Chapter 34
Chapter Thirty-Four
M aude headed home with a smile on her face.
Apparently, she, Essie, and Blaise were now the trivia team to be reckoned with.
After winning three rounds in a row, they weren’t just the champions, they were, according to Dan, the emcee, the dominating champions, displacing the previous champs.
Ironically, a team of men called the Worker Bees.
“Looks like you’ll have to work harder, boys,” she said to herself as she went inside, laughing at her own joke.
The evening had been a lot of fun and Blaise and Essie were cool. Maude was really glad she’d gone.
Now it was time to log into Nightforge for an hour or so. After she ran a few raids and spent some time with her enclave, she would turn her attention to Ollie’s ex.
Actually, Maude would probably start the dive into Emily Elizabeth Louden Keen on her laptop while she played Nightforge on the big screen. No reason not to multitask. Especially since Ollie had texted her Emily’s maiden name.
“How’s it going, Pixy? Did you miss me?” She left her purse on the side table and bent to sniff the flowers Ollie had given her. She’d brought them in from the porch before she’d left. She went to check on Pixel.
The timer on his light had switched him from daylight to moonlight, meaning his tank was bathed in blue lighting to simulate actual night. Because he was a red and white dragon variety, the blue light made him look purple. Beautiful no matter what time it was.
He slowly swam past, no doubt already half asleep, his fins floating behind him like a fancy dress caught in a slow-moving breeze.
“I know,” she said. “I’m bothering you. Sorry. I’ll try to keep it down.”
Her stomach rumbled. Popcorn and pretzels didn’t really qualify as dinner. She searched her fridge and came up with the lemon orzo and chicken pasta she’d made a few nights ago.
That would do. She heated some up, filled her Stanley cup with ice, water, and a big squirt of cherry electrolytes, then took all of it to her chair in the living room. She set her drink and her bowl of orzo on the side table, then went back to her desk for her laptop.
She leaned the closed laptop against the chair. She’d eat first, then get to work. While she ate, she watched an episode of Flimflam Man , a new docu-drama about a con man and the female FBI agent hunting him. It was good and Maude was tempted to watch a second episode, but she had work to do.
And orcs to raid.
She took her bowl into the kitchen then fired up her laptop. She started with Google, typing in Emily’s full name in quotes, then adding the city of Beechwood. She hit Enter before turning her attention to Nightforge .
She logged onto the computer attached to her TV using the wireless keyboard she kept beside her chair.
She put on her headset, grabbed her controller, greeted her enclave, and set up a raid time for ten minutes from now.
They’d need at least fifty members if they were going against the Red Camp.
Those orcs were powerful and fully armored.
There were plenty of enclave members online, though, so they’d be good.
After that first raid, she set up a time for another raid, this time on the Blue Camp. Then she accessed the War Room chat board, which was reserved for the members of the enclave who ran things. She’d been the Crown Regent of the Elthar Enclave for over a year.
The more she got involved with the Queen Bees and got to know them personally, the more she’d come to realize something: it was time for someone else to be Crown Regent.
She still loved the game and the friends she’d made in it, but there was something truly magical about connecting with people in real life.
She’d never imagined that would happen for her at the Colony. It was embarrassing to admit but she’d thought this place would be filled with a lot of boring old people. At fifty-five, she did not consider herself old.
Her new friends were all her elders, but none of them seemed particularly old. Age really was a state of mind. Sure, sometimes the body intervened to remind you of the truth, but generally, you were as old as you acted.
Then, of course, there was someone besides the Queen Bees she might be spending time with. Ollie.
She didn’t know what was going to happen between the two of them, but dinner would be a good start toward figuring that out. They hadn’t set a date or talked about a restaurant, but it didn’t matter. She’d be happy with anything, really. Getting some quality time with him was the real point.
Also, the fact that they were going out was huge. She couldn’t ignore that. He was officially back on the market, and although the divorce had initially hit him hard, the seed Cece had planted about Emily’s potential infidelity had apparently helped him move past the heartbreak at record speed.
Maude could see how that would do it. Nothing like betrayal to change your thinking.
She typed out a message to the War Room group, choosing her words carefully.
Hey gang! Hope you’re all doing well. I love and appreciate all the work you guys put into keeping this enclave safe, happy, and successful.
My real life has gotten unexpectedly busier lately and I realize that the time has come for me to step down as Crown Regent.
Nobody freak! I’m not leaving the game. I just need to be a little more fluid.
