Clay met me at the road. “Medical Examiner’s here, and we think the body was transported and dumped from somewhere else. We’re making casts of some tire tracks now”. The turn-out was indeed a flurry of activity.
“So you’re sure one of the Lions club guys didn’t find and pick her up with the rest of the litter?” I asked sarcastically?
Clay gave me a disgusted look. “No, smart ass, but I do want to know how she ended up in one of those litter patrol bags.” “Did you look in the rest of them to see if you’re missing any more teen-agers?” I asked? “Just something that looked like it might be some of her school notes, doesn’t appear to be very relevant.”
“That trail over the hill we just followed showed signs of recent activity”, I told Clay. Might want to have a deputy check it out.” “Yeah, okay.” Clay wasn’t really paying much attention to me. “I’m pretty sure she was dumped from a car. Anyway, Nicole’s calling me having a cow about getting you guys over to the “Scallop” to help with breakfast. I’m going to have Irv here give you a lift.”
Great. Irv. I went to school with Irv and he’d looked like a rhinoceros then. Now he looked like a deputy rhino. Beady eyes, beaky nose, and a large square body with weird looking grey skin. He also stuttered. “H,h,h,hi N, n,n, n, Natalie. I I I I I’m sure gl glad you’re h, home.”
I’m pretty sure Dandy didn’t do anything unusual. He just walked up to rhino Irv to give him the requisite crotch sniff greeting, but Irv jumped he’d been hit in the balls with a round of buckshot.
“Wha, wha, what’s that”? Irv’s stutter edged on panic.
“It’s just a dog, Irv.” I explained, pulling Dandy back. I hadn’t really expected a sheriff’s deputy to be afraid of dogs. Especially smallish, skinny ones that look more like a house elf from Harry Potter than they do a vicious canine.
Irv turned to Clay in terror. “I can, can, can’t drive a d, d, d, dog back to town!” he exclaimed. N, N, N, Natalie, yes, but d, d, d, dog, NO!”
Clay looked disgusted. “Oh for Pete’s sake.” “Nat, can you drive a Charger?” he asked?
Sure, why not. It’s a car right?
“Irv, Nat will drive your car back to the Scallop with the dog in the back in the cage, and then you can drive back out here after you drop them off.”
“Nope.” Irv was emphatic. “I’m not sitting locked in no car with a dog in the cage behind me. He can fit his skinny little nose through the wire and he might lick me.” It appeared that the more scared Irv got, the less he stuttered.
Clay did the the trademark MacDuffy 360 eye roll. “Fine. Nat can drive, the dog rides shotgun, and Irv rides in the cage.” “Just GET GOING”.
While absurd, this situation appeared to appease all parties. I buckled myself and Dandy in to the front seats of Irv’s Charger, while Irv crawled in the back looking nervous. Perhaps it is fortunate that Clay hasn’t seen me for awhile, or I’m sure I would have received a stern lecture on safe driving and not using the law enforcement equipment. As it was, I squealed the tires out onto 101 and immediately hit the lights and siren for the brief trip into town. I ignored the radio, which immediately buzzed with Clay’s voice telling me to knock it off, and Irv’s pleading from the backseat. I mean really, how often does a fraud vegan chef get to drive a cop car and run the blue lights. Plus the Charger had some really good kick to it. Beat the heck out of my VW Bug with the dead flower in the bud vase back in Venice.
It was nearly 7am by the time I rolled up to the “Singing Scallop B&B”, lights still flashing and siren blaring. By the way, don’t blame Nicole for the name, she inherited the mess, remember. Ginny named the damn place purportedly after the scallop version of “Angels on Horseback” started singing “We All Live In a Yellow Submarine” to her the night of Nic and Jake’s wedding reception. We suspect the scallops actually carried on in usual silence, and the fifth of Tanqueray Ginny pre-functioned with did the singing.
“Uhh, s,s, something’s going on.” Irv was right about that. Spotted Owl enthusiasts milled in groups in front of the turn-of-the-century hotel with the faded “Singing Scallop” sign above the porch. Wild gesturing toward the building was punctuated by Fine bouncing from group to group dragging her leash and her “bomb sniffing” dog coat dragging beneath her since it was at least two sizes too big. There was no sign of North or Nicole, although my nephew Gauge and niece Shell were dashing amongst the throng in their p.j.’s trying to catch Fine.
Our arrival was greeted with something blended between relief and chaos. Except, as Irv and I got out of the car, Fine dashed up to first me, then Irv to greet the newcomers. To me, she asked what took us so long. Irv she merely greeted cheerfully by jumping into his arms, and then leaping back with surprise when he dropped her and crawled shaking back into the back of the car. The crowd then descended on me, the civilian rather than Irv, the deputy. Of course they did. I was wearing the deputies jacket, and I was driving. And I wasn’t hiding in the back of the car from the bomb-sniffing dogs. Clearly, I was in charge.
A tall thin man with thinning grey hair and a longish beard, Birkenstocks, and a Greenpeace t-shirt approached the car looking agitated. “There’s a wild animal loose in there!” “Someone needs to call animal control, it’s wreaking havoc, and we haven’t had breakfast yet!”
Monday, March 23, 2009
DAFS - Chapter 3
I’ve seen a few things in my 35 years that frankly I find disturbing. I admit helping Nicole deliver my niece and nephew made me more than a little squeamish. Rushing Dandy to the veterinarian after his run-in with a mountain lion (I had to shoot that one) was another. Playing dead victims on increasingly gory crime dramas isn’t pretty, but isn’t really comparable.
I guarantee that watching a naked, dead, pregnant teen-age girl get pulled out of a “Keep Washington Green” bag is right up there in the “been there, done that, not going back” category of experiences. In fact, it was right up there in the “throwing up in the ditch” category.
The usual “cop in action” furor erupted. Clay called for back-up. The rest of us were ordered into the SUV so as not to disturb the scene. That worked for five minutes until Sully started making emu dooky smells again. At that point, badge, or no badge, Clay got outvoted. North, Sully, and Fine made their way into town in the SUV. Since Dandy and my shaken nauseous self found the body, and therefore became material witnesses, we had to stay. I borrowed a Sheriff’s jacket from the back of the SUV to shield myself from the wind and rain, and stood with Dandy despondently watching the rest of the crew head into town and dry warmth.
Clay bent over Calise’s State-provided shroud studying the scene. In an effort to get as far away from the scene as I could, I took Dandy and circled widely around the pull= out, looking for a trail or path we could explore during our wait for authority. The pull-out itself was wide and gravelly, with spots of mud, and puddles. Most of the ecology trash bags were piled near the center of the turnout, toward the brushy hillside that emphasized that side of the road. I could hear, but not see, the unmistakable sound of rushing water. Walking a few hundred feet up the highway, we came to a bridge where the road crossed the Little Quilcene River on its way to the bay. So the river wasn’t far from the pull-out, in spite of the cliffy terrain.
We made our way back down the side of the highway, emergency vehicles whirling past with lights flashing and sirens blaring. There wasn’t much space in the pull-out itself by the time we got there, so we backtracked a few feet along the highway until we found what amounted to little more than a deer-path winding its way up along the cliff-side. Whippets are tougher little dogs than they look, and Dandy was completely game for a trek through the wilderness. Especially when there were good smells. I’ve been observing my dogs for a long time, and this path had Really Good Smells. The problem was that I was cold, tired, and miserable, and exploring Really Good Smells didn’t seem like fun. I wanted a nice warm vehicle, a blanket, a cup of coffee and one of those little Men in Black mind erasers to forget finding Calise.
As usual, Dandy didn’t care what I thought. He took off up the deer path with all the enthusiasm of a bunny hunt. I followed him half-heartedly winding our way along the base of the cliff, my jeans getting soaked by salal and Oregon grape invading the trail space. In a few places rotting downed trees and thick brambles made the trip slow going. Dandy was small enough to slink around, under and through most of the brush, but I was slowed down by having to navigate with the leash. An advantage of leash walking dogs is that you tend to notice things that you might normally not. The dogs stop to smell everything that they classify as “interesting”, and in a forest obstacle course you pay more attention to the obstacles.
This particular deer path looked to have been recently disturbed by something less lithe than a deer. Branches and brambles were broken, and moss on the path was disturbed. In a couple of places the salal was flattened. Dandy was interested in those spots, and I wondered if a deer had nestled down for the night, or if something else had made it’s way through to the road.
