“I told you that I recognized some of the guys names on the list.”
“Yeah, you did.” Susan picked up her copy.
“I said that the other names were probably from his church or his neighbors.”
“They’re not?” Susan asked.
“Well, a lot of these names that I didn’t recognize are actually anagrams of names of the people in the shop.”
“Now that’s cool,” Susan said.
“I don’t see what you mean,” Tempest said, feeling that if she stared at it hard enough, she would see the secrets that Otter had figured out.
“Ok, look at number 82, Pb-lead. He has Chuck Nolan on that line. Under his misdeed was written ‘unauthorized weapon’ and the consequence was ‘confiscation’. He’s the one I gave his knife back.”
“That’s easy enough to see,”
“All right, but I’m thinking that he was making a comment about something when he assigned an element to a person. I don’t think it’s random. He didn’t think much of Nolan and thought he was dead weight, like a piece of lead.”
Duke sprawled under the kitchen table started to snore lightly.
“That makes sense,” Tempest agreed.
“Now here’s this line,” Otter said, “Is my boss Michael’s name in an anagram. It says C-carbon. That makes sense as carbon is something we use all the time at AzTech.”
“What is carbon’s function? If you said that someone was made of carbon, what would that say about him?” Susan asked.
“That he was a burned out shell.” Tempest said, thinking of charcoal.
“Or that you are essential for life,” Otter said. “Michael gave him a chance at life. A lot of heat and pressure—and what else is this insane business, but heat and pressure—and you get diamond.”
“Rather metaphysical for science,” Susan said.
“The more I read this, the more I think I should make a deck of cards out of this for some kind of game,” Tempest said.
“Oh, I think I found my dad’s name.” Susan said excitedly. “He’s Co-cobalt. What would that mean?”
“Well he’s in fabrication, he works with a lot of metals that have cobalt in them—but if I wanted to be metaphysical, the first thing that comes to me is blue. Cobalt blue would be a true blue. Clark must have liked Jay, but then most all of us do.”
“Ron Defray is Pu-plutonium.” Otter burst out laughing. “God he really hated that guy.”
“And this looks like Annie,” Tempest said. “He has her under neon.”
“What else? Bright colors, isn’t reactive.”
“Where is gold?” Tempest wanted to know, “Who does he have under gold?”
Otter ran her finger to 79 Au-gold. She studied it for a minute. “It looks like the anagram for his wife.”
“An ‘I love you’ from the grave,” Susan said.
“I think I have chills,” Tempest said, rubbing her arms.
“Yeah, and it looks like I owe him an apology. Not a really big one, as he was still manipulating quite a few of these people. Some for what he thought was wrong, but to get information.”
“Who are you looking for now?”
“Greg, our IT guys, Clark has him under Hg--mercury. It used to be called quicksilver,” Otter laughed again, “Cornering Greg is like nailing Jell-O to the wall. He figured out that Greg was giving him fake information.”
“So we need to find you,” Tempest said. “What he says about you.”
“I’m under number 40,” Otter said. “Zr-zirconium.”
“A gem,” Susan said, “Often a substitute for diamond.”
“Jeremy said that Clark knew that only Michael and I could solve the code because we were both well versed in the same field. Clark wanted me to figure everything out because he didn’t want to Michael to know about this before it was fixed.” Otter said.
“Who is Jeremy?” Susan wanted to know.
“He is an adopted nephew of Clark’s. He also doesn’t think Clark committed suicide—Clark promised to be around to help him through college. I met him at Clark’s funeral. Today, he came by work to see if I’d worked out the puzzle. He was disappointed that I didn’t have the thing solved by now. He wasn’t too happy I gave some of the papers to the police. But we did agree that Clark was a bit of a challenge.”
“Are you sorry the police are involved?” Susan asked.
“Heck no,” Otter said. “I think there was a murder committed. I want the police to be involved. I’m not arrogant enough to think I can do it without you guys.”
