Chapter 184: The Non-Prodigal Son Returns Home

Saturday, May 7, 2005 (Continued)

Both cars parked in front of my home and we all got out. Prof told me, "We need to introduce you to the guards first."

One of the guards was standing close to us, the other much farther back, which struck me as a sensible tactic, based on my extensive knowledge of security procedures, gleaned from several years of TV watching.

The guards obviously knew Prof and Vanessa, who introduced me. The Williamses stayed with me until I'd unlocked the door, let us in, and introduced myself to the young woman whose job it was to scream if someone tried to sneak into the house. [Prof had been assured by his PI advisor and Patrick - both with total confidence - that Binion's would NEVER authorize the use of force. Sneaky illegalities were to be expected, but overt criminality wouldn't happen.]

The Williamses started leaving as I went to rouse Mom and Dad. Dad met me halfway. He'd been sleeping lightly and had been wakened by our noise. Soon there was a LOT more noise.

We had a GREAT reunion! Lots of hugs, tears and talking, with Carol providing the most of the first two reactions, and Mom most of the last one. One somewhat upsetting thing I noticed was that everyone's nightwear wasn't their usual. They were all dressed in shorts and T-shirts, presumably so they could leap out of bed and do whatever needed to be done if there was any trouble.

When the gushing had died down far enough that people actually became coherent, the questions started.

I was conscious of the girl who was wandering around the house, so the first real thing I said was, "If you want to get into details, we should take it into one of the bedrooms and close the door." It turned out that they did want to get into details.

I turned on Mom's bedside radio fairly loudly, to provide some covering noise, and said, "Let's not get too detailed. Prof's going to arrange to have the houses checked for bugs early next week, so we shouldn't say too much before that's been done." By which time everyone would have calmed down a great deal. I wasn't worried about the 'buggers' - a pun Mom would understand - hearing my comment. It'd motivate them to remove their bugs, which was fine by me. [As I mentioned earlier, there were none. The only indoors places that had been bugged were Vanessa's and Prof's university offices, and those bugs were gone already.]

Mom urgently asked, "Where've you been?"

I started giving her a lighthearted review of my travels, beginning from when the flight from LA had touched down in Corvallis.

It didn't take long for Mom to express worry about the danger I'd been in.

I agreed with her, "I was very scared. It almost bit me."

"Huh? What almost bit you?"

"The big, nasty fish. It took a dislike to me, and didn't appreciate me catching it. I almost lost the tip of one of my fingers." I had INTENDED to go fishing, I did catch a couple of them in NP-boxes, and it's not as if fishermen are known for telling the truth, is it? My making it funny might help calm Mom down.

"You went fishing?" asked Dad.

"Sure. I spent all of Thursday very enjoyably floating around in a rowboat on Lake Pend Oreille. That's a lovely lake in Idaho, with good fishing. I can recommend it. I forgot to take any sunscreen, so I nearly got a bit of sunburn too, so I guess that could be considered dangerous too, couldn't it? Haha.

^-- "I was NEVER in any danger, Mom. I was having a vacation for a few days. It was quite relaxing. I didn't eat as good as home though; any chance of anything good in the fridge?"

"I'll get it!" Carol jumped off my lap to get something for me. I'd been hoping Mom would volunteer as food preparation activities relax mothers, but Carol was a good second choice for someone in need of relaxing.

"I never had any problems, Mom. I just went from place to place, did some fishing, read some books, got plenty of sleep, saw some of the country. There was a bit more driving than I'm used to," by a factor of a thousand, "but no big deal. I quite enjoyed it."

"But they could've caught you!"

"They never got close," I said, taking a guess, "and it wouldn't have been a big deal if they had. I'd much rather have spent the time fishing, but having to say, 'I'm not going to tell you' a few hundred times wouldn't have been a big deal. They just wanted to know how I did it, or to find my notes about how I did it. There weren't any notes, but they didn't know that. They had a chance to earn some serious money if they could get my cooperation in time. I didn't want to be bothered with them, so I avoided them. And I've still got a few contracts that are yet to come due - over the next few days - which I didn't want to be messed up by anything they tried to do. It was simply easier to stay out of their reach."

"But they could have tortured you! People will do anything for large amounts of money."

