Otter Under Fire

by Dakota Rose Royce

  “And I’m pissed because I like him a lot, and I like them a lot but I don’t want them to be some kind of dangerous secret agents. Why couldn’t they be some kind of corporate types who lead dull selfish lives?”

  “You hate corporate types.”

  “Yeah,” Otter sighed, “I do.”

  “As a matter of fact, you had some very scary things you said you would do to the next corporate type who asked you out on a date. It involved torture of a rather personal nature, if I remember correctly.”

  “Well I’m entitled to some fun.”

  “So what do you mean trained killers?”

  “I went to dinner with Joel tonight. I told him what I suspected about his friends and him. The more I talked about it and the more I said, the more convinced I was that I was right.”

  “What did Joel say?”

  “He said he didn’t mean me any harm and that he wanted to find a place in my life.”

  “Oh boy,”

  “Yeah,” Otter said, putting her glass in the dishwasher. “He didn’t even act like he cared I knew. He was more amused than worried.”

  “That’s kind of scary all by itself.”

  “You have no idea. While I’m running off at the mouth, I’m thinking in the back of my mind that if he was a dangerous killer, he certainly could end my life if he didn’t like what I knew.”

  “Otter…”

  “I know, right? They want to recruit me for something and I told him I’m no good for covert work. I would say the wrong thing at the wrong time and give it all away. I can keep a secret and confidences, but not live my life like that.”

  “So what are you going to do?”

  “You know,” Otter said, picking up Spooky and cuddling him, “I made a decision just this minute. No use going hysterical when logic makes more sense. I don’t think I’ll do anything. I’ll just ride the waves and see where it takes me.”

  “That’s an unusual stance for you,” Tempest observed, “You usually want to rush in and fix everything.”

  “There only so much me to go around,” Otter said, “And so many government people are involved in this, I really hope someone is there to save me if I get in over my head.”

  “I’ll be there if you need me.”

  “I know, and thanks. So not to change the subject, how was your trip?”

  “It was pretty cool. We toured some of the new facilities. Your uncle is a genius by the way.”

  “Yeah, I know,”

  “And so is your cousin,”

  “I know that too.”

  “He’s just like his dad,”

  “Thank goodness,” Otter said with feeling.

  “They’ve scouted out old factories in depressed parts of the country where there are two or three small run down towns close together. There are just enough people in each location to start with and he’s keeping things really quiet. He doesn’t want a bunch of publicity.”

  “Nobody sane wants to be the focus of the public eye anymore,” Otter said. “There are too many crazies out there to screw with things.”

  “They’ve really set things up well,” Tempest continued, “to keep it in the family, but not divided by the family--at least not for the next century.”

  “I know,”

  “And they’d love for you to come and be a part of it.”

  “I probably will in a few years. I like what I’m doing now—and I keep my hand it. I’ve helped them develop some of their products.”

  “It’s a really sweet bicycle you helped develop, I want one.”

  “And you get to market all kinds of products.”

  “Very awesome deal for me, and I can keep my independent accounts as well.”

  “Well you might stumble on a new product that could result in another manufacturing facility. You’ve already made your tailoring client faint with happiness.”

  “She never struck me as the swooning type.” Tempest said, “But then not every tailor gets to work directly with the famous Carole Julienne.”

  “Lucky her.”

  “Lucky her? Lucky me! The luckiest day of my life was the day that Mrs. Nelson put us together to do a science project.”

  “You were pretty pissed at the time.”

  “I was. I was also grounded because I tried to fly by standing on a bicycle wearing a cape I made on my mother’s sewing machine.”

  “It’s lucky you didn’t kill yourself. You were known for doing all kinds of crazy stunts.”

  “Our first day we started our project, you explained to me why trying to fly my way wouldn’t work and we figured out how to make a glider; you were the first person in my life who talked to me like I had any brains.”

  “You had plenty of brains, but you had a nutty fire and brimstone preacher for a father. In his world, girls didn’t have brains.”

  “My nutty father and your crazy mother, it’s a wonder we survived our childhoods.”

  “We had each other,” Otter said with a grin.

  “We make a good team.” Tempest agreed.

  “And the glider we made was a great science project.”

  “Good thing, nobody found out that we actually tested it out.”

  “You tested it out, I just did the calculations.”

  “It’s a good thing You Tube didn’t exist then.”

  “And your older brother had a pickup truck and was just as crazy as you.”

  “He talks about the fun he had flying on that thing to this day.”

  “Even though he broke his ankle?”

  “Even though,” Tempest affirmed.

  “Thanks for reminding me this isn’t the first crazy thing we’ve been through.”

  “Probably not the last either,”

  “Good point.” Otter stood, lost in thought. “I think I’ll go to bed, it’s been a long day.” She put Spooky down and headed for her bedroom.

