“Special Agent Fernandez, what do I owe the occasion?” I ask.
“I’m just stopping by to give you this from the US Attorney,” he says to me as he hands me the envelope.
I open it and see yet another check inside. This one is for $250,000. I just shake my head.
“Is there a problem,” Fernandez asks me.
“No, no problem. You keep bringing me unexpected checks,” I say to him causing him to smile.
I offer him food, which he politely declines. I thank him and he leaves. I stand there looking at the check trying to figure what else to do with this money. I take it down the hall to Jill. I hand her the check and smile.
“Nice,” Jill says looking at the check.
I got to thinking about how I had stopped reading Bob’s diaries. I looked for the one that I had started. I found it in the living room, next to the couch on an end table. I picked the book up and settled into the couch to read some more. One item that I saw which interested me was a street sign company. Bob made a good point that most if not all street signs seem to be universal. As he put it in the book, “A stop sign is just that no matter where it might be posted in the US,” making note that it is possible for a company to bid on DOT contracts and make and ship to the various locations the signs.
I find a pen in the binder of the book and circle this idea.
I hear a crash in the kitchen. I get up and head to the kitchen to see an embarrassed Donna looking at the plate she dropped. Sammy is already getting the broom and dustpan to clean up the mess.
“Don’t worry about it, Miss Donna. We do this all the time,” Bobby tells her. I say to Donna and Dakota to not move as there is glass everywhere. Both of them pick their feet up and put them on the rungs of the chair.
Sammy is working diligently at sweeping up all the glass and dumping it into the trash.
As John works his way around the lower level of the house, Diane comes out and begins to help him. I see them stealing kisses here and there, which I find rather cute. It dawns on me that I have not asked Dakota how well John is doing with the new job of being my assistant.
“He’s doing quite well, Daddy,” she says to me.
“And, you, how are you doing? I’m not stressing you, out am I?” I ask, worrying about both John and her pregnancy.
“No. He’s listening and following directions. He’s starting to anticipate, which is good,” she says to me.
Amy now arrives, with both Donna and Dakota telling her that there is glass on the kitchen floor. This prompts Amy to go get the vacuum. She hands it to Sammy who plugs it in and turns it on.
After just a couple of minutes, Sammy has the entire floor vacuumed and he wraps up the cord and hands it back to Amy.
I put the diary from Bob into a drawer in the kitchen and head to my office to log onto my computer.
When I get there, I see my gorgeous wife already working.
“Hey there beautiful, when did you get up here?” I ask.
“Oh, about an hour or so ago. Rob sent us an email that you need to read,” she tells me, making me a bit nervous.
I turn on my laptop and get prepared for Rob’s email. Once loaded up I read the heading, “DANGER WILL ROBINSON, DANGER,” I smile because I know of Rob’s love for old TV shows, such as ‘Lost In Space’.
I open the email and it reads, “Well, as you anticipated, I found several former employees that have not been terminated off the system. Three of the horse tracks that you sold have all their employees still active in our system. I terminated all the employees from the horse tracks. Out of curiosity, did you acquire any casinos? I have found that we, Jaxson Inc. own THREE casinos. One in Oklahoma, one in Florida, and one in Arizona. The three total of more than 3,000 employees. I have made a list of them but need your direction on what to do with them. Please advise,” he writes to me.
“CASINOS, really?” I say out loud causing Jill to stop and inquire what’s wrong.
“Well, we apparently now own three casinos. Oklahoma, Florida, and Arizona,” I tell her.
“How did we acquire them?” Jill asks.
“I have no earthly idea. I have Rob looking into it,” I tell her.
“You’re not overloading Rob, are you?” She asks.
“Um, well I don’t know. I sent him about 20 or so people from the Hawk, but I’m not sure where we are on the other group,” I reply.
“Let’s call him, right now,” she says.
Jill picks up her cell phone and dials up Rob.
“Hey Rob, it’s me, Jill. David and I are worried that we may have overloaded you with this project. Are you doing OK?” She asks.
“Well, kind of. I mean the group that David sent me from the Hawk was a huge help, but now finding these four casinos,” he says before I stop him.
“FOUR? I thought you said there were only three,” I say with him on speakerphone.
“Well, they are in three states, but there are four casinos. One in Oklahoma, one in Florida, and two in Arizona. One near Tucson and one in Phoenix,” he tells us.
My mind races towards Tina and her being in Phoenix with her Mother.
Jill thanks Rob for his hard work and ends the call. I suggest, “Hey, since we will be traveling this week, why don’t we stop over in Phoenix to visit Tina and check on this casino that we own,” I say to Jill. She readily agrees.
CHAPTER 3
I see another email that interests me. It’s from Roger. It reads, “I heard about the shooting at your home. I guess the fools are stupid, shooting up a party that is full of FBI agents and their families. You need to set a plan in place when something like this happens, whether you are at the house or not. You may not be the target as you have three ladies who are pregnant. The bad guys may think that your weakness is through them,” he writes.
I reply that I agree with his belief that they may target the three pregnant ladies, but I joke ‘guess they haven’t met Dakota yet’.
As I sit at my laptop, staring at the screen, I look over to Jill who isn’t showing her pregnancy yet. I shrug my shoulders and go back to reading emails.
I check the email number and see that there are 311 emails. I round up the ones that are duplicates and delete them before I begin to read the ones labeled ‘read-only’. My task is to read and delete them, getting my email box empty. It takes about two hours to read all the emails.
“Hey, Hun, what do you think about getting John a truck of his choice? I think that he is getting frustrated with riding in Diane’s car all the time. I was thinking of maybe a Ford Expedition. I don’t want him to have a pickup as everyone he knows will always ask him to help them move their stuff,” I tell her.
“I think that is a wonderful idea. Have you come up with anything for Dakota yet?” She asks me.
“No,” I say to her.
We go back to working on our computers. About an hour later Jill exclaims, “There, my email box is now empty!” She says with a glee in her voice.
It is just over a half hour before my email inbox is also empty. We both close our laptops and head downstairs.
In the kitchen, I step on a small shard of glass all the way out into the dining room. I sit down and Dakota retrieves our first aid kit offering to take care of this for me. She squirts it with hydrogen peroxide, drying it with a piece of cotton wipe and puts some sav on it along with a ‘Hello Kitty’ Band-Aid. This garners several hoots and comments from the group. Even Jill laughed and commented about how ‘cute’ I looked with a ‘Hello Kitty’ Band-Aid.