You can find the
Another Dimension, Another Time, Another Lois[/i] TOC here.
Where we left off in Part 12 …The door opened and in walked the henchmen who had captured them out by the pond.
“Finally! I thought I’d ended up in hell,” Lois mumbled, more to herself than to her captors.
“I want my watch back,” Jimmy demanded, either ignoring Lois’ comment or he hadn’t heard it.
“Pipe down,” the bearded thug responded, opening the door to Lois’ cell. “Your host requests the honor of your company upstairs.” He unfastened her hands from the manacles and dragged her from the cell.
“I think I’ll have to pass. As much as I’d like to leave this torture chamber, I forgot my party clothes,” Lois said, rubbing her wrists.
“Spencer Spencer said it was a come as you are,” the man retorted.
“Not Spencer Spencer!” Jimmy said with dismay. “He’s my man.”
“I told you he was scum,” Lois called to her partner as she tried to break free from the strong man with the gun. “Maybe you’ll think twice about whose dating advice you’ll take from now on.”
“Let us go!” Jimmy yelled, pulling on his chains. “Or I’ll cancel my subscription to [i]Love Fortress International!”
The henchmen both looked at Jimmy as if they couldn’t care less, but the distraction was long enough for Lois to use her elbow to jab the strong one’s gut.
“Hey, hold it,” said the bearded man, jabbing a syringe into her thigh. “Nap time, honey.”
Lois lost all will to fight and to keep her eyes open and suddenly felt extremely relaxed and tired.
The last thing she could remember was hearing Clark’s voice echoing through her head,
Fight it, Lois! Fight it.***
Part 13“Come on. Wake up,” some male voice coaxed through a thick fog. It wasn’t Clark’s or Jimmy’s.
Lois felt extremely tired, but at least she was sitting down. She didn’t want to wake up, but someone was slapping her cheeks.
“I’ve had lousy dates before, but this is ridiculous,” the deep voice continued. He sounded quite full of himself.
She pulled her eyelids open to find herself tied to a chair in some ornate and tackily decorated office. Whomever had slapped her face was now gone. Her chair was surrounded by six cross-bows at close range. Either someone was paranoid, or her reputation had preceded her. Lois couldn’t think of another reason for the overkill on the weapons.
Facing her was a man with what could have been either badly highlighted, sandy blond or salt-and-pepper hair and a goatee; Lois wasn’t quite sure which. He was sitting inside some kind of wood box with only his head exposed so he had to drink his martini with a straw. Classy.
“Hi-ya, toots. I’m Spencer Spencer. Welcome to my windowless lair,” he told her.
“
You’re Spencer Spencer?” He wasn’t at all what she expected. She examined his box thingy closer. It seemed to be some kind of medical device on wheels. “I thought you’d be…” She couldn’t think of a single polite thing to say that wouldn’t make him activate the crossbows. “– taller.”
“You look lovely when you’re revolted,” he spit out at her.
“I don’t know what you’ve got going on here, but…” She had no hope. Not even the suggestion of hope of being rescued. What could she possibly say?
Tell him something, Lois!“Authorities will be here any minute.”
“You mean your six foot some-odd tall DEA agent of a boyfriend? Well, that would be just hunky dory with me,” he said with a big smile. “I much prefer his body to Shorty downstairs…”
Lois gulped, not knowing what to make of that statement.
“But doubtful, since we’re not on American soil. You know, I was going to kill you for all that crap you wrote about me, but then I thought you might like an exciting career opportunity,” he said, trying to charm her again.
It really wasn’t going to work; she didn’t know why he was trying. “What do you mean?” she asked suspiciously.
“You can be my sex slave,” he suggested.
“Kill me,” she stated. ~Sorry, Clark.~
“I know. I know. The body. Maybe I shouldn’t hide it in a box. Maybe you imagine it worse than it is.”
“Maybe,” Lois responded cautiously.
“You couldn’t imagine worse than this!” he roared at her. “My only chance with girls like you is shooting them up with cobra venom and then it’s iffy, but all that’s going to change now, thanks to modern medicine.” He pushed a switch with the side of his head. A curtain fell, revealing a painting of a tall, debonair Spencer dressed casually in a button-down shirt and slacks.
