Switcheroo (25 page)

Chapter
48

Later, I found out Fred had been
trying to pull the truck onto the car carrier he was towing when the
teleportation system activated.  Kim had been watching from her car in the Bell
Buoy parking lot.  They were stunned when Fred and the Ford Ranger disappeared.
As they watched open mouthed, a huge portal opened, spewing out an eighty foot
tall semispherical slab of earth with an old school gymnasium on top of it.  
For a grand moment the whole thing just sat there. Then, with nothing to
support the soil, it collapsed with a deafening crash.

Dirt, debris and dust flew out in
all directions flattening trees and partially covering Kim’s car.  The Captain
carefully dug her out and helped her into the lobby of the Bell Buoy Seafood.
The lobby smelled like a hot canvas sneaker full of sardines, but it was air-
conditioned.  The shock of what she had just seen acted to combine fear, raging
third trimester hormones and Fred’s presumed death had her in tears. Later,
with the knowledge that Fred was still alive, she was still crying because she
was alone in South Carolina with no money or credit cards.

Back in Tennessee, the blast
created by the teleport-gone-wrong outside Oakridge had created quite stir.  We
heard sirens shortly after the big bang. They sent five county squad cars, two
fire trucks and two ambulances, none of which were needed.  What we really
needed was a winch.  Fred Smithey kept yelling at me. The sides of the huge
hole were too steep to climb. He stopped yelling for a moment to answer his
cell phone.

“Will you please stop yelling at me?”
I said to him through my cell phone. He transferred his unintelligible
screaming to the phone.

“You teleported. I’ll explain
later. A tow truck is on the way with a winch. Get into the truck after it is
hooked up. They’ll pull you out.”

“Where’s Kim?”

“She wasn’t in the truck?”

I called Kim’s cell phone.

“Rust, I need you to get me outta
here!”

“Calm down,” Wrong thing to say
today, especially to a panicky pregnant lady.  I was picturing her buried under
eighty feet of earth and debris. “Are you trapped…hurt?”

“No, I’m stressed out. There was
an explosion and Fred is gone.  Now I’m in a stinky seafood barn and I am being
attacked.”

“Who is attacking you?”

“Realtors and property
developers.  The land next the Bell Buoy was swampy low land. Since the explosion
filled in several acres with soil, they are all yelling at each other and me
about who will get to develop it.  They think I know the owner. This stress
can’t be good for the baby!” Neither can slurping virgin drinks in a
smoke-filled Orby’s or doing God-knows-what with Fred Smithey in my bed.  Again
I was reminded I had to get to JC Penney’s for new sheets right away.

“I need you to stay with the
truck, Kim. I’ll pay you.”

“There ain’t no truck anymore,”
She sobbed.

“Oh, it’s there somewhere. Just wait
there and when they find the truck tell ‘em it’s yours.”

While the Edisto Island authorities worked on digging the truck out, I told Kim to go to Piggly Wiggly and wait
at the Western Union office.  I would call her after I wired her some money to
get the truck back.

I looked up and a uniformed
officer was approaching.

“Well, that truck is being pulled
from the hole along with the screaming guy.  Father, I need to take a statement
from you,” he said, whipping out his note pad.

“I’m not really a priest.”

“Okay. I can’t arrest you for that
since you told me up front.  Is it a Halloween costume?”

“No, it was a dumb disguise,” I
sighed.

“Well, what caused this big hole
in the ground?”

“Well, where do I begin?  Fred was
four wheeling and fell into a biiiiigggg hole.”

“Father, or uh, Sir, Stratton
called from Knoxville and filled me in. We know there was an explosion or some
seismic event. Things will go better if you just tell us what happened.”

“Ok, well let me start from the
beginning…”

About ten minutes into my story,
the man says, “So where are these bad guys?” Meaning Partee, Kendrick and
Slink.

“They’re in South Carolina.”

I gave the name and address of the
Bell Buoy. “They were most likely killed in the blast, though.”

“Right.”

He stepped away after that to get
a statement from Briana. His final look toward me was one normally reserved for
door-to-door salesman or street corner preachers.

