Wordzzle 66 - Come on Boxcars!

Take a cyber roll of the dice and sashay on over to the Raven's Nest for the odds on favorite hostess of Wordzzle.


The Ten Word Challenge: swashbuckler, heads-up, dry martini, recovery, jungle gym, whiskers, bathing suit, spade, circular reasoning, abrasive

The Mini Challenge: butter wouldn’t melt in her mouth, stagnation, chart, star crossed lovers, apricot brandy


This Week's Episode: Answers?


In the period following the untimely death of Charles Hollingsworth in the house fire, the investigation in the Mortgage Fraud Department had taken on new meaning. With the connection to several murders and perhaps even a serial killer, the multi-billion dollar fraud case attracted the FBI's best and brightest.

Like star crossed lovers, the disparate departments within the agency joined forces to disclose the true identity of the woman involved with both the fraud and the murders. The trail seemed to go cold with Cathy McCarty's trip to French Guiana. The agency had served notice to Hollingsworth's company for recovery of much of the fraudulent loans, but the underlying assets, the homes, had long since been foreclosed on or otherwise changed hands.

The agency also took note of the fact that one of the company's accountants was deceased, believed murdered in the desert and the replacement was no where to be found. It didn't seem like abnormal or circular reasoning to suspect the now missing, believed dead Martin Heingold had suffered a similar fate to the first number cruncher. Still a nationwide alert was put out for Martin.

For Martin's part, he had not needed a heads-up to realize that his time in L.A. was done. He had read the L.A. Times story on the house fire and decided to chart a different course of action. He did the only thing he could think of and got out of dodge. He did not return to work, left his apartment the day he read the papers and didn't look back. In fact, he went a step farther and burnt all his old ID and used a set of documents he'd had made some months prior after his gambling problem had put him in jeopardy for his life.

Martin decided South America sounded good, so he booked the first flight out of LAX that evening. It turned out to be a flight to Cayenne, French Guiana. This capitol city on the northeast coast of South America was a jumping off point for tourists interested in visiting Devil's Island, the famous (or infamous) French prison. Martin scarcely realized he was taking the same trip that Humphrey Bogart had flown to film "We're No Angels" with Joan Bennett back in 1954. And though he thought of himself as a Steve McQueen fan, he missed the connection with the 1973 movie Papillion, also filmed at Devil's Island. Unlike his famous predecessors, Martin wouldn't be drinking a dry martini on the veranda with Joan Bennett or sharing the regions exquisite apricot brandy with some young starlet.

No, Martin was traveling to escape and be reborn. For this trip he just needed his bathing suit, his new ID and a change of clothes. He would hang out on the beaches of South America and defer to temporary social stagnation for the near future. Perhaps after sufficient time he would buy a sailboat and fulfill his dreams of being a dashing swashbuckler, only on a modern Sloop with auto reefing and A/C.

Martin stepped off the plane in Cayenne just days after Charlotte's charter had landed at the same airport, though into two entirely different worlds. Martin sported a few days growth of whiskers and was dressed casually enough to play on the jungle gym with the young children at a nearby park.


Charlotte, on the other hand, had been picked up by her limo at the executive jet hangar and whisked away to her estate. The chauffeur had been all of 5 minutes late due to traffic in the city and was concerned he'd receive an upbraiding from his employer. While to most who met her Charlotte seemed that old world lady that the saying "Butter wouldn't melt in her mouth" might be attributed to; she could be quite abrasive and demanding with the help. Always one to call a spade a spade, she demanded and more often than not received, the utmost in service and care from her staff.

Had Martin known that he had flown thousands of miles only to jump from the frying pan into the fire, he would have surely gotten on the next plane to anywhere else in the world.

RT