Wednesday 21 November 2018

Episode 16 - Summoned

Felicity Benoit was a fellow private detective, who had been in the profession not longer than Harry had.  They had met at a convention in New Jersey where he had learned a great deal about being a Private Detective, and Felicity.
She was honest, forthright, and worked for her father, a distinguished man in a profession of sometimes somewhat shady characters.  A lot, he found, were ex-police, as was Jacob Benoit.
She was quite good looking as well.
They had attended a sidebar event, where the participants were given a set of clues, and they had to work out the perpetrator.  Harry was the only one who got it right.
She was curious about him, told him he3 looked nothing like the average PI, but aside from the criticism, they hit it off and had become friends of a sort.  She worked New Jersey and sometimes come the other side of the Hudson, he rarely had cause to go to New Jersey.
Now he needed her help.
After greetings, she said, “Have you got a real case yet?”
It was something of a ritual, she would ask, and he would say, ‘Not yet”, but in this case, he had better news.”
“Yes.”
“Give me the gory details.”
“It’s not that exciting, a woman wants me to catch her husband cheating, and when I had to confront him, told me he wanted evidence of her cheating with his brother.  Then when I was surveilling his bother, the brother was shot and killed.”
“Hell, that’s better than anything I’ve had.  Who shot the brother?”
A man came out of the bushes and jumped in a car.  Got the make and model and two numbers off the plate/.  Think you can help?”
“I can try.  Details.”
He gave her the car make, model, as best he could remember and the two numbers of the registration plate/.
“Thanks, I’ll call you as soon as I can find out anything.”

Harry went back to the office and waited.  This was the part of the case he hated, having to wait for information to come in so he could move onto the next phase.
But it did give he time to think about the latest developments.  He was surprised he had not heard from Jennifer Jones about her brother in law, unless, of course, she had something to do with it, and after confessing Al was bad-tempered, he couldn’t rule him out as the perpetrator.  In the absence of calls from his client, he would have to call her and give her a report. 
It certainly wasn’t going to include the fact Al had asked him to find evidence of her having an affair with his brother.
It irked him he had no idea who his client was, except she said she was married to the brother of the victim.  And the surname, Jones, one of the most common names in the phone book.  He didn't bother looking her up, because there were too many with the same name.
Nor did he have any idea how to contact, or find his second client.
It was a tangled web.
The phone rang, and he jumped.  He'd just nodded off.  It was Felicity.
"The car belongs to the Outtell Finance Company, it’s a company so anyone could have been driving it.  But one thing it was not, and that’s stolen.  So the question is, who was driving it.  I’m in.  What’s the next move?”
He had little time to get over the shock or her inviting herself into his case.  What could he say, she just did him a huge favor.  “Visit the Outtell finance Company.”
“Good.  Text me.”

He was in the middle of searching the internet for information on the Outtel Finance Company when his phone rang again.
He thought it might be Felicity again, and hadn’t looked to see who the caller was.”
“What now?”
“Get your butt down to the station now, Walthenson.  Or I’ll send a car to arrest you.”
Sykes.  More bad-tempered than usual.
“You’ve got an hour.  Don’t keep me waiting.”  The line went dead.


© Charles Heath 2016-2018

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