The Curious Waitress: An Eyebrow Rises

By Janet Marloe

My name is Leslie Ann Brennemann and I learned that you have to fight to be free from your demons, but not everyone wins that war. Sometimes the victories you win on the battlefield do not lead to success in the end. I have seen my fill of loved ones who succumb to their torments, often by circumstances beyond their control. I can see what previously remained hidden in the toast, the tree, and the crack baby. Loss will help you recognize what everyone has been trying to tell you, but the cost includes part of your soul. My mother Dory tried to teach me, but she didn't know the words. Maybe, in the end, that was the point.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Janet Marloe
• Release date: May 20, 2022
• ISBN: 9798799418021

Janet Marloe

The Curious Waitress series comes from works by author Janet Marloe. She has been writing since 1987 and has previous works not published here.

Book preview

Prologue

My name is Leslie Anne Brennemann. My journey to become a curious waitress takes another turn, this time into the surreal. Years ago, I lost my mom and I was devastated, but it taught me how to grieve. I didn't know how to live without someone, and a good portion of me died with her. This year I lost a close friend. She showed me how to live, not just live but to be alive, and that didn’t last either. I learned what life could be like if I had everything I ever dreamed of, and I learned a lot from her, but our friendship was never meant to last. I was there when all her dreams caught up with her.

I so wanted to be like her, but it was a bitter reveal for me when I discovered all her friends influence and fortune, were make believe. As it turned out, just like my first three event triggers, everything remained connected by a thread. The thread of irony. From the simple actions my mother took to save people she never knew, to the actions my other mother took to run away and be different from her mother. It all came full circle in the end. Whether we want to acknowledge it or not, we all remain entangled forever.

Summer started with a hot wind, it crossed the United States and took with it most of Middle America. We call them Heartland Haboobs now, something we didn't know we needed to do, name the dust storms. I have become a full-time waitress, and it seems silly, but my goal is to move into my own place with Kyle after we are married. I want our own private mobile home on my own patch of property where I don't have to shovel poop for other people.

Just like the song says however, we don’t always get what we want.

Instead, I learned more than I needed to know about backing up a robot, kidnappings and murder, and the tremendous cost of revenge. I get to meet a crime boss, which is never a good thing, ride in a helicopter and learn the meaning of an officiating fat Elvis. All of these things, from seeing my mother in her true form a few weeks ago, to cracking my head open in a Madrid parking lot, forced me to grow up in a way I totally was unprepared for. Isn’t that the way it always goes? Only the crappiest things in the world prepare us for more crappy things in the world.

But if you can make it through, the rest is gravy.

#

Chapter 1

Branford Malone gingerly climbs down the stairs of the bed and breakfast, before the sun has even risen to find the owners, Don and Shirley McDermott sitting at the kitchen table. They both immediately rise up when they hear him in the hallway.

Good morning. Mrs. McDermott smiles and pushes her hair behind an ear, Will you be having breakfast?

No thank you, just coffee if you don't mind. There's going to be a big breakfast on the ranch.

Don McDermott sits back down, How's that young girl? Leslie?

Branford squeezes into a chair and flips over a coffee cup from a small stack on the table, She's fine. She fully recovered it seems. I think she's gonna be OK.

Who tried to poison the Sheriff's son? Shirley asks curiously as she pours his first cup and spins back to put the carafe back in the machine.

What? Branford cocks his head. He had inadvertently become the authority on all legal matters in the county, when the entire secret service contingency stayed overnight a few years ago. They assume he monitors the goings on from a secret lab somewhere.

Carter Elam. Don nudges with his chin, He got poisoned.

The thought takes a moment to ferment, something coffee could help with. He takes a deep breath and brings the mug to his lips, Ah. That was his girlfriend. She can't cook. He blows on it and tests the heat.

He has a girlfriend? Didn't he just get married? Don puzzles just as confused as ever.

Branford laughs and the coffee comes down, but their faces remain serious... The rumor mill. For a small town, crazy spreads faster than internet memes. He corrects his demeanor, Ahem... Uh, yeah, you're right. They did get married... Well, his wife tried to kill him then.

Oh God. She slides out a chair and falls into it.

Branford just smiles. The things he hears at this place just cannot be categorized. Before he let anyone know why he came to town regularly, years ago, he sat at this very table and learned about the chaos that a bunch of lesbians brought to the town. Children of color born out of wedlock, drugs, a secret hotel for gays, and what's worse... Dudes for the dude ranch. Most hilariously at the time grew into folklore, but the whole town thought they let exotic wild animals roam around without a fence... Wild lions.

