The Rescuer Ch. 03

"... I didn't drive here... I was carried out here once... then I walked the next time... I don't care if any of you believe me... but I've stood in the very middle of this road to Hell... Twice!"

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Museum Garden

Exhibition

After the second

finale performance

Total chaos as the entire

event space is being

reconfigured yet again

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Ellie's entire face was still flushed from all the excitement and residual heat from the extreme pyrotechnics.

Their entire group kept having to move a few feet, from side to side, to keep all the new activity from running them over. The first two sections of attendees, that had been singled out over the speakers, were already switching places.

Those that had been watching the second finale, near the relative safety of the huge warehouse, had just finished going thru the extra auction tables crowded inside its bottom floor. The group of outdoor attendees nearest the proper Auction Tent, had finished making their choices after winding thru the maze of tables in there.

Now the two crowds that had been on the sides of the main stage were switching locations, and streaming as best they could thru the military school students rearranging all the chairs yet again. The rest of the audience were either lending a hand in transforming the city block sized event space, or lining for either their first bite of food or more drinks. More tables kept pouring out of the lower level of the support buildings, then getting filled up with amazing delicacies from all the caters and local restaurants.

The free champagne and beer glasses got picked up almost as fast as they got set down, while the dozen or so bartenders making mixed drinks for cash were extremely busy trying to keep up with their paying customer's demands.

The strange redheaded girl from her own company, was making timely rather pithy announcements, and was easily keeping everyone organized and enjoying themselves. Her view from the second floor of the exhibit hall made that job much easier, but it was really her unique and wry sense of humor that made the real difference to the event.

There was still no sign of any of the actors from the stages, and Lynette was beginning to look a little nervous. Even Carissa kept looking around, to see if Drake was about to walk out of any one of the now reopened doors of the support buildings. The Seniors were releasing the thick outdoor curtains covering the windows, one at a time, and the Juniors were folding them up and carrying them out to the waiting trucks. The enormous piles of rope were just being tossed into canvas bags and wheeled out off site.

All five of the huge doors in the back wall were open now, but security was still extremely tight for the event. The obviously ex-military Opera House guards kept a close eye on everyone, while shooing away any reporters or camera crews that got too close. The generator trucks and the other equipment needed for the performance had left long ago. Now those doors were being used to cart off all sorts of things from the warehouse to the few remaining trucks. The sophomores were in charge of that, while the freshman were rearranging the chairs and tables into a more dining friendly setting.

But a few of the museum staff were helping the orchestra to set up a new area just to the left of the stage. One enterprising young musician was busily trying to recruit a few of the other college students, into providing mini concerts for the rest of the evening. Ellie knew that his job was going to be hard, and with all of the wonderful smells coming from the food tables, he had already lost most of his potential candidates.

Everett was looking tired, and was fending off far too many questions from the crowd of well wishers, thanking him for sponsoring the event. The kind old woman, that she had never met before tonight, tugged politely on her arm.

"We haven't been properly introduced, but you can call me Maureen. Everett talks about all three of his new assistants constantly, but you the most. We are going to have to work together, you and I, to get him home tonight as soon as possible. I don't know how he would have gotten thru this last nasty fight with his board without you and Lowell!"

Ellie knew that her face had turned red the moment Lowell's name was mentioned. The knowledge that Carissa had conceded in the fight for their coworker's attention, was just now sinking in. Thoughts that the next time she had him alone, the teasing might finally be over, made more than just her face grow warm.

The tiny wrinkled face couldn't hide the sharp eyes and brilliant mind behind them. Mentioning Lowell had been a deliberate test. Here was a person, even while of the oldest generation, that still had much to do with everything going on in the city. Ellie had certainly known of the educational foundation, named after the woman's husband, but hadn't even realized that his equally extraordinary wife was still living.

"Oh! Don't look at me like that! A lot of us, not just us old folk, prefer to work behind the scenes! You're that way too! Aren't you?"

Ellie took a half step backwards, and reappraised her new companion. Together, they walked back a little further from the main group of leaders, so they could talk more privately.

"I try to, but it's not always easy. Getting Everett out of here, at least in anything less than an hour, is going to be so difficult! He's already had a long week, and an even tougher day! This whole fight for control over his own company? It's almost ruined his health! He was so much better after his long trip back to England. Now, I just don't know. What should we do?"

Maureen took a long look around the event space, and sighed. She was apparently tired, too. A few other people were already leaving, being led out to the hordes of waiting cabs filling up the street on the back side of the museum. The old woman clearly wished she was already in one of them and headed home.

"Not much we can do for a little bit. In a minute, I want you to go drag that too eager musician over here. I think that I can solve all of his recruitment problems, rather easily. But you? You have some questions about this whole event. Maybe something to do with your own invitation list? And some missing VIPs from Carissa's much smaller guest roster?"

Shocked that she was so easily being read, Ellie forced herself to turn away for a second. After recomposing her face, she snagged two glasses of champagne, from a passing museum staff member acting as a waiter. As she handed one of the tall elegant glasses to Maureen, she struggled to express her thoughts carefully enough.