Eventually, we crested the bluff above the turnout. I could look down on several emergency vehicles through the trees. The bald head of Doc Thibodeau, the Medical Examiner, stood out, as did Clay’s red buzz cut. I cut back to the path, more defined at this point. It switch-backed down the hill and through the fir and cedar forest, ferns, and moss I could hear the roar of the river below.
“Natalie!” I could just barely hear Clay’s voice calling over the noise of the river. “Nat, where are you?”
I made my way back to where the path opened up above the turnout, dragging Dandy reluctantly back with me. “I’m up here” I hollered down, waving at my brother. Clay finally looked up and peered up the bluff. “How’d you get up there?” he yelled.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh. I flew? How’d he suppose we got up here. “I hiked” I yelled back. “Well, hike back down. We’re going to head into town, we’re done here.”
Huh? Done here? Wasn’t it a crime scene? Dandy and I began our precarious descent down the deer path. We were almost back to the road when he jerked the leash and nearly pulled me off the trail. Nosing at the base of a rotting stump, he picked up something with his mouth and continued trotting down the trail with it. “Dandy” “Icky, leave it” The dogs had a delightful propensity for picking up all things dead, disgusting and generally undesirable. Dandy stopped and obediently gave up his treasure. It looked like a hard plastic concave bowl or cover. Before I could examine it, Clay shouted again, “Nat, COME ON”. I stuffed Dandy’s toy into the Deputy’s coat pocket and made my way back to the turnout.
I guarantee that watching a naked, dead, pregnant teen-age girl get pulled out of a “Keep Washington Green” bag is right up there in the “been there, done that, not going back” category of experiences. In fact, it was right up there in the “throwing up in the ditch” category.
The usual “cop in action” furor erupted. Clay called for back-up. The rest of us were ordered into the SUV so as not to disturb the scene. That worked for five minutes until Sully started making emu dooky smells again. At that point, badge, or no badge, Clay got outvoted. North, Sully, and Fine made their way into town in the SUV. Since Dandy and my shaken nauseous self found the body, and therefore became material witnesses, we had to stay. I borrowed a Sheriff’s jacket from the back of the SUV to shield myself from the wind and rain, and stood with Dandy despondently watching the rest of the crew head into town and dry warmth.
Clay bent over Calise’s State-provided shroud studying the scene. In an effort to get as far away from the scene as I could, I took Dandy and circled widely around the pull= out, looking for a trail or path we could explore during our wait for authority. The pull-out itself was wide and gravelly, with spots of mud, and puddles. Most of the ecology trash bags were piled near the center of the turnout, toward the brushy hillside that emphasized that side of the road. I could hear, but not see, the unmistakable sound of rushing water. Walking a few hundred feet up the highway, we came to a bridge where the road crossed the Little Quilcene River on its way to the bay. So the river wasn’t far from the pull-out, in spite of the cliffy terrain.
We made our way back down the side of the highway, emergency vehicles whirling past with lights flashing and sirens blaring. There wasn’t much space in the pull-out itself by the time we got there, so we backtracked a few feet along the highway until we found what amounted to little more than a deer-path winding its way up along the cliff-side. Whippets are tougher little dogs than they look, and Dandy was completely game for a trek through the wilderness. Especially when there were good smells. I’ve been observing my dogs for a long time, and this path had Really Good Smells. The problem was that I was cold, tired, and miserable, and exploring Really Good Smells didn’t seem like fun. I wanted a nice warm vehicle, a blanket, a cup of coffee and one of those little Men in Black mind erasers to forget finding Calise.
As usual, Dandy didn’t care what I thought. He took off up the deer path with all the enthusiasm of a bunny hunt. I followed him half-heartedly winding our way along the base of the cliff, my jeans getting soaked by salal and Oregon grape invading the trail space. In a few places rotting downed trees and thick brambles made the trip slow going. Dandy was small enough to slink around, under and through most of the brush, but I was slowed down by having to navigate with the leash. An advantage of leash walking dogs is that you tend to notice things that you might normally not. The dogs stop to smell everything that they classify as “interesting”, and in a forest obstacle course you pay more attention to the obstacles.
This particular deer path looked to have been recently disturbed by something less lithe than a deer. Branches and brambles were broken, and moss on the path was disturbed. In a couple of places the salal was flattened. Dandy was interested in those spots, and I wondered if a deer had nestled down for the night, or if something else had made it’s way through to the road.
Eventually, we crested the bluff above the turnout. I could look down on several emergency vehicles through the trees. The bald head of Doc Thibodeau, the Medical Examiner, stood out, as did Clay’s red buzz cut. I cut back to the path, more defined at this point. It switch-backed down the hill and through the fir and cedar forest, ferns, and moss I could hear the roar of the river below.
“Natalie!” I could just barely hear Clay’s voice calling over the noise of the river. “Nat, where are you?”
I made my way back to where the path opened up above the turnout, dragging Dandy reluctantly back with me. “I’m up here” I hollered down, waving at my brother. Clay finally looked up and peered up the bluff. “How’d you get up there?” he yelled.
Uhhhhhhhhhhh. I flew? How’d he suppose we got up here. “I hiked” I yelled back. “Well, hike back down. We’re going to head into town, we’re done here.”
Huh? Done here? Wasn’t it a crime scene? Dandy and I began our precarious descent down the deer path. We were almost back to the road when he jerked the leash and nearly pulled me off the trail. Nosing at the base of a rotting stump, he picked up something with his mouth and continued trotting down the trail with it. “Dandy” “Icky, leave it” The dogs had a delightful propensity for picking up all things dead, disgusting and generally undesirable. Dandy stopped and obediently gave up his treasure. It looked like a hard plastic concave bowl or cover. Before I could examine it, Clay shouted again, “Nat, COME ON”. I stuffed Dandy’s toy into the Deputy’s coat pocket and made my way back to the turnout.
DAFS - Chapter 2
Chapter 2 (DAFS)
The closest land to Quilcene resembling anything like an airstrip is actually located north of Puget Sound on a small privately owned island close to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Geographically speaking Eliza Island is only a stones throw from Vancouver Island and is generally as close to Canada as it is to the United States. The McDuffy Cessna managed to not lose a screw during the flight and the bumpy landing across the rough field that served as a runway. The best part of the flight was the complete failure of the in-flight audio system, so I didn’t have to suffer through North yakking at the emu or Anne Murray. The unfortunate side of the flight was the fact that there’s apparently an undiscovered market for emu Depends. There is nothing quite like evacuating a small airplane that smells intensely of emu dooky. Even if you’re a whippet, emu dooky is not amusing.
It was only about 4am, when we banked through the grey foggy mist and I could peer down at landscape of trees, mountains and Sound that I hadn’t seen for five years.
It was, of course, raining. I miss my palm trees already. And how’m I going to explain rain to Fine and Dandy? They were whippets, small greyhound-like dogs, without an ounce of fat, no insulation, and built for speed. They’re also used to sleeping on furniture, eating at regular times, and lying out in the sun every day. This whole trip was going to be a shock to their system. Little did I know what a shock to my system it would turn out to be as well.
The Cessna lurched to a stop, and immediately a beat-up, battered, Chevy pick-up circa Anne Murray’s last hit rolled over to meet us. Eliza is a private island, the only way on and off is via plane or boat. The few vehicles on the island live, and die here permanently.
Buzz Brainard, the island caretaker had obviously been alerted to our presence. He also greeted North like an old buddy, which, of course they were. By my math, Buzz and North had been within a grade of each other in high school, depending on whether they graduated as scheduled or not. After a brief potty break, two very disgusted wet whippets loaded into the cab of the truck with me and my suitcase. In their opinion the luxury nature of their travel accommodations definitely was leaving something to be desired this trip. North tied down the Cessna near a black and gold and hopped in the back with Sully on a tether. For as wimpy as he was about flying, Sully seemed to have no objection to being bounced along in the back of a pick-up. Go figure. Next time give the bird a valium.
Buzz shot me a look out of the corner of his eye as we bounced down the rutted road to the public dock, where presumably we’d get a boat back to semi-civilization, meaning Quilcene.
