NOTE: If you haven’t been following this from the beginning, and if you want to know the full sequence of events, start with the introduction. Click on Archives on the right.
Soil comes moist and black in sunny yellow plastic sacks, 40 lbs or 60lbs at a time from the Snaz “Garden of Eden” plant and paving center. There’s a blond American Eve pictured on the front of the sack ‘sans’ serpent, but modestly covered by a few leaves on an intervening tree branch. She stands next to Adam with his fig leaf in place. This Eve has commercial savvy and knows how to stoke your expectations. Huge dahlias are perpetually blossoming around her and Adam gestures towards apples and pears and tomatoes, squash, broccoli and carrots piled in baskets with out a spec of dirt or caterpillar or even a fly to be seen. Each ideal platonic fruit and vegetable is displayed against the perfectly mowed green carpet of grass in front of them. The specially blended soil is registered and tested to comply with the standards of the Mulch and Soil Council, who’s website is provided. Detailed instructions are printed in Spanish English and French for best results with the product, which goes on fertilizing your garden long after you planted.
Dirt previously dug out of the clay under the dead yellow alyssum has dried into dusty sun-baked lumps like rocks. Having mixed the specially blended Snaz soil product with the dry clay, I fill in the hole for future planting. Put my spade with hickory handle beside the rake’s orange fiberglass handle leaning against the wheelbarrow nearby. Now using Snaz “Super Trowel” with saw tooth feature for cutting through roots, it is time to replace some dead potherbs with newly purchased Chrysanthemums. Lark waves from the road and comes through the gate to unburden herself.
“Hi Fred, Has Diddlie come down the hill yet? Are you getting your hands dirty again?
“Only my gloves Lark. See these pots?”
“There’s nothing but dried stalks. What are you trying to grow? Wow! I love the pots … oh yes! … the red one, it’s great!”
“That had cilantro in it and the dead brown stuff in the yellow pot was Italian parsley and this one …”
“Fred, you have to water them!”
“Lark, water is the thing alright, but they got too much
in those monsoon rains we had in the summer.”
“You mean they drowned?”
“Looks like it, but look at that.”
I point out the thickened roots on one of the dead plants I am exhuming.”
“Look like miniature parsnips.”
“I forget which herb this is, but those roots should sprout next spring so I’m reburying them over there by the hydrangea.”
“They might be day lilies.”
“No, not in the pots. They are all over the place though.”
“I thought they would just grow more with more rain, like all the other stuff in your yard. Its like the woods in here.”
“Yes the shrubs need pruning to clear the paths. Look at that Burford holly.”
Lark looks at the surrounding greenery, admires the holly berries and swats a mosquito on her bare arm.
“Fred, there’s a visitor on your neck right under your ear.”
I can’t swat it because my gloved hands are full of plant roots, so I shrug to drive it off.
“Why is UPS delivering to an empty house?”
“Where? What do you mean?”
“Look up the hill at Jake’s house. The driver just left a package up there by the side door.”
“I haven’t seen anyone move in.”
“Well I am going over to Diddlie’s and I’ll check it out on the way up the hill. She is finally back from that endless trip.”
“Didn’t she go to England?”
“Yeah that trip, which was extended by her new romance.”
“Haven’t seen her … didn’t know about … No come to think of it I saw her last week carrying a bundle of goldenrod up the hill.”
“Fred you couldn’t have, she only got back yesterday. Lou picked her up at Dulles.”
“Yes, I see what you mean.”
“Have you looked at Shrinkwrap’s latest posts?”
“No, Lark, not lately,”
“That’s what I came to talk to you about. There’s an article on surveillance both by government and corporations, and it’s about us!”
“What? … are our names mentioned? … I mean no one talked to me or anything.”
“No, Fred it’s about government contracts for surveillance and involves the incident in Fauxmont. None of us is mentioned by name.”
“Oh, dirty tricks!”
“Fulton Furray’s blog mentions the prosthesis in the gully. He’s convinced there’s a lot more to it and that Dordrecht’s Group is involved. He has a copy of a contract, showing they are linked to Fibonacci Corp. Also Fulton has been served a subpoena to appear before Judge Grackle to reveal his source.”
“What is Quiscalus P. Grackle getting involved for? He usually does the high profile cases?”
“Quiscalus! Where did you get that from?”
“I just read an article about him in a bird magazine at the doctor’s office, and here he turns up again.”
“Okay, Fred, a judge in a bird mag.?”
“That’s right he is a bird watcher and has an impressive list.”
“List of what?”
