“You also have to agree in writing that if you’re fired they have the right to share that information with all the other resorts and cleaning contractors in Florida.
“So not only are you fired, but you can’t get another job without having to move five hundred miles away.
“In other words, if you’re gonna steal from a guest, it damn well better be worth it.”
“Does it work? I mean, does it keep the housekeepers from stealing?”
“From what I hear it works pretty well. And I’ve been doing it for three years now. Only one maid from my resort has been fired for theft. She claims she didn’t do it. But she was shifty as hell and a doper to boot.
“I’m pretty sure she stole the watch for a hit. But she was on borrowed time anyway.”
“How so?”
“The other thing they do is random drug tests. Twenty percent each month, from the top down. Even the general manager’s name goes into the hat every month.
“I thought that much was B.S. until he and I got pulled the same month. I sat next to him at the medical center while we were waiting to do our urine tests.
“He was actually a pretty cool guy. He said that knowing anybody, even the managers and supervisors, could be tested any time kept everybody honest.
“I said, yeah, but surely you could pull some strings and get out of it.
“Then he said yes, he could. But he thought it helped the workers to know he was subject to the same rules they were.”
She looked at Marilyn and said, “Hey, are you sure you’re off the dope? Because if you don’t pass your screening test it looks bad on me, since I referred you.”
“Don’t worry. I’m clean. I’m ready to get off the streets and to be a mama again.”
She nodded toward little Jacob, sleeping soundly in his bassinette across the room.
“I owe it to him to go legit and stay that way.”
“I hope you can do it. Because if he sees you working the streets he won’t have anybody to tell him it’s not okay for him to do the same.
“Don’t worry. I’m gonna do everything right from now on.
“So, what’s it like, cleaning rich people’s rooms?”
“Oh, it’s not bad. I’ve worked budget motels and those people never tip. And they leave the rooms in disgusting messes sometimes.
“At the resorts, it’s different. The guests mostly have money, and they feel like they’ll go to heaven if they share it with us poor folks.
“So as long as you do a halfway decent job they’ll leave a few bucks at the end of their stay.
“Every once in awhile I’ll get a fifty dollar bill, or even a hundred if you remember to tell them how nice they looked or you’re nice to their snotty brats.
“One of the girls found a teddy bear in the parking lot and tracked down the owner. They gave her five hundred bucks on the spot. Said the little brat wouldn’t sleep without the bear and she saved their vacation and all that.
“I guess the bottom line is it pays to be nice.
“Big time.”
Marilyn mistakenly thought by running away from Grand Rapids and not telling anyone where she was going she could start fresh.
But life seldom gives one a chance for a “do-over.”
Typically the mistakes one makes come back at some point to haunt them.
In Toledo two men in black suits were staking out Bob the parole officer’s house, in hopes of catching Marilyn coming or going.
Bob knew they were out there.
He’d spotted the car as he came home from work, parked four houses away and aimed at Bob’s house.
A blacked-out Crown Victoria never fools anybody. Bad guys spot it a mile away, and laugh at it.
For a vehicle which is supposed to blend in with its surroundings, such vehicles do a lousy job. It says “undercover cop” all over it, and its presence insures the bad guys will be on their best behavior. No drug deals will be done with such a car around, and in fact any drugs within a hundred yards will be ingested or hidden.
Of course, it could be there to keep an eye on another of the houses on the block.
But Bob the parole officer knew better.
It was a nice, respectable block, full of retirees and clergy. It was the only block in the city which boasted three ministers among its residents.
It was not a block where people either bought or sold drugs.
No, Bob knew they were there to investigate him.
And there was no sense waiting them out. The longer he stayed in his house, peeking through the blinds occasionally to see if they were still out there, the longer he’d go crazy.
It was better to confront them, see what they wanted, and hopefully send them on their way.
He parked his car in the driveway, pocketed his keys, and walked over to the brown Ford to ask them what they were investigating.
Chapter 55
As the Winnie Minnie cruised along Interstate 40 east of Oklahoma City, Rocki and Darrell were discussing their plans for the next few days.
“We have that guy in Gallup, New Mexico. The one who said he sees the ghost of Pancho Villa every Cinco de Mayo. We can go there and interview him and then head north to Yellowstone.”
“Is he the guy who says Pancho Villa appears on his roof, with a bottle of tequila, shooting his six-gun into the air and shouting Hurra por México?”
“Yes. The same one.”
“And you’re not skeptical about that story?”
“Of course I am. But he claims to have video.”
“But if we go do him first, we’ll have to go through the Rockies to get to Yellowstone.”
“No. We wanted to visit the Redwood National Park for our travel guide and do a photo series on the Golden Gate Bridge for our national landmark book. We can head up the Pacific coast to do those and then shoot over to Yellowstone.”
“Are you sure you’re just avoiding going to Yellowstone in the hopes I’ll change my mind?”
“I don’t know… well, maybe.”
