Chutes and Ladder

by Marc Jedel

  Samerson’s face grew puzzled for a moment before comprehension sank in. He stood up and turned to his whiteboard. “Well, without going into details I shouldn’t reveal, let me explain my overall vision for Sirius.”

  Sean threw a frown in my direction and then turned his rapt attention to Samerson and the board.

  I looked sideways to see Raj directing a raised eyebrow at me. He gave me a quick shake of the head.

  I got the eyebrow-encoded message and nodded. I wouldn’t do anything else to screw up today’s meeting.

  After five minutes of convoluted explanation had clarified nothing about the company’s overall direction except confirming Samerson’s incoherent thought processes, he got himself sidetracked and started telling personal anecdotes again. Perhaps fooled into thinking he had us mesmerized by his charisma, Samerson switched to humor. “When someone screws up when they work for me, do you know what I call them?”

  Following Raj’s eyebrow-influenced guidance not to speak, I shrugged and tried to look interested. I didn’t dare look at Raj, not wanting to start laughing aloud at our new CEO.

  “A taxi,” was Samerson’s punchline. He and Sean roared with laughter.

  But … You’re buying a driverless car service.

  Acting tough in front of the troops must have been Doug Samerson’s definition of effective leadership. That was the kind of attitude that never inspired people to take risks for a company. Maybe I needed to update my resume again after all.

  I forced a polite smile as I shifted in my seat and watched them laugh. Out of the corner of my eye, I caught a glimpse of gold. Adjusting my position as I pretended to laugh allowed me to get a better view. A door to the side of Samerson’s office was ajar, the gleam of bright gold coming from what could only be a private bathroom.

  He had a private bathroom? Made of gold? My eyes widened as I signaled Raj with my eyebrows to check out the ostentatious display in the corner.

  Raj could talk in “Eyebrow,” but despite understanding three other languages, he apparently couldn’t read it.

  We sat there for another five minutes while I tried to get Raj’s attention, Sean sucked up to the CEO, and the CEO talked about himself. All in all, a typical meeting with senior executives. Before I knew it, Samerson had shaken our hands and we were following Sean back through the building.

  The whole way back to the elevator and out into the lobby, Sean raved about Samerson’s inspiration and vision, and he didn’t appear to be faking his enthusiasm. I held it together long enough to shake his hand without calling his boss an idiot, or yawning.

  As Raj and I found ourselves alone again outside the building, I slumped in exhausted relief on a bench. “Well, he certainly appeared smart from a distance.”

  “Your confusion is understandable. Light travels faster than sound, so some people only appear bright until you hear them speak.” Raj laughed, and I joined in.

  As we waited for the Rover car to arrive, my annoyance started to grow. After seeing Samerson’s private restroom made of gold, I had figured lunch would be spectacular. Now, after the rapid exit, it was back to the office and a plastic tuna sandwich from the small café across the parking lot. Maybe I’d stop to buy a lottery ticket. My chances of striking it rich with stock options seemed about as likely as winning tonight’s lottery drawing.

  I considered what I’d learned from today’s visit. First, despite wanting to be a brilliant, inspirational, visionary leader like Steve Jobs or Elon Musk, Samerson still played in the minor leagues. Second, gold bathroom! Finally, both Samerson’s and Sean Peters’ behavior had caused my highly-tuned detective’s antennae to tingle.

  I needed to talk to Mace Jackson. And tell him what? As I considered our time with Samerson and Peters, a detail started to come into focus. Unlike all of Samerson’s direct staff, Peters didn’t have a colorful watch band on his wrist or some ready excuse for not wearing it.

  I got excited.

  This was it!

  I’d cracked the case. Peters must have lost his watch in the struggle when he killed Larry. That was why he grew so sensitive when I brought up Larry and didn’t want to talk about their relationship. Maybe they’d become friends while working on that strategic project together and then had irreconcilable differences on the project’s direction. As part of his extreme sports training, Sean lured Larry out on a Saturday morning hike and killed him on the trail when Larry wouldn’t change his mind to support Sean’s position.

