The joke thing was Gwen’s idea, not Paul’s. She knew Scotilly and Jools would be in the theater opening night, and they would be in disguise. She needed a way to flush them out, and from all the phone conversations she’d had with Jools over the last eight weeks, she knew he’d be sensitive to any affront to his, and his father’s, profession. The idea of using a derogatory joke was her idea, but she had asked Paul if he knew any butler jokes, and he did. Gwen had instructed her team to watch the front rows during Alicia recitation of the jokes. She also had decided to tell a neutral butler joke first, to fully capture Jools attention, and then follow it up with a derogatory joke.
Alicia now said, “Here’s another one.”
‘A wealthy couple had plans to go to a show, so they advised their butler they were giving him the evening off, and they would be out quite late. After an hour and a half at the show the wife told her husband she was bored and wanted to go home. The husband said he had to stay until the end to meet some important people. So the wife went home alone and found the butler laying on the couch watching TV. Standing in front of him she said, "Take off my dress. Now my bra. Now my shoes and stockings, and garter belt and panties." When he had done as she asked, she said, "The next time I catch you wearing my clothes, you're fired.”
Gwen had pegged Jools after the first joke, when he nodded his head in appreciation, and whispered something to the strangely dressed woman next to him. He confirmed his identity after the second joke when he stood, gesticulated at the stage, and said, “I protest. What rubbish. Utter and blasphemous nonsense. Tripe.”Scotilly stopped the diatribe by pulling him down in his seat, but Gwen knew he was her man.
The second half of the performance went better than the first. The harmonies between Paul and Renee were stunning, David’s Pink Floyd style guitar added lyrical beauty to the songs, Ringo happily pounded away up on his riser, smiling non-stop, Christine played some of the finest piano Paul had heard in many years, and Alicia sang a soulful backup that made him smile and nod at her again and again. When the curtain came down, the band stayed on the stage, amazed by what they heard out in the theater. Half the crowd was singing Hey Jude while the other half sang Hey Renn. They’d heard the song once, and already it was burned into their collective musical memory. Paul brought all the Junies out on stage, had the curtain raised, offered a simple thank you to them, all the while listening to the crowd sing and clap. Little Jinny and Nev took a quick bow, and then slipped off stage. They still had a job to do.
Chapter 82 – The Fifth Kidnapping
The job they had to do, the job they did, was to commit the fifth kidnapping since this whole thing started back on King Street when Paul, Stella, and Anna went out for an after dinner stroll. It didn’t take them long. They spotted Scotilly and Jools heading for an exit, got behind them, waited for the crowd to thin a bit, grabbed them in vice-like grips, and herded them backstage to the office. Jinny found Gwen and told her where they were. She said, “Bring Anna there, then you and Nev join the party. This won’t take long.”
It didn’t. She and Anna put the screws to Jools in a very efficient and effective manner. He went into the office a staid, dignified Englishman, proud of his heritage, accomplishments, and culture, and came out shaking like a bowl full of warm shrimp and grits being passed around the table at a family gathering. First Gwen went at him, then Anna. Then Gwen, then Anna. “Remember what you said to me on the phone that time?” asked Gwen. “Remember when you did that in the bunker?” asked Anna. They batted him back and forth like a shuttlecock in a badminton game. Even Scotilly felt sorry for him.
Not wanting to miss the party, they let them go after fifteen minutes of torture. Jinny led them outside to a taxi (not The Green Taxi Company), where he said, “So what are you going to do with the eight mill?”
Jools said, “Get therapy.”
Scotilly said, “Hire a new butler.”
Chapter 83 – St. Barths, Finally
Once again the bow of the sixty foot sailboat cut through the warm waters of the Atlantic, and once more Little Jinny puked over the side, exiled forward to the bow and away from everyone else. Guignard had suggested he just fly over to St. Barths and meet the group there, but he’d insisted he wouldn’t get sick again. Gale was making him pay, telling him Guignard was never going to kiss him again, no matter how many times he brushed his teeth.
During the cast party after the sixth and final performance, Roger asked Paul what he was going to do now. He said, “Fly to London. Take care of business that has piled up over the last eight weeks. Check my mail.”
“Then what?”
“Then I’ll see where Renee and I are.”
Later in the evening Roger asked her the same question, and she said, “I’ve performed all over the world for twenty years, with some of the greatest musicians, in some of the greatest performance halls, in the great cities of the world, and I’ve never had as much fun as this gig in Charleston. I’m going to re-evaluate my career. See what I want to do and where I want to go, and with whom I want to play. I think I want to set some new goals, and it will take a little while to figure them out.” Roger nodded and smiled. “Gwen invited me to come with y’all to St. Barths, and I said, yes. That’s all I know about what I’m going to do next.”
And there she was, sitting in the cockpit with the others, one arm around Gale’s shoulder, the other arm around Slev’s shoulder, laughing at all the jokes mounting up around and about Jinny and his puking. She was getting into the spirit of things, telling Jinny his face looked like a prune, when a loud bell sounded from the cabin down the stairs. This was the same bell that had sounded the previous time the boat was headed to the French island, the bell from the satellite phone, the call from Richard saying that Paul McCartney had been kidnapped. Everyone looked at Gwen. There was not a second's hesitation on her part. She headed down the stairs, and ten seconds later the bell stopped ringing. Ten seconds after that, she climbed back into the cockpit, with the phone handset in one hand, a foot of curlicue cord attached, and a large pair of kitchen shears in the other. She flipped the phone overboard, set the shears on the cockpit table, picked up her glass of white burgundy, and said, “St. Barths, finally.”
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Richard Dorrance lives in America's most beautiful town,
Charleston, South Carolina. You can look at other books at his website: richarddorrance.com
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