Woden’S Key: A Me, the World, and a Dog Named Steve Adventure

By Wayne Cotes

In 1941, two American agents on a routine operation to collect intelligence on the defenses of the Dutch East Indies suddenly find themselves in a race to recover the three pieces of a key that protects the legacy of the Netherlands. Seventy years later, Jerod Grey uncovers some cryptic journal pages that set him, his dog Steve, and members of the Adventurers Club to following the path those agents took. From Monterey to Bali and from the Netherlands to Upstate New York, the Adventurers Club unearths the mystery of Wodens key. They arent the only ones searching for the key, though. Dr. Chandler LeBlanc has his sights set on the treasure that key protects, and hell take whatever steps he finds necessary to ensure he gets it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: AuthorHouse
• Release date: Jul 13, 2018
• ISBN: 9781546242925

Wayne Cotes

After 26 years in law enforcement, I was afforded the opportunity to take an extended period of time off prior to retirement. I chose to use that time to write my first book, Me, the World, and a Dog Named Steve: The Mini-Expeditions. Initially, it was just to cross an item off my bucket list. Ive always had a ... talent might be too strong a word ... proclivity (perhaps) for telling tales and I wanted my stories to reach a broader audience. I still serve in the US Navy reserves as a Chief Petty Officer. Im an avid hiker, kayaker, and semi-professional adventurer.

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CHAPTER ONE

Monday, July 25, 2011

T he alarm went off at 5 am. I’d like to say that it had awakened me, but the truth was that I had been lying here for the past hour with my eyes open. I wanted to sleep more, I just couldn’t. Part of it was that my body clock just liked to mess with me, the other part was excitement. Today was our first official day of work for the Adventurers’ Club (A Non-Profit Organization). That last part had to be added to avoid conflict with another group that called themselves the Adventurers Club. I thought the apostrophe following the s was enough to differentiate us from them, but according to the lawyer, it wasn’t. And here I thought grammar was important.

I woke up thinking about a quote from Helen Mirran, the British actress, who once said, You write your life story by the choices you make. Good or bad, each decision we have made along the way shapes who, and where, we are today. My life has been far from perfect and I’ve made so many bad decisions along the way that I sometimes feared that the consequences of those actions were going overwhelm me and wash me away. But, had I not made those decisions, I wouldn’t be where I was at, and I was excited about today.

I leveraged myself out of bed, making it a slow transition from being horizontal to being vertical. 27 years in law enforcement and 30 in the military, both active duty and reserves, had done a number on my back and I was learning that, especially first thing in the morning, sudden movements tended to cause my back to seize up and my mouth to let loose a string of expletives. I started most days with 800 mg of ibuprofen. It was routine. Get up, use the head, wash my hands, and pop some pain meds. At least it was just over-the-counter medication and not something containing opioids.

I stood up and grabbed a pair of shorts and a t-shirt from the top of the dresser, catching myself in the mirror as I did so. For being 53 years old, I was still in decent shape. Six feet and 200 pounds, I had a broad back and shoulders and a wide chest. My stomach was relatively flat, although I was never going to see a six pack. My hair was cut short, military style and showed little of the gray that was coming in near my temples. For all the years I had spent out in the sun, my face had few wrinkles, just creases around brown eyes when I smiled. My nose was crooked, a by-product of my days as a fighter. I had been fortunate to avoid ever getting cauliflower ear which would have been a shame. My ears were my best feature. I could have made a killing as an ear model.

Clothes on, I looked to the side of the bed where Steve, my Australian Cattle Dog and near constant companion, was sleeping on her pad. Come on girl, let’s go outside. She stood up, stretched, and sidled up next to me for a quick head pat before heading down the stairs to wait by the door until I got there. Like I said, I had a routine in the morning: use the head, wash my hands, and take my ibuprofen. The pain medication came with its own set of problems, though – nose bleeds, water retention, and ulcers, to name a few. Damned if I did, damned if I didn’t. For the time being, I wasn’t suffering from any of the side effects, so I chose the damned if I did route.

