A Question of Fate

"Just last week, he had asked me to look for another property, something in the neighborhood of three quarters of a million dollars. I guess that won't be happening now?"

"No. I think I'm going to be moving out of state soon and I may need the funds. I will, however, want you to continue managing the properties that he, no I, own. I'll send you my address when I finally decide where I want to live."

Back in her car, she rehashed the information that she had already obtained.

He wanted a property in the $750,000 range; I found $150,000 this morning. Where is the rest of it, you bastard?

Moments later she thought she knew the answer; it had been on their tax return. Only one bank had been listed on the Interest Income schedule, but the total interest earned was around $10,000.

Awilda drove to her branch and asked to speak to the manager. Once inside his office, he gave her a hug and gave her his deepest sympathies.

"What can I do for you, Awilda?"

"I'm trying to track down all of the accounts that were in either my name or in Chad's name or jointly owned."

"Sure, no problem, I can do that, but in order to get access to the funds you will have to give us a death certificate and a copy of the will. Sorry but those are the banking laws."

"No problem; I don't need immediate access, I just want an idea of how much we have and where it is. I'm afraid my husband didn't always share information that he didn't think I needed.

As she spoke, he was typing information into his terminal. Soon a list of the accounts was on a printer next to his desk.

"This shows three accounts; one in your name, and two in his name. There is also a joint checking account and a safe deposit box." After several minutes of searching he came back into his office. "According to our records you have access to the safe deposit box upon presentation of your key."

"I don't have it with me; I'll have to come back tomorrow and check out the box."

He gave her the listing of the accounts and the balances in each.

In the car, she removed the list. 'That accounts for about $120,000. Don't tell me there's another half-million dollars in that safe deposit box!'

She drove home and after getting a beer from the fridge, she marched into his office and searched all the drawers for his bank key. Finding nothing, she walked to their bedroom and pulled apart all of his drawers, but her search was in vain. Sitting on their bed, she tried to think of any areas that she had failed to search. Suddenly a thought popped into her head. She practically ran to the kitchen and there on the kitchen island was the yellow envelope that she had been given after the funeral. Inside were his personal effects that were on his body at the time of his death. She dumped the contents onto the countertop. There was a watch, a gold cross and chain, his wedding ring, his wallet and his car keys. Awilda picked up his car keys and there it was; a small silver key with the number '306' stamped into the top.

The next morning, she presented her key and, after consulting with the branch manager, the clerk went into the vault, removed box number 306, and brought it to a secure room and left her.

She held her breath as she opened the rather large metal box. Inside were stacks and stacks of cash, all similar to the ones she had found at home. She placed them on the small table in stacks of five bundles each. When she was finally finished she counted the stacks. There were twelve stacks in all, $600,000.

In the bottom of the box was an envelope addressed to her. Her hands shook as she opened the envelope and took out the papers it held.

'Babe, if you are reading this letter, then I am dead and I probably died in a very violent manner. I'm so sorry I put you through this. I just couldn't resist the money. Every day I saw or heard about all this money that these scumbags were pulling in. You can't believe the amount of money that flows through their hands! They have so much cash that they can't launder it fast enough. Years before I met you, I was approached by a guy who dangled a year's worth of my salary just to tip them off of any possible raids. I started doing other jobs for them and soon I had more cash than I'd ever seen before. I knew I had to get rid of the cash and started buying real estate.

Then you came into my life. I tried to think of a way to get out. It took a long time to put together, and during that time I had to keep doing what I was doing. I thought I had everything covered. The raid was going to go down, we were going to nail his major customer, and then nail him. Instead, I assume I failed and now you're stuck with everything.

Please don't turn me in. It will only cause a lot of embarrassment and pain for you, your parents, my parents, and the department. More importantly, it will put your life in danger. The first thing I want you to do is sell the house and move out of state. Once the will is probated and the estate is settled, I want you to change your name back to Colone. The real estate is managed by a company. They handle everything for ten percent of the total rent. They pay all the bills, handle all the problems and we get a check once a quarter.