  It all hung together. The police just needed to locate Peters’ watch on the trail and we’d have him for Larry’s murder.

  Would the police honor me with an award ceremony? Maybe the mayor would make me an honorary detective? I’d prefer a special costume … or signal. Like Batman’s Bat-Signal. Wait. Would San Jose or Santa Cruz County honor me? I groaned as I thought of the bureaucratic in-fighting that could take weeks to resolve and cost me my renown. Then, I smiled as I realized I could offer to attend ceremonies in both places. Did Santa Cruz County have a mayor? Maybe their council just met in the woods and ate granola.

  Raj interrupted my thoughts. “Aren’t you coming?” He was sitting inside a Rover car and looking up at me with a puzzled expression.

  Shaking away my daze, I hopped in.

  9

  Tuesday Afternoon

  Mace called me back! I answered on the first ring, fumbling my phone in my eagerness as I stood outside my apartment building with my nieces. “Hey, Mace… I mean Sergeant.” I kicked myself for my mistake when I heard his annoyed grunt.

  After our last case, he’d told me to use his title whenever we interacted in a professional situation. He’d said, “Call me Sergeant.” Then, when I’d used his title and asked if I could do a ride-along in his police car someday, he’d added, “No, actually, don’t call me. Period.” I was sure he meant he’d call me to arrange the timing. Ever since, he must have been really busy.

  “You’ve called me at least six times this week and it’s just Tuesday,” came Sergeant Mace Jackson’s low rumble. Before I could respond, he rumbled on, “But the captain made me call you. I got volun-told to be the liaison for this investigation with the Santa Cruz County Sheriff’s Office.”

  “Wow, so it’s true? They started an investigation? Now they believe me about Larry? Did any of my tips pan out yet?” My heart started beating faster than my words spilled out as I paced on the sidewalk.

  Earlier, I’d picked up my nieces from school for a quick visit with my neighbor, Mrs. Kim, who watched them occasionally. The girls had bonded with her, and her cookies and tea didn’t hurt. Now, as I spoke on the phone outside my apartment building, Skye and Megan dropped their backpacks on the ground and crossed their arms. Megan’s eyes narrowed, shooting laser beams in my direction as she gestured for me to follow her. Skye attempted her own version of airplane ground controller signals, trying to get me moving inside.

  I had murder on my mind, so I shooed them away.

  “Did they collect Larry’s EpiPen from his car? Did they find any fingerprints? DNA? What about Gloria? Did they arrest her yet?” Despite hunching over and covering the mouthpiece, I was too excited to keep my voice down, and the girls could hear my side of the conversation.

  The girls stopped their efforts at trying to get me into the building. Looking at me with wide eyes, they seemed torn between intrigue and fear.

  I walked farther down the sidewalk, away from them. They were too young to get involved in something this sordid.

  “I just said it’s an investigation. I sure didn’t say anyone believed you.” Mace’s staccato words seemed to struggle to come out of his mouth. Then he sighed heavily and, in a more resigned tone, added, “They’re treating his death as suspicious. The autopsy isn’t complete yet. Anyway, we can’t share any details with you.” He paused and muttered something under his breath before saying to me, “They want you to come in tomorrow morning to answer some questions.”

  I got to be his partner again. Super-agent Marty
is back! “I’m in. I can take some time off and join the investigation—”

  He cut me off. “You are not joining the investigation, only talking to the deputies about what you saw. This time you need to be polite, or you’ll find yourself spending some time in our holding cell.” His voice gained that intense tone that he used when he wanted to intimidate people. It worked.

  I understood. He wanted me to be part of his secret investigatory unit, in case the Santa Cruz Sheriff’s deputies were in on the conspiracy. This would be like that movie …

  I shook my head. This wasn’t the time to get stuck in one of my sidetrack reveries. Mace needed to know the latest breaking news. “I think we have two new suspects. Doug Samerson, the CEO of Sirius Innovation, and Sean Peters, the Chief of Staff. Peters acted very suspicious today when I asked him about Larry. And he wasn’t wearing one of those custom watch bands.” I paused for breath.

