Beverly Hills Maasai (11 page)

“A costume party?” Dakota said.

“Exactly! Exactly! Obviously we see eye to eye!” my father exclaimed.

And just how any of this was helping our cause was a mystery to me. It felt like my father was on Dakota’s side. I almost said something then, but I decided to keep my mouth shut. Even though I didn’t know what he was up to or where he was going with this, I knew my father well enough to know that
he
knew what he was doing. He hadn’t got rich by being stupid.

“And there’s something even worse,” my father said. “Did you see what they were wearing on their feet?”

Dakota shook his head.

“Tire-tread sandals! Can you imagine what your sponsor would say?” He gestured to a big poster advertising a famous shoe brand and a wall lined with boxes of those shoes. I hadn’t noticed those. “What would their reaction be if the winning runners wore tire-tread sandals instead of these shoes?”

Dakota went a bit pale beneath his tan when my father said that.

“I … I … hadn’t even thought of that.”

“It’s a good thing one of us did,” my father said. “Business is business, after all. Any event where your sponsors aren’t happy is destined to be a doomed event.”

“Thank you for pointing that out to me,” Dakota said, a bit uneasily. “Thank you so much.”

Now I really started to question where this was all headed. My father was running them right out of the race!

“I’m sure you would have thought that through eventually,” my father said.

“That’s most gracious of you, Mr. Hyatt, most gracious.”

“Not at all, son. You were placed in this very important position for a reason. I’m sure the organizers were most impressed with your previous experience and expertise.”

“Yes. My father said he couldn’t think of anybody better suited to run the event.”

“Your father?” my father said.

Dakota looked as though he’d been caught saying something he hadn’t meant to tell us.

“Yes, my father was one of the partnership team that provided the start-up money for this event,” he explained reluctantly.

“Then obviously he and
all
the partnership team have the greatest faith in you. I’m sure you’ll make your father proud.” My father paused. “Especially in light of how we’re going to resolve this potentially
explosive and damaging situation regarding your refusal to allow our friends to participate.”

Dakota now looked completely confused. Welcome to the club!

“But … but … I thought we’d agreed they couldn’t run,” he stammered.

“I never agreed to that. I was simply helping to explain the difficult situation. You’re in a very bad situation. It would be most unfortunate if we had to sue the marathon.”

“Sue? What would you sue us for?” Dakota demanded.

“Well, for starters, breach of contract.”

“We don’t have a contract!”

“Yes, we do. You took the money and gave these men their registration packages.” He turned to me. “You do have those packages, don’t you?”

I held them up.

“And they are signed by the registration officer, are they not?” my father asked.

“Yes, he signed them,” I said.

“But he wasn’t
supposed
to sign them!” Dakota protested.

“But he
did
, and he is your sanctioned employee, so what he does is in the name of the marathon,” my father said. “Money was taken and a product provided. That is a fully executed contract.”

“But that can’t be right.”

“It is. Please feel free to contact your lawyer … or your father. In fact, you might want to do that immediately, because I’m going to be contacting my lawyer to
ask him to go before the courts to request an injunction to stop the marathon from taking place.”

“An injunction?” he gasped. “I don’t understand what that means.”

“Basically an injunction is a temporary restraining order ensuring that while the matter is being reviewed by the courts,
nobody
will be allowed to compete. The race will not take place.”

“You can’t do that!” Dakota snapped.

“Oh yes, I can. Getting an injunction is a certainty.” My father sounded completely confident. That didn’t mean he was—only that he needed to sound that way.

“You don’t really think you could win a lawsuit, do you?”

“I don’t know if I can or can’t,” my father replied. “What I know is that I can tie the whole thing up in the courts long enough to make sure that the race is put into jeopardy. Even if I can’t win, I can guarantee you a prolonged legal fight that will cost you time and a considerable amount of money.”

“But surely
you
don’t want to go through a lengthy trial,” Dakota said.