  Otter had her wash in the machine by five am on Saturday morning. While it was doing its thing, she went to the grocery store. By the time she got back, the washer was done; she put in a second load and put the first in the dryer. She took a few minutes to put away her groceries and make out her bills, then vacuumed her side of the duplex. The first load was done in the dryer so she took it out, put the second load in and put her clothes away. She put the second load of laundry away and threw her sheets and towels in the washer and cleaned her solar operated litter boxes. When she was done with her bathroom, the sheets and towels were ready for the dryer. She dusted and vacuumed in the main part of the house, since it was her turn and finished at the same time as the dryer.

  All her weekly chores done, she got in her car to go to work. The time was barely eight thirty. With almost no traffic she made it to work in about 20 minutes. She only planned to spend a few hours at work that day, just to make sure everything was running smoothly. The nice thing about Saturday was that a lot of the issues during the week didn’t happen on Saturday. Ron Defray didn’t usually come in, customers didn’t call her with urgent requests and the shop was just lower key.

  Otter went through each department to make sure equipment was running, the schedule was being followed and there were no major issues she needed to worry about. There were always minor issues and she took care of those easily. She went into her office and unlocked her computer.

  The spreadsheet with Clark’s list on it was still in her screen so she pulled it up and stared at it. There had to be something on it to give her some idea of what Clark was thinking, some kind of method to his madness.

  “Mackenzie?” A male voice queried.

  Otter looked over from her computer screen to see Jeremy Redding standing in her doorway.

  “I hope this is ok, Uncle Clark said you worked on Saturdays a lot. I tried last week, but you didn’t come in.”

  “No, I had decided to take a Saturday off, but I did see you at Clark’s house.”

  “When you didn’t come here, I went over there to see if Tonya would talk to me.”

  �
��Did she?”

  “Not really. She was pretty upset about something you said.”

  “I think I made her mad.”

  “She looked more scared than mad.”

  “So why are you here?”

  “I wondered if you’ve found anything else out about Uncle Clark.”

  “What all did Clark tell your dad about how he’d take care of you?”

  “Oh, he told Dad that he knew I wanted to go to college and that I wouldn’t have any money to do that. He told Dad not to worry; he would see I was taken care of.”

  “Did he say how?”

  “He said he had some kind of life insurance policy in case his cancer got him before he could take care of it personally.”

  “It’s hard to get life insurance when you have cancer.”

  “He had it before, a long time before, a few policies he had put away.”

  “And you can’t cash them if you’ve committed suicide.”

  “I know and he knew that. That’s one of the many reasons he wouldn’t have done this. He had a policy on himself made payable to his wife, each of his kids and me. He wouldn’t have done this to them.”

  “What did you know about the Christ’s Sword project?”

  Jeremy shook his head. “I thought he was crazy to be messing with other people’s lives, but he said he had a good reason. I didn’t understand it and he said that Tonya didn’t understand it either. He said he was fixing something with it. I don’t know what that could have been. So you got the box ok then?”

  “What box,” Otter asked sharply.

  “The box I left on your porch. Uncle Clark gave it to me for safekeeping and gave me your address. He said that if anything happened to him to give it to you.”

  “I have no idea what to do with it,” Otter said, a little regretfully. “Do you know what was in it?”

  “You know, I don’t.” He shrugged. “He never told me and I never opened the box.”

  “There was a dragon and a laptop in it.”

  “Ah, ok. What does that mean?”

  “And I’m supposed to know this because…?”

  “I assumed you knew. He talked about it like you would know what to do. He said you were the only one bright enough to figure it out other than Michael the owner. He didn’t want Michael to know anything about this until you got it fixed.”

  “I’m afraid I’m not a lot of help. Listen, Jeremy, I didn’t get along with your uncle all that well. I didn’t understand him much of the time. He exasperated me more often than not.”

  “I know,” Jeremy said smiling and the smile reached his eyes, “Uncle Clark got on people’s nerves. He knew it, he thought of it as his talent.”

  “He was a total pain in the ass.”

  “You need to understand something, though. Uncle Clark was on a mission to remove evil of some kind. He thought there was evil here and he was working on eradicating it. In some ways he was a difficult person, but in others he was extremely meticulous and exacting. He had a way to get under people’s skin and piss them off, but he wasn’t a deliberately cruel man. And he was extremely loyal to Michael. He wouldn’t have done anything to hurt Michael or his business.”

  “You should have been the one to do his eulogy.”

  Jeremy outright grinned and the effect on his features was brilliant. “I wanted to, but then I would have said he was murdered and caused all kinds of trouble. I think Tonya knows that.”

  “Well I have a copy of his list right here,” Otter admitted. I was looking at it when you came in.”

  Jeremy came into the room and looked at her screen.

  “Yes, that’s it. Exactly like the one I have. There must be something in the list that gives you information. Something only you or Michael would understand.”

  “Well the list was originally alphabetical. That didn’t do anything for me.” Otter said, “And then I did it chronologically, but that didn’t make any sense to me either.”

  “It can’t be that easy. Otherwise the wrong person would be able to figure it out.” Jeremy said reasonably. “And Uncle Clark liked to work with puzzles.”

  “That’s true,” Otter said. “I’ll work on it some today, I promise. If I can’t figure it out, I’ll take it to some friends and we will figure it out together.”

