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Gil was buzzed into the main area of the Greenfield Police Station, where he walked over to Detective Tindall’s desk. “Hi, Karen! You really have video of the tunnel people?”
“Pull up a chair. The judge wouldn’t sign off on surveillance, so I did the next best thing. I asked the people living adjacent to the tunnels to keep an eye out for suspicious activity out there. Cheryl Needham’s son installed a few video cameras around her house. I had to zoom-in the video a lot, so the picture isn’t very clear. But watch this.”
Gil saw a grainy picture of a person in the woods. He was walking around holding something. They watched for a couple of minutes and Gil asked Karen to zoom out a little. He grinned and said, “I think I know what he’s doing. He’s dowsing.”
“Dowsing?”
“To dowse, a person holds an L-shaped rod in each hand and, when the rods move, they’re over a water source, a pipe or conduit, a buried body, or whatever they’re looking for. I worked with a guy who used dowsing to find buried pipes or wires before excavating. He swore by it. I think it’s a bunch of malarkey, but I actually tried it once with that guy. I walked for a few yards and the rods suddenly moved toward each other. It was creepy. But, I never found out if there was anything under there.”
“Well, this video won’t get a judge to authorize any surveillance,” said Karen. “But what we do know, if these people are, in fact, dowsing, is that they are looking for something under the ground in that area. Why wouldn’t they just use a metal detector?”
“Maybe because what they’re looking for is either not metallic or buried too deep. If the dowsing gives them responses, they would dig down. If not, they might try using ground-penetrating radar. I don’t know anything about buying or using that type of equipment. I’ll have to research it. If it’s really expensive, these guys may hire another PhD student to make one for them. They seem to have quite a bit of money, based on their tunneling escapades.”
“Well, why don’t you look into that. I’ll put some surveillance on the area and maybe we’ll catch these people.”
Gil’s cell phone rang with a rousing rendition of By The Beautiful Sea which made Karen giggle and shake her head. “Hi, Professor. Sure. Hold on, can I put you on speaker? I have Detective Tindall with me.” He fumbled with his phone for a few seconds. “Okay, so you say you have information on the tunneling method?”
“Yes. Professor Clive Fassbender from the Colorado School of Mines sent me some information. He said that the people you’re after probably used a small boring machine of a type used quite routinely. The machine would have a rotating head that bores through soil and rocks. Water is pumped into the head of the machine which mixes with the soil and crushed rocks and is pumped out the back as a slurry. He said that it’s unusual to use an expandable mesh tunnel material. He’d never heard of that. He also said that tunneling along the sewer piping was a smart thing to do because that soil would have been previously excavated and back-filled, making it easy to tunnel through. I’ll email you the information he sent me. I hope this helps.”
“I’m sure it’ll help, Professor. There couldn’t be too many of these boring machines around here,” said Gil.
“Thank you so much, Professor. You’ve been very helpful,” said Karen.
Gil ended the call. “I’ll look through the material he sent over. I’m curious about those machines. I wonder how they steer them.”
“That’s funny. I’m not the slightest bit interested in those boring machines.”
“You can’t make dad jokes, you’re a mom.”
“By the way, you and Lili are invited to dinner at Eddie Locke’s place tonight. Lili has all the details.” Eddie Locke was an old high school classmate of Gil’s.
“That sounds like fun. Is he still dating Pam Leone from our last case?”
“As far as I know, he is. So, how was it shacking up in Florida with Lili?”
“It was a little surrealistic. Sometimes it felt like I was with Cynthia, then suddenly I’d realize I was with a stranger. Other times it felt like I’d been married to Lili for years. We were definitely thrown into a mode of getting used to each other’s idiosyncrasies very quickly.”
“What idiosyncrasies?”
Suddenly Gil started moving his arms up and down saying, “Danger Will Robinson! Danger Will Robinson!”
Karen looked at him like he was crazy.
“Sorry. That’s from my generation. It was from an old kid’s show called Lost in Space. Whenever the boy in the show, Will Robinson, was about to get into trouble, his robot pal would launch into that warning. Anyway, I’d have to be crazy to start telling you what I think are Lili’s idiosyncrasies.”
Karen grinned. “I guess you are a smart guy, just like the Chief says.”
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GIL AND LILI ARRIVED at Eddie Locke’s place at 6:00. It was an attractive ranch-style house with dark brown cedar siding. As they approached the front door, they were surprised to find it to be made of stainless steel, with no apparent door knob. As Gil was about to knock, the door automatically opened with a hiss. The top half of the door slid up and the bottom half slid down. They looked at each other, shrugged, then walked in. They were shocked. The entire living space looked like the inside of a spaceship from a science-fiction movie. The walls, ceilings, and floors were shiny gray and cream colored. All the wall and ceiling corners were curved. The furnishings were ultra-modern, and most were attached to the floors and walls, with leather cushions in muted colors. The television was an enormous screen that took up a whole wall of the living room. Another entire wall was comprised of an aquarium filled with colorful fish, some up to a foot in length.
Eddie approached and said, “Welcome aboard, Gil! You remember my friend Pam?” Gil and Pam were wearing matching coveralls.
“Yes, of course. Hi, Pam. This is Lili, whom you may remember.”
“Of course, hi! We’re so glad you could come.”
“Eddie, your house is unreal!” said Gil. “I’ve never seen anything like it, except in the movies.” He handed Eddie a bottle of wine.
“Thanks, buddy! This style is typical of the living quarters on my starship. Oh, I almost forgot.” Eddie went over to a tablet computer that was built into his kitchen island and turned on some new-age music.
