CHAPTER 90- SPACE MATH

"A pyramid scheme?! She's running a pyramid scheme out of our house?!"

Elizabeth had been pacing the floor of their small quarters for several minutes. Initially stunned by what Jack had told her about Julie, she was now irate.

Aaron had watched her go back and forth across the room several times in the hopes that she would do something interesting, but all his mother did was wildly throw up her arms into the air as she spoke loudly.

"As near as I can tell," Jack responded.

It was two days since Jack's odd message to Elizabeth about shoes and call-girls, and he was finally telling Elizabeth about the investigation back in Liskow. Initially claiming that he was bound by office privacy rules and confidential investigations, he had told her nothing more when he had returned to their quarters that night other that she was not to worry about anything and when he could divulge more information, he would.

Elizabeth had decided that the whole incident had been a misunderstanding of some kind back on Earth, and since she hadn't ordered any shoes or female escorts recently, she had put the matter from her mind. Especially because Jack had assured her that he would handle it.

Rather than worry about foot apparel and prostitution, she had instead concentrated on her lesson plans.

Until tonight.

When Jack had finally been able to confide in her.

He had come back to the room and explained to Elizabeth about the series of messages he had received at the security office involving their home in Liskow and an attractive Thatcher woman who had been having small intimate parties in the evenings.

There was also the matter of several stay-at-home moms who had a sudden income working out of their homes with seemingly no business skills, no large inventory, and no actual observable work.

"And I guess sometimes shoes have women's names?" Jack questioned. "Women were sending messages saying they knew someone who wanted to order a sexy Mary Jane, or a flat ballerina."

"Ballerina flat," Elizabeth corrected Jack.

"What's the difference?"

"One's a flat-chested dancer. The other's a shoe like a ballerina would wear."

"Whatever. It all seemed a bit suspicious when law enforcement first looked into it. They thought maybe it was some kind of bored suburban wife escort service. And then it turned from a suspected prostitution ring into a suspected get rich plan being run out of our house."

"She talked these women into joining a shoe business – a pyramid scheme?"

"She recruited them to sell shoes through some company called "She Savors Sweet Shoes". They paid a fee upfront, and then she got them to recruit their own friends and families to sell. She gets a percentage of the sales from all her recruits and from their recruits. Something called a downline."

"I know how they work," Elizabeth told him. "There are tons of them. Make-up. Hair products. Jewelry. Perfumes. Teas. Kids toys."

"Well the husbands didn't know about them. And the wives were keeping it a secret to surprise their husbands with a bunch of money they hoped to earn. The men got suspicious and talked among themselves. A few beers and a lot of imagination later, and they thought maybe their wives were paying a percentage of their income to Julie because she was their pimp."

"And they called in the police?!"

Jack nodded. "They were concerned."

"I just can't believe Julie got involved in one of those pyramid schemes," a somewhat stunned Elizabeth replied.

But she realized, even as she said the words, that she did believe it. It was exactly something Julie would do.

"Not just involved. One of the top leaders. And she recruited most of the neighborhood," Jack told her.

"The parties at our house?"

Jack nodded again. "And hosting parties with them at their houses."

"All those invitations she was getting," Elizabeth said almost to herself. "I knew it seemed odd."

Elizabeth sat the edge of a mattress and slumped forward.

"So, the police were surveilling our house and my name is listed on the mortgage with yours, so they thought I was involved."

"Well, it did have them curious as to what was going on in an officer's home. Especially because there was a lot of money suddenly coming into Julie's bank accounts – they checked. And she's an attractive woman, who by the way, was having that boyfriend of hers sleep over a few times."

"Which boyfriend?"

"Does it matter?"

"I suppose not," Elizabeth admitted with a discontented shake of her head.

"They thought maybe you had set her up as a replacement in your role as a pimp or a pyramid scheme leader. Every woman on our street was involved."