Move someplace nice; keep a low profile, live off the cash in this box and the box in my file cabinet. Most importantly, find somebody who deserves to be with a beautiful woman like you and live happily ever after.

Love always,

Chad'

After she wiped the tears from her eyes, she picked up the other paper that was in the envelope. As she unfolded the paper a United States Passport fell to the floor. It was issued to a name she never heard of, but the picture was definitely Chad's. Taped to the back cover of the passport was a California driver's license. Both were less than two years old.

'I guess these were for a quick escape if things got too uncomfortable for him.'

She pulled a large cloth bag out of her pocket book and dumped the cash and the documents into it, and then closed and locked the box and left it on the table as she left the room.

It took a month to settle the estate and another month to sell her house. Her furniture was placed in storage with a moving company with the understanding that it would be delivered to her new home when she decided where that would be.

Her resignation from the City of Los Angeles Police Department, because of her emotional state due to the extreme trauma she had endured, was reluctantly accepted.

After several weeks of investigation, Awilda decided that her new home would be in the small town of Sedona, Arizona. So at the age of 26, she packed her bags and headed northeast.

Chapter 5

The first couple of days at Microsoft were for orientation and project group placement. While he was filling out the required employment paperwork, he noted that it required him to use his full legal name, John David Richardson. Later that day he was introduced to a number of people as John Richardson. When Bill Gates himself, called him John, he knew better than to try to correct him, so David was put to rest.

Over lunch he reminisced about how he became known as 'David.' It had been the start of third grade, the first day of class. As the teacher called the roll of students she noted an unusual number named John.

'Will all those of you named 'John' please come to my desk.'

When they were all assembled, she called out the name of the first 'John' alphabetically by last name.

'In my class, you will be called John. OK, you can go back to your seat.'

The next child was named 'Johnny', the next 'Jack', and the next Jacky. Then she got to him.

'It seems we've run out of variations of the name 'John.' Young man, what is your middle name?'

'David', he replied.

'Then in my classroom, you shall be called 'David'.

After several weeks of confusion, the names became permanent and were embraced by teachers, parents and, most importantly, the kids as well. He was David to everyone except his father. So when the new family moved in next door, their only child, Awilda, only knew him as David.

Years later, when he thought back to that third grade class; he thought he had figured out why so many kids in his class were named John. He was born on January 18, 1964, less than two months after the shocking assassination of President John F. Kennedy. The Kennedys were held in high regard, especially in the northeast, so it was only natural that parents would be partial to the name of 'John' for their male children born soon after that sad event.

"Hi, I'm Michael; this is Tom, and this is Gary. You've been assigned to our programming group."

John, who had been in the middle of his daydream, jumped with surprise.

"Hi, I'm John. Pleased to meet you."

"We're looking for one more person to share our apartment; it's the first floor of a two-family about five miles from here. It has two bedrooms, a kitchen, a living room, and a bathroom. We have access to the basement for storage and to do our laundry. The rent's dirt cheap as long as we take care of taking out the garbage and keeping the hallway clean. The landlord is an elderly woman who lives on the second floor. We help her out as much as we can and she keeps our rent low; it's only $200 a month, split four ways that's fifty a month. You can't beat that. What do you say, you in?"

"Sure. I just got into town last week; I'm staying at the Holiday Inn. That's only a little more than I'm paying for two nights."

"Fantastic. By the way, we call it "the Frat House. Come with us, we'll show you our work room."

Once in the room, Mike, the elected spokesman of the group, shut the door and began to speak.

"I'm sure you're aware of our first operating system, MS-DOS, and its bastard step-child PC-Dos. We're working on Windows, its successor. It's a graphical extension for MS-DOS. I think we're almost ready to release the first version. According to Bill, it will revolutionize computing as we know it. Here, take a look."

