The Babymaker Ch. 04

With that being all, I said "Okay, guys, you've all done good work. I know I've been hard on a lot of you, and I appreciate you bearing it. The only thing left to do is talk to David Roseblatt, and I'll handle that since he's in the City. So y'all get some rest, and enjoy the football games either here or on TV..."

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When I got back to my office, I made phone calls. After leaving a message, I called Lieutenant Rudistan to my office. When he came in, I said "I need you to very quietly talk to 'Ice Cube' Perry as well as any other contacts or C.I.s you have." I handed him a file folder. "What's inside there is what we're looking for."

"Wilco, sir." said Rudistan jovially. He moved out smartly to execute the mission.

Next, I called Eddy the Bounty Hunter. "Eddy, pull out all the stops. I need to know who was hired to kill Carl Ryder and David Rose... Yep, they're the same guys in both murders... I don't need proof, just the guys names, and where they are at any given time, if you can get it... okay, thanks..."

My earlier call was returned: "Hello, General McFarland, thank you for returning my call... yes, Alison is doing well... yes, sir... yes, General, I have a favor to ask you..."

Part 25 - Storm Clouds Gathering

Saturday, October 3rd. It was a big gathering at The Cabin. Marie was staying overnight with Carole. Paulina brought Tasha. Tanya and Jack Muscone brought their kids Tiffany, Jennifer, and Pete over, Teresa and Todd brought their boys, and Cindy, Callie, and Maggie brought Betsy over. Sheriff Griswold brought himself over.

The kids had a big birthday party for Pete Feeley, though little Jack Burke and Ian McDonald Troy decided to play video games in the attic room rather than join the festivities... until ice cream was served. At that point Jack made an appearance, but Ian was still a no-show. Pete still collected a good haul of toys, and his favorite was the baseball glove Carole had bought for him (with my money, but I digress...)

The Bulldogs and Wildcats won their games, and the Georgia Bulldogs were taking care of their lightwork, the Tennessee Volunteers, in the nationally-televised afternoon game. The highlight of the game was when the Georgia mascot bulldog Uga whipped the Tennessee mascot blue tick hound Smokey on the sidelines when the dogs were brought together for the television cameras. Word was that Smokey wanted to enter the Transfer Portal after that beatdown.

Late that afternoon, I got a phone call from Alison McFarland. "Don," she said, "I got a hot tip that something big is going on at the University. According to my sources, Dr. Lionel Carmela is contacting a lot of Faculty about a situation involving your wife, but I don't know what that situation is."

"Okay, I'll check it out." I said. "And if I find something out you can use, I'll let you know."

After disconnecting, I went and found Laura, and had her come out with me on the back deck. I told her about what I'd heard, though not that Alison McFarland was my source. I said "I don't know what it's about, but if you have some contacts you can call, you might want to find out." Laura nodded, and went inside and upstairs to make some phone calls.

After dinner, as night fell, Cindy asked if she could speak to me on the back deck. I agreed, and we went out. I started up the gas log fire in the fire pot, as it was getting chilly in the evenings.

"I'm sorry about everything that's happened, Don." Cindy said. "I know I'm going to have to pay for what I did to Julia and Joan and their cellphones."

"Yes, and that's in the hands of Our Sheriff." I said. "Don't worry too much about it, though. It is what it is, and things will work out. And if the Sheriff wanted you gone, you'd already be gone."

Cindy said "I also heard that Ariel went to Midtown, possibly looking at places to start her own gym. She may ask me to buy her out of her shares of Town Fitness Centers."

I said: "If she does move down there, Molly and I have a house to rent her. Chief Soltis moved to a gated community with much better security after getting death threats from Tasheeka Harris's 'Black Lives Matter' thugs."

Cindy nodded, then said "Don... is there any way that I can secretly, in an off-the-record way, maybe as privileged family information, tell you that I happened to have learned that not only is every woman that hooked up with the Babymaker Boys first had gynecology appointments with Laura, but that every man in that group had virility tests done by her?"

