Chapter 9: Car Jacking

Monday morning the after-party broke up. Our guests at the ranch packed up their suits and dresses, put on their ‘business’ clothes, loaded up their cars, and headed down the long driveway to head north, back to the populated bay areas and their jobs.

Blake and Doug gave me manly hugs, fist bumps, and then really turned on the charm with Mindy as we stood saying goodbye. “We’ll see you Wednesday night, right?”

I teased my new wife, “Boys night out, of course.” Mindy dug her fingers into my side.

She said, “And you’ll behave yourself unless you’re with me.”

Doug said, “You come, too. Bring all your girlfriends and your sister. Out of five guys in our group, two are now married. That’s the same ratio as for you and your four girlfriends.”

Mindy laughed, “I’ll see what I can put together. You going to be at Coyotes again?”

Doug nodded, “Yep. Luke had such good luck there in finding you, we thought we’d go back.” He laughed.

Blake added, “Oh, yeah. We’ll have the check for you.”

I waved my hand at each of them, “No, I don’t want your money. I know this all started as a bet, but I am a very happy man right now thanks to you and that bet. Please, keep your money. Tell the others. It’ll save me having to make a similar bet with each of you.”

Blake didn’t look so sure, but nodded in reply. I didn’t want his money. I got to thinking it would cheapen my relationship with Mindy and I didn’t want that. Further, I didn’t need the money.

By nine a.m. everybody was gone except Margo. She was walking around the house and outdoor areas with a few sheets of paper checking off things and adding things to her list. As she passed by I asked, “What are you doing?”

“Making sure that everything gets returned to the way it was before the wedding and party. I see a few things that need attention by the caterers and the rental store. I’ve been planning on staying here to tidy up, get all the bed and bath linens washed, and then heading into the office. Your housekeeper should be here any moment, too, and she’ll help. I have a long list.” She waved her iPhone at me.

I liked that Margo announced her intentions and didn’t ask for permission. She’d even taken over management of my housekeeper around the wedding without involving me. I was out of the office a lot and didn’t need things to hang up because I wasn’t there to approve something. Margo knew what needed to be done and would do them.

Mindy and Margo started chatting about the house and the cleanup jobs. I left them to it and went to get my own things I wanted to take north with me.

Married life fit me well. By agreement, we both tried to be home by six o’clock each evening. We’d change into casual clothes, have a glass of wine, and talk about our day. About an hour or so later, we’d go out to dinner to some eatery in the valley. Mindy made a list of about fifty restaurants she wanted to try, so we started to shop around according to her list.

After two weeks, I asked her one Wednesday night, “Okay, we’ve been married for about fifteen days, what’s the verdict? What do I do that irritates you?”

Mindy had to think. “Well ... you sometimes miss the hamper with your dirty clothes and they just sit there, you pile dishes in the sink rather than put what you used in the dishwasher, you don’t empty the dishwasher of clean dishes, and most importantly you’ve stopped sending little love texts each day.”

I realized she was right. I’d started to take her for granted, so my romantic habit of a text or two each day to say ‘I love you’ had fallen by the wayside. “I will fix those things.”

“What about the things I do?” Mindy asked.

“I don’t like wet lingerie hanging in our bathroom. It’s fine in the laundry room, and I can get used to that. I wish your bathroom countertop was neater. You’re too cheerful when you get up; I like quiet until after the first cup of coffee. I wish you could narrow down the shampoos and conditioners in the shower to one of each, not a half-dozen of each. Those are nits and barely worth mentioning. I’ll get used to them if you don’t want to change.”

Mindy said, “And you’re not peeved in any way with my sexual activities on the weekend?”

I laughed, “What, that you like to fuck all my friends and eat out all of yours? Hell no, I’m not at all peeved at any of that. Perhaps you forget that I’m also doing things with you female friends.”

Mindy teased, “Are you fucking Margo in the office?”

I shook my head. “No, I told her the office was for professional stuff only; no hanky-panky. She really would like to have a big slice of me, but she has to wait until the weekend down at the ranch if she chooses to come down.”

Mindy said, “She could come here in the evenings. I like her. She’s smart and sexy.”

“You have her beat by miles.”

“Flattery will get you everywhere,” Mindy replied and kissed me. “Margo is in love with you.”

“I know that, and I don’t know what to do about it. I’m married but have an infinite hall pass to play around. I like playing around when we’re together with all our friends and we can have a little orgy.”

“She told me she wants in on the whole sexual scene we enjoy with your and my friends,” Mindy said. “I don’t mind that idea. My sister made the same request, by the way. She even went further and told me she wanted to move here, and in with both of us if we’d have her.”

“Yeah,” I replied, “Margo would do that, too. I think we want to stay as only a couple for a few months while we get used to being married. Once we’re secure and tight in our marriage we can admit other players into the tent on a longer-term basis than a casual overnight. Of course, if you want to do something sooner, I could be coaxed into whatever you’re thinking.”

Mindy agreed and added, “That said, either of them could stay overnight with us a night or two a week if they were so inclined. That way you’d be able to have some ‘strange’ during the week.”

I laughed, “And you should set up the same situation with someone so you have the same situation.”

Mindy teased, “It’s different for me because I derive please with both men and women. Maybe you need to broaden your horizons?”

