Friday 17 July 2020

Case 2 - Episode 11 - You don’t sometimes get to pick your partner

Harry had always assumed from the very moment he met Alicia Wentworth, that she would be trouble.  Hiding behind a benign smile, heaping flattery on everyone in sight, and sidling up to the patriarch, Walthenson senior, she had started as his personal assistant at the grand old age of twenty and had split his marriage apart and most of the family too, by the time she was twenty-one.

And for her efforts, and the trouble she created for everyone else, other than Walthenson Senior, she married him in a combined twenty-first birthday and wedding.

For Harry, it was still beyond his comprehension that a drop-dead gorgeous twenty-one-year-old could marry a man in his seventies, but later he came to realize some people will do anything for money.

She had, and then only had to endure the notion of living with him for another seventeen months before he died, of a heart attack, and though Harry could never prove it, he knew she had something to do with it, other than having sex as she had told the police.

She had set the scene perfectly, too perfectly.

But the police did not pursue the matter, and she got away with it.

Now, she was the de facto head of the practice, had more in assets and wealth than the rest of the family combined, and was resented by everyone who worked with her.

And, despite all that, she remained.

Perhaps after all Harry did have some grudging admiration for her.  At least she did not give him a hard time like the rest of the family, but that had to be simply because he didn’t work there.

But that nagging feeling that she was responsible for a lot of problems never left him.  He played nice with her, for appearance's sake, but knew one day, there would be an opportunity to investigate her.

With her alleged association with the Prenderville’s, that day had come.  Just because she gave him a name in an anonymous envelope, didn’t mean she had nothing to do with her.  It wouldn’t surprise him that she set it up this way, telling, but not telling, knowing that the name would preclude him from doing anything, because no one had before, and that included some of the top prosecutors in the city.

The Prenderville’s were virtually untouchable.

And by virtue of her alleged connection to Prenderville, Alicia might think she was too.

How mistaken.


“So, what are you looking so peeved about?”

He came back to reality with a thud.  It might have been him accidentally falling out of his chair, but he just caught himself in time.

He was conscious of the fact that he had to present a better image to Felicity since she had professed to his mother that she was his girlfriend.

She was a girl, and she was a friend, but he hadn’t quite categorized their relationship in those terms.  Not that he minded that she had said so.  He liked her, and he believed she liked him too.

“The fact Alicia might be involved with the woman.  And that she might be involved with my father, in fact, responsible for his disappearance.  It certainly would play into Alicia’s hands if he were to disappear.

And then some.

After the death of his grandfather he had got to sit in on the will reading, and in fact, obtained a copy of the will from the lawyer.

His interest was in the terms, not in the fact that his grandfather had left Harry nothing, in comparison to his father and brothers.  Only those who practiced law would get a share.  However, another little codicil added presumably later, was that in the event of his father predeceasing his grandfather’s second wife, she would inherit Harry’s father’s stake in the practice.

Harry was not sure how that could actually work, but it was complicated and settled on that basis.

The curiosity was on one hand, the grandfather had left nothing but a small stake in the practice for his new wife, and on the other, that he could make Harry’s father basically the caretaker until he died when Alicia would then step up and take everything.

Neither his mother nor Harry could understand why he chose to stay.  If he had left right after his grandfather’s death, that practice would have foundered in six months or less with Alicia at the helm.  He’d built it up and made a comfortable living from it.  Perhaps that was all he wanted in life.

But now he was missing, that put a whole new light on the practice and Alicia.

“Then perhaps it’s time for me to begin surveillance on her.  See where she goes, who she meets, you know the sort of thing.  If she has something to hide, I’ll find it.  And, it’s better if I do it,” Felicity said, “because she knows you and might recognize you.  Me, she wouldn’t know from a bar of soap.”

A generous offer.  “But,” he said, “don’t you already work for your father?”

“Not at the moment.  He’s put me on a semi-permanent holiday until the trouble I caused blows over.  Could take a year, he said, before the police let us back in.  It’s not so bad for him, but they won’t work with me, so he had to cut me loose.  Now, I can work for you.”

“Well, at least I can pay you, but not a lot, mind you.”

“I was hoping you’d say that…about the helping, that is, and not the money.  What are you going to do?”

“Check out the indomitable Mandy Prenderville and try not to get my head shot off.  From what I’ve briefly read about her, and her brothers are very dangerous people.”

“I’m surprised Mandy allowed the press to take the photos.”

“I’m surprised my father is somehow mixed up with the Prenderville’s.  I’m guessing it might not have been readily apparent to my father at the time.  After all, his own father blindsided him with the Wentworth marriage thing, so what else wasn’t he told, or anyone else.  And if my grandfather was working for the Prenderville’s, it would have been a huge account.”

With funds being funneled into the new wife’s pockets.  If nothing else comes out of this investigation, he would somehow get the truth from Alicia, or if not her, others responsible for what had happened.

It might be the single reason why she stayed with Walthenson’s.  It would be interesting to hear what Giselle had to say about it.

“What about Florenz?” Felicity asked, remembering there was another player in the mix.

“Fit him in around everything else.  I’ve no doubt at some point all the players will cross paths, if not intersect, and hopefully, we’ll be there to ask some pertinent questions.”

Felicity decided not to tell Harry about the situation with his mother and his sister.  Somehow, along with everything else, she would juggle all of that too.


© Charles Heath 2020

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