The rest of the San Francisco trip was pretty much a blur, we shopped and went sightseeing every day, ate at a superb restaurant every night. No one wanted the visit to end and we all left little bits of our heart behind at that wonderful city by the bay. We've thought often about moving back there but the timing hasn't ever been right to do so, although we certainly hope to someday and we all visit at least twice a year now.
There was really now only two pieces left of important unfinished business. Tammy had finalized her retirement and had her things shipped to Tiny's house in Lovett. We alternated visiting each other most weekends, us driving down one weekend, them driving up to visit us the next and usually 'resting' the third weekend at our own homes, giving our loved ones personal quality time. It was a very good arrangement.
The women started doing serious wedding planning, with both bridezillas going completely overboard and determined to make it the single greatest (or at least most erotic) day of their lives. Tiny and I tried to stay out of the planning as much as possible and we just nodded our heads to whatever was asked of us. The only major sticking point was wedding location. Some serious thought was given to getting married all together in the Caribbean, as we still had the vast majority of the Foundation Money to go collect. This remaining problem was now becoming our other major priority that needed to be handled.
In the end, Tiny made a simple request that seemed to settle the location problem. Neither of the brides to be were particularly religious but no officiating judge or justice of the peace seemed to appeal to their sense of drama. Tiny offered this solution, "If drama is what you want, then there is no place better to be married in than 'The Church' in Lovett."
Lovett, as I think I've said several times before is a very odd sort of place.
It had been settled at various times since the early 1800's by various "outcast" groups of settlers, usually having odd and peculiar religious customs and practices. By the late 1960's and onward, odd and peculiar was definitely en vogue, and the County had a bit of a population growth with hippies and 'new age' folks discovering the existing quaintness and joining their own oddities into the community and fitting right in. Until the recent growth of a local software company and a small biological research farm, the single largest business in the area was the Nudist Colony, apparently one of the larger and well-known ones in the country which attracted a good bit of this sort of tourism.
"The Church" technically fell within the boundaries of the nudist camp and had embraced at least some of the core beliefs of every generation of the towns new immigrants, but particularly focused its emphasis on Honesty and becoming a better person inside. Tiny regularly attended this church and asked his wife if that location would be alright. She immediately agreed and Allison tentatively agreed pending a visit to see it for her self.
We visited the following weekend and it was a bit of a mental change to have to undress and go nude into church, rather than the usual dressing up in ones Sunday best. Instead of a cross at the altar of the church there were instead flowers. By the end of the service I found that I had enjoyed it immensely and so had Allison. I saw the point of the whole thing nearly immediately. Honesty was seemingly the number one core belief and it seemed to permeate everything in Lovett County. Shopkeepers seemed to actually respect their customers (and not just their money), husbands and wives seem to communicate better with each other and most importantly most people did what they felt inside was 'right inside' and the best thing to do, not necessarily the most advantageous thing to do. All of this was refreshing, but decidedly odd, especially with today's fast paced (and rude) modern big city life.
Being nude in church surrounded by several hundred other nude couples and individuals, I felt that there was no place in anyone's soul whatsoever for any form of deception. Literally, we had everything "hanging out" and there was nothing left to hide. I decided that I could grow very accustomed to this. We agreed this location option would work very well for both of our weddings and the Great Joint Wedding planning sessions began in true earnest.
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We finally had to make a decisive plan for reclaiming Alfred's retirement stash from its offshore bank. We must have tossed a hundred plans around of the last few months for the best way to accomplish this but in the end we settled for the simplest plan. Tammy had one of her government contacts to track down the whereabouts of a certain forger that she had once met in a Naval investigation (he had been creating virtually perfect Government Military and Dependent ID's that locals were using to shop at the PX and Base Commissary). He was more than willing, for a small fee, to alter Alfred's and May's passports to fit two of us.
In the end, Tammy and I were the ones who went.
The plan went so smoothly we had to wonder if we were just dreaming, or if something else far worse was wrong and we just didn't know it yet. We established our identities at the bank and had the account unfrozen. We then set up a new secure transfer account with the bank's IT guy so that we could easily do future computer on-line wire transfers to one of just two approved accounts only. Allison's 'Settlement' account and a new Texas based account we had set up under our Foundation name. We had begun all of the IRS non-profit paperwork awhile earlier (it takes forever) and were expecting our final NPO authorization nearly any day now. Everything was done in several hours with no drama!
Tammy and I resisted the urge to celebrate and enjoy some proper sun on a pure white sandy beach, and we decided not to press our so far perfect luck and we headed home almost immediately, still giggly with excitement.
Alfred's slush fund was even more massive than I had guessed in my most optimistic estimates, and it was still growing! The wily old bugger had apparently written some secret computer code into the Syndicates main accounting computer (wherever that was, I did get the IP address for Tammy to research) that transferred small unnoticeable percentages of each individual transaction nearly every day. The Syndicate might have been recently decapitated, but it still looked like there was some in-bound money flow occurring, albeit significantly reduced from what it had been just a few months ago. It looked like they had been hurt, maybe badly, but they were not yet entirely out of the game.
Frankly, we had done our part and we had all suffered enough! We quietly agreed that the remains of the Syndicate was now definitely someone else's problem. I just hoped in the years to come I we would not regret that decision.
Just a few drops of rain can lead to a flood and Alfred's money had definitely flooded. Our Foundation was funded now for life and try as we might, we could just barely spend the interest, let alone significantly touch the account principal. Future generations long after us will be praising Alfred & May's names.
The Foundation finally legally established, we held a brief but official Board of Directors meeting. Allison, Tammy, Myra and I were the four voting Managing Directors and Tiny was elected Director of Charitable Operations. He would be the primary person responsible for carefully selecting the worthy individuals, groups and organizations that would receive our funding, approval of which by at least three of the four members was considered 'Agreed'. Our first checks went to several SDPD oriented charities and then the hospital in San Diego that had saved Allison's life, after her rescue. Her attending Urologist also received a check also more than suitable for establishing a Liver and Kidney specialty clinic at the hospital.
