Chapter XVII

It had been a quiet week for Arianne and myself. We had several long talks, and she had finally convinced me to close my office and retire from active work as a private investigator. We also decided to put the place in the city up for sale and make the home up on Beech Mountain our primary residence. So I called a friend of mine who had extensive real estate experience and asked him if he would like to be our agent. He agreed, and within 48 hours he had found someone who liked the place and was willing to offer almost our asking price.

And so we headed back down to the city to set things up for the movers -- wow, I'd never had movers before, but now that I was wealthy it was a different world. All we had to do was decide what was to go to the new place and what was to go to various charitable groups. And once we had that sorted out, we met with Scott and signed all the paperwork on the deal, and cut him a check for his percentage.

We had a couple of days to kill before the movers were to show up and transport our things, so we figured we'd take a short trip and visit some out of the way places around Western North Carolina and Eastern Tennessee.

Which is how we ended up on a dirt road in the middle of nowhere, axle deep in mud, with Arianne's friend Amelia and her new boyfriend Jason. And, don't blame me for getting stuck - it was as much Jason's fault as anything.

He had been going on and on (and on) about how much money he'd earned last quarter as an investment banker, and then insisted he knew a back way from Elizabethton (Tennessee) to Hot Springs (North Carolina) and, for some reason, I let him have his way, even though he hadn't yet shown that he actually knew about anything he was talking about.

Most of you may not know this, but back in the hills, cell phones tend to not be very useful. Jason's 3G iPhoneSuperSpecial with Massage Attachment, or whatever it was, didn't work. He pouted for a bit, as he was being shown to be a complete fool. The pouting wasn't working, so he tried stomping his feet. There's nothing more foolish than a 40-year old acting like a 4-year old.

Arianne tried hers ... no signal, and mine, well, I hadn't charged it in weeks. "How do you plan to get us out of here?" she sighed, obviously exasperated.

"No worries. I have a cunning plan!" I responded, my grin spreading. Her eyes widened before she planted her face in her hand.

"I thought we talked about this! No more MacGuyver-ing since you turned the cat pink trying to insulate the house!"

"Aww, I keep telling you, that wasn't my fault!" I looked around, hoping for inspiration to back up my mouth, but nothing came to mind.

"Well? What's your plan, Big Boy?" Arianne said to me.

I sighed and said, "Simple. I walk back to that last farmhouse we passed, and see if they can help us."

"I'll go with you, Guy," Jason announced. Every word from his mouth was an announcement. Arianne and Amelia both nodded emphatically behind his back, and Amelia mouthed 'You could even get him lost'. She had obviously begun to regret ever meeting the schmuck.

"Come on, then," I said, and began walking back down the road. As we trudged along, Jason continued 'announcing' the. whole. way.

"If the state would keep these country roads in decent shape, this never would have happened.... I'm gonna sue Apple, because this iPhone isn't working like it should.... Man, that Amelia is one hot chick, isn't she?... The Gothic rule in Spain is one of history's forgotten splendors."

He was about to get on my last nerve.

There was just no logical reason for him to suspect this guy except that niggling, gut feeling gnawing at him. Something-no; nothing about this slime was right. Like Amelia; I wanted him GONE.

I looked over at Jason sharply. "Did you hear that?", I asked, but he was too busy taking the back off his phone - presumably to 'fix' it - to notice me, much less the voices I sometimes heard out of nowhere.

Finally, after an eternity of listening to Jason spouting forth, we got to the farmhouse we had passed earlier. "Uh, you better let me talk to these folks, Jason. Mountain folk don't always take kindly to strangers." Especially obnoxious assholes like you, I didn't add.

"Finally!" Jason shouted. "I've got a signal. I'll take care of things, Guy." And he stopped in the road, dialing furiously.

I only half paid attention, as I was eyeing the farmhouse and hoping the owner wasn't trigger happy, but the conversation that followed sounded something like this - on Jason's end, at any rate:

"Who ate my pink elephant?"

"The blue frog standing by that stick-in-a-pot."

"What??"

"What what?"

"Why?"

"That you might cry."

