Purely by Accident

by Jim Beegle

  The four- or five-foot snake and the small and wiry mongoose had mesmerized Mark. He knew, just as sure as he knew anything, that the little mongoose was as good as dead. When the board was removed the snake immediately lunged at the creature, confirming Mark’s fears; but when he looked to see if the mongoose had taken the full strike from the snake, it was nowhere to be found. The little creature had moved as quickly as lightning to a place behind the snake. Just before it bit into the scales behind the snake’s head, little Mark had caught a look at the mongoose’s face. The eyes were glued to its prey. It was the same kind of look with which Hamilton was looking at him now. The snake had died in a few seconds. Mark was sure that Hamilton could not inflict that kind of damage that fast, but on the other hand, he was not going to allow himself to get bitten either.

  Mark took a deep breath. “Listen, Hamilton, I appreciate the fact that you are so concerned about what may happen to me, but you need to understand one thing.” Mark leaned over the table so he would not have to talk so loud. “I know and you know the money and its whereabouts is my only hold card. I am not about to give up my advantage, however slight, until I have what I think I need to protect Amy and me. I’m not telling anybody anything else until then. I gave you proof that I was what I claimed to be. You think I can save two million dollars on my salary just to try to pull off some kind of scam? Come on Ethan, you know better than that. What are you trying to do?”

  Hamilton reacted almost immediately when Mark used his true first name. He had never liked it and it always grated on him when people chose to call him by it. But he let the anger bleed off quickly before responding to Amy’s husband. “Look, Mark, I can understand your frustration; this isn’t something I’m making up on my own. I‘m just carrying the message.” Hamilton said in a calm, even voice.

  All the way to this meeting Mark had reminded himself of the things in his favor. He had complete control of the money and he was the only one who knew where it was. He was also the only one who knew exactly how much money there was. Finally, there was the pressure all that knowledge could bring to bear. While he couldn’t negotiate very far without revealing some of the details, he could turn up the heat at any time and try to make things happen the way he needed them to.

  Maybe it was the fact that the size of the accounts holding the money was finally starting to sink in. Maybe it was the ongoing struggle with Amy or the new battle with DECCO or the offer from Pat to join him in Denver. Maybe it was the new wrinkle that he might have to deal with people that could seriously think about putting him in jail that had rattled him. Whatever the reason, he was tired of all of it and reached out now with anger and bitterness toward Hamilton.

  He decided it was time for step one: turn up the heat.

  He stood and put his napkin down on his uneaten lunch. “Fine, then you carry a message back to whomever you need to and tell them this: You have until Wednesday to show me some progress. If I don’t see things begin to move toward a conclusion by then, I will contact the insurance company that covered the original loss and take my chances with them. I want this stuff done and over with by Christmas, understand?” He was almost shouting by the time he finished.

  “Calm down, Mark.” Hamilton said looking around reflexively to see if anyone had overheard them. “Did I say we couldn’t get a deal done? If I led you to believe that, I am sorry.” Hamilton was using his best banker voice now. “I just wanted you to know that it would be much easier to do if I had some more information, that’s all.” Mark bet Hamilton was very good at firing people. His voice and his mannerisms were so pat that you would actually feel sorry that you had put him through the trouble of having to terminate you.

  Mark looked at his watch. “Look, I’ve got some real work to get done this afternoon. You do what you need to do. Call me by Tuesday and let me know where things are. Remember what I said, Hamilton. Somebody is going to get a lot of glory out of this, and I really don’t care who that is. I can tell you this: I am not going to let that glory come at my personal expense.” With that said, Mark turned and walked out of the deli.

  Hamilton sat and watched him go with a look on his face like that of a father who could not make a son see the logic in his point of view. It didn’t have to be this hard. If only Mark would just work with him on it. He sighed as he got up and started back in the direction of his parked car. So much to do and now a new deadline to meet added to the problems that would have to be considered. He was thankful he had already gotten a good number of things done in order to bring this to fruition in the time-frame Mark wanted. Maybe not exactly the way Mark wanted it to, but when the time came he would come to understand the need for compromise. He imagined that Amy could help there. Even as the thought went through his head he was beginning to wonder how much influence Amy still had over her husband. Hamilton had seen disturbing signs over the last week. Amy was already looking for a way out of her life with Mark; too bad Mark had not seen them yet.

  Then again, maybe he had. Hamilton knew Mark to be a smart, albeit naïve fellow. No matter, he would just have to gamble that when the time came Amy could muster enough influence to convince her husband to see things his way. He hurried his pace to the public parking lot. He had a lot of things to do before Monday. Already he was worried about finding people in their offices on Friday afternoon this close to Christmas. He still had to be careful with how quickly he moved and how he went about it. Even the rumor of tens of millions of dollars made people think and do strange things.

  Mark got back to find Kirstin in the lab. He was pleased as he went by the glass wall that looked into the room to find her sitting and listening with her yellow legal pad close by. He returned phone calls and began to gather up stuff from his office for the weekend. The most important thing he knew he needed was Patrick’s business plan. He felt something inside tugging him, urging him to take time to review the documents.

