A few hours later, The Babe and I returned to Earl’s house. No cars were in the driveway so both he and Dad had left, most likely for China Camp.
“Earl? Dad? Anybody here?” I waited. No response. “Good.”
Just to make sure I wouldn’t be surprised, I locked the front door and climbed the staircase to the second floor to Earl’s bedroom, located at the far end of the hall.
Earl was a neatnik. His room—or what should be called his suite of rooms—personified Ben Franklin’s quote: “A place for everything and everything in its place.” The expansive bedroom, painted a pale green, had a deck off to one side, with a view of La Cruz Canyon, like mine. A gentlemanly coverlet in shades of brown and tan engulfed the king-sized bed. The bed was precisely made. I bet it had knife-sharp hospital corners. I wondered for a moment if Earl had ever served. Antique pine bedside tables with delicate, blown glass lamps on top, graced either side of the bed. Nothing rested on the amber-colored tables except for his phone’s docking station. No dimes or nickels, no pile of paperbacks, no crossword puzzles. Not even an empty wine glass.
Two pine chests of drawers stood against the other wall, photos of his son and daughter-in-law, Tyler’s high school graduation picture and a large portrait of a pretty woman scattered across the top. Given the young woman’s stiff “beehive” hairdo, it must have been taken in the sixties. Earl’s wife, maybe? I didn’t know her name and Earl never mentioned her.
The comfortable room was clean and organized, just how I would suspect a wealthy-yet-unpretentious computer scientist would keep it. It was also a little boring for my tastes. Too much brown. The only sign of personality surfaced with the photographs. Off to one side was a large modern bathroom that had a control panel by the entry door. Earl could order up a warm shower while in bed, have the cool tile floor heated to perfection before his toes hit the ground, and his towels warmed on electronic towel racks while he showered.
A walk-in closet held more suits, shirts, and shoes than I’ve ever seen outside of the men’s department at our local department store. Strange, because I never saw Earl dressed in anything but casual clothes and faded tees.
Earl’s study had two entrances: one from the bedroom and the other from the hall. It overwhelmingly outsized the bedroom. You could tell it was the more important room; it had a more lived-in feel. Against one wall were floor-to-ceiling bookcases with half a dozen diplomas and certificates on one shelf. A framed crayon drawing of a boy walking with a man near the ocean, done by his son or maybe Tyler, sat front and center on another shelf. Next to the drawing, a black and white photo displayed a shirtless twenty-something Earl in skintight jeans, his long hair pulled back in a ponytail, dancing to music that had ended years ago.
“My goodness, Earl. Look … at … you.” The photo had been taken outside, and Earl swayed in front of a packed group of young people at a concert. The boy next to him wore striped pants and a tie-dye shirt; the girls dancing behind tossed their shoulder-length straight hair. They dressed in long flowing skirts and wide floppy sun hats. In one corner of the frame, I found the girl with the beehive from the bedroom photo. Only now, her light hair hung loose around her shoulders, her arms high over her head, her eyes closed. Braless, her breasts pushed against the thin gauzy top. Like everyone else in the photo, she beamed.
I picked up the frame, undid the clasps on the back and pulled off the cover. On the back of the photo, it said, ‘Woodstock, August `69, Catskills.’
Earl had been at the infamous concert. I wondered if he and his wife had met at Woodstock. What a story that would be. I replaced the back and set it down on the shelf. I pushed down an urge to hunt for more photos. I needed to keep my focus and continue the search. The only problem was that I didn’t know what I was searching for.
The rugged black cases that held his quadcopters were on the next shelf. I knew he had two of them, but I counted three large cases and four, exceedingly small cases, about the size of cell phones. I opened the large cases and found drones, controls and drone parts. No extra sheet of paper, no notes, no extra video cards. I did the same with the small cases. The first mini drone was about as big as a dragonfly. It looked like the one I’d seen in the sketch. The next two were even smaller, half the size of the dragonfly. Once they were airborne, they’d be all but invisible.
The perfect spying machines.