While Jason stood there speaking gibberish to God knows who, I walked up on the porch of the house and knocked on the door. When it opened and an old man stuck his head out, I explained what had happened and asked him if he knew of anyone with a tractor, or if he could recommend - and call - a wrecker for me.

"Ain't got no tractor," he replied. "But I got a team of draft horses I use to drag timber. They can pull you out. Lemme go harness 'em." He paused for a moment, then said, "Is that crazy feller yonder with you?" and gestured at Jason, who was gesturing wildly as he shouted into his phone.

"Yes, he is, but I'd appreciate it if you didn't hold that against me." I replied, smiling.

The old man laughed heartily and said, "Well, there's one in every family, I reckon. C'mon to the barn with me. We'll hitch up the team and have you out in no time."

We walked around the house to the barn, and the old man started putting the tack on two of the biggest horses I'd ever seen. They certainly looked like they were capable of pulling my Woody out of the mud.

After he got the horses ready, he glanced toward the back door of the house, and then said, "Whew, that's some hard work. I think we deserve a swig or two afore we head up the road." And he reached behind a bale of hay and pulled out a jug.

"Here son. Try some-a this. It'll put hair on your chest - or curl what you already got!" He guffawed.

I took a small swig, and, realizing that it was some fine apple brandy, took another healthy swallow. "Thank you, sir. That's some mighty good brandy!"

He winked at me and said, "My pappy taught me how to make it, and he learned from his pappy. Now, let's go get you car out'en the mud." He tugged the lead and the team of horses obediently followed.

As we rounded the house, we could see that Jason was still shouting into his phone, so I called to him. "Jason, never mind. This gentleman is going to help us."

"Give him a shot of this," the old man said, holding out the jug to me. "If I know anything, that'll shut his gob."

I laughed and took the jug. "Here, Jason. Have some of this. All that talking, you must be thirsty."

"Hold on, Eric. What? The password is elephantism." he announced into the phone, and took a swig from the jug. I don't know who laughed harder then, the old man or me, as Jason started coughing and wheezing. Especially when he dropped his precious cell phone in a puddle.

Once Jason recovered from his initial fit of coughing, he joined us as we passed the jug back and forth, walking up the road. By the time we got back to the car, he had mellowed quite a bit, and I realized that I was not entirely sober, either, even though I had been taking small sips. Suddenly, I worried what Arianne would think when she smelled my breath.

Cheese. He realized he needed some cheese. A nice, smelly, salty, hunk of extra-sharp cheddar cheese. That would do it.

The old man looked at me and said, "Who the hell was that?" and I just shrugged my shoulders. He shook his head, already certain that we were a bunch of crazy city folk, and set to hooking the draft team to the front of the car.

"Now, you get in and help it along - give 'er gas gently, so as not to spook the horses," he said, and in no time the Woody was emerging from its sticky predicament.

Once we cleared the mudhole, I got out and offered to pay the farmer for his help.

"Never you mind that, young feller. I got plenty outta watching that guy."

"All right, then. I guess we'll be on our way, then," I said, looking up the road in the direction we had been traveling. My stomach was rumbling and I noticed that dusk was starting to fall.

The old man followed my gaze and said, "Road ends just around the curve yonder. There ain't nothing up there but my back pasture."

It was then I got that feeling. You know the one. It was that same sinking feeling you get when you call to see if your car is ready yet and the mechanic says, "Well, actually, we ran into a little problem."

Chapter XVI

It was amazing how quickly the month had passed; the whole year for that matter. Seems like we had just celebrated New Year's and now it was the day before the Autumnal Equinox. And it was still snowing.

Funny, you'd think with all that snow, there would be more than a few inches of accumulation. Arianne seemed to think so, too. She was walking from room to room, looking everywhere. No snow in the kitchen... none in the laundry room. But she did get her trombone and start playing it.

Good ole Dixieland Jazz.

I watched her as she crossed the bedroom, playing "When the Saints go marching in", and then pause as she reached the closet. She looked around at me and said, "I hear voices. Lots of them."