I laughed heartily. "Mom, you watch FAR too much TV! There was never any possibility of their torturing me. They needed my active cooperation. I've got a head full of complex mathematical formula, rules for when to use which formula, how to combine them, etc. It's all incredibly complicated. There's absolutely no way they could torture that stuff out of me. Even with my active cooperation and honest intent to explain it as well as I could, it'd still take me several hours to explain what I was doing and how. I could leave out one tiny piece and they'd never know. It's not the sort of material you're going to get out of someone if they were screaming in pain.

^-- "They know how complicated their business is, and they know they needed my active cooperation. Or, failing that, they were hoping I might have left extensive notes somewhere, but you know the way I study so you know I'm not big on taking prolific notes. More likely than not, they'd spend most of the time begging me to join their company, be their partner or whatever. They were basically just very rushed headhunters; in the business, not criminal sense.

^-- "I'm not interested in the business. I just thought it was a good way to make some money, so we could afford to buy a nice mansion, and somewhere for Donna to keep her horse."

That instantly got a very excited and happy Donna onto my side. The next little while was spent on horse-related questions: "When can I get one?", "When can I start looking for one?", "Where will we keep it?", "How many can I get?", "Should I get a boy or girl horse?", "Can't we get it earlier, and keep it here for a while?", etc. I'm sure I don't have to tell you what sort of answers Donna got.

When we managed to get back to what everyone other than Donna considered the main topic, I said, "Mom, did Prof or Vanessa ever suggest that you were in danger of being kidnapped and tortured to force me into coming back and telling them what I'd done?"

"No. They said there was no physical danger. We just had to worry about break-ins, bugs, and that sort of thing."

"That should answer your question then. They were in a hurry, and they're rich, so they threw a lot of PIs into finding me, but that was all that was happening. Some of their PIs might've been nosier than they legally should have been, but you never gave them a chance to do much, and now it's all over anyway because they only had a brief window to get ahead of their competitors. Prof and Vanessa suggest that you keep the security going overnight, but when daylight arrives everything will be back to normal. Not quite normal, because we've got more money now."

#1: <Wait for it... >

Dad asked, "How much money?"

"I haven't got the final figure yet, Dad. That'll take another week because some of the contracts haven't come due yet. I'm not sure exactly, but it'll be a few million."

Both families had talked about buying a mansion and creating two $1 million emergency funds, but judging by my parents' reaction, they hadn't really believed it.

Donna was quickest off the mark, announcing, "Oh boy! We can buy LOTS of horses!"

Mom incredulously asked, "A few MILLION?" Then a second later, "DOLLARS?"

Carol climbed back on my lap by now, smiled happily at me, and informed me my food would be heated enough soon. [She fetched it for me after the {Ding}, in a couple of minutes.]

"Haha, yes Mom, dollars. I've got no idea what you thought the alternative to dollars might've been. In a few days we should have enough of them for a nice mansion. Probably for bit of frivolity too."

#2: <If we want to keep our being rich a secret, should we have let Donna hear that?>

#3: <It'd be too cruel to exclude her from our return, but the question is whether we make a fuss about keeping it secret.>

#1: <If we don't make a fuss, she'll excitedly tell everyone that, "My brother's got millions of dollars and he's buying me at least one horse.">

"By the way, I prefer not to let anybody know that I'm rich yet. Julia wants to hold off on that until after our anniversary." I squeezed Carol's waist and NP'd her lips closed for a moment, letting her know she was included, but not to say anything. "The money will be arriving in dribs and drabs next week, and I don't know how much it'll be yet. And Julia wants things to settle down at school, so I'll be able to tell how differently people act when they know I'm rich. So please don't tell anyone about it."

#1: <I particularly like the "dribs and drabs" comment. A couple of dribs, a few drabs, and next thing you know you've got eleven million dollars.>

My request for secrecy confirmed Mom's suspicion, "You don't know that you're actually going to get this money, do you? It might all evaporate."

"I shouldn't think so. A good chunk of it is already in our bank accounts in LA. The only way it could evaporate is if someone emptied them. Only Prof and I can do that, and I trust him. The money wouldn't have gotten into that account without Prof putting it in."