Otter Under Fire

by Dakota Rose Royce

  “Yes Michael.”

  After Michael left, Otter wondered how much more of “this” there was going to be.

  After work, Otter had a business meeting with several members of the local machining and tooling association. Once she got out, she was starving. Since Tempest was out at a networking function and she was already dressed up in a decent outfit, Otter decided to go to her favorite steak house near Metro Center for prime rib and salad. She glanced down at herself; she really did love the suit. She was wearing a light gray, rayon and cotton blend business suit. The jacket was short and tailored with princess seams and three quarter length sleeves. The pencil skirt came just above her knees. She wore an aquamarine and amethyst silk blouse and maroon pumps.

  Unfortunately a good portion of Phoenix had the same idea. The parking lot was jammed full and there was a line out of the door. Her visions of dinner fading, Otter went inside to see if there was a space at the bar. Not one empty bar stool, not one small booth was available. The perky little hostess told her the wait was 2 hours. Disappointed, Otter turned toward the door, mentally taking inventory of her refrigerator and freezer to see what she could make for dinner.

  “Otter?” A familiar voice queried behind her.

  She turned to see Joel walking toward her.

  “My goodness, what are you doing here?”

  “I’m having dinner with a couple of friends. Would you like to join us?”

  “No, thank you. I wouldn’t want to intrude.” She smiled at him, “But thanks all the same.”

  “It wouldn’t be an intrusion at all. C’mon, we’d love to have you join us.”

  “Are you sure? I can just as easily go have dinner somewhere else.”

  “Who wants to eat dinner by themselves? Come join us.” He reached for her hand and began to gently tug her toward the dining room. “We’re just getting ready to order, so you wouldn’t have to wait long for your food.”

  “All right, all right, I’m coming.”

  They made their way to a table for four with two other men sitting at it. They both rose and waited for her to be seated.

  “Guys, this is Mackenzie Ottenberger, better known as Otter. Otter these are my two oldest friends, Troy Hoffman and Graham Nicholson.”

  “Nice to meet you,” she said politely. Both men were tall, she noticed. Troy Hoffman was slender with hair as black as night and brilliant blue eyes; Graham was athletically built with flaming red hair, green eyes and looked like his ears should have been pointed. He had been scribbling on napkins for a while she noted and continued to do so once he sat down again.

  “That’s a nice suit,” Joel said.

  “Thank you,” Otter said.

  “Otter is an engineer,” Joel told his friends. “She runs a shop down in south Phoenix.”

  “Impressive,” Graham said. “I do engineering myself--mechanical mostly.” He showed her a couple of his napkin sketches—which seemed to be bridges and machinery.

  “I do mechanical and metallurgical,” she said.

  “Really? That’s very interesting. I have this project I’m working on and I can’t decide on the right materials for some of the components, maybe you could make some suggestions. I have the blueprints out in my car.”

  “Let the poor lady have her dinner,” Joel said firmly. “You can pelt her with engineering later.”

  “How do you two know each other?” Troy asked Otter.

  “We were introduced by a mutual friend,” Joel said. “This is the third time we’ve seen each other, but we haven’t been on a formal date yet.”

  “Things seem to keep happening,” Otter said. The waitress came over to give her a place setting and to take their orders. After they all ordered, she continued. “He came to a party at my house on Friday night.”

  “I saw her at an event on Saturday night and took her home since her ride wanted to stay later.”

  “We were supposed to go to dinner later this week, but I hadn’t heard from him when he wanted to go.” She looked at Joel pointedly.

  “I actually planned to call you tomorrow, but now that you are here we can discuss it.”

  “Who knows what could happen between now and then,” Otter said.

  “And since here you are tonight,” Joel said bowing toward her from his seated position.

  “Poor lady probably thinks you’re stalking her,” Troy said, toasting her with his drink.

  “It does look kind of suspicious,” Graham said with a wicked grin. “I would certainly wonder if I were her.”

  “It’s not a problem,” Otter said demurely. She sipped her iced tea. “I can take care of myself and I’m usually armed.”

  The three men hooted with laughter. Otter took another drink of her iced tea and began to nibble on the shrimp cocktail that appeared in front of her.

  “So tell me, how you three rowdy gents know each other.”

  “We’ve been friends since sixth grade,” Troy said. Graham nodded as he sketched some more figures on his napkin.

  “I told you they were old friends,” Joel said with a smile. “We’re actually celebrating tonight as Troy just got back from overseas.”

  “Really, are you in the service?” Otter asked.

  “In a manner of speaking,” Troy said. “I work for the government, mainly on diplomatic details.”

  “That sounds really interesting; I’ll bet you’ve seen a lot of different countries.” Yes that was definitely interesting she thought to herself.

  “I do, and have, yes.” He nibbled on a potato skin. “I’ll have to tell you about them some other time. We’d be here all night otherwise.”

  “Oh, I forgot to tell you,” Otter said turning to Joel, “Someone got into my office and went through all my files.”

  “They did what?” Joel dropped his napkin.