“Me? I won’t be going through anything. I have lawyers on retainer. I’ll just sic them on you like little legal pit bulls. They’ll enjoy going after you, and for me, the money doesn’t mean anything. All that matters is making my little girl happy.” He turned to me again. “Would suing him make you happy, angel?”

I smiled. “That would make me
very
happy, Daddy.”

“Then that’s that.” He pulled out his cellphone. “I’ll call my lawyer and—”

“No!” Dakota screamed as he practically jumped across the table. “Perhaps we can discuss this further.”

“I’m afraid the only discussion I’m going to be having is with the newspapers and TV networks.”

“What?”

“We’re not just going to fight this in the courts; we’ll be taking it to the court of public opinion. I want the world to know that you consider people who are wearing traditional Kenyan tribal dress as being like part of some sort of sideshow or circus … or what was that term you used? Yes, like people going to a
costume
party. That will certainly get people’s attention, especially the other runners. Aren’t the best marathon runners in the world from Kenya?”

He nodded his head slightly. His mouth was open, and there was a stunned, shocked look in his eyes.

“When they’ve heard that you’ve been insulting their countrymen I’m sure they’ll withdraw from the race, leaving you a definite cut
below
the rest in terms of race competitors.”

Dakota looked like a trapped animal. He didn’t see any way out.

“It’s all so … so unfortunate that we have to go this route,” my father said. “Although there is that one other choice.”

“Other choice?” Dakota squeaked.

“Yes. It’s so simple. Let them run. They are qualified.”

“They are?” Dakota asked.

“Alexandria, what was that story you told me about a lion?” he asked.

“Yes, of course. Samuel once ran after a wounded lion, tracking it for days, never stopping. He ran at least sixty miles.”

“Which I believe is more than two marathons, is it not?” my father asked.

“Almost two and a half,” Dakota admitted.

“Then they are certainly qualified to run, wouldn’t you agree?”

Dakota nodded.

“And you are allowing them to compete, correct?”

Again Dakota nodded. He knew he had no choice.

“That is excellent. Of course, that does still leave you with one little problem.”

“It does?”

“Yes. What will your sponsor think if the three men wearing tire treads win the marathon they’re sponsoring? They won’t be happy.”

“Not at all.”

My father got up from his chair, circled around the desk, and put a hand on Dakota’s shoulder. “You know, son, I like you. I really do. And that’s why I’m going to make sure that embarrassment doesn’t happen.”

“You are? How?”

“I’m going to make sure they run this race in your sponsor’s shoes.”

“You will?”

“Of course. I’m assuming that you’ll give them all shoes.”

I almost laughed. I couldn’t believe my father’s nerve. First he’d won the fight, and now he was going to add insult to injury.

Dakota let out a big sigh. “Do you know their sizes?”

“I’m not even sure if they know their sizes,” my father said. “But we’ll send them in, and I’m sure you can help them find just the right shoes.”

My father slapped Dakota on the back. “It’s always best when we can resolve a situation so that everybody wins, and this is one of those cases!” he trumpeted.

“Yes … yes, it is,” Dakota agreed.

Personally, I couldn’t see any way that Dakota had won, other than that he’d been allowed the illusion he hadn’t been beaten into the ground.

My father and I started to walk out of the office.

“Wait!” Dakota called out.

This had all seemed too easy—what now?

“If you give me an address I’ll arrange to have their chips delivered—the electronic chips that they wear in the race.”

“Chips?” my father asked. I was a little confused about that too.

“Each runner has an electronic chip that shows his progress throughout the route to prove that he ran the whole race.”

“Are you questioning their integrity?” my father demanded.

“No, of course not!” Dakota exclaimed. “All runners have chips—it’s just protocol for everybody!”

“Well … then, thank you,” my father said. “Very considerate of you to have them delivered.”

We walked out and closed the door behind us.

“Well?” my father said to me out of the corner of his mouth.

“Thank you! Thank you so much!”

“No problem. It was my pleasure.”

I looked over at him. He was beaming. “You really did enjoy that, didn’t you?”

“Yes, yes I did,” he admitted. “And you?”