Lois shrugged. “You don’t look so bad. I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
“That’s not what I look like now,” Spencer informed her with annoyance. “That’s what I would have looked like if your DEA agent boyfriend hadn’t decided to blow you off.”
The headless bodies, whispered Clark.
“The headless bodies! It was you!” Lois gasped. Dan had said something about transplant drugs being stolen and having a new lead. The four headless men! Of course. She beat Dan to the punch, yet again. Too bad she wouldn’t be able to live long enough to rub it in his face.
Spencer grinned at her leap in logic. “Oh, yes, you’ll do nicely as a sex slave. I always liked a little spunk in the bedroom.”
There was a commotion outside the door, and the strong man pushed Jimmy into the office. “He said, he’s willing to give you what you want.”
“No!” Lois shouted. “Jimmy,
no!”
“Shut up!” Spencer Spencer snapped at Lois as he looked the young photographer up and down. “I don’t know…” He turned to the thug. “Blow!” He refocused his attention on Jimmy after the thug had left. “Mess up, and she’ll look like a goalie for a dart team.”
“Okay, Spencer, here’s the deal,” announced Jimmy. “I’ll give you whatever you want, but Lois has to be set free.”
“What?” Spencer responded, surprised.
“Jimmy!” Lois pleaded. She didn’t want him to lose his head.
“How good of shape are you in?” Spencer asked him.
“I’m drug free. I eat well. I exercise. My body is in top condition,” Jimmy bragged with some embellishment.
“No, he’s not. Jimmy lives on pizza and junk food. He gets winded running down the block…”
“Lois,” Jimmy groaned, shooting her a pleading look.
“I think you should also know, this man is insane,” she told Spencer.
“Lois!” her partner scolded her.
“That really doesn’t matter, honey. I’m not going to need his head,” Spencer reminded her. “How old are you, kid?” he questioned Jimmy.
“
What?” the young photographer exclaimed with a frightened glance at Lois. “What did he mean by that?”
“Jimmy,” Lois warned.
“How old are you?” Spencer repeated to the young man, taking another look at him. “And take off your shirt.” He glanced over at Lois. “Your other boyfriend is what thirty? Older?”
“I’m twenty-two.” Jimmy slowly started to unbutton his shirt and murmured to Lois under his breath, “What does he want exactly?”
“Your body,” Lois murmured back with a head bob towards the picture behind Spencer. “Literally.”
Her partner’s eyes popped wide open as his hands went up defensibly. “Well, you caught me, Spencer. It’s just like she said. I use drugs all the time. If it isn’t prepackaged and full of chemicals, I don’t eat it. I never exercise. I have heartburn and diabetes. The doctors have given me six months to live.”
Lois rolled her eyes. Jimmy lied worse than Clark. Correction. No one lied worse than Clark.
Thanks.“Pescado! Get your butt in here!” Spencer yelled and a dark-haired man wearing a suit sauntered in. He didn’t look like an average everyday thug. “How much time have I got?”
“The way your vitals are going, sir, forty-eight hours. Possibly less,” replied the man with a Spanish accent. “Then you’ll be too sick to operate.”
Lois swallowed.
This man was Spencer’s doctor?
“He isn’t the specimen I wanted…” Spencer looked Jimmy over once again. “I’d hoped I’d be taller… Nevertheless, Doctor, prep for surgery.”
“Let Lois go,” Jimmy pleaded for her again. “She doesn’t have anything to do with this.”
The psycho magazine publisher grinned at Jimmy. “I’m not letting her go. You wanted to have sex with her. I’m giving you this chance.”
Jimmy gulped. He shot Lois an apologetic glance as the strongman thug returned and hauled her friend away.
***
Lois paced back and forth in her cell. She had to help Jimmy. She wouldn’t be able to live with herself if they cut off his head.
Think, Lois. How can you get out of here? Did you check the door to the cage? Clark suggested.
“What? Did Superman heat-blast it or something?” she muttered out loud, because she was alone in the room.
I don’t think they shut it properly.Lois walked to the door and sure enough, the cage door had closed, but not enough to latch. “I love you, Clark!” she cheered.
I love you too, honey, but I’d prefer not to be married to a former sex slave.She ignored Clark’s comment as she crossed to the door of the room and peered out. Up a floor and down a hall, she found the operating room, where they were still prepping Jimmy for surgery. He was strapped down to a surgical table. Somehow she was going to have to get into that room.
