Trudi Baldwin - Sammy Dick, PI 02 - Acid Test for Yellow Flower

by Trudi Baldwin

  Mountain handed his gun to me. I aimed it right at Freddy’s tiny, dark heart.

  That done, Mountain gently gathered up the bleeding dog from Gloria’s arms. Once Kiva was off her lap, Gloria leaned unsteadily to one side to get onto her hands and knees. She rested there for a second. After a beat or so she struggled to her feet. Freddy had beat her up pretty badly.

  Mountain caught my eye, “Let me get these two into the car, Sammy, and I’ll be back.” Cradling the wounded dog, Mountain took off slowly through the bushes with Gloria limping along behind him. With the first movements of Gloria, Kachina leaped up to follow. There was no way she was going to let Kiva and Gloria out of her sight.

  With Kachina clinging to her side, Gloria called back to me over her shoulder, “I guess I’ll need to take this girl with us. They’ll just have to deal with it at the Emergency Room. I’ll use Mountain’s phone to call my vet from the car to meet us there.” I figured if anyone could make all that happen Gloria could.

  The bushes closed up behind the retreating menagerie led by Mountain, and pretty soon just Freddy and I and the three horses were left alone on the little outcropping of rock. The wind had picked up even more. I could hear it rustling through the ponderosas below us. It smelled piney and cold, a good, heartening scent that made me think of snow. I kept the gun pointed steadily at Freddy, but he wasn’t going anywhere. His eyes stared straight up into the wondrous blue Sedona sky. He kept crying in little whimpers, and I could see the row of puncture wounds along the side of his throat slowly dripping blood. I didn’t think he was in danger of dying, but I didn’t really know or care.

  Mountain returned soon. The first thing he did, now that Gloria was safely in the car, was to bend down and give me a lengthy kiss. I smiled up at him and handed back his gun.

  “I know I’ll just make you mad if I say be careful on the ride back to Gloria’s house, so I won’t say it.”

  “You already have, Mountain, but that’s okay. I can handle it.”

  “That you can, Sammy. That you can,” he agreed warmly. He gave me a final hug and then rousted Freddy up off the rock. Freddy immediately said he was dying and couldn’t walk.

  Mountain retorted, “Walk or I’ll shoot your ass off the cliff right here. Who’s to know what actually happened.” Freddy took one look out over the cliff’s edge and then back up into the rock-hard eyes of Mountain. He started marching out through the bushes, nearly at a goosestep.

  I was left alone on the cliff side with a stable-load of horses, but before I mounted, I just stood there drinking in the to-die-for views and giving thanks to God that no one had actually died there that day.

  Shepherding Gloria’s horses home proved to be fairly easy. Glitter Girl and Golden Oldie followed behind Rainmaker without incident. When we reached Gloria’s stables, I untacked all three, fed, and stabled them for the night, then called Mountain for an update.

  He informed me that because of her concussion and serious contusions, Gloria had been ambulanced to the nearby Verde Valley Medical Center at its Cottonwood location, in a small town just to the west of Sedona. Gloria’s vet had met them at the emergency care center where the vet staunched the dog’s bleeding and inserted an IV. Kiva’s prognosis was mildly hopeful, if she made it through the night. The vet, a long-time friend of Gloria’s, agreed to care for both dogs at her own veterinary clinic until Gloria was able to return home.

  As for Fake Freddy, he’d now committed crimes in two jurisdictions: Sedona and Phoenix. Mountain was able to enlist Sedona law enforcement to take him into custody after the emergency care center pronounced him fit to travel. Shot full of antibiotics and watched closely, Freddy would survive. He was lucky that Kachina had missed his carotid artery and other life-threatening locations on his neck, and there was no threat of rabies since Gloria took perfect care of her goldens. The Sedona police were coordinating with Phoenix police for a transfer of custody the next morning. Because Freddy’s neck had to be wrapped in bandages from chest to chin, Mountain said he resembled some kind of long-necked ostrich when the Sedona police arrived to cart him away to a special care lock-up facility for the night.