"It's who wasn't here that's puzzling me so much right now! The twelve missing board members and their wives, that's obvious now. And there's no real mystery why every single one of the local press snobs have been totally excluded. But Everett insists that he has invited two newspaper column writers to attend, although I haven't seen either one of them yet, or have a clue who they are. It's the Trustees that are worrying me! I tried and tried to get them to accept Everett's personal invitations! Over and over, they simply and politely refused to come! They even refused to take some complimentary tickets for the Trust's staff! They insisted on buying those, and a few dozen other tickets for charity! Why wouldn't ANY of those three come? I think I figured out who donated the last few buildings last year, to finally give the museum committee complete control of the entire block!"

Maureen looked up at her rather intently for a few seconds, while sipping her champagne. Then those almost colorless eyes made a firm and irrevocable decision, and Ellie wondered if her life would ever be the same after the next few minutes.

"You are completely right about that, but I am sure you'd be very hard pressed to prove it! But I will tell you what I can. Young Avery, who took over his father's famous law practice so many years ago? His wife is expecting their third, no fourth child, very soon. Yet another girl, I think, and her condition always gets delicate the last few months of her pregnancies. With the Trust maturing this fall? The same month as her due date? It's no wonder his wife wanted Avery to stay home tonight! That young man has half worked himself to death over this last decade!"

Ellie thought she could see how Maureen liked to dole out her carefully chosen information. You just had to ask the right questions, be patient, and have the right follow up query ready. Get the next bit to be asked for wrong, and the flow of secret knowledge would certainly stop. Hoping she had the right follow up question, she spoke carefully.

"Emma has become rather famous, and that's gotten worse for her as the Trust gets closer to maturity. But her answer was always the same, too. She never even pretended to be able to come here tonight. I've never met her, but I've been told that this is something she would have really enjoyed! With months to prepare for, and work it into her busy schedule, why couldn't she make it?"

The light colored eyes twinkled, and Maureen's wonderful voice grew even softer.

"She has rather personal reasons for refusing, but she also has duties of her own for the Trust. Those tasks instantly conflicted with the date your company helped choose for the Reveal party. Emma is on a very complicated and important trip overseas. Long planned for. She went to Japan first, to personally examine a few of the rather complicated business arrangements the Trust maintains there. Then she went to England, for a few more weeks, to try and deal with some of the problems the Trust is tangled up in. If my little spies are right, even now, she's flying towards New York. To finally go rein in the very last of the rather troublesome sycophant's, leaching their way thru Trust funds. A few of the family there had been stupidly left in charge of a few charities, and they are being removed next week. Old Avery's initial setup of the Trust had been nearly perfect, but from time to time, the older members of the Family have to be removed from power. They used to hate when Old Avery did the deposing the most. Now I'm aren't so sure! That East Coast branch of the family only dread dealing with the Senior Trustee more than Emma these days!"

Ellie was grateful for the little hint about where to steer their conversation next. They maybe had only a few more moments, before the busy students rousted them out of their temporarily secluded spot.

"I've actually met the Senior Trustee. Just once, and just this week. It was a rather remarkable event, in Everett's privately accessed office conference room. Carissa was supposed to be there, but made some very poor excuse for missing it. I found out later, that at least originally, she was aligned with Anthony's camp of the Trust's family? Or at least she had grown up thinking that way? But I swear, I recognized that second voice on the speakers! The one that came right after Drake's? Was that him? Is he actually here tonight? All my invitations, calls, and emails to him never got thru. I even went down to Avery's huge building downtown, this morning, to personally hand his so-called assistant one last set of invitations. She refused to accept them! I've never been so politely insulted in my entire life! She even made me take them back, and give them away, specifically to a newly arrived group of our more annoying engineers!"

Maureen laughed wonderfully, obviously having had experience with all three of the rather rude guard dogs, now true experts at barring all possible official access to the Trustees.

"She tried that with me, just once, but I quickly found out that it didn't matter. Two of the Trustees don't even enter the building for months at a time! Avery hides up on the top floor, and uses his own legal office for Trust business. Emma conducts her work wherever she is, mostly out at her own farmhouse. Absolutely no one from the city is allowed to go out there, so I wouldn't recommend trying it! The Senior Trustee has his own office, that's even more obsessively guarded! I know of only one person that freely goes in and out of that old decrepit building to visit him there!"

That last hint was a trap, although why Ellie knew that, she couldn't adequately express. It was both bait and a dead end, to see if she would be able to resist the distraction, and stay on track with tonight's business.

Knowing that this was the final test of her worthiness... she did her very best to ready the only perfect and allowable last question... right before her too short time completely alone with this extremely powerful woman was about to end.

"If I actually heard the Senior Trustee's voice earlier? It must have been on that antique land line intercom system. There wasn't any static interfering with his message. That means that even with all of the security precautions, he is here, physically somewhere on the museum grounds? I don't see how that is possible! Even though he has been an almost total recluse these last ten years, surely he would have been recognized! A lot of the older society people here watched him grow up! If I had seen him anywhere, even lurking in a corner, I would have known it! Why hasn't anyone raised an alarm?"

