Bike Week Blues (16 page)

Ruthie was such an empathetic Pisces, I
thought she might tear up. Thankfully, Penny Sue arrived with the
Taser, Carl close on her heels.

Mother and son were both mightily impressed
with the weapon. Carl turned it over in his hands and felt the
balance. “Multiple shots, longer range—that’s quite a breakthrough.
I’m sure police departments will be standing in line to buy this
baby.”

“I want one,” Frannie said, taking the Taser
from her son. “Ruthie, do you think your father could get one for
me?”

“I’ll ask. That’s a prototype the company’s
president sent me as a favor to Poppa. It may be on the market
soon; I honestly don’t know.”

“See what you can do. It sure is better than
a gun—not so messy.”

Carl surveyed the kitchen. “Smells good in
here. Have anything for a starving boy?”

Fran cocked her thumb at the table. “I
always do.” She grinned at us. “It’s amazing how he magically
appears whenever I rattle plates in the kitchen. I sneak a bowl of
ice cream in the middle of the night, and Carl’s at my elbow before
I finish dishing it out.”

“Come on, Mom, I’m not that bad,” he
protested.

“Close. Though, I don’t mind.”

“How did your battle go the other day?” I
asked between bites of chicken salad.

“They skunked us with infrared sensors. But,
not tonight. Tonight, we’re going to win.”

“You play at night?” Penny Sue asked. “How
can you see to shoot the paintballs? Besides, isn’t the park
closed?”

He wiped his mouth. “Canaveral’s closed
after sunset, so we use the Merritt Island Refuge for night games.
We’re unveiling our secret weapon tonight, The Bird of Prey. Todd
and the others will never know what hit them.”

Fran patted her son’s shoulder. “Carl and
his friends have been working on The Bird for months. You won’t
believe your eyes—it’s really ingenious. We’ll take a tour of his
apartment and workshop after lunch.”

We cleared the table and loaded the
dishwasher while Carl went downstairs to tidy up.

“He’s got to pick up his dirty underwear
from the floor,” Fran grumbled. “Thirty years old and still throws
his clothes in the floor. He needs a good woman to whip him into
line.” She sighed. “Unfortunately, he and his buddies don’t have
time for women. Computers, science, technology, and those
Star
Trek
war games are all they think about.

“I suppose I shouldn’t complain, he’s not
out on the street doing drugs like my next door neighbor’s son.
That kid is twenty-two, flunked out of college, and never worked a
day in his life. He’s killing his parents with worry. They need to
kick him out on his butt.

“At least Carl is a millionaire and pays his
own way.”

Ruthie, Penny Sue, and I did a double-take.
Millionaire! That sweet, young man was a millionaire? Must have
made his money on the GPS deal. Now, that’s the kind of man Ann
needed. Eight years difference isn’t much, especially since women
mature faster than men.

Fran started the dishwasher and led us into
the foyer to an elaborately carved door that fit with the woodwork
so well, I hadn’t noticed it. She swung the door open to reveal a
U-shaped stairwell. “This is the Bat Cave,” she quipped.

Star Trek
, Batman—hey, millionaires
are allowed to be eccentric, I thought with a grin. Instead of a
dark, gloomy lair we found a spacious, bright, one-bedroom
apartment, complete with an efficiency kitchen that obviously
hadn’t been used for much more than pizza and popcorn.

“Welcome to my humble abode,” Carl said with
an expansive wave.

Humble heck. The place had an
ultramodern/retro leather sofa and a red upholstered swivel chair
shaped like a hand. The palm formed the seat, the little finger and
thumb were curved into armrests, with the three middle fingers
curving up for the back.

“Try it,” he said to Penny Sue.

She eased into the chair, skeptical that it
would hold. It did. She leaned back and pivoted the chair from side
to side. “Boy, this is really comfortable.” She got up. “Try it
Ruthie.”

Ruthie lifted her feet and twirled in a full
circle. “I saw something like this at an art gallery in New
York.”

“I bought it at a gallery there—don’t
remember the name off the top of my head. The bedroom’s over here.”
He opened the door to another ultramodern room, complete with
metallic sheets and comforter. “I had them made. They’re replicas
of the ones used on
Star Trek
.”

