by John Moore
“What role did you play in the company?” I asked.
Michael took a drink of water and cleared his throat before answering. “I started in accounting but transferred to the manufacturing division after my first year. I stayed in that division for the next five years. I learned a great deal about controlling processes and managing people. I joined the mergers and acquisitions unit where I stayed till I resigned lastyear.”
Charlotte nearly tripped over her tongue trying to ask her next question. “Why did you leave Magna?”
“My role removed me from day-to-day interaction with people on the front line of the business. I spent most of my time dealing with lawyers and CPAs. I lived in a high-pressure paper world. I felt like my talents were going to waste and so was I. Our team worked grueling hours putting the deals together, and when we finished a deal, we just moved on to the next one. I wanted less work and more fun out of my life. That’s why I went to work for the brewery. Unfortunately, their funding ran out, but the experience taught me that I’m happier in small businesses, and enjoying my work is more important than a huge salary.”
I kicked Charlotte under the table to break her trance. She sat up straight like she’d been busted sleeping in class by a high school science teacher. “Why did you come to New Orleans?” she asked.
“What better place to have fun than New Orleans? The city is rebuilding from the devastation of Katrina and is world renowned for its food and nightlife. So, here I am.”
Charlotte unconsciously batted her eyes and asked, “Where are you from originally?”
Michael smiled at Charlotte as he noticed her interest in his personal life. “I was born in Chicago. My father was in the military, so our family traveled around quite a bit. I lived in California, New Mexico, North Dakota, Colorado, and Germany. But I’ve always called Chicago home. It’s a great city with a fantastic culture, and the jazz connection reminds me of New Orleans.”
We talked to Michael for another hour or so about his work experience and his vision for our company. He didn’t understand why two marketing gurus like Charlotte and me had chosen such a generic name for the company. We hadn’t. The name was chosen by Mr. Morris when he started the company. I agreed with Michael that “Nature’s Sweetness” wasn’t a very appealing name to market our product. He suggestedwechange the name if we hoped to be able to stand out in the noisy food marketplace.
We also talked about how we were going to market stevia. Were we targeting the supermarket chains, natural food stores, online business, or some alternative form of distribution? I didn’t really have a clue. Stevia was slowly becoming familiar tohealth-conscious people in the United States, but the vast majority of the population hadn’t heard of it. We needed to take a close look at our strategy. Michael left Charlotte and me at the restaurant to talk to each other about our next move.
“What do you think of him, Alexandra?” Charlotte asked.
I gave her a sly smile and asked, “As a boyfriend or an employee?”
We both laughed out loud. She was so busted. We agreed to talk about him after we had some time to think about his answers. She needed to let the fire in her lap die down a bit before she could make any rational decision. If we didn’t hire him, she was going to put him to work anyway, doing night work. She had it bad.
When I arrived at the condo, Tom was sitting at the kitchen table, and Piper was on the couch with my computer, hard at work on the website. Tom had been on the phone with Zach and Jason Crawford for almost two hours. He was brimming with excitement when I sat next to him.
He launched into an exuberant recital of their discussions.“Jason has been teaching Zach and me about crop rotation. It is possible to avoid the use of commercial fertilizer completely if we grow the right crops and rotate them properly. We are going to have to buy some cattle to roam the property to have a ready supply of natural fertilizer to spread. We can also collect it from some of the surrounding farmers and ranchers.”
“Wow. Have they spoken to any of the locals about it?” I asked.
“Yes, as a matter of fact they have. The smaller farmers and ranchers are supportive. They want to help Zach as much as they can. Seems there is quite a backlash against Aggrow for over-fertilizing their leased land and causing the streams to fill with nitrogen,” Tom said. “If that weren’t bad enough, they are spraying pesticides and herbicides by plane and tractor. Winds have blown the poisonous clouds over the neighboring farms and your small hometown of Silbee.”
“I’ll bet the people of Silbee are fit to be tied,” I said.