I couldn't hear the voices, because I had The O'Reilly Factor turned up loud, watching BillO and Fred Barnes go at it about something... I wasn't really sure what.

"What should I do?" Arianne asked me, but I didn't answer because I was watching a commercial for a laxative that had some of the characters from I Love Lucy and The Flintstones in it. Slowly, carefully, she opened the door with the end of her trombone.

There was no snow, but Fred Thompson and Freddie Fender were in there arguing about Classical music with Georg Frederic Handel.

Arianne screamed and.....



I woke up trembling. And that was my dream.

Oh, except for one thing. And then everyone on the planet named Fred exploded. And suddenly it all made sense.


"Well, honey," Arianne said to me, "that's why "Sesame Street" and "Homeland Security" have no business in the same room together, much less the same sentence. Nightmares. Now c'mere and let me hold you."

Chapter XV

Thanks to Jen, for her help with this one.

It had been a quiet few weeks up on the mountain. We were starting to really like being there, and weren't looking forward to heading back to the city. The weather was getting cooler, with just the slightest hint of color change in the leaves. Yes, life at 5500' elevation was pretty good.

The Lutefisk Case, as Arianne had started calling it, came to a resounding conclusion; or rather, our involvement in it did, after I had a dream insight. In my dream, I was standing at the edge of a yawning chasm filled with the most noxious fumes imaginable.

And then I woke up to find the cat inches away from my face. Only problem was, we don't have a cat. Turned out I had left one of the sliding glass doors open a little bit, and the cat had come on inside to check things out.

After I put the cat outside and shut the door, I started thinking about the lutefisk that was stinking up the mini refrigerator in the basement recroom. I was wide awake after that whiff of Stygian cat butt air, so I went on downstairs to ponder. As I made the last turn on the stairs, I thought that cat had gotten back in, because I was getting that whiff again, but as I walked into the room, I saw what had happened. Either that cat had opened it somehow, or one of us had left the minifridge open.

I was leaning towards the former - because we had consumed a couple of bottles of some of the lesser wines in the cellar, and had both been feeling a bit giddy before we went to bed. We had also built a fire in the downstairs fireplace and had roasted marshmallows. Near the end of the evening, Arianne had mentioned how "mashmellows and wine were nice together, particularly at a time like this!"

I went to nudge the fridge door shut and, there on the floor beside it, I saw the dish where Arianne had been keeping the evidential lutefisk sample, now licked clean.

I picked up the empty dish and carried it out to the trash can, then came back in and decided to go ahead and empty the minifridge, because the smell had permeated the whole thing. I carried it outside to air for a while and went back to bed, thinking that was the end of that.


We were eating breakfast the next morning when Arianne saw the cat on the deck, looking in through the sliding glass door and pawing at it.

"Look at that," she said to me, "isn't that a cute kitty?" I told her what had happened the night before, with the door being open and the cat eating the lutefisk, and she decided that, since the cat had found food once, we were now obligated to care for it.

I explained that the cat probably belonged to one of our neighbors, but Arianne rightly pointed out that we had met all the neighbors, and none of them had a cat matching the one now sitting and staring at us through the plate glass.

I conceded the point, Arianne got up to open the door, and we became cat owners. The cat went straight for the recroom, but when she saw that the minifridge was gone, came back up the steps and sat in the kitchen, looking from the main fridge to us and back again. This was some pretty impressive behavior, Arianne and I agreed, but it was nothing compared to what happened over the next couple of weeks or so.

A couple of days later I realized that Felicity - the name seemed to fit - was getting larger, and I mentioned this to Arianne.

"Well, she's just eating better, is what it is."

"No, I mean she's getting larger. Eating better doesn't make a cat's legs grow longer and head grow bigger. Look at her."

"Huh. I do believe you're right."

By the end of Felicity's first week with us, it became obvious that something abnormal was going on. When she had found her way into the house that night, she had been an average sized housecat. She was now closer to the size of a mountain lion.

That was strange in and of itself, but what began happening next made us forget all about the growth spurt.

Felicity began reading books.