  “At least the ones they could get to. They didn’t seem to be able to get in my locked file cabinet. I ended up having a meeting with the owner and the GM and told them about what’s been going on.”

  “What has been going on?” Troy asked.

  “Yes, let us in on this,” Graham said, his stare becoming razor sharp as he looked at the pair of them.

  “I told you some of it,” Joel said. “She’s the one who had the co-worker that was blackmailing half of her shop. Officially he killed himself, but the events of the last few days has put that in question.”

  “Oh yeah, I remember this,” Graham said. “You just didn’t mention that you were dating the lady in question.”

  “We haven’t had date yet,” Otter reminded them.

  “Well you kind of have, or rather, kind of are,” Troy contradicted her. “Just think of us as chaperones.”

  “If you had a daughter,” Otter asked Troy, “Would you trust the two of you to be chaperones?”

  “We could be trusted with someone’s life,” Graham chimed in.

  “But not with someone’s daughter,” Otter countered.

  They all laughed again. Then the topics of conversation bounded around the table as quickly as a tennis game and Otter found she enjoyed herself immensely. She looked down at her plate sometime later and realized that her prime rib had been consumed long before. A quick peek at her watch told her it was nearly half past eight.

  “Wow, what a lovely dinner,” she said. “But I will turn into a pumpkin in a short while. I need to go home to bed; I have to get up around three thirty tomorrow morning.”

  “Better you than me,” Troy said fervently.

  Otter reached for the check, but Joel put his hand over hers. “I asked you to have dinner with us. I’ll take care of the check.”

  She considered protesting, but knew it wouldn’t be accepted, so she thanked him instead. The check was taken care of quickly and they all got up to leave. They all exchanged business cards before they headed to the door.

  “Mackenzie J. Ottenberger,” Graham read, “What does the ‘J’ stand for?”

  “For the Joker, the patron saint of smart asses,”
Otter said with a grin.

  “One of my favorite saints,” Troy said to Joel. “Next to Saint Nevermind.”

  Shaking her head, Otter straightened up her suit and headed for the door. Joel opened the door for her and walked her to her car.

  “Thank you for having dinner with us.” Joel said, smiling down at her.

  “Thank you for inviting me. It was a lot of fun.”

  Joel bent and kissed her on the lips. “I’d like to do this again sometime. I will call you.”

  “Ok, that sounds good.”

  He even opened the car door for her. “Try to stay safe,” he said, “There’s a crazy person out there. I don’t want anything to happen to you.”

  “I’ll do the best I can,” she promised and she drove away.

  Tempest should be happy, she thought. At least he kissed her on the lips this time.

  The next few days were highly productive at Arizona Techno-thermal. Nobody trashed Otter’s office and nobody sent her any more evidence. She breathed a sigh of relief that life was finally settling down to normal and she could fully do her job with no distractions—at least no more distractions than usual. She implemented the new delivery system for the lathes that the she had envisioned for years and the maintenance manager couldn’t wait to try, she changed a few people around to make the flow of the shop more efficient and she worked to coordinate the different department into complementary parts of a functioning whole. The last part would take a while, she had to admit, but production was going up so she was hopeful.

  Mitch spent more time with her, working on the shop flow and, thankfully, Ron Defray kept his distance. As instructed, she didn’t talk about Clark with Mitch anymore and let him think she was content to forget about it. Annie bragged to everyone about her newly painted porch and had pictures to prove it.

  It was a few days after her dinner with Joel and his friends that the police detective contacted her. He politely requested an interview and they agreed that he would meet her at her house that Friday evening after she got off work. She most definitely didn’t want anyone to see her talking to a detective in the shop. She had just enough time to get home and cleaned up before the doorbell rang.

  “I’m Detective Addison,” he said through the security screen, “We spoke on the phone.”

  “Yes, of course, come in,” Otter invited, opening the door.

  “You don’t have a door knob on your front door.” The detective said as he came inside. He was a compact man with ebony skin and brown eyes. For some reason, his movements reminded her of Gonzo.

  “I don’t have door knobs on any of my external doors, except the back patio,” Otter said, leading him into the living room. “It’s part of my security system.”

  “Interesting,” Addison said, “I’d like you to know that I am looking into Clark McCartney’s death. You know already that this case has already been closed and ruled a suicide.”

  “Yes,”

  “You also know that his spouse and family have not protested this verdict and seem to accept it.”

  “Yes,”

  “The case has not been re-opened. I am examining the evidence and the new evidence to decide if the case should be re-opened and re-examined in favor of homicide.”

  “OK,”

  “Part of this examination is asking questions of you and anyone else who may be related to this case.”

  “OK,”

  “What was your relationship with the deceased?”

  “We were co-workers. He worked the sales and billing at Arizona Techno-Thermal and I saw him there every day.”

  “What is your position at Arizona Techno-Thermal?”

  “At the time I was a supervisor over two departments, I have since been promoted to the shop coordinating position.”

  “Was that because of his death?”

  “No, I was slated for that promotion before he died.”

