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Ruffling Feathers Chapter 11 - Songs in a Minor Key
Amy Hutchins's subpoena arrived on a gray day in March. But then, Amy thought bitterly, most days in London were gray. English weather, notoriously wet, had fittingly reflected Amy's mood since she had started her dream job for National Public Radio in October. The call from NPR had come out of the blue. Though she had been working with her mentor, Jay O'Brien, for over a year on making the leap from print to broadcast journalism, Amy was beyond shock when Jay called to say that a buddy at NPR had just alerted him to an opening in their London branch. NPR was looking for someone to cover the Green movement in Europe, someone with a strong environmental track record who had connections on all sides of the issue. The job was Amy's if she wanted it. Now, just when she was ready to experience her first English spring and put the turmoil of last summer finally behind her, she had to go home to Colorado to testify in Greg Hansen's trial. What puzzled Amy was that she was a witness for the defense. She had hoped not to get dragged back into the mess she had fled, but surely any contribution of hers should have been sought by the prosecution. Amy stared at the envelope in which the subpoena had been delivered and crazily wondered what would happen if she ignored it. Not really an option. People like Amy don't run from their responsibilities, even when those responsibilities are gut wrenching. I know, I just know they'll ask me about Paul. And he'll be sitting there, looking at me, listening to me. And it will be awful all over again. During the long, gray winter in London while she struggled to learn a new job and a new way of life, in self-imposed exile from family and home, Amy relived three glorious weeks in July when the planets aligned and life was beautiful. As she walked in the rain to and from her office, she could almost feel the glorious Colorado sun beating down on her and Paul as they struggled towards the truth of Paul's parents' deaths and all that it held for them. From the minute she had walked down the United Airlines 'direct to London' jetway at Denver International Airport and out of Paul's life, Amy had unremittingly relived every minute of their three weeks together. It had all started with Paul's request for her assistance as he tried a different tack in his quest for the truth about his parents' death. Amy had stood on the jogging trail, hands on hips, defiant, wary, "Okay Paul, enlighten me" she had said to his declaration that he would tell her the truth as he knew it. Following Ariel's lead, eager to reach the park she knew lay ahead, they started back up the jogging trail, retracing the route Paul had just covered during his mid-morning run. "Where to begin?" A little smile crossed Paul's face, " 'To begin my life with the beginning of my life, I record that I was born...' " Amy was not amused. "Since when do slash and burn industrialists recite Dickens?" "Is that really how you see me? As a slash and burn industrialist?" A chilly glance indicated she did. He shrugged. "I suppose you would. Why would you see me as anything else? So, what is the truth as I know it? I suppose I can tell you the facts and we'll see if that passes for truth. My parents died in a plane crash ten years ago. It was December. They had spent Thanksgiving in Vail at their condo. I suppose my mother spent her time skiing and socializing, mostly with the Betty Ford crowd; my father was busy making deals. The Two Forks dam project had just been shot down by the EPA so he was retrenching, getting ready to cast the net further afield. I was in Paris—doing the grand tour. Kind of old-fashioned, but it was the next step in the education prescribed by my father. My Uncle Matt, Richard's father, called me at three in the morning to tell me that my parents' plane went down shortly after takeoff from the Vail airport. There were no survivors. The weather hadn't been too bad, flurries, but really cold. The FAA concluded that the deicing system hadn't worked and that the wings had iced up." As they walked the trail, Paul told Amy the details of FBI agent Dennis Brown's plans to smoke out the eco-terrorists who, Dennis believed, had murdered George Donovan ten years ago. There was evidence that the deicing system had been cooked. In a chilling monotone, Paul told Amy that the Donovan Park project, as well as the proposed strip mall in Old Town Piñon, were nothing a front, a reincarnation of the scenario in which George Donovan had been the victim, but in which Paul himself was now being offered up as the sacrificial target. Dennis was going to save him, Paul asserted, before the final blow. Amy listened silently to Paul's confession. At the end of the jogging trail, they stopped and looked across Piñon's town park. Amy unleashed Ariel, who ran across the park to the arc of trees that skirted the park. Amy and Paul followed. Once more, they walked across the wide expanse of lawn to the little white garden at the edge of the park. As they crossed the park, Paul told Amy more details of the project. Phase One had been the press conference announcing the Donovan Foundation's grant of ten million for fish habitat. Amy's heart sank when she heard that Dennis had been relying on her, specifically, to do enough research to break the aquifer storage story at the press conference. So Paul hadn't been surprised after all, at her questions regarding the aquifer. He had been expecting them. Phase One had been successful—Donovan's new Foundation building had been sabotaged and the authorities had been able to collect evidence that they could compare with the meager evidence from the plane wreck a decade ago. Phase Two was designed to make Donovan Industries' assault on Colorado personal. Because Piñon was home to several radical e-groups, the strip mall project was designed to simply pour salt in the wound and accelerate retribution. Phase Two had also been successful. Before Paul could explain just why it had been considered successful, Amy cried out in dismay. They had reached her moonlight garden