I started to head downstairs to let Steve out, but took a second to bang on the door to the spare bedroom. Rise and shine, big guy. Breakfast in 20 minutes.

The room was being used by my adopted brother and current Personnel and Support Chief for the Adventurers’ Club, Dan Thomasson. He had flown in from Colorado last Wednesday and was crashing at my place until he found an apartment of his own. I heard muffled cursing from the other side of the door, so I assumed he was now up.

I continued down the stairs and into the kitchen. Steve was waiting somewhat patiently by the back door. Before I let her out, though, I grabbed a portable radio off the kitchen counter and hit the transmit button to communicate with the two security guards who were on duty outside. It was best to let them know we were up and moving around before I opened the door for Steve.

I had to hire security when, two weeks ago, two armed men had broken into my house and tried to kill me, though I wasn’t 100% sure that killing me had been their primary goal. It was possible they assumed I wasn’t home at the time they chose to break in. I had just come back late the night before from a trip to Africa. They may have been just as surprised to find me home as I was to find someone breaking into my house. I didn’t have definitive proof, but I was confident that their primary goal had been to steal a set of notebook pages I had found hidden in the back of a Salvador Dali painting that was hanging on my wall.

The pages had notations on them but no context – a mystery in need of solving. Dan and I had stayed up late last night preparing a brief for the first official staff meeting of the Adventurers’ Club. We were hoping this would be our first mission, but it had to be put to a vote.

Security notified, I opened the back door and let Steve out, flipping on the back porch light as I did so. I left the door open so she could come back in when she was done and set about brewing a pot of coffee and fixing Steve her morning meal. Once the dog was taken care of, I started on breakfast for Dan and me. Nothing fancy, just bacon, eggs, and toast.

Dan came shuffling into the kitchen while breakfast was still in the process of getting fixed. The coffee was done, though. He poured himself a cup and took a seat at the breakfast nook. You could have let me sleep, bro, he said. His voice was naturally deep – fitting for a guy who was 6’6" and weighed in at over 300 pounds. He ran a hand through his dirty blond hair and then rubbed his bleary blue eyes.

I could have, but then I’d be up by myself. No fun in that, I replied, taking the bacon out of the frying pan and setting it on a plate to cool while I scrambled and cooked a few eggs.

We don’t start work for another two and a half hours and it’s not like we have a long commute to the office. You could literally leave the house at 7:55 am and still arrive early.

He was right. We didn’t have a long commute. In addition to formalizing the Adventurers’ Club, we had purchased and installed three modular office buildings less than a hundred yards from the house. It was one of the benefits of having five acres of land.

I lived in an unincorporated part of Marin County in the San Francisco Bay Area. The house itself was a modest two-bedroom, one bath structure with a wrap-around porch that had been built in the 1950s. It had been remodeled about two years before I moved in. I had been living here for almost four years, and in that time I had added a two-car garage big enough to house a full-size, king cab pickup, and a 15,000 square foot metal building that held all of our gear for our expeditions and had a small bunkhouse attached.

After the break-in I’d decided some additional updating was in order; I was in the process of adding near indestructible polycarbonate windows, steel core doors in steel frames, and metal shutters that could close with the push of a button and could withstand an impact of up to a 7.62 mm rifle round. I also had installed an alarm system and cameras. The last feature, and the only one that was still in progress, was a safe room. Most houses in the Bay Area didn’t have basements. Mine did. It hadn’t been much, just a 20’x20’ cinder block room down a flight of stairs off the kitchen. Now, in the event of an attack, I could lock myself in the room and nothing short of a well-placed charge of C-4 plastic explosives was going to get me out. It’s also where I’d placed the safe.

I turned off the burner on the stove and divided the eggs between two plates, and then added the bacon and a piece of toast. Butter was already on the table, along with salt and pepper, so I took the plates over to the breakfast nook and set one in front of Dan. Grabbing my cup of coffee, I sat down across from him and began to eat.