  “Did you know about it at the time?”

  “No, I found out about it about a week and a half ago.”

  “Did you have a relationship with Mr. McCartney outside of work?”

  “No, I thought he was a pompous, self-satisfied jerk. That is also the reason I didn’t think he killed himself. He thought too highly of himself and killing himself would have made him look weak.”

  “I see,”

  “Since I know about the blackmail and how he was pressuring my other co-workers, I’ve come to like him less than that even. I wish he were alive so he could face some kind of punishment.”

  “Then why do you care that he was ruled a suicide?”

  “Because there are four fatherless children now, there is a young man he promised to help, send to college who now doesn’t have those resources and there is a deeply religious family who think their family member killed himself when he may not have. I don’t know a lot about the Mormon faith, but I think that means there’s a big black check mark next to the family name in some kind of celestial book of records.”

  “OK,”

  “And a decent man in Michigan may also have been murdered for the same reason.”

  “What about you?”

  “I’m trying not to think about it too much, but I’m worried about my own safety as well. If other people have been killed, I could be a target.”

  “Why do you think that would be?”

  “Because I was the last person to talk to him before he went to Michigan. At least that’s what his wife thinks. I also got his computer and papers so if there is anything else in there, I could be in the killer’s sights.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Someone trashed my office over the weekend. They dug through my files and the box that came from Clark’s office.”

  “And you don’t know who did it?”

  “No,”

  “No security cameras?”

  “The offices have just been remodeled. They haven’t been connected yet.”

  “Have you been blackmailed by the deceased?”

  “No, and neither have any of the managers.”

  “What do you think about that?”

  “I think it’s strange, I would think management would be his main target. I don’t think he’d go for Michael, the owner. Michael would toss him out on the street. That man has no fear, blackmail or not.”

  “Do you know of anyone who would want to cause Clark harm?”

  “Clark wasn’t a popular guy, detective. I would imagine a lot of people wanted to cause him harm. He had a way about him.”

  “So you think the list is long?”

  “I think he was killed by someone he tried to blackmail. He stepped into something way over his head. I don’t know which person on that list it would be, but he had a way of pissing people off.

  “I also mentioned to the widow that maybe Clark was sick. He took a year off with lung cancer and was in remission, I suspect that something metastasized in his brain and he became delusional—calling himself Christ’s Sword and thinking he was doing all of this for everyone’s good.”

  “You’re certainly put a lot of time into thinking about this.”

  “It keeps coming up. It shows up in my office at work, it shows up on my porch at home. I can’t leave it be, someone wants me to think about it.”

  “I may have to interview a few people at your place of employment,” Detective Addison said.

  “Mitch, our general manager may freak out,” Otter said, “He hates disruption to the shop, but Michael the owner will be ok with it. He wants to see this all put right.”

  Just then the doorbell rang.

  “Excuse me a minute,” Otter said as she got up and walked to the front door. She looked outside to see Joel on her front porch.

  “What are you doing here?”

  “I thought we were supposed to have dinner tonight.”

  “Uh, no, you never said what day. You just gave me directions.” She opened the door for him. “I’m busy right now.”

  “So I see,” He strode across the room
with his hand out, “Hello Addison, it’s good to see you.”

  “Joel Buchanan, I didn’t expect to see you here. Do you know this young lady?”

  “We’re friends,” Joel said easily, “And we have plans to go out for dinner tonight. I didn’t realize you would be here.”

  “I decided to look into this case and I needed to question Miss Ottenberger in order to make an informed decision.”

  “I’m glad someone’s looking into it,” Joel said. We were beginning to worry about Miss Ottenberger’s safety.”

  “There is certainly some suspicious activity,” Addison said.

  “I can go hang out by the pool,” Joel said, “I don’t want to interfere.”

  “No, that’s ok. I think we’re done for now,” the detective said. “If I have any further questions, I will contact you, Miss Ottenberger.”

  “Thank you,” Otter said and saw him out.

  She turned and walked back into the living room. “You knew he was here, we didn’t have plans for dinner.”

  “We could have had plans,” he said with a grin, “You may have just forgotten.”

  “Don’t bullshit me Joel.”

  “OK, yes I knew he was here and I came deliberately so he would know that I know you. There, happy?”

  “Why would you do that?

  “I was just giving you a little leverage, in case there is any reason to doubt you.”

  “Why would he doubt me? I’m about a credible as they come. I hope you didn’t piss him off by showing up here.”

  “Nope, Chris is very even tempered. He’ll be on your side, even if it doesn’t look like it now.”

  “Ok,” Otter shrugged. “You made me forget something I was about to mention to him when you rang the doorbell.”

  “What was that?”

  “We need to find out how Clark worked. Did he put someone on the list before or after he contacted them? Better yet are some of these people potentials or did he talk to everyone?”

  “Why would that make a difference?”

  “Because if he upset someone who killed him, it would either be the last entry on his list or he has the files somewhere to put together all his evidence. I’m betting that the person we’re looking for isn’t on the master list yet.”