of now pitifully wilted white flowers. She hadn't visited her plot since she had shown it to Paul on midsummer night and so hadn't noticed that the sprinkler spigot had been twisted away from the garden. She knelt on the ground to realign the spigot. The dirt was powdery dry and brittle leaves and stems crumbled at her touch. She looked up, "Even when you have a sprinkler system, gardens die if they're not tended." Amy stood up and wiped her dusty hands on her cutoffs. She took full measure of Paul before continuing, "The arrogance displayed in your so-called project is nothing short of mind-boggling. I am very sorry that your parents were killed. I cannot even begin to imagine how horrible it would be to experience that kind of loss. But to use us, every thinking, feeling, caring Coloradoan...to abuse us, by diverting our energies from actual threats to our region to your fabricated ones, is unforgivable. Have you any idea how much time, money, resources, and energy it took to pull off that South Park rally? And you have the gall to tell me that it was for nothing? When it comes out that this was all just for show, every last one of us at that rally will look like a flaming idiot. And you'll just walk away. You'll nail some poor stupid bastard for murder and then you'll go back to Chicago or wherever the hell you're from and we'll spend the next five years cleaning up the mess and trying to reestablish credibility." "I'm sorry." Paul carried the weight of Amy's accusations and acknowledged the truth of her rage. "I'm really, really sorry, Amy." And then the light at the end of the tunnel beckoned irresistibly. "But we can stop it before it gets worse. Annie told me to take a different tack, and you can help me find true course." Week One And the man could cook. He could differentiate a shallot from a clove of garlic, sage from basil, prosciutto from pancetta. He was sorry; he wanted her help; nothing more be said. Amy sat in Paul's kitchen that first Saturday night and watched as he cooked for her and listened as he talked to her. "What am I really? What I am is hardly better than a slash and burn industrialist. I'm an engineer...and a sailor. All my life, all I ever really wanted to do was design sailboats. Lovely lines that curve down to the waterline, sails that arc, taut with the wind. I grew up messing about in boats and never got over it. When I dream, I dream of sailing...the wind, the salt spray, the sheer force of wind and water." "And where did you mess about in boats? Lake Michigan?" "Why would you think Lake Michigan?" "Well, you're from Chicago aren't you?" "Chicago? No. That's just where the company's headquartered. No, I'm from Maine—I can actually say that because I'm sixth generation Maine. Home is a little fishing village that wants to be a tourist trap, Carlisle Point, Maine. It's where I'm from and where I live when I'm not on the road." "You're kidding. You live in a fishing village? You're small town?" Amy was incredulous. "Most of my life, I've lived at the very tide-line of the sea." Amy's interest was peaked. "Have you ever made any passages?" "I sailed LA to Hawaii alone. Mostly though, I sail my own coast. The inlets, the rivers, exploring the geography, trying to understand where I'm from." "Annie says that geography is destiny." Amy added dreamily. "I've never actually known what she meant by that..." And then a thought brought her back to the task at hand. "Don't you have a sister hanging about? Isn't that how we got started on this particular conversation?" "My sister is with Annie Edgerton this evening. Gina wants to be a chef, which I have mixed feelings about. I'm afraid she'll quit college and run off to Cordon Bleu or something. Anyway, she and Annie really hit it off when we were at the Gilcrest's ranch over Fourth of July. Annie's hired her on as kitchen help for wedding catering for the rest of the summer, and Gina couldn't be happier." "Well, I can't think of a better person for your sister to be with than Queen Anne." Amy paused and then plunged on, after all the pursuit of truth was the sole reason she and Paul were sharing appetizers, "My mother was literally stunned by how much Gina looks like your mother. Have you heard that before?" "Everyone who knew my mother sees her in Gina. At least in looks. They're light years apart in personality, which is kind of hard on Gina because she thinks people are disappointed when she doesn't sparkle like my mother did." "Your mother sparkled?" "Kate Gilcrest told me my mother was the biggest flirt she ever knew, and she meant it in a good way. She had pizzazz. Kate said that Mother could walk into a room and every eye, male and female, would gravitate to her. And she could work a crowd. Every man wanted her on his arm. And every woman felt that she was her best friend and owed everything to her—look at how your own mother remembered her." Amy frowned slightly at this. "I had no idea my mother ever even met your mother, much less felt that she saved her life. I tried to ask her about it after dinner that night when..." Amy blushed as she remembered her mother's loud voice during dinner. Paul smiled kindly, "It's okay. Don't go there..." "Anyway," Amy continued, "she wouldn't
tell me a thing about it, which for my mother, is extraordinary." As might be expected when two people are as fiercely attracted to each other as Amy and Paul were, romance is the inevitable outcome of any shared interest, no matter how slight. Whether it be a quest for truth or a quest for good Chinese, common ground becomes sacred ground. With his apology, Paul bridged the gulf that had divided them. And Amy mercilessly suppressed the quiet, little voice in her head that told her that his apology wasn't enough. Instead, they threw themselves wholeheartedly into finding mutual ground—a love of simple Italian food, a penchant for earmarking pages of books, listening to Mozart, Bonnie Raitt, and Billie Holliday. That first week, they gloried in their new-found compatibility, and armed with good intentions, they sallied forth to tilt at windmills and look for answers.
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