Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 7 – On the Town

Chapters 5 and 6 had some minor rewrites, nothing worth reposting, which brings us to Chapter 7.

Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 7 – On the Town

Tom stroked Frank Sinatra’s fur as Stacey exited the Station’s main gate. She glanced over and chuckled. “You’re approved of. He doesn’t give up his seat for anybody.”

Frank cushed Tom’s lap and fell asleep, his purrs almost as loud as the F-150’s AC. “Frank Sinatra, huh? If we had Gene Kelly, Ann Miller, and a couple of other hoofers we could make a movie. When did you get a cat? When did you get a truck? When did you get a farm? Feel free to answer in any order you’d like.”

“How come you were there when I made managing partner but not for my retirement party?”

“You retired a little suddenly, Sis. None of your emails ever mentioned antyhing about that.”

Stacey entered I-278 traffic. Frank stood up and looked out the window as if riding shotgun. Satisfied she handled the maneuver safely, he turned, cushed Tom’s lap again, settled back down, and continued his purr.

“Yeah, that kind of happened. Ingram alerted you back when I made partner?”

Tom smoothed Frank’s fur. “What kind of connections does he have he can get word to me through Navy channels and arrange for a 72-hour leave so I can come stateside, party-hardy, and get back in time for exercises?” Frank burrowed into Tom’s lap.

“I worked two months on a liability shield for Valdex Oil. They bought a fleet of single hulled tankers – ”

“And took up operations in the Gulf. Perfect targets for terrorist activity and environmental disasters. That was yours?”

“I spent nights finding double-hulled tankers they could afford. They didn’t want to hear about it, and that didn’t make sense.”

Frank opened his eyes, yawned, blinked at Stacey, and went back to sleep.

“So I had one of our people do some forensics. They hired us to create a liability shield, and hired a competitor to create an insurance trust.”

“They wanted a disaster?”

“Complete with parachutes and indemnities for everybody in the C-Suite.”

“Who’d take the hit?”

Stacey looked at him and pursed her lips.

“The investors?”

She raised her eyebrows.

“The investors and everybody else in the company?”

“Don’t forget all the oil giants Valdex transports for. It’ll make the ’70s energy crisis look like a day on the beach when it happens, and it will happen. They’re counting on it.”

“You gave up twenty-plus years of career building because of one client?”

“No, I gave up twenty-plus years of career building because of a fortune teller.”

Tom sared at his kid sister. His kid sister diligently kept her eyes on the road. Frank Sinatra opened his eyes and looked up at Tom.

Tom realized he stopped stroking Frank’s fur and started up again.

“Okay, tell me about the cat, the truck, the farm, and the fortune teller.”

Fank closed his eyes and the three of them continued north to Acra.


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Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 4 – What We Do in the Shadows (rewrite)

Chapters 2 and 3 had some minor rewrites, nothing worth reposting, as on to chapter 4’s rewrite (which included a name change).

Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 4 – What We Do in the Shadows