“Why is Hydrogen on here twice?” Tempest asked.
“It used to be that way on the older Periodic tables.” Otter explained, “Hydrogen was on both sides of the chart. On one side, it was a gas and on the other side, it was a metal.”
“How could hydrogen be a metal?” Susan asked, intrigued.
“It’s because of gas giant planets like Jupiter. Under intense pressure, like the core of Jupiter or Saturn, hydrogen acts like a metal. That is why Jupiter has such a strong magnetic field. The hydrogen in its core is giving it that magnetic field. It’s debated quite a bit in scientific circles whether it is a true metal or not, but for theoretical purposes and for the purpose of Clark, it looks like we will have to use it that way.”
“But look, the names next to both H-Hydrogen designations are the same.” Tempest said.
Both of them were the name Cal de Lemn.
“I don’t know that guy, the name isn’t familiar.”
“Are you going to take this to Detective Addison?” Susan asked.
“Eventually,” Otter said, “I don’t know what I have yet. I don’t need to hear the derision in his voice when he says ‘The Periodic Table Miss Ottenberger? You think you can prove murder by science geek jokes about your coworkers written with the symbols of the elements?’”
“Ooh, that’s harsh,” Susan winced.
“Don’t get me started about secret codes and tratorium.”
“OK, OK, I get it.” Susan laughed.
She rose to go, but Otter stopped her.
“If you don’t mind, I wanted to ask you about something else.”
“I figured,” Susan sighed, “You want to ask about Joel.”
“I figure you know him from the army.”
“I told him that he shouldn’t date you or get to know you while he was on a mission. I told him you would figure things out way faster than he would expect. I think that made him want to meet you more.”
“What kind of mission is he on?”
“I don’t know, and that’s the truth. He couldn’t tell me and wouldn’t anyway.”
“Well, what can you tell me?”
“I can tell you he’s one of the best at what he does, if not the best. I can’t hold a candle to him, and I’m good.”
“That’s impressive.” Tempest said.
“I can also tell you he is a really good guy, and he likes you a lot. He isn’t going to lie to you. If he and his friends like you, it opens all kinds of doors.”
“She can open her own doors, thank-you-very-much,” Tempest said.
“And he’s a gentleman. Listen, trust me and don’t worry about it. I’m not out to get you hurt or killed. Where would I go for brunch?”
“That’s an excellent point,” Otter said, “but you had all kinds of nice things to say about the dog trainer and he was slime.”
“Yeah, but he was just a joke, Otter. I was just having a bit of fun to get you out of yourself. I thought you’d realize I was kidding.”
“But you…”
Susan rose to leave. “Let it go Otter. There is nothing you can do about that anyway.” Duke jumped up from a sound sleep to leave with her and Stella said good-bye by jumping his tail as he walked past.
“Right,” Otter said. She would let it go…for now.
The warehouse was enormous. Set on several hundred acres a few miles outside of Black Canyon City, it looked like a huge industrial concern. Except it was desert
ed with just a few cars in the parking lot and no visible signage anywhere to tell her any information about where she was.
Odd.
She stood on the asphalt and looked around her. It was still mostly dark and she wondered at the wisdom of coming along.
“Did you eat anything yet,” Joel asked her as they approached the entrance.
“I had a breakfast shake at about five this morning.”
“That should be ok. It’s best not to ride these things with a full stomach. All the jostling can make people puke.”
“Gee, nice to know.” What kind of guy takes someone on a date with the purpose of making them puke? She asked herself.
“I didn’t say you would, I said it was a possibility,” Joel said as if he read her mind. He used a key card in the entrance slot. The door unlatched and they walked into a simple office with a desk and display cases with more key cards and regular keys sets hanging in them. Joel used his card in one of the locks and took a set of keys. He opened a drawer and took a short turquoise lanyard out of it and fitted it with a card and a key. He opened another drawer and got out a plain white card that said “visitor—civilian” on it and printed “Otter” on it. He took a sticker out of another drawer and put it on the name tag. It was a small black ribbon.