As she snuck around a corner, Lois found Pescado’s nurse getting dressed. Finding a lose brick, Lois knocked the woman out and stole her surgical garb, including a cap and mask to hide her hair and face.
Lois walked into the operating room and glanced down at Jimmy. He looked up at her, fear in his eyes as he begged for mercy. She winked to let him know it was her.
Jimmy tugged at his straps, trying to get free.
Some vote of confidence there, Jimbo.
Pescado was checking the equipment. “Heidi, check his bindings,” he ordered.
Lois nodded, crossing to the far side of the operating table, where she loosened instead of tightened the straps that held Jimmy’s wrists and head down.
The doctor turned to young man holding up a syringe.
“Time to go nighty-night,” said Spencer with glee from his box behind Pescado.
“After I get his head off,” Pescado explained to Spencer. “I’ll freeze his body with liquid nitrogen.” He pointed to the tank above Jimmy.
Jimmy gulped and shot another panicked glance at Lois as the doctor cleaned his neck once more.
Lois came up beside the doctor, trying to think of a way to distract the man.
“After I finish giving him this shot, Heidi, I want you to hand me the scalpel,” Dr. Pescado informed her.
She nodded – as she was pretending to be Heidi the nurse after all – and set her hands down on the tray of surgical instruments. Jimmy flinched as Pescado pinched his arm to pop a vein for the tranquilizer, but Lois hit the doctor over the head with the tray before he could inject it into Jimmy’s arm. She grabbed the syringe, stabbing the doctor with it instead.
“Guards!” shouted Spencer. “Get this woman out of here!”
Jimmy unfastened the rest of his bindings and pulled himself up with the cord to the liquid nitrogen.
“Jimmy, no!” Lois screamed, diving over the table and knocking him off to the other side. The operating table fell down next to them.
The cold liquid air blew onto the doctor instead, freezing him as he passed out from the sedative, and he thudded down to the floor.
“Admit it, Lois, you like…” Jimmy started to say, before the first shot rang out.
The room was filling with a nitrogen fog and the guards couldn’t see at whom or what they were shooting. Lois pulled the operating table between them and the doorway. She and Jimmy hid behind it as bullets bounced around every surface of the room. They heard a thunk and the shooting stopped.
“Superman?” Lois whispered in hopeful disbelief, her heart banging against her ribcage.
They peered over the top of the table and saw a man standing in the foggy doorway with the two guards knocked out at his feet. As the fog cleared a little bit, Jimmy said, “Dad?”
Dad?The man crossed his arms, staring at Lois and Jimmy. “A little far from home, aren’t you, son?”
“I’m on assignment,” Jimmy responded stiffly, climbing to his feet. “Lois and I came to check out a romantic island resort.”
Mr. Olsen took an obvious gaze around the destroyed room and raised a brow. “How does it rate?”
“I’m going to give it a fail,” Jimmy said, turning to his partner and holding out a hand to help her up. “Lois?”
“Definitely,” she said, still wondering how Mr. Olsen, so-called structural engineer, had found them.
“Romantic?” Mr. Olsen examined Lois with his eyes again.
She pressed her lips together at the obvious once-over as she took Jimmy’s outstretched hand and got to her feet.
“Lois is the woman I’m going to marry,” Jimmy announced, tossing a joking grin towards Lois, taunting her to deny it to his father. He must have heard that crack about him torturing her down in the dungeon.
Mr. Olsen craned around his son to take a better look at her. “Is this true?”
“Yes,” Lois replied, matter of factly, calling Jimmy’s bluff.
“What?” gasped Jimmy.
What?! Clark sputtered at the same time.
“If neither of us find the person of our dreams by the time I’m forty, Jimmy has graciously offered to marry me, so we don’t die alone, and I have accepted,” she explained.
Lois, that’s a dinosaur sized bone!~He offered to lose his head to save me. Anyway, I have already found the man of my dreams,~ she told Clark with a self-satisfied smile. ~So, Jimmy will never get his chance.~
“Well, then, I guess I should introduce myself,” Jimmy’s father said, holding out his hand. “Jack Olsen.”
“Lois Lane.” She shook his hand.
