Caught by surprise, Harry didn’t have an immediate or reasonable comeback to the brother’s allegation.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” he said lamely. He might as well have said ‘guilty as charged’.
The brother shook his head in disapproval. “You’re just like the rest. The sooner you realize Al is pulling your chain, the better. He’s the one you should have under surveillance.”
The brother stood up and looked up and down the street, not warily as if he was expecting trouble, but what might be a precaution.
It was just another quiet street in suburbia early in the morning. One other jogger, and an old man walking his dog, or perhaps the other way around.
There was no traffic, it was not one of those through streets that everyone used as a shortcut.
“Then, just for the record,” I decided to be bold, “You’re not having an affair with Jennifer Jones?”
“Why would I? I have my own bundle of trouble to keep happy, and God knows, that’s not an easy job. I see Jennifer is still trying to prove Al’s a cheater. Here’s a piece of information for free, Al is not that stupid. If he was going to have an affair, no one would know about. No one alive that is.”
Emphasis on the word ‘alive’ which was worrisome.
"Al gets excitable, done time for murder, you know." He smiled. "I'd be careful if I were you."
Harry cursed himself for being discovered. Was he that obvious?
He watched the man cross the road and recommence jogging. Not the sort of exercise Harry would do himself at that hour of the morning. What time was it? His watch told him it was just after 6 am.
He was still watching the brother as he apparently tripped and fell to the ground. Unusual. He didn't move.
It was about the same moment Harry realized something was wrong when a person dressed in black burst out of the bushes on the other side of the road, jumped into a red sports car and it sped off.
At the same time, a woman who came out of the house on whose front lawn he was lying, and kneeled beside the man, screamed.
© Charles Heath 2016-2018
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