The shy smile, that she was rather too quickly coming to love, lit up the tiny wrinkled face.

"Are you so sure that you haven't seen him? Drake isn't the only eccentric mad man in town!"

The wonderfully expressive colorless eyes carefully and slowly turned upwards... retracing the path the sword wielding idiot had taken running along the roof tops to free the stuck canvases... and her intense gaze stopped at the even more treacherous top of the glass exhibit hall itself!

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"No. Not there. People are still looking up at the roof where the lightning struck. They'll see you. Try over here. The view of the main party area is actually better behind this merlon."

The amused look on the Artist's face made him wince.

Of course he would have made the mistake of using that outdated term for the tall squares of bricks surrounding her. Still, the terrace's combination of low waist high walls and that wider than normal middle column, would be just tall enough to nicely shield her from the view of the people milling around below.

Jenny, of course, wasn't going to let that word choice slide. She was difficult to deal with at the best of times. Not just because that once she was comfortable around you, she didn't have the slightest concept of personal space. His emotionally troubled friend never let one of their now rare meetings end without some rather serious and heartfelt sexual teasing.

"Only you would call a bunch of ordinary bricks lining a rooftop a merlon! But wasn't that exact spot also on your rather lengthy and boring list, of places for me not to stand tonight?"

The long bangs of the short bobbed haircut swayed side to side, as she strode further away from the brick corner that had gotten half destroyed by the rogue electrical strikes. The dark black hair was never in danger of covering up her dark eyes though. Her pale freckled skin looked a little sunburned, despite the unfortunate amount of time she'd been forced to spend indoors lately. That meant that she was probably still napping nude, in the middle of her own private roof top garden, during her lunch breaks.

I'd originally chosen the Terrace for her to watch the Reveal for a very specific reason, but the insurance company had quickly nixed the idea. The official 'risk-assessed' and acceptable location had been a miserable compromise.

Typically though, Jenny had gotten her way.

No matter what the cost.

The out of bounds Terrace precisely mimicked the feel of one of the few places Jenny felt totally safe these days. But even though I had left my night job across town in plenty of time, I'd just barely arrived for the first finale on schedule. If there hadn't been that surprise long delay getting the performance even started? I wouldn't have been able to prevent her from standing exactly at the now horribly damaged corner of the rooftop.

I had correctly guessed that she would chose to disobey more than just me.

The effects specialist that had designed the entire performance, had stressed to Jenny over and over, just how dangerous that corner location might become. Before the statue height had been altered literally at the last minute? There had been a very real possibility that wonderfully inventive show, meant to honor Jenny, might have actually killed the Artist that had created it's central focus?

Once the half ton of bricks had fallen down onto the empty orchestra chair... all bets about safety and planning were off... but behind the scenes the Reveal team had worked miracles!

Other than a few minor but expected injuries to the actors on stage, the night had gone exceptionally well. The radio chatter had been a blistering expletive rated mess though, when it was learned that Jenny had been on the Terrace after all. The person on the warehouse roof, that had been tasked with keeping an eye on her with a pair of binoculars, had been hastily reassigned at the last second. That sort of continuous slip up had driven the effects team leader crazy for the last month.

No wonder the New Zealander had wanted to put off the second finale.

His fellow performers and Drake had done well, trying to convince him to allow the extra performance. But even adding my own words hadn't been enough. Nor had his very appreciative audience cheering him on afterwards. What had really turned the tables?

Seeing the reason for tonight's event, standing safe and unharmed by my side, on the very rooftop that had become a death trap.

Jenny's phobias had flared up with all the cheering and shouting. She hadn't wanted to risk being seen by the crowds down below. But I eventually made her reveal herself to him, looking up from the bottom of the garden's back wall, during that last moment of critical indecision.

We all knew that after all of her hard work... Jenny would've wanted to be alone and get the very best look at the statue creature she had created in action... no matter what the risks were.

Jenny rarely did what she was told, unless she'd wanted to do it already.

The spot in the far corner, that the insurance people had insisted was the only allowable place for people to be on the support buildings roof's during the performance, made for pretty awful observing. We should've insisted on putting an actual person up on the rooftop with her from the very start. We had settled for having somebody ready to step out a door at a moment's notice, if a signal from the warehouse roof was given.

Lowell would have been the obvious choice, but I knew he had a much different mission to perform tonight. I really didn't know all the details, but the young man I had never met, was far too much like me to leave anything truly critical in the hands of others.

So when other attempts to find a suitable, and trustworthy hidden companion kept failing, I reluctantly ended up agreeing to be on secluded standby myself. Once I slid down the glass barrel roof of the Exhibition Hall, and found the Artist's approved location empty, I immediately gave up the idea of staying hidden. I frantically climbed over the various intervening roofs to get to the Terrace directly.

That left me with the very tricky job of calming Jenny back down after each performance. She wasn't easy to handle, and long ago I had found out that it was best to not even try that approach. You could only let her be herself, and gently guide her own rather simplistic, and much damaged inner nature back onto the right path.

But because Jenny also had a brilliant and creatively literal mind... I always had to tread carefully and watch not only what I tried to say... but each of the words I chose while I did that.