"I told her to treat our house with respect and take care of it!" Elizabeth exploded. "It's a quiet family neighborhood!"

"Not so quiet anymore. And I'm not so sure about the family part. It appears Julie's business has caused a lot of marital arguments."

Elizabeth put her head in her hands and tried not to imagine her peaceful quiet street with its picket fences and flower boxes now in an uproar. This was worse than the crazed squirrels in her backyard.

"The thing fell apart pretty quickly when the women realized there was no one to sell to because they had all joined. Then they got angry."

"Tell me again about the police breaking up the fight."

"Some of the women demanded their investment money back from Julie."

"Did she give it back?"

"She did. To some of them. But then all the others wanted their money back, and I guess things got pretty heated when a couple of them came to the house during one of Julie's parties and confronted her."

"And people got assaulted?! And arrested?!"

Jack shrugged in reply. "Shoes were thrown. Apparently, something called a stiletto missed Julie's head and got stuck in one of our walls."

"I knew she couldn't be trusted with our house!"

"And what's a mule? Please tell me it's some kind of shoe and not an animal."

"It's a shoe that doesn't have a back," Elizabeth explained.

A perplexed Jack stared at her. "Why would you want a shoe without a back?"

"You slip in. Like slippers," Elizabeth mumbled. "They're casual."

"Well, it wasn't very casual when it went through our dining room window."

"I'll kill her!"

Killing Julie wasn't an option since Elizabeth was more than a million miles away from her, and getting farther away every minute.

And as Jack reminded Elizabeth, she was opposed to violence. It was one of the things he loved about her.

So instead, she fired off a heated hologram message. It would be days, if not weeks, before her younger sister received it. By then, Elizabeth's tirade about respect for someone else's property and reputation would have lost some of its sting.

Jack was upset too, but as he explained to Elizabeth, it was too late to do anything about it now, and by the time they returned in two years, Julia would have made amends to the neighbors and the incident would hopefully have been long forgiven.

Besides, his attention was on another matter.

"I have a theory," he called out one morning as he stood in front of the mirror in the small bathroom. Using short, light, downward strokes, he moved the thin razor blade across his face. Removing the foam and short facial hairs.

Elizabeth, holding Aaron Daniel on her hip, moved over to the doorway and leaned against the frame.

"Remember how I said that every transporter brings back a sample of produce that's grown in Coal Valley," Jack said.

"Yeah."

"And you asked how they know the samples on Earth are actually coming from Coal Valley."

"You said they're tagged in Coal Valley, scanned when they are put on a transporter headed home, and scanned when they get off the ship back on Earth," Elizabeth reminded him.

"Right." Jack took a small cloth and wiped off the remaining shaving foam from his face. "And you asked if someone could be substituting the food back on Earth."

Elizabeth crouched down and set her squirming son on the floor. "You said no. Do you now think that's what's happening? They're being substituted when they get back to Earth?"

"No. I think they're being substituted in Coal Valley." Jack couldn't help but smile at his idea. "We know there's a chain of custody from Coal Valley to Earth. But what about if the substitution takes place in Coal Valley?"

"But where's the substituted good corn coming from?"

"From Earth. On a transporter. Like this one. It's getting smuggled in. Probably easily in the cargo hold. And then it's turned around and sent back as if it originated in Coal Valley."

Jack spend the next two days with staff members inspecting every crate in the cargo hold. When their search revealed nothing, he moved on to the individual passenger quarters and crew quarters. From there, he moved on to the offices and work rooms. Searching under berths, in lockers, and behind every movable piece of anything.

After two more days, he hadn't found a single ear of perfect corn. Or any ears of corn.

However the corn was getting to Coal Valley, it didn't seem to be getting there on the transporter.

Jack was discouraged, puzzled, and tired of invading everyone's privacy. He had seen dirty socks, interrupted people making out, disturbed laboratory experiments, gotten stung by a bee in the apiary, and gotten attacked by a bird in the aviary. And still no corn.

