so he headed upstairs.
He threw the bat on the bed and put on a shirt and zipped his pants. He then checked the calendar on his desk. Right there in bold letters it read, “Susan’s visit”. He let out a sigh. Why do I even have a calendar, when I never check it?
After brushing his teeth, he headed back down. The food was on the table by this point.
Susan was looking in the cupboard for something. He noticed she had let her straight brown hair grow out. She normally kept it shoulder length, but now it was half way down her back. He still worried that she was too thin, even though she kept assuring him she was right in the healthy range for her height and age. He always thought Susan was beautiful, like her mother.
She turned around and put her hands on her hips. “Where are the plates and glasses?”
“Dishwasher.”
She opened it and started pulling them out. “I hope these are clean. What are all your plates doing in the dishwasher? Your cupboards are completely empty.”
“I take them out of the dishwasher as I need them. I use them and then I put them in the sink. When the dishwasher’s empty, I reload it and turn it on.”
She was slowly shaking her head as she put the plates on the table. “What happened to all those nice dishes that Mom had?”
“I had to get rid of them. They reminded me of her too much. I bought different ones that didn’t make me sad.”
She walked over and hugged her father again. “I know her passing has been rough on you. It was rough
on all of us. I understand that you needed to grieve, but now it’s time to move on with your life. It’s been two years. You need to get out there.”
“I’ve always been a little out there.” It was a weak attempt at a joke.
“You know what I mean. Go find someone. Go on a date, travel, live your life and stop sitting around feeling sorry for yourself.”
“You don’t exactly live what you preach. When are you going to find someone? You live in that fancy apartment with a wonderful view of New York City and never date. Just go back and forth to work.” His wife had died without having a single grandchild. It would have been something to make her last days happier.
Susan smiled. “I have to admit, Dad, I am seeing someone. I now know what it’s like to have that special person in your life. I didn’t know how lonely I was until I met Frank. You’ve been cooped up for too long. You need to travel, live your life and maybe find someone in the meantime. You’re not going to meet anyone sitting around writing books.”
“Writing books isn’t exactly sitting around.”
“You know what I mean, Dad. After breakfast we are going to do something fun.”
“Who is this Frank, and when am I going to meet him?”
“It’s way too early for that. I don’t want to scare him off. Eat up, we have a busy day.”
Jim looked down at his food. Pancakes, eggs, and bacon. She had cooked all his favorites. He was suspicious. She was buttering him up for something. It was what Susan always did before dropping a bombshell on him. At least he would get a good breakfast before the other shoe fell. He grabbed his fork and plowed in.