Lili was enthralled. She walked around looking at the curious collection of house plants and artwork. A woman’s voice out of nowhere said, “Approaching.” A view of people walking toward the front door appeared on the video screen. The door opened with a hiss, and Micky Tindall walked in with his wife Jane. Karen and her husband Jeff followed along. Karen’s father-in-law, Micky, was also a classmate of Gil and Eddie’s. There were hugs and greetings all around.
Eddie said, “We’ve made some special drinks for you tonight. The blue and green ones are alcoholic and the pink one is lemonade. Please help yourselves to some hors-d’oeuvres over at the Science Station.” The brightly colored drinks in glass pitchers matched the futuristic theme of the house. Even the appetizers looked futuristic, with perfectly cut sandwich wedges of salmon surrounded by cream cheese and stripes of sliced cucumbers, circles of bread topped with spirals of thinly-sliced avocado, and small cones of bread filled with chicken salad and cranberry sauce.
Gil brought Lili a blue drink, while he stuck with the pink lemonade. She took a sip and flipped her hand open by her head, the universal sign of her head exploding. “This drink is sweet, tangy, and loaded with alcohol. I think the blue is Curaçao liqueur, which tastes orangy. If I drink more than one of these, I’ll be lost in space.”
Karen came over to them and looked around to make sure nobody could hear them. “Lili, have you heard anything from your friend in Witness Protection?”
“There was another attempt on her life! Her guard was shot and she took off. Nobody’s heard from her since.”
“You have got to be kidding! Somebody found her in WITSEC? How is that even possible?”
“I have no idea. I’m hoping she’ll contact me, somehow. Though, I’m not sure what I’d tell her if she does.”
“Either they were tracking her the whole time since she entered the program, or the US Marshals are compromised at some level,” said Karen. “Neither scenario seems plausible.”
“She could have tried to contact a friend, but she doesn’t seem to have any around here, especially since her neighbor was killed. Her Florida friends haven’t heard from her. She doesn’t have any close family either.”
Gil said, “The whole situation is even more bizarre than tunnels under Greenfield, and definitely scarier.” Gil saw Eddie talking to Micky, so he went over to join the conversation. “Hi Mick.”
“Hi Gil, do you remember Alice Hayes?” asked Micky.
“A little. She really wasn’t in any of my classes.”
“Well, after high school, she worked as a stripper at Burgo’s Tavern in Sunderland. She just retired as the CEO of a big cosmetics company in New Jersey.”
“So, we should encourage more girls to get that sort of work experience as a pathway to success?” asked Eddie.
“I really don’t think that’s a good idea, but good for Alice.” said Gil.
“So, what’s up with the mysterious tunnels?” asked Micky.
“I think that they may be examples of quantum tunneling. Created by advanced beings from another dimension,” said Eddie.
“Well, I’ll have to add that to our list of possibilities. But, I can’t really talk about an ongoing investigation,” said Gil.
“Excuse me, gentlemen,” said Eddie. I have to help get dinner ready to serve.”
Pam requested that everyone refresh their drinks and make their way to the dinner table. The dining room had subdued, bluish lighting and, in the middle of the table, lay a large, cream-colored hemisphere. Pam pressed a button on the wall, and the top of the hemisphere lifted, casting white lights onto the tabletop. Suddenly, the sides slid out in segments, like oranges slices. The segments lowered to the floor, becoming the chairs. The table and chairs had purple accent lighting underneath.
After the women had decided where everyone should sit, they all sat down. Eddie and Pam brought out platters that contained matrices of cube-shaped foods. Each platter held different colored cubes, and each cube was about three inches on each edge. The platters were labeled: green cubes were broccoli and spinach, white were rice, orange were sweet potatoes, and there were also chicken, beef, and salmon cubes.
As people took food and passed around the platters, Eddie explained, “That’s the way they come out of the food synthesizers.”
“Well, actually that’s the way they come from a company called SQUAREAT in Miami,” said Pam. “We had a friend ship them to us in a refrigerated truck.”
Lili tried a green cube. “It’s really good!”
They are all nutritionally balanced portions that are easy to store and last for two weeks in the fridge,” said Pam.
“And the farm is very neat and compact, with a variety of square animals, birds, and plants.” said Eddie. The guests chuckled.
“Well, I guess were all getting a square meal today,” said Jane. There were a few groans in response to that comment, but the table had a constant buzz of excitement as people tried the variety of food cubes.
As everyone finished their meals, Gil and Micky helped clear the dishes. Pam and Eddie brought several trays of futuristic-looking pastries to the table. They were all very colorful in cylinder, triangle, and cone shapes. Pam went around offering scoops of vanilla ice cream.
“Oh, these are fabulous!” said Karen. Where did you get them?”
“I went to a wedding cake designer in Northampton, said Pam. She’s a friend of mine.”
“This is the most interesting dinner I’ve ever had in my life,” said Gil. “It’s been wonderful.” Everybody chimed in to agree.
After dinner, some opted for another drink, but more opted for coffee. Gil, Lili, and Karen were chatting with Pam. Eddie called for everyone’s attention. “I would like to thank you all for coming. I hope you’ve enjoyed my star cruiser, but I’d like you to consider this. Earth is really just a spacecraft hurtling through space at unimaginable speed. We’ve been lucky enough to be safe from the dangerous space environment by residing within our atmosphere. Unfortunately, we’ve been polluting our atmosphere at increasing rates for the past couple of hundred years. Hopefully we will soon remedy that situation and survive. If not, earth will continue to hurtle through space without us. Thank you.” Everyone clapped.