Mountain Greenery
This is Chapter 28 of The Inheritance, a serial fiction novel on FITK
Saturday Morning, July 25, 2020, I-5, near Burlington, Washington
“This was a good idea, to get out of town for a while,” said Mary, “Where is this place that you rented?”
“It’s in a small ‘town’ named Glacier,” said Sean, “If you can call it a town—it’s really just a collection of small houses clustered around a bend in the Mount Baker Highway.”
“We’re staying on a glacier?” said Mareka, “Won’t that be cold?”
“The glacier is up on Mount Baker. We can hike up to it tomorrow, if you want,” said Sean, “It will take a couple of hours though. Did you bring your hiking boots?”
“I’ve got ’em… ” said Mareka, “… and my hat.”
“We should have everything we need,” said Mary, “And once we’re there, we won’t have the one thing we don’t need: the internet.”
In the past few days Mary, Sean, and Jo had been trending on sketchy internet sites because of Barbara Merrit’s insinuations about a series of deaths connected to the threesome, even going back as far as the ‘Billygate’ affair nine years previous. Merrit had also published photos of Sean and Jo together, as well as Sean and Mary with a ‘mystery woman’ who just happened to look a lot like Sean’s grandmother Emily. Those pictures became an internet meme, the images were manipulated to include Amelia Earhart, Marilyn Monroe, Princess Diana, Jeffrey Epstein and even Ghislaine Maxwell. They turned Merrit’s ‘revelations’ into a sophomoric joke. Sean and Mary’s lawyers had received numerous requests for comments or interviews, but Mary had instructed them to denounce them all as being absurd even though, in the case of the images of Emily, some of them were true. The images from the ‘witch riot’ had developed a following as well when some of the participants had also been seen at the CHAZ/CHOP occupation in June. After the fiasco and the repercussions of CHAZ, the police had little time to spend investigating the relatively minor “incident” in front of Sean and Mary’s apartment building and they considered it, for all practical purposes, closed.
Saturday Morning, July 25, 2020, Seattle
In the guesthouse, Jo was following the flurry of media activity that featured her. She was more concerned with the fact that John Stroud, her abusive ex, was now a wanted fugitive and probably desperate. If he found out that Jo was in Seattle he might try to contact her and, knowing him, try to take advantage of her somehow.
And she was lonely.
FBI Agent Marchal was looking over the report from the Arizona State Crime Lab. He had been in contact with them and, acting on Sean’s urging, had the thoroughly examine the car that Andrew Stevenson had died in. There had been a device installed in the ventilation system, cleverly rigged to open a canister similar to the one that was found on the body of the intruder that Jo Sanford had killed. That intruder, who had never been identified, was suspected of being a Russian operative from the clothing he wore.
“So there is a Russian connection,” Marchal said to himself, “Now the question is why?” The Arizona report gave a hint. It had subpoenaed the financial records of the “church” and had found that along with the small donations Stevenson had received, that recently there were many large amounts from known Russian front groups. That explained where Stevenson got the money for the car, but left open the question of why did they kill him after giving him the money? One additional fact stood out. The car was leased from a dealer was also suspected of doing business with Russian money launderers, and the dealer had already been in contact with the police, to make sure he’d get the car back as soon as possible, so as to dispose of the evidence. Stevenson’s autopsy gave the cause of death as “cardiac arrest”, the same verdict as Sally O’Donnell’s. Whatever the poison was in those canisters, it was deadly and, after a short time, vanished without trace.
Saturday Afternoon, July 25, 2020, Glacier, Washington
Arriving at the cabin, Sean and Mareka began to unload the van. Mareka took her backpack into the faux-alpine cottage and went right back out and began to explore the yard. Although the town was fairly-well developed, the existing pines behind the lots had been left in place so there was a palpable sense of being “in the woods”, with a “real” forest not far behind.
“Don’t run off, now,” said Mary, “There are more and bigger wild animals around here than at home.”
“We’ll see if we can find some of them tomorrow,” said Sean, “And watch out for portals, too, Kiddo.”
“O.K. Pops!” said Mareka, “I won’t go far… ”
Next Chapter: The Mountain’s High