What time did we go to bed last night? Dan asked.

Late.

I know it was late, asshole, he said with a laugh. How late?

Hell, I don’t know brother. 1:00 am, maybe. Maybe 2:00.

And what time is it now?

I looked at the clock on the microwave. 5:32.

We could have slept another 2 hours, Jerod.

Hmmm. Maybe you could have but I couldn’t, and I didn’t want to eat breakfast all alone. That would just be sad. I smiled at him. He gave me the finger.

We finished eating our breakfast and I did the dishes while he went and showered. Having only the one bathroom could be a hassle sometimes. There was a shower out in the bunkroom, but I didn’t feel like gathering up all my toiletries to go use it. In another week, there would be an additional bathroom in the basement safe room. The contractor had warned me that the ventilation down there wasn’t great and that I would need to watch out for mildew if I used it regularly, but in a pinch, at least there would be a second toilet to use.

Dan took only about 20 minutes to shower and shave and then he returned to his room to finish getting ready, leaving me the shower to use. I took a quick one but let the hot water beat on my neck and back for a while longer than usual. Once showered and with teeth brushed, I also finished getting ready in my room. I got dressed in my customary uniform which consisted of hiking pants and my handcrafted leather hiking boots. Due to the special occasion of this being our first official staff meeting, instead of wearing a t-shirt, I grabbed one of the light weight khaki shirts that I had bought for my trip to Africa. It was a button down and had a collar. That was about as formal as I wanted to go.

Dressed and ready, Dan, Steve, and I met in the kitchen once again. I fixed myself another cup of coffee and then switched off the pot. We all walked the short distance to our offices.

I walked up the short flight of metal stairs that led to my office space, inserted the key and unlocked the door. The offices hadn’t yet been wired for an alarm system but that would be done before the end of the week. There would also be cameras out here, all tied back to a server in the safe room. There would be a camera monitor here in my office, one in the main office where Nadia had her desk, and one in the kitchen. I could also use the TV’s in the living room or the master bedroom as monitors.

Nadia Bello was our office manager. Her job was to keep the day-to-day show going – answering the phones when we couldn’t and making sure we all stayed on task. Today would be her first day on the job and I already imagined that she had the most difficult position in the organization.

Entering my office, the door opened into the conference room. A large oval table occupied most of the space. Nine chairs sat around it. At the close end of the table was a laptop computer hooked to a multi-media projector. There wasn’t a pull-down screen yet, but the back wall was white and would suffice. Dan had set it up yesterday, and the computer would be connected to our wi-fi network by the end of the day. In addition to the conference table, there were three book shelves, all nearly full. My reference library was growing all the time and at last count, I had about 690 books.

Steve followed me in and sniffed around the room while I went into my office. A good-sized desk sat in the middle of the room, closer to the back wall. There were two leather chairs sitting in front of it and a comfortable looking desk chair behind it. The back wall had cabinets on bottom and shelves on top. There was a decanter and four old-fashioned glasses made of crystal sitting in the center of the cabinets. I had purchased a bottle of single malt Scotch to fill the decanter. One of my favorites, it had a sweet and smoky finish. Pictures of our various adventures hung on the walls along with my degrees.

I sat down at the desk and turned on the computer. This one was a desktop that was tied in via ethernet cable to the network. When the home screen came on, I typed in my password and set about checking my email.

There were several in my inbox congratulating me on our first official day, including emails from Bob and Curtis.

Bob, also known as Robert Hansen, was our primary benefactor and my friend. We had met in San Juan Del Sur, Nicaragua when I had kept a drunk college kid from trying to punch his lights out. Bob was also a collector of ancient artifacts and was the sole reason I had gone into the artifact reclamation business. Bob didn’t have a problem purchasing antiquities on the open market, if everything was legitimate and ownership wasn’t in question. But there was a thriving black market for these items and sometimes, artifacts were stolen from their rightful owners or pilfered from archaeological sites. That’s where we came in. Our job was to recover those items and return them to where they belonged. Bob also hated being called Bob, which is exactly why I did it.

