Probe was a very short-lived TV show from 1988 starring Parker Stevenson as Austin James, a genius eccentric who founded a scientific think tank and then retreated from it, preferring to isolate himself in his laboratory and emerge only to solve baffling crimes. Ashley Crow played Mickey Castle, his loyal secretary/side kick. The show ended way too soon, and even decades later I enjoy envisioning what this crime-solving duo might have accomplished together, given more time to show their stuff. Enjoy!
The Tale of the Saturday That Came Twice
Chapter 1
When Mickey Castle steered the station wagon onto the gravel lot of the warehouse residence of Austin James, the last thing she expected to see was Austin himself leaving his concrete fortress to meet her outside. He carried himself as always, stoutly erect, chin high, long-legged strides that bespoke an important man in a great hurry. It was such a delightful surprise.
He pulled open the back door first and tossed a lumpy, tightly packed duffel bag inside. Then he opened the front passenger door and plunked himself heavily into the seat. His wavy brown hair still hung slightly damp in the back, at its thickest, and his fine-boned jaw was freshly shaved, faintly musk-scented. Happily, he had ventured outside his usual palette of black, white, and gray and selected a dress shirt with navy blue in the pencil-striped print.
Mickey's smile spread across her face and lit her hazel eyes. "Are you that eager?"
He smiled tightly and buckled his seat belt. "No more or less than I was last night. I need you to make a stop for me first."
Her smile faded. "What kind of stop?"
"I need to run an errand." He watched her hands, both clenching the steering wheel, and her eyes, fixed on him with an unspoken demand. He blinked. "Don't worry. It's on the way." She continued to stare at him imploringly. "Drive!" he urged, and he proceeded to rummage through the glove compartment for a cassette tape.
They had crossed through and northward out of the city, and had heard all of the first two movements of Beethoven's Ninth Symphony before Austin spoke again.
"Turn here."
Mickey signaled right and took the indicated exit off the interstate, but not without a skeptical raising of her eyebrows. "Austin, where are we going?"
His eyes gleamed and he smiled as he noted the worry lines deepening on her brow. "It's just a quick side trip, I promise. I have to check on some geological data at a particular place, at a particular time. Now! I have a theory…" He trailed off, as he was so wont to do when theory became suddenly much more interesting to him than a day planner or a conversation.
"What kind of theory?"
"You really want me to tell you?"
"No."
He smiled again and glanced ahead briefly. "Turn right again just past that sign."
She did as he requested. Her job, ultimately, was to assist Austin, even if he seemed at times to work against himself. Sometimes she felt as though a bigger part of her job was just pulling Austin out of his own head every once in a while. "You know, I didn't go to the trouble of arranging this interview today for my benefit." She paused, waited. He didn't answer. "This is your pet project you wanted to put out there, remember? I'm trying to help you." She heard his sigh, barely audible, but clear evidence of his growing exasperation. That could only be called progress. In Mickey's mind, any reaction was better than none. "I even came in extra, on my day off. Is this your way of saying you've decided not to be interviewed after all?"
With that, she hit critical mass. "No!" he protested, scowling. "I said I'll do it; I'll do it."
"But we're going to be late."
Austin let out a huff, and his clipped inflection gave more indication of his mood than his words. "On a scale of one to ten, ten being most, how badly do you think our interviewer wants to talk to me?"
Mickey rolled her eyes.
"What?"
"Never mind, I know where you're going with this. You're probably right."
His trademark smirk curled the corners of his mouth. "Probably?"
"She probably won't leave just because we're a few minutes late," Mickey conceded, with an emphasis on 'probably.'
"Ha! She wouldn't leave if we were an hour late, maybe more." Seeing the worry lines reappearing across his secretary's forehead, he quickly added, "Not that we will be." He looked ahead out the window. "There!" he said sharply, and pointed. "See that turn off? That's where we're going."
Mickey approached the turn, a hairpin departure on rocky dirt off the paved road. Posted at its entrance was a weather-worn sign prohibiting trespassers. "It's private property, Austin."