I walked into the study one afternoon, and there she was, sitting in the desk chair, a copy of Gray's Anatomy open in front of her. I had been at the desk a few minutes earlier, taking care of some insurance paperwork, and Arianne had gone to the supermarket. And then maybe the post office and bank. In any case, she was out of the house and I hadn't put the tome on the desk.

When I walked in, Felicity looked at me... and then politely moved out of my favorite seat, picking the book up in her mouth and carrying it over to the better light by the window. She laid it down and, as I stared dumbfounded, continued reading. Turning the pages and everything. By the time Arianne got home, Felicity had finished Gray's Anatomy and was reading Stephen Hawking's A Brief History of Time.

Things were getting pretty surreal in the vacation house on the mountain, let me tell you.

Especially the next morning when Felicity looked at me while Arianne and I were having breakfast and said, matter-of-factly, "Hawking has some good ideas, but his presentation leaves a lot to be desired."

"Honey," I said to Arianne, "did you hear what I just heard?"

Arianne just nodded, staring in shock at the now wolfhound-sized feline.

Felicity then sat back on her haunches, put her front legs up on the table, looked at each of us in turn and said, "I can not believe that some of you humans are proposing that John McCain person for president. I've heard of some dumb things, but... but... that would be like nominating Simon Cowell for Supreme Court Justice!"

We could only agree.

That afternoon, Felicity asked if we could set her up a lab in one corner of the recroom. By this point, I was just rolling with it, and agreed. I wondered how she would use any of the equipment, but then I noticed that her front paws had changed. The dewclaw had lengthened and now looked like a functional opposable thumb, and her toes had lengthened into what were nearly fingers... albeit ending in sharp claws.

Using the proceeds from an auction of some of the artwork that really hadn't done anything for either Arianne or me, I purchased some basic lab equipment and had it delivered, and set Felicity up as best I could.

A couple of nights later I was sitting by the fireplace, enjoying the latest Dean Koonz detective novel, when I heard Felicity muttering, "Well. We'll just have to integrate around the singularity." I looked over at her, and saw a man standing out on the deck. When he saw me, he turned to run and, in the moonlight, I noticed that he was the same man who had grabbed the stolen package of lutefisk and taken off without saying a word.

The next morning there was a strange van parked just down the street from our driveway. We had seen it in the neighborhood, often parked in front of a house that we knew was empty for the season. And we knew it didn't belong to any of our neighbors who lived nearby full time.

As I was looking out the window at the van, wishing I had my surveillance kit - which was at my office back in the city - Felicity walked up and said, "They're after me. They know I ate that lutefisk. I've got to get out of here, because you and Arainne are in danger as long as I'm here."

I looked over at her - not down, as she was now standing on two legs - and replied, "Well, you can't just walk out the door. A two legged cat-woman? In fact, you shouldn't even be standing near the window. Let me figure out how we can get you out of here, and you think on where we should take you.... We could hide you inside something... I have never wished that I played the tuba more in my life."

"I'll figure something out, Guy," Felicity said, handing me a slip of paper. "See if you can find some place like this."



I read the note she handed me, briefly amazed at the excellent handwriting from someone who, a week before, didn't even have hands, and began thinking while in the background I could hear Felicity rummaging through one of the closets.
She was looking for a place at the end of a rural road; literally a dusty backwoods place chock-full of peace and quiet.

"I've got it!" I cried, turning to tell Felicity of an old mountain cabin I had seen about an hour from nowhere, but I began laughing instead as I saw her standing there, dressed in one of my shirts, Arianne's jeans, and a big floppy hat.

"So, here's what we do," Felicity said after calling Arianne into the room and filling her in. "Guy, you go out and check out the van. If they are watching the house, they'll have to leave when they see you coming to talk to them. They can't do anything to you in broad daylight in front of your neigbors, after all.

"And, as soon as they leave, Arianne and I take off in the Woody, and she drops me off near that cabin. Then, sometime in the next week or so, you bring me my equipment."

"We should pack you some food and such, Felicity," Arianne said, but Felicity flashed her still sharp carnivore's teeth and said, "You don't need to worry about that. I can hunt for my food. After all, I do prefer a fresh kill to that packaged crap you humans eat."