“Who’s the guy is in the box?” Jack asked with a nod towards Spencer Spencer.
The liquid nitrogen fog had dissipated enough for her to see over to the back corner of the room where Spencer Spencer had been located. He was dead. Shot through the head by one of his guard’s bullets. Heidi was crying over the frozen body of Dr. Pescado.
Lois and Jimmy exchanged a look and she decided to let him field that answer.
“Spencer Spencer,” Jimmy replied. “He wanted to attach his head to my body.”
Jack raised a brow to that information. “Well, it looks like I got here just in time,” he said, wrapping an awkward arm around his son’s shoulders. It was uncomfortable embrace that ended seconds later.
“How exactly did you do that, by the way?” Lois asked, following the two men out of the operating room.
Jack shrugged. “The watch I gave Jimmy has a GPS – or Global Positioning System – device on it. I just homed in on the watch. When I dropped by the office to ask you to lunch, son, Mr. White said he didn’t know where you were, because you were supposed to be at work.”
“On assignment with my partner Lois Lane, Investigative Reporter,” Jimmy answered. “I guess Perry didn’t get my message.”
“Then Lois’ boyfriend showed up, looking for her…”
Lois rolled her eyes. Lovely. Just what she needed.
“Ex-boyfriend,” Jimmy grumbled. “Wait! My watch.” He turned around and pulled it off the inert wrist of the strongman. “Thank you,” he told the man before dropping his arm back on the ground.
“But why would you look for us?” Lois wasn’t convinced she was being told the whole story. “How could you get here so quickly?”
Jack Olsen smiled with a shrug. “I have friends.”
“Friends?”
“My dad’s ex-army, Fort Truman, remember. He’s got friends everywhere,” Jimmy responded by way of an explanation. Sometimes he could be so naïve. “Oh, Dad, remind me to tell you what Dr. Golden did to me.”
Lois still wasn’t convinced by Jack’s vague tale. “Tell me more, Jack.”
“What matters is that you two are safe,” replied Jack with more evasion.
“Who do you work for again?” Lois questioned.
“Olsen Civil Engineering.”
Uh-huh.“Dad blows up some of the biggest stuff in the world,” Jimmy gushed.
Lois didn’t doubt the validity of that statement.
“Your boyfriend… Dan,” Jack said, not giving up on that title for Scardino yet, even though she had. “ – was worried because after the DEA raided the Love Fortress corporate offices, he found information that Spencer Spencer – I liked the exposé, by the way – lives on a private island east of Rio, near where the two of you – Dan and you, that is – were supposed to be spending this weekend. Since
you hadn’t come to work either, we agreed it was too many coincidences.”
“On assignment,” replied Lois. “Thankfully Jimmy stepped in when Dan backed out at the last minute.” She smiled at her friend.
Jimmy shrugged. “Some of us prefer to spend the weekend with a live woman to headless dead men,” he replied, trying for casual but not quite carrying it off.
“I called a few old army buddies and presto, here I am.” Jack sighed. “And you didn’t even need me.”
“Of course, I need you, Dad!” Jimmy clarified. “If you hadn’t clobbered those thugs…”
Lois jumped in. “We could use a lift home.” If he gave them that, she would be willing to overlook his preposterous cover story. For now.
“I’ve got a heli outside,” Jack said, nodding in the direction they should go.
Good riddance, Love Fortress! Hello, Smallville!
***
Back at her apartment, Lois sat on her sofa. She was freshly showered and happy to be home; yet, at the same time, itching to be off.
“Lois, I’m really sorry about your island vacation,” Perry apologized to her over the telephone. “I’m sure you’re too overwrought to put words…”
“I’m sending you the story as we speak,” she interrupted, clicking ‘send’ on her laptop.
“Terrific!” her boss said with enthusiastic relief. “Will I see you two in the office tomorrow?”
“Well, I don’t know about Jimmy; after all he was the one who was almost beheaded. I was just being recruited as an unwilling sex slave,” she said, finally able to laugh about their experiences. She shook her head. Sometimes her life was stranger than fiction. “I believe Jimmy said he was going to catch up with his dad. Me? I’m ready for that vacation you tried to sell me on before this whole mess. I’m taking a week… no, two. I need to clear my head, reset my priorities.”