"I know. Go on."
She turned dutifully onto the pathway, which rose at a relatively steep grade, winding amid the desert scrub and juniper patches. The route was teaming with wildlife that morning, with jackrabbits and warblers scurrying or flitting away from the vehicle at their approach, and numerous geckos sunning themselves on rocky ledges alongside the road. The morning sun was high, and with all her heart Mickey wished she cared less about the passage of time so she might better enjoy this rare foray with Austin into the Arizona countryside. As much as he claimed to appreciate nature, he didn't often get up close and personal with it. At least, not outside the lens of his laboratory microscope.
"I thought you were in a hurry."
Mickey was jarred out of her reverie by Austin's deep voice, laced with irony. She realized she had slowed to a strolling pace, watching the passing scenery. She pressed the accelerator rather than answer him. "What is this place, Austin? Some kind of private nature preserve?"
He was gazing thoughtfully ahead. "Watch the curve up there. It has a pretty steep drop and no shoulder." He glanced her way. "We're almost there."
The bend in the road continued for a long time through a stretch thick with pinyon pine, and the altitude rose with it. Mickey felt her ears pop. Finally they emerged from both the turn and the forest, and entered a more level area. There, Mickey stopped abruptly and sucked in her breath, astonished. The road appeared to have ended in that place, blending into a sprawling spread of grassland bordered by an upward protrusion of volcanic tuff and granite and dotted with cacti to its rounded precipice. Opposite the rock face stood a steep drop underlining a panoramic view to the East. A sparkling lake lay far below, and the cloud-encircled summit of Four Peaks was its crowning glory.
Austin seemed to pay the awe-inspiring view no mind at all. He left the confines of the car and removed his duffel bag from the back seat. Wordlessly, he produced a set of worn, grey coveralls and began to don them over his business clothing.
Delight quickly turned to dismay, and Mickey opened her mouth, prepared to express her displeasure in a few terse words.
"Don't say it!" Austin exclaimed, holding his palm up flat as though to physically restrain the impending outburst. "I need a rock sample. It gets dusty. I don't want dust on my clothes. Okay?"
She pursed her lips, but finally let out her breath. "I'll wait in the car," she grumbled.
"Come on. Have a look around." He worked the coverall leg holes over his shoes, pulled up, and shrugged into the sleeves. Again, his blue eyes locked on her. They were bright and alert, and filled with good humor. He flashed a smile. "I'll be back." With that, he turned and walked quickly away, his hands nimbly fastening buttons. When he reached the end of the grassland on the eastern ridge, he seemed to simply step off the edge of the cliff and disappear.
Mickey frowned, but she waited at first. She tried so hard to just wait, but as the minutes passed and Austin failed to come back into view, her need to check on him grew. All at once, she rose from her seat and hurried toward where she had seen him go. The wind caught up her abundant blond curls and whipped them back from her face. She spun around in a half-circle, searching for her wayward boss. "Austin!" She reached up and held her hair down at her neck, stopping it from swinging forward again across her face. Her long skirt swirled around her ankles and clung to her legs as she quickened her pace to nearly a run. "Austin, where'd you go?"
She reached the ledge, peered over, and he was still not to be found. Small rocks kicked up by the toes of her shoes rolled ahead and over the cliff's edge, striking dully against other rocks an indeterminate distance down. "Austin!" she hollered into the abyss. "I hope you didn't fall to your death, because I'm not coming down there after you!"
She turned and shot a glance back toward the car. She was alone. Maybe he did fall to his death. Maybe she would have to go down there, just to find out. She reached out and took hold of a rugged pine sapling growing out of the rock face. She stepped forward some more and stretched out her other hand toward another sapling, tentatively testing with one leg for a reliable foothold a favorable distance further down.
A moment before she was fully committed to her climb a strong hand closed around her wrist and sent her heart thumping wildly. "I wouldn't do that," Austin said, from where he knelt above her. He reached down with his other hand and held her firmly under her arm, pulling her over and away from the edge with a grunt. They ended up facing each other, sitting in gravel, breathing heavily. "You're not dressed to go down the hard way."
