The Second Floor | Unhappy Accidents, pt. 4 (63.15)

[mragland]

4.03.2063 – Richmond upon Thames, Greater London

Grant had been putting off this call for a while now, but he knew that it had to be done. If for no other reason, than his own peace of mind. He got into the office early that gray Tuesday morning, settled in, and pulled out his laptop (not the team-issued one, but the one from home), making sure to route it through the mobile Wi-Fi, a little black box slightly smaller than a deck of cards.

Molly joined the call in less than twenty seconds.

“Hey, Grant,” she said, her video was not on. “Thanks for calling during business hours for a change.”

“You got my last email from yesterday?” queried Grant as he took a sip of coffee from his travel mug.

“I did. I think I'm up to speed here. Did you get my consulting agreement?”

“I did,” said Grant, opening another window on his computer. “You don't come cheap.”

“Well, I had to pad it a little so you could begin paying down that negative balance.”

“But this will leave us square?” asked Grant, hopefully.

“This will start to move us towards square,” said Molly. “You ready to begin?”

Grant heaved a sigh, “Yeah, let's go.”

“Alright, I won't hold you in suspense. We concluded that Arlo's theory, while interesting, was a little off the mark. Truth be told, I don't think anybody in the BBA cares much about you or your club, no offense.”

“None taken.”

“But an incident did occur. So, we looked more broadly at who might be behind it. First, let's go down the list, starting with the Pacific, which you thought held the most likely candidates. Hawaii. Usually your prime suspects when it comes to this sort of thing and we took a long, hard look at Hough and Walker. The club is in a pretty good place right now, and Walker is frankly busy with other matters. The guy is 97 and he's been taking stock of his own mortality lately.”

“Better late than never,” said Grant.

“And he might be taking steps to address it,” Molly went on. “Short of it is that he doesn't appear to be up to any of his old tricks and might be going through a period of, I don't know, introspection? Maybe?”

“Sounds like he's taking it seriously,” said Grant, who wondered briefly if he would even see 97 himself. If he did, he didn't plan to be working when it happened.

“And next up, Long Beach. There are the water rumors, of course, and the rumors of the club relocating away from L.A., but it's hard to know how much stock to put into either. The club seems a little bit like a perpetual victim. Sad to say, I'm not sure there is really much fight in this group, certainly not enough to lash out.”

Grant nodded. “The Surfers are an institution. Hard to just pull up stakes.” The club had strung together some good campaigns, but that one-hundred loss season last year might have knocked the wind right out of their sails, a few more like that and relocation looks a lot more reasonable.

“Moving along to Portland. The Kate Fiscus Circus left town, taking her cookies with her, and the club's carried on just fine in her absence. Sandy Mounds is the new face of the front office, though Wilson pokes his head out now and again. The Lumberjacks have turned into a clean, boring team. They don't appear to be practicing the dark arts anymore.”

“I will miss those cookies,” said Grant, “but not the shenanigans.”