“Two whole weeks? On vacation? You?” Perry couldn’t hide his disbelief. “Lois, honey, Dan is good for you. If it wasn’t for him…”
“Chief, please. Don’t defend him. When it comes down to it, he wasn’t there for me when he said he would be. If it hadn’t been for Jimmy, my cobra-venom filled, sexually assaulted body would be washing up on the shores of Metropolis.” She thought about the tiger. “Or worse.” Then she reviewed those choices again. Nope, she would have rather been eaten by the tiger.
“Okay, Lois, let’s not sugar coat things… ” Perry continued. “You know my thoughts on this subject. You sure you want to go off on your own, right now?”
“Why? Does some other psycho billionaire, who I don’t know about, got it out for me?” she scoffed. “I’ll be fine. Don’t worry, Chief. I plan on looking up an old friend.” Lois typed Kansas into her map program on her laptop as someone knocked on her door. “Got to go; my dinner’s arrived. See you in two weeks.” She hung up the phone and walked to the door. Glancing through the peep-hole, she saw a large pizza box. “I ordered Chinese!” she said to the person on the other side of the door.
The pizza box lowered and was replaced by a large box of chocolates. She could see Dan’s hopeful face peering over the top of it.
“No, thank you,” she said through the door, not opening it. “I gave at the office.” She returned to her laptop and typed in a request for directions from the Topeka airport to Smallville.
“Lois,” Dan called. “Open up, babe. We need to talk.”
Babe? Is he nuts?“Apparently,” she grumbled, still ignoring the man at her door.
“Lo-is!”
“Dan,” she said, not getting up from her seat. “The last man who called me ‘babe’ is currently underground at Whispering Pines Cemetery. For your safety, it’s not recommended that I open the door.” True, she hadn’t killed Ralph herself, but dead he was.
“Lo-is,” Dan pleaded again. “Let me apologize.”
“No.”
“Please give me a second chance.”
“Second? You blew your second chance months ago, buster,” Lois retorted.
“Lois, can we please not have this conversation through the door,” Dan begged.
With a groan, Lois stood up and walked to her front door. She unfastened her locks and swung open the door. “Dan, I don’t want to see you anymore. Whatever I felt for you is gone.”
His face fell. “What?”
“I don’t love you. It’s not working between us. I’m with someone else now,” Lois stated coldly, starting to shut the door. She had no patience left.
“Who?” Dan growled, sticking his foot in the doorway. “And don’t dare tell me it’s Clark…”
“Jimmy,” she replied without hesitation.
Jimmy?“Jimmy? That kid?” Dan scoffed.
“Jimmy’s a man. I’m a woman. Do I need to draw you a diagram?!”
“He tried to
kill you!” he reminded her.
“Irrelevant.” She waved a hand through the air, wiping away that issue. “Maybe it could have been you, but it wasn’t. You had more important things to do than spend an uninterrupted weekend alone with me. So, you see, it’s over between us. I can’t to go back. I’d much rather be with a man who’s there for me even when there aren’t bombs going off and people trying to kill me. Please leave.” She kicked his foot out of her doorway and shut the door in Dan’s shocked face. She relocked her locks and returned to her laptop.
Lucky Jimmy.“Dan told me not to tell him it was you,” Lois replied. “So, I gave him what he asked for.”
Um… Lois… “No, Clark, nothing happened with Jimmy. Never been there, never going there, would rather die,” she said, scrolling down the screen.
I don’t think Dan asked for that, Lois. You didn’t have to embellish the truth.“What? You want me to call him back and apologize?” she scoffed. “Fat chance. That man never takes ‘no’ for an answer. I had to phrase it in a way that he knew that my ‘no’ meant ‘never again’.”
Remind me never to break your heart, Clark gulped.
“I don’t think you’ll ever forget this, Clark,” she mumbled, saving the map and heading to a weather website to check out what she should pack.
I believe you might be right there, Lois.***
Lois pulled her rental car into a parking space outside the Smallville Diner. She was starving, not having eaten since picking at that in-flight meal. She really ought to start bringing her own food on flights, she told herself. She had thought about driving all the way from Metropolis, but after looking at the map, she determined it would take a minimum of two twelve-hour days in the car – one-way – just to get to Smallville.
