Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight

by Ann Mauren

  Mayne Attraction: In The Spotlight

  by

  Ann Mauren

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  Published by Ann Mauren Media at Smashwords

  Copyright © 2010 by Ann Mauren

  This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, brands, media, and incidents are either the product of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously. The author acknowledges the trademarked status and trademark owners of various products referenced in this work of fiction, which have been used without permission. The publication/use of these trademarks is not authorized, associated with, or sponsored by the trademark owners

  This eBook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. It may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please return to Smashwords.com and purchase an additional copy for each person you share it with. Thank you for respecting the author's work.

  A Few Words of Acknowledgement:

  To my hero husband, Jerry, for keeping my secret identity under wraps…

  To my ‘framily’ friends Natalie and Janet, whose influences bounce back and forth all over this story…

  And to my favorite author, Bill Bryson, who educates and entertains with words like no other…

  Thank you.

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  An Introduction to the Mayne Attraction Series

  It’s been said that there are always two sides to a story. The case could be made that the actual number of sides depends on how many individuals are involved since every viewpoint brings something different to the table.

  I have always been fascinated by the overlap and particularly the divergence that occurs when you compare one person’s account of a situation with that of another’s—especially when something very important to those involved is at stake. This series embraces those shades of gray in the overlap where stories coincide, intersect and ultimately depart.

  Book one of the Mayne Attraction series, ‘In The Spotlight,’ presents the story from the youthful and sometimes naïve perspective of Ellery Mayne, heroine and namesake of the series. The subsequent volumes contain the viewpoints of a hero and an antagonist, though which is which will be for you to decide after having viewed both men’s accounting of events, thoughts and actions as explained from each unique perspective.

  I hope you enjoy the world of Mayne Attraction and that you find fun and color in the overlap.

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  Fortune favors the brave.

  Publius Terrence

  Roman Playwright

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  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1 – Déjà Vu

  Chapter 2 – Fantasy

  Chapter 3 – Recovery

  Chapter 4 – Scopophobia

  Chapter 5 – Experiment

  Chapter 6 – Trust

  Chapter 7 – Legacy

  Chapter 8 – Reticent

  Chapter 9 – Goth

  Chapter 10 – Emperor

  Chapter 11 – Instructor

  Chapter 12 – Episode

  Chapter 13 – Classified

  Chapter 14 – Repression

  Chapter 15 – King's Island

  Chapter 16 – Great Wolf

  Chapter 17 – Game Night

  Chapter 18 – Love Letter

  Chapter 19 – Introduction

  Chapter 20 – Hidden Falls

  Chapter 21 – Conspiracy

  Chapter 22 – Miracle

  Chapter 23 – Commencement

  Chapter 24 – Invitation

  Chapter 25 – Eco Challenge

  Chapter 26 – Even

  Chapter 27 – Friendly Skies

  Chapter 28 – Banff

  Chapter 29 – Lake Louise

  Chapter 30 - Lake Oesa

  Chapter 31 – Scrapbook

  Chapter 32 – Pitch Pile

  Chapter 33 – Kiwi

  Chapter 34 – Fireworks

  Chapter 35 – Emergency Room

  Chapter 36 – Peaceful

  Chapter 37 – Big Brown

  Epilogue

  Prologue

  —ARTAN AGOLLI—

  We didn’t mean to kill him.

  Dritan assured me this unusual little foray would be easy and well worth the effort. And, as always, I was foolish enough to believe him. It made me very nervous, though. We’d never ventured this far on our own with so little in the way of solid information. Adding to my nervousness was the sense of blindness I felt. Nothing looked or seemed right here.

  The house was nice, but not what I had expected. It was much smaller and more modest looking than it should have been. The fact that it had no security system or personnel caused me to question his information all the more.

  “Are you sure you have the right address?” I asked, assuming the accusatory tone one takes with a misbehaving child.

  “I’m sure,” he said as he took a long drag from his cigarette while staring in the opposite direction out his window.

  “This doesn’t look right.”

  Holding his breath, he tilted his head back in irritation, closed his eyes and let out a long smoky exhale.

  “It’s right,” he responded—curtly.

  We rarely looked at each other when we conversed. Our relationship constantly evolved yet somehow it remained as it had always been: sometimes we were partners, at other times bitter enemies, but at all times tied together as brothers.

  It was just past midnight. We waited for about an hour after the last light was out, both smoking, relaxing and listening to some new downloads he was overly excited about—just more irritating noise as far as I was concerned.

  The plan was simple: drug the old man while he slept, ask a few pointed questions, locate the items we needed, put him back to bed and move along. Easy.

  The girl walked in on us after we’d been unsuccessfully working on him for about twenty minutes. We were in the middle of arguing over the dosage and next steps when a form in the dim light moved slowly past the foot of the bed where we were set up. Our normal reaction would have been quick and deadly for the intruder, but she didn’t scream, act frightened, or even acknowledge us. She just kept moving at a slow pace deeper into the room. Alarm quickly turned to amusement as the situation became clear.

