Chapter 57

Mitch went from a nervous smile to a big grin when I opened the door. Beside him stood a slender Japanese girl who matched him height-wise and haircut wise.

"You made it!" I grinned back, come on in!" I moved aside, revealing the entry and Kelli standing by the entry closet door. The couple moved in past me and I closed the door behind them. "Mitch, this is my ahh – friend Kelli Montoya. Kelli, this is Mitch Price."

"Nice to meet you Kelli, ahh, this is my umm friend Megumi Okada."

"Nice to meet both of you," Kelli said with a grin of her own. "Can I take your coats?"

Both were wearing very nice leather jackets. They weren't matching – Meg's was a deep. Reddish brown and went to the hipsand Mitch's was black and only went to the waist. Mitch was wearing black slacks and a blue shirt. Meg had a purplish colored blouse and a black skirt that fell to the knee. They both looked very nice.

"Don't you both look nice," Kelli said as she took their jackets, Mitch schlepping a laptop bag between hands as he got the jacket off without setting the bag down.

"Nice to meet you Megumi," I said to the girl as Mitch was helping her out of her jacket.

"Meg please, Mr. James," she laughed pleasantly. "Only my grandmother calls me Megumi."

"And I'm Cooper. Nobody in town calls me Coop yet, but it'll start eventually, it always does. Until then, please call me Cooper."

"Of course," she laughed again.

"And I'm Kelli. Nobody calls me anything but Kelli, except for my grandmother Isabel. Sometimes she calls me bellota."

"Acorn?" I laughed. "Your grandmother calls you acorn?"

"When I've pleased her. When I've messed up she calls me arbusto," She waited for me to translate, and when I didn't, provided us with 'shrub.'

"How come you know bellota but not arbusto?" she asked.

I recited.

"An acorn swung
On an oak-tree bough;
So long it had hung,
It would fain fall now
To the kindly earth,
That its germ within
Might burst into birth,
And its life begin."

"'The Acorn' by Francis William Bourdillon," I explained. "I had to translate that in Spanish class in high school. Back then I could recite the entire poem, but these days that first verse is all I remember. Can't say my Spanish is all that good anymore either, but I do remember bellota, my little bellota ... um "mi pequeña bellota?"

"Hah! Not bad for a kid from Jersey," she leaned in and kissed my cheek.

"Dinner's in the oven and we have..." I glanced at my watch. "forty minutes until the timer goes off. About five minutes before that happens I need to start getting the rice ready, so we've got a while before we eat. Would you guys like something to drink? We've got bottled iced tea or key lime nojitos."

Oooh, Nojitos!" Meg overacted. "Keep the alcohol away from the teenagers," her lighthearted laughter after the overly dramatic statement had us laughing along with her. "Those go with the dinner?"

"Yeah, Carne Asada casserole and Spanish rice."

"Better save the good stuff for dinner then," she said. "I'll have an iced tea for now." Mitch nodded his agreement at her decision.

Drink choices decided, we moved towards the kitchen where Kelli retrieved our iced teas and I fetched two more from the fridge for Mitch and Meg. I double checked the oven and timer to make sure everything looked good.

"Lets go sit in the living room," I suggested. "I'll turn the music down a bit." everyone followed me there and I grabbed the remote and turned the volume down a little, though it wasn't that loud to begin with. When I turned back to everyone I saw that Kelli had sat down on the love seat and Mitch and Meg had taken the couch. Kelli smiled and patted the seat next to her, so I slid in beside her, letting my arm slide around her back.

"You have a very lovely home," Meg commented, looking around.

"Thank. I'm still getting used to it. When I showed Kelli around earlier it was only the second time I'd been in some of the rooms."

"He showed me where he's going to have a pool put in out back," Kelli said.

"I think I"m going to have trees planted along the drive too – its just too bare for my tastes."

"That'll help make things a little less visible from the road too," Mitch suggested. "Not that you're all that visible with the house back against the hill like this."

"No, the setback from the highway is nice, even if it is just an old two-lane blacktop," I agreed. "I just think it will look nicer driving up to the house through the trees. It seems so barren the way it is now."

While we'd been talking, Mitch had opened up his laptop bag and pulled out a laptop. "I'm no expert, obviously, but that doesn't appear to be the same laptop you had at the mall the other day."

"Its not. That's my 'innocent, just hanging out, don't care if it gets confiscated' laptop. This is my 'Can't you see I'm working?' laptop. Very different set of programs on this one. Some that might confuse local law enforcement."

"And it would confuse them because?" I asked.

"Because some of the same tools you might use to find and fix network and computer problems that can impact an efficient network can also be used to harm them."

"Are you going to need them tonight?"

"I don't know. We'll go look at where your internet connection comes in to the house and where your wireless is set up, and that will tell me a lot."

"Why don't the two of you get started on that while Meg and I go set the table?" Kelli suggested.

"Sounds good," I said, standing. "C'mon Mitch, let me show you to the dungeon."

"Lead on."

I took him down stairs to the basement and showed him the utility room. He looked over the incoming cabling, Bobby Chalmers network box and the cable company's and the wireless router. He tugged a little on the cables and smiled.

"Your cable guy does really good work, and this is all good equipment. At least as good as what I would've recommended. You've got an internal copper network of some kind too, did you know that?"

"Sort of," I shrugged. "Bobby, the guy who did the install says it was better to make an internal network and then hook wireless routers in where we need them. We hooked one up on the ground floor and another on the second."

"How's the coverage been? Any dead spots?"

"Not that I've noticed, but the only places I've used the laptop have been the living room, kitchen and my bedroom."

"Well, I don't think I have to worry about your network from what I can see here. You want me to recommend some computers, so lets go back upstairs."

"Works for me," I agreed.

"That is one seriously kick-ass home gym you've got, by the way," he said as we were walking up the stairs.

"Brand new too," I laughed. "My parent's didn't need this sort of stuff, but I'm still too used to having to keep myself in shape, so I bought the whole kit."

"Yeah, you sure did," he added his laugh to mine and shook his head. I showed him where the wireless access point was at the top of the stairs. We went upstairs and I showed him the wireless access point up there.

"Did your cable guy say where the tie in would be for your external wireless when you decided to put it in?"

I didn't remember Bobby saying anything specifically about the outside wireless connection and suggested we look on the balcony, as it had a good view of the back of the property. We didn't see anything obvious on the balcony, but Mitch''s eagle eyes spotted a small block that looked slightly out of place under the eaves at the back of the garage. I agreed that it was worth investigating, or better yet, emailing Bobby about.