Diners, Dives, and Dirty Deeds

by David F. Berens

  Back Roads - A Short Story Collection starring various characters from the Troy Bodean Series

  Knuckle Bones - A Troy Bodean Prequel Short (available for download if you join my Reader Group HERE.)

  Troy Bodean Tropical Thrillers

  #1 Rogue Wave

  #2 Deep Wave

  #3 Blood Wave

  #4 Dark Wave

  #5 Skull Wave

  #6 Shark Wave - Coming Soon

  Jo Bennett Archaeological Mysteries

  #1 Temple of the Snake - With Nick Thacker

  #2 Tomb of the Queen - Nick Thacker & Kristi Belcamino

  Jack and Alison Thrillers

  #1 Diners, Dives, and Dirty Deeds

  #2 Goats, Boats, and Killer Cutthroats

  #3 COMING SOON

  Goats, Boats, and Killer Cutthroats

  A Jack & Alison Thriller #2

  1

  Poof! Montana!

  They say that success is relative. I just paid my rent and bought groceries in the same week. For me, that’s pretty successful.

  When I was in college, I thought I would be able to get a job as a columnist for a newspaper and earn a decent living. After I graduated, I found out that newspapers were laying off, not hiring, and making a living was very difficult with a degree in journalism.

  My name is Alison Meyers. I’ve been out of school for two years now, and I work for a local weekly newspaper in Charlotte, North Carolina. I report on road closings, new companies coming to town, community events—that sort of thing. It brings in a regular paycheck, albeit a small one. I supplement that with freelance work writing magazine columns—mostly food and travel. Today I got an email asking if I was interested in contributing to an article about one of the lodges in Glacier National Park in Montana. It’s very rare to get an invitation for an article like this. Usually, the writer comes up with an idea for an article and pitches that to multiple magazines hoping that one of them will bite. It’s a lot like fishing.

  I did something a little different this time. I emailed a portfolio of my work to the editors of all the food and travel magazines I could find, and asked them to consider me for any specific articles they wanted written. One of my emails landed at the right place at the right time and prompted this response. Too bad it’s in Montana. I was hoping for something closer to home.

  I called Jack to tell him about it. Jack is a photographer I met a couple months ago. In the short time we’ve known each other, we’ve been through an awful lot together and gotten to know each other extremely well. Since he does only freelance work with no regular paycheck at all, and he’s been doing okay at that, he’s been helping me build up my freelance work.

  “Hi Alison!” came through my phone after the first ring. “What’s up?”

  “All those packets I sent out? I got an email back from one of them.”

  “Great. What’s it say?”

  “They want me to do an article on a lodge in Glacier National Park. They’re getting different writers to write about each of the different lodges so they’ll have different viewpoints.”

  “Ya-hey, great!”

  “No, not great,” I said. “It’s in Montana!”

  “And …”

  “And we’re in North Carolina …?”

  “So we get a couple plane tickets, and POOF, we’re in Montana!”

  “Whoa, wait a minute. Two plane tickets? This is not even a guaranteed job yet, and I don’t know that I can get enough money from it to pay for even one plane ticket, let alone two.”

  “Sure you can. You’ve done a lot of travel and destination articles before, right?

  “Well, I wouldn’t call it a lot. Maybe five.”

  “And they read the ones you sent them, and they liked them so much they called you, right?”

  “Yeah, but—”

  “Take the job! It’s yours. But tell them that you want to cover all the lodges, not just one. That’s the only way. Tell them it will save them money on expenses because they’re only paying for one team to fly to Montana instead of three or four or however many lodges they have there.”

  “There’s four.”

  “See, you’ve already done your homework. You know the lay of the land.”

  “Aaugh!” I cried out to nobody in particular. I wasn’t screaming into the phone, because my hands were at the side of my head ready to pull out my hair, which I would never do since I spent a half hour poofing it up this morning. Jack is such an optimist, and I love him for that, but sometimes I think he’s missing a dose of reality. “First off, no travel writer charges expenses for a team. We’re low-budget operators. And second, it’s just not that easy. I don’t know their word count or their rates. It may not even pay enough to cover the expenses.”

  “They’ll pay the expenses. They can’t legitimately expect anyone to fly all the way to Montana and pay for that out of a word rate. I’ll take care of it.”

  “You’ll what? Who are you that they care about?”

  “I’m your professional photographer partner. Nobody’s going to buy a premium-priced magazine about Montana without it being full of full-page high-definition pictures of wildlife.”

  “What do you know about wildlife photography?”

  “I’m a photographer. I take pictures for a living. I’ll take pictures of the wildlife.”

  “And what if the wildlife doesn’t want to pose for you?”

  “Now you’re just being silly. Wildlife poses for everybody. How else do you think that photographers get all those great pictures?”

  Somehow I let him talk me into forwarding him the email so he would have the editor’s contact information. I wasn’t at all convinced that that was a good idea, but I knew that I couldn’t take this assignment, anyway. Flying to Montana would be crazy expensive, plus it would take a whole day to get there and another to get back. All for probably a couple hundred dollars. I had done that sort of thing before when I felt that I couldn’t afford to turn down any opportunity, and I eventually learned that sometimes you have to turn one down and keep looking. As much as that hurts when I need every dollar I can get, if an assignment pays two hundred dollars, but is going to cost me three hundred in expenses, that’s an assignment that I can’t afford to take.