Chapter
49

The city smelled like a coffee pot
left to burn all night.  No, wait a minute. That smell was coming from my
kitchen.  I wandered into the kitchen and turned off the smoldering coffee
maker. I sloshed some ice cubes and water around in the blackened pot.

It had been two weeks since the
implosion at Oakridge.  Most of the pain from my various injuries sustained during
the escapade had abated.  I was back to working for Joel Axeman at LISA again,
but not working as hard.  I was getting reacquainted with Bandit and trying to
get my life and house back in order.

When I finally called her, Mother
had explained to me that her therapist told her to deposit the accumulated rent
checks.  He told her that by not treating me like a grown up she was enabling
my shortcomings. I told that was psycho-babble bullshit, and told her to slap
the bastard for me the next time she saw him.

I had bought new linens for the
master bedroom at Target.  I had kicked Fred over to the guest room and tried
to establish some ground rules about when Kim could visit. 

Since I had located Georgie
Parker, Willie Crandle had sued for child support. She was all set to start
receiving monthly payments from Georgie, but for now she was complaining to
anyone who would listen about her swollen feet, her swollen belly and a myriad
of other discomforts.

Fred was turning into a great
friend. His wife was divorcing him, he would lose his job at Pinkerton as soon
as his sick time ran out, and he was in love with a girl who was pregnant with
someone else’s baby.   A friend in need?  He had been a great help to me, but Knoxville had not been a great place for him. Or had it?  He had been a middle-aged man
with a boring job, a loveless marriage and nothing to look forward to but the
Sunday newspaper.

The Mr. Coffee was unusable, I
found my old French press, put water in the kettle to boil and hit the shower.
I returned to the kitchen to an ear splitting whistle from the kettle.

“Rust, will you make that stop?”
Kim yelled from the den; more ear splitting.  I hadn’t noticed before, but now
I could hear the sound of the TV coming from the den - Judge Judy.  Kim was
violating one of the rules I had set for Fred. She would only come over when he
was there. After tanking up on coffee, I dressed and tried to sneak out the
side door.

“Rust, would you rub my feet?” Kim
whined. I could almost hear her pouting. Fred was out doing field work for me,
leaving me to deal with the whiny woman who was about ready to pop.  I cut
through the den to the front door. She was lounging on the futon with the dog.

“Kim, I gotta go. Here’s an
icepack,” I said as I tossed her the frozen, blue bag.

I could still hear her talking
loudly to me as the front door closed behind me.  I was leaving her alone in my
house. I did not know where her mom lived. I did know her middle name or shoe
size.  I was slipping; I needed to tighten up or maybe just lighten up.

I lowered myself into the Tarjetta
and headed to my Mom’s. Yeah, I could have walked but it was the week before
Thanksgiving. The weather had turned cold. Plus, I had sworn off exercise in
order to make my upcoming New Year’s resolution to lose weight more meaningful.

This would be Tammy, Grandma
Tuttle and little Hannah’s last day at Mom’s house.  Ruby was cooking lunch
with Grandma Tuttle. It would be sort of an early Thanksgiving and also
goodbye. They would be missed especially baby Hannah. I had invited Wendy
Forsyth and Briana. I was trying to smooth things over with them. Grandma
Tuttle’s house had been repaired. Tammy was now flush with cash since she had
sold her ‘discovery’ and received her first advance against royalties. This would
be a leisurely day.

I was thankful.  Not everyone was
doing as well as I was. When the emergency crew was cleaning up the wreckage of
the old gymnasium on the giant mound of earth next to the Bell Buoy parking
lot, they could hear muffled screams.  The collapsed gym building was sort of
the sheet-metal whipped cream atop an earth sundae lying in a hot fudge bog. 
The cherry on top was a small pickup truck. Kendrick and Slink were found in
the bed of the truck, alive.  Partee was found under the truck, apparently
unconscious.  It seems when the whole mess materialized and the gym began to
tremble violently, the three of them realized they needed to take cover. Two
jumped in the truck bed. Partee, unable to jump because of his mangled knee,
dragged himself under the Ford Ranger. He survived the fall in the small space
there.