Curtis Feldman was a professor of archaeology at Harvard University who specialized in Paleo-Indian cultures and Mesoamerican civilizations. He was also who referred to us our two researchers – Adam Green and Tiffany Peterson. I had agreed to hire them both when I found out that they were recipients of a grant that assisted them with food and housing while they conducted research and worked on their master’s theses. Adam was an anthropologist whose goal was to utilize his skills to help companies better determine their target audiences. Tiffany was a dual major in paleo-botany and archaeology. Both had extensive research experience and I was eager to add them to our team. Adam had already given up his place in Boston and was staying with some friends in San Francisco. Tiffany wouldn’t be joining us for another week.

There was also an email from Rob McGregor. Rob and I had served in the Marine Corps at the same time, although he had gone Infantry and eventually Force Recon, while I had gone to the aviation side of the house. We had attended boot camp only a week apart and had been on a lot of the same bases at the same time. For all that, he and I never met during our military service in the Corps. We met when he joined the police department and I was assigned as his Field Training Officer. He had a good career, excelling in patrol and earning himself a spot on a street crimes unit. His skills from Force Recon earned him a position on the SWAT team. Rob had also ended up in a bit of hot water for his use of force – not that he had done anything wrong, but in a city as sensitive as ours, he was moved inside to a desk job. Then, during a riot when everyone had to be out on the streets, a protestor was hurt and the finger was eventually pointed at Rob. The media dug into his record, saw the use of force incidents and portrayed him as a loose cannon. The department fired him.

Rob fought it and eventually won his job back, along with a big settlement for back pay. He took the money and resigned. I can’t blame him. Who would want to go back after all that? Instead, he became a private investigator; he was currently working for me, trying to gather what information he could on the two men who had broken into my house and tried to kill me.

I opened the email. Rob, Dan, and I had just met yesterday for lunch. Rob had filled us in on what he had found out so far. The two men who had broken into my house were most likely Papahi and Kaivao Akauola. They were brothers who worked for a man named Chandler LeBlanc as his private muscle. LeBlanc was an archaeologist who in turn worked for a businessman named Charles Bellington. It wasn’t unusual for some businesses, particularly those involved in real estate development, to have an archaeologist on the payroll. Construction crews uncovered items of archaeological interest all the time. It was then the archaeologist’s job to go to the worksite and determine if the find was significant enough to halt construction, or if they could just work to hastily extract anything found so there was minimum impact on the project timetable. I had just met Bellington and LeBlanc at a fundraiser two days ago. I took an instant dislike to them both, and that was before I found out LeBlanc’s men were most likely the ones who had broken into my house. Likewise, Bob had said that Bellington’s business practices were less than scrupulous, although he hadn’t provided any specifics, and I hadn’t pressed him.

The email contained pictures of the Akauola brothers, their vehicles, and places of residence, along with a few pictures of them meeting with LeBlanc. Rob also included his notes – times, observations he had made, and so on. It was his dossier on the whole gang. In the email, he said he would continue to monitor and would be in touch in a few days. He had another job to do and would let me know when it was complete.

I sent him a reply thanking him for everything he had done so far and to be sure to send me a bill for his services when he was convinced he could dig no further. I saved the dossier to a jump drive, to the hard drive on my computer, and to a server Dan had set up.

I finished looking at all my emails and then looked at the time – 8:45 am, 15 minutes until the staff meeting. Well, girl, shall we get ready for our first official meeting? Steve, who was lying in the dog bed I had placed in my office, looked up from the chew toy she was happily engaged with and thumped her tail. She was ready.