  Anyway, that was at the beginning of the week. Jack was coming over today for lunch. I’ve been cooking him dinner once or twice a week. I like to cook, and he’s fun company. He makes me laugh, except when he’s trying out one of his new magic tricks on me. Then he usually just makes me groan. He has to take pictures for a wedding tonight, so I told him to come over for lunch instead. I’m making chicken paninis. Grilled chicken breasts pounded flat, with caramelized onions, provolone, and fresh aioli, all on pizza dough bread and grilled in butter. Mm-mmm. To die for.

  Jack showed up with a roll of duct tape in his hand.

  “Hmm, what do you have in mind for that?” I asked him with an evil grin.

  “I like the way you think,” he replied with a grin of his own, “and I actually have something in mind very much like you’re implying.”

  “Ooh, I can’t wait. But I’m in the middle of my paninis.”

  “I’d like to get into the middle of your paninis!”

  “Oh, you!” I could feel my face flush. “I’m going to use that tape on your mouth.”

  “Actually, I want you to wrap it around my wrists.” He held up the tape. “Here.”

  “I need to get back to my paninis.”

  “This is quick. One minute tops.”

  “Then follow me into the kitchen. That’s too long.”

  Jack and his roll of tape followed me. “This smells amazing. What is it?”

  “I’m making chicken paninis, but what you smell is caramelized onions.”

  “I hope you’re writing this down,” he said, “because I don’t know what any of that means, but right now I’d follow you anywhere.”

  Jack has been bugging me ever since we met to write a how-to-cook book, and I have to adm
it that he has me thinking about it. He’s constantly prodding me to make notes every time I tell him something about cooking—especially anything that my grandma taught me—and I actually have been doing that, but don’t tell him. That can be our little secret—you and me.

  I put the chicken on and said, “Okay, you have one minute.”

  He handed me the roll of duct tape and said, “Wrap this around my wrists.”

  I took the tape, and he held his wrists together out in front for me. I picked at the end of the roll, being careful not to chip my nail polish, and got it started. I wrapped it around his wrists and then wrapped it around again a second time. I cut off the roll with a pair of scissors and said, “Okay, now what?”

  “I saw this on TV and thought it would be a good skill for us to have, considering we’ve already gotten kidnapped once.”

  A shudder ran through me as I suppressed a horrible memory. “So you can get out of that?” I asked.

  “We’ll find out. It worked for the guy on TV.” Jack brought his hands up to his face and suddenly brought them down, throwing his elbows out. Snap! The duct tape broke open in a straight line right through both layers.

  “Wow!” I said. “That’s impressive. How’d you do that?”

  “Duct tape is really strong, but if you jerk it hard along one edge, it’ll snap right in two. When you throw out your elbows, it pulls on the bottom edge of the tape. It’s just like when you tear it.” He picked up the roll and easily tore off a short piece. “Here, you try it now.”

  “Oh, no,” I said. “I have to flip the chicken.”

  “You really need to try this just once so you’ll know how to do it if you ever get tied up with duct tape.”

  “I already have been tied up with duct tape!” I yelled, knocking the roll out of his hands and sending it somewhere under the table. “I spent an entire night in that filthy house taped to a kitchen chair!”

  “If you mean Ricky, he tied us up with parachute cord.”

  “Not when he came back the second time! You used up all his cord, so he used duct tape on me.”

  Jack came toward me with his arms out. “Oh, Alison, I’m so sorry. I didn’t know.”

  I turned away from him and buried my face in my hands while I regained my composure. A few months ago—it was actually when I first met Sam—he and I got kidnapped and tied up. We escaped, and later I got recaptured. I never told Jack all the details, and he never asked. I think he feels a little guilty about the whole incident, and so did I at the time, so we’ve just never discussed it.

  I heard my chicken searing and rushed to the stove to flip it over.

  “Sit down,” I said. These will be ready in a couple minutes.”

  He sat down at the table without saying another word. I’m not used to him not talking, and I realized how my outburst must have affected him. “Hey,” I said. “Forget about that. It happened; it’s over. I’m making some delicious sandwiches now. Let’s enjoy them.”

  I assembled the paninis and put them back in the pan to grill. Two minutes later, Jack took his first bite.

  “Wow! This is incredible. This has to go in your book.”

  “This might be a little too much for a how-to-cook book,” I said. “And besides, I didn’t learn this from Grandma. I think I saw it on TV.”

  Jack wolfed down his panini. “Absolutely amazing,” he said. Aioli was running down both of his arms. He was licking his fingers, and I noticed that his eyes were shut.

  “Just imagine how good it would be if you spread out the experience over a longer time.”

  “I think of smelling your cooking as foreplay, and eating your cooking as the orgasm. There are some things that you just can’t control how fast they happen.”

  Wow! I didn’t see that coming.

  “What?” Jack asked.

  I didn’t realize that I was staring at him. I took a big bite of my sandwich to avoid having to respond.

