But she said nothing. She simply rang her up and named the price for the items. Mrs. Kingsley paid for it by using her ATM card in the card reader which corporate had finally purchased for them six months before (though Elsa the maid still insisted on writing checks when she was the one purchasing groceries). The transaction was approved—it always was when members of the Kingsley household were the ones making it—and off the redhead bitch went, heading back to the parking lot and her little Volkswagen convertible so she could drive home to her mansion on the cliff, do drugs, drink wine, and poison the demon-spawn she was now growing in her belly.
No sooner had Mrs. Kingsley left the store than Darlene’s three o’clock person checked in for duty. It was Karen Michaels, one of two assistant managers and Darlene’s closest crony. They had gone to high school together and had worked together at the Alpha Beta for the past fifteen years. It was they who ruled the Oceano Alpha Beta the same way the popular clique in high school (of which Darlene and Karen most certainly had not been members of) had ruled the minions beneath them. Karen would be in charge of the store until closing time once Darlene left at 5:00 o’clock.
“Why don’t you take over for me here?” Darlene told her. “I’ve got some admin stuff I need to do before I go home.”
“Sounds good,” Karen said, amicably enough. She nodded in the direction of the door. “I saw Laura Kingsley heading out as I came in. She buying up a bunch of booze again?”
“A hundred dollars worth of wine,” Darlene said. “They are such alcoholics, aren’t they?”
“Completely,” said Karen, who drank far more wine per week than Laura Kingsley could ever hope to, though she made a point to buy most of hers in San Luis Obispo or Pasa Robles. “And I just learned something really shocking about the Kingsleys today.”
“Oh yeah?” asked Darlene. “Do tell.”
She was about to do just that, but a customer chose that moment to enter the express checkout. It was an older lady named Margaret who had at least twenty-five items in her cart, but who also spent most of her grocery budget in the Alpha Beta so they were not going to call her on it.
“We’ll talk about it later,” Karen whispered. “It’s really juicy. Check your email. I sent you a copy of the story.”
“Okay,” Darlene said, immediately intrigued.
She went to her office inside the customer service area where the cigarettes were sold and the film developing was done. She sat down at her desk and logged into her computer. She went immediately to the Alpha Beta email server and opened her inbox. She saw the email immediately and her eyes widened as she saw the subject line: JAKE KINGSLEY AND HIS WIFE ARE KEEPING AN UNDERAGE VENEZUELAN SEX SLAVE!!
“Hmm,” she said. “Very interesting.”
She opened the email and saw the picture. She then began to read.
Jake flew over the town of Oceano at 5:38 PM that evening, his altitude 2800 feet, his engines at only forty percent thrust as he made the turn for final approach and an ILS landing at SLO Regional. As was usual, a good many members of the town heard the distinctive high-pitched whine of his aircraft as he passed over and noted, many with annoyance, that the Satan worshipping death metal artist (whose wife was now pregnant with a demon spawn) was back in town for the night. He touched down at 5:43 PM and was in his BMW heading for home by 5:55. He drove through the gate at 6:12 PM and was in the house by 6:15 PM.
“Hey, sweetie,” Laura greeted when he walked through the door. She got up to give him a kiss.
“Hey, babe,” he said, accepting the kiss, which tasted of chardonnay.
“I cut up all the vegetables for you and the oven is preheated for the tots. All you need to do is cook the burgers.”
“Sounds good,” he told her. “Let me go drain the dragon and wash up and I’ll get to work.”
“You do that,” she said. “I’ll go pop the tots in the oven.”
Jake went to the nearest restroom—the guest bathroom in the hallway between the kitchen and the entertainment room—and took care of his business. He then walked back into the entertainment room and grabbed one of his bottles of Lighthouse Ale from the refrigerator in the bar. He opened it, poured it into a glass, and then made his way back to the kitchen. Laura was sitting in one of the breakfast nook chairs that she had pulled over near the large kitchen island.
“Did you remember to pick up those prenatal vitamins today?” he asked her. Dr. Vargo, her gynecologist, had advised her to start taking them as soon as she stopped her birth control pills so that when she did eventually conceive she would have an ample supply of folic acid in her body to stave off neural tube defects such as spina bifida in the future Kingsley child. But Laura, who could be just a little scatterbrained on occasion, had forgotten to pick them up when she’d gone to the pharmacy to put the hold on her pills—even though that had specifically been her mission for the trip.
“Yes,” she said giving him a little eye roll. She did not like being reminded of her scatterbrain episodes. “I remembered.”
“Good girl,” he said. “Maybe I’ll give you a little treat after dinner.”
“You were going to do that anyway,” she said.
“Don’t ruin the moment,” he told her, opening the refrigerator and pulling out the package of ground beef. He set it down on the counter and then pulled out a cutting board. The garlic Laura had bought was sitting on the island. He extricated three cloves from it and set them aside. He then got out a small bowl and a stick of butter. He put half the stick in the bowl and then popped it in the microwave, setting the timer for fifteen seconds—just enough to soften it.
“What’s the news on the transgender situation?” Laura asked.
“It is officially nipped in the bud,” he told her.
“Oh yeah?”
“Yeah. Pauline got hold of Ron the ramper. He told her that he posted the original picture of him with us along with all the other pictures of our plane in some photography group he is a part of with an explanation of what the shots were all about. There are over two hundred people in this group and some or all of them must have forwarded the email to others who then did the same. Somewhere along the line, the author of that email must have pulled the shot out, photoshopped it, and then made up all that transgender shit and sent it out into the world.”
“Why would someone do something like that?” Laura asked, shaking her head.
Jake took the now softened butter out of the microwave and carried it back to the island. He rooted around in the drawer—which was sparkling clean and neatly organized thanks to Elsa—and took out the garlic masher. “Because people are assholes,” he said simply. “Whoever this person is, he doesn’t like me. It doesn’t matter though.”
“Why doesn’t it matter? You said that the media vultures are circling.”
“They can’t print or air anything about this,” Jake said, mashing the garlic cloves into the butter and then putting the masher in the sink. As he was washing his hands again, he continued to explain why. “Pauline had the ramper send her copies of all the shots he took that day and the original email he sent out. He is perfectly willing to go on record about what actually happened. She then sent copies of those pictures and the original email to every reporter that enquired about the fake email. In the body of Pauline’s email she let them know that there is no Jose at the Sandpoint airport FBO, that no law enforcement agency in the Sandpoint area has taken a report about an underaged Venezuelan tranny being held in captivity by the Kingsleys, and that Ron the ramper is willing to testify in court that he is the person in that photo, that he has never been to Venezuela, and that he is most certainly not transexual or a maid.”