As tacky as it sounds, they were nice and
fit the décor perfectly. Not something I would have chosen, but
perfect for a single male. At least everything wasn’t black like
Zack, Jr.’s furniture.

“Now ladies, for the pièce de résistance.”
He ushered us through the living room and a door at the far end of
the apartment.

Another garage—although, this was no
ordinary garage. The walls were lined with computers, monitors, and
all manner of electronic equipment in addition to regular tools
like hammers, wrenches, and an acetylene torch. In the center,
mounted on a boat trailer, was something covered in a tarp. He
folded the cloth back to reveal a boat that looked suspiciously
like the Batmobile.

“The Bird of Prey,” Frannie May said
proudly.

“What is it?” Penny Sue blurted.

“Victory,” Carl gloated. “The Battle of
Khitomer is ours.”

“Good, but what is it?”

“A stealth runabout.”

“Huh?” Ruthie and I said in unison.

Carl lifted a hatch on one side. “A boat
that can’t be detected. See all the angles and the black coating?
It scatters radar. A hybrid engine—gas and electric like the new
Honda. The gas engine gets you there fast, while the electric is
virtually silent so we can sneak up on the shore.” He puffed his
chest out with pride. “And, now we’ve overcome the infrared
problem. We’ve developed a way to scatter the heat signature.”

“How?” Penny Sue asked.

“That’s confidential. We’re applying for a
patent.” He put his hands on his hips and beamed. “Todd and the
Romulans don’t have a chance this time.”

“I’m surprised they had a chance before. The
other team, the Romulans, have something comparable to this?”

“Not exactly, but close.”

“They all went to MIT together and, one by
one, migrated down here after we moved,” Fran explained. “Being so
young—they all graduated before they were twenty—they hung out
together in college and made up this
Star Trek
game. They’ve
never stopped playing it. Except for Carl’s work on the Global
Positioning System when he was seventeen—interviewed by
Popular
Science
and everything—most of their patents came from trying
to outwit each other in the game.”

“Most of the Romulans’ breakthroughs have
been in surveillance. Our forté is countermeasures.”

I studied the Bird of Prey, then Carl. He
was a handsome man, not to mention smart, rich, kind to his mother.
It was time to call Ann. I had to stall that engagement until she
could meet this Klingon.

* * *

Fran was scheduled
to work at the
center that afternoon, having graciously offered to fill in for me
so I could spend time with my friends. Free of obligations, we
elected to put on our swimsuits and sit by Fran’s pool. A large,
irregular oval with a three-man Jacuzzi at one end, the enclosure
was perfectly positioned to give a panoramic view of the
Intercoastal Waterway.

“Doesn’t get much better than this,” Penny
Sue said, dropping a copy of the
Daily Journal’s
Bike Week
Event Supplement onto her lounge chair and touching her toes a few
times.

Clad in a square-necked, black one-piece
that contrasted dramatically with her light coloring, Ruthie looked
like a fashion model. One of the waif types, not the full-bodied
models that I liked so much who were coming into vogue. Ruthie
angled her chair toward the sun and sat down with her laptop and a
newspaper. “A shame Fran’s Carlo didn’t get to enjoy all of this.
She’s a terrific woman and obviously loved her husband very
much.”

I put my towel and cell phone on a table
shaded by an umbrella and plopped down on the side of the pool. The
pool was solar-heated and the water was as warm as a bath. “She’s
been a wonderful friend to me.”

“I see that and promise not to make any more
snide remarks about Carl,” Penny Sue said.

“The revelation that he’s a millionaire
didn’t influence your decision, did it?” I needled.

“That and the fact he’s obviously brilliant
and not just a nerdy flake. The genius types are always quirky.
They say Einstein got lost on the Princeton campus all the time.
He’d get so wrapped up in new theory or something, he’d lose his
bearings. And, remember the guy in the movie,
A Beautiful
Mind?
He taught at MIT, didn’t he?”

Ruthie scowled. “John Nash was
schizophrenic—that’s a far cry from quirky.”

Penny Sue pulled her hair back. “All right,
he was a nut.”

“Schizophrenia is a serious illness. It’s
nothing to make fun of. You know, Jo Ruth is thinking of going into
psychiatry.”