I shrugged. “It was sort of interesting to watch, although you certainly had me confused for a while there.”

“You? Think about poor little Dakota!”

I laughed. “He did kind of get that deer-in-the-car-headlights look.”

“Not a car. A transport truck. I wanted him to see nothing but grille coming at him.”

“Remind me not to get on your bad side,” I said.

“You, my angel, could
never
be on my bad side.” He looked at his watch. “Now, I’ve got to get back to the office—call if there are any more issues.”

I knocked on the door of the guest house, careful to keep things from sliding off the tray. The three glasses of orange juice sloshed slightly but didn’t spill onto the toast or cereal sitting alongside them.

There was no answer and no noise from inside. They couldn’t still be asleep, could they? No, that made no sense. Maasai always got up when the sun rose, and it was almost ten now. Then again, they were probably still on Kenyan time, which was ten hours different, so it wasn’t ten in the morning it was really—No, wait … it was ten hours
earlier
in Kenya, so for them it was more like midnight instead of ten in the morning. They had to be awake.

I knocked louder. The door shook, and this time the juice did slosh out of the glasses and onto the tray and the toast, sparing the cereal. So much for my future
as a waitress. Like
that
could
ever
happen. There was still no answer, though.

I turned the knob. The door was unlocked and I pushed it open.

“Hello!” I yelled out.

There was no response to my call. I looked around. I couldn’t see anybody. I slipped inside and put the tray down on the little end table.

“Nebala—guys—are you here?”

The door to the bedroom was open. There was nobody there, but the bed was made. Actually, it looked more as though it had never been slept in. Then I noticed that there were blankets on the floor, and the cushions from the living room. They’d slept on the floor. That was very Maasai. But the question wasn’t where had they slept, but where were they right now. Maybe they were somewhere out on the grounds of the property.

I went outside and circled around the pool house, coming back to the front of the house. The driveway curved around the front of the property, from the gate and the high wall that surrounded the whole place, right past the house and to the garage—the
five-car
garage, my father always made a point of saying. The whole property was nothing short of immaculate—beds filled with exotic flowers, perfectly pruned shrubs, and grass so green and manicured you’d think it was artificial. It was like a work of art.

Speaking of which—where was the artist? Where was our gardener, Carlos? No Carlos and no Maasai. I had the strangest thought that the Mexican gardener
had taken the Maasai out for a breakfast burrito.

I tipped back my head. What was that smell? Was it smoke? Yes, smoke … it was smoke. Was somebody having a barbeque, or was it from a fireplace? No, neither made any sense at ten in the morning, but there was definitely the odour of smoke, and it wasn’t a particularly nice smell.

I walked toward the garage. It blocked the only part of the front of the property that I couldn’t see. And as I walked, the smell of the smoke got stronger and more pungent. No barbeque. No fireplace. Not unless somebody was burning garbage in their fireplace, or—I stopped dead in my tracks. There was a wisp of black smoke rising into the air from behind the garage!

I ran toward the garage at full speed, tripping over the curb, and circling around and then skidding to a stop in disbelief. Nebala and Koyati were squatting on the ground beside a little fire that Nebala was poking with a stick.

“What are you doing?” I exclaimed.

They both gave me a look like I was crazy, like I didn’t know what a fire was.

“Yes, yes, I know it’s
moto,”
I said, using the Swahili word for “fire,” “but why have you made
moto?”

“Mpishi,”
Nebala said.

“Mpishi?”
That word sounded familiar. Wait … I knew what it meant. “But you don’t have to cook anything. Carmella made you breakfast … well, really more like brunch.”

“Brunch?” Nebala questioned. “What type of animal is brunch?”

I laughed. “Brunch isn’t an animal; it’s a meal. Sort of half breakfast and half lunch—brunch. I have it waiting for you in the guest house …”

I suddenly realized that I’d been so startled by the fire that I hadn’t even thought of the fact that there was one Maasai missing.

“Where’s Samuel?” I asked.

Nebala gestured to the wall surrounding our property.

“He climbed over the wall?”