  Chapter Twenty Six – Love in High Places

  Once all his charges were accounted for, Mountain returned to Gloria’s to pick me up. I’d already spoken to Gloria, via Mountain’s phone, asking permission to raid her refrigerator and her glass-enclosed wine closet to aid in the making of dinner. I’m more of a micro-waver than a chef, but Gloria had so much to choose from, I was able to chop up fresh vegetables and slice and marinate long slivers of some organic lean beef to prepare for Mountain’s arrival. I even found some chocolate éclairs that I set out to defrost for dessert.

  Mountain called in advance to tell me he was on his way and then called again to inform me he was at the locked gate. I nearly skipped out Gloria’s front door to rush down to meet him I was so happy to have his company. I’m not the introspective type and I’d already spent too many hours alone with little to do but peruse Gloria’s books and slowly sip a glass of very fine white wine on her suspended deck, followed by one more glass as I watched the sun descend in a flaming miracle of pink and cerulean blue, until the canyon folded into darkness, and the stars lit up like nothing you’d ever see in Phoenix.

  I’d called Geo during the first glass of white wine asking him to feed and water Snack. I filled Geo in on the latest, as he had been quite worried when I wasn’t answering his calls. I also gave him one more reminder to be ready to pay up since I’d beat him hands-down in Motive Monopoly. He kind of grunted in response, but we were both excited with another undercover investigation contract successfully under our belts, and with the expectation of a huge payout from Gloria to follow.

  Even though I was woozy from two glasses of wine, and my ribs hurt like hell, I brimmed with happiness and anticipation as I trotted gingerly in my too tight tennies down the winding road in the starlit night to meet Mountain. When I turned the corner, I could just make out his tall, sexy body strolling on the road further along. The dark figure approached me until I got close enough to hear the crunch of his boots in the gravel and then he enveloped me in his arms, bending down to deliver a soft lingering kiss that touched me in the deepest part of myself followed by a hungrier kiss and an even hungrier one after that.

  Before the fourth kiss, we turned and practically ran up the hill to the house to take our kissing to a much deeper level. Dinner occurred many hours later, after we’d made love on almost every piece of furniture Gloria owned including the chaise lounge out on the suspended deck. Mountain’s confidence, creativity, and endurance as a lover combined to make him perfect for me, but I just couldn’t imagine settling down at this point in my life. He seemed to intuitively understand this and accept me, all of me, just as I am.

  Once our ardor was completely spent, I managed not to screw up cooking the dinner. We took our plates over by the fire to savor all the delicious flavors I’d magically concocted out of Gloria’s generous provisions. By now we were slightly clothed, having managed to at least don tops, he in an unbuttoned shirt and me in Trinity’s infamous hoodie; the fire radiated warmth all over our exposed skin and danced in Mountain’s brown eyes. After downing the last bite of his éclair, Mountain leaned in close to my ear and whispered his thank you for the delicious dinner and told me that he loved everything about me. I was still working on extracting the last bit of custard from the middle of my éclair, but I stopped momentarily to lick my lips, kiss him, look into his gorgeous eyes, smile and say, “Ditto.”

  Mountain kind of laughed and kind of didn’t—at my less than ideal reply, but he cut me some slack as he usually did and the evening progressed on to even more love-making in Gloria’s huge four poster bed. I hoped she’d understand, but Mountain’s and my mutual attraction was so strong, I didn’t really care.

  Chapter Twenty Seven – Going Viral

  While we were making love in Gloria’s bed, Lazy Larry’s video went viral on YouTube that ve
ry same night. Larry’s extensive network of video game friends viewed it, viewed it again and then fired out the YouTube hyperlink to their sex-starved, drama-starved buddies all over the world who viewed it, viewed it again and then fired out the hyperlink to their sex-starved, drama-starved buddies all over the world who did the same, on and on and on.

  Luckily, Larry had tastefully blurred out the pornographic parts, but the video, entitled, “Naked Women Mud-Wrestle in a Giant Vat of Lotion,” lit up the internet as if Larry had shot a flame thrower into the highways and bi-ways of the worldwide web. The video spiraled outward, lighting up desktops, laptops, phone screens, Twitter Tweets, like a California wildfire. Unwittingly, Lazy Larry had caused Gloria’s Organic Lotions business to catapult into boom-mode overnight.

