Causeway Conspiracy

Chapter One

Lightening streaked across the black February afternoon in Mobile, Alabama as Gabriella Deveraux made her way down the hallway of McDonahue, Summett & Locke.

She approached the corner office of John Richard Stevenson, local state senator and lead counsel for the city of Mobile.   John Richard and Gabriella had been ironing out the last minute details for a new business venture that NASCAR legend Sonny Aldridge was launching next month.  Sonny was about to open a chain of hamburger drive-through restaurants called Decker's.  Decker's would specialize in hamburgers only.  The burgers would be "decked out" with everything but the kitchen sink.    The kicker, according to Sonny, was that although they only offered burgers, but they offered sixty different types of burgers.  Everything from the traditional mayo, ketchup and mustard variety to the more exotic veggie burgers with pineapple and avocados.

Smiling to herself, Gabriella thought, yikes, too bad Elvis didn't live to experience this hamburger joint!

Gabriella shifted the stack of heavy files from one arm to the other as she pushed the door to John Richard's office open with her foot.  She bit her bottom lip and smiled, as she became acutely aware of the rich carpeting underneath her feet in his office.  John Richard demanded, and got, the oddest things in the firm.  His requests ran the gamut from extra padding underneath the carpet in his office to

demanding that his secretary be stationed in a cubical just outside

his door.  Gabriella rolled her eyes and laughed as she thought of Patsy Kenney, John Richard's 60-year-old secretary.  Patsy was more than a match for the redneck senator.  Patsy hailed from Boston and when John Richard would scream commands at her from his office because he was either too lazy to use the intercom, or to ignorant to figure out how it worked, she would quietly get out of her chair, wink at the secretary next to her,  and walk down the hall out of earshot.    After several minutes of not getting an answer to his frantic pleas, John Richard would come barreling out of his office and tear down the hall to find her with a frantic look on his face.

John Richard actually produced nothing for the firm.  He was just a name on the letterhead to make them look good.  His days were spent smoozing, having lunch meetings with all the right people and trying to figure out how to win the next campaign.   The firm tried to keep a tight reign on him because although he was an elected official, he has a tendency to say the wrong thing at the right time.  The right time to cause scandal or controversy that is, so the powers that be tried their best to stay one step ahead of him to keep the young senator on their payroll while also avoiding controversial issues that could prove to be an embarrassment to the senior partners.  John Richard wasn't "polished".  He could still morph into redneck mode in 0-. 5 seconds and the consequences be damned.

John Richard's office was also headquarters for his campaign for election to the Lt. Governor's office next November.  Upon entering his lair, Gabriella had to maneuver an obstacle course of placards and stacks of flyers featuring John Richard's smiling face, all stacked along the floor in front of his desk.  Gabriella successfully stepped through the minefield of political posters and stickers and sighed as she tossed the files into the large Queen Anne chair in front of John Richard's desk. 

Since Gabriella had joined the firm as an RN attorney, she had, (1) been assigned almost no medical cases, and (2) been paired with John Richard for almost every assignment he had been given.  She finally figured out that the firm always gave John Richard a partner and hoped this partner would be successful in keeping him from embarrassing their prestigious firm.  As the youngest associate, this task fell to her.

Gabriella bristled as she thought about how much time she spent tethered to John Richard because the partners didn't trust him on his own.  On more than one occasion they had actually been mistaken for a couple.  Hmmmmm, we look as mismatched as Sonny and Cher she thought to herself as she unconsciously bit her bottom lip.

Gabriella stood exactly 5 feet 4 inches tall.  A vivacious blonde with shoulder length hair, blue eyes and a perpetual smile.  Her friends frequently accused her of having a Marilyn Monroe sense of humor as well as what they fondly called, Marilyn Monroe "late syndrome".

Gabriella would always laugh and tell everyone she did indeed suffer from some curse of time which always seemed to cause her to make a slightly late entrance everywhere she went.    John Richard hovered over the crowd at 6 feet, 3 inches tall.  A lanky freckled face redhead, he looked every bit the part of the former basketball star he had been at The University of South Alabama more than a decade ago.  But for all the college John Richard had had, he still talked like the South Alabama redneck he was.

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