it Happened Last Wednesday (The Zelda Diaries Book 1) Read online

  “Where is here?” Zelda asked in a low voice as she stared into the margarita glass which had miraculously refilled itself.

  Her job was to get out here every month, follow the enthusiasts, and come back with pictures, interesting feature stories, and videos for hobbyist.com and the magazine that was subscribed to by millions of readers. In the past three years, she’d logged enough frequent flyer, hotel rewards, and points to earn an all-inclusive stay at a luxury resort. At this point, another night is a strange bed wasn’t that appealing. Neither was another night sitting at a bar with two other lonely souls seeking a connection.

  To her right was an odd looking man, late thirties, maybe early forties, thick glasses, five o’clock stubble, bad skin, and bucked teeth. He also had “married” written all over him. On the immediate left was a little ole woman with no teeth holding ventriloquist dummy who appeared to be enjoying more shots of Tequila than his owner.

  “You know you want some company tonight,” a voice said to her.

  Zelda looked at the old woman, who gave her a toothless grin and a wink.

  “It isn’t her that’s interested in hitting that tonight,” said the now stronger male voice.

  She looked to her right, but the weird looking man was drinking when the voice spoke up again.

  “He didn’t say it, I did. Put that drink down and let’s get the real party started in my room,” the voice, now slightly muffled, suggested.

  The intense brown eyes remained focused on the man. It was the oldest trick in the ventriloquist handbook. Taking a drink while throwing your voice.

  “I’m not amused,” Zelda told the man.

  One of his hands was under the bar, fiddling with something as the other hand held the glass while his eyes held her stare. One eyebrow arched as if he were challenging her misconceptions about life. She twisted her lips in the trademark sister girl annoyance.

  From under the counter rose the tiny hat attached to a tiny ceramic smiling face. “Would you be amused if I told you I was rocking three inches of solid oaken wood for your pleasure,” the little dummy said.

  “No. I am not humored at all by you or your tiny little wooden friend,” Zelda replied. Lifting her glass, she threw back the last of her drink. An overused rented hotel bed was calling her name. Tomorrow there was a full day of interviews and shooting videos of corny men with an obsession with a puppet. The last thing she wanted was a night stuck with a man with his hand shoved up a dummy’s ass.

  “You don’t know what you are missing,” said the little dummy.

  For some reason, she directed her next words to the puppet. “If I wanted to spend my night talking to a little man, I would still be with my ex,” Zelda said.

  “You don’t seem like too much of a prize yourself,” the dummy said. “Seems like you would be lucky to get some wood in you, maybe it would alter and improve your disposition.”

  She walked over and slapped the dummy first.

  “Hey lady!” said his owner.

  She slapped the owner next.

  “That’s for being an asshole,” Zelda said.

  “You’re the one talking to a dummy! Maybe you need to sleep it off,” the man told her. “Then we try this again tomorrow night when you are sober and nicer.”

  “Tomorrow I may be nicer, but you will still be a grown man with your arm shoved up a puppet’s keister,” she said with a frown.

  “What if I file charges against you for assault?”

  “Excuse me?” Zelda said, looking back at him.

  “Have dinner with me tomorrow, without my little wooden friend, and I will call it a wash,” he told her.

  “If I said no?”

  “Then I will take a photo of my reddening face, call 911 and say that you have assaulted me for being a bit too friendly. I didn’t touch you, but you hit me and cracked the porcelain face of a priceless, antique family heirloom,” he said, showing her the face of the puppet. True to his words, a chip was on the end of the dummy’s nose.

  “That’s blackmail,” she said to him.

  “No, I can either buy you dinner and we get each other through one more night of this conference, or I can send you a bill for 1500 bucks to replace Danny’s face,” he said.

  She looked at the chipped nose sad face puppet, then at the man.

  “Send me the bill, I would rather replace Danny’s face than spending a night looking at yours,” she told him, handing him a business card.

  His mouth dropped open as she walked away from him, not even bothering to look back. He looked down at Danny, his doll. “This is all your fault,” he told the puppet. The happy-faced little wooden man looked back at him. The red tip of his nose missing giving him a creepy appearance of a horror movie in the making.

  “That was one attractive lady, Danny,” he said to his pal as he tucked him under his arm. He hated this conference, but the four-day meeting of ventriloquists was his life blood. The orders received at this show would sustain his family’s business for another year.

  Scott Gerald just didn’t think he could go one more hour of being behind a booth all day and alone at a bar all night. He truly hoped that the lady would give him something to look forward to on Wednesday night. Danny was a part of his life. Making and repairing ventriloquist dolls was the world in which he lived.

  I am a powerful man.

  People give me what I want.

  I am a puppet master.

  A world class skilled craftsman.

  He’d taken the elevator up to the top floor where he’d been booked in one of the Presidential suites by the conference organizer. The beautiful lady’s card was placed on the desk next to his computer as he booted up, checked the website on the card, and then selected the email address of the managing editor of the magazine and website which employed her. He knew the company well. He spent nearly half a million dollars a year in advertising on the website and multi-page ads for Father’s Day and Christmas. The managing editor knew his name.

