Higher Mythology

by Jody Lynn Nye

  “Mona!” the hearty voice greeted her. “Glad to hear from you. So glad you called back.”

  “Jack,” she said, equally heartily. “To what do I owe this pleasure?”

  “Well, lady, it’s like this. There’s a rumor floating around up here that you’re having a few problems with EPA standards—some overspill from your tanks?”

  “Well, perhaps a little—it’s fertilizer, of course,” Mona replied in the sweetest voice she could muster. “There are nothing but farm fields on all sides of the plant. It doesn’t hurt corn to feed it more fixed nitrogen, especially in this season. You ought to come down and see for yourself. Very green.”

  “Uh, no thanks, lady,” Jack said. “I’m an urban cowboy, myself. What we want to know is, if there was a chemical spill, why didn’t you report it to the EPA or the county yourself? That’s the kind of flak we’re getting up here.”

  Mona swallowed. “I’m sorry you’re being harassed, Jack. It happens to me all the time.”

  “That’s not good in this kind of messy election year,” the assistant said. Mona could sense the veil coming off the threat. “We’re too vulnerable. If it goes on, it could turn into a media circus. Your viability comes into question, Mona. The party might have to pull back on endorsing you. Out of pure survival instinct.”

  “What?” Mona cried. “But we’re almost there! It’s September. What about my position in the community? My platform?”

  “We can’t go on calling you the Environmental Candidate if you’re … misleading us all about your environmental standards,” Jack said reasonably. “I’ll be frank with you, lady. If the Committee—not to include myself in that group, but we’ve all got to kow-tow to them—starts to feel you’re an embarrassment, they’re going to cut their losses and run with the candidates they think can go the distance.” He sounded apologetic. “We’ve got to keep the Democratic majority in the House. Unless you’ve got something substantial to add to the Committee?”

  Mona knew what that meant. The higher-ups were taking her public humiliation as a chance to ask for a donation. Her perceived wealth as a property and business owner was once again working against her. Only she knew how bare the cupboard was, but she had little choice. They were forcing her to cough up or concede.

  “Of course,” she said, keeping her voice level. “I’ll have something substantial to funnel towards the party very soon.”

  Jack offered effusive thanks, and hung up. Mona cradled the phone feeling flustered and angry. She was certain that the continued annoyances—culminating in a threat to discontinue her dearly-won candidacy—could be laid at the feet of Hollow Tree Farm and the Doyles, in spite of their promises. She knew there was no way to prove her suspicion. They kept saying they would never do anything to jeopardize the safety of the child. It was hard to argue with that kind of logic, but equally hard to disagree with the gut feeling she had about them.

  The blond child was still staying holed up in the cabin bedroom, emerging only for the necessities. Williamson reported that Grant Pilton was upset because she had been doing the cooking, and now he had to rely on his own meager skills. The child was becoming more of a nuisance with every day that passed. Mona resolved to get rid of her as soon as she had a good, financial reason to do so.

  ***

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  A little discreet questioning by Keith around the office on Thursday gleaned the information that publishing false data was regarded as the advertising industry’s equivalent of insider trading: it was okay as long as the perpetrator didn’t get caught. Keith fully intended that Brendan would get caught.

  The vice president in charge of Mona Gilbreth’s accounts was very pleased with Brendan, a fact that the young man announced to anyone who would listen, or anyone who didn’t move away too quickly. He dropped first names with alacrity, something Keith and Dorothy, at least, found funny.

  Keith thought the VP would have been happy with anybody willing to do all the gruntwork on a project but leave most of the credit for him. He was trusting Brendan to do everything right, so he hadn’t been checking on what was going into those press releases that he approved. Brendan bragged at length about his new connection with the vice president when he returned to the conference room at the end of the day. Keith, sitting next to him, rolled his eyes toward heaven as the paean of self praise went on and on. Sean, across from Keith, grinned.

