Chutes and Ladder Read online

  Chutes and Ladder

  A Silicon Valley Mystery (Book 2)

  Marc Jedel

  BGM Press

  San Jose, CA

  Copyright © 2019 by Marc Jedel

  All rights reserved.

  Names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Published in the United States by BGM Press.

  ISBN 978-1-7327164-1-4 (paperback edition)

  Cover designed by Alchemy Book Covers

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  http://www.marcjedel.com

  Contents

  1. Friday Afternoon

  2. Saturday Morning

  3. Sunday Morning

  4. Sunday Afternoon

  5. Monday Morning

  6. Monday Afternoon

  7. Monday Evening

  8. Tuesday Morning

  9. Tuesday Afternoon

  10. Wednesday

  11. Thursday Afternoon

  12. Friday Late Morning

  13. Friday Afternoon

  14. Saturday Morning

  15. Saturday Afternoon

  16. Saturday Evening

  17. Later Saturday Evening

  Preview Book 3: Serf and Turf

  Acknowledgements

  About the Author

  1

  Friday Afternoon

  “What do you call a fly without wings?” No response, so I answered my own joke. “A walk.”

  I watched the kid for a reaction. I didn’t know him, but he was stuck watching my niece’s soccer game next to me. He popped another Goldfish cracker into his mouth without comment. Three-year-olds didn’t get my sense of humor. Appreciation for that level of advanced wit didn’t begin until age five.

  My sister, Laney, sitting on my other side, made a disgusted sound. “That’s it. I’m going for a run.”

  “Wait, is it over?” I started gathering my things as hope spread throughout my stiff body.

  Laney snorted. “No, silly. It’s halftime. They’ll eat oranges for fifteen minutes while the coach gives them instructions they won’t follow. I’ll be back.” She stood up from the grass, did a quick stretch, and jogged off around the fields.

  She didn’t appreciate my jokes either, which wasn’t exactly a news flash to me. I’d seen more of Laney in the last few months since her move to the Bay Area than I had since we were kids. Although we’d aged, my sense of humor, like most men, remained firmly rooted at the childhood level.

  The kid wandered off too, no doubt looking for something he found more exciting than me—like the clods of dirt he started kicking. My niece, Skye, played defensive stopper for her eighth-grade rec league team, meaning she hung around talking to the goalie and the other defenders on her team while the action took place at the other end of the field. I wasn’t too clear on why I had to be there—something about an important game that would determine who played in the upcoming championship. The league moved this match up by a day because many of the girls would be out of town on Saturday at a Girl Scout campout.

  The outcome of this game had no meaningful impact. The first-place team would receive cheap metal-and-plastic trophies at a pizza parlor to celebrate their all-important victory. All the other teams would also receive cheap metal-and-plastic trophies at other pizza parlors to console them for not finishing first. Skye had asked me to come watch, and she did say “pretty please.”

  As a result, here I sat on a warm, late October afternoon, without even an appreciative audience for my humor, while my software code wasn’t writing itself. I closed my eyes, at least enjoying the rare opportunity to sit outside in the daylight during the week.

  Off in the distance, Laney rounded the corner of another soccer field. I watched the coach haranguing the girls for a while and tried to figure out why this sport had become so popular. The game resembled kickball in front of one or the other team’s net. It had none of the strategy and excitement of a real sport, like baseball.

  Okay, maybe baseball didn’t have much action, but the ballparks did serve beer.

  When I looked back toward the other field, Laney was no longer in sight. Had she gone supersonic to get some coffee before halftime ended?

  Confused, I stood up, cupping a hand over my eyes to block the glare of the setting sun, and spotted Laney lying prone on the ground by the empty field. I jogged toward her—actually, it became more of a lumbering fast walk when my huffing and puffing made me realize that avoiding the gym hadn’t improved my endurance.

  Laney was holding her ankle and fighting back tears when I reached her. “What happened?”

  “Help me up,” she responded, wincing as she got to her hands and knees.

  I complied. “Strange place to take a nap,” I said, trying to distract her from the pain.

  “Stupid animals. Digging stupid holes.” She flicked a dismissive hand at the offending hole in the ground that had tripped her.

  Laney put her arm around my shoulders and hopped back to the stands, muttering and cursing in a low voice.

  “Does it hurt that much?” I asked.

  “I’ve got to take Skye to the campout tomorrow morning. I just hope they can give me something for the pain so it’s better by tonight.”

  For Skye’s sake, I hoped so too. Camping wasn’t my cup of tea, but I’d hate for her to miss out. It wasn’t that I didn’t like nature. Nature was great. Living in the Bay Area meant that I went hiking on a regular basis. With the help of my new friend, Brody, a barista at a nearby Starbucks, I’d even rekindled my love of the ocean. At the ripe age of forty, surfing hurt my knees too much, so I went kayaking with him instead.

  Camping was a different story. After the campfire petered out for the evening and the songs were sung, I held to the unpopular belief that people and nature should retire to their own separate quarters. People lived inside and nature belonged outdoors, along with all its affiliated bugs, animals, and whatever else went bump in the dark.