He never corrected anyone, back then he just wanted to lay low, since being a black man in a small town in Nebraska felt dangerous enough already, he didn't want to make an impression. He knew what all that talk was code for. Even the Sheriff displayed his ignorance out in the open, but things had changed when Leslie came. The Sheriff's son grew up with her, and they got into trouble together. His attitude softened over the years, but it took a while.

That girl is a Strasburger right? Don asks Shirley.

She rubs the table with her fingers, I think so. She's the youngest of Claire's kids.

Wow. Harold's kids... Only one got married. Don shakes his head.

Branford's phone beeps and he pulls it out. Give her the phone... The message says.

Give her the phone? He asks aloud and looks up at the McDermotts. What phone? They both appear to pull away. He looks back at the screen but does not recognize the number. He thinks carefully for a second, then reluctantly calls the messenger. Give who, what phone?

After a moment of listening, he gasps, Ha! Really? He stands up and moves to the back door. How have you been? You're back in the states?

The McDermotts listen covertly as he opens the door, pushes through the screen and steps onto the back porch.

Wow that's pretty awesome, Ritsy. He pauses and looks around the yard in the dark, Well, believe it or not, that girl is my niece.

The McDermotts startle and look at each other confused, feeling the cold air rushing into the house, but they won't close the door. They quietly stand up and slide their chairs in.

Branford nods and smiles, Yeah, but it gets better. She's Dory Azod's kid.

Right?

But wait, there's more. She was adopted by Leslie Anne Brennemann.

Don and Shirley both nod slowly, and whisper to themselves, Ohhh. Shirley puts her hand on her husband's back, That makes sense... They hide by the counter and lean in to listen.

Branford continues, Yep that's the one... Seriously.

They move to the sink where they can hear better, and Don opens the refrigerator, leans towards the back screen door, but acts like he's looking for something.

Well yeah. I can head out there now. I don't think the delivery guys will be there this early. It's pretty remote.

Branford pulls into the Brennemann driveway and he glances over at the dashboard. 07:12 displays in numeric characters in a small digital box in front of the passenger seat. The backyard looks like a carnival, with long morning shadows shrinking already. People milling around everywhere, the chuck wagon spread sits fully assembled in the driveway and right in the middle, the space egg delivery truck. He stares suspiciously as he pulls into the grass and parks.

Upon exiting the car, the space egg, already loaded, begins moving down the driveway inside the specialized truck. As it pulls away it reveals Leslie, Mary and Celeste drinking coffee from massive cold weather mugs by the back porch.

The ground feels soft and he looks at his feet. It must have rained. The sky overhead kicks around a few gnarly dark clouds, so it probably will again. Everyone turns to him as he steps up.

Good morning, ladies. He smiles at Mary and puts his hands in his coat. You guys started early.

Have some breakfast. Cynthia walks towards him and points over her shoulder.

Branford looks to where she points and spots the Chief and Earl sitting under a tarp. I think I will... He squeezes by and heads that way.

Cynthia joins the other girls, and they just stand quietly and watch the chicken coop and a new pump house getting created before their eyes. All the activity makes the air feel festive.

Leslie looks back to the big truck making its way onto the highway, taking away her steamer, I never even got to open it up.

Everyone turns.

What's in it? Celeste asks.

Clothes. Lots of expensive clothes. Leslie smiles recollecting all the fashion.

Natalie walks up and tosses her plate into a trashcan nearby and turns to them, They took your space box.

You miss one payment... Mary teases.

Everyone smiles.

Leslie shrugs, I guess I'm not Kelly Abernathy anymore.

Why don't you get to keep it? Natalie asks.

Everyone begins to head to the barn for warmth. Leslie puzzles, and looks down in thought, I guess 'cause it wouldn't fit in the house?

#

Blackballed

Travel documents for Gabriela Lopez lie scattered across the bed, in a small hotel room. The sunlight filters through the trees, filling up the room through a large open window. On the edge of the bed rests a small bag, and by the door a larger suitcase waits, ready to go. Upon closer consideration, the images on each document, show the face of Calogera Agrigento, also known as Lisa.