  He had calculated the departure time with their Friday evening traffic in mind for the trip to the airport. It did not mean there were fewer cars on the road, they just did not get on his nerves as badly as they would have if they were trying to rush to catch Kirstin’s flight. In the car during a lull in traffic, Mark turned to Kirstin and looked at her while trying to watch the road in front of him as well.

  “Look,” he said turning his full attention back to the road, “I wanted you to know that whatever I decide, I think you could do this job without any trouble. Actually, knowing that you understand things like I think you do, will make this an easier transition for me if I decide to take the new job. I am afraid that at first, I did not think much of your talents. I was wrong, and I’m sorry.”

  Kirstin didn’t say anything right away in reply. She continued to look out the windshield of the car and toward the airport. He thought she had not heard him and he was getting ready to repeat his confession when she spoke. “I really appreciate you telling me that. It means a lot coming from you. I will tell you this much. Even though I’m not totally in agreement with you as to the exact problems with the release, you’re right. The problems are more than just cosmetic.” She took a breath and turned to speak directly to him. “We’re months away from release.” Mark let out a breath that it seemed to him he had been holding for a while. She had seen the facts and made up her own mind. Granted, it was very much in agreement with his thought processes, but he was sure she had come to the conclusion regarding the state of the software on her own.

  He wanted to park the car and help her into the terminal with her bags, but she would have none of it. He put up token resistance, actually grateful that he would not have to hang around the airport making idle chit-chat for the next hour. He still needed to get by Marin’s and then off to Runaway Bay. They shook hands on the sidewalk in the loading zone. It was a warm, friendly parting. Before she joined the crowd in the terminal Mark gave Kirstin one of his business cards that he had prepared for her before they left downtown. On it were his private phone numbers for th
e house in Highland Park, the ranch, and the cell phone. He encouraged her to call if she needed him. They parted, wishing each other a Merry Christmas.

  Mark threaded his way out of the DFW airport complex and south onto Texas Highway 360 going toward Arlington. There was just as much traffic going away from the airport as there had been going into it. It was typical of a Friday afternoon and, because it was typical he just relaxed, knowing that no amount of lane changing and yelling would shave more than a minute or two off his travel time.

  The city of Arlington, Texas, had started out decades ago as a distinct city situated between Dallas and Ft. Worth. Over the years as Dallas grew west and Ft. Worth expanded east, the lines of where the three cities started and stopped had long since ceased to exist. Now it was just one long stretch of houses, strip malls, and apartment complexes that showed little if any break between the city of Rockwall to the east and almost a hundred miles to the west at the far city limits of Weatherford. Mark made his way south into the heart of Arlington at speeds that ranged for a high of sixty miles per hour to a low of barely five miles per hour—all within the span of just three or four miles of the four-lane freeway as the evening traffic merged into itself. Just north of Interstate 30 he took the Brown Road exit and drove west for several miles before turning right onto a side street. He slowed his speed and drove down the road to a pleasant middle-class neighborhood. It was not quite dark enough at this time of day in the winter that he needed the headlights on the car; he could still see kids out playing in the neatly cared-for front yards of the houses as he drove by.

  He had to take one more right turn before he found himself on Marin’s street. He had been here several times, but the trips were separated by long stretches of months. He thought to himself how funny it was that he had been to the house so many times, but had never been in it. When he found Marin’s home he pulled the car into the driveway, turned off the headlights, and stopped the engine.

  Marin greeted him quickly after he rang the front doorbell. She invited him into the house and closed the door behind him. Mark found himself in the living room area of the medium-sized house. If he had not known Marin he could have guessed a lot about her just by the way she kept her home. It was the house of an older single person. The furniture was older and told the observer that function and not fashion had been the deciding factor in its purchase. There were bookshelves along most of the walls. Things were arranged neatly and, even to the casual observer, there was order in how the books had been placed. The part of the house that he was looking at was neat and well kept but also had the feeling of someone’s home.

  Mark had lived by himself several times before marrying Amy. He was a man given to order and hated when things were messy. The apartments and houses he had lived in were always neat and well ordered. They were also very sterile and void of any association with the resident. If you looked hard enough you could tell he just kept his stuff there. He could tell from a quick inspection that Marin really lived here. The place reflected her. He was surprised to learn the things about her that the room told him. Mark was surprised at the amount and type of art in the room. Brightly color paintings and intricate sculptures were as carefully hung and placed as the books had been. The display caused him to think briefly of Cecil.

  There was once again the awkwardness of their last meeting. How should they greet each other? Marin settled it by offering Mark a seat and asking if he wanted something to drink.

  “I have juices, soda, we can mix a drink if you like, or I have wine and beer. You like beer don’t you?” Mark could tell by the way she asked the question that she was not just being polite, she really wanted him to accept her offer. It would not have surprised him to learn that she had stopped on the way home to make sure she could offer him something to drink.

  “Hmmm,” pulling at his chin in an exaggerated manner. “I wouldn’t say I like beer. It is more of a weakness than a real like or dislike,” he said, looking up at her. She laughed and headed off in the direction that Mark assumed to be the kitchen.

