Home Goes The Warrior (19 page)

Lee drove aimlessly around the area for several hours, lost in thought. Whenever he saw a home for sale, he stopped and jotted down notes about it. He planned to return over the weekend and look at homes in the area.

CHAPTER TWELVE - HOUSE HUNTING

fter his morning run the next day, Lee dressed and headed for the Media area to look for a home. On the way he found a diner and enjoyed the first big breakfast he’d had since Maggie left. When he finished, he stopped and bought a local newspaper and a county road map.

The evening before, he had narrowed the search area significantly. He’d decided that he really liked the area around Media. These were open residential areas with a lot of wooded, rolling hills. Looking at the map, he realized that there were three townships in the area he liked. The furthest north was Swarthmore, the home of Swarthmore College. Just south of that was Wallingford, where he had seen that nice high school yesterday. Then south of that was Rose Valley, a bedroom community with many older mansions and several upscale, but small, developments. These were his target areas for today.

The morning passed rapidly. He independently looked over four or five homes that were for sale but didn’t see any he liked. At one point, he called a realtor and had her show him a home that looked reasonable. But, once inside, it proved to be less than he had expected. The rooms were small, dark, and somehow depressing. He thanked the realtor for her time and continued his search.

By 1 p.m., he was famished and getting discouraged, so he drove to Media and found a pub with sandwiches. The pub, Packy’s Grill, turned out to be a real find, with a cheery atmosphere and good food. He ate and was about to leave when he noticed two men in a booth toward the back
of the room. One of them was the big man he’d seen yesterday. Today he was wearing a dark suit complete with a necktie, but again Lee had the feeling that he knew this man from somewhere. He looked at him for a moment, debating whether to go ask the man if they had met. But the man caught his look and glanced away with no hint of recognition. Lee decided his imagination must be getting the better of him. He paid the bartender for his lunch and left to resume the house hunt.

The bearded chairman called the Skimmers to order for their monthly meeting. Marie, the group’s secretary and accountant, had prepared for the meeting by placing pitchers of iced tea and glasses on the long table. Everyone settled in and, as was their routine, filled their glasses before the meeting started.

Routine financial and administrative matters were discussed and resolved. Then the chairman opened the floor for new business. Marie, who seldom spoke at the meetings except for her financial reports, raised her hand. “I’ve been doing some research and a lot of thinking about that FBI investigation that seemed to peter out a while back. I think we should keep an eye out for possible FBI infiltrators in the shipyard. They’re well-known to plant people on site when they want information. I’m a bit afraid that they may try to sneak someone into the yard to spy on us.”

She was repeating the thoughts of “Papa,” but the people at the table had no idea of that. In fact, they had no idea that “Papa” even existed.

The chairman took up the subject immediately. He didn’t know about Papa, but he knew that Marie had a lot of good ideas and was certainly someone to listen to. “That is an excellent observation. Any thoughts, people?”

A man at the end of the table chimed in with, “Probably not that easy to get people into the shipyard. The hiring freeze would probably slow them down.”

Another man differed on this. “There’s always a few people coming and going, even with the hiring freeze. There’s transfers from other
shipyards, and there’s always the Navy guys. The hiring freeze don’t apply to either of them.”

The chairman took up the conversation from there. “Okay. Were there any shipyard transfers recently?” The question was directed at a small grey-haired lady about halfway down the table.

“There’ve been two shop guys that transferred in from Norfolk so they could be closer to their homes. One welder and one rigger. But I don’t think they could be a threat to us, with them working out on the waterfront and all. There’s one new Navy guy, a new combat systems officer that came in. He’s already created some waves. Got Vince Askew in trouble with the shipyard commander. He would be worth watching, I guess. I don’t know for sure.”

The chairman picked up on this. “Anyone else had anything to do with this guy?”

One man raised his hand.

The chairman nodded to him and asked, “What do you think?”

“I really don’t know. He seems like a classic Navy guy, more like the shipboard sailors than the engineering officers, if you know what I mean. He’s mainly been a fleet sailor, although he has done a tour of duty up in Bath, Maine. Seems a bit too rough around the edges to be an FBI guy, I think.”

At that, the man who had first mentioned the hiring freeze spoke up. “Are you sure about him working at the shipyard in Bath?”

“Yeah. He was the quality assurance officer up there.”

“Then something is definitely fishy here. The planning officer told us that we’re scheduled to train him next week. Why does he need training if he’s been around shipyards before? We’ve never trained any of the other officers the Navy sends in to babysit us. Why are we starting now?”