Pushing my chair back from my desk, I went into the conference room and hit the power button on the laptop computer sitting on the conference table. Once the computer was running, I logged in and then pulled up the brief Dan and I had spent the evening putting together. In the future, it would be the Operations Chief who would be responsible for creating the brief from the information provided by our researchers, our logistics specialist, and the intelligence provided by any outside resources.

I had done the brief in PowerPoint. The first slide was just our organization’s name: The Adventurers’ Club – A Non-profit Organization. It looked so generic. We needed a logo. That was something I would assign to our Public Information Officer, Joanna Walton.

Joanna was in her early 40’s with hair that had already gone from black to salt and pepper, with more silver than black in it now. She had worked in the media and as a spokesperson for several tech companies in the Silicon Valley. She excelled at marketing on social media platforms and as much as it rankled me to admit that social media was the new venue of choice for a large percentage of people worldwide, it was now our reality. Joanna was trying to settle down with her new bride; they were talking about starting a family, and the work hours and pace of the Silicon Valley world wasn’t conducive to such a venture. We were happy to have her on our team and I was hoping to draw on her experience to get word about the Club out to the public.

I sat down in the chair at the end of the table closest to my office. The first person through the door was Nadia Bello, the office manager. She took the chair to my left. Nadia was from the Sudan and was a gnostic Christian whose family had fled persecution from the Muslim majority of that country. She had been in the United States since she was a young child and while her family had fled their country of origin, they had not shed all of their traditions. Nadia was in an arranged marriage with a man who still lived in the Sudan. She was happy with the arrangement – being married to a man who wasn’t here gave her a certain level of freedom. She had a son, Ibrahim, who was two. We said our good mornings and then she broke out a notepad and pen. She’d take the minutes for the staff meeting.

Dan and Joanna entered next. Joanna was sporting a large cup of coffee and was wearing a black business suit with a yellow button-down shirt. Dan was wearing light tan cotton pants, a blue short-sleeve collared shirt, and a wide-brimmed straw hat that reminded me of something a tobacco farmer in Cuba might wear. He took the hat off when he walked in to the office and set it down on the conference table.

Rosalia Gutierrez and Zuleyka Perez walked in next. Rosa and I went back 20 years; we had first met on a deployment to Africa. She had been a Personnel Specialist in the Navy. She had picked up Chief Petty Officer while we were on deployment, a year ahead of me, and eventually retired as a Master Chief, one rank above mine. She had no problems reminding me of it, too. I was more than happy that she had signed on to be our Human Resources Director. In the past few weeks she had helped me hire everyone who would be at the staff meeting, except for Zuleyka. Z, as I liked to call her, had been a gift from Bob. She was the first full-time employee of the Adventurers’ Club and she did the paperwork that the government and donors liked to see. I hated paperwork so between her, Rosa, and Dan, I was seriously hoping all I had to do was sign things.

Last to enter were our Logistics Specialist, Isiah Hernandez, and one of our researchers, Adam Green. Isiah was short and stocky with black hair and deep brown eyes, and at maybe 5’5 and 180 pounds, he was mostly muscle. A veteran of the Army, he had learned to manage an armory and a supply depot which were part of the skills he would need for his role in the Club. Adam was a typical college student, though a little more serious now that he was pursuing a graduate degree. He was maybe 5’8 and had a medium build with dark brown hair and brown eyes. Other than me, he was the only other one who was dressed somewhat casually. Guess people didn’t get the memo regarding our dress code.

Once everyone was seated, I looked around the room. Good morning, everyone.

Good morning was the unanimous response, although I heard a few bosses and sirs thrown in.

"It has been the tradition of the Adventurers’ Club to start each new mission with a quote and a toast. Today, however, we are starting something new and different. We are no longer a loose group of friends and acquaintances joining together to accomplish a single operation. We are now a formal organization. I can’t thank each of you enough for the hard work you have done to get us here.

