by Paul Snyder
“Your fieldwork drives you idiotic enough to let four men come in my house with shotguns and kill a police detective’s husband in my bedroom.” She was still betrayed and hurt. “My Bugatti and Dan’s favorite Lamborghini were fire boomed by police.” Meghan shook her head. “A media gag order was put into place to cover-up police misconduct from the public. A sexually perverted police officer filed false sex crimes, false felony verbal assault charges and then used police department jammers to prevent me from calling 911. At the same time, they kidnapped us and held us hostage, at gunpoint at my house. And, all this, in one week. What do your productivity apps look like in a year? I want a police department mind map.” She paced the rocks. “The police department is wrong, dead wrong. Steve Davis is dead in my house to prove it.”
“The United States is a free country. You’ve got a lot to learn…”
“You let them hurt me in the country you love and fight to live free inside, the United States of America? Don’t justify this despicable thing you’ve done! Who am I to support your despicable behavior. I’m standing up to say enough is enough.”
He walked to her, and she moaned with grief. He knew her to be a kind and forgiving person. And he hugged her and apologized. She also apologized, and although Jim figured she would fine, there had been too much suffering for her, too much loss in her life, too fast.
He went back to her boat, and he felt her pain, and if he were not careful, walls would be around her as long as she walked the face of the earth, even forever. She did suffer more than she should have. We’ve both suffered more than we should have. Everyone’s suffered more than they should, and hopefully, tomorrow, we will all be stronger for it.
43
Meghan stepped down near Andrew and then glanced back at the shallow sandbar where they passed through only a half an hour ago. The thirty-foot waves were still stacked to the horizon and crashing over the breakwater.
Meghan knew Rick had made an absurd mistake. Only an amateur would expose a shiny diamond necklace in the ocean, especially in Seal Beach, where needlefish were known to frequent the warm, brackish part of the San Gabriel River. Rick was a seasoned waterman. He knew better! She cast about in her mind for some reason why he did it. Excuses flooded through her, and she winced at her thoughts. Did Rick feel like he had to die? Did he want to die?
Andrew extended a hand to her, and she grasped it as she held the diamond pendant cross. Andrew nodded intently, and there was a look in his eyes she hadn’t seen. Was it the memory of the adventure they had shared in the impact zone on the rocks? Was it his promise to marry her? She wanted to say something, but she didn’t dare speak. She only stood there looking at him. Andrew signed to her. “Dan was right, and your mother was wrong.”
“How?” She asked.
“The red poppies symbolized death and resurrection.” Andrew signed. “There was a death and a resurrection.”
She looked into his eyes then, afraid of what she would find there, fearful of a false hope. “Are you telling me Rick is in heaven?”
Andrew signed to her. “There may be people watching us with binoculars. Be very still and look down into the water.”
She searched the surface and saw Rick in scuba gear, waving at her a few feet beneath the water. She felt a physical shock when she saw him. It had been only twenty minutes since he’d died, and suddenly he was alive again. She stood at Andrew’s side and slowly stroked his sun-bleached hair as she watched Rick underwater. It didn’t seem long as she looked at Rick; it had only taken her only a second to know all she ever wanted to know in her life. Rick’s alive… We’re fine, after all!
They’d found each other, and their dreams had finally come true, and now, Rick was alive, and soon her peaceful home would be restored. Rick had helped her do all this, and he would help her in the future too. Rick’s alive again like Philip promised. “My mother’s crimson red poppies did symbolize death and resurrection, but they also meant beauty and success in my home. Rick Weber does have more lives than a cat. Maybe ten or twelve lives.”
She had found Rick to be alive just inches beneath the water. She wanted to reach out and touch his hand but didn’t dare. Jim Temple was in her speedboat. On the shoreline, people may have night-vision cameras. Rick had been lost to her. And, by some miracle, he was found, but still, she couldn’t touch him. “Rick’s still more a ghost than a man.” She smiled down at Rick in a way that told him all he needed to know, and then Rick swam down into the depths and disappeared into the sea.
Andrew signed. “He’s resurrected from the dead, a ghost, and alive, with more lives than a cat.”