Discipline at the table suddenly deteriorated as everyone began talking at once. After a moment, the chairman slapped his palm sharply on the table. “All right, all right. Pipe down. Do any of you have any idea why this guy is getting the royal treatment by the planning department?”

Another man held up his hand, saying, “It ain’t only planning. When he’s done there, they’ve scheduled him to come over to where I am in the supply department for more training. We’ve never trained any Navy people before.”

At this, the chairman reared back in his chair, staring straight ahead. It was a position that he took when something very bad was happening. The people around the table had only seen this a couple of times over the past decade, and they knew something serious was coming.

Finally, the chairman spoke. “Let’s not get carried away here. This may not be everything that it seems to be. I want those of you who work in the shipyard to get around somehow so that you see this guy and can recognize him if you need to. Then I want all of you to keep an eye on him. Watch his every move. We don’t want to overreact and do something that could bring any more attention down on us, but we’ll take care of him if we have to.”

The chairman then cautioned them to be very careful in the near future. “Don’t do anything rash. If we have to dispose of this dude, we’ll do it in a methodical manner that won’t scream murder and won’t track back to us. For now, let’s get our ducks in a row and figure out if this really is, or isn’t, a Navy guy. We’ll meet again next Saturday. Same time, same place. Thanks, everybody.” With that the meeting adjourned.

By the middle of the afternoon, Lee was tired. He’d looked at almost every home in the newspaper and had found nothing that he liked. He was driving down the main street of Media for the hundredth time when he spotted a real estate office. He decided to pull in and go talk to someone. His way wasn’t working, and maybe they could help.

As luck would have it, as soon as he walked into the office, he heard a voice greeting him. “Hello Lee. Did you finally decide to ask for help?” It was the woman who had showed him the house that morning. She was laughing cheerfully.

He put on his most sheepish face and said, “Yes, ma’am. What can you do for me?”

The realtor began by asking a series of questions that he was able to answer readily. Then, using a thick book of real estate listings, she began to find properties that interested him. They spent over an hour
looking at pictures and narrowing the search. At the end of the hour, she had a list of ten properties they would look at the next afternoon. They parted company after agreeing to meet the next day at her office. Lee headed back to the Navy base.

As soon as Lee was in his BOQ room, he grabbed the phone and dialed Maggie’s number. She picked up immediately. “Hey big guy. I thought you’ be calling today. What’s new in Philly?” Lee told her all about his house-hunting adventures and misadventures. She was very interested, asking questions and giving him hints on the kind of home she would like. Finally, the conversation turned to his visit with the accounting firm yesterday. “Lee, what about your uncle? Did you go see him?”

“No. I did go to his office, but it turns out he retired and is living in Florida now. I did spend some time with his partner, though. He’s been handling everything that my folks left behind since Uncle Mike retired last year.”

“Oh. Is there anything interesting there?’

“Yeah. For starters, there’s a climate-controlled storage unit full of things that Mike kept for me out of the old home. I told him we’d go through it sometime after you get out here. That way we can decide together what we want and what we don’t want.”

“Good, that might be tough for you. But for me, it might be really interesting, maybe even fun. I’ll be able to see some of your childhood stuff. I’d like that.”

“Yeah, Mag. But there is something else that is even more important, and something that’s a bit scary. There’s some money I didn’t know about.” Maggie laughed cheerfully. “I’m sure it’s no big deal. It’s not like either one of us is a millionaire or anything. After all, a few extra bucks can always come in handy in an emergency.”

“Maggie, I don’t know how to tell you this, so I’m just going to blurt it out. One of us is a millionaire. In fact, one of us is a multi-millionaire!”

There was a long silence, then, “You’ve gotta be kidding me!”

“No, love. There was some money when my folks died. Then Uncle Mike invested it. Now they tell me that it’s worth somewhere over six million dollars.”

“Oh my God, Lee. What are you going to do?”

“Nothing, Maggie. I told them to keep it and just keep handling it. I don’t want it. At least, I don’t want it now. I’ve got a good life and a good woman. I don’t want to do anything that could jeopardize either one of them. I started out looking for a nice, affordable little house yesterday before I knew about this. Today, after I slept on all of this, I kept looking for a nice, affordable, little house. I want the life we talked about and dreamed about. Nothing else. Is that okay with you?”

Maggie was crying softly over the telephone. “You big idiot. Of course that’s all right. It would have scared me to death if you had decided anything else. I really do want the life we’ve talked about. I don’t care about money. I love you, you big nut!” Now she was over the crying and was laughing somehow, softly. He was laughing with her, but tears were running down his cheeks. This was what he’d wanted to hear.

They talked that night for hours.