So, I went outside and walked up to the van, but before I got to it, the engine started and they drove away. As soon as it disappeared around the curve, I waved and Arianne backed out of the driveway and took off in the other direction. I spent a tense couple of hours waiting and wishing I'd gone with them, but finally I heard the purring of the old Plymouth motor and met Arianne at the door.

She ran towards me and it was like the ending of one of those classic war movies where the soldier comes home: we met, I swung her up and gave her a kiss, hugging each other tight until our ribs were groaning. We went back inside, shut the door, and tried to get back to our normal lives.

The next day I remembered that I had told some of my investigator friends that I would attend a symposium starting on...I checked the calendar...September 15. I reached for the phone to call, trying to decide how to explain my absence. I considered blaming Costa Rican Independence Day...it's always a national holiday somewhere, right?

Chapter XIV

It had been a quiet couple of days up on the mountain, and Arianne and I had been relaxing and enjoying our stay at the Beech Mountain home. It was late summer, and at the higher elevation we were enjoying chilly nights and cool days. We spent a lot of time looking around the house and seeing what was there, and our best discovery was the small wine cellar in the basement.

I hadn't known that Dirk was a wine connoisseur, but there were about a hundred bottles of wine stored down there. It wasn't all good, and we had a rude awakening involving a bottle of spoiled wine.

Janey Hicks, my new realtor, stopped by to make sure everything was going alright, and brought us a welcome basket with some fresh baked bread and a couple of casseroles. Arianne courteously accepted the basket and was pleased to see the contents, if a bit hesitant. She didn't want to appear rude, but she was tempted to ask,"Is this real; or is it processed cheese-food type substance?" But she was very impressed with the bread - which was saying something, given her own proficiency as a baker.

We invited Janey to stay for dinner, but she begged off. "I'd enjoy it, but I have to get home. There was some road work done in front of my house, and we're still cleaning up the mess the construction workers made. The driveway is almost completely blocked and we haven't been able to locate our mailbox. As you might imagine, that's very frustrating."

"Well, we'll have to have you over some time, Janey," Arianne said as the two of them walked to the door. "Thank you, again."

"Have a good evening, y'all, and if you need anything, don't hesitate to call me," Janey replied as she left.

We also got to meet some of our neighbors. Most of them were people who, like us, had these homes as vacation properties, but there were some full-time residents and they were eager to meet us.

We immediately hit it off with one couple, Joad and Callie Steiner. They were a retired couple who had moved to the mountains of North Carolina from Iowa, where they had operated a large farm. Their oldest child, Melanie, had taken over the farm almost five years earlier, and they had lived up on the mountain ever since.

They invited us over for dinner, and we all talked and laughed like old friends. After we ate, we went out on their deck to enjoy the cool evening weather and watch the sun set over the mountains to the west. Both Callie and Joad regaled us with tales of their life on the prairie, and I told some stories about my experience as a private investigator.

I started with the story of the paternity case that hadn't quite gone as I expected. It had ended with me being charged with being the father of the child whose paternity I was trying to establish, but I managed to straighten things out.

"You just never know how things are going to turn out; I've dodged many a bullet in my life," the old man said as he laughed.

"That's a fact, Joad," I said as I finished telling how I stubbornly persisted until I proved that not only was I completely unrelated to the child, but that the father was, in fact, the local city councilor - who, of course, based his political career on "family values." Which, in in this case unlike many others, cost him his seat and his political career... and many thousands in child support.

Callie then told a tale of life on a farm in the middle of the 20th Century, and of the hardships they had to endure. She was chain smoking as she talked, and the image was very intriguing. The words left her mouth, wreathed in blue smoke. They drifted upwards to hang above her head like her own little cloud. "It's just not in my nature to quit."

Joad nodded as she finished the story, his love for his wife evident in every word.


Later that week, Arianne spent some time shopping in some of the antique malls over in Boone, coming home with several things, some of which I really liked, and some .... not so much.