  “I’ve been talking with that editor for the Glacier National Park article,” he said. “No one else he’s contacted has committed yet. Seems that most of them have the same concerns that you did—big expenses, lots of travel time, and too low a paycheck to make it worthwhile.

  “Fortunately, I offered him an alternative. And he bought it.”

  “What exactly did he buy?” I asked with a small amount of dread.

  “You get to do the entire article—all four lodges! I do all the photography. He’ll pay you their standard word rate, plus he’ll cover both of our expenses.”

  Twice in the same sandwich, I was dumbstruck. “I don’t believe it,” I said. What’s the word rate?”

  “I don’t remember. It will all be in the contract. He said he’d email it to you Monday.”

  “You’re serious, aren’t you?”

  “Have you ever known me to not be serious?”

  “Really? You’re actually asking me that?”

  Jack clutched his heart and slid down in his chair. “You wound me.”

  2

  Four Men and a Body

  Two weeks later, we were on a plane to Salt Lake City. I had a window seat, and Jack was beside me sitting in the middle. He was asleep, like most of the other passengers at this god-awful hour of the morning, but I didn’t dare lean my head against the window and crush my hair.

  I had brought along a magazine and that kept me occupied for a while, but with the hum of the plane engines and the vibration, the next thing I knew, a bell was ringing and the flight attendant was telling everybody to raise our seat backs for landing. We only had forty minutes for our layover in Salt Lake City, so I wouldn’t even have time to fix my smooshed hair.

  Of course, Jack was wide awake and his usual chipper self. We were about ten minutes late landing, and they start boarding planes thirty minutes before takeoff, so we had exactly zero time to get to our next gate. Fortunately, our next flight was with the same airline so we only had a short distance to run. I had to pee, but we didn’t have time. Jack pointed to a restroom sign and told me he’d wait for me and hold my carry-ons. I didn’t think I’d have time, but he insisted that I would if I quit arguing, so I did.

  I returned to find him standing at the gate with the gate agent waiting on me. We handed her our boarding passes and were the last two on the plane.

  “I told you I didn’t have time,” I said, once we got buckled in.

  “Where are we right now?” Jack replied.

  “We’re in our seats, but that’s not the point.”

  “Seems like that’s exactly the point to me. Now don’t you feel better?”

  “I would if I’d had the chance to pee.”

  “Well what did you do in there?”

  “I had to fix my hair!”

  We landed in Great Falls, Montana, without further incident. We were both hungry, but also eager to get to our destination, so we just bought sandwiches at a kiosk and got our rental car.

  Two and a half hours later, we climbed out of our car and stretched, both grateful that we would not have to sit for thirteen straight hours again for a whole week.

  Glacier Park Lodge was our first lodge on this journey. I had looked at pictures of it online when I was scheduling the trip, but seeing it in person was a different experience altogether. This place is huge! Four stories high and really long, all made out of logs, with a green roof. It looked just like a giant Lincoln Logs building.

  Jack wanted to take some pictures of it before the sun set, so he grabbed his backpack full of cameras and lenses and things I don't recognize, and we started walking around.

  He took some pictures from far back to show the big green lawn in front of the lodge and the snowcapped mountains in the background. Then he took some from down low behind some flowers with the lodge more in the background.

  The sun was going down, and I was starting to get chilly. Hungry, too, and I pointed out to Jack that he didn’t want to start out this trip with a cold, hungry woman. He wisely decided that he was satisfied with the picture
s he had already taken, and we went inside.

  Wow. And I thought I was impressed by the outside. This lodge has a big giant open central room that's completely built out of the world's biggest logs. Exposed balconies wrap all the way around the two floors above with a giant dining room and sitting area underneath. It's like the Teddy Roosevelt version of the Great Hall in Harry Potter's Castle.

  We went up to the registration desk and checked in. I introduced myself to the man at the counter and told him that I was doing an article on the lodges in Glacier National Park.

  “Oh, you're the young lady I spoke with several weeks ago,” he said, offering his hand. “I'm Jacob. It's so nice to meet you in person.”

  “It would be real nice if we could meet the manager this evening,” I said.

  “Oh, I'm afraid that won’t be possible,” he said. “He’s already left for the day.”

  “Oh that’s a shame. What time does he get here in the morning?”

  “He usually arrives by eight o'clock, but he does have some meetings tomorrow. He may be difficult to reach.”

  “Now we talked about this,” I said. “I explained that I was writing this article, and you promised me that I would be able to interview the manager.”

  “Yes, that won’t be a problem. You can do your interview with me. I’m in charge of all outside communication, anyway, so the manager asked that I help you with whatever you need.”

  “Are you the guy that takes care of this place over the winter?” Jack asked with a little too much enthusiasm. “Like that guy in The Shining?”

  Jacob hesitated a moment; then said to me, “I can meet with you tomorrow morning at ten o’clock. Will that be sufficient?”

  I took a deep breath. Grandma taught me to do that when things weren’t going my way. “I guess it will have to do. I’ll see you tomorrow morning at ten.”

  After we left the desk, I grabbed Jack’s arm and said, “What were you doing back there? I have to work with that guy.”