Wordzzle 30 - In the 60s they said you couldn't trust anyone over 30!

This Week's Ten Word Challenge will be: spam, problematic, flower girl, splurge, milk, orphanage, lyrics, politics, ice cream cone (looks like 9 to me) so we'll use cone alone as well

And for the Mini Challenge: drag race, poppy seed, swinging from a star, John Denver, diagram

Maybe this will be the last wordzzle we can trust, all after will be over thirty.

Anyway........... Go by Raven's Nest and find out what this is all about if you don't know.

Each week a great group of writers puts their considerable wits to work on using up the wordzzle words. It's always entertaining and often brilliant. In my case I'm stuck in a rut on this stupid serial.

If you need background go back a few posts and there's a list of all the stories from start to finish.

This Weeks edition: Complications

Inspector Generale' Michele Gerard Dupononitee looked through his e-mails. He deleted spam and forwarded jokes and such to his friends. The one with the picture of the flower girl peeking up the bride's dress (and of course it being France she was wearing no pants) was pretty good. He would send it to a couple of close friends. He would also have to e-mail the sender and remind him that the official e-mails for the French Intelligence service were not to be used for this purpose anymore. It had become problematic with more and more women in the ranks; even here in Paris the ugly visage of political correctness had surfaced.

One had to know how to play politics as well as be a good investigator these days. He stopped long enough to take the last bite of his poppy seed bagel and down the last of the office's atrocious coffee. Why the most important intelligence gathering agency in Europe couldn't splurge on a decent coffee pot perplexed and simultaneously vexed him. What was happening to his country when food took a back seat to efficiency?

The next e-mail surprised him. If was from a special branch of the United States Department of Justice. It mentioned that a French citizen named Claude Debaucherrie was implicated in a series of murders in the states. "Merde" muttered Michele. He did not want to open up the can of worms that was Claude Debaucherrie. Still, it would have to be followed up. He would send it down the line and let some flunky poke around in files. So much of Debaucherrie's record had been expunged that it would take weeks to find out they knew nothing. Such was the way of these things.

In Miami Sgt Johnson was preparing to pack up and head back to DC to meet McCool. He wanted Thomas to make the rendezvous with the mysterious note sender. McCool had promised to take him out to the drags in Maryland while they were there. Growing up in an orphanage, Johnson had not had a father to give him a love of cars and speed. His friend McCool provided that now. The drag race would be a diversion from the case and time the two could spend as just friends.

He listened to the oldies station in his hotel room, as Peter, Paul and Mary sang "Leaving on a Jet Plane". "I wonder how many people know that John Denver actually wrote the lyrics to that song?" he asked himself. One of the things that made him a good investigator he guessed was paying attention to little details like that.

Johnson missed the more emotional element of the song entirely though, as he was almost always leaving for somewhere, somewhere that Zan wasn't most of the time. At some point his friends might have to draw him a diagram in order to get him to understand what he needed to do with Zan. McCool would just say "Marry her dumbass, who else will take you?"

His cell buzzed, it was the local special agent downstairs to take him to the airport. He walked to the elevator, went down two floors, around the "caution wet floor cone" and out the front door to the waiting sedan. His flight left in just under an hour.


Claude looked at Justine as she licked her ice cream cone. Such a small thing had made her so happy. The milk he'd used to make her homemade ice cream had been fresh and unpasteurized, just the way he would have had it in France. She was delighted by the tart, rich and oh so wonderful flavor of his mocha chocolate ice cream. "What kind of pimp, biker dude made homemade ice cream?" she wondered to herself. She felt as though she were swinging from a star at times with him. Other times, the ones where his darker side showed, she wondered if she might survive the experience.

Something was definitely going on with him. This sudden trip to DC and his wanting her to go with him. That was all new, and exciting too. "What would he do next" she thought to herself. As long as he kept wanting her, that was enough for now.

RT