Detective Stratton was able to
have Slink and Kendrick arrested by the locals.  Partee pretended to be
unconscious and then was able to charm his way out of the ambulance by
bludgeoning a cop and a paramedic with a pair of defibrillator paddles. He was
last seen hauling ass in a stolen police cruiser.

Crackling leaves blew along the
boulevard in the wake of the Tarjetta as it cruised through Sequoyah.  I pulled
into Mom’s driveway and up to the large house under its umbrella of mammoth oak
trees.

I parked at the back of the line
of cars that were here for this luncheon.  I eyeballed the vehicles. The
Pontiac Parisienne with the faded off-white paint and genuine fake wood side
panels was obviously Grandma Tuttle’s. The sensible Mercedes sedan was probably
Andrew Chandler’s.  The giant yellow Hummer had to be Tammy’s.  There was a
black Lincoln I did not recognize. That was definitely a bad sign.

The door was opened by a very tall
fellow in a suit; I assumed he was the driver of the Lincoln.

“Good day, Sir.”

“Hello, uh. I’m Russell Stover,
they call me Rust.”

“I am Mr. Smith, Andrew Chandler’s
houseman.”

“I didn’t see you when I visited
him recently.”

“I’ve just started today, Sir,” he
smiled. He was nice enough; I was going to have to nickname him Lurch just
based on his height and occupation.

Mr. Smith saw me in and I moved
through the towering hall toward the center of the house.  I crept into the
kitchen and gave Ruby a big hug.

I could tell by the delicious
smells that Ruby was getting along great with Grandma Tuttle. She was at the
stove stirring a pot.

“Everyone is in the den watching
Hannah,” Ruby said, as she handed me a glass of white wine.   Well, the wine
would help me stay smooth with Tammy and Wendy in same room. At least it was a
big room. Maybe I could keep them separated. Probably wouldn’t matter since I
had gotten Wendy’s daughter kidnapped and Tammy viewed me as milk past its
date.

The short hall from the kitchen
opened into the large main room that mother calls the den. It has a quad of
sofas surrounding a jumbo coffee table in the middle.  Little two-year-old
Hannah was kneeling at the coffee table playing with a red plastic barn and
animals.  She would moo like a cow and then giggle.  Andrew Chandler and my
mother sat behind her, watching her approvingly.

“Russell, you’re here.”

Mother stood and came over,
touching my sleeve as she kissed my cheek. “I have had the best time with our
guests while you were out of town. I hate to see them go.”

Andrew Chandler was sitting on the
next couch sipping his glass of red wine.  He stood and nodded as I approached.
We shook hands.

“Capital job lassoing those trucks
for us, Rust,” he spoke quietly. “You really earned that finder’s fee. I have
been working with a group of investors and have already helped Tammy launch a
corporation based on this new technology. She has been wired a handsome advance
and she will derive royalties from the profits of the new company.”

“What will be the focus of the new
firm?”

“Long term, we will try to
replicate the technology to manufacture transporting stations.  It will be
called InstaHere.”

“InstaHere?”

“Yes, that was actually Tammy’s
idea. ‘InstaHere, Here instantly’ is our slogan. You see?”

“I guess so,” I smirked.

“Anyway, we will offset research
costs in the near term by shipping from LA to New York.”

“I get it. Park one truck in LA
and one truck in New York. But how much can you move, the trucks are so small?”

“Oh, we will construct a warehouse
in each city so we can move a large volume by swapping them. The devices will
be removed from the trucks and installed in the warehouses. The interior shell
and all the cargo and people will be transported.”

“People, too?”

“They’ll have to sign a waiver. 
It’s perfectly safe though, as you know.”

“Yes, but I’m still not sure if
I’m me.”

“Of course, you’re still you,”
Andrew smiled.

“And what about Billy Madison?” I
said, remembering the troubled inventor.

“Oh, he also received a cash
advance and a share in the future royalties. I hear he started a business in Ohio called Looptown? Sells yarn and such for crocheting and knitting, I gather,” Andrew’s
brow furrowed. “Bit of an odd one, that fellow.”

Then his eyes glazed over.
“Listen, I need to tell you something.  I know you must have noticed that I am
fond of your mother.  I have always been concerned that she might think that I
was after her money, you know.”

