Sara began writing, and as soon as she was done Jennifer ripped the check from her hand, not even giving the ink time to dry.
"Tootles," she said, waving goodbye, and she slunk out the building like the rat she was.
Harriet and Sara planned a large funeral for Edward that was well-attended. All sorts of friends and business associates showed up. Jennifer was no where to be found, and that was a good thing for everyone.
Life went on, and the next year Sara and Harriet were negotiating the purchase of a large sapphire mine in Northern Kenya. If that went well, they were going to follow up by purchasing a diamond mine in South Africa. They would eventually put the whole blood diamond industry out of business and revitalize the market and make it ethical and fair trade.
This was a giant step forward on both a professional level and a political level. And of course, their competitors were not pleased with this proposition. There were heads of states that were deeply involved in the blood diamond trade, it went far beyond business or individual rogues. They were meddling in some very deep, very powerful political forces. Still, Harriet was not afraid. Ever since her father had died she vowed to be a fierce fighter for independence. After all, her mother had lost her life saving her two daughters and giving them freedom to live in America, safe from the grasp of Hitler. It was the least she could do to honor the legacy of her mother. Besides, with Sara at her side she felt like she was on top of the world. She didn't think anyone could touch her. She thought she had nothing to lose.
After several weeks of teleconferences, the plans for Kenya looked like they were going to go through. Sara had laid on her typical combination of charm and aggression throughout the negotiations and her strong business sense had won the day. All that was left were for a few documents to be signed in person, and then the acquisition of the sapphire mine would be complete. It would mark a huge accomplishment for B.J. Jewelers and eventually for international justice. Sara and Harriet talked it over, and they agreed that Sara would fly the corporate jet to Kenya to finish the deal. They couldn't risk sending anyone else and having the deal be called off so late into things. Only Sara could be trusted to make sure everything went smoothly.
They decided to celebrate with an exotic dinner. They got dressed up in their finest and went to one of the newest, most exclusive restaurants in the Bay Area. Sara and Harriet dined on caviar and all sorts of interesting delicacies and they indulged in several cocktails. They were feeling happy, tipsy, and invincible. Even though Harriet's father had died without ever knowing that his daughter was a lesbian, Harriet felt free and happy. She and Sara nooked and nuzzled in the restaurant in front of anyone who cared to watch. Then they paid the bill, left an outrageous tip, and took a limo back to the home they shared together in Noe Valley. They had designed the new home together, and it had a whopping price tag of 14 million.
That night was spent naked in the hot tub, naked in the living room, and then naked in the bedroom. The sex was exhilarating and powerful, and it left them both wanting more. When the alarm went off the next morning, Sara gave Harriet a big kiss. "I can't wait to get back to you, I feel like there's still a lot of sex we have to finish," she smirked.
Harriet playfully swatted at her with a down pillow. "There's always a lot of sex we have left to finish," she laughed, "we better live to be two hundred!"
She paused, then asked, "do you think you have time for one last romp before you leave?"
Sara looked at the bedside clock, and with a frown she shook her head no. "I don't think so sweetie. I want to take a hot shower, drink some coffee, and iron my suit before I head out. I'm going to need some time on the ground to get my bearings before I meet with the owners of the mine, and I want to make sure I get there with plenty of time. I don't know much about how Kenyans do business, so I need to stay on my toes and be ahead of the game."
"Always the business woman," Harriet sighed with a dreamy smile on her face. "That's why I love you so much."
She blew a kiss to Sara. "I hope you don't mind if I snooze for another twenty minutes while you get ready. Alcohol can really take it out of me!" Harriet said.
Sara excused her and went off to her shower. When she was clean, brushed, fed, and caffeinated, she gently woke Harriet to say goodbye and give her a parting kiss.
"Be safe," Harriet told her, "you got this!" They clasped hands firmly, and then Sara was off.