  By morning, sales on Amazon for Yellow Flower and Glory’s other organic lotions had shot through the roof. With both Fake Freddy and Marissa in jail awaiting trial and Gloria still not released from the Verde Valley Medical Clinic, very few people were left to run the factory.

  On our way back to Phoenix, Mountain and I decided to pay a visit to Gloria in her hospital room. Before we left Gloria’s house, though, we cleaned it up the best we could after our raucous night. I also walked down the trail in the crisp morning air to feed and water the horses. I’d borrowed some of Gloria’s clothes which were a bit too roomy for my slender size, but better than the hoodie and too-tight jeans. The tennies would have to do, though, until I got home and could change out of them.

  Mountain called the car rental company in Sedona, explaining the damage to the Camaro’s interior and the cause in the line of duty. They agreed that the Phoenix police department would be responsible for restoring the interior of the car to its original beauty, paid for by tax-payer dollars. A sister car rental company in Phoenix would then return the car to Sedona.

  With all that settled, we took off in the stained Camaro down Dry Creek Road turning right onto 89A toward Cottonwood. The medical center was a clean, attractive one-hundred-bed facility. It looked like a good place for Gloria to recuperate, but when we walked into her room, Gloria’s appearance shocked us. Her right eye was swollen shut. Ugly, deep purple, nearly black bruises radiated outward discoloring the entire right side of her face. A bandage covered her head and I hoped they hadn’t shaved off her beautiful, golden hair. Additional bruising and welts wrapped like gruesome blue bracelets around her wrists, where Freddy must have held her down as she fought for her life.

  She looked frail in the cold, unforgiving November light cast from the room’s single, large window. After seeing her, I quickly turned to look out the window at the dull parking lot view to gather my thoughts and emotions I was so struck by Gloria’s condition. My own ribs ached as I turned to face her, reminding me that I too needed to get checked by a medical professional sometime soon. Mountain stood respectfully at the foot of the bed.

  Maybe the doctors had given her some kind of happy-drugs, though, because even with all of the bruising, Gloria was in good spirits. She thanked both of us again for saving her and told us that Kiva had lived through the night and the dog’s chances of survival were climbing higher by the minute. With this uplifting news, I figured I’d found the real source of Gloria’s happy-drug: Kiva’s recovery. Gloria was hopeful that the doctors would release her that afternoon to return home.

  Meanwhile, Gloria had other problems or perhaps mixed blessings would be a better description. Sales for Glory’s Organic Lotions were rocketing off the charts without enough personnel left in her factory to meet the surging demand. Remembering the clause in our contract about an additional bonus for improving the business on top of solving the crime, I pulled a chair close to Gloria’s bed to talk some serious business, while Mountain went to get us some coffee. Gloria seemed fully engaged and appreciating the distraction from dwelling on all of her medical conditions. I reminded her that I had an insider’s knowledge of who was and wasn’t competent in her lotion company, and immediately began making a number of recommendations for personnel changes and promotions.

  Gloria asked for pen and paper. I scrounged around to try and find some, finally making a trip to the front desk to return with both. I was pleased that Gloria took notes as I talked. She listened carefully as I began to list who was and wasn’t competent, starting with Fake Freddy and Marissa, the Schizoid Admin, obvious candidates for the top of the Incompetent List. On the Competent List, I suggested she promote Trinity to the empty front desk vacated by Marissa, and Carlita Cordova, the Cool One, as I’d nicknamed her, to position of General Manager, to include factory oversight, human resources and security, at least temporarily. To backfill for Carlita, I recommended Ancient Annie for a promotion to run the entire floor as Plant Manager and to coach all of the Team Leaders, and to backfill for Annie, promote Handsome Hayden into the Team Leader role, as he was a natural-born leader anyway.

  There was still the problem of the sky-rocketing orders and not enough people to meet the demand. I called Sylvester Swane, my mentor and benefactor, and asked him his advice for the best temporary labor service in town. Gloria was Sylvester’s long-time friend, and I suspected on and off girlfriend. After I explained the current state of affairs and Gloria’s predicament, he said he’d call around among his many connections to get some recommendations. He also spoke to Gloria to tell her he’d be up to see her that afternoon and to stay a few days at her house to keep an eye on her and help out.