“Hey, Hollywood”. “Been a long time since we’ve seen you in these parts.” I mentally banged my head on the windshield. Besides “Dufflebag” which was a family privilege insult, I hate being called “Hollywood” the worst. If I’d actually been an Oscar-winning starlet, it possibly could be tolerable, but given a cooking show and a couple guest appearances on C.S.I. and Law and Order, usually as a disgusting looking corpse, “Hollywood” seemed more of an insult. “Yeah, well, busy, you know” I tried smiling brightly hoping it would satisfy his need to make conversation. “Uh huh. He said. “But seems you aren’t too busy to come home when the family needs you. You here to help your sister or your brother?”
This floored me. North? Needing help? “What’s going on with North?” I asked as casually as I could manage.
“North?” Buzz guffawed. “North been a survivor since he shot the mountain lion before it ate you for lunch when you were nine.” While true, this is a particularly embarrassing story I don’t like to be reminded of. “I meant your brother Clay.”
“Clay?” As far as I knew, Clay was a deputy sheriff in Jefferson County with a Stepford wife and 2.5 Stepford children. I talk to Clay almost as much as I talk to North, which is obviously nearly never. Nicole keeps me filled in on as much of the family gossip as I want to hear.
“You ain’t heard ‘bout Clay’s little difficulty?” Buzz pulled into the tiny island marina parking lot and gave me an almost toothless grin. “Trust you’ll be hearin’ soon enough”. Maybe you can impress the FBI fellers with your Hollywood hot stuff”.
Buzz hopped out of the truck and paused to look back in at me. “Do ya ever FEED those dogs?”
We were a fairly wet motley crew that made our way down to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s’ SAR boat moored at the public part of the dock. Fine wasn’t sure she liked rain, and she was really sure she wanted no part of the boat. My North Face sweatshirt was soaked through. Dandy dragged me down the gangway with his usual enthusiasm, nearly getting run over by Sully in the process, who had lost his tether to North and shaking his feathers and making booming noises at the top of his lungs.
“Well, what the hell?”. My brother Clay stood on the edge of the 40’ cutter and watched our arrival with one eyebrow raised and his mouth turned down. Clay’s been better than the rest of the family from day one, and rarely chooses to let us forget it. His only concession was to the fact that I actually appeared on TV. on a fairly regular basis, which made me somewhat slightly more sophisticated than the rest of the family.
“What the hell” in this particular case had nothing to do with my rain sodden appearance with two skinny dogs, and more to do with the large angry emu that jumped into the cutter without regard with who he pushed off in the process.
Clay emerged from the water between the dock and the cutter sputtering and screaming. “I’ll have that beast for Thanksgiving, we’ll have king size wings for the Superbowl, we’ll keep KFC in business for a year, what the HELL are you doing with that thing North?” Fair enough to Clay, he knew just whom to blame for the appearance of a large flightless bird.
Buzz, North, and a brown-jacketed deputy managed to fish Clay out of the water using dock fenders and spring lines from the cleat hitch. It wasn’t until he stood soaked and sputtering on the dock that I realized his uniform read “Sheriff” MacDuffy, and not “Deputy” MacDuffy.
“Wait a minute?” I glared at him indignantly. “You got elected Sheriff and nobody told me?”
Buzz gave another toothless grin. “Wasn’t so much he got elected, as it was that Old Abercrombie shot himself in the ass with his service revolver and got booted out for sheer stupidity. Clay here’s taken over until next election time. ‘Course, he ain’t exactly a rocket scientist but he ain’t used his side-arm on his own buttocks yet.” “And if he can’t find the Fowler slut, it won’t matter whether he shoots himself or not, cuz Brian Fowler’ll do it for him.”
I was cold, tired, wet, and confused. And I was the best off of my siblings. Nicole’s husband left her for the Schwans driver, Clay was a sheriff with a missing teen-ager and the FBI in his face, and North was babysitting an emu.
Lord, I miss Lindy Carrington.
After Clay was semi-dry and we were under way for the 30 minute cruise to the marina at Quilcene, we communed in the boat’s cabin.
“Did Buzz say something about a Fowler girl?” I asked. “Is that the same Fowler family we were in school with?”
Clay nodded, looking frustrated and defeated. “Calise Fowler is the daughter of Brian Fowler, he was in Drake’s class. He’s married Annie Carter. Calise has been missing since late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. So just a few days. Depending on who you talk to.”
“So she’d be about Gage’s age then?” Gage is Nicole’s son, Thirteen, macho, comedian, and voted “most likely to be a pro-athlete or used-car salesman”.
“A little older, actually. Don’t you remember Annie was pregnant when she graduated?” Annie had been older than Nic and I, and most of my high school years are blacked out by my constant search for a “get out jail free” card, but I did remember Annie. She was one of those warm, happy, fuzzy types that was so good to be true that you wanted to strangle her.
“Right. So that’d make Calise 16 or 17?” “Not a strange age to disappear. You sure she’s not a runaway?”
Clay sighed. “No, I’m not sure, but I’m also not the popular elected Sheriff. I’m the puppet filling in trying to prove myself until the next election. So I got half the town screaming that I’m not doing anything and why haven’t we called the F.B.I., and the rest of town wondering why I’m wasting tax dollars looking for a teen-age hooker party girl.”
“Was she?” I asked? “A teen-age hooker party girl?”
“I don’t know, really.” Clay sighed again. “So hard to tell with those high school kids, they don’t talk. But Brian and Annie seem to think she was okay, and Drake says she did well in his class.” Drake is the clock-wise normal version of the MacDuffy siblings. He’s ten months older than Nic and I, and usually gets voted an honorary triplet. He teaches science at the high school.
“Why did Buzz seem to think I might be here to help you?” I asked. “He wanted to know if I was here to help you or Nicole.”
Clay looked at me and for the first time since his impromptu bath in the 35 degree Puget Spa, he laughed. “Because you’re Hollywood, dummy.” You’re my sister. You’ve been on those cop shows – I’m much more likely to call you than the F.B.I. right? And then I make everyone happy – I’ve called in an ‘expert’, and I’m not spending a fortune in tax dollars.”
Remember the head-banging noise you heard earlier from the windshield when Buzz called me “Hollywood”? The noise you hear now is my head banging on the hull. What are the chances I could go back and plead that it was a vegetarian chili tofu dog and I’m very sorry, Miss Carrington…? Seems I was going to be needing that get out of jail free card again.
“You don’t really think I’m going to help you, do you?” Suspicions, dulled earlier by my numb, tired mind, started to kick in. “Why do we have a Sheriff’s boat picking your sister up from the island, Clay?” “Isn’t that wasting tax payer dollars?”
“Not really”. Clay jumped back against the side of the boat as Sully stomped down the stairs, looked round at us and then shook his rain soaked feathers much as a large Golden Retriever would shake his wet coat in the midst of company. I chose to ignore this, as did Clay. We were already as cold and wet as we could be.
“I’ve got the F.B.I. showing up this morning, and a whole convention of Spotted Owl supporters staying at Nicole’s. Plus the search parties have been organizing from there. Ginny isn’t worth a damn, and I’m not going to get any cooperation unless I can get someone there who can cook, make coffee and keep thing going.”
I remember now why I don’t come home very often. Weird shit happens here. And thanks to the twisting kaleidoscope that represents my family, I’m always stuck in the middle somehow.
We managed to arrive at the Quilcene Marina without anyone else falling overboard, or serving as towel duty for a wet emu. I did borrow some “bomb sniffing” police K9 jackets for the whippets to try to keep them reasonably warm. Waiting at the Marina was a large black SUV looking more like it belonged to presidential security detail than to a bass-ackward Sheriff’s department. Clay was downright proud of it. “First thing I bought with the new grant this year!”, he explained.
We piled aboard for the last leg of our “planes, boats, and automobiles” adventure, with Sully forced to ride in the very back cargo space with my suitcase and North’s dufflebag. Dandy, Fine and I got the middle row, and North rode shotgun.
The marina is on the opposite side of the bay from town, and there’s a major stretch of Highway 101 that circumvents the bay. It’s an amazing drive. I’d forgotten the beautiful majesty of the Madrona trees, the bonsai effect the near constant winds have on the evergeens, the screams of flying rat seagulls and the fresh saltiness of the air. In Venice Beach, you usually hear blaring radios, and screaming children, and smell suntan lotion and popcorn. It’s not the same
You also never forget the smell of emu dooky. Trust me on this one. About a mile into the drive, my nose startled to prickle. “North!” Both my brothers turned to look at me. “Sully stinks – I think he needs out”. “What the hell? Can’t he wait?” Clay clearly hadn’t had the pleasure of flying with North and emu yet.