"Austin!" she sputtered, veiling her surprise and utter relief in anger. She scrambled to her feet. "Where were you?"
He didn't say anything. He merely smiled and pointed toward the south. Mickey followed his finger and for the first time saw the path. It was a rocky, rather steep and winding footpath leading down a more negotiable portion of the drop off. It was rough, certainly, but undoubtedly a path. Mickey chewed her lip and ventured a glance at Austin. If he was internally laughing at her, he was keeping it to himself. He had already stood up, brushed off his clothes, and turned his attention toward sealing a plastic sandwich bag half-full of what appeared to be ordinary gravel.
"So, did you get what you came for?"
He held up the bag and gave it a little shake. Abruptly, he turned and began walking in the direction they had left the car.
Mickey wiped a hand over her forehead. The sun was growing hotter and giving her skin a prickling sensation. She could only imagine the frizzing effect the wind and heat were having on her hair. Her clothes were streaked with dust. "You had to come all the way up here just for that?" she griped, quick-stepping to keep up with him while brushing away the dust from her skirt with a flattened hand.
"Yep." Then he stopped for a moment to fish in the breast pocket of his coveralls. "Happened to find one of these, too, if that makes you feel any better." He produced his prize, and tossed it carelessly in the air for Mickey to catch. She caught it in both hands, a knobby, gray rock about five inches in diameter, perfectly round. It had a small hole at one end, revealing in the sunlight brilliant, violet-colored crystals contained within.
"It's a geode," she observed, inspecting it closely.
"Amethyst, by the looks of it," Austin agreed.
She turned it over again. "You think so? It is pretty. What do you want me to do with it?" She looked up and found he had continued the walk alone and was out of earshot next to the station wagon, unbuttoning the coveralls. She hurried to join him. "Where should I put it?"
He shrugged. "If you like it, why don't you keep it? It can be a souvenir of the day you nearly went rappelling in a dress sans harness or rope."
She grinned at him and tossed it back. "It would be better in a necklace." He snatched it from the air and looked up at her, his lip pushed out in what could only properly be called a pout. She answered it with a saucy smile. Then, more seriously, she said, "But you know we can't take this, Austin."
"Why not?"
"Because it's worth money, and it's on private property. Don't you have to get the owner's permission to take things like this off their property?"
Austin worked one black sneaker and then the other out of the coveralls. "I don't need permission." He jerked his chin slightly toward the car, and Mickey unlocked the doors. Then he retrieved the duffel bag from the back seat.
"You know the owner?" Mickey guessed, watching him bunch up his coveralls in a ball and stuff them back inside the bag. He added both the baggie and the geode and zipped the bag closed.
"I am the owner," he answered with a self-satisfied grin. He flung the bag in the back of the car, then opened the front door and sat down.
One of the more endearing aspects of Mickey's employment was the never ending series of surprises Austin served up from day to day; endearing and exasperating. Mickey gaped at him for a moment before sitting down in the driver's seat and openly staring at him. "All of this? You own it?"
He strapped on his seat belt. "All three hundred thirty-two acres of the land around the end of this road."
"How come you never told me you owned land?"
He blinked and searched her face as though trying to discern the logic of her question. "It never came up." He stole a glance at his watch. "We really are late now. Let's go."
She wagged her head and started up the car. Beethoven's Ninth picked up where it had left off when they arrived. For perhaps a minute, they drove in silence, and Mickey couldn't stop thinking about Austin's land. She never knew his future plans. Even though she was sure he had them, was systematically achieving them and checking them off his mental to-do list as he did so, he didn't talk about them. It was clear, even flattering, that Mickey held a special and maybe solitary place in the inner life of The Great Austin James, but at times he still seemed a stranger to her. She narrowed her eyes thoughtfully and mused aloud, "So what are you planning to do with all that land, Austin?" She cast him a curious glance. "Building your retirement dream-warehouse?"
