Among the Ducklings Read online

  Marsh Brooks

  AMONG THE

  DUCKLINGS

  Second Kindle Edition

  © 2012 by Marsh Brooks

  To Margie, for everything.

  Acknowledgments

  I just want to thank Linda Hurt and Dr. Mary Bea Reyes for agreeing to be my “editors” and for the constructive criticism that they gave me during the writing of this novel. Linda and Mary Bea, I owe you one.

  Chapter One

  “Charles, party of nine. Charles, party of nine,” kept repeating the young hostess, as she surveyed the crowd standing outside the Brazilian restaurant, as if she knew who Charles was. She wore a blue blouse over a long black skirt. The name tag on her blouse read “Cathy”, and on the top left of the blouse, embroidered, were small figures of women in bikinis with feathered masks dancing in a carnival.

  “I think it's us,” a woman said, pointing to a large flat beeper with blue flashing lights that one of the men in her group was holding. She was the only woman in the group, and the only one standing while the men were sitting on the bench in front of the restaurant. A few minutes earlier, they had offered her a seat next to them, but she had declined. She preferred to stand.

  The man with the beeper then got up and waved at the hostess, who then guided them to a corner of one of the dining rooms, where two tables were joined together to accommodate the group.

  Although it was known as a Brazilian restaurant, the menu itself consisted of a variety of dishes from numerous countries in South America. Located in downtown Orlando in a large shopping center, the restaurant contained six separate dining rooms that shared two self-service salad bars. Pictures of the Brazilian countryside adorned the walls of each of the rooms.

  After ordering a martini, the woman then followed the men in her group to one of the salad bars. As she approached the salad bar, something caught her attention. She turned and looked.

  Far away, in a dark corner in the adjacent dining room, sat a man she recognized. Next to him was a young blond woman who was whispering something in his ear, while her lips gently kissed his earlobe. He was smiling, and his hand covered hers affectionately above the table. She was stunned. They didn't see her and they were not going to.

  She had to leave the restaurant. She had to think. She needed to know who the blond woman was, and why he was with her instead of with his fiancée tonight.

  ##

  “Good afternoon, Mr. Pierce. How is your ankle?” a voice rang from across the room, prompting Philippe Pierce to shift in his hospital bed and turn his head in the direction of the voice. His 6 foot 2 inch frame barely fit in the bed, which made him wonder whether the hospital mistakenly put him in the children's ward.

  “My name is Dr. Gomez,” the voice then added. “Are you feeling any pain?”

  “The nurse gave me some painkillers and I feel a little bit better,” responded Philippe.

  “Good,” said Dr. Gomez while reading from an electronic pad in her left hand, and holding what appeared to be a tiny black stylus. Dr. Gomez then used the stylus to punch something on the screen of the pad and said, “I see yesterday was your birthday. Happy birthday.”

  “Thanks. My luck,” Philippe replied distractedly, thinking about the irony of his situation. Who would have thought that he would miss his 35th birthday party that his friend Jeremy had planned for him yesterday? He had driven five hours from Miami and arrived at Jeremy's house in Saint Augustine at 2:00 pm to be on time for the birthday party, which was to start at 7:00 pm. By 5:00 pm, he was already being rushed to the hospital, having broken his left ankle in a game of basketball.

  “Did you enjoy your birthday cake?” Dr. Gomez asked.

  “Sure. It was the best hospital cupcake I’ve ever had. Not much sugar and taste,” replied Philippe with a short laugh, which caused Dr. Gomez to join in the laughter.

  “I will tell our new baker how much you enjoyed it,” Dr. Gomez said. She was dressed in a blue coat, and looked to Philippe to be in her mid sixties, with short black hair, light hazel eyes, short nose and very small lips. She didn't appear to be wearing any makeup. She didn't need to. She must have been a knockout when she was younger, thought Philippe. Dr. Gomez sensed that Philippe was watching her. She looked up and her eyes met Philippe's and she said, “I see that you live in Miami. How did you get injured and end up all the way up here in Saint Augustine?”