Harriet woke up an hour later and went about her day as normal. She was surprised when she had not heard any word from Sara by that evening, but she knew the time zone was screwy and she had also heard that the Kenyans had a lot of formality tied up in their business dealings. She was probably so busy schmoozing with some bigwig out there she never had a chance to call home. She fell asleep that night watching the news, her cell phone in her hand.
When she woke up she saw that she had missed a text from the B.J. Jewelry headquarters. It read 'URGENT. CALL IMMEDIATELY' in all caps. Feeling her heart jump into her throat, Harriet called into headquarters. That was when she got the horrible news. Sara was dead. Her jet had mysteriously crashed on the Kenyan border on its return trip, signed papers in tow.
Neither the documents nor the jet's black box had been recovered. Sara's body was also missing, but judging from the damage she was assumed dead on impact.
"She incinerated in the fire from the crash," Harriet's assistant told her.
Harriet hung up the phone without a word.
She was devastated.
Part 3 of the Trilogy, The Granite Report
Chapter 1, The $43,000 Ring
Niki, the woman Debbie Brown had fallen in love with when she was still a senior in high school, now worked for the New York branch of the Boston Consulting Group. She spent her days in a tall skyscraper on Park Avenue doing research on foreign non-profits for the worldwide management consulting firm. When she wasn't in her office she was traveling around the world to meet clients, traveling first class, of course, so she could get work done, or else she was to be found with her girlfriend Gerti Roges, usually doing something public and pretentious.
Gerti was a literal Barbie. She had grown up in a wealthy part of Manhattan to wealthy parents who granted her her own penthouse apartment for her sweet sixteen. They also introduced her to a wonderful surgeon who gave her a boob job, tummy tuck, and threw in a nose job as a birthday surprise. She had grown up a socialite and although she knew how to talk the talk, she was more into looking the part and walking that walk. In other words, she was a bit of a bubble head. Still, her frame was enticing, sculpted by star surgeon Michael D'Angelo himself, and she had beautiful skin with long, golden blond hair. Since graduating from college she had gone ahead and had her lips done, her cheeks sculpted, and she got butt implants. She was arm candy alright, and Niki liked arm candy. It helped in the business world. Plus, after long days in front of the computer or high pressured meetings with CEOs, the last thing she wanted to do was go home and be intellectually stimulated. Gerti kept appearances and she kept it shallow. It was relaxing, and they had been going together for five years now.
Today was Saturday and Niki and Gerti were leading their bimonthly lesbian reading group in a nice lounge area of the BCG building. The reading group had been Gerti's idea. She always wanted to be involved in things that seemed scholastic or philanthropic. For that purpose, she had persuaded Niki to get permission from her superior to borrow the Inman Lounge, a smallish size, quaint area in the BCG building filled with comfortable modern furniture and small indoor shrubs. Niki would select a book for each month, the themes were always political and the books were non-fiction, usually written by reporters or else first hand accounts written by poor souls under persecution in foreign countries. They had covered topics like genital mutilation in sub-Saharan Africa, mail order brides from Russia, forced marriages in India, and similar subjects relevant to women. The members of the group would discuss their impressions of the book and suggest ideas that they could do to help. Most of the ideas w
ere to hold a fundraising gala or to invite a speaker to present to a small audience at an expensive dinner party, but such was the life of for-profit philanthropy. It didn't go very deep. Which was great for Niki, because it didn't take much time away from her job, but boy did it look good on her resume. It also helped her make a lot of new contacts on LinkedIn.
Anyway, this week they were reading the autobiography of a poor city girl in Thailand who had been sold into prostitution by her family. She had contracted several serious sexually transmitted diseases and had her arm broken by an angry client. She had been arrested and put in jail for 2 years for prostitution, despite being a minor who had clearly been enslaved against her will, and during her stint in prison he had spent all of her time and energy writing letters to Amnesty International and the American Embassy in Thailand, begging for her freedom.