  Sylvester called back shortly. One of his connections knew of a dog food manufacturing company, near Gloria’s factory, in the final throes of shutting down and outsourcing all their work to China. Over a hundred employees would be losing their jobs. Once I heard this news, I suggested that Trinity, Carlita, and Ancient Annie team up to interview all interested, soon to be ex-employees of the dog food company to fill 24/7 coverage of Glory’s Organic Lotions’ production. The employees would be experienced in manufacturing and could be brought on quickly. By this time Gloria was beaming and so engaged in leading and managing her thriving business that her medical conditions seemed to recede into the background.

  I made three, additional recommendations: that Gloria award both Tattooed Tanya and Sally Snort bonus checks in some kind of award celebration for going above and beyond the line of duty to protect Gloria’s business and that Lazy Larry be allowed to advise on marketing promotions in the future, to include a healthy bonus when he achieved success.

  While we were talking, Gloria informed me that she did not believe in outsourcing work overseas; she liked to keep her businesses close at hand to keep her eye on them and also to employ as many local people as possible. I wanted to butt in and say, “You certainly haven’t been keeping a close eye on the day-to-day operations of your lotion factory.” But I chose not to, since Gloria would sign our big, fat bonus check, or so I hoped, so I kept my mouth shut.

  We left Gloria with the bedside phone glued to her ear conferring with Carlita Cordova, managing all the changes in the factory. I had no doubt the hospital would release Gloria that afternoon and she’d be back to her old self before too long.

  The drive back to Phoenix in the blood-stained Camaro flew swiftly by. Both Mountain and I were exhausted from our action-filled day on Saturday. I was truly in need of a day of rest and recuperation. I decided to wait until Monday to get my ribs checked in favor of crashing in my bed for a deep, long sleep.

  Chapter Twenty Eight – Giving Thanks

  By Thanksgiving much had happened. Most importantly, Geo and I not only received a whopping sized check from Gloria for services rendered but she honored the clause in the contract about an additional bonus for recommendations that markedly improved business performance. I’d given her my recommendations that day beside her hospital bed and she’d implemented every last one of them.

  Gloria’s business had nearly doubled in profitability. Carlita the Cool One, working with Gloria and Ancient Annie, had revved up the factory into 24/7 production churning out Yellow Flower and other p
opular lines with precision. Meanwhile, Trinity managed the entire front office with ease, processing new-hires in and managing the day-to-day business. To demonstrate her gratefulness, Gloria had put Trinity on a salary that doubled her hourly wage. Gloria had also sent Geo and me a larger bonus check than even Swann Diamonds had paid us for our first major, corporate undercover job.

  With so much money floating around, Geo immediately shoved our newfound wealth it into our Dick Agency bank account before either of us could spend much of it, but we made a few changes at our house too. Geo and I decided it was time to give up our downtown office when the lease came up at the end of the year. Geo had been pressuring me for a while to take the Dick Investigations Agency online with a web-site, LinkedIn and Facebook presence instead of our tiny but very expensive brick and mortar office. He agreed that he would create and manage all of it. I finally complied. Because of my undercover work and Geo’s pursuit of a degree, neither one of us was able to spend much time in the office, so it sat mostly idle and empty the entire year. Not a good business decision as both Geo and my dad had tried to tell me in the first place. No one ever said I’m the kind of person who learns things the easy way.

  Geo would miss the convenient rendezvous location with Little Miss Kathy Keach who worked and lived near our brick and mortar office, but they were seeing so much of each other between their two residences it wouldn’t matter. Geo and I decided we’d meet clients in Starbucks if need be.

  Geo and I made another momentous decision—to give up our scarred Formica topped kitchen table with the cracked yellow plastic chairs and get a real, grown-ups’ table made of wood with removable leaves. To tell the truth, even that level of commitment scared the crap out of me. I wasn’t sure I was ready for a real, wood, grown-ups’ table. I was having way too much fun just as things were, but Geo, Delilah and Kathy all applied tremendous pressure on me after Geo’s and my huge bonus check arrived in the mail and I finally caved.