“The card is for the women’s john, the key is for a locker in the adjoining locker room. The locker number is stamped on the key. Put your purse, jewelry anything you don’t want flying off your body while you’d driving around. Your watch is fine, but the jacket will be kind of hot after a while. Take the backing off the ID card and put it on your upper right chest.”
“Do many women come here?” Otter asked with a half grin.
“Quite a few old army buddies, Susan comes up once in a while. At first we didn’t have facilities, but as more females started coming over—first as dates and then as comrades—we built the amenities for them.”
“So what is this place?”
“It’s a big playground,” Joel said with a grin. “With an exclusive membership, let’s go get your gear stashed and I’ll show you around.”
The bathroom was clean and efficient, toilets, sinks, showers and lockers. Otter put her things in the designated locker and went back out to meet Joel.
“Ok, now loop the lanyard though one of your belt loops and secure it and then put the key and the card in your pocket. Then it’s out of the way and secure.”
She did as he instructed.
“You dressed appropriately, that’s a good thing.” Otter looked down at her well-worn work boots, blue jeans and V-neck red stretchy t-shirt. She’d dressed for comfort and what she assumed would be scrambling around in a race-car like environment.
“You were pretty clear on where we were going, what did you think I would wear?”
“We’ve had people show up in short shorts and halter tops.”
“At the go kart place, you get in free if you dress like that.”
Joel snorted. “And how would you know that?”
“It’s on all the bathroom advertisements around town.” When he gave her a blank look, she explained, “A lot of small restaurants and bars have these signs in all their bathroom stalls and one of the advertisements is for the go kart places. True story,” she said as he shook his head.
They stepped out of the office area and into a large arena, lit by fluorescent lights all the way across. In a corral were some of the strangest vehicles Otter had ever seen. She wanted to get a closer look but Joel ushered her past them.
“You’ll get to look at those in a bit. This is our arena we can do the buggies, hand to hand, tractor pulls and gladiator combat, whatever we want here.”
“Do you get many gladiators?”
“We get our share.”
“That would be something to see.”
“It is. Over on the far side, there are gyms for working out, the men’s john and locker room, a flight simulator and some other types of war game rooms.”
“This is quite a place.”
“I’m not done yet. In the back, under the bridge there are the garages for the buggies’ mechanical issues. There is a machine shop and all the maintenance equipment, the computer geek room and a huge pool that’s accessible from both the men’s and the women’s locker rooms.”
“Nice.”
“Out back is a hangar and we have repair facilities for jets, old bombers and some helicopters.”
“This is so cool.”
“It’s a place where people can be themselves and do things they enjoy. The control office is up there,” He gestured up to a glass wall set up near the roof. “And they control the air strip and the grounds.”
“What is that?”
“You could call it security. Nobody comes on the grounds that aren’t supposed to.”
“Did you ever have to decline membership to someone or throw someone out?”
“Once in a while,” he said easily. “A couple of other things to remember, you will notice that there are no steps and all the door handles are levers that are easy to push up and down. We are completely accessible to people missing body parts. Absolute courtesy is expected.”
“Of course,”
“And everyone’s name tag and key card gives their rank, branch of service and ribbons, just as if they had their uniform on. Your tag says civilian guest—but you are a widow of a serviceman. People here know that you aren’t actually military, but you deserve respect. It helps that everyone here knows you don’t know military hierarchy so if you screw up, nobody shoots you.”
“Are they likely to?”
“Almost everyone here has weapons. Sometimes they bring them, sometimes they don’t, but they probably won’t shoot you.” He grinned, “I just wanted to see if I could get a rise out of you.”
“Nearly everyone I work with packs,” Otter said. “They don’t think I know it, and I can’t frisk them without probably cause, but I’m sure of it.”
“It doesn’t bother you?”