She was eventually pardoned, rescued, and whisked off to the United States to be given life saving drugs and a new shot at life. Although her left arm would always be crippled from inadequate medical treatment for the multiple fractures, she was now the head of her own small baking company in Rhode Island and she was looking forward to marriage one day.
It was a heart wrenching story, and the women were all very moved by the plight of this brave young girl. They were busy discussing how they might have some sort of big evening ballroom event and invite all the top plastic surgeons in the area to attend. They could have a gift raffle, and then at the end of the event, when the docs were all boozed up and happy with their free gifts, they could ask if there might be a surgeon or team of surgeons who would volunteer to perform an operation to make the girl's arm look more normal.
Plastic surgeons absolutely loved performing charity surgeries. It made them look less evil than they appeared. Plastic surgeons got a bad rap for tricking young girls into spending years' of savings on a surgery only to discover months or years later one surgery wasn't enough and they had to either live with a bum tit or a dysfunctional nose or a droopy lip or else fork over more cash. As if it was the surgeon's fault the girls didn't possess a little more foresight or use their new bods to get a wealthy man to pay for a fix.
Everyone had settled on a theme for the ball, 'Tropical Siam,' and they had decided they would feature water lilies and exotic fish in beautiful aquariums for a night of subdued magic. As the meeting was coming to a close and Niki was getting ready to dismiss everyone for the day, she heard Gerti clearing her throat loudly.
When Niki turned her attention Gerti's way, she saw her girlfriend getting down on one knee. She was proposing.
Niki's world slowed to an almost frozen spin and she felt a bit dizzy. She put one hand on a nearby chair to steady herself and watched in disbelief as Gerti opened up a small box containing a giant 6 karat diamond that sparkled like a disco ball. It had cost Gerti a whopping 43 thousand dollars, and it was meant to impress.
As Niki broke into tears all of the members of the reading group broke into applause.
"She is so touched, she is crying," one of them cooed, pulling out a cell phone to snap a photo of this rare moment of weakness from a big shot working woman like Niki.
But before she could take her snap, Niki stopped crying and her look of startled shock turned into a scowl. The applause stopped, and the women of the reading group started to look downright concerned. They made little mouths of surprise at each other, waiting to see what was going to happen with eyebrows raised.
"Gerti, do you know what this diamond means?" Niki asked, enraged. "Do ANY of you know?" she asked, making a sweeping gesture to the group with her hands. "This is not just an insult to my love for you, Gerti. This is an insult to my intelligence and to my very being!"
Everyone looked shocked. Some of the women were whispering to each other that Niki was a bit of a drama queen.
"Over react much?" they snickered.
But Niki went on the explain to the wealthy, privileged group of girls who spent all their time pretending to care about important causes and worldly things the story of the Granite Report.
"This is a story about a very good friend of mine. She is also a lesbian. She is the former Navy SEAL and CIA Agent turned international spy, Brown, Debbie Brown. And it all started like this…"
Chapter 2 , The Death of Sara
"I just don't understand it at all," Harriet said sitting on the foot of her bed in her beautiful California home talking to her long time friend and former lover Marylynn Legrange about the death of Sara.
Sara had died during a routine business trip. The plane she was piloting was found, crashed on the Kenyan border, but Sara's body and the black box were never recovered. Based on the condition of the plane, Sara was announced dead. There had been a funeral for her yesterday, a solemn procession that was made even more grim by the presence of a heavy fog, even heavier than usual for a San Francisco morning. Many tears had been shed and dozens of the most beautiful white lilies had been laid in front of the large portrait of Sara that was present in place of a casket. They were meant to symbolize the innocence that has been restored to the soul of the departed, but they were also a favorite flower of Sara's.
Harriet was explaining to Marylynn, who had been unable to attend the funeral because she had emergency business in South America, what had happened. She told her how fishy everything seemed. Sara was an excellent pilot with years of experience, and she wasn't one to take unnecessary risks, especially when money was on the line. She was an expert business woman, and that was the reason that Harriet had sent her to complete this business in person. Sara was the only one who could be trusted to handle such big business deals. It didn't make sense that something like this would happen. And for the black box to not be recovered… well, it just stank of outside interference. Of sabotage.