He sat down at a machine that looked like an IBM PC but had no markings of any kind. With a few key-strokes he opened his first program. After hitting an icon in the corner, that screen shrunk but was still visible; now he opened a second screen that looked like a spreadsheet program. Then he opened a third screen, showing a graphic version of the numbers from the spreadsheet.

John was astonished. They had three programs running at the same time on one machine.

"All three programs are running together, one over the other, sharing data."

When he tried to open a fourth screen, however, everything froze and an error message appeared.

"Dammit. We don't think it's a software problem, we think we've just outgrown the hardware. We've got the motherboard filled with all the RAM chips it will hold; it's just not enough. Anyway, John, that's not your problem; you're going to be working with Gary and Tom on the OS/2 project in conjunction with IBM. Bill said you have some experience with the System 32."

"That's right, my father's with IBM in Boca. I've been writing code for the 32 for the last five years. I'm pretty good with UNIX."

"You're that Richardson; I should have known. I've talked with your father several times on conference calls with Bill. You'll fit right in."

That evening, John picked up his personal items and checked out of the motel. He moved into the "Frat House," sharing a bedroom with Mike. They each had a twin bed placed in the corners furthest away from the door. There was just enough room for one chest of drawers, two drawers for each. John realized right away why they called it the 'frat house'. In the front windows, the guys had placed a sign with three large Greek letters; Mu, Sigma, & Iota. It was a play on the Microsoft Corporation name, substituting Incorporated for corporation.

For the next four years John worked in the OS/2 environment. Once the Microsoft version was released to original equipment manufacturers, he was shifted to the team working on a 32-bit version of Windows based on the OS/2 code.

Of course there were other groups working on other projects throughout their new headquarters in Redmond, Washington. Those projects were for developing software to run on the existing operating systems, and, where no hardware existed, developing the hardware and the software to run it.

Bill Gates was pushing harder and harder to develop software first. He always preached that if you weren't considered by others to be on the cutting edge of technology, they'd drop you like a hot potato and someone would step in to take your place. He seemed to be everywhere at once: sitting in on meetings, critiquing new ideas, making snide remarks about presenters who seemed to be taking shortcuts, or who were not "pushing the envelope" far enough.

His programmers and systems people were working sixty-hour weeks, being fueled by Twinkies, Coke, and marshmallow peeps. Something had to give; for John that moment came in 1995. They had just released Windows 95. On the release date August 24, 1995, the 'Frat Brothers' decided to celebrate at a local tavern. None of them were real party animals, but that night they had indulged in a liberal amount of beer. Gary, Tom, and Mike had taken Gary's new Firebird, while John drove his trusty 1963 Volkswagen Beetle. The need for speed overwhelmed common sense and the Firebird left the Beetle in the dust. Minutes later, on the freeway, it crossed over onto the shoulder of the road traveling too fast to make the bend, jumped the curb and struck a utility pole, killing all the occupants. John had taken the back roads home and was unaware of the accident until he was awakened the following morning by a Washington State Trooper.

John was numb with shock; he stood in the empty apartment that they had all shared for just over ten years. That was bad enough, come Monday morning he was going to have to go back to work, to the room he spent nearly three thousand hours a year in, every year, for the last ten years; the ghosts would haunt him forever.

He just couldn't do it; he wouldn't do it. Monday morning, he would sit down with HR and hand in his resignation. If he had to, he'd walk into Gates' office and tell him himself.

Everyone in HR was very sympathetic, of course. After a half an hour of filling out forms and going over how he wanted to handle his accumulated vacation and personal time and his retirement and stock option plan, he was asked to wait in the conference room across the hall. It wasn't long before Bill entered the room and closed the door.

"John, I know what you must think of me, that I pushed you guys too hard. But I had no choice. We were a young company. We had to strike fast in an industry that was changing faster than anybody could imagine. We had to find a niche and become the dominant player, because if we didn't, there were others who would. We've been responsible for making nearly twelve thousand millionaires, many of those still employed here. The company is now a large, mature company, we're ready to branch out into other areas and take advantage of all the new technologies being developed.