"Jawaharlal Nehru, the former Prime Minister of India, once said, ‘We live in a wonderful world that is full of beauty, charm and adventure. There is no end to the adventures we can have if only we seek them with our eyes open.’ I gave them a moment to think on that quote. That is a significant change in the philosophy of the Adventurers’ Club. We are no longer waiting on the adventures to find us; we will be actively seeking them. But, we must do so with our eyes open.

We don’t have a drink to toast with, but, in the spirit of our tradition, I do hereby call the first official staff meeting of the Adventurers’ Club to order. There were some smiles, some raised coffee cups, and a small scattering of applause. For 9 am on a Monday morning, I couldn’t have asked for more.

We started with the financial report from Z. She read our total expenses since we started the process of formalizing the Adventurers’ Club several weeks ago, provided a proposed budget for us to review and revise, laid out some ongoing expenses and any big ticket items we would need to consider in the next week. We had decided to run our budget cycle from July 1st to June 30th of each year. Unfortunately, we were already near the end of July, so I gave everyone a week to analyze their portions of the budget and get any recommendations back to Z, so she could have a final proposal for us to vote on in two weeks.

Rosa went over our benefits package and when the medical, dental, and life insurance would kick in. As we were just starting the benefits, they wouldn’t be effective until next Monday, but anyone hired after that would be automatically enrolled as soon as the paperwork was entered. She also gave us a progress report for our part-time employees – those whose specialized skills we would call upon as needed, depending on the nature of any given expedition. She had sent out about 30 packets to people we considered part-time employees – mostly friends and associates I had worked with in the past –that So far she had received back only about ten of the packets. I told her to give them another week. These were people with lives outside of the Club, so we had to give them more time. If she didn’t have the packets back by then, she could start calling individual members.

Rosa also went over a new proposed pay scale based on skills, and that instead of having members sign a contract for a single mission, they would sign one for the year. I took a vote of the executive members of the meeting which included Dan and me, Rosa, and Z. We all agreed. We really needed to hire an Operations Chief, if for nothing more than to break a tie if we had one. Rosa went over our recruiting efforts in that area and said that we had an interview with a gentleman on Wednesday who had applied for the position and seemed to have all the requisite skills. That was good news.

Dan gave us a status update on the computer and wi-fi networks. He said that we should be fully up and running by the end of the day, or tomorrow at the latest. After that project was complete, he’d start working on the communications center. He requested the services of James Nickle. James had a been a communications specialist in the Army who spent some time working the comms of a Joint Special Operations Command. He was familiar with the equipment we used and had helped set it up when we set up a Tactical Operations Command center in Colorado Springs during a mission back in April. We all agreed that James would be beneficial. Rosa would have to finalize his contract, so the sooner we could reach out to him, the better.

Joanna laid out what projects she had before her, including designing our website and setting up our social media accounts. I also asked her to develop a logo. She made a quick note and then said she would try to have something to present to the group by next week. She was also hoping to start working on a fundraising event to be held in the next six months, providing our non-profit status went through. We all gave approval to start researching venues and determining what type of event we would want to host.

Adam had not yet been given any assignments to research. That was going to change after my brief but for now, we moved on to Isiah. He would have a full inventory of equipment and supplies on hand completed within the next few days. He would also schedule a few days to go to Colorado and inventory the warehouse there. He should have a full report to present no later than mid-August. He was also in the process of setting up a preventative maintenance schedule for the equipment we had on hand, such as motorcycles, ATVs, and generators, that would benefit from routine maintenance. Most of the maintenance he could perform himself but would need tools to do so. I directed him to draw up a proposal for what tools he would need and a budget for them and we could proceed from there.

I asked Nadia if she had anything to add, and other than requesting she be copied on any documents that we would need to archive for future reference, like the budget proposal for tools, or completed packets for personnel files, she had nothing.