"Absolutely not!" he exclaimed, lips twisted in an indignant sneer. "This place is a complex natural habitat with multiple, interfacing ecosystems. And the volcanic ash depositories in these hills are like a diary of the Earth going back thousands of years. It needs to be explored, studied, understood." He regarded her sternly. "Not built on." He turned to gaze out the window and added, casually and more to himself than Mickey, "Besides, it wouldn't be practical to supply sufficient power and water at this altitude and distance from an eligible source."
Mickey began to laugh, drawing a look from Austin that was partly perplexed and partly offended. It was Mickey's turn to smirk. "But you still went to the trouble to find out, didn't you?" Peripherally, she saw him duck his head, hiding a reluctant smile. Her guess was spot on, and it thrilled her. "I knew it!"
"Well, I might have considered building a small retreat at one time, maybe an astronomy station for viewing the cosmos with my high-powered telescope. This would certainly be an ideal site for launching scientific inquiries."
"All for science, huh?" She said archly, but decided he didn't deserve further teasing over the matter. "How did you find this spot anyway? The want ads?"
"Auction." His lips grew thin with the memory of a particular triumph. "I outbid a property development firm."
As they continued winding back down the dirt road, Mickey's ears began popping again with the drop in elevation. She made a mental note to come stocked with chewing gum next time she went driving with Austin.
"Stop the car, Mickey." Austin's voice broke into her daydream, urgent but not alarmed. She came to an immediate stop.
"What's the matter?"
Austin opened the door and trotted back up the road a short distance. He stepped off the road up to a knot of ironwood shooting up from the ground. When he reached it, he picked up something, a length of paper, clinging to the cluster of boughs at its base. He returned to the car, sat down heavily, and scowled at Mickey. "You see this? How many miles from civilization are we, and there's still litter? I just don't understand how people can be so careless with their trash."
Mickey took a moment to inspect the paper, which Austin had flattened on his lap.
"It looks like a giant bag of flour."
"It is," Austin confirmed. "It's what's left of a twenty-five pound bag of bread flour. That's commercial grade. Probably fell off a waste disposal truck."
"Maybe," Mickey replied mechanically, before her eyes suddenly lit up and she cried, "No! I'll bet I know exactly where this came from."
"You do?"
"Yeah, I saw it on the news. A deliveryman for a food distributor flaked out on the job and unloaded an entire truckload of groceries for a pizza parlor into a ravine. It must have been near here." Satisfied with her own explanation, she put the car back in drive and continued toward the highway at the base of the hill.
"Why?" Austin demanded, after a period of thoughtful silence.
"Why what?"
"Why would the driver take the time to back his truck up to a ravine and unload each item? Why not just put the truck in neutral and give it a good shove?"
Mickey frowned. "The guy wasn't thinking straight. Why should it make sense?"
"Human beings aren't always sensible, but there is always a reason for how they behave. Every action has a cause and delivers an effect. The deliveryman decided to end his employment. Why did he spare the truck? The way he acted, it sounds like he had more of a vendetta against the pizza parlor than the trucking company. Why? Did the news say what the guy did after he threw away the load?"
"They said he went back to work; he acted like it never happened. Weird, huh?"
Austin rubbed his chin thoughtfully and stared intently at the remains of the flour bag in his lap. "There's more to this than you got from the evening news. I sure would like to find out."
"Later!" Mickey exclaimed. "We have an interview first, right?"
He didn't say anything, but Mickey was positive that somewhere under the lush strains of 'Ode to Joy' she heard Austin groan.
Even after they were back on the interstate and well on their way to the interview site, Austin's mind was still chewing on the idea of a burned-out deliveryman chucking a truckload of groceries into a ravine.
"What was the name of the trucking company?"
"Are you still on that?"
Austin sighed. "I suppose I can find out when we get back to the warehouse."
"I didn't say I didn't know. I'm just surprised you care so much. You really take littering seriously, don't you?" She smiled softly at his longsuffering stare. "Okay, okay. The company was called 'Able Foodstuff.'"
Austin perked up. "Good! Let's pay them a visit just as soon as we finish up this appointment. Who are we meeting?
