CHAPTER TWENTY NINE
I was awakened by the sound of John descending the stairs. He was dressed for work but had not yet put on the suit coat. “Good morning you two.” Cassie was starting to stir. John peaked into the TV room and noticed Marlene was putting on a house coat.
“How did you sleep, Marlene?”
“Fairly well, you were right, the chairs are quite comfortable. But as a rule I don’t sleep very well. I normally am up and down at least twice during the night. Do you have a coffee pot down here?”
“I do. Regular or Decaf?”
“As high an octane as you can make it. I like it strong and black.”
“Ok, give me a minute and I’ll make you a pot, but I want to open the wall here.”
Marlene hurried to watch John press his hand on the wall. “Is that all you have to do to make the wall move, John, it seems so simple and easy?”
“No, I have to unlock it first, which I do electronically. The wall won’t move unless the lock is disengaged.”
“How do you do that?”
John laughed and said, “I’ll leave the door open as long as you are here, so you don’t have to worry about losing access to the room. Let me get the coffee started and then I have to let these two out for a little while. They run in the mornings. Sylvester will let them back in since I will be gone. And there’s coffee cake in the kitchen. Just ask Mozetta for whatever you want, she’s already busy in the kitchen. I will be at the plant until about six, and you have my cell if you need me. One more thing, would you like me to move your car since you’re not dressed? It’s in the way of the Land Rover.”
“I’ll do it. Let me get my flip flops and keys.”
The four of us left the house. John opened the car door for her and noticed the house coat was all Marlene had on. It had been a long time since he had seen that much skin. After she moved the car he boarded the Rover and rolled down the window. “Call me if you need me.”
“John, wait, are you ok with Guido being here? I could have him here by late tonight.”
“Go ahead, Marlene, go for it.”
Before Marlene dressed she made a straight line toward the secret room. She could open only two of the cabinet doors which were useless to her since they only contained television monitors and disc players. The rest of the doors were locked, though she saw no place for a key. “Electronically,” she thought. “It’s got to be in his pocket,” she mumbled to herself. She had heard a soft click when John pressed his left hand on the wall, so his right hand must have been in his pocket.
John stopped the Rover before leaving his drive at the intersection of Highway Nine. He pulled the secure cell phone from his breast pocket and placed a call by using a speed dial.
“Hello John, what have you got?”
“She’s searching high and low for it, Chip. Even if she gains access to it, she won’t know the codes to get in, but I don’t think she’ll get the door open anyway. And she’s packing heat. Anything new on your end?”
“No money has been moved. It’s still in the Caymans under the depositor’s name of Ophala LLC. The bank there in Georgetown will notify me the moment there is an effort to move any part of it. And we still can’t find a single person in the world named Robert Ophala, the director of the LLC.
I’ve got a trail working as we speak. I hope to talk with a man in Iowa this morning who may confirm what I’m piecing together. I can tell you that Marlene Johnson is her real name and that she has a son named Charles, K-9 Special Ops, now serving abroad. There’s a lot more I’m going to hold close to the vest until I talk with Iowa but it might lead to the break we’ve been searching for. John, she lives alone and has virtually no money in her checking and a meager amount of savings. I think you should consider that she is being used as a pawn and may be desperate for money. I’ll let you know when I get more information which could come today. How has she behaved in your presence?”
“Hmmm. She is playing the sex card to get to me but is saying virtually nothing other than her work with the dogs, so I don’t know yet if what you are thinking could be the case but I’ve entertained the same thought. She should have received a fairly nice chunk of change when her husband died in combat, but then again, that was many years ago. I’ll make some probes into that tonight.”
“The sex card, eh. You interested? And what does the word probes mean?” Chip said laughing.
John laughed and replied, “I could tease her if I thought it would turn her around, but no, I’m not going to let her get the best of me. I wonder why she’s carrying a gun if she’s just a pawn, but on the other hand, it could be that she has to look over her shoulder and if she doesn’t perform she would be expendable. So the gun, who knows, self-defense maybe?” Ok, Sylvester will check up on what she’s doing today from time to time. I don’t anticipate much of anything happening today, though she is bringing in one of her dogs late tonight. I will let you know if something happens that you need to know, and you do the same when you have what you need, ok?”