"John, I want to thank you for all your hard work and the sacrifices that you made to help make us a success. I wish you could stay on, but I understand why you can't. I just wish your friends were here to reap the rewards as well. Please accept this check; it's a gift from me to you, it has nothing to do with Microsoft and I've been assured by my tax people that it is not taxable to you. Good luck and best wishes in the future in any venture that you get involved in."

He abruptly stood up, offered his hand to John, and then left the room. Before John left the room, he peaked into the envelope. He had to sit briefly to compose himself; it was a bank check in the amount of one million dollars.

One of the women from HR came into the room and sat next to him. "What did you say to him; I've never seen him so emotional before?"

John didn't reply, he just folded the envelope and put it in his pocket.

"What are your plans? Are you going to stay here in Washington?"

"No, I've got to get away from here. Maybe I'll move back to southern California. I really want to get out of this area before the rainy season begins."

"I know what you mean. I get so depressed here during the winter; it always seems to be raining. My sister left here a couple of years ago. She moved to Sedona, Arizona and just loves it. She said they have more sunny days than we have cloudy ones and they even get on average about eighteen inches of snow a year. You should look into it."

"Maybe I will; thanks. I think I'll go visit my folks in Florida for a couple of weeks. I haven't seen them in years. I've got until the end of September to vacate our apartment in Bellevue; then I'll make the decision."

________________________________________________

John surprised his folks, showing up on their doorstep with a bag in each hand. His mother was overjoyed, while his father was somewhat skeptical as to the motive behind his visit. One evening after his wife had retired for the evening; he sat with John in their 'Florida Room'.

"John, what's going on? I can see something is bothering you, what is it?"

"Dad, I quit Microsoft."

After giving his father sufficient time to comprehend what he had just said, he explained what had happened and how it had affected him.

"John, are you OK financially; do you need any money?"

"No Dad, I'm fine. In fact, thanks to your advice and a very generous gift from Mr. Gates, I'm worth in excess of five million dollars."

"Maybe I should be hitting you up for a loan. That's great son. What are your plans?"

"Right now, I think I'm going to move to Sedona, Arizona. I need some time to decide what I want to do with the rest of my life."

"Arizona... your mother was hoping you'd settle a little closer to home when you finally left Microsoft."

"Dad, it rains too much here and is far too humid for my tastes. I'll make sure I come back and visit more often; after all, I'll have a lot more free time, now that I'm unemployed."

John stayed with them for the remainder of his two-week vacation, and then it was time to get back to Washington to end one phase of his life and begin the next.

He packed whatever clothes and personal affects he could fit into the back seat of his car and after one last look at the 'frat house', the Mu Sigma Iota sign was still in the front window, he started the trek southeast on Interstate 84. Before he was done he would travel over 1,380 miles. It was already dark when he arrived in Sedona, so he checked in at a Great Western Hotel. The next morning, he parted the curtains and discovered that his room opened up onto a large patio. After dressing, he stepped out onto the patio and fell in love. Overhead, three hot air balloons floated silently with the wind, northward through the valley; the only sound was an occasional burst from the heaters. The early morning blue sky was a perfect contrast to the majestic red rock mountains across the valley.

Chapter 6

Where she ended up wasn't exactly in Sedona, but rather the small of Village of Oak Creek just to the south. Awilda was looking for a building that she could use as both a school for self-defense and as her residence. She found it on Route 179, the access road from Interstate 17 to Sedona. It was a building that had had two retail businesses on the first floor and two apartments on the second. The entire building was vacant; it seemed that no one had found the right type of businesses to occupy the first floor and the apartments had never been rented.

The owner of the building was desperate to get out from under the deluge of red ink and was very willing to give her an excellent price, especially since she was paying with cold cash. She hired a contractor to make extensive renovations to the second floor apartments, combining them into one large residence, and added a large deck onto the roof of the commercial space below. From her new deck, she could see the majestic red rock mountains that ringed the valley including the rock formations known as Bell Rock and Cathedral Rock.