He just wanted to go back to his own quiet quarters, play with his son, crawl into a berth with Elizabeth, and not have to see another thing on this transporter.

"Can we see your attoeme sometime?" eight-year-old Susie asked Elizabeth.

The students were sitting at their assigned tables in the room used as a school, and had just finished a story on the industrial revolution.

"My what?" Elizabeth asked with a curious smile. She was used to young children mispronouncing words.

The young girl shrugged. "Your attoeme."

Although usually good at guessing what a student meant, Elizabeth was perplexed by this one.

Attoeme?

"I don't know what you saying. What's an attoeme?"

Susie shrugged. "I don't know. That's why I want to see yours. My mom and dad were talking about you and my dad said that he doesn't care about your attoeme. And my mom said that was good, but you might care that it was out there for everyone to see."

"Anatomy? You mean anatomy?"

As the words came out of her mouth, Elizabeth suddenly felt her heart racing. My anatomy?!

Joyce piped in. "Our mom said you might be embarrassed that he saw yours, but our dad said it's not something he hasn't seen before. And if you were going to be embarrassed it would be about how stupid you were to punch in the wrong code in the bathroom."

"Shh. Susie," Joyce hissed. "You weren't supposed to tell her that Daddy called her stupid!"

"I. . . I wasn't stupid. I had shampoo in my eyes," Elizabeth retorted indignantly. It was too good to be true. I knew someone was talking about the shower incident! she thought bitterly.

"Our mom told us that we need to be careful not to open the bathroom door when you're in there," Joyce spoke up.

"That's a very good rule," Elizabeth noted. "Now, let's turn to our math lesson."

"Can we see–"

"NO!" Elizabeth interrupted. "It's math time. We'll do vocabulary another day,"

Joyce nudged her sister, and then leaned over and whispered. When Susie didn't say anything, Joyce whispered hoarsely. "Ask her."

"Girls," Elizabeth said sternly.

"It's about math."

"We haven't even opened up the computer program yet. What's going on girls?" a suspicious Elizabeth asked.

"We don't know if you know math very well."

"Excuse me?" Elizabeth, taken off-guard, replied.

"Dad said that you spend a lot of time in the shower."

"We're talking about math now. Not the bathroom."

"It's math!"

Susie nodded in agreement with her sister. "When our mom and dad were talking about you, Dad said you spend a lot of time in the bathroom, and my mom told him to be quiet, but dad said that's because you're not alone in there. And when we asked what they were talking about, our mom said she just meant that you and Officer Thornton take showers together sometime to save water minutes."

"But that doesn't make any sense if you take longer showers," Joyce added quickly. "Cuz you're not saving water minutes if you take longer showers."

Elizabeth noticed that her one Japanese-speaking student was hurriedly typing the conversation into her automatic translator. She could only imagine how this was being translated as the girl seemed more and more interested in the conversation. In fact, all the students were now staring at her.

"And then Dad said that from what he heard there was a whole lot more than showering going on. But then mom told him to be quiet."

"I guess he means washing your hair too," Susie said with a tilt of her head as she considered the matter.

"Ask her about the math," Joyce urged Susie.

"You ask her."

Please don't ask me anything, Elizabeth thought in a feeble attempt at mind control.

"Is math the same on Earth as on the transporter?"

Elizabeth had to admit that question surprised her. She had no idea where this conversation was going, but with a bit of relief she realized that it wouldn't have anything to do with her and Jack.

"Math is the same everywhere. That's what is so perfect about math. It's constant. It's factual. It's not open to interpretation. Why would you think it's different on the transporter than on Earth?"

"Because our mom told our dad that if one person wants to take a shower with another person, that's none of our business. Then our dad said that if we were back on Earth, and you and Officer Thornton were together in the shower, one plus one would have made another one by now."

Up next: Chapter 91

Dear Readers: I hope it made you smile. 😊