  As Philippe was reliving the events of the last forty-eight hours from his hospital bed in Saint Augustine, Florida, little did he know that meeting Dr. Marcia Gomez would change his life forever.

  ##

  Helped by the strong winds that kept pulling and slapping Isabel Romero's umbrella, the torrential rain managed to fully drench Isabel, as she ran from her car to the main entrance of the Dadeland mall in South Miami. She calculated that it would take her two hours to buy a gift, change clothes and drive across town to Los Caballeros, a Mexican restaurant in downtown Miami, to celebrate the high school graduation of the daughter of her close friend, Lucy Langford. The reservation was at 6:00 pm and Isabel's watch read 4:30 pm. She was already late and needed to hurry.

  “May I help you Ma'am?” asked the young, good looking male clerk, as she entered the electronics store. The clerk seemed no more than eighteen years old and appeared to be a living example of the term “multiracial”. Was he black, white, Hispanic? One could not tell by simply looking at him.

  “I am looking for an electronic book reader,” Isabel replied. Except for one customer, who was busy perusing an electronics catalog, the store was completely deserted.

  “I guess the rain chased your customers away,” Isabel said as the young clerk grabbed a blue box from the top of a shelf behind him, with a picture of a gadget with the name Rezko on it. The picture on the box looked more like a large calculator than an electronic book reader.

  “I guess so,” The clerk said. He pulled the gadget out of the box and added, “This is the latest model that we have and recommend."

  “I'll take it,” said Isabel.

  The clerk looked surprised at Isabel's fast decision and said, “Give me one second, and let me go check the price for you.”

  “The price on the box hasn't changed, has it?” Isabel asked, smiling at the clerk and pointing to a small yellow sticker on the side of the box.

  “No. Ma'am,” the clerk replied, looking embarrassed.

  “OK. Just wrap it for me,” Isabel said, as she planted her credit card on the glass counter, in front of the clerk.

  “Yes, Ma'am,” the clerk said, picking up Isabel's card.

  As the clerk was swiping the card, Isabel realized that the young clerk kept calling her Ma'am. She had just turned thirty-two years old last month and wondered whether her age was showing.

  As soon as the clerk finished wrapping the gift, Isabel ran out of the store. The rain was still pouring heavily, forcing Isabel to wait at the mall's entrance and not run to the car, fearing that the water might damage the electronic reader. As Isabel was waiting for the rain to stop, her cell phone rang, emitting an awful tune that her sister Rebecca had downloaded from the internet and uploaded into Isabel's Iphone.

  “Hello,” Isabel answered.

  “Hi big sis,” Rebecca said, “Where are you? Richard just called me asking for you.” Rebecca was twelve years younger than Isabel. But the age difference never prevented them from being good friends.

  “I am on my way home to change for the graduation party. I am all wet from this rain,” Isabel responded.

  “Oh, I remember now,” Rebecca said. “Richard said to call him back."

  “I will,” Isabel promised. Isabel and Richard Seyfert had been engaged for the past three years. Sometimes Isabel wondered if they would ever get married. T
he wedding date had never been set and Richard was in no hurry.

  “I don't want to use your money,” Richard would say. “The economy will soon pick up and my construction company will rebound. The fact is that I love you. So why is it wrong for me to make sure that I'm financially able to provide for my wife before we get married? ”

  “Isabel, are you OK?” asked Rebecca still on the line, interrupting Isabel's thoughts.

  “Sure. Where are you?”

  “I am with Mark. We’re picking up Mark's niece. We're going to the movies,” Rebecca answered. Mark was Rebecca's boyfriend and they had been going out since high school.

  “What are you going to see?” Isabel asked.

  “Some horror movie that Mark chose,” Rebecca answered.

  “Hopefully, it’s good. So at what time do you think you will be home tonight?”

  “The movie starts at 7:00 pm. I should be home by 11:00 after dropping Mark and his niece off.”