I walked around behind his desk and sat down in the swivel chair. The sketches of the drones I had seen the other day lay strewn across the desktop, plus a few more. I opened the middle drawer. Nothing but the usual drawer junk that even a man as organized as Earl kept. The top side drawer housed operating manuals for some kind of server. I pulled opened the next drawer and found a small plastic container of the mini memory cards, like the one I’d found in the beer cap. A hole punch took up the third drawer. So far, my little expedition had been a colossal waste of time, except for the discovery of the Woodstock photo and the mini memory cards.
I got up, walked toward the wall of books and let my hand drift across the bindings of the books, skimming the titles. Nothing out of the ordinary there. They were mostly technical tomes I had never heard of and would never make any sense to me, even if I decided to read one. I turned, ready to leave, when I noticed a computer textbook, slightly out of line with the others. The author’s name was Cunningham. Earl Cunningham.
I pulled the book off the shelf and flipped back the cover, skimming over the introductory page and the table of contents. What didn’t he do in this field? I turned the page and found a cut-out square that held a waterproof black pouch, the type that divers often carried, and a short barrel revolver. The handgun covered the smooth pouch that had an air-tight sliding seal. I put the fake book down on the desk, took out the gun, and set it gingerly on the desk. Then I lifted the pouch and slid open the seal. Tucked inside were a big blue marble, a man’s wedding ring and a paper with a list of nine complicated letter-and-number sequences that stretched to fifteen digits long. They all started with the same prefix—U8Q—and ended in sequence, like A1, B2, C3 and so on.
I carried the paper over to the desk, pulled out my phone and took a picture. Just then, I heard a car crunching across the stones in the driveway.
“Hey, Trisha,” Earl called out. “You need to come out here and repark. I can’t get in.”
Oh no, I did it again. I put the paper back in the black bag with the blue marble and the ring, then placed it in the book. I added the revolver. Then I flipped the fake book closed and hurriedly pushed it back in the bookcase, making sure the binding stood even with the other books. I darted out the door, ran down the hall into my bedroom and peered over the deck.
“Sorry, Earl,” I called down. “I’ll be right there.”
I apologized profusely to Earl. “It won’t happen again.”
He smiled and patted me on the back. “Don’t worry about it. But in the future, please be more considerate about me and your dad. We’re getting older, you know. Eyesight’s not as good as it used to be. Don’t want to ding your car.”
I followed Earl into the kitchen. “How was China Camp?”
“It’s the busy season. The parking lot is crowded. Beach is crowded and so is the snack bar. I’m tired,” he said, sitting down heavily on a solid wooden chair.
“Let me get you something to drink. You want a beer?”
“Sounds good. But not Coyote Ridge.”
“Don’t blame you.” I flipped off the cap on a tall-necked brown bottle I found in the side door of the fridge, handed it to Earl and sat down.
“Heard anything from Tyler?” I asked.
He shook his head. He seemed strangely unconcerned.
“I’ll leave you alone.” I started to walk out, then changed my mind and turned. “Actually. . . I have a question for you. About the house on the other side of the hill. You’ve been watching it with your drone, right? Any particular reason?”
Earl regarded the beer bottle for a long time.
“There was a lot of activity. Good place to practice. That’s all.”
“They have a garage full of servers. Did you know that?”
“I’m tired, Trish. Need to take a shower.” The tone of his voice made it clear he wouldn’t be answering any more questions.
“Sure. Okay.”
I walked up the steps to my room and glanced down the hallway to Earl’s study. Next time he went out, I would pay his suite another visit.
“Earl?” I yelled from the door of my room. No answer. I walked to the staircase. “Earl?”
“Yes, Trisha?” he said, walking up the steps with The Babe by his side, his voice suddenly very tired.
“Do you know where Dad is?”
“At China Camp, I suppose. He and a few volunteers were working on the pier when I left.”
“Think I’ll take a drive out and visit him.”
As I walked down the hall to my room, my phone pinged. A text from Burk.
Back from SR yet?
Does he know I’m home or is he fishing? I didn’t respond.