Chapter 18

By Cindy and Walt

For all intents and purposes Janet Anton died at 3:15 PM on the first Friday in September. It had been a long summer and I was pissed because I spent most of the summer being Janet Anton. To be honest I missed Farmer's Grove.

At 3:30 PM in the parking lot of the Office Plaza, Rose Seabold was reborn. I was ready to lose the uniform, but alas I had forgot to bring a change of clothes. Well technically I did have a change of clothes in the trunk of the Hyundai, but I couldn't get to them before I got out of town.

I drove toward Farmer's Grove and the Country Store, but I knew I would be meeting either Mission or Morris somewhere along the way. I drove for about an hour before the cell phone rang.

"If I had it, I would bet you ten bucks that is Morris," Liam said.

"Since you don't have it, we should bet ten million," I said with a laugh.

"Now you are just being silly," Liam said.

"Hello," I said into the phone.

"About five miles ahead and on your right there is a Sheets Convenience store. Pull over and fill the tank. Then order dinner and have a seat, I'll be along in a bit," Morris said.

"What a bitch, she is going to have you wait in the open to spring a trap on anyone following you. That is, if the person following you doesn't have you killed by the time she gets there," Liam said.

"Come on Liam, you know it's standard spy craft and you would do it yourself in a minute. You just don't like her," I demanded.

"You are fucking A I don't like the bitch," he said. "She tried to fuck everybody I worked with and it wasn't a good thing."

"Well she is probably going to fuck me as well, but I can't do anything about it," I said.

"Not yet you can't, but collect the money and the people you will need to protect yourself," Liam suggested.

By the time that conversation with myself ended, I was pulling into the Sheets Store. I used the Janet Anton debit card to pump the tank full of gasoline. Once the pump stopped, I moved the car to the parking area beside the store so that I could go inside for a pretty good hamburger and french fries.

Even after I finished the burger Morris didn't show so I waited. I had been in the dining area for half hour or more before Morris showed. She walked up and sat down. "You look as though you gained a couple of pounds," I said.

"Good to see you too," she replied but she didn't appear too glad to see me at all.

"So what you got for me?" I asked.

"So many things, it's hard to know where to begin." She began by handing me a prepaid debit card in the amount of eight thousand dollars. "That's two months salary." There aren't any check stubs so take my word for it the taxes have been withheld," Morris said.

I was against this one, but Mission said you earned it, so this box is for you," she said handing me a cheap plastic box the size of those used to store recipes. "What's in it," I asked.

"A present from the DEA. It's a reward for the tip that led them to the tunnel. Don't expect any more when you read about a round up of players using a time share resort in Mexico as a cover for drug smuggling. That box is your only reward. I would never have given it to you," she said.

I opened the 99 cent plastic box and found it to contain gold. From having seen the gold shows on TV, I guessed there was somewhere near seventy ounces of gold, worth at least $75,000. Most likely it was ill-gotten gains money. Something no one was going to bother reporting.

"Wow, that's what I call a reward," I said.

"Don't worry it came from the raid, so no one is going to miss it," Morris said. I made a note that she knew it wasn't kosher. I might need to use it against her one day.

"I promise I'll put it to good use," I said.

"If I were you, I wouldn't invest it. Hoarding comes to mind," Morris said.

"Thanks for the advice, but what I want to know is what is with Jeremy and Alice?" I asked.

"They are an enigma. We can't break their story, but we also can't verify parts of it. So we can only suggest you stay away from them," Morris suggested.

"It's going to be hard to avoid them, if I continue living in the Country Store," I replied.

"Well you can afford to move somewhere else now," Morris said.

"My next move is going to be a homestead in Alaska," I replied.

"Well not for a while anyway," Morris said.

"Your truck is outside and your stuff is in it, including your scrubbed computer and phone. I'll be taking Janet's electronics," she said.

"I've been gone over two months," I said. I was ready to get back to my life such as it was.

"I'm sorry I can't tell you any more, but we are just going to have to wait and see what if anything happens," Morris suggested.

"Nice," Liam said. "They can arrest Jeremy after the fact and bury you." I gave him the half nod of my head.

"I guess that is everything," she added. "I expect you are going to need a professional to cut the grass after two months."

"Not a chance, have you been by the country store?" I asked.

"No why?" She replied.

"Because I have a lawn care professional. Her name is Molly," I said with a laugh.

"Well good, the grass can get awfully high in two months. You don't want the place to look vacant. We sure don't want anyone poking around. I know you have a clean operation, but you just never know what someone might stumble across," Morris said.