“Of birds he has seen. Serious bird watchers make lists.”
“Fred, if the story on Shrinkwrap is just about a prosthesis and bird watching, Grackle wouldn’t even know about it.”
“Yeah, he is only in on the big stuff.”
“I don’t think Fulton is going to give anything up and Grackle will try to nail him!”
“Lark, the story has already been reported on local news …”
“I know Fred. We were at the H Bar together, remember?”
“That’s right. So what is Max saying?”
“I am not supposed to, but I’ll tell you he is afraid he is going to be the scapegoat.”
“The scapegoat for what?”
“Fred, even though the police got there after the others, they are retailing the prosthesis story. I mean what do they know? Why are they are taking Urban Safety’s word for it? There should be an inquiry into what really happened before the police arrived, and the Fauxmont Militia and Urban Safety were there by themselves.”
“That’s probably twenty minutes or more.”
“Steve thinks it took the police half an hour to get there.”
“Ah, but how soon were they called?”
“That is a question. If they delayed calling, why did they?”
“Who made the call?”
“Probably Urban Safety, that’s what they are supposed to do.”
“They all know each other, these security contractors are often ex-police or army or something like that.”
“You remember the trouble about all that dirt in the gully?
“Yeah, the stuff from the failed silt fence when Jake’s place went up.”
“If the illegal dumping is taken to court, Max will be the defendant.”
“Right, that’s it. So you think the dumping case will cover the real question of what was in the gully?”
“Isn’t that what Fibonacci do?”
“Yeah … perception management.”
“How about lies, obstruction of justice, and framing an innocent man?”
“How about it, or a fertile imagination Lark?”
“Okay Fred, Fulton has shown a connection between Fibonacci and Dordrecht’s. Max worked with Dordrechts when he built the Tripp house a couple of years ago. He thought they were doing a lot of unnecessary work. So he told Jake Tripp about it, thinking Jake was getting fleeced. Tripp didn’t say much, then Max was told to mind his own business by some clown from Dordrecht’s.”
“Really? You mean they sent him a letter, or was it done in person.”
“In fact it was done over in the parking lot outside the H bar, by a guy in a business suit. Max thinks he’s an attorney from the way he kept intimating legal action.”
“Well, I remember that crazy security system with all the video screens in their huge lobby. I tried to tell Gale the system was faulty when I first moved in here, but don’t think she heard me. There were too many screens. They looked redundant to me at the time. I couldn’t make sense of it at all. It was like a hall of mirrors.”
“Yeah, that’s one of the things Max noticed. He said there were two huge wiring closets full of connections, tons more than any residential place would need, and he only saw in there once when he was inspecting his own work. Who ever left those doors open made a mistake because they were locked whenever he went back. Also, he said the closets had heavy metal doors, not like you have in a home closet”
“Could they be for the complex wine cellar mechanism with computers and so on?”
“Right, Max knew about that, but he was never shown any of the details, not even the plans. That stuff was blank on his set of blueprints and he had to work around the space.
“Did he tell Trip all this?”
“I guess he told Jake everything.”
“Did this ‘suit’ just come up to him in the parking lot out of nowhere?”
“I don’t know, maybe he called first. Max was really mad and called up Sherman but …”
“Sherman? Who’s Sherman?”
“You know the attorney …”
“Oh I see, being Tripp’s attorney, he thought …”
“Sherman Shrowd is also Max’s attorney. That’s why Max called him to give him a heads up on the dumping case.”
“Shrowd is probably in the know already.”
“That’s another reason Max called him. He’s expensive but so well connected, you know, it’s worth it.”
“Alright so there’s a contractual relationship between Fibonacci and Dordrecht’s, and Jakes place had a lot of weird electronics. What’s the scoop?”
“Fred you know, I think Juanita’s body was found in the gully, and I think there was a cover-up that night.”
“Is that where the Shrinkwrap story is going?”
“Possibly, it tags Marshall Rundstedt as being on the board of Leiden Organization and an advisor to Fibonacci”
“ … and what is Leiden Organization?”
“Supposedly they do educational programs for various middle Eastern governments, but I’ll bet that’s not all they do.”
“But what’s the connection to Fauxmont’s gully?”
“Then there’s Rank Major, he works for the Fib. I believe.
The connection is all these people who live here also work for these related companies, and these companies have something to do with the Tripp’s weird house … and Juanita lived at that house and may have known something or seen something.”
“Known what Lark?”
“That’s the question. It’s a dirty business, and that’s what gets to me about her disappearance.”