“But why?”
“Why? Maybe because I don’t want to get blown to smithereens, that’s why.”
“Honey, you heard the scientists. They all say the most likely time for an eruption is two years away.”
“Yes, and they always put the fine print in there too.”
“What fine print?”
“The fine print where they say everything is an estimate and they really can’t be sure when it’s gonna blow.”
“Oh yeah. That. But bearing that in mind, wouldn’t it make sense to go now instead of later? I mean, the longer we wait the more dangerous it’ll be.”
“Don’t be so logical.”
At that moment Penny waddled over and placed her chin on Rocki’s leg. It was her way of letting Rocki know that if it wasn’t too much trouble she’d really like a snack.
Penny had a last name: Fourpaws.
She was rescued by their granddaughter Meadow, who christened the dog with both names, although the last one was seldom used.
When she heard both names used together, Penny knew she was in trouble or in the midst of an important people conversation.
So when Rocki started the next sentence with “Penny Fourpaws” the dog’s ears lifted up and she paid rapt attention.
“Penny Fourpaws agrees with me. That we should stay away from Yellowstone as long as possible.
“In fact, if we never went to Yellowstone it would be fine with us. Wouldn’t it, girl?”
Penny barked.
Not because she agreed with Rocki, or even had a clue what Rocki had said.
But rather because she thought she might get an extra treat by doing so.
“See,” Rocki continued. “She agrees with everything I said. She said we should never ever go to Yellowstone. Not ever.”
Darrell turned toward her long enough to give her “that look.”
“Call me skeptical, but I don’t think that’s what she said at all.”
“The
n what did she say, smarty pants?”
“She said that right now we have a great story for our ghost book. But that the story has three parts.
“She said we already have Jonny’s part of the story. And we already have Hannah’s part of the story.
“She said the story will never be complete without the third part: Julianna’s part. And that in order to get Julianna’s part we need to go to Yellowstone while Yellowstone is still there.”
“Oh, she said all that, did she?”
“Yep. And more too.”
“Oh yeah? What else did she say, pray tell?”
“She said she loves her daddy more than her mommy and that her mommy should stop putting her in the middle of our disagreements.”
Rocki looked at Penny and said, “Penny Fourpaws! Did you really say that?”
Penny put her snout on the floor and covered it with one paw.
Even if she lived to be a thousand, she’d never understand humans.
Especially these two. They were just… nuts.
“Hey, pull over when you can, will you?”
“There’s a picnic area coming up in about four miles. Why?”
“I thought I had some dog treats in the console but we’re out.
“And Penny needs one. Or four. You hurt her feelings.”
“Me? What did I do?”
“You didn’t believe her when she told you to steer away from Yellowstone.”
“Honey, I’ll make a deal with you…”
“What?”
“We’ll head west to Gallup to interview the Pancho Villa guy. Then we’ll head up the Pacific coast and do the Golden Gate thing and visit Redwood National Park. Under one condition.”
“Okay. And what’s the one condition?”
That we go straight to Yellowstone after we see the redwoods. No detours, no diversions, no added interviews anywhere else.”
Rocki turned to Penny and asked, “What do you think, girl?”
Penny, by now thoroughly confused and unsure whether to trust Rocki again, merely whimpered.
None of the three knew it, but the deal they’d just made would be a fateful decision for all of them.
*************************
Thank you for reading
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 3: A Nation Gone Crazy
Please enjoy this preview of
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 4: Any Day Now
*************************
Hannah hung up the phone and gazed out into nothingness.
She was stunned. Her face was frozen. Her eyes were glazed.
Tony came to her from across the room, thoroughly confused and trying to make some sense of the half-a-conversation he’d just heard.
“Hannah… baby… what was that all about?”
“The animals.”
“What about the animals?”
“They all migrating away from Yellowstone.”
It wasn’t registering.
“What do you mean?”
“The animals… the bears, the gray wolves. Even the raccoons and skunks…. all of them.
“They’re leaving the area in droves.
“The highway patrols and sheriff’s deputies all over the area are reporting mass numbers of animals walking alongside the highways away from the park.
“They reported a bison walking into downtown Los Angeles. They thought it escaped from their zoo. But it didn’t. It walked there from the Yellowstone area, apparently by following the back roads at night.
Tony, they spotted two black bears in the northern suburbs of Albuquerque last night. Do you know how long since anybody’s seen bears in Albuquerque?
“And birds too. Hundreds of thousands are taking to the air and flying away from the Yellowstone area. Not just south, as many of them do in the winter, But in all directions.
“Apparently the birds are so thick flying over Salt Lake City they’re almost blacking out the sun.”
“So what does it all mean?”
“Tony, animals have senses we can’t even begin to comprehend. They sense earthquakes long before humans can feel them or modern seismographs can detect them.
“It means they sense something big is coming. They can feel the earth start to rumble, deep underground.
“And they’re getting the heck out of Dodge.”