Calogera had escaped Spain after the murder of Kalisa Grigorevna and attempted to take a familiar route to get back to the United States. She contacted everyone she knew that could help her with documents and travel arrangements, avoiding the gaze of law enforcement, but she had no success. She sent a message to Schuyler Vroom, Zopija Luedtke, Lenizel Needebaum, even Marion Hanna, but no one had responded. It feels like she has been blackballed, and the threat raises her blood pressure, her hands tremble as she sits on the edge of the bed, elbows on her knees.

It appears Gabriela Lopez, her fake persona, had finally made it to the end of the line.

Unbeknownst to her, all of her contacts, all of the people she relied upon to get her travel documents, their jobs, their secret locations in different countries, and their talents came from the imagination of Kalisa Grigorevna. They did not exist without her. Calogera used to travel the world with impunity, but without help, she would not be able to stay off the radar of the authorities. Lastly, she reached out to Alex Geitzen, but he had never proven as good as any of the others, and even he had not responded.

A gentle breeze blows in from a greenish blue lake visible through a few trees. The sounds of birds and animals creep in over the rush of a waterfall in the distance somewhere, and the sheer curtains over the window move hypnotically. The image comes from a computer screen. It simulates an actual window in a hut somewhere in the south pacific, but Calogera shows no interest. She knows she only made it to TS4, the space station built by the Chinese government, and now she can't get back to Earth.

A buzz draws her attention and she finds a message on one of her computers. A bleep of useless information draws out her curiosity, and she begins to ponder the universe, looking up to the blank wall as if an image appears.

When Calogera searched Kalisa Grigorevna's apartment in Spain, after her death, she found a receipt from one of Kalisa's purchases, a travel steamer for Kelly Abernathy. Attempting to locate the steamer she put it in a special app to track its movements and final destination, and then promptly forgot about it. Now it just arrived at TS4. She tosses the small computer back onto the bed, falls back and lays down. Kalisa, dead for days now, couldn't have made the arrangements.

In a weird twist, Zopija Luedtke stored her travel steamer in Kalisa’s garage. She knew they worked together, but did not know they were that close. Now it seems Sophie may have shipped that travel steamer, or had a part in getting it to TS4. Maybe Sophie had a secret persona too, and maybe it was Kelly Abernathy.

She lays still for a moment or two, then brings up her phone and looks for a local contact for Kelly Abernathy, but nothing shows up. Abernathy has no apartment at TS4, and yet this unit appears clearly headed to a personal residence.

Her ex-lover and old boyfriend Fernan Sandoval, confessed to her that in spite of just running around murdering people, his job really involved trying to locate 32 billion dollars that he thought Kalisa may have stolen. The amount sounded laughable, but now she feels more intrigued than perplexed. Just one of these bulk steamers could store a fortune, and it sure seems like something Kalisa would do. Now that she's gone, the steamer just magically arrived here.

The special program shows the local address for the delivery, but the apartment belongs to a K. Vanderhawk. Calogera puzzles, the phone drops to her belly. Vanderhawk sounded familiar. In the past it remained possible that she may have traveled in a jet owned by that woman, she just could not remember well enough to say for sure, but that name...

Sandy, never classified as a wise guy, never thought things out clearly, he just acted on impulse. That proved useful in lives past, but now he just seems a little goonish. He had been searching for the money for years and he still had no solid leads. If he did, he probably murdered them already.

All the while, traveling covertly in a giant steamer like the one she saw in Italy, Kalisa hid the money and it floats around like an enchanted wardrobe. That could be why he never found it. The box keeps moving. She lays back down and picks up the computer. Within a few minutes she has mapped out the address and estimated the time of arrival for the box. Her hands drop to her side and she stares at the ceiling.

Sandy would never find it, he's just too stupid, but even if he does, he won't find it before she does.

#

Pickling Salt

A blue robot pulls up to the mail stand at the front of the property. Beeping and churning, it meticulously expels several boxes into the Brennemann mailbox. Like clockwork triggered by the robot, Natalie comes out of the back of the house and walks into the barn. She grabs a wagon and heads back down the driveway, past the kids by the parked cars, Melissa, Dillon, Milo, Leslie and Kyle. She pays no attention to them as they throw things around.

Natalie's hair, hangs down her back to the back of her knees, and it blows in the wind like a sheet while she walks with a purpose. She goes to the front of the house and gathers all the delivered items while the little robot beeps and drives away. She chunks them randomly onto the cart and wheels it back up the driveway.