  Tomorrow morning, so would the beautiful woman.

  Of course, he wouldn’t do anything remotely as crass as telling her boss about her bad behavior. He was too smart and classy for that. Instead, he opened the billing software on his laptop and sent the managing editor a bill for $2500 to repair Danny’s face. It was a thousand dollars more than he quoted her, but he was a master craftsman.

  He was building a base.

  Now, he only had to wait to pour the concrete.

  Patience, a well-honed skill in his trade, would be employed as he waited for her to come find him in the morning.

  Chapter 3

  The ringing cell phone was across the room and she didn’t feel like getting up to answer it. The call would go to voicemail. After a very large cup of coffee, a couple of seared pieces of pork, a few lightly fried baby chickens, and a toasted slice of carbohydrates smothered in jelly, she would kind of, sort of, be ready to face the day. The unwanted caller would be addressed after her eyes were completely opened and her belly was full.

  Whoever wanted to have a conversation with her didn’t appear to care about her scheduled plans. The hotel room phone rang next to the bed. One eye peered at the ringing peace disturber with hate and malice making her head throb, reminding her of how much she drank last night. The hate increased knowing that whoever it was on the other end wanted to start a dialogue with her addled brain before she had coffee.

  “Yes, hello,” she said as she grabbed the receiver.

  “Are you awake?” the voice asked.

  “No,” she responded.

  It was her boss. Maybe if she pretended to be semi-conscious, he would hang up and call back after she’d been caffeinated. Today, she was having no such luck.

  “Then wake up,” Harold Letterman said to her. “Wake up right now and explain to me why Scott Berger has sent me a bill for $2,500 to repair the face of a ventriloquist dummy named Danny whose nose you broke?”

  “The dummy was asking for it,” Zelda said.

&n
bsp; “The man or the doll?”

  “I slapped both of them. Breaking the dummy’s nose was accidental...wait, $2,500? He told me $1,500 and I said I would pay for it,” Zelda said in her defense.

  “Well, you are wrong! He sent the bill to me. Do you realize that man spends half a million dollars per year with us in advertising on our website and magazine? Why are you slapping him anyway, Zelda?”

  “He and his little friend asked me to play with his wood...or play with his wooden friend... or something to that effect,” she mumbled.

  “And how did the $1,500 come into the conversation?”

  “He asked me to have dinner or he would file charges with the police and bill me for the damages to...the dummy’s name is Danny?”

  “Yes, it is the official mascot of Berger Ventriloquism Services. Danny is nearly 200 years old, the second doll his grandfather bought and one of the first items his grandfather put into the Vent Museum,” Harold told her.

  She kind of felt bad for damaging such a rare object. “Hey, if it is so rare, why was he using it in a bar to score some last call action?”

  “I don’t know Zelda and I don’t care. All I know is that I am not paying him 2500 bucks he doesn’t really want or need That invoice was sent to bring you to heel and it is going to do just that,” Harold said firmly.

  “Mr. Letterman, I will tell you exactly what I told him. I am willing to pay for the damages to repair Danny’s face as long as I don’t have to sit across a table and look at his,” she said sitting up in the bed.

  Her stomach was rumbling and turning at the same time. She knew the next line in the script. Harold was going to remind her what her job was. He would then politely suggest she have dinner with Scott Berger. This would be followed by, It’s your job to get the story.

  “Go get the story, Zelda. Scott Berger is an enigma. He is a master craftsman, one of the best doll repairers in the world and if you can get him to do it, I hear he is amazing at ventriloquism. He was on the circuit for a while, but something happened to him, and he went behind the scenes,” Harold informed his number one writer.

  “His father runs the museum, his cousin the ConVention, that is with a capital V, and he runs the company. The only time he is seen in public is at the ConVention where he teaches one of two sessions, but he is mainly there to make sales,” he said.

  “You sure know a lot about this man,” Zelda said, rubbing the sleep from her eyes as she yawned wide.

  “That bit of information everyone knows. Few people know the rest of it. I need you to get dressed, find him, and be his best friend all day. Go get the story,” Harold said.

  “I quit,” she said in the line.

  “If you quit, I will fire you,” Harold responded, then hung up the phone.

  Fine. Just freakin’ fine.

  “I love the taste of crow in the morning,” she said with a grimace. Breakfast was going to be at the all you can eat chow line in the hotel restaurant, versus her leisurely breakfast in the hotel room. The cup of coffee she imagined having a hot shower as she read the morning paper had become a wispy figment of her imagination.

  “All because of you, Scott Berger. Do you want me? Then you will get me along with all of my attitude as well,” she said aloud, heading towards the shower.

  Wednesday was the first actual day of the convention. Registration started at three p.m. and from what she could tell, there was a newbie orientation at 4, followed by dinner from five to seven and a show. The late night antics commenced at nine and by 11:45 hook ups with little wooden friends would be taking place in hotel rooms.