  “So you think it’s all in the bag for you, huh, Brendan?” Sean asked uneasily. In spite of the fact that the creative team for Dunbar professed undying love for Sean’s ideas, Dunbar was kicking up a fuss at the PDQ administration. Sean was afraid that if Dunbar went shopping for another agency PDQ would consider it his fault and drop him from the program. He’d been nervous all week. “The job and all?”

  “Surely, my man, surely,” Brendan said, delivering a loving pat to a sheet of paper sitting on top of his notebook. “Larry loves my touch with a press release.” He rose. “’Scuse me.”

  He left the room, leaving the press release temporarily unguarded. Keith couldn’t resist temptation like that.

  “Immortal words,” he said, spreading a clean sheet of paper on top of Brendan’s draft. “Rest in peace.” He signed the cross over it. Sean laughed and went back to his tire ads.

  Staring hard enough at the paper to burn holes in it with his eyes, Keith willed the blank sheet to take on an image of the print below. As Brendan returned to the room, Keith snatched back his sheet of paper, curious why no print had appeared. He glanced at the back, then wondered what part of Catra’s instructions he had gotten wrong. The copy had been reproduced in perfect mirror image on the side that had touched the original.

  He secreted the page in his notebook and carried it into the hall to peruse. Backwards or forwards, the release made interesting reading. Brendan had decided, either on his own or after prompting by Mona Gilbreth, to pad her credentials to make her sound much more impressive a candidate than she was. Keith intended that Brendan would get caught with his factual pants down, but not right away. He didn’t want to jeopardize Dola’s life by retaliating against Gilbreth’s student stooge. Once Dola was safe, all bets for Brendan’s future sanity, career, or peace of mind were off. Brendan was going to pay for making trouble between him and Diane. It was especially irritating when there was no time to go down to Midwestern in person to straighten things out. Keith was delighted Brendan himself had provided him with the proof that he was indulging in unapproved business practices. As long as Keith kept his eyes open for attacks by Brendan and kept a step and a half ahead, he could wait until the correct opportunity came along to help Brendan get what he deserved.

  Thankfully, there was nothing else going on down at the farm to which he needed to give his attention. At least at present, Gilbreth was holding the line on letting Dola go. The harassment of the Folk on the farm made Keith furious, but they assured him they were handling it.

  Ground searches by the Little Folk with Big Folk drivers had been curtailed because all the college students had classes. He wasn’t forgetting, as Diane had accused him hurtfully over the phone, that other people had their own responsibilities. He winced at the memory of her angry voice. Brendan had a lot to answer for.

  It had been too windy downstate to fly, grounding the balloon surveillance team, and besides, Frank Winslow hadn’t exactly been in the mood since the air sprite popped out. Keith couldn’t blame him. He knew the way he would feel if anything serious did happen to one of the elves. All in all, there was no way to find Dola until Gilbreth was ready to give her up. That meant Keith could only worry until the weekend when he could go down to supervise the hunt himself and make up with Diane.

  Keith stuffed the paper into his notebook and went back in to join the others. Where one indiscretion lay, there would undoubtedly be more. He suspected that Brendan was also pushing the envelope on the budget for the Gilbreth double account. He had seen an order for “Amber Waves Of Grain” posters sitting on the secretary’s
desk in the foyer. There was an additional request appended in Brendan’s handwriting for a hundred single-sheets. Chances were good that neither Paul nor Solanson had authorized them. Keith saved up the fact to tell Paul when he needed ammunition. It was a chance to get back at both of them. Gilbreth had enlisted Brendan to make life tough for him, and he intended to return the favor with interest.

  Maybe if he could get a hold of the single-sheets when they arrived, he could infuse them with a sense of revulsion. He’d laughed out loud when the Master had told him about Diane, Dunn, and the enhanced flyers at Gilbreth’s rallies. It was too good an idea not to repeat. Just to make certain, he took a copy of the print order.

  The weekend was only two days away. Keith wondered how he could hold on only forty-eight hours more. Saturday morning, wind, rain, or shine, he was going down to Hollow Tree Farm. He was determined that they would get Dola back that day, or bust.