  Moving around the bed to a large walk-in closet, she opened the door wider, letting more light into the bedroom and illuminating her small form very nicely. Pulling an empty laundry basket from a lower shelf she dumped out a hamper of clothes into it. Then she bent down to gather some dirty boots, a hat and a belt, throwing them on top of the pile.

  We looked at each other and then back at the sleepwalking laundry girl. She was very young and pretty; the old man’s granddaughter perhaps? If so, then I felt more assured about this being the right house after all, but still very unsettled that we had overlooked her presence after making such a thorough search of the house initially. Where had she been up to this moment?

  Moving out of the closet, she toted the basket–which appeared to be twice her weight–into the bathroom where she then dumped the contents into the tub and poured a generous capful of what was probably shampoo overtop ‘the load.’ Placing the emptied laundry basket on top of the toilet, she flushed it and walked out into the bedroom once more; a blank expression on her face as she headed for the hallway. Though her movements had the look of purposeful efficiency they had been bizarre and funny to watch. I realized I hadn’t smiled about anything in a long time. It felt good.

  Dritan laughed and rose immediately to pursue her, probably to make certain she wasn’t just a very quick thinking and self-preserving actress whose next move would be to set off an alarm of s
ome kind. He was gone for several minutes while I sat with our host who had slept through the injection but frustrated our efforts by not responding to the smelling salts or any of our actions to rouse him in the normal way so that we could question him. I was growing tense and irritated at the lengthy but silent interruption. What stupidity was he engaging in now?

  After what felt like an eternity he finally returned.

  At first a well pleased smile played on his lips as he reported, “It looks like she came in through the kitchen. The door was still open with a key in the lock. But she put herself to bed in one of the rooms at the end of the hall. I’ve heard of people sleepwalking before, but I’ve never seen— ”

  Suddenly concern changed his expression as he looked past me to assess the old man.

  “What happened?!”

  Even in the low light, the man’s color was decidedly blue now, and I realized he’d stopped breathing while I was busy imagining my brother’s actions in the next room…

  After a brief consultation we decided to let him ‘sleep’. Resuscitating him probably wouldn’t help now and might leave too much evidence.

  We didn’t get any information out of him or the items we sought, though I did find something promising in a folder on the night stand which I collected for further review.

  Always the impulsive opportunist, my brother stood in the doorway looking into the darkness down the hallway. I knew exactly what he was thinking about.

  “Artan, I don’t suppose we could just take the girl instead…” he said with a resigned sounding sigh at the end, though he already knew what I would say.

  “Besnik would pay a lot for her, for that hair especially,’ he continued wistfully.

  I could see his point. The addition of the girl’s ‘company’ and the substantial profit from her sale would surely reduce some of the evening’s disappointment. But looking over at the dead man in his bed we both knew the answer.

  “No,” I said, taking charge. “Let’s have one more look around and get out of here before she wakes up.”

  Working hard to resist the lure of what would surely be huge mistake at this point, I added, more for myself than for him, “If we need to we can come back later,” as though it was just an option and not a certainty.

  Chapter 1 – Déjà Vu

  Every little girl wants to believe that her parents are deeply in love. If mine were not, they were fabulous actors.

  My poor, sweet mother. I was convinced that she would never marry again. I was also concerned that she might die of a broken heart, and then I would too. That’s what I thought when I had been in this place the first time. Shorten and Bryan Funeral Home off Preston Highway, on the south side of Louisville. That was seven years ago when I was ten years old. My dad was a commercial airline pilot. Well, he was actually in charge of training new pilots for UPS (United Parcel Service) at the time of the crash, a mid-air collision off the southern coast of Norway, near Bergen. Parts of the plane were eventually recovered—but no bodies.

  I felt so sorry for my mom. I certainly felt sorry for myself too, but my mom…she was going to be so lost without him. My dad took such good care of her—of us both; we absolutely adored him. He was chivalrous, humorous, and sometimes mischievous, and now he was gone. His absence felt like a black hole sucking all thoughts of a happy life now or in the future into a timeless, lifeless void. But unlike the coldness of space it burned me over and over again every time I looked in my poor sweet mother’s eyes.

  Her parents had died young, in, ironically, a plane crash, when she was in college. Somehow she managed to pull herself together and graduate a year later. Then she began working at the main branch of the Louisville Free Public Library, where she first met my dad, Matthew Mayne, who was the ideal in Scandinavian male physical attributes: thick blonde hair in a crew cut, tall and muscular, handsomely squared features with piercing blue eyes that were glued to her while she assisted him with his quickly improvised research project.