At the domino table, she sorts all the packages, takes the wagon back into the barn, then comes back through the side door and scoops up the two boxes meant for the house. She leaves the rest of the mail on the domino table for the vultures to eat.

Once inside, she gently places them on the edge of the counter by the sink and the junk drawer. She digs into it and pulls the scissors out, to stab one of the boxes and cut it open. The stuffing peels back to reveal several bottles of spices and pink pickling salt. She pushes it away from the edge, grabs the other box, and heads through the house to the front porch.

Kicking open the screen she can see Branford sitting in the rocking chair, slumped down, his mouth gaping open. She stares and her eyes swell. He's not rocking or moving and she cannot immediately determine if he's even breathing. She kicks his shoe and he startles awake.

He looks up at her, confused and angry.

She holds out the box, You said to bring it to you first...

This for Leslie?

Yep. Natalie turns and goes inside, anxious to get back to her pickling salts.

Branford examines the box with a concerned eye.

#

Kyle Toss

Leslie, Kyle and Melissa search the mud for a decent sized white rock. The boys, Dillon and Milo already have one and toss it back and forth to each other. They practice catching it behind their backs.

This driveway used to be all white rocks. Kyle says as he digs one lose from the dirt.

Remember when I beaned Carter in the head?

They both start laughing and Kyle shakes his head. He turns to Melissa, You have to say 'BEANBALL' before you toss the ball. BEFORE. And it's not supposed to be a rock. Only balls. And no baseballs. He points at Leslie.

She laughs, I dropped him like a sack of potatoes.

Mary tanned your hide.

She finds a good-sized stone. Here. She cleans it off. Look at my fingers. Hold it like this. You don't want spin. You want it to arc just like this... She makes an imaginary line in the air with the rock that ends up at Kyle's back.

He spins and pretends to catch it.

If it has a handle like a screw driver you have to toss it a special way so the handle lands in his hand. Boosht. Just like this. She makes a sound like the screwdriver landed in his hand. Boosht. Just like that. But this arch... She demonstrates again and again Kyle whips his hand back to catch.

Dillon hollers, Like this. He and Milo continue tossing their stone back and forth to each other, from behind their backs.

This arch is what you need to perfect. Leslie tosses the rock from behind her, and Kyle catches it behind his back. He immediately swings around and tosses it back to Leslie.

She catches it and shows it to Melissa.

Try it. Kyle says, motioning to Melissa.

Leslie gives her the rock and she tries to toss it behind her back, but it falls way too short and Leslie catches it. She hands it back to her and she tries again. They keep working on it.

Minutes later in the kitchen, Leslie reaches into a cooler and pulls out a soda, and without warning she flings it into the air in a single motion behind her back. Kyle catches it at his belt, and he winks and makes a noise with his mouth.

Melissa stands in awe, That is so cool.

He pops it open.

#

Miraculous Conception

Kiu Hu stands behind an engineer sitting at a desk, in a scientific complex at TS-4. Around him several others gather to watch, and right at his side, Cheung Ling observes with her arms crossed and her legs tight together. Her presence brought change, and only Hu understood fully the significance of her being there.

The project, part of a larger secret arm of a clandestine department, no longer had complete anonymity, they had been found out. The politician and Military Officer in charge, found himself in a particularly precarious position, since neither side knew about this secret project, so in an effort to ease the tensions, he brought in an officer from the judicial branch, thinking he had some control over her.

Ling had the covert position of Liaison, between this wing of the Chinese government, and the Chinese Military. Politicians created her rank and position the same day this task force had been discovered. Her specialty had been law enforcement, and previously, the capture of Zhāng Eun-jung, a crime boss that had evaded capture for years. The chain of command had changed into a committee, but she immediately recognized the undue influence the old politician had on her position, and the efforts he made to guide her actions.

The separate departments secretly volleyed to get her full attention, but she had one task in mind when she reluctantly accepted the role, and it blinded her to anything else. She would find and capture Zhāng Eun-jung, and no one would be able to stop her.

Over the past eight months, she studied the group and Kiu Hu quietly, just observing, but her presence could not be denied, and everyone knew who she was, and what she was there for. Her indifference to the project changed, when she learned what they monitored and tinkered with, an anomaly somehow embedded in a banking network backbone. Translating the technical aspects of the abnormality to military men, actually helped her understand the scope of the process. She explained it to them, using military logistics as an example, an expertise that she understood well, but her rudimentary understanding of the computer network technology involved, left her completely baffled as to its true purpose or inner workings.