“If some crazy comes in guns blazing, he won’t be shooting long.”
“You’re that confident in your people?”
“About half of them are ex-military. Some of them are probably members here. Not worried a bit. The only one there expressly forbidden by Michael himself is Ron Defray because he can be such an idiot. He wears an empty holster as an act of defiance.”
“Sounds like a great guy.”
“Not even a little bit, very much like plutonium.”
“What does that mean?”
“Oh, shit, I forgot to tell you. I found a code in Clark’s list. I was going to call you last night, but it was late. I figured I would see you today and you could contact your merry men and maybe we could take a look at it. It’s a really interesting puzzle.”
“My what?” Joel said with a delighted laugh as he looked down at her.
Oops.
“Ah, I was just being a smart ass,” Otter said, “I tend to be one.”
“Gee, would that make me Robin Hood?”
“I would hope not. I don’t think stealing from the rich as all that noble.”
“You don’t?”
“No, I think that stopping thieves and evil deeds is noble. I think stealing from the rich and giving to the poor is just an excuse for bad manners.”
Joel laughed again. “I’m sure that Graham and Troy are in the building and I assure you we don’t steal from anyone. We’ll have a look at your decoded list after we take a run around the buggy course.”
The buggies were awesome. They had more horsepower than a go kart, the frame was a carbon-graphite material held together with the most innovative joints Otter had ever seen. The seat was like a gyroscope inside the frame, the driver’s weight would always keep the seat upright, no matter if the car flipped or cartwheeled.
The buggies were amazing, but the course was beyond belief. There were bridges, underground tunnels, caverns, mazes and many other obstacles and diversions. There was even a jump ramp that Otte
r had to try just once. It was with great reluctance several hours later that Otter followed Joel back into the warehouse to put the buggy away.
“That was a lot of fun,” she told Joel as he helped climbed out of her rigging.
“Glad you liked it,” he said, “I’ll have to bring you back again some time.” They stood face to face and the energy between them began to hum. Otter’s heart began to pound and her knees started to go weak. She looked up into his smoky gray eyes and he cupped his hand on the side of her face and bent toward her.
“Hey Joel!” Otter looked over and saw Graham coming toward them.
“Oh boy,” Otter said.
“Steady,” Joel said and winked at her. He turned to Graham.
“What’s up?”
“Hey, Otter,” Graham said.
“Hey back at you.” Otter said weakly and held on to a buggy frame for support.
“Troy’s got us a table upstairs,” Graham said. “He’s waiting for us.”
“A table?” Otter asked and looked at Joel.
“We have a mess hall upstairs. They have mainly sandwiches and some salads. It’s all pretty basic stuff.” Joel said.
“Ah, ok, just give me a minute to go get the list,” She said, still feeling a little unsteady.
“We’ll meet you upstairs in about ten.” Joel said to Graham.
“Okey Dokey,” Graham said and headed toward the ramp.
“Now to finish what we started.” Joel said pulling her toward him.
“Is that allowed here?”
“It is when nobody is looking.” He kissed her soundly. She responded and it felt so good, like waves on the beach good, like a good stretch after a refreshing nap good. Like if she didn’t stop soon, she wouldn’t be able to stop herself from ripping off his clothes good. Joel really knew how to kiss.
She pulled away and smiled up at him. “We’d better not keep the merry men waiting.
He grinned down at her. It occurred to him he was grinning and laughing a lot more lately. “Certainly, we don’t want them to become suspicious, do we?”
“Definitely not.”
“So this Clark guy embedded a code into the list?” Troy asked as he looked at his copy.
“It looks like it.” Otter answered. “He assigned an element to everyone at the shop, except hydrogen which is a name he has in code I think. I spent some time unscrambling everyone’s names and sifting through all the extra crap. Although I can’t be certain, it looks like he assigned the elements to each person as a personal statement. He has his wife assigned to gold.”
Otter Under Fire Page 16