44
During an elegant engagement party with Meghan’s family in Big Bear, everyone celebrated Meghan and Andrew’s upcoming wedding festivities. It was the first of many chances to raise a glass to the soonlyweds and mingle with loved ones before celebrating in San Onofre. Last month Dan had rented several three-bedroom beach cottages on the sand near Lower Trestles, where everyone met for a long weekend of parties on the beach.
Meghan’s brother, Simon, prepared a barbeque and tried to figure out what Denise had meant, asking Andrew to draw up a ninety-nine year lease. After Andrew and Meghan agreed with her father to live eight months in Seal Beach and four months in Big Bear during the summer when everything was growing, Meghan’s father requested her uncle Wayne add a separate guest house, a beautiful log cabin, to Meghan’s new home in Big Bear.
The guest house was a gift to the man who saved everyone's lives in Meghan’s beach house and then Meghan’s life, Jim Temple. And the ninety-nine year lease was rent-free, for life, to Temple. According to Denise, Meghan had a new brother, Jim Temple.
Simon told all the Inland Empire that there were now thirteen in the Green family in the mountains at Big Bear. Philip Winston hired Tom Clayton as a building superintendent at Sun Coast Properties. The position opened after Julie passed her real estate exam and received her license.
Julie invited Jim Temple to the engagement party at the beach cottages. Still, he had to stay at the FBI Laboratory to teach classes, give one more exam before saying goodbye to Washington D.C. for a three-week vacation at his new beach house on Sunset Beach, near Warner Street, in Orange County, California, where Jim was learning to surf.
Snickers thoroughly enjoyed the weekend with them at the beach cottages in San Onofre. There were way more seagulls to chase in San Clemente than in Seal Beach, and Meghan was sad to be returning to Orange County so soon.
Philip would be here at any moment with her black Cigarette Racing speedboat. Meghan went to the front porch of the cottage on the beach. She sat on a beach chair in the sand, watching the waves. And the surfers, they were everywhere. Every ten feet, she found someone with a surfboard. An hour later, she saw her black, fifty-nine foot, Cigarette Racing, Terrianna speedboat, moving slowly, a hundred yards off the shore.
Beneath the black hardtop, Philip Winston and Andrew piloted the vessel to a stop. Rick Weber exited the cabin, walked topside to the stern's transom part, and stopped at her six racing engines. Rick looked to shore, bouncing with the waves that gently lapped against her boat.
Time had been kind to Rick, good for the ghost. His ghost, his spirit, had a body again, and her nightmares of Jennifer Davis were still there. Moments of terror still pursued Meghan, but she’d forgiven Detective Davis and the Seal Beach Police, who were always having their lunches and hanging out at the Second Street Park with Wendy and her sister and the other children. With Jim Temple’s help, everyone moved on, and somehow it was all more a bad dream than reality.
Meghan was beginning to cope with her scuba certifications, starting to laugh at the idea of spearfishing with Rick Weber and Andrew off the reefs in Laguna Beach while spending weekends at Rick’s home that had a beautiful view of the Newport peninsula from Ruby Avenue on Balboa Island in Newport Beach.
Rick Weber stood near her boat’s stainless-steel handrail. Something happened quickly. Rick threw himself into the wa
ter and was swimming hard to shore. Then suddenly, a six-foot wave sprang up, high above the other waves on the beach. Rick began racing down the wave, bodysurfing toward the cottage. He disappeared into the whitewater. Then, suddenly, he sprang out of the water, leaping over the waves.
Rick began racing across the sand toward the cottage, his feet digging into the beach, sending up clouds of sand behind him. Meghan froze, preparing for the moment, she knew might come one day, preparing for her future father-in-law, Rick, to meet her mother, Denise.
Meghan went into the house and found Denise watching a snowboarding video with a fifteen year old girl, Simone, Meghan’s newly adopted daughter. Denise learned to surf with Simone over the weekend. Denise planned on teaching Simone to snowboard as Rick burst through the front door, his tanned chest heaving, gasping for breath. Rick Weber stared at the three of them, mother, daughter, and granddaughter.