You know how it is. Anyway, let’s start fielding possible nominations, okay?
As expected, the flood of responses came rushing in. Some thanked her for her service, some were just crying emojis, some were lengthy comments about how much her work for the enclave was appreciated. Then came one question Maude hadn’t been expecting.
It was from IndigoJayne, the player Maude had helped since she was a newbie, a woman who’d really come into her own lately, and the person Maude would be happy to see become Crown Regent next.
Her question simply read: Did you meet someone?
Maude laughed softly. IndigoJayne was over the target, but Maude wasn’t about to give an affirmative answer. For one, she didn’t really know if Ollie qualified as “someone” yet. And for two, things between them were very much up in the air.
Saying yes felt like it might jinx things. Maude wasn’t superstitious, but even that was a bridge too far even for her.
She answered, Just made some RL friends and gotten involved in some groups. Plus work is picking up. Can’t be two people so… She added the shrugging emoji and figured that should do it.
After a bit more discussion, they ran their next raid and she signed off with a promise to be back as soon as she could.
Then she turned her attention to the Google search. Lots of results but nothing that was earth-shattering.
She scrolled through them, bookmarking the pages she wanted to come back to or those she thought might lead to other things.
Emily was a Realtor for one of the big local firms. Maude decided to explore that for a bit. She looked up Emily’s company and quickly found her listed as a broker and top agent. Emily was probably making good money, then.
Real estate in Beechwood was hot. Great schools, easy access to the beach, and safe neighborhoods. It also wasn’t much of a tourist destination, which made locals love the town even more.
That was changing these days, thanks to people like Emily who were advertising the homes for sale here as great “vacation home opportunities.” Maude scowled. Beechwood did not need snowbirds. There were enough of them here already.
But she knew they brought in money and that money helped keep the roads paved and the schools in new computers.
Maude looked at the rest of the company’s employees listed on the website. Two more women and two men.
One of the men was married, one wasn’t, but he was the most junior Realtor and looked about twelve, which probably meant he was twenty-something.
Maude did a search on Derek Nyland and found him on Instagram, where he liked to post pictures of himself at the gym or on the beach.
And occasionally next to his car, which was an older model Corvette.
Derek was definitely a fan of himself shirtless. The whole vibe he gave off made Maude think he could be a possibility.
He might consider a woman like Emily an easy conquest. Or maybe he was into the whole cougar thing. He was worth looking into more thoroughly.
Maude opened a Word doc and put his name at the top, then copied and pasted in some info about him. His Instagram handle, his email, and a number he’d listed for himself on the company site.
She wondered what the real estate company’s policy was on interoffice romance. Something else to look into.
Next she went to Emily’s LinkedIn, using one of her fake accounts to sign in. It didn’t look like Emily did much with the site. Maude made a few notes and moved on to Facebook.
Emily liked Facebook. She was in numerous groups. One for moms of college students, one for female Florida Realtors, another for scrapbookers, one that was all about fast healthy meals for worknights—the list went on.
Emily apparently never met a group she didn’t join. That would take time to dig into, to see who Emily interacted with and then dig into those people.
Maude made another note about that, then moved back to some of the results Google had returned.
Emily had been interviewed several times in the last year, mostly by local publications, and she’d attended quite a few fundraising and charity events.
Her company had sponsored two of them. The first was for an organization that helped homeless veterans, which seemed slightly odd for a high-sales Realtor to be involved in.
But maybe Maude was reading too much into that.
The second was a dog rescue, which made sense, since Oliver and Emily had a golden retriever. Could be that’s where the dog had come from. Curious, Maude clicked through to the rescue’s website and then again through to their Events page.
She found the most recent event, a black-tie gala. She scrolled through the photos, which were both staged in front of the rescue’s step and repeat backdrop, and candid, most likely taken by attendees.
She found Emily in a red satin one-shoulder gown with crystal embellishments at the waist and shoulder. Very pageanty but Maude was admittedly biased.
She took a break to refill her Stanley and grab the remaining brownies. She ate them while scrolling through the many, many pictures from the gala.
One caught her eye and made her take a closer look. It was the red dress that did it. Emily wasn’t front and center but she was in the background of the photo. Maude zoomed in. Emily had a big smile on her face and her hand on the arm of a young man she was standing close to.
A young man who looked very much like Derek.
Maude sat back, stretched her arms over her head, and wondered if she should make coffee. The night was just getting interesting.