  Mona Gilbreth received her mail with trepidation. On top, her receptionist had placed the increasing stack of overdue bills and dunning memos from her creditors. The very sight of them depressed her. More letters, she noted with dismay. Unable to stomach answering even one more, she tossed them unopened into the waste basket. There was one more item, a small box.

  “What’s this?” she asked.

  “I don’t know, ma’am,” the receptionist said. “It was in the mailbag.”

  Mona turned over the small cardboard carton, and nearly dropped it. On the back, the return address was Hollow Tree Farm. She took the pile of mail and the tiny box and hurried with them into her office, and locked the door.

  Inside the box was a round blue jewel. Mona picked it up and let it rest in her palm, admiring the lights that shone through it onto her skin. The sapphire looked almost too perfect, but it had an aura of genuineness that impressed her into deep and silent respect.

  The jeweler, an old friend of the family, came at her request to have a look at the stone. After making a careful examination of it, first through his half-spectacles, then through a loupe and a small microscope that he carried in a case, he looked up at her over the half-rim frames.

  “You’re right, Mona dear. It’s real, and worth a pot of money. It’s an antique cut, absolutely flawless. Perfect. I haven’t seen anything like this outside of a museum, even the Smithsonian. May I ask where you got it?”

  “It’s a family heirloom,” Mona said. “I just inherited it.” She held up the box it arrived in, but carefully kept the address out of sight.

  “Wonderful,” he said, shaking his head.

  “Could you sell it for me?”

  “Without any trouble, dear. You leave it to me. Shall I take it with me now?” As she had, he seemed to be reluctant to put it down.

  “Um … what’s it worth?”

  For answer, the jeweler took a pad of paper and pen, and wrote a number on it. He pushed it towards her. “Not a penny less than that, and maybe more.”

  Mona gazed at the figure. For the first time in two weeks she started to think that things were looking up. The jeweler packed the sapphire into a padded, plastic pillbox, and placed it carefully into the box with the microscope.

  “I’ll call you. If nothing else, I’ll buy the stone from you. As an investment. I’ll call you by the end of the day.”

  “Thank you!” Mona remembered to say as the old man left. She picked up the phone and dialed out. As soon as the other end was answered, she said, “That’s quite an interesting package I received today. I wouldn’t mind hearing there was more where that one came from.”

  “There is,” H. Doyle said. “We’ll give you two pounds of the same if you return our child.” Two pounds of fabulous jewels, each stone worth a fortune! Mona was elated. She must have punched exactly the right button to make these people squirm. “When can we meet?”

  “Wait a minute,” Mona said. “It has to be exactly the right place. I’m not going to let you bully me into someplace I feel vulnerable. I want the least exposure possible. I’ll be in touch with you,” she said.

  Without waiting for H. Doyle to protest, she briskly slapped down the phone and strode out of the room, pausing long enough to grab her purse.

  “Hold all my calls,” she said to the receptionist on her way out the door. “I’m going shopping!”

  Dorothy came into the conference room, looking panic-stricken. Brendan smiled up at her, but her gaze went past him and lit upon Keith.

  “Hey, I thought you sent the storyboard for “Getting off lightly” over to Bob,” she said accusingly. “I just met him in the hall. He says he’s been waiting three days for it.”

  “I did send it,” Keith said, his mouth dropping open. “I put it in interoffice mail on Monday.”

  “Well, it didn’t get there,” Dorothy said warningly. “I’m not going to do it all over again.”

  “It’ll be okay,” Keith said. “I’ll go and explain to the team what happened.”

  “They won’t be happy,” Dorothy said, following him out the door.

  Brendan was delighted. It was the first trick he had played on Keith that had really paid off. He’d had the most incredible run of bad luck trying to set Keith up. File drawers Keith used wouldn’t open to anyone else’s touch. Some wouldn’t close after Brendan pried them open. Sprays of paper exploded out of pigeonholes and notebooks without any visible mechanism propelling them. He was dying to ask Keith how the trick worked, but he didn’t dare. Keith would want to know, and reasonably, too, what Brendan was doing in his files.