Penny Sue chuckled, “Good, we’ll have
someone to treat us in our old age.” She sat down and opened her
paper. “Wouldn’t y’all love to meet Uncle Enrico? I’ll bet he was a
character. Had to be in the Mafia, don’t you think?”

“Probably, considering Fran said her own
family didn’t ask him too many questions,” Ruthie said.

“I wonder what happened to him? Cement
galoshes like they do on the
Sopranos
?” Penny Sue asked.

I leaned forward and splashed water on
myself. “Yeah, or maybe he’s in the witness protection program. He
could be in Palm Beach right now with a new identity.”

“Shoot, Enrico could be here at Bike Week.
Grow a beard, shave your head, get a few tattoos and piercings—no
one would be the wiser. Fran might have passed him in the
supermarket a dozen times,” Penny Sue said.

“Your imagination’s running away.”

She pursed her lips and snapped the paper
noisily. I dove into the pool and started swimming laps. I started
out slowly, feeling the tension in my shoulders. It had been a long
time since I’d had a good workout. I swam the first two laps like a
klutzy whale, ragged strokes, an irregular kick—it’s amazing I make
it up and back. By the fourth turn my body was warm and loose and
muscle memory kicked it. I poured it on for the several more laps,
stopping at the shallow end next to my friends. Panting, I sat on
the steps, waist deep in water.

“That was some swimming, girl,” Penny Sue
exclaimed.

“I was a lifeguard in high school.”

“I couldn’t do that if my life depended on
it. I’ve never been able to swim. Took lessons as a kid and quit
when they insisted I put my face in the water. Pu-leeze, no telling
what that chlorine would do to my skin, not to mention that my
make-up would run.”

Ruthie handed me a towel; I heaved a thanks.
“You wore make-up as a child?”

“Not much, only a little blush and mascara.
But, I started using moisturizers when I was about six. ‘A dewy
complexion is a girl’s best friend,’ Momma always said. Until the
end, Momma had the skin of a teenager.”

I climbed out of the pool and wrapped the
towel around me. “How did you ever get out of college if you
couldn’t swim? Passing the swimming test was a requirement for
graduation.”

Penny Sue started twirling her hair. “A dumb
requirement. I went to school to find a husband. What good was
swimming for that? After all, I wasn’t looking to marry Tarzan and
live in a tree. Yachts with life preservers and penthouses are more
my style.”

I draped the towel over a chair and sat at
the table. “Come on, how did you get out?”

The hair twirling intensified. “You know how
all freshmen were required to take the test and if they didn’t
pass, they had to sign up for swimming lessons?”

“Yeah.”

“I was out sick that day. Lord, I thought
I’d made it. Then, a week before graduation, this muscle bound
physical education teacher tracked me down and said I couldn’t walk
down the aisle unless I took the test. I guess they felt sorry for
me, seeing how I was on the verge of tears, had already gone an
extra semester to get enough credits, and was scheduled to marry
Andy in two weeks.”

Penny Sue hadn’t graduated with us because
she refused to take any early morning classes. Consequently, she
couldn’t get in the core courses and had to go an extra semester,
dictating an August wedding instead of the traditional June
nuptials.

“Coach Hanson told me if I could get up and
back the length of the pool any way, even dog paddle, and tread
water for two minutes, she’d pass me. I almost had a panic attack,
yet knew I had to do it. Considering the amount of money Daddy had
dished out for the wedding, drowning was preferable to not
graduating.”

“You could have still gotten married,”
Ruthie said.

“No, Daddy knew I would never finish college
once I was out from under his thumb, and he was bound and
determined that I have a degree from University of Georgia. Not
that my degree in anthropology has done a darn bit of good, but he
was adamant that I would carry on the family tradition.”

She was really twirling her hair now, the
mere memory making her nervous.

“So, you passed?” I asked.

She let out a long sigh. “Barely. I dog
paddled up and back the length of the pool. The whole time Coach
Hanson paced me from the side of the pool with a long pole. I guess
if I’d gone under, she’d have speared me like a fish. Anyway, then
it came to treading water. I was considerably skinnier in those
days, and I swear, if it hadn’t been for the buoyancy of my boobs,
I’d never have lived through the test. By the end of the two
minutes, only my nose was above water.” She ran her hands down the
front of her torso. “Heckle and Jeckle, here, saved my life—”