"You don't remember?"
"I wouldn't forget. You didn't tell me."
"You didn't ask."
"Mickey…"
She smiled, enjoying the little game they played. "The interviewer is Belinda Alvarez of 'American Notables' magazine. You're next month's feature interview. Isn't that exciting?"
He grunted, and Mickey looked at him peripherally and smiled.
"Come on, Austin. Isn't this what you want? It's an opportunity to talk about the things that matter to you, to let people know the things you know, get on board with some of your ideas."
"It's an opportunity to pry into my personal life in order to entertain people waiting in grocery store checkout lines. Let's get it over with and go visit that trucking company."
Mickey grimaced. Slowly, she said, "I'm sorry, Austin. I can't."
"What do you mean, you can't?"
She looked away from his probing gaze, fingered the collar of her blouse. "I already have plans."
He thought about that for a moment. "What plans?"
"Just…plans."
"You have a date."
Mickey pressed her lips together and kept her eyes planted on the road ahead. She didn't know why the subject was making her uncomfortable. Maybe it was just saying no to Austin, especially when he was excited about a new puzzle to solve. She hated to disappoint him.
Austin nodded slowly while he observed her with scientific focus. "You have a date; a blind date, from the looks of it. Your hesitancy suggests nervousness and maybe some embarrassment." He snapped his fingers. "You're doing someone a favor!" It wasn't a question.
He was maddeningly right. He almost always was. At her core, Mickey knew that wherever Austin's investigating took them was bound to be more intriguing and more fun than the impending date, and with very little cajoling, Austin stood a good chance of talking her right out of it. She stifled a smile as hard as she could and resigned herself to an explanation. "You know I went to school in California, right? Well, I had a good friend while I lived out there, and she asked me last week if I would meet her brother, maybe show him around, when he came to town. That's all. He just relocated here."
"Older brother or younger brother?"
She frowned. Austin's train of thought sometimes took strange turns. "Older. What difference does that make?"
"He's recently divorced," Austin declared. "He's making a fresh start. His sister is projecting her desire to help onto a more geographically available surrogate." He tipped his head and smirked at her. "That would be you."
"Excuse me?"
"What else do you know about him?"
"Nothing! Austin…"
He looked alarmed. "That's all you know? Nothing else? For shame, Mickey!"
"Okay, no, that's not all I know, but Austin…"
"Well, let's start with a name. When we get back to the warehouse, I'll find out—"
"Stop it! No, Austin. No! I don't want you to tell me about him. I want to meet him and find out about him for myself."
"What if I could tell you in five minutes that he's a poor prospect and a relationship between you two would never work?"
Something in his tone touched a nerve, and Mickey felt the color rise in her face. "I don't want to know in five minutes. I want to do what everybody else does and go on dates and have conversations and take all the time I need to find out it'll never work!" She set her jaw and held a tight, two-fisted grip on the steering wheel while she veered right off the interstate onto an exit ramp without signaling, and braked at the stop hard enough to upset the stack of cassette tapes in the glove compartment.
Austin stared at her wordlessly.
"Our turn," she muttered, glaring at him.
Perhaps Austin wasn't finished discussing her evening plans, but even he had enough social intuition to drop the subject while his secretary remained in control of a moving vehicle.
The interview was booked at a trendy delicatessen in an upscale area of the northeast suburbs. It had a long order counter with a checkout at one end, and row upon row of small, square tables set with elevated, high-backed stools. The décor was black and white, with accents of eye-popping magenta, and an array of geometric modern art framed on the walls. On a typical weekday, the place was probably crawling with hurried and important professionals, but late on a Saturday morning, patronage was relatively thin. The journalist waiting to interview Austin was not difficult to find. Granted, she would have been hard to miss even at noon on Friday.