“NO!” North and I both replied emphatically. Clay pulled the SUV into the nearest road turnoff, and North hopped out to give Sully a chance at some “er” relief. Dandy and I got out too, in spite of the rain. Dandy never misses a chance to check out the action wherever he is. 101 here is a windy, loopy road with few turnouts that basically ends at the marina. Kids come out here to party, A few intrepids with generators will actually reside out here, and periodically the Lions Club comes through with their adopt-a-higway litter patrol to keep things tidy. The scattered white plastic trash bags in the turn-out indicated their dedication to their civic duty.
“What the hell you feeding that thing?” Clay hollering behind me let me know that Sully was almost finished with business. Dandy had a different idea though. He made his way over to one of the litter patrol bags that seemed a little different – size maybe? I couldn’t really tell. Until Dandy pushed his way around to the other side of the bag and found the human arm and hand with a pretty pink tipped French manicure protruding from the stretchy plastic.
“Uhhhhhh, Clay?”
“What now, we gotta get going?”
“I think you’d better see this.”
To my credit, I didn’t throw up when Clay gingerly opened the bag. I did have to keep a tight handle on Dandy, who knew something was wrong and wanted to fix it. North looked a little pale, but held in there. Sully, on the other hand, got one sniff of the corpse and proceeded to puke up the small amount still left in his stomach.
“Oh for God’s sake” Clay glared at North, “Get that mess cleaned up, it isn’t part of our crime scene. I gotta go call for back up and try like hell to keep the media quiet until we positively identify her.
I didn’t need help positively identifying Calise Fowler. She looked just like her mother, right down to the fact that since she was nude, it definitely appeared that she was at least several months pregnant as a teen-ager.
The closest land to Quilcene resembling anything like an airstrip is actually located north of Puget Sound on a small privately owned island close to the Strait of Juan de Fuca. Geographically speaking Eliza Island is only a stones throw from Vancouver Island and is generally as close to Canada as it is to the United States. The McDuffy Cessna managed to not lose a screw during the flight and the bumpy landing across the rough field that served as a runway. The best part of the flight was the complete failure of the in-flight audio system, so I didn’t have to suffer through North yakking at the emu or Anne Murray. The unfortunate side of the flight was the fact that there’s apparently an undiscovered market for emu Depends. There is nothing quite like evacuating a small airplane that smells intensely of emu dooky. Even if you’re a whippet, emu dooky is not amusing.
It was only about 4am, when we banked through the grey foggy mist and I could peer down at landscape of trees, mountains and Sound that I hadn’t seen for five years.
It was, of course, raining. I miss my palm trees already. And how’m I going to explain rain to Fine and Dandy? They were whippets, small greyhound-like dogs, without an ounce of fat, no insulation, and built for speed. They’re also used to sleeping on furniture, eating at regular times, and lying out in the sun every day. This whole trip was going to be a shock to their system. Little did I know what a shock to my system it would turn out to be as well.
The Cessna lurched to a stop, and immediately a beat-up, battered, Chevy pick-up circa Anne Murray’s last hit rolled over to meet us. Eliza is a private island, the only way on and off is via plane or boat. The few vehicles on the island live, and die here permanently.
Buzz Brainard, the island caretaker had obviously been alerted to our presence. He also greeted North like an old buddy, which, of course they were. By my math, Buzz and North had been within a grade of each other in high school, depending on whether they graduated as scheduled or not. After a brief potty break, two very disgusted wet whippets loaded into the cab of the truck with me and my suitcase. In their opinion the luxury nature of their travel accommodations definitely was leaving something to be desired this trip. North tied down the Cessna near a black and gold
Buzz shot me a look out of the corner of his eye as we bounced down the rutted road to the public dock, where presumably we’d get a boat back to semi-civilization, meaning Quilcene.
“Hey, Hollywood”. “Been a long time since we’ve seen you in these parts.” I mentally banged my head on the windshield. Besides “Dufflebag” which was a family privilege insult, I hate being called “Hollywood” the worst. If I’d actually been an Oscar-winning starlet, it possibly could be tolerable, but given a cooking show and a couple guest appearances on C.S.I. and Law and Order, usually as a disgusting looking corpse, “Hollywood” seemed more of an insult. “Yeah, well, busy, you know” I tried smiling brightly hoping it would satisfy his need to make conversation. “Uh huh. He said. “But seems you aren’t too busy to come home when the family needs you. You here to help your sister or your brother?”
This floored me. North? Needing help? “What’s going on with North?” I asked as casually as I could manage.
“North?” Buzz guffawed. “North been a survivor since he shot the mountain lion before it ate you for lunch when you were nine.” While true, this is a particularly embarrassing story I don’t like to be reminded of. “I meant your brother Clay.”
“Clay?” As far as I knew, Clay was a deputy sheriff in Jefferson County with a Stepford wife and 2.5 Stepford children. I talk to Clay almost as much as I talk to North, which is obviously nearly never. Nicole keeps me filled in on as much of the family gossip as I want to hear.
“You ain’t heard ‘bout Clay’s little difficulty?” Buzz pulled into the tiny island marina parking lot and gave me an almost toothless grin. “Trust you’ll be hearin’ soon enough”. Maybe you can impress the FBI fellers with your Hollywood hot stuff”.
Buzz hopped out of the truck and paused to look back in at me. “Do ya ever FEED those dogs?”
We were a fairly wet motley crew that made our way down to a Jefferson County Sheriff’s’ SAR boat moored at the public part of the dock. Fine wasn’t sure she liked rain, and she was really sure she wanted no part of the boat. My North Face sweatshirt was soaked through. Dandy dragged me down the gangway with his usual enthusiasm, nearly getting run over by Sully in the process, who had lost his tether to North and shaking his feathers and making booming noises at the top of his lungs.
“Well, what the hell?”. My brother Clay stood on the edge of the 40’ cutter and watched our arrival with one eyebrow raised and his mouth turned down. Clay’s been better than the rest of the family from day one, and rarely chooses to let us forget it. His only concession was to the fact that I actually appeared on TV. on a fairly regular basis, which made me somewhat slightly more sophisticated than the rest of the family.
“What the hell” in this particular case had nothing to do with my rain sodden appearance with two skinny dogs, and more to do with the large angry emu that jumped into the cutter without regard with who he pushed off in the process.
Clay emerged from the water between the dock and the cutter sputtering and screaming. “I’ll have that beast for Thanksgiving, we’ll have king size wings for the Superbowl, we’ll keep KFC in business for a year, what the HELL are you doing with that thing North?” Fair enough to Clay, he knew just whom to blame for the appearance of a large flightless bird.
Buzz, North, and a brown-jacketed deputy managed to fish Clay out of the water using dock fenders and spring lines from the cleat hitch. It wasn’t until he stood soaked and sputtering on the dock that I realized his uniform read “Sheriff” MacDuffy, and not “Deputy” MacDuffy.
“Wait a minute?” I glared at him indignantly. “You got elected Sheriff and nobody told me?”
Buzz gave another toothless grin. “Wasn’t so much he got elected, as it was that Old Abercrombie shot himself in the ass with his service revolver and got booted out for sheer stupidity. Clay here’s taken over until next election time. ‘Course, he ain’t exactly a rocket scientist but he ain’t used his side-arm on his own buttocks yet.” “And if he can’t find the Fowler slut, it won’t matter whether he shoots himself or not, cuz Brian Fowler’ll do it for him.”
I was cold, tired, wet, and confused. And I was the best off of my siblings. Nicole’s husband left her for the Schwans driver, Clay was a sheriff with a missing teen-ager and the FBI in his face, and North was babysitting an emu.
Lord, I miss Lindy Carrington.
After Clay was semi-dry and we were under way for the 30 minute cruise to the marina at Quilcene, we communed in the boat’s cabin.
“Did Buzz say something about a Fowler girl?” I asked. “Is that the same Fowler family we were in school with?”
Clay nodded, looking frustrated and defeated. “Calise Fowler is the daughter of Brian Fowler, he was in Drake’s class. He’s married Annie Carter. Calise has been missing since late Saturday night or early Sunday morning. So just a few days. Depending on who you talk to.”