“So is this what’s finally gonna make her get out of there?”
“No.”
“No? What does that mean, no? This is the most convincing evidence yet, wouldn’t you say?”
“She said it’s her job as a ranger to warn the people who are off the grid and might not know about the coming eruption.”
“No. It’s not her job to endanger herself to help people who made a decision to isolate themselves. They don’t even live in the park. And if they are trying so hard to be hidden and isolated, how in heck is she going to find them?”
“She says the rangers know where many of them are. They’re all accessible by some type of road or trail, and there are hundreds of them in the area. Hundreds who have no televisions, no radios. People who wanted to live as their ancestors did. Off the land, with only their hunting and fishing and trapping skills to sustain them.
“Honey, those people don’t live on the park. She’s under no obligation to risk her own life to save them.”
“I told her that.”
“And what did she say?”
“She said they shouldn’t be written off, shouldn’t be allowed to die because they made a decision to live off the grid.
“She said just because the government wants to write them off, to pretend they never existed, she and her ranger friends aren’t willing to do likewise. She said they deserve a chance to live also.”
“Geez. They’re going on a suicide mission. She can’t see that?”
“Apparently not. Or maybe they think they have time.”
“Do you think they do?”
“I don’t know, Tony.
“But the animals sure don’t.”
*************************
The Yellowstone Event Book 4: Any Day Now
will be available worldwide in April 2018.
*************************
If you enjoyed
THE YELLOWSTONE EVENT
Book 3: A Nation Gone Crazy
you might also enjoy
ALONE: Book 1
Facing Armageddon
Dave and Sarah Anna Speer had been preparing for Armageddon for years. They thought they’d covered all the bases, and had planned for everything.
It never occurred to them that the single thing they had no control over was the timing.
Sarah was on an airplane with her young daughters when solar storms bombarded the earth with electromagnetic pulses. Everything powered by electricity or batteries was instantly shorted out and would never work again.
Dave was suddenly alone.
He was also unsure whether his family was dead or alive. He assumed that the airplane stopped working and plunged from the sky. But it was scheduled to land in Kansas City at almost the exact time everything stopped working.
Had they landed in time? Was it possible they survived?
This is the story of a man facing Armageddon alone. It chronicles the things he does to survive in a newly vicious world.
It also includes Dave’s desperate and poignant diary entries to his wife. Just in case she did survive, and somehow makes it back to him to find he didn’t make it himself.
From the author of last year’s best sellers “Final Dawn” and “Countdown to Armageddon” comes a new tale of one man’s journey through hell… alone.
Chapter 1:
Dave couldn’t get the tune out of his head. He’d heard it all morning long, off and on, playing quietly in the back of his skull. And it was driving him crazy.
Oh, it wasn’t unpleasant. It was a happy little ditty. At least it sounded that way. It sounded more like sunshine and smiles, rath
er than rain clouds and foreboding.
Finally, he’d had enough.
“Okay, let’s play a game,” he announced while looking in the rearview mirror at Lindsey and Beth.
“I’ll hum you a tune, and the first one to guess the tune gets a candy bar when we get to the airport.”
Sarah looked at him from the passenger seat. With that look.
“Excuse me, mister? You’re going to get the girls all hyped up on sugar just before I take them on a four hour plane ride?”
“Not both of them, honey. Just the one who guesses the name of the song.”
“Uh… no. If that song is still bugging you, just hum it. If any one of us guesses it, you can buy each of us a cinnabon.”
The girls laughed. Beth gave Lindsey a high five. Lindsey said, “All right! Go, Mom!”
Dave coughed. At first he had no words.
Then he found some, and stated the obvious.
“Why is it okay to get all three of you hyped up on sugar but not okay to do it to just one of you?”
“Because you know I have a thing for cinnabons. And I’m the mom. So that makes me the boss.”
Lindsey broke out in uncontrollable laughter from the back seat, and Beth said, “Ooooohhh, Dad, you just got owned.”
“I don’t know if it’s worth it. I mean, those things aren’t cheap, you know.”
“Oh, we know, don’t we girls?”
Two heads nodded up and down behind her.
“But, Dave, they are soooo worth the price. And I’ll give you a bite. And think how sweet I’ll taste when you kiss me goodbye.”
Beth made a gagging sound.
“Besides, if you want us to help you with that song, you have to pay the piper. It’s only fair. And if you don’t, it’ll continue to drive you crazy for days. Maybe even the whole week we’re gone. And we’d feel so bad for you if that happened.”
“Yeah, you’re just oozing with sympathy for my plight.”
Sarah smiled and blew him a kiss. She was even more gorgeous now than the day they’d met thirteen years before. It suddenly dawned on him that he was an incredibly lucky man, to have such a beautiful wife and family. And that the price of three cinnabons wasn’t that great, in the grand scheme of things.
The Yellowstone Event (Book 3): A Nation Gone Crazy Page 18