  “OK, be safe,” Isabel said, before she hung up.

  ##

  As the rain refused to subside, Isabel was contemplating whether to make a dash for the car, when her cell phone rang for a second time. It was Richard and she picked up.

  “Hi honey,” she answered.

  “Hi Bella, I tried to call you to let you know that my conference was canceled, but all I was getting was your voicemail.” Richard began calling her “Bella” ever since she told him that her father used to call her by that nickname when she was a kid.

  “You’re in town?” Isabel asked, surprised.

  “Yes, I found out that the conference had been canceled when I got to Orlando, so I took the next flight back,” Richard answered in a disappointed tone. It was a bid conference that Orange County was holding with potential construction companies to build low cost apartment housing around Orlando for the County. The purpose of the bid conference was for the County to discuss the requirements for the construction project, and to answer questions from contractors about the project. Isabel knew that Richard was excited about the project. He believed that he had a good shot at winning the contract because of previous work his company had done with the County.

  “They should have told you about the cancellation before you made the trip,” Isabel said.

  “It looks like they faxed the cancellation notice to the office yesterday morning. Apparently, no one at the office noticed it,” Richard replied.

  “Sorry about that. By the way, my cell phone battery died on me and I had to let it charge in the car on my way to the mall to pick up a graduation gift for Lucy's daughter. I‘m sorry I missed your calls.”

  “No harm done,” Richard said. “Since I'm free, I don't think you should go the graduation party by yourself. I was calling to let you know that I was on my way to pick you up.”

  “I' m glad. Besides, I hate driving in the rain.”

  “That’s what fiancés are for,” Richard said with a laugh and they both hung up.

  ##

  When Isabel reached her house, Richard's car was already in her driveway. Isabel lived with Rebecca, in a one-story stucco house in a housing development near the Tamiami airport in South Miami. By itself, the house looked very nice with a two-car garage on the side. However, it was built by an unimaginative developer who decided to use the same design for almost every house in the neighborhood. Isabel's house was bright pink, sandwiched between a light green and a dark brown house. The first time Richard saw the houses in the neighborhood, he asked Isabel whether the whole neighborhood was colorblind. Not missing a beat, Isabel then told him the far-fetched story about how, at the beginning, the only way a neighbor could differentiate his or her house from another in the neighborhood was by looking at the house number.

  “However, when many elderly people with failing eyesight began moving into the neighborhood,” Isabel had recounted, “locksmiths made a bundle of cash from calls from lost homeowners complaining that they could not get into their houses and asking that their locks be replaced. Once they realized that they had gone to the wrong houses, locksmiths had to charge them again to put back the old locks. As a result, the homeowners’ association voted to allow owners to paint their houses any way they liked, making them easy to recognize. Now, instead of paying locksmiths, we now pay painters.” Isabel had concluded with a big laugh. Although Richard had laughed with her, as a contractor with an eye for detail, he didn't find the story very funny. In reality, the homeowner's association was disbanded years ago.

  Isabel bought the house from her mother's life insurance proceeds after her mother, who worked as a nurse at Jackson Memorial Hospital, passed away fourteen years ago from breast cancer, leaving Isabel, who had just turned eighteen years old to raise Rebecca, who was then six years old. Besides her aunt Marcia, who was her mother's sister, Isabel had no other relatives. Isabel's father, a native of Cuba, who worked for an organization that helped Cuban government officials secretly defect to Miami, disappeared two years prior to her mother's death and was never seen again. While there were unconfirmed reports that her father might have been killed by agents working for the Cuban government in Miami, nothing was ever proven.

  ##

  It was almost 5:45 pm, when Richard and Isabel left the house for the party.

  “I think we may be getting there fifteen minutes late,” Richard said.

  “Not bad,” Isabel said to herself. After all, she was in Miami, on Hispanic time, which meant that she was early.