“You got it.”
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Cassie and I finished our morning run and sat on the porch before she would enter the house through her cat door. “I think I’ll be by myself with her, but I hope she lets you observe.”
“Yeah, me too, Buck, I am interested in learning the letters. Let’s hope so.”
Cassie entered the house and in a few seconds Sylvester opened the front door for me. Sylvester then yelled into the basement, “He’s here, Miss Marlene.”
Marlene appeared at the bottom of the stairs and said, “Come on down Buck, and it is ok if Cassie comes.”
She was wearing shorts and a tee shirt with her hair pulled back into a pony tail. We followed her into the secret room and noticed that the table and chairs had been pushed back against a wall. There was a suitcase laying on top of the table. She instructed us to sit next to the wall and she sat cross-legged in front of us some three feet away.
“First, I want to see if you understand “Yes”, and “No”. Buck, let me hear you bark once if you want to say yes.” I barked once. “Now bark twice if you want to say no.” Which I did.
“Good, that is a great first step.” She then unfolded a cardboard which she laid on the floor between us. It resembled the sunscreen that John unfolded to put on the dash of his car. Only the thing she unfolded, which was about three feet long when fully extended, had letters in all capitals on it. The letters were arranged as:
THE QUICK BROWN FOX JUMPS OVER THE LAZY DOG
“This is called a pangram. It uses every letter in the English language alphabet. The sentence says the quick brown fox jumps over the lazy dog. Can you point to the shape of a letter than is used more than once?”
I studied the sentence and noticed a shape that was used more than once. I pointed to the O in BROWN, then the O in FOX, then OVER, then DOG. Then I noticed the T shape and pointed at it, and then the E, then the U shape. She said there were two more letters used more than once. I looked and looked but couldn’t find them. Cassie got to her feet and reached to the H shape, then the R.
“Excellent. You both are amazing. Do you know the sound of the letter that is used four times?”
I barked twice.
“Ok, we will come back to that later.” She reached behind her and grabbed a plastic box. Out of the box she withdrew one of many cards. It had a large letter A on it. “Look at this letter, and then see if you can find the same letter in the sentence?”
I studied again and saw the shape of the letter in the word LAZY. I pointed to it.
“Good.” She then pronounced the letter A. “Ok, when I speak the letter A, point to the letter in the sentence.” She said A and I pointed to it.
“Amazing.” She then turned the A card over and it had a picture of an apple on it, only she was holding her hand over the bottom of the picture. “Do you know what this is?”
I barked once.
&nb
sp; “It is an apple.” She removed her hand and I saw shapes that were spaced out evenly; A P P L E. “Take your time, Buck, see if you can find each of these letters in the sentence. Do you understand what I’m asking?”
I barked once. I pointed to the A in LAZY, the P in JUMPS, the L in LAZY, and the E in THE.
Marlene folded up the sentence, rose to her feet and reached into the suitcase. “Ok, this will be the last thing we do before we go stretch our legs, and it’s going to be hard, so if you don’t understand don’t worry.” She unfolded another cardboard which revealed a diagram of a large computer keyboard, about four times the size of an actual keyboard. “Study this. It’s arranged for ease of use for typists but it takes a good while to learn it. See if you can point to the letters that you just saw in the word apple.” She still held the small card with the apple picture in her hand.
It did take a while but I found the shapes. She hid the card in her hand behind her back and asked for me to do it again. From memory I did it, but really I still didn’t know letters, only shapes of letters. She rose to her feet and said, “Let’s go outside. We have to go slow or it will be too much.”
Once outside, she dialed her cell phone. “John, this is Marlene, you are going to be so surprised when you get home, and proud. He’s already accomplished in one hour what I thought would take all day or maybe he would never understand. He is truly brilliant, John. He can spell apple John, isn’t that fantastic?” Uh, not really, I thought. It wasn’t spelling just yet and maybe never would be.
John was somewhat surprised that Marlene sounded so cheerful. He opened a desk drawer and then laid out four business cards. He didn’t have duplicate letters so there was only one P. “What does this mean, Marlene, how do you envision Buck being used even if he can spell every word there is? And yes, it is fantastic.”
“I can think of a million ways, John. I will explain some situations tonight. I am so excited!”