“So she’d be about Gage’s age then?” Gage is Nicole’s son, Thirteen, macho, comedian, and voted “most likely to be a pro-athlete or used-car salesman”.
“A little older, actually. Don’t you remember Annie was pregnant when she graduated?” Annie had been older than Nic and I, and most of my high school years are blacked out by my constant search for a “get out jail free” card, but I did remember Annie. She was one of those warm, happy, fuzzy types that was so good to be true that you wanted to strangle her.
“Right. So that’d make Calise 16 or 17?” “Not a strange age to disappear. You sure she’s not a runaway?”
Clay sighed. “No, I’m not sure, but I’m also not the popular elected Sheriff. I’m the puppet filling in trying to prove myself until the next election. So I got half the town screaming that I’m not doing anything and why haven’t we called the F.B.I., and the rest of town wondering why I’m wasting tax dollars looking for a teen-age hooker party girl.”
“Was she?” I asked? “A teen-age hooker party girl?”
“I don’t know, really.” Clay sighed again. “So hard to tell with those high school kids, they don’t talk. But Brian and Annie seem to think she was okay, and Drake says she did well in his class.” Drake is the clock-wise normal version of the MacDuffy siblings. He’s ten months older than Nic and I, and usually gets voted an honorary triplet. He teaches science at the high school.
“Why did Buzz seem to think I might be here to help you?” I asked. “He wanted to know if I was here to help you or Nicole.”
Clay looked at me and for the first time since his impromptu bath in the 35 degree Puget Spa, he laughed. “Because you’re Hollywood, dummy.” You’re my sister. You’ve been on those cop shows – I’m much more likely to call you than the F.B.I. right? And then I make everyone happy – I’ve called in an ‘expert’, and I’m not spending a fortune in tax dollars.”
Remember the head-banging noise you heard earlier from the windshield when Buzz called me “Hollywood”? The noise you hear now is my head banging on the hull. What are the chances I could go back and plead that it was a vegetarian chili tofu dog and I’m very sorry, Miss Carrington…? Seems I was going to be needing that get out of jail free card again.
“You don’t really think I’m going to help you, do you?” Suspicions, dulled earlier by my numb, tired mind, started to kick in. “Why do we have a Sheriff’s boat picking your sister up from the island, Clay?” “Isn’t that wasting tax payer dollars?”
“Not really”. Clay jumped back against the side of the boat as Sully stomped down the stairs, looked round at us and then shook his rain soaked feathers much as a large Golden Retriever would shake his wet coat in the midst of company. I chose to ignore this, as did Clay. We were already as cold and wet as we could be.
“I’ve got the F.B.I. showing up this morning, and a whole convention of Spotted Owl supporters staying at Nicole’s. Plus the search parties have been organizing from there. Ginny isn’t worth a damn, and I’m not going to get any cooperation unless I can get someone there who can cook, make coffee and keep thing going.”
I remember now why I don’t come home very often. Weird shit happens here. And thanks to the twisting kaleidoscope that represents my family, I’m always stuck in the middle somehow.
We managed to arrive at the Quilcene Marina without anyone else falling overboard, or serving as towel duty for a wet emu. I did borrow some “bomb sniffing” police K9 jackets for the whippets to try to keep them reasonably warm. Waiting at the Marina was a large black SUV looking more like it belonged to presidential security detail than to a bass-ackward Sheriff’s department. Clay was downright proud of it. “First thing I bought with the new grant this year!”, he explained.
We piled aboard for the last leg of our “planes, boats, and automobiles” adventure, with Sully forced to ride in the very back cargo space with my suitcase and North’s dufflebag. Dandy, Fine and I got the middle row, and North rode shotgun.
The marina is on the opposite side of the bay from town, and there’s a major stretch of Highway 101 that circumvents the bay. It’s an amazing drive. I’d forgotten the beautiful majesty of the Madrona trees, the bonsai effect the near constant winds have on the evergeens, the screams of flying rat seagulls and the fresh saltiness of the air. In Venice Beach, you usually hear blaring radios, and screaming children, and smell suntan lotion and popcorn. It’s not the same
You also never forget the smell of emu dooky. Trust me on this one. About a mile into the drive, my nose startled to prickle. “North!” Both my brothers turned to look at me. “Sully stinks – I think he needs out”. “What the hell? Can’t he wait?” Clay clearly hadn’t had the pleasure of flying with North and emu yet.
“NO!” North and I both replied emphatically. Clay pulled the SUV into the nearest road turnoff, and North hopped out to give Sully a chance at some “er” relief. Dandy and I got out too, in spite of the rain. Dandy never misses a chance to check out the action wherever he is. 101 here is a windy, loopy road with few turnouts that basically ends at the marina. Kids come out here to party, A few intrepids with generators will actually reside out here, and periodically the Lions Club comes through with their adopt-a-higway litter patrol to keep things tidy. The scattered white plastic trash bags in the turn-out indicated their dedication to their civic duty.
“What the hell you feeding that thing?” Clay hollering behind me let me know that Sully was almost finished with business. Dandy had a different idea though. He made his way over to one of the litter patrol bags that seemed a little different – size maybe? I couldn’t really tell. Until Dandy pushed his way around to the other side of the bag and found the human arm and hand with a pretty pink tipped French manicure protruding from the stretchy plastic.
“Uhhhhhh, Clay?”
“What now, we gotta get going?”
“I think you’d better see this.”
To my credit, I didn’t throw up when Clay gingerly opened the bag. I did have to keep a tight handle on Dandy, who knew something was wrong and wanted to fix it. North looked a little pale, but held in there. Sully, on the other hand, got one sniff of the corpse and proceeded to puke up the small amount still left in his stomach.
“Oh for God’s sake” Clay glared at North, “Get that mess cleaned up, it isn’t part of our crime scene. I gotta go call for back up and try like hell to keep the media quiet until we positively identify her.
I didn’t need help positively identifying Calise Fowler. She looked just like her mother, right down to the fact that since she was nude, it definitely appeared that she was at least several months pregnant as a teen-ager.
DAFS Chapter One
Chapter 1 (DAFS)
Have you ever had one of those days where your life is sailing smoothly down Ventura Highway in the sunshine, good life, great career and then someone else’s crisis completely throws potholes in the pavement?
I’m Natalie McDuffy, “Nat” to my friends, and “Duff “ to people who haven’t learned any better yet. And “Dufflebag” to my least favorite sibling.
I grew up in the backwoods of Washington State. God’s Country. The Evergreen State. Twenty-seven different local words for rain. Couldn’t get my rust-covered ass out of there fast enough. Since I graduated culinary school, I’ve lived and worked in Southern California. If you watch the Epicurious network on cable at all, you’ve probably seen my show “Vegetarian Victuals”. When I’m not shooting VV, I work at the world famous restaurant Maximillan’s By The Sea in L.A. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good steak as well as the next girl, but the vegetarian gig was the only programming slot available, and I needed the job. Now it’s the most-watched program on the network. Wouldn’t you know?
So now I’m a closet carnivore, living with my two dogs in Venice Beach.
Make that “was” a closet carnivore, living in Venice Beach.
Yesterday two unrelated unfortunate events changed both my eating and living arrangements.
I got outted from the closet con carne by an impromptu run-in with Lindy Carrington. You probably know Lindy from the pages of People magazine. She’s the actress who’s Britney’s BFF every other 20 minutes. Turns out she’s a religious vegetarian, card carrying member of PETA, and self-appointed president of the “save the hot dog” campaign. She caught me right outside the Venetian Frank with a double chili dog with onions. Lindy screamed and called me a lying, fraudulent bitch, which kind of pissed me off. I don’t get pissed off easily, but Lindy might have pissed me off to the point where I might have kind of lost my temper and thrown the double dog with onions in her bleached blond hair.
This unfortunate misunderstanding was followed by a phone call from my producer Bruce at Epicurious explaining that really, it had come to their attention that I a) was most unsuitable for the VV show, and b) had some serious temper issues. I tried to argue that I don’t have temper issues, I just like to eat in peace, but it didn’t fly.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I then got one of those middle of the night phone calls. You know, the ones that make you sit bolt upright in bed, trying to catch your breath, your heart hammering in your chest, and adrenaline surging through your fingers because you know something must be terribly wrong? Problem was, I couldn’t sit bolt upright in bed because Dandy the dog was lying across my chest. Under the covers. His sister Fine was on top of the covers, curled up in a little ball on my feet. Between the two of them, I couldn’t have sat upright if the apartment had been on fire.