She wrote in her findings, Moving weapons and ammunition from manufacture to a battlefield requires planning, especially if the battle is already been underway. Without disruption, to move massive amounts of anything requires staging areas, facilities and depots as well as trains, ships, and planes. Inside those huge facilities, even with organization, small areas within that inventory get infested with rodents and insects, and they get transported with the equipment, regardless of the efforts taken to prevent just that. In the banking network, the equipment buffers and caches, susceptible to the same premise, have miscellaneous traffic and network objects embedded in the data streams.

It appeared to be benign at first glance, but as her understanding grew, she could see clearly what the purpose had been for its creation. Her suspicions linked it to the massively powerful underworld, and to the crime boss Zhāng Eun-jung. That's where her life goal and this anomaly intersected. For the past five years, her and her department, had solely focused on finding Zhāng Eun-jung, destroying his network of criminality, and bringing him to justice, and the discovery of this anomaly gave her the first significant break, but something else happened. When the government upgraded the equipment, instead of getting rid of the anomaly, it grew and began to perform actionable tasks, and no longer looked solely like a weapon of the underworld.

All the computer engineers grew excited, and their enthusiasm drew her curiosity out like a slow-moving magma flow, altering her blind ambition. She grew intrigued by the object and what it appeared to be doing. The random actions developed into identifiable patterns, and soon they detected all the social media accounts, but most significantly, no one had detected a programmer. The object ran on a thin layer of code, and deposited millions of bits of data all over the world, which it called up to spawn influence in the social media accounts that appeared to be driving the anomaly.

The engineers remained baffled, and their curiosity fused with her own. She could not be pulled away now. Just monitoring those social media accounts had led her directly to some of the underground operations of Zhāng Eun-jung, and the inner workings of a worldwide criminal venture. She used the technology to add to her arsenal, but through a serious of unfortunate events, the overall efforts were not fruitful. Her teams, through incompetence and happenstance, lost evidence, arrived too late or somehow miscommunicated the locations of important criminal activity.

The results drove her mad with rage, but she kept it in check. What it revealed without a doubt however, proved devastating to her efforts. A mole remained somewhere in her ranks. Ling knew she neared the inner circle of the syndicate, as the threats and activities around her began to rise and grow in prominence, but she remained unable to capitalize on the information they gathered.

There indeed remained a mole in her task force, but the bulk of her efforts were not thwarted by that individual. Motoko had altered the documents, the meeting prep, the location data. The very thing that an entire department had been developed to study, had been feeding them alternate information. All that was about to change.

The final catalyst occurred this morning. Something new and unique happened, and another level of intrigue began to germinate in her brain. She squints at the engineers as they rush about. Huge amounts of connections, sprouted from a location somewhere in the heart of the United States, generating data that swells inside a litany of networks and devices. Her forehead crinkles. The military side of her begins to feel threatened.

Over the last several months, even Kiu Hu had changed his perspective. He and his team view everything happening as a scientific phenomenon, it was no longer a tool for the syndicate.

A young man steps up to a large display on the wall, and his presence catches her eye. A map of America flips open, and a red dot appears in the middle of the northwest, a part of the map all bathed in green. The image however, does not show even a highway or state lines.

He scratches his head.

Ling steps up and grimaces. Her arms do not unfold, There are no government agencies there. Except maybe missile silos. She says carefully to the young man in Mandarin.

She turns back to Hu and examines his expression.

The young man next to her speaks softly, The United States had never been a focus of activity in the past.

She turns to him and examines his stern curiosity. Could this be the programmer? She asks.

His expression doesn't change, but his head tilts. She looks back at Hu. His focus remains on the scads of data flying around the internet as a result of the activity, technically displayed on monitors and screens, represented by scads of numbers and text.

He touches an engineer softly on her shoulder, Now. She begins to type, and within a few keystrokes, everyone looks up to study.

Ling moves to the image on the wall that has seized their attention, next to Hu.

The young man follows her, He's injected code into the anomaly... We can gain control over it.

She steps back and watches the diagram but nothing changes. She studies him from the corner of her eye, and he scans the big screen like he’s chasing a bug. A shift in the air of the room draws her attention. Everyone standing, moves a step or two closer,