I wondered how much Morris knew. She might know something, but she most likely did not. I had a feeling she didn't want to know much.

"So how much can you guess about Jeremy and his sister. They claim to be trust fund babies, so is there a trust fund?" I asked.

"They don't work and they have healthy bank accounts and there is an investment account with a pretty good chunk of change in it," she said.

"So they do seem on the up and up?" I asked.

"The investment account could be from anything. They claim it is an inheritance, but it could be from anything," Morris replied.

"Okay well at least they don't seem to be active in anything too illegal," I suggested.

"If we thought they were, we would get you out. If they are doing anything wrong, it is most likely a moral offense not a legal one," Morris said.

"Just so I know, what kind of yearly income do they draw from the investment account?" I asked.

"Around half a million," she said. "That is each. They moved to the country to find that proverbial small pond. That is a hell of a lot of money in the mountains, but not so much in New York or Miami."

"That makes sense. But then it is a good place to retire from a criminal enterprise as well," I added.

"Like I said, just wait and see," she suggested.

"Not much else I can do," I replied. "Well I guess I will head home. You want to leave first or shall I?"

"I guess you should, since you have been here the longest," she said.

Before I stood to leave I made sure I had left all the Janet Anton ID material, then I recovered my real ID. Well as real as it gets for me, I thought.

I found my bag of dirty clothes in the passenger seat, but my backpack was in the bed of the truck. I was happy to drive away from the meeting with Morris. The almost 75K reward from the DEA was a nice surprise. Then there was the no surprise about Jeremy and Alice. I was happy to see that as well. All in all it was a good meeting.

I had about a two hour drive before I made it to the Roaring Gap exit. It was also the access road which held the two plazas. I didn't plan to stop since I had no idea what I needed after being gone two months.

The time passed slowly as I tried to remember all the things I had planned to do, while I waited for another job to come along. For one thing I could finish the Country Store house. The main thing left was decorating. It was one of the many things I had absolutely no talent for whatsoever. I decided to see if I could get either Alice or Rachael, or both, to give me some advice.

Then I also needed to get back out to the school to pick up my drawings and the critique of them. I would like to know if I had any talent or not. If not I decided I would switch to welding. I figured I would look better in a welding helmet than the girl from flash dance, or maybe not.

I pulled into my driveway and noticed the landscaping was much better than it had been two months before when I left. Molly the goat had taken care of all the weeds and vines, leaving me a nice clean wooded area behind the house. The shrubs along the front were low enough to showcase the thin vertical windows. Hell, there were even flowers lining a new walk from the driveway to the small porch.

In the rear of the house there were several rosebushes trying to take hold before the end of growing season. It was on the verge of ending in the mountains, where my 'country store' house was located. I took a better look at the different looking 'knock out' roses as I entered the side door of my house.

The side door was a hold over from when the building had been a 1950 something filling station. It was the only way one could enter the office area from the outside. When the roll up doors were removed, other doors had been installed. The side door had been reopened by Carlos. I entered the small office that I converted to a galley kitchen.

I had driven two hours since I drank four cups of coffee, so I immediately made the sharp right turn into the huge bathroom. After I did my thing I decided it was too cool to shower just then, so I left the light on in the bath. The switch also controlled the ceramic electric furnace. I knew that I had about a twenty minute wait for it to heat the bathroom, so I closed the door and continued on into the main part of the house.

I managed to fire up the wood stove. I was still agonizing over having a gas burner unit installed, but for at least the tenth time, I decided not to decide. Instead I began a small fire in the stove. The warm air from the stove would rise naturally into the sleeping loft eventually. In the meantime I could sit in the kitchen or even the bathroom to stay warm.

With a pile of clothes on the floor and my funky hot water heater finally up to temperature, I stripped off my clothes and entered the giant shower room. I turned on the pump and opened the valve so that the heated water mixed with the cold then poured onto me. I had forgotten what it was like to have a really quick shower, and then just stand under the showerhead until the water ran cold.

By the time the water turned cold, the bathroom was very warm, so I was still comfortable as I dried off. Then I stepped into the bathroom section of the huge double room arrangement.

I was finally clean and getting used to my quirky house again after the tiny Capitol City apartment. I sat by the fire in the newly completed living room to check all the emails I had not seen since I went back under cover. I checked because I would not have been able to answer them over the last two months anyway. Part of the spy code was when undercover stay away from your real life completely. Well my real life wasn't real but it was the one worth protecting.