“Jason told ACC he expects them to furnish tons of fresh soil to cover the polluted soil on our land,” Tom said. “It has to be trucked in from uncontaminated land, and ACC is not willing to do it. We are going to have to work through the lawyers. Jason said there’s no way around it. The land has been poisoned.”
“Well,” I said, “it looks like ACC is up to their old tricks. The heat on them has passed, and they are reneging on their promises. I’m not surprised. They are polluters, not environmentalists. If they want another fight, we’ll give it to them. I wonder if their new position has anything to do with Bart Rogan. He’s probably right in the middle of this. If Rogan is involved, ACC will be coming at us with guns blazing.”
ACC had the money to wear us down in a court battle, so we had to find another way to beat them. But how? Jason was right.They were slippery bastards, and with Bart Rogan on their side, I knew we were about to face another battle for survival. With new threats looming from Rogan and ACC, why was Tom leaving us alone? Something was up, and I needed to get to the bottom of it.
Chapter Six:
Romance in the Air
I couldn’t figure out why Tom wanted to spend the night at his place before he went out on the boat. He could have stayed with Piper and me for a while but left like he had somewhere pressing to go. I hope he wasn’t planning another trip for ROLF. Last time he ended up in a Mexican jail and was almost sent to prison in Mexico. But boys will be boys, I thought. I trusted Tom, and I knew he’d learned not to take reckless risks. I decided to give him space. Besides, I wanted to spend some girl time with Piper. She’d been working away on my website and hadn’t shown me what she’d done.
Tonight Piper and I were going to have a girlie night. I told her we should rent a chick flick,but Piper insisted on Z, the story of an infection that turns large portions of the world population into zombies. She loved occult anything, and it wasn’t so bad because Brad Pitt was the star of the movie and he’s easy on the eyes. He and his wife, Angelina Jolie, had purchased a home in the French Quarter and had done some wonderful charity work in the city after Katrina. At least Piper let me paint her nails on our girls’ night, even if we did use a different color for each finger. She was definitely an original. She didn’t have a dark side like Mandy Morris. She was going through a phase inspired by the Twilight movies and The Walking Dead television series. Hell, I even liked The Walking Dead. It was too cool to resist. There’s nothing wrong with thrills ’n’ chills, or even an interest in the mysteries of life and death. It’s when you start wanting to live in the darkness that there’s a problem. I really didn’t think that would happen to Piper. She was way too enthusiastic about life.
We made and consumed copious amounts of popcorn, me smacking as I ate and Piper throwing it up the air and catching it in her mouth. Piper laughed at me when I nearly jumped out of my skin at all of the scary parts, calling me a scaredy-cat. I couldn’t figure out how they made everything look so real. There were thousands of zombies attacking a city, and it all looked real, making me nearly pee my pants. I sat jammed up against Piper and grabbed her arm every time something scary happened, me jumping making her laugh out loud. I blushed with embarrassment the way she looked at me when I grabbed her. I’d have been more embarrassed if she’d known I’d seen the movie already. That movie was much like my life, chaos and mindless evil threat
ening me from all directions. Maybe everyone’s life was like that to a certain degree. Evil is out there, butit’s how you handle it that counts. I did miss Tom, but all in all it was a great night.
The next morning Piper and I went to see Jess Johnson. She had undergone the first of her chemo treatments, her face sunken and her natural tan color washed out, leaving an unnatural, grayish-brown tint to her skin. Jess’s movements were slower and more deliberate than usual. She tried in vain to smile at us as we entered her office, and she slumped in her chair without her patented energy I’d become so accustomed to seeing.
“So, I see you’ve brought that little computer whiz with you,” Jess said. “Piper, are you getting used to living in New Orleans?”
Piper was usually reticent to speak to people she didn’t know well, but words burst from her like water from a collapsed dam, her voice flooding the room. “It’s the best. I love it. Did Alexandra tell you we are going to live on Bourbon Street in the heart of the French Quarter?”