She instead dipped into her Tahiti fund and bought herself one coach ticket to Topeka and a week in a convertible, saving herself between forty-eight to ninety-six hours of research time for the extra expense. She didn’t know if she was going to find anything in Smallville. She hoped to find something: a birth record, a death certificate, a school transcript, someone who knew Clark at some point. She needed to know, once and for all, that she wasn’t crazy.
She opened her car door and went into the Smallville Diner. It was just as she pictured it: rows of booths lining the windows and a scattering of free-standing round tables, each covered with a checkered plastic tablecloth. There was also a long counter for individual seating.
“Please Seat Yourself” invited the sign, so she did. There was one booth open in the back by the restrooms. Not ideal, but she didn’t want to sit at the counter. Actually, she was kind of surprised that the diner was still busy at – she glanced at her watch – one forty-five on a Tuesday.
“Hi, there,” the friendly blonde waitress said, sliding a glass of ice-water across the table in front of Lois. “You waiting on someone, hon?”
‘All my life,’ Lois thought, before answering out loud. “Just me.”
“Okay. You’re not from around here, are you?”
Still dressed in her Metropolis clothes, Lois figured she indeed stuck out in the middle of Nowheresville, Kansas. She knew she should have worn her jeans.
“And you’re not here for the cattle auction, are you?” the waitress guessed correctly again.
“That obvious?” Lois joked, more to herself than at the waitress. “Vacation.” She took a sip of her water and accepted the offered menu.
“You driving between Wichita and Topeka?” the woman hazarded a guess. “You’re a little off the beaten path. You lost?”
This waitress asked more questions than Lois had while interviewing the President. Of course, Lois had only been allowed the one question. She pressed her lips together, still wishing she had come up with something better. ‘If you had twenty-four hours to spend doing anything you want, how would you spend them?’
If you were a major league baseball player, which position would you play and why?~Potato. Tomato,~ Lois retorted.
Lois raised her eyes and focused them on the waitress, realizing that the woman was still next to the table, waiting for her answer. What had she asked? The waitress’s hair was styled differently and she was wearing a uniform instead of jeans, but – Lois blanched – this woman had been in her dream. Lois searched her brain trying to remember the woman’s name. Then she noticed her nametag: Maisie. Of course! “Neither,” she informed her.
Maisie knows everything about everyone. If there’s information to be had in Smallville, Maisie has it, Clark whispered in her ear.
Tread carefully.Lois couldn’t believe her good luck. “I’m searching for a friend of mine. I’ve misplaced him,” she continued, dismissing Clark’s groan of humiliation.
Maisie eyed her skeptically and Lois had to agree with her assessment. Only someone like Clark – a one in a million type man – would know two such different women.
Lois pulled her gaze away from Maisie’s to the menu, deciding it was best not show her hand too soon. “So, what’s good?”
“Everything,” Maisie informed her. “But we’re out of pulled pork and meatloaf. Oh, and the peach pie. The cattlemen wiped us out.”
Lois took another quick glance at the menu. “I’ll take a burger, fries and…” She flipped a page. “Is that real ice cream shakes?” she asked in amazement and saw a softening of Maisie’s hard expression. “Chocolate, please.” At least, she wasn’t one of
those city girls.
Maisie took the menu and disappeared behind the counter. Lois retrieved a notebook from her briefcase and started to review everything and everyone she could remember from when she and Clark had come to Smallville to investigate the “EPA” digging up Wayne Irig’s farm.
Wayne Irig. Martha and Jonathan Kent. Rachel Harris. Lois added Maisie’s name to the list.
Wayne’s my dad’s best friend and neighbor, Clark had told her when they had come to Smallville in her dream.
Clark had taken Rachel – now Sheriff Harris – to the prom. It wasn’t much to go on, but Lois had somewhere to start. Back on the island she had started to jot down everything personal she had learned about Clark since he had started at the Daily Planet. She decided to review these facts again now.
He was a year older than her, so born in 1966, graduated high school in 1984. He had played football at Midwest University and graduated with a degree in journalism, probably in 1988. Lois made notes. How did he pay for college: football scholarship or student loans?
Before that, Clark had grown up on his parents’ farm in Smallville, and after college he had traveled the world, including Borneo, Nigeria, England, and China. Where else would he have picked up Chinese? Can one
pick up Chinese? Had he studied the language in college? He also knew French. Lois added France to the list.