  The weird thing was that Keith always seemed to know what stuff had been messed with. Brendan didn’t know how he did that, either. Maybe there were spycams in the ceiling? He checked the room’s corners, looking for surveillance equipment. It wouldn’t surprise him if he did find them. There was no trust whatsoever in this place; he ought to know.

  He gloated, wondering just what Keith was planning to say to the creative director about the missing storyboard, which only he, Brendan, knew was floating in the Chicago River under the Michigan Avenue bridge.

  “What are we going to say to them?” Dorothy demanded, as they strode down to the media coordinator’s office.

  “Nothing but ‘I’m sorry this is late,’” Keith told her. “We have to stop here, first.” Keith pushed open a door, and held it for her to pass through in front of him.

  “Research?” Dorothy asked, recognizing the department.

  “Mrs. Bell, hi there!” Keith said. “How’s my favorite investigator?”

  “Can the crap, sonny,” Mrs. Bell said. She was a short, plump woman with a cigarette perpetually stuck in the corner of her mouth. Her desk was the only untidy spot in the room. She was legendary for her organization, and Dorothy had learned to revere her in the short time the interns had spent in her department. “What do you want?”

  “Can I have my file?” Keith asked, bowing on one knee to the research librarian.

  The woman reached into a deep drawer and pulled out a brown cardboard portfolio. She brushed cigarette ash off its surface. “Taking it with you?”

  “Nope,” Keith said, untying it and fishing through its contents. Over his arm, Dorothy could see dozens of storyboards and sketches.

  “What is this?” she asked.

  “Security,” Keith said. “Since my stuff started disappearing, and getting sent to the wrong offices, or getting things spilled on them, I’ve been making color xeroxes of everything and hiding them down here. That way I never lose any more work. There we go.” He pulled out a copy of the Judge Yeast layout and handed it to her. Deftly, he retied the folder and returned it to Mrs. Bell. “Come on,” he said cheerfully. “The team won’t wait forever.”

  Brendan slipped into Paul Meier’s office in the afternoon. Paul glanced up from his work. “Hi, Brendan. All done with the Gilbreth campaign?”

  “Coffee break,” Brendan said, managing to make it sound amusing and beneath his notice.

  The subtlety was not lost on Meier. He raised an eyebrow. “S
o what can I do for you? Sit down.” He gestured at a couple of chairs against the wall.

  Brendan squatted down on a chair and pulled it up to Meier’s desk with a hand between his knees. “Paul, I wanted to bring something up. I feel kind of delicate about saying anything.”

  “Well, that’s a first,” Meier said dryly.

  “What?”

  “Nothing. What is it?”

  Brendan settled his other hand next to the first and leaned on them, swaying forward confidentially. “Well, in the last week or so, something seems to have been bugging Keith. Oh, he’s here, most of the time,” Brendan said, laying slight stress on the last phrase, “but his mind isn’t here.”

  “I noticed, but he seems to be doing the work,” Paul said. “What’s the problem?”

  “Part of our grade is based on attendance, right? Well, he’s been taking days off. The rest of us all come every day. It isn’t right, when we’re expected to show up. Take last Wednesday. He wasn’t here because he had to run downstate because of a personal matter. You sent him to see Ms. Gilbreth. When she came in on Monday, she wouldn’t talk to him. What do you think he must have done?”

  “I can’t imagine. So what are you suggesting? That he shouldn’t get the same grade as you because he’s got poor attendance and he enrages the clients?”

  “If he’s upsetting clients, should he even be in the program?” Brendan asked delicately. “If his personal life affects the way he treats clients?”

  Paul tilted his head back and looked down his long nose at Brendan. “You raise some interesting points, Brendan. You think maybe I should talk to Keith?” he asked, his voice expressionless. “Find out if he made an ass of himself downstate?”

  “Oh, yes,” Brendan said, then added hastily, “but I’d appreciate it if you wouldn’t mention me, okay? I’m just trying to keep the program running at its best.”