Fortunately, my cell phone was within reach. And I recognized the ring tone. Certain people in your life, for various reasons, warrant their own ring tone. My twin sister was one of them.
12:30a.m. This had better be good.
“Nic. What’s wrong?”
My sister’s voice sounded fragile and shaky, although that was normal when she called my Horizon cell phone. She still lives in the official Middle of No-where on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and the small town where we grew up finally got a stop-light last year. Cable TV. and cell phone reception haven’t made it yet.
“Nat?” Crackle, fzzzz, staticky sounds
“ Nic what’s wrong?”
Fzzzttt “Jake” crackle, crackle “surf & turf bitch” crack fzzzzzzt “alone” fzzzzzzttttt “kids” sssssstttttt “need help up here”.
“Nic, I can’t hear you. Is something wrong with Jake or the kids?”
Fzzzzzttttttt “Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” Snort, sniffle. I held the phone away from my ear as my sister unmistakably blew her nose into the microphone.
“Nic, stop right where you are, I can hear you now. What’s going on?”
Crackle, ffffzzzzttt, crackle. So much for the Horizon stalker network.
I sighed and tried to heave 65 pounds of combined sleeping whippet off my body so I could get up and see if the reception was any better in the living room. The apartment’s pretty small, but it’s not that small, and it has a great view of the ocean if you stick your head out the bathroom window. With the success of VV, I could probably have afforded better, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. Too busy. Now unemployed.
It wasn’t until I got to the kitchen that Nic’s voice came through clearly enough for me to understand the issue du jour.
“Nat, Jake’s gone. Sluurrp, snuffle He ran off with one of the meat suppliers, and left me here with the kids to manage this place alone. I need help.”
Some sets of twins know what the other is thinking and feeling without having to exchange words. Not so Nic and I. We actually need modern conveniences, such as Horizon Wireless, to communicate.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t close, and as luck would have it, I had some time on my hands, thanks to Lindy Carrington, vegan bitch.
For most emergencies my family usually manages without me. I’m in L.A. and I have four siblings still within a 20-mile radius of the family homestead. For this particular emergency, however, the rest of the MacDuffy family were, well, duffs.
“Nic, why are you calling at 12:30am? Couldn’t this have waited until 5:30, or some civilized hour?”
“Nooo” Nic wailed. “There’s a Save The Spotted Owl convention in town, and we’re full up. I can’t make breakfast for 15 people.”
Nic and her soon-to-be ex-husband Jake ran Jake’s family business, a semi- bustling B&B in Quilcene, Washington. If you could convince a tourist there was a reason to stop and stay in Quilcene, Nic and Jake got their business. They also catered coffee, beer, sandwiches and oyster sliders to every logger and local fisherman around. Nic can field strip a 30-06 and you can bounce a quarter off a bed she makes, but she’s about as much good in the kitchen as Daisy, the resident goat. Usually, Jake’s mother, Ginny, nick-named for her favorite booze stashed under the counter, could slosh coffee at the locals, but without Jake’s culinary skills, there was gonna be no one to serve up the famous beer battered fish and chips, and the clam chowder would come from a can from New England.
Not to mention, Nic’s breakfast-making skills probably didn’t run much past corn flakes and orange juice.
One can make the drive from LA to Seattle in about twenty hours if you stop at every Starbucks between Disneyland and the Space Needle. By my sleep-addled brain, that was going to put me about 16 hours late for breakfast.
“Uhhh, Nic?” “How’m I supposed to be any help here? I sure can’t get there before breakfast.”
“Ever heard of an airplane?” “I’m pretty sure they have them at LAX”.
“Nic, I can’t just come and leave Fine and Dandy. They have to come too.”
“Shit”. “Lemme think”.
Since Nic thinking could be a laborious process, I amused myself by making a pot of coffee. I debated between leaded and un-leaded – unsure as to what my chances of actually making it back to bed might be. Nic’s a slow thinker, but she is an amazing plotter.
“Okay, I’ve got an idea. Let me call you right back.” Nic disconnected.
I opted for caffeine, and took the opportunity to rummage through the back of my closet and throw some of my remaining Eddie Bauer wardrobe into a suitcase.
Twenty minutes later, the cell phone jangled an unknown number.
“Hey Dufflebag!” I rolled my eyes back in my head as far as they could go without a complete 360.
“Hey, North.” I can barely tolerate my oldest brother on good days with enough sleep. Middle of the night without coffee or alcohol wasn’t going to cut it.
“Nic says you need a ride home. Something about Jake the Snake slithering out in the middle of the night.” You may be getting the idea that our family leans a little counter-clockwise in the dysfunctional department. “I’m in San Diego dropping off a sick orca calf. Pick you up at Orange County in an hour.” The phone went dead in my hand.
When the growing-up genes were handed out, North missed more than a few of his share. He then addled what was left coherent in his brain with a bit too much Canadian wacky tobacky. In spite of the fact that he had the maturity level and general habits of a happy-go-lucky teenager, he managed to get his pilot’s license. The BC bud left him with a permanent need to, well, fly. Post-license, he disappeared for a few years, and returned to Quilcene with a tan and a Cessna. He pops about the world with the Cessna, sometimes on legitimate business, and other times we just don’t ask questions. Most of the time, we have no idea where he is or what he’s up to. Really, it’s okay that way. Remember what I said about dysfunctional.
Needless to say, my faith in his piloting skill is not assisted by the practices of any organized religion. And just my luck he’s an hour away with an airplane.
It’s a good thing I love my sister.
The other down-side of flying with North is that his music taste arrested sometime in the soft sounds of the Seventies. That means the cockpit headphones will be tuned to the likes of Karen Carpenter and Anne Murray. I’m pretty sure that after three hours of listening to “Daydream Believer” I’m going to want to do a D.B. Cooper out the back of the plane.
An hour later found me on the sidewalk outside Orange County Municipal Airport, towing a tangle consisting of two confused whippets on leashes and my rolling black carry-on size suitcase. Fine wanted nothing to do with the weird thing on wheels and had wrapped her leash around my knees in an attempt to get as far from it as possible. I couldn’t get her untangled without putting down my travel mug of coffee, which would have gotten knocked over in the chaos. So we staggered crab like to the section of the airport marked for transient aircraft. I didn’t see the blue and grey McDuffy Cessna, or any sign of North, so I made my way to the nearest hangar and stumbled through the side door.
“Dufflebag! It’s about time you got here!” North, unmistakable with trademark McDuffy red hair, and his pony-tail holding the current family record for length. In spite of the fact he was holding the largest wrench I’d ever seen, and his coveralls were drenched in grease, he whirled over to give me a big hug. This resulted in the two whippets going crazy with excessive greeting disorder, and me losing my grip on both the suitcase and the travel mug. Now I’m covered in grease, and I have no coffee.
“Hi North. Good to see you too. Where’s the plane?”
North gave me his most mischievous grin, the one that bore bad tidings to anyone with sanity intact. “It’s here” he gestured at the back of the hangar, where the plane appeared to be littered across the hangar floor in several pieces. “Started making a funny pinging noise when we took off from San Diego, so thought I’d better have a look before we headed up”.
I frowned at the mess on the floor. “Funny pinging noises? Just what does that mean?”
“Oh, probably nothing, maybe a loose screw or something. Don’t worry about it. Get yourself some more coffee.”
Since the whippets appeared to be harmlessly wandering the hangar, I took the travel mug over to a small kitchen area in a corner and examined the black sludge that represented itself as coffee.
BOOM! I jumped about three feet in the air as a bomb went off behind me. I came down, turned around and found myself nearly eyeball to eyeball with a gigantic bird that promptly bit me in the ear.
BOOM! The bird seemed to have a limited vocabulary, consisting mostly of imitating a cannon. It made what I swear was a strange face and spit my gold hoop earring out on the floor.
“North!” I yelled. “What the hell is this thing and why is it here?”
“What’s what?” North and Dandy both crawled out of the belly of the plane to check out the commotion. Whippets are the most helpful creatures on earth, and Dandy clearly felt it was his duty to be mechanic’s assistant. The bird was far too large for him to consider it any kind of prey. “Oh.” said North. “That’s Sully. Didn’t I mention Sully? He’s going back with us. San Diego Zoo is sending him up to the Game Farm.