She glanced up as Maisie set down her chocolate shake. The diner had almost cleared out in that time. “Where did everyone go?” she asked the waitress in awe. “Was it something I said?”
Maisie chuckled. “Cattle auction. All week. Next auction starts up at two thirty.”
“Oh.”
Well, that explained it, she thought before another brainchild struck her. “It’s not as crazy as the Smallville Corn Fair, is it?”
“Festival,” Maisie corrected before going on to reassure her. “Oh, no. It’s fairly tame. The cowboys can get rowdy at night, but other than the extra mouths to feed and more trucks in town, most people wouldn’t notice them.”
Lois released a breath of relief. “I’ll be in town a few days. Is there a hotel you can recommend?”
Maisie looked at her with pity. “Oh, honey. We’ve only got the Gold Nugget Motel out by the state road, on the edge of town. I wouldn’t recommend it to the likes of you, anyway.”
The woman from Metropolis didn’t know whether to be insulted or relieved. Had there been a gold rush in Kansas? Must be a ‘nugget’ of golden corn.
“Plus it’s probably booked up with cowboys,” Maisie continued. “And we’ve got the smaller Smallville Inn here in downtown. It’s a bit pricier, but nicer too.”
‘Thank God!’ Lois thought.
“But I happen to know it’s full up with ranchers this week.”
Her heart dropped.
Crap. The nearest town was forty-five minutes away. “Terrific,” Lois grumbled. “Isn’t there anywhere else? A bed and breakfast? A room I could rent for the week? Something?”
“Well…” Maisie hemmed and hawed.
“Anything!” Lois pleaded. She could tell Maisie knew of a place and the reporter leaned forward in anticipation.
“Some friends of mine have kind of a working farm vacation resort thing. You know where city folk pay to come and pay to work, eat, and sleep on a real farm. It’s not really a BnB, although food’s included. You earn your keep. Doing chores, collecting eggs, milking cows, and the like.”
That forty-five minute commute wasn’t looking too shabby in light of her only option for staying close to town.
“I can call and see if they have room,” Maisie volunteered.
“Can you ask your friends if I can pay extra instead of doing chores?” Lois suggested. Chores would dig into her precious research time. She had come to Smallville to look for Clark, not to get her farm on.
“I don’t know if she’ll accept, but I’ll ask. I know funds are limited and the chores a plenty since the accident,” Maisie responded with a sigh.
Accident?A ding of a bell announced Lois’ burger was ready and her stomach growled in response.
Less than a minute later, Maisie set down the plate and a bottle of ketchup. “Who’s your friend? Maybe I can point you in the right direction?”
Lois took a bite of a thick steak fry and moaned with satisfaction as she pondered her choices.
This was it. Either Maisie would tell her what she wanted to know or protect her own, as Clark said people were apt to do. With Clark dead – Lois winced every time she thought those words, because her heart contracted in physical pain – what possible reason was there for Maisie or anyone to hide? Still, Lois didn’t want to say his name. What if she hit a brick wall? But – on the other hand – how was she going to find out any information if she kept Clark’s name to herself?
Not yet, Lois. We don’t know how or when I died. It’s best if you do some digging first before asking questions.Lois decided that Clark was probably right about erring on the side of caution. It wasn’t her usual form, but this wasn’t her typical case. She wouldn’t want to spook anyone by dropping Clark’s full name too soon, no matter how tempting it was to know if Miss Know-It-All Smallville had heard of him. On the other hand, she hadn’t come half-way across the country to not ask the hard questions. “I’m looking for a friend of mine who went missing; someone named…” She pressed her lips together and then exhaled. “Kent,” Lois finally spit out.
Maisie gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry, hon. I don’t know any Kent in Smallville. Let me go call The Farm and see if they’ve got room for you.” She knocked on the table, despite it being Formica instead of wood, and took a few steps back towards the kitchen before stopping. The waitress turned back to Lois and asked, “You don’t mean Martha and Jonathan Kent?” Then she waved that idea out of the air. “Nah, the Kents aren't missing. I’m betting you mean someone with the first name Kent, right?” She shrugged and continued on to the diner’s kitchen.
*** End of Part 13 *** Part 14 Comments