I was at the desk in the study, looking through the microscope at the sample of lutefisk that Arianne had scooped up when I helped nab the "intelligence challenged" criminal who tried to rob the General Store across the parking lot from the police station. My curiosity had indeed gotten the best of me, and I was trying to figure out just what was "in the lutefisk", as the man had yelled while the cops were hauling him away.

Since I was woefully lacking in any sort of biology knowledge, I couldn't really tell if there was anything abnormal about the smelly brine-soaked fish.

Anyway, I was engrossed in contemplating the cellular makeup of questionable foodstuffs as Arianne walked in from her first shopping foray and plopped down her purchase on the desk next to the microscope. I looked over ... and looked again, not sure what to think. "What the hell?" I said, unable to contain my disbelief. "Where in god's name did you find that, and why the fuck is it dressed like a sailor?"

It was a large, metal gecko, wearing full 19th Century British Naval Admiral's regalia.

"You don't like it?" she asked me, raising an eyebrow and tapping her foot in the playful way that I was really starting to enjoy.

"Well, it's... umm, it's nice and all, but what the hell is it?"

"It's a gecko, silly," Arianne responded as she trailed her fingers up my neck and lightly tangled them in my hair. "I think I'm going to go get in the hot tub. What are you doing?" Her fingers started teasing my hair and neck.

"Umm, nothing important," I replied, no longer thinking about the geckos or lutefisk.

In no time, the office was empty and, if you'd been nearby, you would have heard giggling and sighs coming from the deck. The cast iron gecko sat atop the paperwork, rusting gently.

Interactive Creative Writing, Chapter XIII

It had been a quiet week in the city in the mountains. The final paperwork had gone through on the inheritance, and I found out I would only have to sell a third of the paintings and other artwork to pay the taxes, so that was good. Arianne and I were settling back into our relationship comfortably, and had decided to go up to the house on Beech Mountain for a few days. I had hired an assistant, a young man by the name of Albert Cerrano, and told him to keep my desk chair warm and refer any clients to Fizzy Joines, a private investigator that I had worked with often in the past.

So we threw some stuff in the back of the Woody, Arianne grabbed her laptop, and we headed up the Blue Ridge Parkway towards Banner Elk and Beech Mountain. Like a lot of the homes up on the mountain, Dirk's house had been available for weekend rental during the times he wasn't using it. We figured we would do the same, so once we got to the top of Beech Mountain, we pulled into the lot of Beech Realty to sign the paperwork and pick up a set of keys to the house.

Arianne decided to go next door to the General Store while I took care of things with the Realtor, so I was alone as I walked into the office. I didn't see anyone, so I called out - "Hello?"

"Be with you in a minute," I heard a woman's voice call out from behind a closed door. Then I heard a flush and the door opened. The woman who walked out of the bathroom wasn't what I expected in a Realtor's office. She was dressed conservatively, as Realtors tend to be, but something about her gave me the impression that she would be more comfortable in a logging camp or on a soccer field.

"Whew! Hope you don't need to use the facilities, friend," she said, waving her hand in front of her face. "That's why you don't light a candle in the bathroom," she added, then burst out laughing.

"Janey Hicks," she said, holding out her hand and taking mine firmly. "How can I help you?" She stepped over to the front window and saw the Woody in the parking lot. "Oh! You must be Mr. Noir. I recognize Dirk's car. So sad to lose him, but life goes on. Let me get the paperwork and we'll be done in a jiffy. I'm sure you want to get on over to the house and check it out."

We were going over the documents when her computer beeped. While I continued reading the rental details, she opened the incoming email and read for a moment. "It's from my worthless ex boyfriend," she said to me. I could tell just by looking at her that, after reading the email, she wanted to reach through the computer screen and smack him for his burning stupidity. "Best day of my life was the day I told him what he could do with himself. We were at the marina over to Watauga Lake, waiting for some friends we were gonna go boating with, and I just had enough of him. He was drunk again - as usual - and when he tried to paw me right there in front of God and everybody, I punched him in the gut, smacked his face and shoved him in the water. Bam, pow, oof, splash!"

I smiled with her and then she burst out in a loud guffaw, "You probably think I'm an awful person, don't ya!"