“What the hell IS he?” I asked, cautiously ducking under the bird to retrieve my earring. Sully promptly tried to take a bite out of the hood of my sweatshirt. “And why does he keep trying to eat my wardrobe?”
“He’s an emu.” North explained. “He’s really friendly, and mostly harmless.”
Sure. As I try to yank my hood out of Sully’s mouth. I was saved from Emu tug of war by the arrival of Fine, who found nothing normal about a giant bird in an airplane hangar and ballistically started barking. Sully, who’d been quite happy to boom deafeningly at me, took one look at Fine and bolted for the Cessna, Fine at his heels. If Emu’s have heels. Sully made it to the plane and hopped up in the co-pilot seat and proceeded to scowl and hiss at Fine, who sat on the hangar floor and continued barking.
I sighed and soothed Fine with a piece of stale powdered doughnut that was hanging out by the coffee. North and Dandy appeared to have the plane almost back in one piece, so maybe we’d get lucky and get out of here before it was time to serve the Spotted Owl people breakfast.
“Okay, you ready?” North crawled out from under the plane and dusted his hands off.
“Is IT ready?” I was more concerned about the plane.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll get us home anyway” North walked off to get his flight plan cheerfully optimistic. “You and the dogs hop in back, and I’ll hand you up your bag.”
“Whaddya mean, hop in back?” I asked. “Doesn’t that beast have a crate to ride in?”
“You wanna try moving him now, be my guest.” North grinned at me. “Lot faster if we just let him stay put.” This appeared to be true. Sully the emu was glaring defiantly from the co-pilot seat. “This is all your fault” I told Fine. “You couldn’t see he was BIGGER than you are?” Fine perked her ears and cocked her head at me inquisitively. I guess you couldn’t blame her, she had to get up at 2am, and all she’d had to eat was a stale doughnut. I’d be grumpy too. In fact, I WAS grumpy.
I bet most people have not been stuffed in the back of a Cessna with two whippets, a smallish suitcase, a 35 pound bag of emu food, and a backpack, presumably North’s. Just getting all squashed in is bad enough, flying that way for three hours is pure hell. To top it all off, my kind and sensitive brother glanced back after I’d made room for everything and made me move the bag of emu food off the floor onto its own seat. “Well, it’s all we’ve got for him for awhile, and it can’t get ripped or dirty”. Great. This left my suitcase and the backpack on the floor and both Fine and Dandy sharing my lap.
In flight service on Air North is non-existent. No matter how much you ask, the emu will not serve coffee or peanuts. In fact, Sully was a paranoid flyer, considering the fact that he’s a bird, for crying out loud. He spent most of trip trying to climb in North’s lap, North spent most of the flight peering around an emu neck, and I spent most of the flight with my sweatshirt hood pulled around my eyes, clinging desperately to Fine and Dandy.
I’m starting to reconsider how much I love my sister.
Have you ever had one of those days where your life is sailing smoothly down Ventura Highway in the sunshine, good life, great career and then someone else’s crisis completely throws potholes in the pavement?
I’m Natalie McDuffy, “Nat” to my friends, and “Duff “ to people who haven’t learned any better yet. And “Dufflebag” to my least favorite sibling.
I grew up in the backwoods of Washington State. God’s Country. The Evergreen State. Twenty-seven different local words for rain. Couldn’t get my rust-covered ass out of there fast enough. Since I graduated culinary school, I’ve lived and worked in Southern California. If you watch the Epicurious network on cable at all, you’ve probably seen my show “Vegetarian Victuals”. When I’m not shooting VV, I work at the world famous restaurant Maximillan’s By The Sea in L.A. Now, don’t get me wrong, I love a good steak as well as the next girl, but the vegetarian gig was the only programming slot available, and I needed the job. Now it’s the most-watched program on the network. Wouldn’t you know?
So now I’m a closet carnivore, living with my two dogs in Venice Beach.
Make that “was” a closet carnivore, living in Venice Beach.
Yesterday two unrelated unfortunate events changed both my eating and living arrangements.
I got outted from the closet con carne by an impromptu run-in with Lindy Carrington. You probably know Lindy from the pages of People magazine. She’s the actress who’s Britney’s BFF every other 20 minutes. Turns out she’s a religious vegetarian, card carrying member of PETA, and self-appointed president of the “save the hot dog” campaign. She caught me right outside the Venetian Frank with a double chili dog with onions. Lindy screamed and called me a lying, fraudulent bitch, which kind of pissed me off. I don’t get pissed off easily, but Lindy might have pissed me off to the point where I might have kind of lost my temper and thrown the double dog with onions in her bleached blond hair.
This unfortunate misunderstanding was followed by a phone call from my producer Bruce at Epicurious explaining that really, it had come to their attention that I a) was most unsuitable for the VV show, and b) had some serious temper issues. I tried to argue that I don’t have temper issues, I just like to eat in peace, but it didn’t fly.
If that wasn’t bad enough, I then got one of those middle of the night phone calls. You know, the ones that make you sit bolt upright in bed, trying to catch your breath, your heart hammering in your chest, and adrenaline surging through your fingers because you know something must be terribly wrong? Problem was, I couldn’t sit bolt upright in bed because Dandy the dog was lying across my chest. Under the covers. His sister Fine was on top of the covers, curled up in a little ball on my feet. Between the two of them, I couldn’t have sat upright if the apartment had been on fire.
Fortunately, my cell phone was within reach. And I recognized the ring tone. Certain people in your life, for various reasons, warrant their own ring tone. My twin sister was one of them.
12:30a.m. This had better be good.
“Nic. What’s wrong?”
My sister’s voice sounded fragile and shaky, although that was normal when she called my Horizon cell phone. She still lives in the official Middle of No-where on Washington’s Olympic Peninsula, and the small town where we grew up finally got a stop-light last year. Cable TV. and cell phone reception haven’t made it yet.
“Nat?” Crackle, fzzzz, staticky sounds
“ Nic what’s wrong?”
Fzzzttt “Jake” crackle, crackle “surf & turf bitch” crack fzzzzzzt “alone” fzzzzzzttttt “kids” sssssstttttt “need help up here”.
“Nic, I can’t hear you. Is something wrong with Jake or the kids?”
Fzzzzzttttttt “Waaaahhhhhhhhhhhhhh” Snort, sniffle. I held the phone away from my ear as my sister unmistakably blew her nose into the microphone.
“Nic, stop right where you are, I can hear you now. What’s going on?”
Crackle, ffffzzzzttt, crackle. So much for the Horizon stalker network.
I sighed and tried to heave 65 pounds of combined sleeping whippet off my body so I could get up and see if the reception was any better in the living room. The apartment’s pretty small, but it’s not that small, and it has a great view of the ocean if you stick your head out the bathroom window. With the success of VV, I could probably have afforded better, but I hadn’t gotten around to it. Too busy. Now unemployed.
It wasn’t until I got to the kitchen that Nic’s voice came through clearly enough for me to understand the issue du jour.
“Nat, Jake’s gone. Sluurrp, snuffle He ran off with one of the meat suppliers, and left me here with the kids to manage this place alone. I need help.”
Some sets of twins know what the other is thinking and feeling without having to exchange words. Not so Nic and I. We actually need modern conveniences, such as Horizon Wireless, to communicate.
But that doesn’t mean we aren’t close, and as luck would have it, I had some time on my hands, thanks to Lindy Carrington, vegan bitch.
For most emergencies my family usually manages without me. I’m in L.A. and I have four siblings still within a 20-mile radius of the family homestead. For this particular emergency, however, the rest of the MacDuffy family were, well, duffs.
“Nic, why are you calling at 12:30am? Couldn’t this have waited until 5:30, or some civilized hour?”
“Nooo” Nic wailed. “There’s a Save The Spotted Owl convention in town, and we’re full up. I can’t make breakfast for 15 people.”
Nic and her soon-to-be ex-husband Jake ran Jake’s family business, a semi- bustling B&B in Quilcene, Washington. If you could convince a tourist there was a reason to stop and stay in Quilcene, Nic and Jake got their business. They also catered coffee, beer, sandwiches and oyster sliders to every logger and local fisherman around. Nic can field strip a 30-06 and you can bounce a quarter off a bed she makes, but she’s about as much good in the kitchen as Daisy, the resident goat. Usually, Jake’s mother, Ginny, nick-named for her favorite booze stashed under the counter, could slosh coffee at the locals, but without Jake’s culinary skills, there was gonna be no one to serve up the famous beer battered fish and chips, and the clam chowder would come from a can from
Not to mention, Nic’s breakfast-making skills probably didn’t run much past corn flakes and orange juice.