  “What?” The clipped tone had returned. He even grew a little strident. “You can’t be going around accusing people of killing someone. If anyone is acting suspicious, it’s you. And there’s no ‘we.’ There’s only you and me.”

  And we just disagree.

  I had to stop finding lyrics to old songs in my daily conversations. Before I could speak again, Mace informed me when and where to show up before hanging up on me. I didn’t even get a chance to explain my theory that Sean lost his watch on the trail during a struggle to the death with Larry. I still felt energized that the police had added me to their team. Tomorrow, I’d impress Mace and his Santa Cruz deputy friends with my observations and deductive reasoning.

  Confident that all would be put to rights soon for Larry, I put my phone in my pocket and walked back to the girls. I felt an odd sense of elation to get confirmation that my friend’s death had been deemed suspicious. Skye had her head cocked to one side and her mouth open to ask me to explain when a loud car roared up, music blaring, and skidded to a halt right in front of us.

  A tall woman with wild, frizzy, ash-blonde hair popping out of her Red Sox ballcap and blown wilder by the wind, sat facing us in a red convertible. “Cuz! How’s things shaking? And who are those beautiful women hanging around with you? Don’t they know better?” She sprang out of her low-slung car to screams of joy from the girls.

  My cool cousin, Samantha, had arrived.

  A psychologist from Boston who had grown up in Oklahoma, Samantha was in town for some convention. Laney and I had both offered her a place to stay, but she chose me because I was cooler. To avoid hurting Laney’s feelings, she told us she didn’t want to force the girls to double up while she was in town.

  Samantha did some complicated hand gesture involving fist bumps, high-fives, and flickering fingers with Skye and then Megan before giving me a quick slug on the shoulder. Samantha didn’t do hugs. Before I knew it, she threw their backpacks in the trunk, got the girls to jump into the tiny, rear-facing bench seat, and sat back down in the driver’s seat. The girls hadn’t seen her in over a year and already they were best buds again.

  “Let’s go, Cuz. Let’s boogie over to Laney’s. I’m starving. It’s way late o’clock on my East Coast stomach.”

  I looked skeptically at the girls, crouched in the back and looking out the window. “Are there even seatbelts back there? Maybe we should take Rover.”

  “Oh, Marty, don’t be such a fuddy-duddy. Get in already.”

  I texted Mrs. Kim that we’d stop by to see her another time and got in. Samantha had that way with people.

  When I looked over my shoulder at the girls, Megan gave me a wide-eyed grin and a thumbs up while Skye pointed at her seatbelt and threw me an eye roll.

  We zoomed off, music blaring as we blew past jealous people in boring cars. It was time to ride—ride like the wind.

  *****

  While we waited for dinner to be delivered, we sat around Laney’s kitchen table talking. As a surprise for the girls, I’d ordered a special dinner from El Salvadore Restaurante. We’d discovered the restaurant by accident when the girls stayed with me last month while their mother was in the hospital. There had been a little incident that night, so I wasn’t allowed back inside the restaurant, but ordering delivery wasn’t breaking any rules. At least not in my book. Just to be safe, I placed the order in Laney’s name.

  Laney propped her booted foot on a chair while Samantha picked on me. “Girls, did you ever hear the story about when your Uncle Marty was young and wouldn’t jump off a tall rock into a lake? Younger kids like your mom jumped right off, but nope, not your Uncle Marty.”

  Skye took the bait. “What happened?”

  “He’s probably still stuck up on that rock.” The room filled with girl giggles.

  Before I could defend myself, the stories devolved into a session of “Pick on Marty” as Samantha rolled out one after another. I tried to keep a frown on my face but it was hard in light of the constant laughter. Samantha was a funny storyteller, even if most of her stories were at my expense and exaggerated.

  A quick conversational detour to discuss the girls’ various Halloween costume options for Saturday left me adding a reminder to my calendar to get a costume for myself. Before I knew it, the conversation had switched gears, as usual, to yet another discussion about what color or pattern to paint Laney’s new car.