Her name was Belinda Alvarez, and she was a seasoned professional at mingling with movers and shakers and semi-celebrities. She was tall and thin and buxom, wearing a clingy chiffon dress with a low, draped neckline. Her ears and throat were adorned with glittering black and silver jewelry, and her dark hair was caught back in a loose chignon except for one wavy tendril in front, which she tucked behind her ear as she looked up from a leather-bound notebook in front of her. She was sitting alone at one of the window-side tables, and as soon as she saw Austin and Mickey enter the room, her amber eyes, heavily framed in sable eyeliner to give them even more of a catlike appearance, gleamed and she stood and hurried to meet them near the door. She caught Mickey's eye first, and extended an expertly manicured hand to her, smiling warmly. "Are you Miss Castle?"
"I am, but call me Mickey." She smiled back, looking up; and up a little more. Belinda was already tall, and her three-inch stilettos only enhanced that effect. Mickey took a step back, partly to introduce the guest of honor and partly to avoid peering up Belinda's nose. "And this is Austin James," she said, beaming a little. She never ceased to delight in introducing Austin to other people, almost like a child at show-and-tell.
"I'm Belinda, and I am so very glad to finally meet both of you." Her eyes were on Austin with these last few words, and the warmth of her smile ramped up visibly. She grasped his hand in both of hers and squeezed.
Austin accepted the exuberant offering in stride. Whether he was flattered or annoyed by the intimacy of the gesture, he didn't show it. His poker face was firmly in place. He set his best impassive stare on the journalist, a look that was known to make many of its objects squirm under the scrutiny, and he allowed only the barest of tight-lipped smiles to warm it.
Belinda wasn't squirming. It seemed to Mickey that she was accustomed to fielding a lot of attention, good and bad, and probably relished all of it. "Thank you for giving me your time, Mr. James," she was saying, pumping his hand one more time before she finally released it. "I can't tell you how much I've been looking forward to our interview. Do you prefer I call you 'Mr. James?'"
"Austin is fine."
"Good, we'll go with first names, then. Shall we sit down?" Linda led them back to her table by the window and they all sat. She picked up her pen and her ready smile appeared again. Despite her forwardness, she was otherwise quick and purposeful in her movements, self-confident, and not given to a lot of idle chatter. She was just the kind of person suited to blunt the edge off Austin's reservations. "Are either of you familiar with American Notables magazine?"
"No."
"Never miss an issue!"
Belinda chuckled lightly at them both and turned to Austin. "I'm not surprised you'd say that, Austin. I'm sure your interests reach far beyond our target audience. We do, however, have a broad appeal to the population at large. Our purpose is both to entertain and to educate. That's why we're interested in interviewing not just celebrities in the entertainment world, but also the upper echelons of business, science, and technology. We are interested in personalities, Austin, from many walks of life." She paused to regard Mickey and Austin in turn with a significant smile. "And I understand you have a very interesting personality."
Eyebrows rose in either skepticism or alarm, perhaps both, and Austin glanced sideways at his secretary. "Oh?"
Belinda bit her lip, reining in her apparent amusement. "I assure you, Mickey told me nothing about you but your availability for this interview. I was referring to the research I did on you. For instance, you are popularly known as 'The Great Austin James,' and yet almost nothing is known about you as a person. I combed all the media I could get my hands on and I found a total of three interviews from the past five years, all trade journals. You have two stock photos you use for articles, neither recent. You founded a think tank giant and are almost never seen there. You apparently live in a warehouse. And you seem to have a knack for solving baffling crimes. Are you a modern day Sherlock Holmes?"
The scrutinizing look had vanished and Austin smiled and rubbed his brow, combed a hand through his hair, shifted in his seat. He looked up again, his expression still unreadable, his hair now spilling haphazardly over his forehead. "I have no special talents, only passionate curiosity."
"I've heard that somewhere," Belinda mused.
"Albert Einstein. And he has many more quotes and a great deal more personality than I do," Austin shot back.
"He's dead; not a very good candidate for an interview," she replied smoothly. She licked her lips, leaning forward. "I prefer my subjects alive and kicking."