  While she was gone he got up and walked over to one of the bookshelves and examined the titles of the volumes. They ran the whole gamut from technical books about Microsoft Operating Systems and spreadsheet programs to a large collection of books about painting and painters. He could tell from the worn spines that the painting books had seen a lot of use. The presence and number of books about painting caused him to quickly move from the bookcase to more closely examine one of the paintings hanging nearby. It was a brightly colored still life of an old barn and surrounding pastures. From the direction of light in the painting, Mark guessed it was morning. He looked at the lower right-hand corner and confirmed what he suspected. There, just barely large enough to be read, were the initials “MY”—Marin Yates. He turned around when she came back in the room and saw her crossing the distance with a brown beer bottle in each hand.

  “These are really good; you are very talented,” he said, reaching out to take one of the bottles.

  She stopped in her tracks and her face flushed a deep and bright color of red. “Oh, it’s nothing really, just a hobby. I’ve been doing it since I was a little girl.”

  “Hey, you give yourself too little credit,” he said after taking a drink from the brown bottle. “These paintings are very, very good. You should be proud of them. I envy your talent.” Even though embarrassed, he could tell that his comments pleased her. “You can imagine how much I love the subject matter.”

  “Still lifes are easy to paint,” she said, taking a drink from her own bottle of beer. “Country still lifes are even easier. Nothing ever changes in them while I am working.” In his mind’s eye, he could see her in a field with all the tools and trappings of a painter, hard at work. He drank his beer and looked at another painting hanging on the wall.

  It was like the first but of a different scene. Mark loved how bright and airy they looked and felt. They talked for several more minutes about the paintings. She told him when and where each one was done. He could tell from the way she talked that this was her passion. She was excited as she described things to him. He asked her if she had more pictures. She reluctantly admitted that she had a lot of other paintings. Mark said that he would like to see them sometime, and soon. This also seemed to please her very much.

  After a time the conversation slowed and finally stopped with Mark standing in front of the last painting in the room that he had not examined very closely. When there had been the lull of a minute or so she motioned him back to the couch. He took a seat, she walked over to a small table along the far wall and picked up a folder. She walked back toward the couch and handed it to Mark.

  “These are the records that Southwest Bank of Houston used to learn exactly how much money was taken,” she said. Mark had already started flipping through the contents of the folder. They were transaction records reconstructing, he guessed, the movement of the money Cecil stole for several months leading up to the theft.

  “This is a lot of detailed information. Thanks very much.” He paused and looked up at her. “But I am surprised that you could get these without going to some effort? Are you sure you are not going to get yourself in trouble”?

  “These are from the bank, but I called this afternoon. All of this information is part of the official file the FBI has on the robbery. It is public record and accessible under the Freedom of Information Act. So, it is okay for me to have it and just as okay for me to give it to you.”

  Mark was impressed with the scope and nature of not just the files but the way she had checked about giving them out. He understood that even knowing where to find the stuff, the search still must have taken her hours to complete, maybe even days. “Well again thank you, and again I still need some idea of how much time you spent on this so I can make sure you get paid for your work.” Marin started to say something but Mark cut her off. “No argument. You did the work; you have earned the pay.” He looked at the paintings on the wall again.
“It must have taken you away from doing things that you like so much and are so good at. You have to be compensated for your time.”

  Up to that point she had listened to Mark’s friendly rebuke for not giving him her hours. But when he mentioned the painting again, even in a roundabout way, her whole being came to life. “Maybe,” she said a playful smile crossing her face “we could work it out in trade.”

  “Oh and how do we do that?” he asked, not sure that he had any idea what she was going to answer.

  “Maybe you could let me come out to your place in Runaway Bay and paint it sometime.”

  “I would be honored if you did,” Mark said without a moment’s hesitation. “And you could stay there while you worked. We will consider that a bonus. I still want to see you get paid for your time, okay?”

  “Okay,” she replied, finally giving in.

  They talked for another thirty minutes or so. Most of the time was spent with Marin explaining to Mark how to read and interpret the information she had just given him. During a pause in the conversation, Mark looked at his watch and was shocked to find it was already eight o’clock. If he left now it would be almost eleven by the time he got to the ranch. He seriously toyed with the thought of going home, but the having to Amy about this conversation with Hamilton caused him to seek another solution. Maybe he could just find a hotel nearby and spend the night there. In the end, he finally decided to at least start the drive and get as far as he could. There were places he could stop along the way if he decided he could not make the whole drive tonight.

  He got up and told Marin that he really had to get going. It was a long way to drive and a lot to do when he got there. She seemed disappointed, but told him she understood. And she walked with him to the door of the house. Either because of the newly formed appreciation for her art or maybe the beer, standing at the door to leave did not feel as awkward as it had standing there when he arrived. Mark reached out and took her hand, leaned over to her, and kissed her on the cheek. After the kiss was planted and he started to withdraw, he paused and without giving the action any more thought he moved to place his lips on hers. She did not move back from him but yielded to his contact. The kiss lasted longer than the one you give to your sister, but not as long as it might on a third or fourth date. He finally withdrew completely from her, breaking all contact, but not before he felt her squeeze his hand in a gentle but meaningful way.