Death Message

Chapter Three

Albeit two hours late in arriving, the flight home was uneventful. The Montanas arrived in Sioux City at ten p.m. on Sunday evening, February 15th. Even though an announcement from the pilot forewarned them of foul weather conditions, they were completely unprepared for the twenty-four-degree temperature and heavy snowfall that greeted them as they stepped from the ambiance of the terminal's artificial climate. By eleven-thirty p.m., the Montanas opened the door to their apartment. Exhausted from the trip, they threw their bags at the foot of their bed, turned up the heat, attended to bathroom duties, and reluctantly set the alarm for seven a.m. In an attempt to maximize every day of their vacation, the Montanas had scheduled their return flight to arrive the night before their next scheduled workday. At this moment, they both regretted that decision. As they slid under the covers, Maggie leaned over and kissed Brad. "I had a wonderful time," she lovingly whispered into his ear.

"So did I."

Within a few minutes, they were both sound asleep.

●●●●

Monday morning was a disaster. The Montanas awoke at eight a.m. Brad had unconsciously turned off the alarm when it went off at seven a.m., then promptly fell back asleep. Except for Maggie sporadically yelling at Brad for oversleeping, as she scrambled around the apartment hastily getting ready for work, nothing else was said in the frenzy. Together, they bolted out the door at eight-forty a.m. for the thirty-minute ride to their first classes scheduled at nine a.m. After breaking several local and state speed limits, they arrived in the faculty parking lot at eight fifty-eight a.m., exited the car, quickly kissed each other, and started running in opposite directions to their respective classrooms.

Brad and Maggie first met while doing their graduate work at UCLA. During their final year, they both applied, were interviewed, and then accepted for their doctoral program at Morningside College near Sioux City, Iowa. Two weeks after graduation, Maggie and Brad were married. Virtually penniless, the Montanas sold Maggie's six-year-old Honda to finance their trip to Morningside. There, they rented a small, sparsely furnished apartment thirty minutes from campus and spent the next two weeks of their honeymoon cleaning and painting. For the next four years, Maggie aspired to professor of archaeology, and Brad to an associate professorship of mathematics.

Margaret Maria Montana, at twenty-eight, was an intelligent, renaissance woman. She all but annihilated the collegiate community's chauvinistic allusion that a pretty face and keen mind were mutually exclusive female attributes. Maggie enjoyed a perfectly proportioned figure mounted on her five-foot-eight-inch frame. Her short raven black hair was exceptionally complimented by deep ebony eyes, heart-shaped face, distinct, though not an overbearing nose, and full sensuous lips, her only source of self-consciousness. Maggie's permanently tanned skin lent credence to her purebred Italian heritage. While Maggie was all woman, she possessed physical strength and a ruggedness born of the seemingly endless archeological field trips that her educational major demanded. She loved her work, and while a neophyte by comparison to the giants in her field, she boasted several new North African discoveries. While these findings catapulted her into the inner circles of her profession, they had not enhanced the girth of her pocketbook. Through all of her early successes, Maggie remained an unassuming, kind, caring, sensitive, and loving person.

Bradley Kim Montana, his middle name, self-assumed at the untimely death of his younger sister from leukemia, was a year Maggie's senior. Yet, he was a virtual unknown compared to his wife's accomplishments and rapid rise within the academic community. Most men become resentful of being overshadowed by their wife's successes, but not Brad. His support for her was unfailing, his love unconditional. While he had not nearly received the notoriety Maggie had achieved, Brad's solid work ethic and intelligence had gained him respect from colleagues and the college's intellectual inner circle. Brad had been laboring on his doctoral thesis for several years and was close to completing a new practical computer-based application for the rapid generation of abstract statistical probabilities utilizing closely coupled parallel processing.

Aware of the importance of his work, he also knew he would never be able to attain the celebrity spotlight Maggie would undoubtedly continue to bathe in. Pride, a definite part of his love, he reveled in accolades given to his wife.

Brad, like Maggie, crushed the stodgy stereotypical image of the college professor. There were no loosely hanging tweed sports jackets, replete with suede elbow patches, over drab turtleneck sweaters, tucked in mismatched trousers, too short to hide mottled KED sneakers. Looking more like an NFL linebacker, Brad was a powerfully built man of six-foot-five inches and a strapping two-hundred and forty pounds. He worked out three to four days a week at MC's gymnasium and, weather permitting, ran three miles six days per week. Brad had thick, light blond hair which he kept short, liquid crystal blue eyes, and handsome, chiseled facial features that were in perfect concert with his muscular physique. While he possessed a good sense of fashion, it was Maggie who usually made sure he donned the same color socks each morning. Brad was of Swedish ancestry and looked as though he belonged on the cover of GQ magazine. However, nothing was presuming or false in his personality. He was a practical and earthy person with his feet firmly planted on the ground. Together, Maggie and Brad seemed the perfect couple.

Having returned to their daily routine, the Montanas waited anxiously for the arrival of THE package. Then, on Saturday, February 21st, Brad answered a knock at the door where a professionally dressed U.P.S. driver handed over what they eagerly awaited. No alarms went off. No sirens wailed. Even if they had, neither Brad nor Maggie would have paid attention. This was their prize, and they held it close to their lives, giving it great importance.