Vincent Quarrals watched Monique Modine exit Martin’s store from deep in the shadows of the Kristoffersen’s barn. Stacey Knox headed south a few minutes earlier.
He considered walking over when he saw her pull in, decided no. She seemed okay enough. He did a cursory read of her background at the state capital using what little Monique knew as a starting point, and something about Knox told him to go deep, go further, do some more reading beyond her litigation histories.
She bought the Campbell’s farm. He never noticed her in town before. What, did she come into town on a lark, saw a broken down farm badly in need of repair with a for-sale sign on it, and decided hot damn, that’s for me? One of the top lawyers in New York City decides to go country?
Bullshit. Only a flake would do that and she didn’t seem the flake type.
Did she even know the Campbell farm’s history?
Sad place if ever there was one.
The Campbells owned the farm since dirt was young. Al Senior, Al and Blanche’s father, never came back from Korea. MIA or POW or KIA nobody knew, and Mrs. Campbell did what she could to hold things together. They dirt farmed their small patch but that gave them enough for themselves and a little more. Kind-hearted neighbors, most of them farmers themselves, bought her overflow. She’d drop off baskets of produce and they’d return the baskets, often with new or at least not too worn clothes for her and the kids.
They raised chickens and pigs. Mrs. Campbell planned on selling off the livestock and Al had none of it. “We have two good breeder sows and all our hens are good layers. I can learn how to slaughter and get things to market. We do this right and we can grow the farm, Ma.”
Ballsy for a twelve-year old kid, but nobody knew what a head for business Al had. By the time he graduated high school he was one hell of a butcher. He handled chickens and pigs with razor sharp knifes and never made a mess. Quiet, quick, and clean, and he proud of it. Neighbors brought their livestock to him for slaughter. He smiled and only took some good cuts for payment.
Al was fourteen, Blanche twelve, and the widow Campbell gets a suitor. Within a year Mrs. Campbell is Mrs. Stockton and Gus Stockton, Mr. Chocolates and flowers and smiles when people are watching, is fists and belt and a water pipe when people can’t see.
Quarrals remembered his parents talking about Gus Stockton when they thought Vince slept, how Gus beat Al and Blanche, at least once beating Al unconscious. By now Blanche is becoming a woman and Gus found other uses for her.
And if Mrs. Stockton said anything?
She’d feel his fists and strop, too.
Just the memory sickened him.
And didn’t Acra grow quiet when Gus died in a freak farming accident, his boot laces caught in the lower fork of a grain elevator, his belt – the same one he used to strop his family – wrapped around one of the tynes, and the controls well out of reach.
Damn elevator tore him apart. Literally.
Vince, starting his teens by this time, still remembered how nervous, how jumpy, Al was when the State Police investigated.
Vince decided right there and then Acra needed its own law. Go to the state when there’s a need, but otherwise keep them out. Acra can take care of itself.
Which brought Vince right back to Stacey Knox. The last newcomer was Larry Martin, a nice guy, a small-time accountant in a Baltimore-based, two-man firm who sold out to his partner, evidently floundered for a while, came north with his cousin to fish the Fingers, saw something he liked and moved in.
And boy, talk about crossing Ts and dotting Is. Vince chuckled. Martin must have been one hell of an accountant the way he went over the paperwork when he bought Acra QuickStop.
Not that Vince could complain. He never had real genuine Italian cold cuts and that Jewish pastry stuff Martin shipped in?
He must be damn good at making connections to get the stuff he could get.
Take those satellite dishes out behind the store. Larry has a crew from the city put in three big satellite dishes so he can watch overseas soccer games and never got them to work right. Anybody asks if they can come watch and either the signal’s down or the dishes were blown out of alignment or raccoons ate through his cable and he’s waiting for a replacement.
Vince shook his head and chuckled.
Something squeaked behind him. He shone his flashlight in his driver’s side mirror. A weasel stared back at him with a young barn rat in its mouth.
He wondered what would’ve happened if he bought the Campbell place. Must’ve been cheap. Modine took her life in her hands every month she went in to make sure the electricity, plumbing, septic, well, and heat still worked. Next thing anybody knows she’s taking down the For Sale sign and one night well into dark a truck pulls up, a team gets out, goes to work, and by the time they leave you could eat off the floor. Fresh paint, fresh flooring, brand new wiring, brand new fixtures, good, solid furniture in the kitchen, bedrooms, dining room, and living room, and the rest of the house with enough furniture to be comfortable without getting in the way.
Who brings a crew in, probably more than one delivery truck, probably with lifting tailgates, does a makeover worthy of Discovery Channel and This Old House simultaneously, and gets in and out between some time near midnight and sunrise?
Quarrals mused.
Al could’ve done it.
He continued to grow the farm as a business all through high school. He received a scholarship to U of Wisconsin Racine, gets a degree in finance, comes back, converts one of the backrooms into an office, and puts a sign out front, Brunswick Investments.
Turned out Old Al had a knack for picking winners. He’d go up to RPI, SUNY-Albany, down to Maris, listen to students give their dissertations, and always picked which papers could turn into profitable businesses. He mortgaged the farm, financed winners, used that to buy back the farm, finance more winners, and bought up more and more land surrounding his farm.
Somebody asked him once why he was so land hungry.
“I’m kind of like Stalin. I only want the properties which are next to mine. By the way, yours for sale?
And every Saturday he slaughtered whatever of his livestock was ripe for market and whatever anybody else brought him.
“You’re so good with a knife, Al. Ever think of going to medical school? Becoming a surgeon?”
Al laughed. “You’re land for sale, by any chance?”
Things went well until Mrs. Stockton wandered off one day and nobody could find her. She’d been three sandwiches short of a picnic for a few years by that time and Blanche, god love her, wouldn’t let anybody else take care of her.
But then Mrs. Stockton wandered off and Blanche would have none of it.
She and Al left right when Vince received his discharge from the Marines. Rumor was Al shacked up with some woman in northern Maine and Blanche to some California nuts-and-berries, back-to-the-earth ashram. They left their property in different directions and neither looked back. The place rotted. The house didn’t need work, it needed to be razed, but some damn land investment group or some such bought it at state auction for back taxes and there you go.
The weasel ran out down a hole in the barn’s floorboard and Vince turned back to watching the comings and goings on Acra’s main thoroughfare. In the cool of the shade, in the quiet of the shadows, he nodded.

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Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 1 – The Good Earth (rewrite)

You knew it was going too smoothly, right? Or did you also see what needed to be fixed?