"No." I said. "There's no way you can legitimately tell me that... so don't say anything to me about it." Cindy nodded as Tiger Mom and Gracie came over to us. Tiger Mom jumped onto Cindy's lap and Gracie onto mine, and soon they were purring like little feline machines as we humans gently petted them. We all sat and looked out over the twinkling lights of our Town as a train came over the western horizon...

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After everyone else had left, with Sheriff Griswold in the second bedroom after having too many bourbons to drive home, Carole and Marie in the third bedroom, Molly in her downstairs room, the boys on cots in the attic room, and Paulina, Laura, and I in the main bedroom, I woke up to find that Laura was not in the bed. I looked out the window and saw that she was on the back deck, with the fire pot going.

I went downstairs and outside, and sat down on 'my' side of the metal mesh loveseat, to her right, and put my arm around her. I didn't ask. I didn't need to.

Laura finally said "I found out that Lionel Carmela is trying to convene a secret meeting of the Faculty Ethics Board tomorrow. They're not the overall Ethics Board, but an advisory subset. Carmela is only calling his allies to attend the meeting, but they're in the majority on the Faculty Ethics Board. I called President Wellman, and he told me he had no idea about it, nor what was going on. He was supposed to call me back, but he never did."

"I also called Stephanie Steele and Dr. Chase of the Law School." Laura continued. "Stephanie and Edward are out of Town on a mini-getaway, which is one reason we are keeping Marie this weekend. She's part of the overall Ethics Board, as is Dr. Chase Neither was contacted by Carmela nor President Wellman."

"Do you know what it's about?" I asked.

Laura said "I have suspicions. Ever since Carl was murdered, there have been some strange things going on. There have been attempts to hack my computers, which would've succeeded against most people, but you know what my security is like." I nodded.

Laura: "And some of my graduate students, including Karyn and Peter, have been contacted by people claiming to be reporters for The Silver Sentinel, the University's newspaper, asking if they know of any projects I'm doing regarding prostitution, and more specifically, male prostitution. Peter and Karyn told me about it. Never had that happen before, where the paper tries to get info on me by harassing my students."

I said "And the Police just questioned Peter over a possible connection to Carl's death." I thought about it, and made a decision. I said quietly: "Laura, I'm not supposed to talk to you at all about the Carl Ryder murder case. But I'm going to tell you some things, and I'll never say anything to anyone else, due to spousal privilege."

I said: "We the Police know that your assistant Laurie was impregnated by Carl. We know that Carla Rose was impregnated by Carl. We have the names of other women that were serviced by Carl or by other men, and your grad student Peter was one of those studs. And what they, the rest of the Police, don't know but I found out... and don't ask me how... is that every woman that used those men for impregnation had a gynecology appointment with you beforehand. And every man involved in that service underwent a virility test."

"My God." Laura moaned quietly. Then she said "I won't ask how you know. But I'm obviously going to have to ramp up my security."

"No doubt about that." I said. "And honey, it may all be innocent on your part; after all, you're a gynecologist and OBGYN on Staff at University Hospital. But that Socialist slug Carmela and the rabidly hostile, corrupt Press will do everything they can to make it sound as bad as they can. Just look at what they did to Cindy's gym, and to the TCPD."

"I am the choir. You are preaching to it." Laura said...

Part 26 - Crime or Coincidence?

"This is Bettina Wurtzburg, KXTC Channel Two News!" shouted the redheaded MILF reporterette from the KXTC studios anchor desk. "Let's go to our reporter Amber Harris for a massive breaking story! Amber!"

"That's right, Bettina!" said the athletic blonde from across the street from the clock tower that was the symbolic entrance to the University. "Channel Two News has learned that Dr. Lionel Carmela has filed a formal ethics complaint with the University, and a criminal complaint with the SBI and the State Medical Board, charging Dr. Laura Fredricson with running a male prostitution ring out of her office on Campus!..."

To be continued.

Dear Readers, you have the cluuuuues. Who is responsible for the murder of Carl Ryder? Who is responsible for the death of David Rose, a.k.a. Flanders? Will Laura's career be over? And what will happen to Cindy, and her career? Tune in next time... same Crowbar time, same Crowbar channel...