Complete Novel

The Black Knight Squash Fiction League Match #3

The Loose Strings  The Racketeers
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Chapter 14

Oh, Bloody Hell!
by David Smith

The screaming drew my immediate attention.   Of course, screaming in the middle of a quiet New England Inn will do that. 

But even before this happened, I was ready to bolt.  I need to get away from this woman who claimed to be my mother and I need to think and drink.  Something did not seem right, and I was not thinking clearly.   There is no way Jean-Luc was my father.    I was not sure what was wrong, but something definitely was not right. My mental alarm was doing a full-tilt boogey.  Too much that did not make sense, including that matter-of-fact greeting by a woman who is supposedly seeing her daughter after years of separation. 

Ted---I am not going to call her Mom, yet---rushed to the door of the room.   Cautiously, she peered into the hall and moved out as it appeared to be clear.   She moved quickly to Room 209, and with gun drawn, tried the door.  It opened, and what she saw froze her where she stood. 

“Oh, no, Mar…”  Ted’s words caught in her throat as her hands covered her face.    

I eased down the hall behind her and saw a woman, who I guess was the mystery doc from Liberia.   She was standing in the middle of the room, dressed only in a white, oversized, man’s shirt.   She would have looked pretty hot for a woman of her age but for the blood that covered her face, hands, and the formerly all-white shirt.    Now, I’m not squeamish (perhaps you will remember Ollie and the neck thing), but the sight of this woman will put me off my feed for a while. 

Now, I think we have established that I have a higher than average intelligence.   That is probably why I put Liberian doctor together with blood gushing from her nose pretty quickly and backed away from the room.    Ted also must have recognized the obvious Ebola signs as she was frozen in place.
                                                                                                                                                                                                                         Focused as she was on her bloody lover, she didn’t notice as I ran down the hall, grabbed my things from Room 202, and scurried out of the inn.  

I spotted the rare Concord cab and managed to get the driver’s attention.  I gave him instructions to take me to Horse Corners, a quaint village about 9 miles out of Concord.  Ok, to say it is a village is generous.  It is a basically a bar by the side of the road among a number of farms.    As we pulled up, I took the driver’s card so that I had a way back.
 
Big Belly’s Bar looked like it did when I was in prep school at St. Exodus.  Not sure it had been cleaned since then.   The smell of grease from the deep fryer assaulted my senses as I entered.   When I was at St. Exodus, the aforementioned Big Belly supplied the beer for squash team parties---all at a healthy mark-up.   Such was the benefit of having an affluent prep school nearby.  

I took the booth in the dark, back corner and ordered a scotch.   I hate to mix my alcohol.  The swill they served was certainly not as good as what I had in my bag, but BYO in a bar is frowned upon.  And you don’t want Big Belly frowning upon you.

The “atmosphere” and the drink were just what I needed to sort through this mess.  Some things just didn’t make sense. Walk through it with me.

The woman I met in Room 202 did look like my mom, but it had been years since I had seen her.   This lady’s hair wasn’t blonde like my mom’s, more of a raven black, and clearly a dye job.   It was also shorter and had a bit more style.  The roots looked good, so Ted had spent time in a salon just recently.   She was thinner, but death will do that to you.   Stupidly, I hadn’t really questioned that she was my mom. 

What was it she said in the room?   “By that time, you were a junior at St. Exodus…”   That’s bullshit.   My mom and dad were allegedly killed when I was in college, not when I was in prep school.   How could she get that so wrong?  She had the date of her own death wrong by several years?  No way.

And then it hit me.  Or maybe the scotch hit me.   I had originally received a call from Mom on voice mail, and then almost immediately, received an email from her.  Neither message made reference to the other.   Why would she do that?  It’s almost as if they came from two different people.   

I grabbed my phone and pulled up the email that Ted had sent me.  As I read through her profession of love for the Liberian, I realized that she did not even know her name.   At one point she called her Karwah and later wrote Yarweh.   This is the woman that she was in love with after two weeks?  You’d think she would get her name right before she hopped into bed with her.   Ok, maybe I am not the one to judge that point---but certainly she could have sorted out the name after.  
  
Was that Mom in the room, or not? If not, where was my mother?

Whoever it was at the inn would not be leaving soon.   The CDC was about to lock her and her friend down tight.   Chris Christie was probably already building a tent for them.   That should provide me with some space.  Instinct was telling me “Quebec.”   I had to get to her house and try to find some answers.   Well, first I had to find the house.  
 
I pondered my travel options and decided it was ok to leave a trail.  I have no idea who was alive back in Tarrytown, but I had to assume that Jack had made it out and was looking for me.

A short while later I was on the regional train to Boston.  I caught an early evening flight to Montreal,   using a credit card for the first time.  I could almost hear the alarm bells going off in Langley.   They would know where I was and where I was going in an instant.   But they were reacting to me, so I figure I had a good head start. 

I picked up a rental car at Trudeau and set the GPS for the 80 mile trip to Mt. Tremblant.    A quick stop in the vacation town of Ste. Sauveur for dinner and I was back on the dark road through the mountains. 

It made sense that my mom would settle there.   When I was little, she loved when we vacationed at Mt. Tremblant.   During my stripper phase, I actually worked one summer at the Faucon Bleu.  Good vacation, but the clientele at the Faucon Bleu were somewhat hands-on.    
 
As I pulled off the highway at the Mt. Tremblant exit, I peered through the dark at the brightly lit Faucon Bleu.  I wonder if Marc-Andre still ran the place.   M-A certainly helped me improve my French that summer.  

With a Marc-Andre inspired grin, I settled in for the drive down the winding two lane road to the resort. My memories were interrupted by the headlights in my rear view mirror.   Weaponless, I had to fight the rising panic as I saw the car accelerate and quickly close the distance to my rental.




David Smith is a Long Island-exiled Medical Device executive of questionable humor and talent, whose unrestrained passion for Chardonnay and San Francisco is only surpassed by his love of the Michigan State Spartans.