I stopped working on Fains I for about two weeks. I got up to chapter 12 and realized the arc I created wouldn’t get me to some key plot points in the story.

Okay, fair enough. Is what I’ve written salvagable?

Fortunately yes, and only with rewriting.

Heads up, some characters have changed. The names are the same, the characterizations are different.

And while I’m here, let me share an interesting experience I had during a recent critiquing session.

I meet with three other authors once a month. Each of us puts something forward for review/critique/analysis, and I’ve been putting through the Fains I chapters I’ve shared here.

In case you weren’t aware, these chapters are raw. I’ve not edited them and am presenting them “fresh from the garden” as it were. I know they need work and put them through the critique group to learn if the story itself interested readers.

Well, a) yes it does.

Yippee for me, huh?

But then I got Yippee #2; the folks in the critique group considered these chapters ready to go, to be sent out, publication-ready.

Whoa, huh?

They were genuinely surprised when I said I considered these far from publishable, only rough drafts, not even first draftish.

Whoa, huh?

What do you think of them so far?

And now on to it…

Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 1 -The Good Earth

Stacey Knox kneeled in the cool, dark, freshly tilled earth with a bag of wooden garden stakes, ten or so packets of seeds – tomato, cucumber, lettuce, mostly vegetables with a some marigolds, echinacia, and purple cone flowers thrown in to draw the pollinators – a ball of gardener’s twine, and Frank Sinatra placed in logical order by her side.
Frank kept meowing and moving, some times pawing a bag of seeds out of the way so he could stretch out in the sun, destroying Stacey’s logical order.

One blue eye winked at the ball of twine before closing and starting what Stacey called his “sleepy-cat purr.”

She ran a hand over his soft, gray fur.”Too much work going after the string, Frank?”

He responded with a slightly louder purr.

“Don’t kittens love going after string?”

Purr.

“You’re telling the court all the documented evidence is false, Mr. Sinatra?”

Stretch, purr.

“So much for book learning, huh?”

She and her brother, Tom, were raised in Ithaca, New York, in the shadow of Colgate University. Both parents were academics and emphasized desk-based scholarship over real-world exploration since early childhood.

She tied her long brown hair in a bun but one strand kept misbehaving and dropping in front of her left eye. Each time she blew it out of the way rather than take off her soil-covered gardening gloves to pin the strand back. Each time it came back to taunt her.

Farming, she decided, could be damn annoying.

Frank opened his eyes and focused on nothing at all. A moment later she heard a car come up her dirt driveway followed by the engine stopping and a door opening and closing.

Frank stood up and arched his back.

Stacey leaned back with hands on her thighs like an aikido player waiting their turn on the mat. “I’m out back.”

Sheriff Vince Quarrals waved as he came around her house. It was Stacey’s first time seeing her new home town’s lawman and she gave herself a moment to take him in: tall and farmer-strong with a slight paunch over his belt, his khaki uniform complete with vertical black stripe on the outside of each pantleg, state-trooper hat and wrap-around Raybans did a good job of giving him a professional look if you got past his Knapp workman’s shoes and open collar with a white tshirt barely hiding a tuft of salt&pepper hair.

He removed his sunglasses and hat as he approached and Stacey added mid- to late-fifties, close-cropped gray hair matching his chest tuft, and a slight limp on his right side.

You’re evaluating him as if he were a witness about to testify, Knox. Stop it. You’re not a lawyer anymore and this isn’t a high-stakes litigation. You’re a farmer now, remember?

Although no longer a lawyer, Stacey had increasing difficulty shutting off what friends and foes in the courtroom called her “Spidey-sense” – a keen, seemingly intuitive awareness of when people were lying and not, when fabrication were deliberate versus unintentional mistakes of memory. Hank Ingram, well-known competitive poker player and senior partner at Stacey’s old firm of Osborne, Nash, and Vogel, and son-in-law of the firm’s founder, Edgar Nash, publicly said, “I’d never play a game with you, Stacey. You cheat, I can’t figure out how you do it, and worse, you won’t teach me how to do it.”

Everybody laughed. She nodded and winked and laughed along with everyone. But she knew it wasn’t reliable. Sometimes it was there, sometimes it wasn’t. Biblically accurate when it was, frustrating silent when it was not. She told her brother, Tom, about it once when they were kids.

“It’s your guardian angel, Sis, keeping you out of trouble, telling you who to believe and who not to.”

She told him sometimes the angel took a form, a shape, coalesced into a cloud-like almost human body. Tom, five years her senior, pulled her close and stared into her eyes. “Did some campus asshole give you something, Sis? You’d tell me, right?”

“Nobody did and I’m okay.”