  By the time I’d half-carried Laney back to our chairs, I was drenched in sweat. I’d have picked her up, but she was a grown woman… not to mention that gym thing again.

  Despite the periodic whimper or curse from Laney, she refused to leave until the game ended. Although we could have asked another parent to bring Skye home, she wanted to tough it out to support Skye and her team. Since her husband died a few years ago, Laney always tried to go the extra mile for her girls.

  Out of respect for her pain and sacrifice, I only cracked a few more jokes during the second half.

  We hobbled out of there to head for the hospital as soon as the game ended. And the handshake line with the defeated team. And the celebratory run through the parents’ tunnel of raised arms. And the hug with each teammate. And the snatching of the postgame snack of cupcakes. Score!

  I would have to drive Laney’s rental car to the hospital so she could have her ankle X-rayed. Despite my offer of a steep family discount, she refused to use Rover, the startup self-driving car service where I worked as a software engineer. We ran one of those next-generation car services that transported people without a driver. Our marketing team thought Rover was a catchy name because the cars fetched passengers whenever they needed a ride, but I always had to explain it. People weren’t newspapers and cars weren’t dogs. Besides, who reads a newspaper these days? At least we had a great engineering team, even if the marketing folks were only so-so.

  Laney was either old-fashioned or didn’t trust my engineering skills. I preferred not to find out which was the case.

  Her last car had been totaled a
month ago in a bad accident involving an ice cream truck and a drone. Not to brag or anything, but I basically saved her life and helped put a really bad person behind bars for a long time. Just another average day in the life of wannabe super-secret agent, Marty Golden.

  Okay, I got lucky.

  I sure didn’t miss Laney’s “Sunshine,” a Beetle with a custom neon-yellow paint job. It might have even glowed in the dark. Ever since the accident, Laney and her girls had spent a ridiculous amount of time trying to decide on her next Beetle’s custom paint job. I could only hope her new color choice wouldn’t be so painful on the eyes.

  As Laney and I reached the car, Skye finished gossiping with her teammates and joined us. She was my oldest niece, a pretty twelve-year-old with long hair pulled back in a ponytail to keep it out of her eyes while she played. Like Superman reverting back into Clark Kent, she’d put her glasses back on after the game, resuming her appearance as a serious future scientist. “Mom, what made you fall?” she asked.

  “I think a rabbit or a gopher startled me, and I stepped into a hole,” said Laney.

  Skye shut the car door behind her. “It’s okay to tell Megan, right?” Skye’s younger sister had traveled to Portland for a long weekend visit with their cousins.

  Megan was a lively sparkplug of a girl. She was seven. Or eight. Nine at the most. Definitely somewhere in that range. I was embarrassed that I didn’t know, but when I tried to ask, they all made fun of me and didn’t answer.

  At Laney’s nod, Skye turned her focus to her phone and texted the latest update to her sister.

  As I pulled out of the parking lot, I felt the need to one-up Laney. “You got tripped up by a silly rabbit? We’ll have to start calling you Alice.”

  When there was no response from the backseat, I glanced in the mirror. “Hey, Skye!”

  Trying to catch the attention of a pre-teen with her nose buried in her phone was like pulling teeth. But I persevered. “Did I ever tell you that, in college, we used to have a scary monster goose that hung around the pond in the middle of campus? It would attack kids who walked past. Everyone called it ‘Triceragoose.’”

  Skye snorted. Unlike three-year-olds, pre-teens appreciated my stories.

  Laney didn’t give up a competition that easily. “Goose schmoose. We had this huge deer that hung around my campus. One day I was walking to the shuttle bus stop and the deer stepped out of the woods and blocked the road. It stared down the bus, so the bus driver had to pick us up half a block back and do a U-turn.”

  I scoffed. “Huge deer. Did you call it Rudolph or Bambi?” As we ran over one of San Jose’s endless potholes, I saw Laney wince in pain, so I stopped teasing her.

  Skye noticed too and patted her mom’s shoulder before returning her attention to her phone.

  *****

  Despite Laney returning to the hospital only a month after her last stay, the nurses and doctors still treated her like all their other patients. By the time her ankle had been X-rayed, braced and booted, and we got back to her house, we were all cranky.

  Skye and I grabbed some leftover chicken and salad from the refrigerator. “Did Nurse Ruth give you laughing gas in the hospital?” I asked Laney. “What were you laughing about?”

  I’d met Nurse Ruth when Laney was hurt last month. Although she’d taken good care of Laney, I’d tricked her into letting an underage visitor, my niece Megan, into Laney’s room after visiting hours and then abused her trust. So, basically, we were buds.

  From her seat at the kitchen table, Laney chuckled. “Nurse Ruth asked if you had hurt me.”

  “Me?” Shocked, I stopped dead in my tracks. Why would I hurt my sister? Maybe we hadn’t always gotten along well as kids, but we were older now.