  “Did I tell you how pretty you are?” Richard said, with an affectionate look. Calling Isabel pretty was an understatement. She was 5 feet 9 inches tall, with very long black hair and light brown eyes. She was blessed with a perpetual tan and a beautiful face that looked to belong more to a model on a runway than to the computer engineer that she was.

  “You are not too bad yourself,” Isabel responded. Like Isabel, Richard was thirty-two years old. At 6 feet with old fashioned good looks, light brown hair, a firm jaw, and piercing gray eyes, Richard was what you considered a hunk and a good catch. In fact, Isabel's friends always reminded her that they made a wonderful couple and would have good-looking children.

  “How is Lucy doing these days?” asked Richard.

  “She's fine. She and her husband are going on vacation in the Caribbean in the next several weeks and she's very excited about it,” Isabel replied.

  “Where are they going?”

  “Jamaica, Bahamas and three or four other countries. I don't remember,” Isabel said.

  “That should be fun.”

  “Oh yeah.”

  “By the way, have you heard from Tia Marcia?” asked Richard.

  “I spoke to her yesterday. She is moving back down here to become the director of the Kendall Rehabilitation Center,” Isabel responded.

  “I hope she likes her new job.”

  “Me too. But I was hoping she would retire and enjoy herself,” Isabel said.

  By the time they reached the restaurant, the conversation had shifted to Richard's company and some new construction projects that Richard had been hired to do. The restaurant was located in the upper Brickell area, at one corner of South Miami avenue, which was populated with exclusive shops and private clubs. The restaurant was finely decorated, and featured a bar upfront, with windows facing both streets, and a spacious dining room in the back. It took Richard and Isabel more than twenty minutes to find a parking space. When they entered the restaurant, everyone was already seated around a long table, eating appetizers and drinking glasses of sangria from three large pitchers. Hispanic time or not, they were late and they knew it.

  ##

  It was a simple question. “How did you get injured?” However, Philippe took so long to respond to Dr. Gomez that she wondered if he heard her.

  “I was in town for a party and I fell while playing basketball,” Philippe finally answered.

  “Are you a professional basketball player?” she asked.

  “No. I am an expert on the loss of enjoyment
of life,” Philippe replied. When he saw the puzzled look on Dr. Gomez's face, he clarified, “I estimate the value of people's earning ability in legal cases.”

  “It sounds like an interesting profession,” Doctor Gomez commented, causing Philippe to smile.

  When she saw Philippe smile, Dr. Gomez decided it was time to discuss with him what she really came for. “Mr. Pierce, as Doctor Sheen told you after the surgery, you suffered a fracture on your left fibula, which was made worse by some ligament damage.”

  “That sounds bad,” a worried Philippe said, with a concerned look returning to his face.

  “Well, it was a serious injury. The goal now is to make sure that everything heals properly to avoid arthritis and deformity of the ankle.”

  Seeing the impact of her last words reflecting on his face, Dr. Gomez softened a little bit and said, “I didn't mean to scare you, Mr. Pierce. You should be fine if you follow our instructions.”

  “Phil,” Philippe replied.

  “What?”

  “No one calls me Mr. Pierce. Everyone calls me Phil,” he said.

  As the tension began to subside from Phil's face, Doctor Gomez said, “Your friend, Mr. Douglas was here...”

  “Jeremy was here?” Phil asked, interrupting Doctor Gomez in mid-sentence.

  “Yes, but you were sleeping. He told me that the two of you met at Florida Atlantic University, in Boca Raton.”

  “Yes, we were taking an accounting class together,” confirmed Phil.

  “This is a very small world. I did my undergrad there too,” Dr. Gomez said.

  “You're a fellow alumnus?” Phil asked, seemingly surprised.

  “Yes, but it was a long time ago.”

  “We have a Facebook page for all alumni at the university. If you haven't already, you should join,” he told her.

  “What's Facebook?”

  “Well…”

  “Just kidding Phil. I may be old but I am not that old,” a smiling Dr. Gomez said.