Jess found the energy to revive the full teeth tour of her smile. “She sure did. I love the Quarter. It’s full of life and characters like no other place in the world. You’ll fit right in,” Jess said, lifting one of Piper’s hands to admire my handiwork. Scarlet, purple, acid-green, lemon-yellow, black. Something about a different color on each fingernail matched Piper’s personality and her hair.
“How are you feeling, Jess?” I asked.
“If you’re asking me if I’ve entered any marathons, well the answer is no. But I’m well enough to know that the body they found, the young man, wasn’t a suicide,” Jess said.
“Do you need my help on the story?” I asked.
“Yes, I do. My guys are wrapped up in some police brutality crap story in Plaquemines Parish. I need a bulldog like you to flesh out what’s really going on with these murders. Demetre thinks they are all some type of ritual killings. He claims to have evidence pointing to Bob Broussard, and he might be right. Will you help investigate and write a series of articles for me?” Jess asked.
“Of course I will, Jess, if it helps you,” I said.
I wanted to know what was going on anyway. We were moving into the Quarter. If Bob Broussard or any other maniac was loose, I wanted to help catch them. The Lois Lane in me was egging me on to get involved anyway. The only problem was I already had too many irons in the fire. I was neglecting my website/blog and hadn’t been to the battered woman’s center in a while.
“What can you tell me about Bart Rogan? Were you able to find out anything about him since his release from jail in India?” I asked.
“He has been spotted in New Orleans. I’m not sure who he met with here, but I know he’s been in town. According to a friend with a newspaper in Chicago, he’s hooked back up with ACC. They are getting concerned with the move toward organic food and farming. The organic food movement is small right now when compared to the entire world food supply, but they look at it like the anti-smoking movement. It started small and blossomed into a real problem for the tobacco companies. Bart Rogan figures in their plans to combat the movement somehow.”
“Holy shit, I was afraid ACC would use Rogan again,” I said. “It makes sense that they are reneging on their deal with us to fix the pollution on our farm. We are going to have to fight them in court.”
Piper sat quietly through my entire discussion with Jess. Finally, she had to step into the conversation. “I want to help,” she said.
“Piper, honey,” Jess said. “That’s sweet, but I don’t know what you can do to help.”
Piper straightened her back. “I can take over Alexandra’s website and use the power of the Internet to fight ACC as well as find out more about the killing going on in New Orleans. That’s what I can do to help,” Piper said.
Jess smiled again. “Damn, girl, you’ve got some spunk. And you are right. That’s something you can do and do well. “
“It’s settled then. I’ll write some articles about the killing in the Quarter, and Piper will help in the background on the web,” I said. I turned to Piper and forced my face into the most serious expression I knew how to make. “I do have one condition for you, Piper. You cannot use your name on any of this. I don’t want anything we do being traced back to you. All of your work on the web has to be done in my name. These are dangerous people. If they decide to retaliate, I don’t want you in the line of fire again. Is that a deal?”
Piper looked at Jess, who had the same serious expression as I did. She wrinkled her nose and said, “It’s a deal. I promise to stay in the background.”
We left Jess sitting at her desk, struggling to stay awake. It pained my heart to see such a magnificent journalistic warrior crippled by such an insidious disease. I said a silent prayer for her to beat it like she’d conquered so many things in the past. Time would tell.
The following day Charlotte and I met with several more candidates for our manager’s job. None of them came close to Michael Keeson’s credentials, foresight, and personality—not to mention his good looks, which captivated Charlotte. We decided to call Michael and offer him the job. I expected him to negotiate with us on the salary, buthe didn’t. He accepted the job at the first number we threw at him. I wondered if his decision had anything to do with Charlotte’s remarkable beauty. I also wondered how long I could keep them apart.
Charlotte came to my old condo to help me draw up an employment contract for Michael. Actually neither of us knew what we were doing, so we enlisted Piper’s Internet talents to find us the most appropriate form contract, to which we made a few modifications. Charlotte volunteered for the job of bringing it to him to sign.