“I’ll take that under advisement.” That statement was my polite way of saying ‘No’ to her. I admit to being slightly homophobic. I tolerate all sorts of close naked male contact, but I don’t want to engage in sex with a member of my gender. As I did the previous weekend, I’m not shy about grabbing hold of a cock and steering it inside my lusty wife.

Mindy and I went out to the Valley Brew House for dinner. The big feature of the restaurant was that they served about fifty different beers including four they brewed on site.

The next night I got some notorious press and so did Mindy. Somebody had spilled the whole can of beans to the press about our whirlwind marriage. A long article appeared under the title ‘The Bet’. There was even a picture of Mindy and me having dinner outside at a place named Silicon Gardens, and a picture of just me someone found on the Internet. There was no byline.

The article described how I had been one of Silicon Valley’s most sought after bachelors, and how one of my friends had bet me a ‘huge sum of money’ that I wouldn’t walk up to woman I just met that night and ask her to marry me. It went on to tell about how I’d accepted the bet, proposed to pretty Miss Mindy Marlow – owner of a chain of women’s boutiques, and then wed her six weeks later in a small friends and family service. There weren’t many details wrong or missing.

At least in the article Penner Real Estate got several strong plugs as a company dealing in high-end real estate, and the anonymous writer made me sound like some wunderkind who could get top dollar for any property sold through us. Although the tone of the article was somewhat negative regarding my impulsiveness in accepting the marriage bet, and Mindy’s in accepting my proposal, the rest of the article was pretty neutral and good press. I wasn’t that upset by it.

Mindy was flattered and we both tried to guess who’d written the story or spilled the beans to someone.

Things escalated further when fate stepped in two days later.

I was sitting in my office reading over a contract for some commercial property in Sunnyvale that was for sale. We had a bidder and I was trying to erode away the gap between seller and buyer so we had a completed deal.

Margo came into my office at Mach One. “Holy shit! You have to watch this. Turn on your television.”

Sixty seconds later, Margo had me watching a high-speed chase. The reporter was repeating what others seemed to know. A minivan had been carjacked and it happened to have two infants inside in car seats. The mother had been forced out of the van at gunpoint, a shot even fired in the Palo Alto parking lot.

Right behind the minivan a Honda CRV doggedly followed. The announcer repeated, “The driver of the Blue Honda that you see right behind the minivan is Miss Mindy Penner, the recent bride of Luke Penner – real estate mogul. She is talking to the police on her cellphone trying to get them to catch up to the scene as they hurdle south on the Interstate at speeds approaching a hundred miles an hour. Our news helicopter just happened to pickup the chase on the police radio.”

I looked at Margo. “Oh, God. I hope she doesn’t do anything foolish.”

The announcer continued, “In the car with Mindy Penner is Patricia Walmont, the mother of the twin infants in the minivan. She has been in touch with State Police as well as ... hold on ... our news helicopter is being told to abandon the chase. The state police are on the scene with their own copter, and ... as you can see from the fading view of the scene, a half-dozen police cars are converging on the scene. Traffic is ... not moving out of the way of the high-speed cars ... the Honda is now falling back as a police car moves into position behind the minivan. We can see the lights and imagine the sirens from here.”

The TV coverage of the scene got more distant but through the telephoto lens we could see the cars in front of the minivan forming a phalanx of vehicles that would not led the hijacked vehicle though. Gradually, the speed of all the cars slowed. An attempt to use an exit ramp was blocked by other cars on the hijacked vehicles right.

The hijacked car made a sharp U-turn into an on ramp to the Interstate, and tried to go the wrong way. Two police cars met the minivan coming up the ramp to join in the chase, just after the evasive turn. The minivan crashed into one police car, maybe at a speed of twenty miles an hour. The driver leapt from the van and back towards oncoming traffic on the Interstate. Police cars were everywhere but where he was running.

As the lone driver changed lanes and started to run across the Interstate to avoid capture, a Honda CRV drove by him and the driver’s door swung open at just the right time. The door clipped him and tossed him about fifty feet through the air to the middle of the highway. Cars jammed on their brakes at the unfolding scene.

I gasped, “Shit, that’s still Mindy’s car.”

The Honda stopped next to the man and Mindy was out of the vehicle in a flash. We couldn’t see what was happening on TV, but Mindy told me later. She had a mace spray in her purse; something she carried most of the time. She ran up to the carjacker and sprayed his face with it. Apparently, he screamed and held his face, unable to see.

A minute later, police arrived at the scene. The man was cuffed and pulled out of the middle of the Interstate and slammed into the back of a police car. The police and Mindy all pulled off the side of the road. Meanwhile, the mother of the children had gone running down the ramp to see whether her babies had survived the crash of her van. They had. Ultimately, the van needed to be loaded on a truck and towed away.

I realized that everything I’d just seen on the television had taken place in about ninety seconds. The announcer was talking rapidly, recapping the entire situation as video clips played over and over. The police were all over the van, Mindy’s car, and so on. An ambulance arrived at the scene, going right to the minivan to tend to the children. A second ambulance arrived to treat the carjacker. The TV cameras had been able to move closer again; we could see the EMTs working through the open back door of the police cruiser as four offices watched with weapons drawn. The guy would be dead meat if he tried to escape.

By the six o’clock news Mindy’s face was all over the news. Her face graced the covers of the Chronicle and the Examiner the next morning with the word ‘Heroine’ in large letters next to it. She was embarrassed, but proudly defended her actions.