Chapter 539

Shortly after sunup the girls and I along with two little boys were walking on the beach. Then we spent two hours working on tans and helping the boys build sand castles.

At 0930 we met the rest of the family in the clubhouse for breakfast. At 1030 we were going to meet with all the deep water employees and then back to the beach for the rest of the afternoon.

Our meeting with the employees was an eye opener for us and them. There were a lot of questions and instructions given.

Lorrie was going to send two clerks and assistants on Monday to change and set up the computer systems and time keeping along with training on how things were to be done for the Florida rentals. East Water Cay would now have that information on their web site and the Florida rental site would be expanded with the East Water Cay offerings.

Once all that was done Lorrie was going to promote someone to oversee and remove herself from the day to day operations of the rental division.

Ching Lee was sending two more to change over and update the website with all new pictures and videos. Hopefully some of the ladies wouldn’t mind being the models in the pictures.

Then a thought hit me, why not send several ladies to be models - we had several who took advantage of free gym and tanning room as employees; four were an 11 on a scale 1 to 10.

Mary Ann Johnson worked as a clerk in security and was single. Andrea Bush was one of flight attendants for Lorrie and her husband. Both were both fitness nuts; both of them would look good in the pictures. Kathy Hoss - one of the CIA pilots - at 48 could put most women to shame; her husband had just died in a snowmobile racing accident in Montana three months ago.

The other was Wendy Adams, the nudist who ran the tanning booths. I would bet there would be some great pictures with her. I called all of them to see if they would be interested in a week tropical vacation and modeling for a PR campaign.

Ching Lee decided she wanted to come back to be the photographer.

Marcy was sending two people, one was Hammond Price to set up the financials, banking and booking and payroll systems. The other - Lexi Morgan - was going to audit the last three years on the books with a fine tooth comb.

Lexi was a former IRS agent in their criminal division who had been shuffled around because of politics and finally had enough. She worked in our tax department with Robert Alderman. If there was a problem with the books, she could find it.

There were going to be surprised employees on Monday. The girls sent an email to their clerks and assistants they wanted to take with.

“We need five volunteers to go on a week long warm climate business training trip. Boyfriends or husbands can go along, passports and photo ID required and swimsuits are optional wear. They would leave Monday morning and be back Friday evening. Destination will currently not be disclosed,” the email said.

The rest of Saturday and Sunday went too quick, but we had a fun time mostly spent on the beach. We had a driftwood fire on the beach as the sun went down.

My security guys all but disappeared every now and then I caught a glimpse of them watching. They even went snorkeling and fishing with us.

It was 2100 when we landed at Morton to begin the routine again. At home with the boys in bed we planned tomorrow’s announcement. We hated whisper campaigns! Those things killed productivity tying up phones and email systems with texts and emails. All JBG employees would know by 0900. The office would be told by an announcement, everyone else by an email.

There were still several months to the bone fishing season. Tomorrow Hanna’s station would be the first to carry the ads and our radio station then stations in Washington and New York.

We were going to cut the price and include airfare from Morton, BWI or Miami International. We were sure that with so many similar offerings around the Bahamas, they had overpriced trying to cut their losses.

We were going to use some of the terrorists’ cash to finance the changes that were going to take place on the island. We figured we could safely launder some of the money that way. It was time to start using some of it.

We had already blocked out weekends and weeks we were going to spend in the surf and sand for ourselves. It was time to enjoy some of the fruits of our labors, the risk we had taken and things we had all worked so hard for.

Marcy wanted to diversify income; this would certainly help, please our tax department and give us the getaway we deserved.

At 0700 another G5 carried Ching Lee and the group back to the Grand Bahamas airport.

At 0800 Lorrie had all the Morton employees in the terminal building and Marcy all the office employees together on the gym floor and made the same announcement that we had written the night before.