I woke up the laptop computer in front of me and brought up the generic title page with just our name on it. Ladies and gentlemen, a few weeks ago my house was broken into by two armed men. With the help of a private investigator, we believe we have tentative ID on the two men as Papahi Akauola, and his brother Kaivao. I flashed pictures of them up on the blank back wall of the conference room. They act as muscle for these two men, Dr. Chandler LeBlanc and Mr. Charles Bellington. Their pictures followed.

Prior to meeting all four at a fundraising gala for the Museum Grant Fund on Saturday night, I didn’t know them, nor did I have any idea why they broke into my house. When they broke in, the only pattern they established was that they unceremoniously tore each painting I have off the wall, and ripped off the back, if the painting had one. All the paintings – except one. I hit the space bar on the computer and a picture of the Salvador Dali painting appeared on the wall. It had been sheer luck that the Dali painting hadn’t been ripped up, too. It was hanging in such a place that the brothers weren’t able to get to it without exposing themselves to my gunfire.

Secreted in the back of the Dali painting I found these notebook pages. I hit the space bar and slowly went through each of the pages so that people had time to read them. "I believe these pages are what the Akauola brothers were after.

The painting had been purchased by a girlfriend of mine, Katy Merritt, from a gentleman in Pacific Grove named Harold Touscher. According to Katy, Mr. Touscher had been left the painting as a part of his mother’s estate when she passed away and before that his mother had received the painting from her mother. The dates would roughly correspond to Touscher’s grandmother being in her early 20’s when Salvador Dali was in the Monterey area. Based on what Katy had learned, the painting was a gift from Dali himself. He had apparently taken a liking to Touscher’s grandmother.

The next slide was on the execution of the mission. Until we have more intelligence, I haven’t yet determined a course of action to take. I’ll allow the PI to continue to research and gather information on LeBlanc, the Akauola brothers, and Mr. Bellington. Tentatively, I would like to go to the Monterey/Pacific Grove area, as this is where this all starts – possibly tomorrow or Thursday.

I clicked the space bar and moved on to the section of my brief on administration and logistics. If this is approved for our first official mission, Adam, I would need you to research and find everything you can on Mr. Touscher and his family, particularly his grandmother. I’ll take care of an initial budget for the operation based on my expectations of where it might lead and what has been spent so far for the services of the PI.

I finished off with a slide on command and communication. As we didn’t yet have an Operations Chief, I would oversee the mission. Communications would be standard cell phones, at least until our communications system was set up. I also laid out some protocols for anyone working in the field to follow, including regular check-in times and procedures if a check was missed.

This had been a very rough draft of how I wanted the briefs to be presented. I hadn’t tried to do anything formal in a long while. When the Adventurers’ Club first started, it had just been Anna and me. Anna Smith was my best friend. An ecologist and zoologist, she was currently in the Serengeti studying the dung beetle. My first mission came when I was on a vacation in the Outer Banks of North Carolina with Anna, her boyfriend at the time, her brother and her dad. Bob had called me and asked if I could shoot down to Florida where an importer in street level pharmaceuticals had come to be in possession of an Aztec sunstone. The sunstone had been a gift to the drug dealer from an underling. The artifact was from a private collection that was being donated to the University of Miami by a wealthy alumnus; the truck transporting part of the collection had been hijacked. Everyone apparently knew who had done the crime, but the local law enforcement officers didn’t have the probable cause to get a warrant to search either the drug dealer’s home or the home of his subordinate.

Originally, I had gone down by myself. I tried the direct method first. I contacted the dealer and offered to buy the sunstone and other artifacts back from him. The direct method hadn’t worked so well and three days later, I was still recovering in a hotel room with multiple lacerations and contusions to the head, face, and body. Anna had called to see how things were going and when she finally pulled the truth from me, had been on the next plane to Miami.

The day after she arrived, we put together a better plan than my failed direct approach. We called a mutual acquaintance of ours, Keelan Burns. Keelan and his brother, Christian, would have been master burglars had they not turned their skills to good instead. Anna and I had met Keelan when we were all serving with the United States Navy. When Keelan left the military, he and his brother started a security consulting company. Their area of expertise was evaluating security plans and systems as a sort of opposition force. He was hired by security and alarm companies to test their systems – by breaking into the locations those systems were meant to protect. He and his brother turned out to be very good at it and his endorsement of a security system or company carried some weight in the industry.