Rick Weber’s eyes were bright. He spoke rough but clear, and they could hardly hear him. But Meghan and Denise, and Simone finally heard what Rick Weber was trying to say. “Nice to meet you. My name is Samuel.”
Denise sauntered to him. “Nice to meet you, Samuel,” she reached out and grasped his hand. “This is Simone.”
Samuel greeted his granddaughter. Meghan followed them out the front door. They sat together on the front porch. Samuel talked about skin-diving with Simone. Simone agreed on a trip to Laguna Beach to learn to skin-dive with Samuel, and then for the rest of the afternoon, Denise and Meghan and Andrew and Samuel and Simone talked, happily forging their futures together.
Acknowledgments
First and Foremost: I thank you for your kindness in reading my story.
I sent the book you just read to 150 agents worldwide and 50 publishers. I got two offers from publishers, none from agents. One publisher was a vanity publisher, and I turned that down. The second publisher wanted to see the entire book, then sent it to their board of directors. I was approved for publication, and they wanted me to do book signings at book stores and guest appearances on radio and television. But my editor, an award-winning writer, said to back off that I could do better financially self-publishing.
I am a debut author, and this my first book. I don’t have a website, social media, or a platform, and I am starting from scratch.
I need reviews for advertisers like BookBub to advertise for me. They will not advertise for me unless I have a certain number of positive reviews.
Your review does not have to be in-depth or pithy and high minded. You can just say you liked it or not. That’s it. And, that’s enough for BookBub and others to start advertising for me.
I appreciate your time, and would you please take a moment to share your feelings on Amazon. Your opinion is super helpful since I don’t have a platform. I am jealous of people on social media. I wish I had followers, but I don’t have the time and wouldn’t know how to start.
I spent a year writing this book. I live alone like Philip in my book, and most days, I write twelve to eighteen hours a day, seven days a week. As an expression of gratitude to you, I included how much work I put into this book in the passage below.
If you would like to know what it means to be a writer and who I am, please read the passage below. I wrote this especially for you, and please leave a review so I can continue advertising and making a living by writing my books.
Thank you so much, Paul
In the middle sixties, we lived in Huntington Beach, California, on Hacienda Street. I went to Springdale Elementary School near Springdale and Westminster Boulevard. I was in the Cub Scouts, and my sister was a Brownie. Our Den Mother, Mrs. Axtell, took our cub scout pack to Universal Studios for a field trip.
When we arrived at Universal Studios, Alan Hale Jr. greeted us dressed up like the Skipper wearing his blue skipper hat, blue shirt, and white pants. They were filming Gilligan's Island, and Alan Hale Jr. was very busy signing autographs.
When I greeted Alan Hale Jr., he asked me if I’d like an autograph, but I felt bad for him because he worked so hard. I was the oldest of six kids. It was my job to watch over the family, and I knew what it meant to be hard at work, so I said no, you’re working too hard. The Skipper smiled and shouted at me. “Why, thank you!” We shook hands, and then I walked inside Universal Studios and went on the tour with my cub scout pack.
If you go online to youtube.com, you’ll find Gilligan’s Island Theme Song. Exactly twenty seconds into the video, you will see a picture of the Minnow leaving Alamitos Bay. The video is filmed where the Alamitos Bay jetty goes out to sea on the same jetty Meghan and Andrew walked through thirty-foot waves during Hurricane Yolanda.
At twenty-one seconds into the video, you’ll see a picture of Skipper’s yacht, the Minnow going out into open water. This is the same place where Dan and Jim Temple piloted Meghan’s Cigarette Racing Boat out to sea to capture Rick Weber at the jetty end.
Still, Rick was already underwater in his scuba gear at the end of these same jetties where the Skipper and Gilligan and their five passengers set sail that day for their three-hour tour.
If you would like to see The Blue Wall Of Silence's actual setting, please go to the youtube video: Gilligan’s Island Theme Song, and you’ll see yachts and boats going in, and out of Alamitos Bay like Meghan did from her beach house.