One can make the drive from LA to Seattle in about twenty hours if you stop at every Starbucks between Disneyland and the Space Needle. By my sleep-addled brain, that was going to put me about 16 hours late for breakfast.
“Uhhh, Nic?” “How’m I supposed to be any help here? I sure can’t get there before breakfast.”
“Ever heard of an airplane?” “I’m pretty sure they have them at LAX”.
“Nic, I can’t just come and leave Fine and Dandy. They have to come too.”
“Shit”. “Lemme think”.
Since Nic thinking could be a laborious process, I amused myself by making a pot of coffee. I debated between leaded and un-leaded – unsure as to what my chances of actually making it back to bed might be. Nic’s a slow thinker, but she is an amazing plotter.
“Okay, I’ve got an idea. Let me call you right back.” Nic disconnected.
I opted for caffeine, and took the opportunity to rummage through the back of my closet and throw some of my remaining Eddie Bauer wardrobe into a suitcase.
Twenty minutes later, the cell phone jangled an unknown number.
“Hey Dufflebag!” I rolled my eyes back in my head as far as they could go without a complete 360.
“Hey, North.” I can barely tolerate my oldest brother on good days with enough sleep. Middle of the night without coffee or alcohol wasn’t going to cut it.
“Nic says you need a ride home. Something about Jake the Snake slithering out in the middle of the night.” You may be getting the idea that our family leans a little counter-clockwise in the dysfunctional department. “I’m in San Diego dropping off a sick orca calf. Pick you up at Orange County in an hour.” The phone went dead in my hand.
When the growing-up genes were handed out, North missed more than a few of his share. He then addled what was left coherent in his brain with a bit too much Canadian wacky tobacky. In spite of the fact that he had the maturity level and general habits of a happy-go-lucky teenager, he managed to get his pilot’s license. The BC bud left him with a permanent need to, well, fly. Post-license, he disappeared for a few years, and returned to Quilcene with a tan and a Cessna. He pops about the world with the Cessna, sometimes on legitimate business, and other times we just don’t ask questions. Most of the time, we have no idea where he is or what he’s up to. Really, it’s okay that way. Remember what I said about dysfunctional.
Needless to say, my faith in his piloting skill is not assisted by the practices of any organized religion. And just my luck he’s an hour away with an airplane.
It’s a good thing I love my sister.
The other down-side of flying with North is that his music taste arrested sometime in the soft sounds of the Seventies. That means the cockpit headphones will be tuned to the likes of Karen Carpenter and Anne Murray. I’m pretty sure that after three hours of listening to “Daydream Believer” I’m going to want to do a D.B. Cooper out the back of the plane.
An hour later found me on the sidewalk outside Orange County Municipal Airport, towing a tangle consisting of two confused whippets on leashes and my rolling black carry-on size suitcase. Fine wanted nothing to do with the weird thing on wheels and had wrapped her leash around my knees in an attempt to get as far from it as possible. I couldn’t get her untangled without putting down my travel mug of coffee, which would have gotten knocked over in the chaos. So we staggered crab like to the section of the airport marked for transient aircraft. I didn’t see the blue and grey McDuffy Cessna, or any sign of North, so I made my way to the nearest hangar and stumbled through the side door.
“Dufflebag! It’s about time you got here!” North, unmistakable with trademark McDuffy red hair, and his pony-tail holding the current family record for length. In spite of the fact he was holding the largest wrench I’d ever seen, and his coveralls were drenched in grease, he whirled over to give me a big hug. This resulted in the two whippets going crazy with excessive greeting disorder, and me losing my grip on both the suitcase and the travel mug. Now I’m covered in grease, and I have no coffee.
“Hi North. Good to see you too. Where’s the plane?”
North gave me his most mischievous grin, the one that bore bad tidings to anyone with sanity intact. “It’s here” he gestured at the back of the hangar, where the plane appeared to be littered across the hangar floor in several pieces. “Started making a funny pinging noise when we took off from San Diego, so thought I’d better have a look before we headed up”.
I frowned at the mess on the floor. “Funny pinging noises? Just what does that mean?”
“Oh, probably nothing, maybe a loose screw or something. Don’t worry about it. Get yourself some more coffee.”
Since the whippets appeared to be harmlessly wandering the hangar, I took the travel mug over to a small kitchen area in a corner and examined the black sludge that represented itself as coffee.
BOOM! I jumped about three feet in the air as a bomb went off behind me. I came down, turned around and found myself nearly eyeball to eyeball with a gigantic bird that promptly bit me in the ear.
BOOM! The bird seemed to have a limited vocabulary, consisting mostly of imitating a cannon. It made what I swear was a strange face and spit my gold hoop earring out on the floor.
“North!” I yelled. “What the hell is this thing and why is it here?”
“What’s what?” North and Dandy both crawled out of the belly of the plane to check out the commotion. Whippets are the most helpful creatures on earth, and Dandy clearly felt it was his duty to be mechanic’s assistant. The bird was far too large for him to consider it any kind of prey. “Oh.” said North. “That’s Sully. Didn’t I mention Sully? He’s going back with us. San Diego Zoo is sending him up to the Game Farm.
“What the hell IS he?” I asked, cautiously ducking under the bird to retrieve my earring. Sully promptly tried to take a bite out of the hood of my sweatshirt. “And why does he keep trying to eat my wardrobe?”
“He’s an emu.” North explained. “He’s really friendly, and mostly harmless.”
Sure. As I try to yank my hood out of Sully’s mouth. I was saved from Emu tug of war by the arrival of Fine, who found nothing normal about a giant bird in an airplane hangar and ballistically started barking. Sully, who’d been quite happy to boom deafeningly at me, took one look at Fine and bolted for the Cessna, Fine at his heels. If Emu’s have heels. Sully made it to the plane and hopped up in the co-pilot seat and proceeded to scowl and hiss at Fine, who sat on the hangar floor and continued barking.
I sighed and soothed Fine with a piece of stale powdered doughnut that was hanging out by the coffee. North and Dandy appeared to have the plane almost back in one piece, so maybe we’d get lucky and get out of here before it was time to serve the Spotted Owl people breakfast.
“Okay, you ready?” North crawled out from under the plane and dusted his hands off.
“Is IT ready?” I was more concerned about the plane.
“It’ll be fine. It’ll get us home anyway” North walked off to get his flight plan cheerfully optimistic. “You and the dogs hop in back, and I’ll hand you up your bag.”
“Whaddya mean, hop in back?” I asked. “Doesn’t that beast have a crate to ride in?”
“You wanna try moving him now, be my guest.” North grinned at me. “Lot faster if we just let him stay put.” This appeared to be true. Sully the emu was glaring defiantly from the co-pilot seat. “This is all your fault” I told Fine. “You couldn’t see he was BIGGER than you are?” Fine perked her ears and cocked her head at me inquisitively. I guess you couldn’t blame her, she had to get up at 2am, and all she’d had to eat was a stale doughnut. I’d be grumpy too. In fact, I WAS grumpy.
I bet most people have not been stuffed in the back of a Cessna with two whippets, a smallish suitcase, a 35 pound bag of emu food, and a backpack, presumably North’s. Just getting all squashed in is bad enough, flying that way for three hours is pure hell. To top it all off, my kind and sensitive brother glanced back after I’d made room for everything and made me move the bag of emu food off the floor onto its own seat. “Well, it’s all we’ve got for him for awhile, and it can’t get ripped or dirty”. Great. This left my suitcase and the backpack on the floor and both Fine and Dandy sharing my lap.
In flight service on Air North is non-existent. No matter how much you ask, the emu will not serve coffee or peanuts. In fact, Sully was a paranoid flyer, considering the fact that he’s a bird, for crying out loud. He spent most of trip trying to climb in North’s lap, North spent most of the flight peering around an emu neck, and I spent most of the flight with my sweatshirt hood pulled around my eyes, clinging desperately to Fine and Dandy.
I’m starting to reconsider how much I love my sister.
Tuesday, March 10, 2009
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