"I need some sort of professional help to figure this all out," Harriet said.
Misunderstanding what she meant, Marylynn told her she could give her a list of great psychiatrists that did sessions over Skype.
"No, that isn't what I mean," Harriet told her. "I mean, I need someone to unravel this conspiracy. Someone outside of the business world. Like a CIA agent or something like that."
There was a pause of silence on the phone. Harriet was used to it. She had gotten the same pause when she had contacted the authorities, when she had actually tried to call the CIA to see if they would help. It was the pause of disbelief that said, 'I think you really DO need some professional help. Some professional mental health.'
"You don't think that Jennifer could be involved with this?" Marylynn asked cautiously.
Harriet let out a long sigh, almost a groan. She couldn't believe people were asking her this question. As if her lazy twin sister could have possibly arranged something this debonair.
"Jennifer and Sara did have an argument before my dad's funeral, but I just don't think Sara has the intelligence to execute something like this. Besides, Sara gave her a fat check to disappear, and if I know Jennifer, money is the only thing that talks. She is probably living it up in some dive bar. I don't plan to hear from her until all the money runs out and she needs another handout," Harriet told Marylynn.
"Well, I wish there was more I could do to help," Marylynn told her friend, feeling perplexed.
Then she had an aha moment. "You know…" Marylynn said, "I do know someone who used to work for the CIA. She is a real stand up gal. She's also a lesbian. Good kid, she went to Dartmouth and then worked for the CIA but she left pretty quickly once she saw the sort of shady business dealings that bunch gets up to. She was assigned to a shake down on one of our coffee plantations and she saved the day for us and got those dopey CIA clowns off our ass. I don't know what she's doing now, but she was a good friend of my son Bob and I am sure he could help you find her. That is, if you are interested in something like that. A sort of paid spy for hire."
Harriet told Marylynn that she was very interested. "Please, ask Bob to get her in touch with me." Marylynn promised Harriet that she would do exactly that
, and then she hung up the phone.
Two weeks went by with no contact from Marylynn or the former CIA agent. Feeling impatient, Harriet gave Marylynn a call to check in and see how things were going. Marylynn informed her that getting in touch with the woman, a Miss Debbie Brown, was proving much harder than expected. Bob couldn't get through to her through any of the conventional means, e-mail, telephone, fax, or Skype, but he did think he had a good idea of where she was.
"If you can sponsor his trip, I think he would be more than happy to take a week or two off work to track her down." Harriet agreed right away. She had plenty of money, and besides, what was money when compared to true love. She had to know what happened to Sara.
Chapter 3 , Where is Debbie Brown
Bob took a first class flight from South America to Boston's Logan airport. He took a taxi cab to the Midway Café, located in the heart of the city, and there he found Debbie Brown. She was attending the café's Thursday night 'Queeroke' karaoke contest. He was surprised by the woman he saw before him on stage. Debbie looked drunk out of her mind, and she was more unkempt than he had ever seen her. Her long red hair looked in desperate need of a washing and she had bangs that fell over her eyes, obscuring her face. She was dressed in a revealing black bodysuit with no bra, her nipples poking pertly for the whole café audience to ogle. This was definitely not the Debbie that Bob had known and loved.
Truth be told, things had really been going down the tubes for Debbie since she left the CIA. In spite of her great credentials, no one could know about her Navy SEAL training and even worse, leaving a job (especially a high paying CIA job) after a mere 2 weeks looked awful on a resume. Debbie found herself unemployed with very little prospects for the future. She spent her days busing tables at a popular local college eatery and her nights getting wasted in local bars. She always attended the Thursday Queeroke night because there was a fifty dollar prize for the best singer of the night. Debbie had yet to win the prize, but she wouldn't stop trying.
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