And as you may have guessed, I fished for years on that same Alamitos breakwater in Seal Beach. I used to ride my bike to the breakwater to go fishing after elementary school when I was a kid in the late sixties and early seventies. And as Andrew Webster and Rick Weber did, I knew all the handholds and footholds and just where to walk on the rocks when the giant waves washed over us.
I’ve caught many sharks and needlefish, too, before I traded my fishing pole for a surfboard in the middle seventies in high school. I went to Marina High School in Huntington Beach. And I was on the high school surf team. My brother was a professional surfer who worked at Quicksilver and then started a clothing line with Dan Flecky called Burning Snow for snowboarders.
They teamed together with Kanvas By Katin, created by Nancy Katin in the late 1950s. I met Nancy before professional surfing took off, and she offered to give me free swim trunks for prizes in a surf contest I was hosting.
When Meghan told Jim Temple that the lifeguard shouted at her with a bullhorn, then almost capsized their boat. They speared the bow through the crest of a rogue wave and ran like dogs with their tails between their legs. That was a true story, but mine, not Meghan’s.
When I was surfing on a seven-foot single fin Infinity pin-tail surfboard, the waves were huge at the Huntington Beach Pier's northside. The waves were breaking over the pier, and the lifeguards kept shouting at me with a bullhorn from their rescue boat that they wanted to save my life.
I told them to leave me alone and let me surf, but they wouldn’t until that rogue wave came, then they almost capsized their boat and ran like dogs with their tails between their legs, and I kept surfing and had the time of my life. I can remember it clearly to this day. I was in the most giant waves of my life, and I could hold my breath for over three minutes, easy. It’s one of my fondest memories.
My father drove my brothers and me in a station wagon with our surfboards to San Clemente. We stopped on the freeway and jumped over the fence to surf Trestles. When we got to the beach, we were stopped by two men in dark suits and sunglasses.
They identified themselves as President Nixon’s secret service. They asked us what we were doing, jumping over the fence on the freeway with our beach towels and surfboards. We told President Nixon’s secret service that when we were driving down the freeway, we just saw that the waves were good, and we stopped by the side of the freeway and wanted to surf. And the secret service let us surf in front of President Nixon’s house, La Casa Pacifica when he was home.
The secret service loved watching us surf. Maybe Nixon did too. We became good friends with the secret service guys and talked with them every weekend. I studied acting at Golden West Unive
rsity in Huntington Beach. I had a professional photographer make a portfolio and moved to Willoughby Avenue in North Hollywood.
I had two modeling agents and worked backstage at the Tic Tock Theater, where aspiring actors would showcase their agent's talent for producers and other movie people. My roommate Don worked for twenty years as the piano player at the CBS lounge, and my neighbors across the street managed Edith Head’s shop at Universal for twenty years.
My friends at Universal Studios said I’d get lots of work in Hollywood. I was already turning down modeling shoots for K-Mart and trips to the Bahamas for photoshoots because I was the new kid in town and having too much fun in Hollywood.
I worked at Universal Alarm and we had Charles Bronson’s alarm at his house and I met his bodyguard. He came to our offices and was huge and very serious about getting Charlie’s alarm system fixed fast. Charles Bronson was in Europe filming a movie and the bodyguard explained how important security was for their home so I sent someone to his house immediately.
Another alarm technician called me from Stevie Wonder’s house, he said. “I fixed the alarm in Stevie’s garage and there was over ten cars in there. Jaguars and Mercedes and I asked Stevie’s mom if these were all Stevie’s cars?” She laughed and said. “Honey, you don’t know, do you?” The alarm tech asked, “What?” Stevie’s mom said. “Honey, my son is blind. He doesn’t drive. He bought all these cars for me.” The alarm tech said he embarrassed because he didn’t know Stevie Wonder was blind.
My friend’s from Edith Head’s shop at Universal suggested I go to college and get an education, so I joined the Army for the GI Bill and went to St. Leo College, where Lee Marvin went to school and studied writing.
I spent a year plotting this story before writing it. I used Dramatica Theory from the USC and UCLA film schools in Southern California to plot the book, so you heard about fatal or critical flaws and saw how the main character had to overcome these flaws that held her life back to employ her unique abilities.