"Not at all, Ms. Hicks. Sounds to me like he had it coming. So, I just need to sign here?" I added, wanting to finish up and get over to the house.

"Yep. That takes care of things at this end. As soon as you and your ladyfriend figure out when you're most likely to want to come up here, you just let me know, and we'll block those dates from the rental schedule. Welcome to the Village of Beech Mountain!"

It shook her hand again as she handed me the keys and took my leave, smiling at the Mountain Woman image made flesh. Arianne wasn't back to the car yet, so I walked across the parking lot to the store. As I was climbing the steps up on to the porch, I heard a voice cry out, "Stop him!" and a young man came barreling out the front door.

My finely honed instincts kicked in and I reached out to grab the fleeing miscreant. He goosed, then ducked. Unluckily for him, though, I'd been nabbing perps for longer than he'd been alive, and was wise to their tricks. I tackled him, and the package he had tried to get away with went flying.

The rogue lay there for a moment, stunned by the impact with the sidewalk, and then moaned loudly. He wouldn't have believed it if he hadn't seen it with his own eye - there was his other eye, looking back at him. He reached out and picked it up - I could see it was glass at that point - and popped it back into the socket.

The Village Police Station was just on the other side of the real estate office, so it took only a moment for an officer to run over and take control of the would-be (and, frankly, not very intelligent) thief. As the cop was securing the prisoner, I could hear the young man babbling. Much like the Internet, there was some useful, possibly even vital information hidden amid the rambling and bravado. He swayed on his feet, clearly intoxicated, and let loose a spew of colourful bile on the sidewalk - it furthered the metaphor, and I was delighted.

Arianne stepped out the front door of the store as the crook shouted something along the lines of "It's in the lutefisk!!" and jerked his chin toward the package, which had burst open as it hit the concrete sidewalk. Arianne walked over to it and I joined her there.

"What is he talking about, Guy?" she asked me.

"Not sure," I replied, squatting down to look at the contents. It had the consistency of pudding, but the scent wafting off its quivering bulk spoke volumes about un-emptied dumpsters and forgotten stacks of crusty socks. "Definitely lutefisk," I said, moving to stand upwind.

"I'm gonna snitch a bit of it so we can check it out," Arianne said, pulling a small plastic container out of her shopping bag.

"I'm on vacation, Darlin'," I said as I smiled at her, knowing that she knew that I wouldn't be able to resist the mystery implied in all these goings on. She scooped some of the fishy stuff into the container, and stood as a man in dark glasses came out of the store and strode directly to the package. He quickly gathered up the contents, and carried the mess back into the store, without saying a word or even looking at us.

I had to make a statement to the cop, but there was no problem once Janey came out of her office and vouched for me, and then Arianne and I headed on over to the house.

I had been to Dirk's house several times, but it was Arianne's first visit. She was quite impressed as she walked through the rooms, and positively thrilled when she saw the hot tub on the deck off the master suite upstairs.

"I think that, after the drive and the excitement at the store, we deserve to ... relax... in the tub for a bit," she called to me.

I walked out onto the deck to join her. "Sounds good to me, but you better read the house rules over there," I said, pointing to the carved sign hanging on the wall.

She stepped over and read for a moment, then turned to me. "Naked?" she cried, aghast. Then she burst out laughing and quickly stripped down.

All I could do was join her....


Some time later, Arianne was looking around the house and found an old microscope that Dirk had used on a couple of cases involving priceless collectible Tibetan Hopping Spiders.

Few are privy to the inner workings of the insular world of competitive arachnid collection, but Dirk had shared a few anecdotes with me at the time. I knew, for instance, that the insanely intricate yet frequently modified qualifications for any given year's Prize Specimen made for lively discussions and heated controversy at the biweekly meetings. All in all, the Arachnid Fanciers' gatherings were a morass of strong opinions loosely held - and loudly expressed.

On a shelf beside the microscope, Arianne discovered a prize specimen specially mounted in a small glass box. She slid it under the lens and bent to the eyepiece.

Looking into the microscope, her first thought was how much the spider looked like Dame Penelope's insufferable Yorkie, Ewok...but with more eyes.

To be continued....