  He had spotted her weeks earlier at the Kentucky State Fair and trailed her then, but gave up the pursuit when he mistook one of her cousins for her date. When chance brought her to his attention again a month later at a downtown café, he followed her back to the library to investigate and engage her further. I would love to have a stalker like that.

  Monica Herron was petite and very fair skinned with lovely, expressive brown eyes and long, smooth, dark brown hair. It was way down her back when my parents first met. I could certainly understand his interest in her, especially as it relates to the attraction of opposites. Plus she was extremely shy, which if you didn’t know her might make you think she was just unavailable. Beautiful and seemingly off limits—is there any greater appeal?

  Her extreme aversion to all things aeronautic was unquestionably a complication for my dad. He managed to keep his true occupation at UPS concealed from her for several months while they dated. He even wore the brown uniform in front of her a few times early on, not sharing the detail that it was borrowed from one of his buddies in the ground transportation division.

  When he finally came clean in preparation for a proposal of marriage and explained rather than confessed the truth—for he had never actually lied, she just had never pressed him for a more detailed explanation of ‘Air Loads Expeditor’—she nearly broke it off. But it didn’t take her long to realize that she couldn’t live without him, no matter how fearful she was about his profession. Fortunately, he soon moved into the training department which kept him on the ground most of the time. They were married soon after. I was born a few years after that.

  The funeral we were attending this day was different for her. Traumatic to be sure, but not the searing and disastrous lightning strike the death of my father had been. My grandpa was her father-in-law, and though he was the family head and had stepped in to take care of us, his loss, though sudden and heartbreaking, didn’t leave her cut in two like after the last funeral we had attended in this very room.

  I felt the loss more acutely. I had lost another father figure and that hole in my universe had torn open wide again. Being here was an extremely painful kind of déjà vu and my heart ached with an echo.

  Samuel Mayne was seventy-eight years old and had died in his sleep. I was the one who found him—peaceful and still. It was not an altogether bad way to go. It’s just bad for the people left behind who miss you terribly and regret not getting to say goodbye.

  I did not panic that morning, and no one was more surprised about that than me. Perhaps the reason was because I knew he wouldn’t want me to be. Though that was possible, (and the explanation I preferred) probably it had more to do with the defect in my fight or flight instinct, which included a third option: cataplexy (sudden, brief attacks of muscle weakness or immobility usually triggered by strong emotion). A related word that gives a feel for this state would be catatonic. After a fairly brief session as a terrified statue, I went next door, informed my mom, and assisted her through the worst nervous breakdown I had ever witnessed.

  Today it was the very same group of family, friends and co-workers there to condole with us. Even the same folks from UPS were there, though not because they had kept in touch with their former UPS colleague Matt Mayne’s widow, but because of a death in the family of their co-worker, Hoyt Montgomery, my mom’s new but much older husband. Mom and Hoyt came together after the crash because they had both been widowed that day. Hoyt’s fiancée, Amanda, had been flight engineer on that trip. Their shared tragedy blossomed into comfort and love and marriage about three years later. Hoyt could never take the place of my dad, but he made my mom happy again and I loved him for that...among other reasons. He was also in the flight operations department at UPS, but close to retirement, thank goodness.

  The morning of the funeral my mom was being weirder than normal, even for a grieving next of kin. Though bleary-eyed and shaky, she insisted on dressing me and doing my hair and makeup, which admittedly I never did very well or even at all, sometimes. I objecte
d to the eye makeup citing the mess it would make with the river of tears I was sure to be crying. She didn’t argue and she didn’t stop. She just said, “It’s waterproof, honey.”

  As much as I wanted to resist and flee, I relaxed and submitted when it occurred to me that this must be something she needed, something that was helping her cope. There was no such therapy available for me.

  I just really wanted to be sad by myself. It was intensely uncomfortable for me to be the object of so much sympathetic attention. Like my mom, I too was very shy by nature, and though I always had a lot to say in my mind, my thoughts very rarely crossed over into spoken form in mixed company. Sometimes a comment would manage to break free and everybody would be shocked and then be overly encouraging, which was still more embarrassing. Consequently, I would go for consecutively longer stretches between public editorializing. I didn’t like being this way, but the louder I beat myself up about it on the inside, the quieter I seemed to get on the outside.

  Standing here in this group of friends and acquaintances, I thought about how the only two people who truly knew the sound of my voice in sentences were my mom and my grandpa. So now there was just the one.

  Chapter 2 – Fantasy

  I couldn’t remember ever having seen him in a suit. I wouldn’t have thought that there would be any way to improve him, but dressed formally, looking like a model for Armani, right down to the tousled blonde hair and perfectly chiseled features, it seemed like I’d been wrong about that. Seeing his face for the first time in so many months, it suddenly occurred to me that I’d been wrong about something else…my mom wasn’t the only person left who knew the sound of my voice in sentences.