“Alexandra, I’ve been talking to Mandy Morris about helping her with Superior Sugar,” she said. “Mandy really needs our help. You know how hard I worked to help build that company. I hate to let it go to hell in a handbasket. Will you meet with Mandy and me to talk about what we might be able to do to help?”
“Charlotte, I think sugar is our competition. Also, we will be telling the public it’s healthier to use stevia than sugar. Don’t you think we have a conflict of interest?” I asked.
“Yeah, but sugar used in moderation is OK. The problem is overuse. And I want to ask you for another favor.”
Charlotte hesitated for a moment, and Piper walked into the room. I knew Charlotte was about to set me up for something, having seen that expression on her face too many times. “I want Piper to spend the night with me so we can go on the haunted house tour with Mandy. Can she? Please.”
Piper looked up at me with those wounded puppy dog eyes.“Please, please, please, Alexandra,” she said.
I scowled at both of them. “But Tom will be back in a few hours. He’ll want to see you, Piper.”
“He’ll be tired,” Charlotte said. “She can see him tomorrow. You two probably have some catching up to do anyway.”
She was right about that. I agreed to let her go once I extracted a promise from Piper that she’d be careful not to put herself in any situations. I reminded her of how scared I’d been after her last encounter with Mandy Morris, which wasn’t Mandy’s fault, but so what? I wasn’t above using a guilt trip on the girl. She agreed, and Charlotte promised to keep a close eye on her.
“Alexandra,” Piper said, “Mandy has invited her group of Marie Laveau fans to come with us. They have a group that knows all about her history. Mandy promised to get them to tell me all about her life in New Orleans and what her family has done since her death. She was the voodoo queen of the city, and I want to know everything about her.”
I peered at Charlotte telegraphing my concern. “Piper, I know how much you are enamored with Marie Laveau. She’s a New Orleans con. I don’t have any problem with you learning all about her, but I don’t want you getting too mixed up with the people Mandy hangs around with. I don’t know enough about them. They seem pretty weird to me, maybe even be dangerous, for that m
atter. So, until I can learn more about them, keep your distance. Can you promise me that?”
“Yes,” Piper answered.
Charlotte chimed in. “I know what you’ve been through and how much you worry about Piper. But you can rest assured that I won’t allow her out of my sight tonight. Mandy is weird, and her group is weird. She probably doesn’t know anything about them either. Remember, she used to party all night long. She’d get drunk and out of control with total strangers. Hell, I wouldn’t even go anywhere with her back then, when she was more normal, so I’ll watch Piper like a hawk. You don’t have to worry about anything. Relax. You and Tom have fun with each other tonight. Piper and I’ve got this. Right, Piper?”
“You better believe it,” Piper answered. “It’s going to be off the hook crazy good.”
I rolled my eyes at the crazy part. “You two had better keep your promises to me or I’ll put my Jimmy Choos on and kick your butts.”
Piper grabbed a bag she’d already packed, and they left before I had time to reconsider.
Tom drove up to the condo a few minutes later. He walked in and kissed me solidly on my lips. We were alone for the first time in a while. It was time to fool around.
“Why don’t we take a shower together?” I asked.
You could have knocked me down with a feather when he said, “Maybe later.” He wanted to shower, get dressed, and go to the Bourbon Street condo. I knew the workmen had finished all of the construction, but I was caught off-guard by his refusal to enjoy each other in the loud and athletic way we always did. I guess he really was tired.
It was dark by the time we’d both showered and dressed. Tom suggested we stroll around the Quarter for a while. It was a rare cool evening for the Crescent City, and a gentle breeze blew from the North. It seemed to put a bounce in the step of the horses pulling the tourists through the Quarter in their carriages. The half-inebriated Quarter revelers seemed to move slightly easier through the air without the normal humidity holding them in place. The lights seemed brighter and the music carried further. It was a beautiful night.