  She wanted no part of it. Each month she was at a different conference, covering odd people who collected and played with odd things. Harold was a collector as well of toy planes, trains, and cars. He started Hobbyist Magazine to highlight the lovers of model transportation collectibles. From there he branched out into telling stories of other hobby lovers.

  Zelda had written for Hobbyist for nearly three years. It had been her hope to start her own magazine at some point, but print sales were damned near on their last leg and unless a warm body had a significant bankroll to get a magazine out there to subscribers, a new publisher was left with online subscriptions and tons of marketing on social media. She took the job in hopes of learning how to manage a publication but fell into the role of getting the story.

  People liked her.

  They liked talking to her.

  Odd ducks spread their wings in her presence to show off the softest feathers on their underbellies. She’d never abused the privilege of sharing their stories and painted her subjects in the best light her words could shed. Passion was a rarity.

  Most people she found, were passionate about causes they either didn’t fully understand or were passionate about causes that personally impacted their lives. It was her job to find the middle ground and pull all of the back stories out of them. Carefully and meticulously, she would dissect their lives to bring forth a human interest piece on how interesting it was to actually be human.

  Today, she had to do that with Scott Berger.

  Rarely did she walk into an interview or conference with a pre-conceived notion about anything or anyone. Mr. Ventriloquist was not going to be so lucky. He already had two strikes against him and the invoice trick was hovering at a close third swing that did not connect to her pitch.

  “I have your number, Scott Berger, and you can bring your little wood to the plate and get ready to strike out,” she frowned.

  She showered, dressed in something comfortable but flattering to her figure, and headed downstairs. Exiting the elevator, she stepped out to find, standing patiently in front of the doors, Scott Berger.

  “Breakfast is this way, Ms. Fitzsimmons,” he said, extending his arm as an escort.

  “Oh shut up,” she said, walking towards the restaurant. Scott’s cheeks were red as he tried to hold back his smile, following her to get their first, but not their last meal together.

  Chapter 4

  Enigma was an understatement of the word to describe Scott. His looks, she quickly found, didn’t match the man behind the geeky façade. The man sitting across from her at breakfast was cultured and refined but chewed like a cow with a chunk of cud caught under his tongue. The bucked teeth didn’t help much either.

  He paid for their meals before telling her he needed to set up the Dealer’s Room.

  “What is that?”

  “I am the primary dealer. Each year, I pick two smaller parts manufacturers to go in the room with me. We can’t, and I won’t, endorse any one brand of product for repair or replacement of parts for the dolls, but picking two to share the room with me is as close to my rubber stamp as you can get,” he said to her.

  He walked slowly, with an ease of confidence which radiated throughout his body. Everyone who passed him in the hallway, walkway or common space of the hotel knew his name. To her surprise, he knew most of theirs.

  “Small family of collectors?” Zelda asked.

  “No, not really. Some of these guys are international. We service customers all over the world so, in the course of a year, I have had some type of interaction with almost everyone here,” he said, opening the exposition room.

  A large banner hung from the wall with Danny’s image in the corner.

  “I understand Danny is the company mascot,” she said, eyeing the poster. She looked back to see Scott eyeing her. “You’re staring.”

  “And you’re spectacular,” he mumbled under his breath.

  “Spectacular enough to have you slide in sideways to get me to eat crow and spend the day with you,” she said.

  “Zelda, have you ever wanted something so badly that you knew that if you didn’t at least make a desperate attempt to try...that you would spend the rest of your life regretting being a coward?”

  She watched his face.

  His hands in his pockets.

  The ridiculous thick glasses perched on the end of his nose looking like an out of work Jer
ry Lewis.

  “Is this one of those moments, Scott?’ she wanted to know.

  “Nope. I just wanted to flex a bit and make you come to me,” he said with a big grin. “It feels pretty good, too.”

  “Not funny. You are not funny at all,” she replied.

  “Then why are you smiling?”

  She found herself smiling a great deal during the course of the morning and well into lunch as she learned more about him. The first thing she learned was that he was indeed a master craftsman. An unfortunate shipping accident of one of the dolls resulted in the act for tonight becoming a slobbering ball of goo because the face of his partner was cracked beyond repair.

  The convention organizer located Scott.

  “Don’t worry, Ted, I will take care of Rocket,” he told the man. True to his word, he laid the doll carefully on the makeshift operating table. The two dealers in the room immediately came to assist by bringing a replacement face and paints. In less than 30 minutes, Rocket had a new face. Using sandpaper, stippling, and painting techniques employed by masters, it became difficult to discern the difference between the doll’s old face and the new one.

  The second thing which impressed her about Scott was his nurturing spirit. Every step of the way, he spoke with Ted, explaining what he was doing to Rocket. He never chastised Rocket’s owner for being careless with his moneymaker, instead, he provided him a brochure with helpful tips on doll care.

  “What do I owe you, Mr. Berger?” Ted wanted to know.

  “This one is one me. However, I don’t want to hear about you abusing little Rocket there...,” he said with a grin as he patted Ted on his back, sending the man on his way.