  Jeremy left his contact information with her this time and as she watched his retreating back, she wondered why she immediately thought of Joel and his two crazy friends to help her work on the puzzle. She went back to her monitor and looked at the list again. What did she and Michael know that not everyone in the shop knew? They both had degrees in engineering and metallurgy. He had way more knowledge and education than she did, but that was something they definitely had that very few other people at AzTech could claim.

  She looked at the column heads, the first one was names, and she already admitted there was no luck there. The last one was the dates, which were a dead end as well. She looked at the other column headings. One was place of occurrence, but most said Arizona so that could hardly be illuminating. Another was offense which wasn’t filled out on every line and then there was a heading that was abbreviated, it said “lmntl”. She wondered what it meant. “Illuminati” hardly made sense. She played with it in her mind like it was a vanity license plate on the highway. Lmnteel, l-m-n-t-l, elementel, elemental…and as she said the word she looked up on her wall at the poster of the periodic table on her wall.

  “Elemental, elements,” she murmured to herself. Was Clark that clever? She scanned the pointer down the list and the formula bar sprang to life at each click. Hydrogen gas, Hydrogen metal, Ag-silver, Fe-iron, that’s what she and Michael had in common--metallurgy and alloys. She spent the rest of the morning and part of the afternoon putting them in order exactly like the periodic table. She had to correct silver, Clark had gotten that wrong, he had silver as 30 and it was supposed to be 47. After she put all 118 elements in order—plus the extra hydrogen metal-- she was left with quite few more, but most of them said “none” and they had a weight of 0. There was one other one that stood out by itself with an atomic weight of 119. As far as she knew, there wasn’t an element discovered yet of 119. When she clicked on that box, the formula bar said “Tra-traitorium”. An obviously made up element, first of all she couldn’t think of any that would have three letters, and secondly it looked like it meant traitor. On that line was the name “Jameson Pennell.” She stared at it in wonder.

  Who the heck was that?

  Chapter 9

  “Thanks for letting me tag along today,” Tempest said to Susan as she scratched Duke around his ears. Since Duke was wearing his collar with his badge on it, he sat patiently, public servant interacting with a citizen.

  “I’m glad to have you along, Tempest. I hope you don’t get bored.”

  “I can write on my laptop if there are long boring stretches. What’s wrong with Duke? He acts like he doesn’t know me.”

  “He’s funny that way. When he’s in his police officer mode, he turns into a different dog. More aloof and professional, I think. It’s like he knows he’s on duty.”

  “I’ve known humans who wouldn’t do that and they should have known better.”

  “He’s a great partner,” Susan said, opening the back of the vehicle for Duke to jump up inside. Once he was settled, she gestured Tempest into the front seat.

  “So why do you want to roam around with me on this fine Saturday?” Susan asked as she fastened her seatbelt and checked her electronics.

  “I thought I might do a blog on the city’s law enforcement, how it directly relates to the business owner. I want to do something about our men and women in blue and tan who are there to protect our lives and livelihoods, and what to do if you want to avoid trouble.”

  “Sounds like quite an article. The publicity doesn’t hurt either.”

  “It’s good for the businesses of any city to know that they have resources against crime.”

  “Sure, if you like we can come to one o
f your trade meetings and talk about basic security and block watches for businesses.” Susan said as she started her vehicle.

  “That would be great. I’ll check our calendar and you tell me who to get in touch with to arrange that.”

  “I need to remind you that I am on duty,” Susan said. “If we have any altercations you absolutely must stay in the vehicle and obey my orders, do you understand?”

  “Yes I do, and I understood it when your commander said this to me yesterday.”

  “Good, just have to warn you formally.” She put her car into gear and pulled out on the street.

  “Every time I drive with you,” Tempest said, “I am amazed at how few crazy drivers I see. I could drive this same stretch of road by myself and see all kinds of scary shit, but with you it’s like Disneyland.”

  Susan gave a short laugh. “Have ticket book, will travel, will bring teeth,” Susan said waving back toward Duke. “I had to stop three very drunk guys on the highway once,” Susan scanned the area as they drove. “There were three of them and one of me. Duke and I had all three of them spread against the hood of my car and Duke jumped up on the hood and divided himself up between each of the men—giving them the evil eye with a theatric growl now and then.”

  Tempest grinned, picturing it.

  “My backup didn’t take very long and they hauled them up and away. These were big guys mind you, two of them had peed their pants.”

  “I don’t blame them, what about the third guy?”

  “He was so close to passing out; I think he thought Duke was a hallucination. That guy had such a high blood alcohol level, I’m surprised he was alive. Of course, he was the one driving.”

  “Of course,” Tempest said, making herself comfortable and pulling out her laptop. “That would be a great way to start my blog.”

  “Now that I know there was a code in the list, there are a lot of things on here.” Otter said peering at the copy she brought home.

  “Like what?” Tempest asked narrowing her eyes at an identical copy. She came home and brought Susan with her after shift when Otter texted her that she had something interesting to show them.