Tom nodded slowly, hesitantly, with eyes narrowed. “Yeah. Okay.”

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Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 6 – It’s in the Bank

Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 6 – It’s in the Bank

 
Monique exited Martin’s store and pulled her car into the street all smiles and bright-eyed. Once out of site she reached under her seat and pulled out her phone. Reception here was iffy at best and she had some kind of signal booster – quite illegal and so what? – installed. She didn’t know if her calls bounced off a satellite and she didn’t care so long as her calls went through uninterrupted.

Her first call was to her agency’s attorney. She politely and flirtingly asked if any problems came up with the Kristoffersen property sale.

None. Clean as a whistle. Was she expecting –

She pressed END before the attorney finished.

Next call. Her private attorney who also came up blank.

Her bank. Ditto.

Okay, one place left.

Her Banco Central de Honduras connected after a few minutes wait and the news there was also good. Money in, not touched since.

What the hell was going on? She got her commission all right and proper. No complaints from the owners…

Who were the owners?

She knew the Kristoffersen place was in a trust. She knew she received a healthy stipend for going in once a month and making sure the place hadn’t fallen down – it was a miracle it hadn’t. She knew every time she contacted the trust with a maintenance issue it was fixed within a day and nobody ever saw the crew who did the work.

She knew. She’d sat and watched after the fifth time it happened.

And the only contact through a law firm’s phone number. She’d leave a message, whatever needed to get done got done. Always an answering machine, never a human, never a secretary, receptionist, principal, partner, …

What the hell was this?

She tracked the phone number once. A blind. The phone number went here but then transferred to there then to another there then…

But also never a complaint and monies got transferred with never a hitch.

And the money was always good. So good she never questioned anything.

Why rock the boat when it’s sailing smoothly along?

But this deal was a bit much. Were they cutting her out? Were they going to hire another agent?

Real Estate agencies for fifty miles around knew nobody invaded Monique’s territory.

Nobody.

What the fuck?

She’d call and leave a message. A polite message. Making sure they knew she was at their disposal for any area real estate needs and thanking them for allowing her to handle the sale.

A man’s voice answered the phone on the first ring. “Hello, Monique. You’ve done a fine job. We’re very pleased. Thank you. We’ll definitely keep you in mind for any future needs.”

The line went dead.

Monique never said a word.


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Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 5 – O’ Brother Where Art Thou?

Fains I (A John Chance Mystery) Chapter 5 – O’ Brother Where Art Thou?

 
Commander Tom Knox sat on one side of a large oak conference table in Naval Station New York’s Reagan Boardroom. His duffel and backpack were on the seat and floor beside him. An athletically thin, middle-aged woman with thick, flowing, hip-length blonde hair sat across from him in a sharp black suit with lapel pins, a service patch he didn’t recognize, and neither a name tag nor an obvious place for one on her suit jacket. Two younger men, both sandy-haired, both clean shaven, both dressed as she sans the lapel pin, sat on either side of her with briefcases open on the table.

They stared into their open briefcases. She stared at him and he stared back. “What department are you with again?”

She ignored the question. “The San Jacinto is equipped with the latest Aegis, that’s correct, isn’t it?”

He looked down at the highly polished table top for a moment. “What’s on the ship’s manifest?”

The man on her left pulled a stapled, much handled report from his briefcase and slid across to Knox. It stopped right in front of him.

“You learn how to do that in school?”

The woman nodded at the paper without taking her eyes off him. “Is that the paper you submitted directly to the Joint Chiefs?”

He scanned his name under the title The Need for Confirmation of Objective Sans KeyHole, ALWYS, and Related Systems. “You reading other people’s mail again?”

“You subverted the Chain-of-Command on purpose?”

“You here to slap my hands?”

“Is your laptop available?”

He pulled it from his backpack. One of the woman’s aides reached across the table for it. “May I?”

“It’s government property. Go for it. For that matter, so am I. What do you want it for?”

The aide reached under the table to a network hub and ran a cable from the hub to the laptop. Tom could see the glare of the screen on the aide’s face as it came to life. The aide nodded at the woman and she nodded back without taking her eyes from Tom.

“You don’t blink much, do you, Miss…?”

“Are you familiar with MK-Ultra?”

Knox laughed.

The other aide slid paperwork and grainy black-and-white photos across the table to him. He glanced at them and laughed again. “These taken with Brownie Instamatics?”

“In all combat situations, there are certain combatants recognized as being able to tell where the enemy is, their number, their weaponry, whether a mission will succeed or fail, who will and won’t survive a mission, sometimes more. When these combatants are compromised or otherwise unavailable, missions suffer, people are lost.” She read where an aide pointed on his laptop screen. “You’ve met one or two during your career, correct?”

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