Keelan also owed me a favor. We met at an all-night diner and over cups of coffee, scratched out a plan on a few napkins. Now I was trying to make plans using multi-media projectors and PowerPoint presentations like I had back in my days in law enforcement and the military. I almost preferred the napkins. I looked around the conference table. Any questions? I asked.

Dan kicked back in his chair and brought his hand up to his face in a gesture of thoughtfulness. What is it we hope to find, or learn, when we reach the end of this?

I don’t know. That’s part of the fun of a mystery. Keep in mind, though, that Dr. LeBlanc was willing to have his thugs break into my house to steal these pages. There has to be a reason.

Presumably, Dan responded back.

Isiah raised his hand and when I looked in his direction, he spoke. The notebook pages were torn out of something? I nodded, and he continued, Maybe it was like a diary of sorts and if we could find the book, maybe the pages will make sense.

That was my thought, too, Rosa piped in. The painting was a part of the grandmother’s estate passed down to her daughter and then to her grandson, Harold. Maybe the notebook those pages belong to was also a part of that estate.

Again, I nodded in agreement. This is why I think a good place to start would be in Monterey. Other than the two cousins and maybe the aunt, we don’t know who Harold Touscher’s next of kin is, or even if he has any. We’d have to find out who is in control of the estate now. The two cousins can’t inherit. They were responsible for Harold Touscher’s murder and, based on what I was told, the aunt fell in with the wrong crowd and disappeared years ago, though, her sons may know how to contact her.

You’d be surprised who pops up out of the woodwork when the possibility of money is involved, Dan quipped.

True, I said. So, according to the by-laws of the organization, taking on a mission is done by a majority vote of the full-time staff. All in favor? There was a chorus of yeses and ayes. No one voted against taking it on.

Good. Our first official mission then. I smiled.

I went around the room and asked if there was anything else before I adjourned the meeting. I had Adam stay behind. First day on the job and I already have work for you to do.

Whatever you need. That’s why I’m here, sir.

No sirs, you can call me Jerod. I waited until he acknowledged. I’ll need you to run down whatever information you can on the notebook pages and Harold Touscher’s family. I’d like to know what the grandmother’s name is, at least. If you need access to databases, get cost estimates to Z and we’ll authorize it. We’re starting from scratch, so you get the chance to build what resources you’d like to have.

Adam nodded. If you can email me copies of the notebook pages, I’ll get started.

We didn’t have email addresses set up for the organization, so I had him write down his personal email address and then, when he left the conference room, I returned to my desk and emailed him what I had. It was almost 11:00. I only planned on having one staff meeting a week, but I wanted to cut that down from two hours to no more than an hour. I hated meetings and didn’t want to torture my people by making them sit through any more meetings then they absolutely had to.

I took Steve out for a walk around the property and spent some time throwing her ball for her before grabbing a bite to eat. Dan joined me, and we made ourselves sandwiches from fixings we had in the fridge.

After lunch, I returned to my office and spent the afternoon working on the operations portion of the budget. Fortunately, Julie, Bob’s executive assistant, was a tremendous help in this regard. She kept records of each of the jobs I had done for Bob, including a detailed accounting of costs. The most expensive mission to date had been tracking down a Sumerian tome that a kid had smuggled out of Iraq. The transportation and lodging expenses alone had cost close to $60,000, and that didn’t include salaries for five people during the time we were hunting the kid and the tome. On average, though, our missions were running around $30,000. I over budgeted and planned for four big missions a year at $45,000 per, plus a discretionary expense fund of the same amount.

I also had to factor in the cost of supply replenishment, salaries, benefits, maintenance on the vehicles,