“You do pretty well yourself.”

“Well, I have my government
retirement and some assets. But, with this new company I can amass a real
fortune.  With this new financial security, I finally have the courage to ask
for your mother’s hand in marriage.”

I felt a little faint. Andrew
Chandler was so much nicer to me than my father had been. But in the warped
vision of my mind’s eye, this was all wrong on every level. I was hoping for a
platonic marriage for the two of then, complete with separate bedrooms, maybe
even separate houses.

“That’s awesome. But, you don’t
need my blessing.”

He smiled nervously; the skin of
his face had the patina of an antique oil painting as it stretched over his
skeletal cheek bones. “I hope that after some time and thought we will have
your blessing.  By the way, here is your finder’s fee.”

He placed a crisp sealed envelope
into my hand and went to sit by my mother.  The two of them watched Hannah play
at the coffee table. They seemed so content, smiling at Hannah and then at each
other. This made me shudder, though it shouldn’t have.

The doorbell rang. I stuffed the
envelope into my jacket pocket and headed that way.  I was too slow.  Andrew
Chandler’s new man-about-the house was holding the door for Wendy Forsyth. 
Wendy’s light brown hair framed her face as she smiled at me.  Mr. Smith took
her blue parka, revealing a black sweater that hugged Wendy’s curves.  As she
stepped in I locked eyes with Briana. From the look on her face I gathered she
had not forgiven me for my role in her abduction.  The scowl she gave me would
have soured all the milk at Kroger’s.

Wendy refused wine, and asked for
tea.   I went to the kitchen and got a coke for Briana and an iced tea for
Wendy.  When I came back to the den, Wendy and Briana were sitting with Mom and
Drew Chandler and everyone was laughing at Hannah.  Briana had softened a
little bit just from looking at Hannah playing. I handed out the drinks.

“Where’s Tammy? Everyone else is
here and ready to eat.”

“She called earlier.  She’s on her
way.”

Just then we heard the loud growl
of a V-eight motor in the driveway.  I walked toward the entry hall. Mr. Smith was
holding the door open.  Tammy was sliding out of a mega-shiny new coupe. Sun
sparkled off red paint and racing stripes, huge chrome wheels glistened.  She
walked to the door, tossing back her black hair. She was wearing only a tight
shirt and jeans. She should have been wearing a jacket in the fifty degree air.

“Nice wheels.”

I stepped out onto the front
porch.

“Glad you think so, ‘cause they’re
yours.” She reached out and slapped the keys into my hands.

“Right,” I laughed.

“No, I’m serious,” She held my
gaze. “You believed me when no one else did. You didn’t think I was crazy, or
at least didn’t tell me I was crazy. You risked everything to get those trucks
back. You helped to change everything for me. This morning I called Orby’s
Place and resigned.  I paid off Grandma Tuttle’s farm.  I went to the Chevy
dealer and bought me and Hannah a Hummer and you this Camaro.  By the way, the
salesman says this Camaro will do everything and more than that Jaguar you were
lookin’ at, and it will look better doin’ it. And you won’t look like one of
them stuffed shirts, no offense,” she said and nodded at my mother’s mansion.

“Hannah can go to college, hell,
now I can go to college. We can start a whole new family tree that will be
completely different. This wouldn’t have happened without you, Rust. The money
you got is payment for a job well done; the car is my way of saying thank you.”

She gave me a kiss on the cheek
and sauntered into the house.  Mr. Smith smiled slyly as he held the door and
then he moved to let Wendy Forsythe through.  She followed me down to the
driveway.

“Hey, Baby.  Wanna ride in my new
car?” I said, in my fake Elvis voice.

She took my hand.

“Briana could come, too.  Maybe a
ride in the new car will help me charm her a little.”

“I asked her to wait inside, so we
could talk.”

“Well, honey. Lunch is almost
ready. We could go for quick spin, but no afternoon delight."

“Oh Rust, it’s a little late for
that,” she said, eyes welling up. “I’m pregnant.”

“Wow.” My knees buckled a little.
This was not something I could teleport my way out of.  I took Wendy in my arms
and held her close.

###