  Laney shifted her glance to the large Labrador puppy that wandered around the kitchen without helping Skye and me get dinner on the table. “I told her the only time you’ve caused me pain since I moved to town was when you got us a crazy dog who almost destroyed my house.”

  My mouth suddenly dry, I licked my lips. “Well, Megan shouldn’t have left her Adderall pill out where Buddy could reach it.”

  Laney’s eyes flashed. “Don’t blame her. That dog tore up papers all over the house. He was bouncing off the walls, grabbing and chewing things, and peeing everywhere. It cost me a thousand dollars for the pet hospital to pump his stomach.”

  Before I could respond, Skye burst out laughing. “It was so gross and so hysterical. He kept running in circles until he, like, collapsed.”

  I managed to stifle my smile. Laney was still unhappy with me for surprising the girls with the dog last month. “Well, the crate should help.” I tilted my head toward the large dog crate that took up much of the available kitchen space.

  Eyes still smoldering at Buddy, Laney didn’t look like she appreciated the crate any more than the dog.

  Yeah, Buddy was one of my more impulsive gifts, but it could have been worse—he could have been my dog.

  “Your payback is taking Skye on her campout.”

  “What?” I was stunned. She knew I did not go camping.

  “The doctor said I need to rest my foot if I’m going on that business trip next week. I can’t tramp around the woods, so you’ll have to man up and take Skye.”

  “Please, Uncle Marty …” Skye tilted her head to the side and tried her puppy-dog eyes on me.

  She forgot I didn’t like dogs. And I hated camping even more. No way would I take Skye on her camping trip. Even though she and Laney had babbled on and on about this campout, I had to draw the line somewhere. For me, that line was drawn around a nice hotel room, with a door that closed, a shower, effective air conditioning, and a comfy bed.

  “Oh, come on, it’s only one night. Don’t be a baby,” Laney pushed, but I didn’t budge.

  “Pretty please.” Skye tried her underhanded puppy-dog trick again before upping her game. “I’ll laugh at all your jokes.”

  I gave the offer serious consideration. That could almost be worth it, but only if she’d convince her friends to laugh too. Then, I remembered all the other moms who would be there. They wouldn’t laugh.

  I used a second, better excuse. “I can’t. I need to fly to Portland early on Monday morning, remember?” I was excited to see a major Star Trek exhibition at the Oregon Museum of Science and Industry and didn’t want to jeopardize my trip. I’d wanted to go for the whole weekend to spend more time there, but I hadn’t been able to convince my new girlfriend, Meghan, to go. Somehow, learning that it was the biggest Star Trek exhibition west of the Mississippi hadn’t been enough to convince her. Our relationship was still new, and I was smart enough not to choose Star Trek over her or raise too many questions about her obvious lack of good judgment. So, I was reduced to a day trip to check out the show while she left for a business trip to the East Coast.

  Laney shook her head in exasperation. “You and your silly Star Trek thing. The girls come home on Sunday afternoon, so you won’t miss anything. Besides, I don’t want you to miss your flight either. You’re flying home with Megan from Portland on Monday afternoon, remember?”

  I didn’t know how she kept track of all these complicated comings and goings. One girl had Friday off school while the other had Monday off. One was off to the wilderness to fend for her life while the other had to pack the right gear for the Pacific Northwest rainforest. The following week would be even more complicated thanks to Laney’s own business trip.

  I had to resort to my final excuse. “I can’t take your place. You have to be authorized to attend a Girl Scouts event as a chaperone.” Last month, I had agreed to help out for a cookie table outside a Whole Foods grocery store, figuring I’d score some extra cookies when the girls weren’t looking. One of the moms told me I had to leave because I hadn’t registered as a volunteer in advance. To make matters worse, I had to buy my own cookies. No compensation for waking up early on a weekend.

  The evil grin spreading over Laney’s face made me worry. “Oh”—her voi
ce rang in a high-pitched tone of glee—“you’re registered now.”

  “What? I don’t remember registering for anything!”

  “I did it for you … just in case. You even passed the background check.”

  I did?

  Laney looked triumphant before turning serious. “Besides, I can’t go now, and Skye is required to have an adult chaperone.” She paused. “Even you count.”

  My winning arguments had all flopped.

  Laney had crushed my final, desperate attempt to avoid sleeping in the dangerous Santa Cruz Mountains, full of wild squirrels, insects, dirt, and trees. As eerie as Redwoods could be during the daytime, they were much more frightening in the dark.

  I jerked back as Buddy startled me by wandering too close to my chair. Using my foot so I wouldn’t have to touch anything furry or wet, I shoved him farther away.

  Silence fell over the kitchen as I struggled to come up with another argument, but Skye filled the void with a whoop of excitement. “I’ll get you a sleeping bag and the packing list.” She flew off to her room as Buddy barked and ran after her, bouncing off the walls and knocking a few pictures askew. My jaw moved up and down a few times without any noise coming out.

  Laney kept her mouth shut, her smug grin showing she was smart enough not to sell past the close.

  Sighing and scratching my head led to no new inspiration.I wasn’t a happy camper.