T. Parker - Black Water

"People do fight sometimes, don't they?" asked Earla.

"Gwen hadn't made any domestic violence complaints," said Zsmorra. "Did they fight a lot?"

"We don't know of anything like that," said Earla.

Neither Zamorra nor Merci spoke for a long moment. Merci picked it up again, which was how they usually worked-Rayborn leading and exploring, Zamorra clarifying, following up, shaping.

"Tell us about your girl, Mr. and Mrs. Kuerner," she said. "And tell us about Archie." She slipped her blue notebook from the pock of her sport coat, got a good pen ready. Gwen was easy. Gwen was happy. She was beautiful from the hour she was born. She was a good student, a good girl. Beautiful voice and liked to sing. Good at drawing. When early adolescence came she was still a good girl. Had a lot of friends and earned them. Still had friends from back then when she… Never any drinking or drug problems, though she probably tried things. Worked Pizza Hut, Sirloin Stockade, then a music store. Liked horses, clothes and music. Especially the music. Bought a guitar with her own money and taught herself to play it. Had the knack, and nobody knew where she got it from. Didn't have steady guys, seemed to use good judgment that way. Fell in love with Archie Wildcraft when she was sixteen, sophomore in high school. Archie was playing scholarship college ball for UC Riverside, a sophomore also. Met him at a theater in the mall, Gwen was there with two of her girlfriends. Archie with two buddies. They went out for ice cream after the show, traded phone numbers. Lee and Earla weren't happy at all about this older guy. Name like Wildcraft spelled trouble, said Lee. Archie was twenty. They allowed him to come over and meet them and had a "pointed" discussion that night about whether to let him in the house again. Agreed that he was clean-cut, well mannered, handsome and head-over-cleats for Gwen.

Lee voted no; Earla voted yes.

So Archie started coming over for an hour, sometimes two, every evening he wasn't traveling for ball. He lived on campus, maybe half an hour away. Earla and Lee never let them be really alone, which wasn't hard with two of their other girls still in the house. Though after a while they gave the young people the privacy of the living room to watch TV, or the family room to study together. Archie never brought her home late from a date, and the curfew was always early. He brought Earla flowers and Lee some choice bass plugs Archie's father had carved, helped him overhaul the outboard on his little fishing boat. Helped them paint the house three weekends running. They never smelled alcohol on either of them, never saw any affection between them except for hugs and reasonable kisses hello and goodbye. All the Kuerner girls liked him, thought Gwen had a catch. Gwen actually colored when he was there or when his name was spoken around the house. Named a kitten Archie so she could say it a lot. She was seventeen when she said she wanted to marry Archie after she graduated.

Lee voted no; Earla voted yes.

Two months after her graduation Lee walked her down the aisle of a little Methodist church in Riverside. One of the happiest and saddest times of his life. Down to his last two girls. But he liked Archie and thought he'd be good to his daughter. Trusted him. Liked him. Archie's ERA was 2.18 and the bass plugs worked.

Earla got up and gave him a tissue and Lee turned his head away and pulled off his glasses in one motion. Merci quietly cleared her throat. Zamorra looked at Earla, then away

"How'd the marriage go?" asked Merci.

"It went fine," said Earla. "Gwen called every day, then every week, right up until… Archie missed baseball at first, but he got on quick as a deputy and really took to it."

"Why did he quit ball?" Zamorra asked.

"He thought he'd get drafted but he didn't. Never had good control of the fastball and the forkie wasn't working his senior year. Tendonitis, too. Tried out as a walk-on but knew it wasn't for him. No offers."

"That's too bad," said Paul.

"He took it good, though. He was ready to try something else."

"Was Gwen working then?" Merci asked.

"Gwen had a band and made a little money, too," said Earla. "She wrote a beautiful song that got accepted for a TV movie. They paid her good money for it, but got somebody else to sing it."

"Then they were doing okay, financially?"

"Gwen didn't grow up with a lot," Earla said carefully. "And neither did Archie. So, compared to what they came from they were doing fine. They had enough. She was happy and Archie was too, unless he was fooling us. All of a sudden, then, middle of last yes they hit it big with this stock and made a lot of profit. Bought a nice house in the hills, new cars. Took trips. Heck, they offered us a hundred thousand to remodel this place, or just sell it and find a better neighborhood. We didn't feel right about it. They weren't greedy people. Not in the least. But both of them liked nice things. And they worked hard to get them. And when they got them they enjoyed them."

"Stock in what?" asked Merci.

"OrganiVen," said Earla. "Then it got bought up by B. B. Sistel and everybody made a lot of money. You probably read about it."

Merci hadn't, though of course she knew B. B. Sistel Laboratories. They made everything from the stuff she took for headaches to the birth control pills she'd taken during her months with Mike McNally.

"Some doctors started it, down in La Jolla. They made this tumor treatment using rattlesnake venom. The idea was old but they found a way to make it work. Gwen and Archie told us that they'd seen slides and videos, and this stuff made from poison could kill those tumors in just minutes. Said it was like watching a miracle. The company called it MiraVen. Anyway, Gwen and Archie invested twenty thousand dollars early last year. Really scraped to come up with it. Then the company went public. Then Sistel bought it. There were splits and options and dividends and all sorts of stuff. And they made two million dollars, practically overnight."

Merci made a note of that. "Invested twenty thousand, got back two million in less than a year?"

"Half a year. All these young geniuses put the OrganiVen company together, based on the cancer treatment. Doctors, business geniuses, marketing geniuses-they were all friends from college."

She exchanged glances with Zamorra. Slowly, almost absently, she wrote CK OrganiVen. Somebody turned twenty grand and snake poison into two million in less than one year, she figured fraud. But something like that could happen legally on Wall Street, or the Nikkei, or the Pacific Stock Exchange right here in Southern California.

Merci wasn't sure what to ask next, so she went with the obvious. "Did the big money make them happy?"

"Very."

"Because sometimes, people are fine until they hit it rich. Then problems start."

Lee nodded quickly, as if he'd thought of that a long time ago.

"I saw no signs of that," he said. "They both seemed kind of… relieved. That twenty thousand was hard to get. They used their retirement money, borrowed eight hundred from us. Borrowed from friends. Got a second on their little house in Santa Ana. So when it all happened just like they wanted it to, they seemed almost to not believe it. It was like they'd hit a slot in Vegas, rather than making a sound financial investment."

Merci wrote couldn't believe it.

The Kuerners looked at each other. Lee broke the gaze and turned to Merci. "Do you think it was something to do with all that?"

"Do you?"

"It worried me that they made so much," he said. "It was all legal know that. But it worried me."

"We're modest people," said Earla.

"Were Archie and Gwen keeping different company last year, when the money started coming in?"

"Not that we know," said Lee.