“How did I not know this?” I asked.
“It wasn’t a big deal,” she said. “Just some small talk. She’s on my Facebook now. She comments sometimes.”
“Really?” I asked. “The mayor comments on your Facebook? What does she say?”
“It’s not a big deal,” she said. “I really like her, and she’s not all that much older than us, late thirties, I think. If she was a normal person that could have a normal life, I would be friends with her.”
“Okay,” I said. “Because that’s so not freaking me out.”
“So you can be friends with the guy that owns all the media in Arizona,” she said, “but when I befriend the mayor on Facebook, that weirds you out?”
I laughed. “I guess when you put it that way.”
“Hey,” she said. “We’re a team. What’s good for you is good for me.”
“Right,” I smiled. “We’re a team.”
“Anyway,” she continued, “back to the land. Andrea was a realtor before she was the mayor, and so I messaged her and told her we were looking for land, and asked if she had any recommendations on who to contact.”
“That’s good thinking,” I said. “
“I thought so,” she said. “So, then she said she and her husband were selling this plot, and she gave me the address and said I could swing by there and let her know if I was interested.”
“And you looked at it?” I asked.
“I just drove by,” she said. “Thought we could go over there together, and then we’ll see from there.”
“Yeah,” I said. “I don’t see any harm in that.”
“It’s too dark now,” she said. “We’d have to find another time.”
“Yeah,” I smiled. “It sounds like a plan. So, I assume you’ve already hired an architect, too, right?”
“Come on,” she laughed. “It was just an idea. But, we have one other really important matter to discuss.”
“Yeah?” I asked.
She shifted in her seat uncomfortably and rubbed her palms together, and I felt the elephant entering the room. She sighed and looked at me in the eye, “I really need to know if Lady Sybil will actually marry the chauffeur.”
I laughed hysterically, as she was referring to a plot in Downton Abbey.
“I thought you already saw the whole series,” I said.
“I watched part of it,” she said, “because it was such a fad with everyone we worked with.”
“I know, right?” I rolled my eyes. “I couldn’t get into it, though.”
“Me, neither!” she laughed. “But, when we watch it, it’s--”
“Different,” I said.
“Yeah,” she said. “Everything’s different with you.”
“Well,” I faked a British accent, “We shouldn’t keep them waiting, m’lady.”
“No,” she said. “That doesn’t work on you.”
“It really doesn’t,” I agreed.
“Not at all,” she said.
We changed into comfortable clothes and laid in bed and spent the rest of the night watching the sudsy stories of British aristocrats and their servants. And, by the end of the night, we discovered that yes, Lady Sybil did marry the chauffeur, and she did it on the sly. I could feel the soap clogging up my pores--even if it was fancy Edwardian soap.
The next morning, Vicki and I arrived at the office, and Landon was ready and waiting to greet me.
“Dude,” he said. “Dude, I think I’ve found a major clue. This is... this... is major.”
I raised an eyebrow and made a cup of coffee. I was going to need to be caffeinated for whatever Landon saw as “major.”
“Whatcha got, Landon?” I asked as I loaded a pod into the machine.
“You’re going to need to see this footage,” he said. “It’s big. It’s huge.”
He clasped his hands over his head and paced the kitchenette area.
“We’re going to break the whole thing wide open,” he said. “Wide open. Malone, the Illuminati. We’ve got proof.”
“Proof?” I asked as I grabbed my mug off the coffee maker. “Of the Illuminati?”
“That they were involved,” he said.
“Okay,” I said. “I’ll bite. Show me.”
I followed him back to the conference room, where he had his gear set up in a somewhat permanent fixture. The monitor was paused to Chloe’s contorted face.
“Okay,” he said. “I took this footage at the vortex. I thought it would be b-roll stock stuff, you know.”
“Right,” I said as I settled into a chair and sipped my coffee.
“But I found this,” he stated.
He cued up a scene with Julianna, Chloe, and Olivia, climbing up Cathedral Rock. There was a lot of muffling, and the picture jumped a lot as Landon climbed it from behind the camera himself.
“Say hi to the camera,” he said.
The girls shot a preoccupied smile, and then, there were a lot of muffled pictures, and the next thing I could tell, everyone was sitting beneath a tree.
For a few minutes, they discussed the hike, and the vortex, and cleansing Beyo.
I sighed. “Okay, what is it I need to see?”
“Just watch, just watch,” he said. “Watch their hands.”
I couldn’t see much in the way of their hands, they gestured around in normal speaking, and as much as anyone does when settling in for a rest after a long hike. Then, the conversation turned to Beyo.
“He was a good man,” Julianna said. “He had his moments.”
The other girls laughed in agreement.
“But,” Julianna said. “He will be sorely missed.”
“I feel like the justice system doesn’t know what it’s doing,” Chloe said. “I mean, no offense to you, Landon, or Vicki or anything. I know you’re doing everything you can. But, I don’t think there are any major leads, are there?”
Vicki’s muffled answer came from off camera, and the girls shrugged.
“But,” Olivia said. “She’s right. It’s been weeks, and if I’m not wrong, we’re not any closer than we were in the beginning.”
“There’s a lot we don’t know
