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“ Did you threaten him?” Eddie asked.“ Didn’ t have too. Just telling him Tracy and Beverly were like my little sisters and how much I cared for them caused him to move on to potentially less hazardous prey. My little sisters love to pass on juicy gossip to their brother Rodney. Sam as a pass around pack would have been too good not to share.” Eddie needed to know the score and pushed for any information Rodney had stored. What he received was more than he needed, but not enough to put the pieces together.
Rodney began with what he heard from a reliable source. The man’ s name, Rodney would not disclose. The story was about Sam’ s father who seemed to have a wandering eye and a fetish for pregnant women. Unknown to her before his death, Sam was one of twenty-four children. Her daddy was a real Johnny Appleseed, planting in more than one garden. Five gardens to be exact. As the owner of a handful of pastry shops, he provided sweets of many flavors and varieties. When he died of a heart attack all the children and“ wives” met for the first time and all their stories were of a man who loved and adored each of them considering he was so busy“ managing” the pastry shops.
No matter how big the pie might be, when you have to split it into twenty-some slices, someone is going to feel like they were given the smallest piece. When he was alive, there was always plenty of pie. The bickering took its toll and some of the children, including Sam, decided to step away and keep the memory of their loving father, as odd as it now was, in tact. Sam just finished high school and had always considered herself the baby of the family, the youngest of four sisters. Re-evaluation caused her to realize she fell somewhere in the middle. With a dozen younger brothers and sisters she decided to make it on her own and had obviously done quite well.
The trucks pulled away having unloaded the stacks of cinder blocks.“ So do you have any take on Sam’ s motives?”“ You walked in looking like a million bucks. Maybe the old man isn’ t taking care of business and the guy that doesn’ t talk, doesn’ t hurt her where it really matters,” Rodney said.“ In the purse.”“ Correct.”“ The look of approval I received from Tracy when I escorted Sam from my office...”“ She can’ t protect you from yourself. She would have noticed if you had nailed Sam and so might someone else. Probably a wise move, on your first day,” Rodney stated.“ I don’ t want to make enemies either.”“ Sam will most likely look at it as a challenge. My advice would be keep it that way, but she is hot. And no. I’ ve never had that opportunity tossed my direction, even though I can be fairly charming.”“ I noticed Tanya took to you pretty quickly.”“ Your wife?” Rodney sounded genuinely surprised.“ I’ ve never seen her laughing like a school girl, dangling from the arm of a man she just met. It’ s so out of character. And then to grab both of us and pull us across the street.” Eddie shook his head.“ I radiate peace and love. You should see me in my tie dyed shirt and bell-bottom, polyester pants. I keep my Afro on a wig stand on the dresser next to my love beads.”
The image was amazingly vivid and Eddie tried to hold back the laughter, unsuccessfully. Rodney smiled. A blue, crew-cab pickup truck missed the entrance and had to back the cement mixer it towed a hundred yards before it could pull into the parking lot. Eddie counted six heads inside the vehicle and two more in the bed of the truck. Rodney exited the vehicle with Eddie following.“ The doors are not here yet. They need to start in the middle and work toward the end,” Eddie said, as the truck with eight dark-haired, dark-eyed men of various ages pulled up and stopped near the black Escalade. Rodney began speaking Spanish to the driver of the truck, pointing and explaining what needed to be done.“ I need to learn Spanish,” Eddie said.
“ I had to have two years of a foreign language for admission into Rice University. Spanish seemed like a logical choice. I had dos muy grande amigos on my high school team. It helped to hang out at their homes and learn conversational Spanish,” Rodney was finding it very easy to talk with Eddie. When he and Frank first discussed the haunted house idea, it was Rodney, who suggested hiring Eddie, reminding Frank he had said,“ Eddie seems to have a, certain, natural ability.”