She may have been flirty by nature, but Belinda, Mickey suspected, was cranking up her charms more than usual for Austin's benefit. Mickey had come to accept that there were women who threw themselves shamelessly at Austin, although the reasons for it eluded her. At first glance, she had him pegged as a quirky, awkward, science geek. Maybe, under favorable circumstances, his posture exuded a magnetic power and confidence, and maybe he wasn't so hard to look at. What was truly perplexing was that he either didn't notice or simply didn't care that women responded to him thus. That such a genius in the lab could be so dense among mixed company was a mystery unto itself. Mickey glanced at him now, and he was looking squarely at Belinda with a strained expression. His answer was terse, irritable.
"No, I am not a modern day Sherlock Holmes; merely an ordinary curious citizen with more than typical time on my hands. Next question?"
For the first time since they sat down, Belinda broke eye contact long enough to hail a waitress. She placed a drink order, waited for Mickey and Austin to do the same. She slipped back into her business mode, with her ebullient smile still in place. "I am rather curious myself," she began. She stopped, looked at Mickey, and after a moment she smiled thoughtfully at her. "How long have you worked for Austin?"
"Me?" Mickey started, suddenly alert, now finding herself included in the interview. "Um, close to a year now; about ten months, I guess." She glanced at Austin. He was still watching Belinda. His eyes narrowed.
Belinda smiled to herself and looked at Austin again. "Historically, you haven't been interested in hiring your own staff, have you? In fact, a year ago you told Modern Physics Quarterly magazine that despite your business partner urging you otherwise, you only intended to keep a secretary, quote, 'when Borneo reaches absolute zero.' So what happened in the space of two months?"
Austin shrugged; his expression remained unreadable. "I changed my mind. It does happen sometimes. And I don't mind being proven wrong, even if it's by the corporate brass of Serendip."
The interviewer considered this, and returned her attention to Mickey. "If you don't mind my asking, how in the world did you manage to land the position of first permanent secretary to this man?"
"Belinda," Austin interjected, a fresh edge to his tone, "if you came here to interview my secretary, why was I required to come along?"
But Mickey was already answering the question. "That's kind of a funny story, actually. You see, I was really hired by Serendip first. I showed up one morning with my résumé, just hoping for any opening, and it turned out they had this position that wasn't even posted yet. The CEO himself came out, looked at me, looked at my résumé, and asked me if I could start in two days. Then he told me as long as I passed the drug test, I was hired." She realized she had drawn Austin's attention and she studied his face, searching for a hint of anger. But she didn't find it. He actually appeared somewhat interested. Encouraged, she blurted, "Convincing Austin to let me stay was the hard part."
"How did that come about?" Belinda raised her eyebrows at Austin. "You can answer that, if you'd rather."
He exhaled, long and low. "I'd rather not."
"First, I had to finish a limerick," Mickey said, smiling wistfully.
"Your interview consisted of finishing a limerick?"
"Oh no, that was just to get my foot in the door. The interview was telling his plant why I left my last job. Austin still didn't want me there; not until I reminded him I solved the limerick and he owed me. So then we did a field test, where I had to follow him around and write everything he said down in a notebook. That went on for a day and a half."
"She quit six times."
"But I couldn't, really, because he wanted to finish the field test. But by the end of that, I felt I had earned the position and I didn't want to quit anymore. So he made me finish one more limerick."
"Well, after quitting six times in one day, she had to prove she was serious about the job."
"And after that, I was in!"
For the first time, Belinda's confident smile faltered. To Mickey, she said, "If that was the field test, what made you want to keep a job working for someone so…" She glanced at Austin, smiling coyly, "So, demanding?"
For just a moment, looking at it from the perspective of the magazine journalist, Mickey could see her unspoken point. What would cause her to sign on board with such a difficult, eccentric boss? Mickey hadn't even shared the whole of it; the demand from the CEO to get Austin to pay his water bill or he'd fire her himself, the first encounter with Austin at home in his isolation chamber where he was napping naked, the dead bodies, the killer computer program, the giant spider, the broken arm. And then she remembered how his bright blue eyes drilled holes right through her when he had taken her by the arm and convinced her as only he could: "He said he was about to take me on the greatest adventure of my life," she answered. "And somehow, I believed him."