  For weeks, Laney had delayed finalizing the order of her replacement car for “Sunshine” while she and the girls debated the silly paint job. “Sunshine” was one of the last major items that Laney’s husband had picked out with her and the girls before his death, which might have impacted her unwillingness to move on. But I was tired of hearing debates about car colors. The dealer had called a few times already to tell her that the car had been delivered and they could finish a custom paint job in a day if she’d tell them what color.

  Everyone ignored my logical solution to paint it the same neon-yellow color as before, and they were debating the relative merits of pink versus orange when I’d finally had enough. “Okay, my turn. Here’s a story about something Poppa did when we all went to Disneyland together.”

  Even though I hadn’t suggested unicorns, rainbows, or some other paint option, everyone turned to listen to my story—probably only to see if it could beat Samantha’s last one. The girls knew Poppa only as a grandfather, not when he was younger and more energetic.

  “So, both our families were standing in line forever for a ride at Disneyland, and this payphone near us rings. Poppa answers it in a fake Russian accent and says, ‘Lunar Base One. This is a secret number. You should never call again.’ Then he hung up on them.”

  Laney, Samantha, and I all burst out laughing as we remembered that hot summer day.

  Skye’s face puckered in confusion. “What’s a payphone? Is that like a burner phone?”

  Megan asked, “Poppa speaks Russian?”

  Without missing a beat, Skye answered, “He probably used that translation app.”

  Megan ignored her to ask, “Is Lunar Base One like the International Space Station?”

  With an impish glint to her eyes, Skye then added, “I read they’re going to build a lunar base soon.”

  “Poppa was an astronaut?” popped in Megan as she got into the game.

  “Was space even invented back when you were young?” added Skye with a malicious smirk, sure she got the best of us now since all three adults had gone silent.

  She was punking me something terrible, so I was glad to jump up when the doorbell rang. I went to get the food and avoid more questions that made me feel old. I took the bag of food and set it on the ground so I could pay. When the delivery guy handed me his tablet for the thumb scan, I gasped.

  Right above his wrist was a small tattoo of a hula dancer, just like the members of the drug gang from last month had. I snuck a peek at his face and almost swallowed hard.

  He was one of the men who had been there that night.

  I bent my head so he wouldn’t recognize me. My hand shaking, I decided to add a big tip in case he
did. Maybe this would work as a bribe to encourage him to forget he’d ever seen me. After all, I hadn’t done anything to them. What happened hadn’t been my fault. Not really.

  Keeping my head down, I mumbled thanks and closed the door behind him.

  Leaning against the door to avoid fainting, I felt a lump grow in my stomach as I started to worry if I’d make it home alive. Perhaps I had been naïve to assume they’d never bother me again. Was this driver even a regular delivery guy? Had they used their connections to track me down to my sister’s house so they could send a disembodied head in the bag to scare me?

  I grimaced and stepped away from the bag sitting on the floor. Then, I reconsidered. That plot was straight out of a scary movie.

  Perhaps they had gone after my friend Larry to keep me from uncovering their conspiracy … Wait, that was another movie, not reality.

  Who would even expect gang members to have day jobs? Housing costs had skyrocketed again, but did even drug gangs need to make extra money to afford living in Silicon Valley?

  Now I had to worry about whether the driver had recognized me and would tell the others. I didn’t want the gang to know where I lived, but I also didn’t want them thinking I lived here and put my sister and nieces in jeopardy. With a heavy heart, sour stomach, and holding the bag far away from me, I returned to the table.

  The others loved their food. The girls showed off their black bean and rice volcanoes to Samantha, who used their plates to demonstrate how the Big Dig tunnels were built under downtown Boston back in the ’90s. I toyed with my food, no longer in the mood for dinner. When a car brake screeched outside, I flung myself to the floor to avoid the bullets.

  “Cuz, what are you doing?” Samantha asked. “You’re acting as antsy as a Yankee fan during a Red Sox home game. And you didn’t eat any of this delicious chow. Stop being a nervous ninny. What’s the deal?”

  The girls giggled as they watched me get up from the floor and sit back down.